One figures
great towns red with destruction while giant airships darken the sky,
one pictures the crash of mighty ironclads, the bursting of tremendous
shells fired from beyond the range of sight into unprotected cities. One
thinks of congested ways swarming with desperate fighters, of torrents
of fugitives and of battles gone out of the control of their generals
into unappeasable slaughter. There is a vision of interrupted
communications, of wrecked food trains and sunken food ships, of vast
masses of people thrown out of employment and darkly tumultuous in the
streets, of famine and famine-driven rioters. What modern population
will stand a famine? For the first time in the history of warfare the
rear of the victor, the rear of the fighting line becomes insecure,
assailable by flying machines and subject to unprecedented and
unimaginable panics. No man can tell what savagery of desperation these
new conditions may not release in the soul of man. A conspiracy of
adverse chances, I say, might contrive so great a cataclysm. There is no
effectual guarantee that it could not occur.
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