of lives and an ever-growing volume of human misery are a terrible punishment for the neglect of science.
I come now to an entirely different aspect of the war, but one in which the Government requires the aid of science just as fully as in the provision of ammunition. It is possible that military experts are mistaken in thinking that the final decision can be reached by fighting. It may have to be reached by economic and financial pressure. And in any case such pressure, if it can be exerted, is certain to have an immense influence upon the war. A Warsaw banker, I. S. Bloch, after immense labour carried on for many years, published in 1897 six volumes on The War of the Future. Two years later, an English translation of the last volume, with the title Is War now Impossible?, was brought out in London. The writer was not considering in his work the wars of small nations or small wars on the outskirts of great empires: he was thinking solely of struggles like the present. He was obviously wrong in some of his conclusions. Thus he believed that the day of the bayonet was entirely over. He over-estimated the financial difficulty, considering that an expenditure, estimated at that time, of £4,000,000 a day for the maintenance of the mobilized troops of the Triple and Dual Alliances would be an impossible burden. And he greatly exaggerated the danger of swift economic and social ruin in the warring states. But he saw very clearly a great deal that military experts have failed to see. The magazine rifle of small calibre with smokeless powder, immense range, and flat trajectory, the even greater improvement in artillery, together with the social and economic conditions of the modern state, were the data from which he drew his conclusions. They are most easily conveyed in a few extracts from a