DAVID STARR JORDAN
JOHN GRIER HIBBEN
(Photo by McManus.)
While that situation may not offer a true parallel in all respects to that in which we find the belligerent forces in the present European war, it nevertheless may be taken as a precedent proving that frontal encounters of powerful opponents generally do not yield final results until actual exhaustion compels one side or the other to abandon hope.
Such an exhaustion hardly can be expected within measurable time on the part of either one or the other of the combatants in the existing European conflict, and this means the probable continuation for a long period of the merciless slaughter which has marked the last few months. We hold up our hands in horror at the stories of human sacrifices in the early ages when, after all, these were, perhaps, less brutal and less appalling than the wholesale slaughter of the flower of these warring peoples of which we now read almost daily.
As I see the situation there really are only three contestants in the war—England, Russia, and Germany. France, Belgium, and Austria are important auxiliaries, but they are playing to a certain extent secondary rôles.