Not only on land, but at sea as well, the tide of destruction
rises and swells. Huge warships, built at a cost of millions of
dollars and tenanted by hundreds of hardy sailors, are torn and
rent by shot and shell and at times sent to the bottom with all
on board by the explosion of torpedoes beneath their unprotected
lower hulls. The torpedo boat, the submarine, with other agencies
of unseen destruction, have come into play to add enormously to
the horrors of naval warfare, while the bomb-dropping airships,
letting fall its dire missiles from the sky, has come to add to
the dread terror and torment of the battle-field.

We began this chapter with a statement of the startling
suddenness of this great war, and the widespread consequences
which immediately followed. We have been led into a discussion of
its issues, of the disturbing and distracting consequences which
cannot fail to follow any great modern war between civilized
nations. We had some examples of this on a small scale in the
recent Balkan-Turkish war. But that was of minor importance and
its effects, many of them sanguinary and horrible, were mainly
confined to the region in which it occurred. But a war covering
nearly a whole continent cannot be confined and circumscribed in
its consequences. All the world must feel them in a measure -
though diminishing with distance. The vast expanse of water which
separates the United States from the European continent could not
save its citizens from feeling certain ill effects from the
struggle of war lords. America and Europe are tied together with
many cords of business and interest, and the severing or
weakening of these cannot fail to be seriously felt. Canada, at a
similar width of removal from Europe, had reason to feel it still