ABSTRACT
Modern wars involve innumerable consequences, whose reverberations echo for years to come. The important part played by railways in modern warfare is shown by the fact that ten thousand trains were steaming back and forth across France during the twenty days of mobilization. The conditions of modern warfare are entirely different. The armies, which in former times seldom exceeded a hundred thousand men, are now composed of many millions, and these hordes of soldiers spread over every part of a country by road and rail like a swarm of locusts, and lay it utterly waste. Artillery and munitions are among the heaviest items of expenditure in modern warfare. The different wars which have followed one another for the last half-century have been of various lengths. The Crimean War of 1854 lasted two years, the Boer War of 1899 two years and a half, and the American Civil War five years; but most of them have been much shorter.
