If the European standing armies and navies had not been raised and kept up, and if the revenue devoted to their support had been expended for schools, there would not now be an uneducated person in Europe. If these standing armies and navies were now disbanded, and the revenue at present expended for their support diverted to the support of schools, and so applied continuously for half a century, there would not be, at the end of that period, an illiterate person in Europe.
Under existing conditions the debts of the European nations cannot be paid. But vast as the sum of them is, their payment is not only possible, but practicable in a very short time. Disband the standing armies and navies, and continue the present rate of taxation, and there would be an annual surplus revenue of $700,000,000. Apply this sum, together with the surplus of the interest appropriation, accruing through the resulting yearly decrease of the interest charge, to the liquidation of these debts, and they would be extinguished in about twenty years.[E26] But if the period during which provision is made for the extinguishment of these debts be extended to fifty-four years, and, meantime, the present rate of taxation be maintained, there would be released and rendered available for educational purposes, annually, the sum of $600,000,000.
What is the purpose, it may be inquired, of these calculations? Their purpose is to show what the armies and navies of Europe cost, and what they stand in the way of. They cost so much that not a dollar of the national debts of Europe can be paid while they continue to exist. They cost so much that the people who are taxed to support them are fleeing from them as from a scourge. They cost so much that the decline of the nations which support them has already begun, and this decline can be arrested only by their disbandment.
That the nations of Europe are declining is shown by the statistics of emigration. The foundation of national prosperity is manual labor. There must be a solid basis of industrial growth for the superstructure of elegance, refinement, luxury, and culture. Manual labor is as essential to triumphs in literature, music, and the fine arts as the foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge, buried in the earth, are to the beautiful arch which spans the great river. And in the strife for supremacy between the nations of the world the maintenance of these triumphs depends, also, upon manual labor.[86] The real flower of a population is, therefore, its labor class. All other classes depend upon it, and all national triumphs spring from it. Hence a drain upon the labor class of a nation is a drain upon its most vital resource. The nation that suffers such a drain continuously is in its decadence. It loses some of its vigor, some of its productive power, and the loss is not supplied. True, the poor emigrant takes with him no part of the splendors of the country he leaves, but his brawny arm and skilled hand have contributed to the support of national pomp and social elegance, and as he steps aboard the steamer he withdraws that support forever.
[86] “Now, therefore, see briefly what it all comes to. First, you spend eighty millions of money in fireworks [war], doing no end of damage in letting them off.
“Then you borrow money to pay the firework-maker’s bill, from any gain-loving persons who have got it.
“And then, dressing your bailiff’s men in new red coats and cocked hats, you send them drumming and trumpeting into the fields, to take the peasants by the throat, and make them pay the interest on what you have borrowed, and the expense of the cocked hats besides.
“That is ‘financiering,’ my friends, as the mob of the money-makers understand it. And they understand it well. For that is what it always comes to, finally—taking the peasant by the throat. He must pay—for he only can. Food can only be got out of the ground, and all these devices of soldiership, and law, and arithmetic, are but ways of getting at last down to him, the furrow-driver, and snatching the roots from him as he digs.”—“Fors Clavigera,” Part II., p. 27. By John Ruskin, LL.D. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1882.
Napoleon the Infamous plundered the conquered capitals of Europe to beautify and enrich the art treasuries of Paris. The art treasures of Europe are destined to cross the ocean, in the track of the column of emigration, if the flower of her labor class continues to flee from her standing armies and navies, as the statues of Rome followed the army of the modern Cæsar. For where the flower of the world’s labor class gathers, there wealth most abounds. Labor, not gold and silver, is the source of wealth, hence it is to the laborer that art triumphs are due, and this is the order of their development. The laborer provides for immediate, pressing wants; he is prudent, and accumulates a surplus; he hungers for education; he develops a love of the beautiful; he seeks to dignify his life and adorn his home; he patronizes art; he draws to himself the art treasures of the world.
The standing armies and navies of Europe have cost the European laborer the sacrifice of all these pleasing and noble aspirations.[E27] Beyond the point of providing for “immediate pressing wants” he has not been able to pass. His surplus goes to the tax-gatherer, to feed and clothe the army and the navy. His desire for education, his love of the beautiful, his hope of a dignified life, and of a home adorned by art—these all are dreams, illusions, which vanish into thin air in the presence of the substantial fact of the annual European budget—for the support of the standing armies and navies $700,000,000!