Events Culminating in The Great Conflict | Page 6

The Advance on Adrianople - Servian and Greek victories - The Bulgarian Successes - Steps toward Peace - The War Resumed - Siege of Scutari - Treaty of Peace - War Between the Allies - The Final Settlement
Chapter XIX
Methods in Modern Warfare Ancient and Modern Weapons - New Types of Weapons - The Iron-clad Warship - The Balloon in War - Tennyson's Foresight - Gunning for Airships - The Submarine - Under-water Warfare - The New Type of Battleship - Mobilization - The Waste of War
Chapter XX
Canada's Part in the World War New Relations Toward the Empire - Military Preparations - The Great Camp at Valcartier - The Canadian Expeditionary Force - Political Effect of Canada's Action on Future of the Dominion
Chapter I
. ALL EUROPE PLUNGED INTO WAR Dramatic Suddenness of the Outbreak - Trade and Commerce Paralyzed - Widespread Influences - Terrible Effects of War - The Tide of Destruction - Who Caused the Conflict? - Half Century to Pay Debts
At the opening of the final week of July, 1914, the whole world - with the exception of Mexico, in which the smouldering embers of the revolution still burned - was in a state of profound peace. The clattering hammers and whirling wheels of industry were everywhere to be heard; great ships furrowed the ocean waves, deep-laden with the world's products and carrying thousands of travelers bent on business or enjoyment. Countless trains of cars, drawn by smoke-belching locomotives, traversed the long leagues of iron rails, similarly laden with passengers engaged in peaceful errands and freight intended for peaceful purposes. All seemed at rest so far as national hostile sentiments were concerned. All was in motion so far as useful industries demanded service. Europe, America, Asia, and Africa alike had settled down as if to a long holiday from war, and the advocates of universal peace were jubilant over the progress of their cause, holding peace congresses and conferences at The Hague and elsewhere, fully satisfied that the last war had been fought and that arbitration boards would settle all future disputes among nations, however serious.
Such occasions occur at frequent intervals in nature, in which a deep calm, a profound peace, rests over land and sea. The winds are hushed, the waves at rest; only the needful processes of the universe are in action, while for the time the world forgets the chained demons of unrest and destruction. But too quickly the chains are loosened, the winds and waves set free; and the hostile forces of nature rush over earth and sea, spreading terror and devastation in their path. Such energies of hostility are not confined to the elements. They exist in human communities. They underlie the political conditions of the nations, and their outbreak is at times as sudden and unlooked-for as that of the winds and waves. Such was the state of political affairs in Europe at the date mentioned, apparently calm and restful, while below the surface hostile forces which had long been fomenting unseen were ready to burst forth and whelm the world.
DRAMATIC SUDDENNESS OF THE OUTBREAK
On the night of July 25th the people of the civilized world settled down to restful slumbers, with no dreams of the turmoil that was ready to burst forth. On the morning of the 26th they rose to learn that a great war had begun, a conflict the possible width and depth of which no man was yet able to foresee; and as day after day passed on, each day some new nation springing into the terrible arena until practically the whole of Europe was in arms and the Armageddon seemed at hand, the world stood amazed and astounded, wondering what hand had loosed so vast a catastrophe, what deep and secret causes lay below the ostensible causes of the war. The causes of this were largely unknown. As a panic at times affects a vast assemblage, with no one aware of its origin, so a wave of hostile sentiment may sweep over vast communities until the air is full of urgent demands for war with scarce a man knowing why.
What is already said only feebly outlines the state of consternation into which the world was cast in that fateful week in which the doors of the Temple of Janus, long closed, were suddenly thrown wide open and the terrible God of War marched forth, the whole earth trembling beneath his feet. It was the breaking of a mighty storm in a placid sky, the fall of a meteor which spreads terror and destruction on all sides, the explosion of a vast bomb in a great assemblage; it was everything that can be imagined of the sudden and overwhelming, of the amazing and incredible.
TRADE AND COMMERCE PARALYZED
For the moment the world stood still, plunged into a panic that stopped