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Show WARFARE BECOMING LESS DEADLY There are not wanting authorities with refereuco to things military who aver that the improvement in arms ban actually rendered warfare less destructive de-structive and that in these days of fearful engines of war the slaughter is much less than it was in the old dajs of muskets, of bows and arrows and of hand to hand conflicts. In ad dition, it may be pointed out that tho modern wars have been mercifully shorter and so less sanguinary than those of tho centuries gone. Under the primitive conditions of fighting, when gunpowder was unknown, un-known, wars drifted on for generations, genera-tions, even for centuries. England waged war with Scotland almost without with-out intormisslon foj a hundred years and for a like period with France. Tho Thirty Years' war and later the Seven Years' war aro epochs in military history. his-tory. Our own Civil war, though foaght with muzzle-loading guns, lasted but four years. About a year thoreaftor Prussia overcame Austria In seven short weeks, and in 1S71 the German power overwhelmed that of France in some eight months. It took Uncle Sam only ninety days to disslpata tho power pow-er of Spain in two oceans. In all old-time battles, where tho weapons were bowB and arrows, swords and battle axes, and whore no weapon was available that could kill at a distance of more than a few hundred hun-dred yards, tho mortality frequently rose to one in every threo oj four fighters engaged, and sometimes exceeded ex-ceeded this enormous percentage; wheroa3, in modern battle, with weapons wea-pons far more deadly, a proportion of one in twenty, It Is claimed, has rarely rare-ly been exceeded. At Alma the casualties were fifty, four a thousand, or loughly, one to 18 5; at Inkerman they wore 1 In 20; at Sedan, 1 in 60; at Gravelotte, 1 in 111, and at Waterloo, 1 in 24. In the Crimean war It has been calculated, 742 'shots were required to dispatch one fighter, and at Gibraltar, 258,387 shot and shell found only 1,341 human targets, and of these many were raoro-ly raoro-ly wounded. -oo The first regular passenger train to cross the new Galveston causeway was a Santa Fo train which rando tho tria on May 17. |