The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-10-16

tneo1aL1on an, 1I1poSSIb1l1ty, may be reminded that it is not in any way so unlikely las war itself seemed eight weeks ago.
 That first declaration of war struck the human race like a bolt from a. clear sky.
 Why may not peace yet beam forth as unexpectedly as war came?
 cataclysm. LA
 Hope has become a world necessity.
 The first requisite to the final an swer to the tragic enigma. now pro- pounded to the race is to realize it's compIexity and it's magnitude. =
 There have been other world vars" but this one occupies a place of terrible uniqueness because never ! before has. the political definition of the world been so comprehensive, never before has the globe. been so popu1ous and never before have the agencies of destruction been so for rnidalbIe.
 The conquests of Alexander. and of Caesar were only worId-wars in the sense that they included practically all the then known area. of civiliza,- tion. But that area was limited, and the same was true of the epoch of the Crusades
 The coalition of Austria. Russia. France and Sweden against Prussia. Great Britain and Hanover was world war-it set men lighting one another on both sides of the globe and it's Western Hemisphere phase was the conflict that was decided by the cap ture of Quebec. But the struggle for the mastery of colonies representing the world-phase of the strife then centered in Europe had an irnrneasur- ably smaller significance than a. sirni- lar conflict would have today.
 The colonies, for example, which Great Britain wrested from France in North America, were of scanty spop11- 1ation, crude institutions and as yet unascertained values Today, the value of such territorial possessi ons as Can ada and India, Australia. and South Afric. represent mostly an advanced civilization, numerous population. the building of railroads, and the develop ment of a thousand forms of enter prise.
 The same, in variol degrees, is true of the colonial possessions of France and Germany, and of the Astatic DOT ton of Russia.
 To choose a. couple of typical in stances; :. siberias once the synonym for desolation, now has become a great grain-raisfng country. and is knit by such 8 bond of transcontine entaI enterprise as the trans-Sfberian rail- road. In Canada within a few years, have been opened up the superb wheat-raising areas of the Canadian Northwest. Similar Illustrations may be drawn from the principal colonial possessions of all the contendtng powers. 1.
 In a word, civilization now has more to lose than 1t had in the time of Fred erick the Great or Napoleon
 Geograp hicaI@ discoveries have made the world larger, invention and en- terprise have made it richer. The property hazard as well as the life hazard in the fearful game in which Europe and it's cosmopolitan depen- dencies have engaged, is many-fold greater than in any preceding world war;
 From the property venture to the blood venture, let g. single comparison illustrate the stake on the world table. Sir Archibald Alison, describing con ditions at the beginning of the cam dred thousand soldiers encirc1ed the paign of 1913 estimated that nine hun NapoleOnic empire for it's ami ihi1ation and that the French Emperor had as- sembled seven hundred thousand men in opposition.
 This nassfng of one million, six hundred thousand troops in the field was the supreme effort on both sides -on the one hand the colossal coaIi- ton of Germany, Great Britain, Aus tria, Russia and minor aIltes-on the other all the soldiers that could be gathered from all the regions where the Bonapartean regime held sway. It was boasted of these armies that the hosts of Alexander could have blown to fragments '*by one discharge i of its tremendous artillery Ger tainIy the array was so grand and i'm pressive as to transcend the scope of human imagination, and the battles of the campaign of 1S13-Lutzen Bautzen, Gross Beeren. the Katzbach, Dresden. Leipsic, have even since oc- cupied a.. grirn1y mem orabIe chapter in the classics of military history. Yet, it is now estimated that the nations engaged in the present war can bring from thirteen millions to seventeen millions of soldiers into the | field
 In such a war as this. what would have been great battles in former wars are styled mere secondary som-