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Popular Science Monthly

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these twelve years the progress of invention and of commerce may have doubled the national income. There is then still another $100,000,000 yearly to be added to the sum available for running expenses. This again can be capitalized, another $2,500,000,000 can be borrowed, not all at once perhaps, but with due regard to the exigencies of banking and the temper of the people. With repeated borrowings the rate of taxation rises. Living on the principal sets a new fashion in expenditure. The same fashion extends throughout the body politic. Individuals, corporations, municipalities all live on their principal. The purchase of railways and other public utilities by the government tends further to complicate the problems of national debt. It is clear that this system of buying without paying can not go on forever. The growth of wealth and population can not keep step with borrowing, even though all funds were expended for the actual needs of society. Of late years, war preparation has come to take the lion's share of all funds, however gathered, "consuming the fruits of progress." What the end shall be, and by what forces it will be brought about, no one can now say. This is still a very rich world, even though insolvent and under control of its creditors. There is a growing unrest among taxpayers. There would be a still greater unrest if posterity could be heard from, for it can only save itself by new inventions and new exploitations or by frugality of administration of which no nation gives an example to-day. Nevertheless, this burden of past debt, with all its many ramifications and its interest charges, is not the heaviest the nations have placed on themselves. The annual cost of army and navy in the world before the war was about double the sum of interest paid on the bonded debt. This annual sum represented preparation for future war, because in the intricacies of modern warfare "hostilities must be begun" long before the materialization of any enemy. In estimating the annual cost of war, to the original interest of upwards of $1,500,000,000 we must add yearly about $2,500,000,000 of actual expenditure for fighters, guns and ships. We must further consider the generous allowance some nations make for pensions. A large and unestimated sum may also be added to the account from loss of military conscription, again not counting the losses to society through those forms of poverty which have their primal cause in war. For in the words of Bastiat, "War is an ogre that devours as much when he sleeps as when he is awake." It was Gambetta who foretold that the final end of armament rivalry must be "a beggar crouching by a barrack door." When the great war began, the nations of Europe were thus waist deep in debt, the total amount of national bonded indebtedness being about $30,000,000,000, or nearly three times the total sum of actual gold and silver, coined or not in all the world. A year of war at the rate of $50,000,000 to $70,000,000 per day has increased this indebtedness to nearly $50,000,000,000, the bonds themselves rated at half or less their normal value, while the actual financial loss through destruction of life and property has been estimated at upwards of $40,000,000,000. In "The Unseen Empire," the forceful and prophetic drama of Mr. Atherton Brownell, the American ambassador, Stephan Channing, tries to show the chancellor of Germany that war with Great Britain is not a "good business proposition." He says: 'Our Civil War has cost us to date, if you count pensions for the wrecks it left--mental and physical--nearly twenty billions of dollars. And that doesn't include property losses, nor destruction of trade, nor broken hearts and desolate homes--that's just cold hard cash that we have actually paid out. You can't even think it. There have been only about one billion minutes since Christ was born. Now if there had been four million slaves and we had bought every one of them at an average of one thousand dollars apiece, set them free and had no war, we should have been in pocket to day just sixteen billion dollars. That one crime cost us in cash just about the equal of sixteen dollars a minute from the beginning of the Christian era.' The war as forecast in the play is now on in fact, and one certain truth in regard to it is that it is assuredly not "a good business proposition" for anybody in any nation, excepting of course, the makers of the instruments of death. DAILY COST OF GREAT EUROPEAN WAR (Charles Richet, 1912) Feed of men. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $12,600,000 Feed of horses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,000,000 Pay (European rates) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,250,000 Pay of workmen in the arsenals and ports (100 per day)1,000,000 Transportation (60 miles in 10 days) . . . . . . 2,100,000 Transportation for provisions. . . . . . . . . . 4,200,000 Munitions: Infantry 10 cartridges a day. . . . . 4,200,000 Artillery: 10 shots per day. . . . . . . . . . . 1,200,000 Marine: 2 shots per day. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000 Equipment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,200,000 Ambulances: 500,000 wounded or ill ($1 per day). . 500,000 War ships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000 Reduction of imports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,000,000 Help to the poor (20 cents per day to 1 in 10) . 6,800,000 Destruction of towns, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . 2,000,000 Total per day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$49,950,000 The actual war began, in accord with Professor Richet's calculation, at a cost of $50,000,000 per day. Previous to this the "dry war" or "armed peace" cost only $10,000,000 per day. This is Richet's calculation in 1912, an underestimate as to expenses on the sea and in the air. These with the growing scarcity of bread and shrapnel, the equipment of automobiles, and the unparalleled ruin of cities have raised this cost to $70,000,000 per day. This again takes no account of the waste of men and horses, less costly than the other material of war and not necessarily replaced. All this is piled on top of "the endless caravan of ciphers" ($30,000,000,000), which represents the accumulated and unpaid war debt of the nineteenth century. War is indeed the sport for kings, but it is no sport for the people who pay and die, and in the long run the workers of the

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