Greater than progress in the arts of peace is progress in the art of war.  We have read in the American papers of a most wonderful new French shell that in bursting paralyzes and destroys life so instantly that all the living things within so many yards are, in a flash, set rigid in position as though manufactured for Jarley’s Wax Works, the officer standing in position with uplifted arm, yet dead, the soldier by the window with a cigar in his fingers, a smile on his face, stone dead.

I was informed that the effectiveness of this shell was not due to its poisonous gases but to the fact that, instead of being filled with bullets, it was charged with a wonderful new explosive.

For the development of the science of war twelve months in the line of battle is worth in new inventions ten years of peaceful military study.  A three years’ warfare for which the English are planning is likely to put Germany’s thirty years of “peaceful” war preparation quite in the shade, so far as practical results are concerned.

I hear of new and more powerful mortars and cannon, wonderful new rifles, now being manufactured by the million from secret plans, and new guns to bring down Zeppelins, that it is not useful to discuss here.

In the first six months of this war, the German casualties must be well up toward 2,000,000.  A million of the injured may go back to the firing line.

But in killed, seriously wounded, missing, and prisoners, Germany must be losing at the rate of 2,000,000 men a year, and the forces of destruction against her will increase rather than diminish.  That she can lose at this rate for three years and have anything left worth consideration as a military power is beyond reason.

Nevertheless, when I spoke with a very prominent American, now in a responsible position abroad, he said:  “The Germans have food and supplies, and they have an idea; and the only way to overcome that idea is by their destruction.  The South had no resources for a three-year or four-year war, but it had an institution, an idea, and a determination.  If you will recall it, at the close of the war there were practically no men left in the South.  This war will be over when the fighting men of Germany have been killed off.”

I have so much respect for the business, mathematical, and scientific mind of Germany, that I cannot believe she will prefer the destruction of the German people, individually or collectively, to the destruction of the German war-machine which set on this war.

I make the following estimate of the casualties—­killed, wounded, missing, and prisoners—­of the warring powers, omitting Turkey and Japan, up to February 1, 1915:—­

German........ 1,800,000
French........ 1,200,000
Russian....... 1,600,000
Austrian...... 1,300,000
Belgian.......   200,000
Servian.......   150,000
Montenegrin...    20,000
English.......   110,000
Total....... 6,280,000

Not in a hundred years, or since the Napoleonic wars of 1793 to 1815, has there been any war approaching these casualties now reaching in six months to six millions.