Paper, “War is the Policy of Waste”
WAR, THE POLICY OF WASTE—PEACE, THE POLICY OF CONSERVATION.
Mrs. Elmer Black, New York City.
In advancing some arguments bearing on that broad assertion permit me at the outset to express my satisfaction that the questions this Congress has set itself to consider have come to be recognized as among the most urgent of all the world’s humanitarian problems. For the peace movement and the Conservation movement are as closely interrelated as, in the pacifist view, the interests of the entire human race are mutual and not antagonistic. The advance of your program is the advance of ours; both are essential to the progress of mankind.
I do not suppose any one will cavil at my plea that when we talk of natural resources we must not merely include inanimate things—timber, minerals, lands, oil and waters—but the brain and sinews of the people as well.
An observant traveler in the United States, asked recently what he considered the greatest asset of the American nation, replied: “The American nation itself, with its self-reliance, ingenuity, the blended genius resulting from race fusion, and the boundless belief in its ability to reach any goal it sets out to attain.” With that contention in mind, I would at once emphasize the fact that neither the material resources of the world nor these higher resources of human equipment can be utilized or developed to their full complement till the profligate policy of international strife is purged from the activities of mankind.
I venture to assert that no war can be waged today that can be justified ethically or economically. With the bringing together of the civilizations of the world, the development ever closer of the bonds of communication, and the institution of the International Court of Arbitration, the last excuse of the war makers has disappeared. No nation today need go to war if the cause it advocates is just. When the plea of “questions of national honor” is advanced it will usually be found that the case behind the plea is so faulty as to entail risk if presented to the judgment of an impartial tribunal, or that there is the secret reason of a desire for aggression in order that some other nation may be robbed of territory.
But assuming for the sake of argument that this latter case can be justified on the ground of imperial advancement and the “survival of the fittest”—a conclusion I do not in reality concede—I still contend that war is a ghastly blunder, inevitably inflicting such loss to the treasuries alike of victor and vanquished that both are laden with debts so great that generations yet unborn are foredoomed to carry an unnatural charge.
It requires no casuist to demonstrate that such a policy is detrimental to human progress and diametrically opposed to thrifty administration. If we think for a moment of what might be accomplished if the war expenditures of nations were devoted to the proper development of the world’s bountiful stores of wealth, the advancement of health and science and the promotion of communal betterment, the imagination reels at the vista of progress that is opened up.
Let us take a few comparisons. The Panama Canal, uniting two oceans and bringing into closer contact the peoples of East and West, is being constructed at a cost of $400,000,000. Against that accomplishment set down the blood and treasure poured out in reckless waste in the Crimean, South African and the Russo-Japanese wars. On the one hand we have a constructive policy in which the nation’s toil and money is conserved and invested so as to operate at compound interest for the benefit not only of American citizens but also of the whole human race. On the other hand, there is a destructive and prodigal policy that has disappointed in after days even those most closely concerned with the crimson fruits of victory.
Speaking of the Crimean War, Lord Salisbury, the late Premier of England, said in his cynical way, “We put our money on the wrong horse.”
The South African War cost no less than $1,331,655,000 and added no less than $795,880,000 to the national debt of England. The flower of British manhood perished on the veldt that the Dutchmen of the Transvaal might be forever relegated to the strata of the subjugated. Yet today, a few short years after that deadly struggle, South Africa is united; the Dutch are enjoying self-government, and, in fact, are politically in the ascendant over their nominal rulers.
Russia lost her entire fleet, wrecked her army and set the forces of internal discontent seething once more within her boundaries. Japan, the nominal victor, so poured forth her wealth that even her amazing vitality is shackled by the bonds of financial stringency. Today both are suffering from the gigantic, blundering conflict—and in the end are compelled peacefully to agree to recognize their respective interests in Northern Asia.
England’s naval expenditure amounts to nearly $250,000,000 a year, and every ten years great costly Dreadnoughts are thrown on the scrap heap—a total waste. Now England has spent on irrigation in India $150,000,000, and I would ask your attention to the fact that this expenditure has not only brought health and prosperity to hundreds of thousands, reduced the dangers of famine and made the desert blossom as the rose, but there is a profit on the capital invested of six and three-quarters per cent.
Taking that as a specimen of contrasts, one is amazed at the mental spectacle of the immense strides that could be made in the world’s prosperity if the expenditure on war and preparations for war was devoted to the Conservation and development of natural resources. The armed peace in Europe in thirty-seven years has cost $150,000,000,000. Yet there are resources waiting to be developed for the benefit of the struggling millions who are crushed beneath the iron heel of Mars; there are reeking human rookeries in the cities of Europe that are a menace to the human race; there are schemes for waterways that would open up wealth practically untapped, to the end that productive machinery might be set in motion for the continual benefit of nations yet to come.
When a Dreadnought fires a single shot from its big guns as much money is dispersed into the air as would pay a workman’s wages for three years or secure a clever student’s college course for a full twelve months. For every cruiser scrapped in naval frenzy a fully staffed scientific laboratory could be run for years in conflict against man’s mortal enemies, the disease bearing bacilli. For years the inventive faculties of the world have been turned to the production of implements of death and destruction. In a saner age of Conservation and peace this concentrated genius will be focused on the preservation of life, the clothing of the desert with verdure, the elimination of space, the improvement of communications, the harnessing of natural forces to the service of man that even today are seen but as through a glass, darkly.
The world is spending every year eight billion dollars on militarism. The expenditure of that ocean of treasure leads nowhere but to the slippery slope of bankruptcy. It creates nothing by which future generations will benefit or of which any but the superficial can be proud. It robs the treasury of the busy bees of commerce and industry and withdraws from active participation in constructive affairs seventeen million men, the strongest and best types, whose brain and muscle should be used for the advancement of their kind. Women, in consequence, as in Germany, have often to undertake work for which nature did not equip them, and so a double wrong is wrought upon the human race.
If the interest only on the money spent on militarism were used on education, 32,000,000 more students would be accommodated at college every year; or the housing problem of every land could be solved as if by a magic wand, to the immeasurable conservation of human health and vigor.
During the South African War the “Investors’ Review” of London said: “In one short eighteen months the war party now sitting on our necks has dissipated more money than the working class managed to accumulate out of their wages during the whole sixty-four years of the reign of Queen Victoria.”
Chancellor Lloyd-George, as recently as the last budget, said in the House of Commons that the money spent on building Dreadnoughts in England in one year would add a dollar a week to the income of every workingman’s family in Europe.
The United States, though not yet in the same parlous plight as the European nations, is heading in that direction, and devotes the enormous proportion of seventy per cent. of its national expenditure to preparations for war. That is to say, every year we waste more than would construct an epoch-making Panama Canal.
Were it possible immediately to reconstruct the scheme of things so that reason ruled, there would be no need to cry aloud for the development of the barren lands of our continent. Waterways would be extended, irrigation works would carry the life-giving fluid to arid areas that need but that to release their dormant fertility, herbage and fruit would spring from regions now productive of only scrub and cacti, and the reforestation of natural timber land would cause the birth of new resources formerly despoiled by the ignorance and greed of man.
But, some may say, surely these shipyards, barracks, Dreadnoughts, and war equipment circulate money and employ millions of men. That, I contend, is a common fallacy a little thought will dissipate. Money being but the tool used in the purchase of labor or the product of labor, is in itself of no account. But the building of a Dreadnought to fire away the product of labor in thin air is to bring all that has gone to prepare for that achievement to nought. The chain of production is broken; henceforth mankind is so much the worse off for that loss of money, labor and its products. But in the true conservation of resources, the labor and its products employed in peaceful and constructive enterprises achieve benefits that flow on continuously in an ever-widening stream, till the entire humanity is made to feel the blending of each man’s labor in the commonweal.
Brain, sinew, time, energy and material resources are being thrown into the melting pot of war, yet but for that very war the evolution of the human race would be eons further on.
Every time a war scare sends the exchanges of the world’s capitals into panic, deadly injury is done to the commerce of the entire globe. Ruin has not to wait for the actual outbreak of hostilities. The wolf of war has but to bare his fangs in menace to cause a premonitory slump to spread devastation through the ranks of the investors. Yet instead of meeting, as the delegates of this Congress are meeting, to debate the best methods of insuring national and international thrift, in statesmanlike preparation for the future needs of the human race, many powerful minds are spending their time devising nightmares with which to scare humanity into ruinous expenditure.
I venture to predict that in the future it will be found that the chief instrument of Conservation has been established already in the arbitration court at The Hague, and generations yet to come will say of its founders, “They builded better than they knew.”
Meanwhile the omens are favorable for the causes of peace and Conservation. The object lessons are there for all the world to see. I have mentioned the Panama Canal in the Western Hemisphere as an instance of constructive Conservation. The Eastern Hemisphere also has its encouragement. Right in the reputed cradle of the human race some of the world’s most brilliant engineers are executing works that will unchain rivers and cleave through mountains to the end that on Mesopotamia’s broad lands the Garden of Eden shall be re-established.
I rejoice to know that this movement towards Conservation nowhere has attained greater volume than in our own land; for with our advantages it seems to me that we are specially equipped for the ennobling task of removing obstacles from the path along which our race must tread in the accomplishment of its high destiny.