The modern warship is a floating fortress equipped with complex machinery, and the rivalry in naval invention has led to a terrible expenditure upon which the powers have embarked in utter heedlessness of the warnings of economists. So prodigious is the destructive power of modern naval weapons that, in the opinion of most specialists, vessels which take part in great battles will issue from them damaged to such an extent that, during the rest of the war, they will not need to be taken into account. In war the strongest nation will be that which possesses the greatest number of arsenals and ready stores of ammunition, and coal at points selected in times of peace; and, in addition to these, a fleet in reserve, even a fleet of old type, but equipped with modern artillery. With such a fleet it will be possible to strike deadly blows at the enemy when the fleets of the first line have been incapacitated. To cruisers and torpedo-boats will be allotted the ferocious duty of pursuing merchant ships, falling upon them at night, and sinking them, with the object of cutting the communications and paralysing the trade of the enemy. The effect of naval wars on trade will in future be incomparably more disastrous than it has ever been before. Calculations show that England alone in a prolonged war could gain the mastery of the sea, forcing the other naval powers to give way everywhere. But the interruption of communications at sea would cause the English such losses that a prolonged war would be impossible for them. Thus, in continuing to increase their fleets and to perfect their armaments at immense cost, the European powers are striving at aims undefined and unattainable. But the financial and social difficulties which yearly increase may result in such dangers that governments must be compelled after immense sacrifices to do what it would be wiser to do to-day--namely, to abandon a fruitless competition. Such is a brief picture of what Europe may expect from a future war. But over and above the direct sacrifices and material losses by slaughter, fire, hunger, and disease, a war will cause to humanity a great moral evil in consequence of the forms which a struggle on sea will assume, and of the examples of savagery which it will present at a moment when the civil order will be threatened by new theories of social revolution. What wearisome labour will be needed to repair the losses, to cure the wounds which a war of a single year will cause! How many flourishing countries will be turned into wildernesses and rich cities into ruins! How many tears will be shed, how many will be left in beggary! How long will it be before the voices of the best men, after such a terrible example, will preach to humanity a higher principle than "might is right"? _IV.--The Warnings of the Economists_