The great conflict of the European nations, brought about by the overmastering ambition and narrow-minded self-sufficiency of the German peoples, which changed, with awful suddenness, all the long-established conditions of civilised society, will be long memorable for a minor, but altogether extraordinary, circumstance.
Not only has this German-made war to be accounted the most stupendous upheaval in all history, but it is the first great armed conflict to be adequately recorded during its progress by means of the most wonderful inventions of human ingenuity. If the telegraph and the instantaneous camera had been in existence during the Napoleonic wars, how differently the social life of those times would have been affected, and what an abundance of documentary evidence would have accumulated for the study and instruction of later generations!
