NON-VIOLENCE  THE ONLY WAY

455

hilt that violence does not win anything worth while, and
that whatever it creates is most unstable. Who now has
won the World War—the Allies or Germany? Who
believes that the conditions now being established in Ger-
many and the rest of Central Europe by means of violence
will be permanent ? Nor can Japan create stable conditions
in China by her present tactics.
Modern war is very different from even that of
1914-18. The use of airplane bombing with high explosives,
incendiary and poison gas, plus anti-aircraft guns, means
that the bombers have to fly so high that they cannot aim
accurately. Hence, modern war is not only vastly more des-
tructive, it is also vastly more indiscriminate in its attack*
In former wars the women, children and aged were mostly
unharmed ajid at home, and able to carry on most of the
habits of normal life. Now they are even more defenceless
than the soldiers. There are no longer any front line
trenches. Everyone is, in effect, in the trenches. A wise
general always kept certain troops in reserve, and never
threw them all into battle. But modern militarists are
compelled to throw the entire nation into danger of destruc-
tion. There may be no reserve to carry on and re-establish
civilization after a modern war.
A modern thermite bomb cannot be quenched by
water. It burns at a temperature of about 2,000 degrees
and melts its way through steel beams and eight inches of
solid concrete cement. Not even Spain has shown the full
horrors of modern war. Incendiary bombs have been
used there only twice; probably as an experiment, by the
Germans, and gas bombs not at all. The Germans deve-
loped a new and terrible form of attack from the air, in
which the planes rose to a great height of about 20,000 feet
where they were invisible from the ground; and at a dis-
tance of about 75 miles from the city they were aiming at,
they shut off their engines, thus becoming entirely silent and
incapable of detection by even the most delicate sound
recorders. They coasted that 75 miles and dropped high
explosive bombs upon the city of Barcelona without the
slightest warning. I have seen photographs of the results.
Defensive measures against that form of attack are utterly