The death of M. de Bloch, or Bliokh, is announced
from Warsaw. He was a Polish Jew, who had accumulated a large fortune as a banker and railway contractor, and earned much renown among his countrymen by economic writings when in 1898 he published in Russia a large book on the " Future of War," the drift of which was that owing to conscription, to the enormous cost of modern campaigns, and to other cir- cumstances decisive war had become impracticable, and that a lasting period of peace was nearly certain. The book was said to have made a deep impression upon the Czar, and even to have produced his Rescript in favour of peace, and it was therefore widely read, but its results as an evangel of peace are as yet quite imperceptible. M. de Bloch probably deepened in the minds of statesmen an impression of the ruinousness of great wars, but he knew nothing of naval warfare, and did not perceive that the great military fact of the last few years, the war between Germany and France, gives a reply to all his theories. If countries like them ean fight to a decision, why is it impossible for others ? At the Peace Conference at the Hague M. de Bloch was listened to with much respect, but that great meeting dispersed without having made war either impossible, or impracticable, or unlikely.
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