War Would Desolate Europe.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 30, 1912:
Winston Churchill Says a Conflict Now Would Be a Horror.
    LONDON, Nov. 29.— Speaking at a banquet given in his honor tonight. Winston Spencer Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, said that while strong feeling naturally existed between Russia and Austria over the Balkan question, a resort to war by them would be a horror, disproportionate to any cause existing or any compensation that might be achieved.
    "Christian civilization," continued Mr. Churchill, "looks across the tangles of diplomacy to the sovereigns of those august empires and asks whether kingship might not in these modern democratic days win for itself new lustre and proclaim to the multitudes of enfranchised toilers in whose hands power is being increasingly reposed the fact that the monarchy is the bulwark of European peace."
    A great gulf, Mr. Churchill said, separated the affairs of Russia and Austria from those of the other European powers, and they had only to pursue the policy of trusting one another, which they had been pursuing, and nothing could drive them from the path of sanity and honor. A general war might plunge Europe almost into the desolation of the Middle Ages.
    "The only epitaph history could write upon such, a catastrophe," Mr. Churchill declared, "would be this, that a whole generation of men went mad and tore themselves to pieces."