The New York World speaks boldly thus:[[51]]
“The preparations for war bear with tremendous weight in times of peace.... Six million picked men in the flower of youth are in arms in Europe. They are all strong men, those who would be most useful in industry. Great Britain’s war-costs [today, in times of peace] including national debt service, $444,000,000, ... are now nearly six times as great as her elementary school costs. An even more bitter contest over a greater war deficit which must be met by increased taxation is going on in Germany.... Russia runs behind $200,000,000 a year in her national finances ... and famine is perpetual.”
All the great governments of the world are increasing their murdering equipment—to be “prepared for war”;—that is, prepared to provoke and dare. The annual expenses for war in England have doubled within the last ten years, and still the stupidity grows. England has 52 battleships, 4 armored cruisers, 16 cruisers, 84 destroyers, 20 submarines, and to these are to be added at once 8 “Dreadnoughts” costing from $12,000,000 to $15,000,000 each, and also an “appropriate” number of auxiliaries—armored and unarmored cruisers, torpedo boats, etc., the additions to the present naval outfit to cost over $300,000,000. France has 21 battleships with an “appropriate” number of auxiliaries, and is building 8 more battleships with auxiliaries. In Germany militarism amounts to even greater madness. In 1872, immediately following a great war, the German Empire spent $73,750,000 as direct expense of militarism; in 1898, not including the loss in labor power, the cost of the departments of murder was $337,500,000. Increases in German militarism since 1898 have been startling, and so furious is the spirit of militarism and so insanely is the government already burdened with “war charges,” that in the year 1907–8 bonds were sold to the extent of $25,000,000, as part of a special effort to raise an extra fund with which to make additions to her murdering equipment.
And thus it is with all the other “great” nations.
Although Russia now staggers under a four-and-a-half billion dollar national debt, and in 1908 was forced to borrow $75,000,000 to meet current expenses (and did her best to borrow $400,000,000); although millions of her citizens face starvation and hundreds of thousands of them are forced into trampdom—yet Russian statesmen and naval experts are planning a billion-dollar navy.[[52]]
“Certain facts will surely, some day, burn themselves into the consciousness of thinking men.... The extravagance of the militarists will bring about their ruin. They cry for battleships ... and Parliament or Congress votes them. But later on it is explained that battleships are worthless without cruisers, cruisers are worthless without torpedo boats, torpedo boats are worthless without torpedo destroyers, all these are worthless without colliers, ammunition boats, hospital boats, repair boats; and these all together are worthless without deeper harbors, longer docks, more spacious navy yards.
“And what are all these worth without officers and men, upon whose education millions of dollars have been lavished? When at last the navy has been fairly launched, the officials of the army come forward and demonstrate that a navy, after all, is worthless unless it is supported by a colossal land force. Thus are the governments led on, step by step, into a treacherous morass, in which they are at first entangled, and finally overwhelmed.”[[53]]
J. H. Rose, in his Development of European Nations, Vol. II., p. 336, surveying the chief events in the evolution of Europe since 1870, writes:
“The individual is crushed by a sense of helplessness as he gazes at the armed millions on all sides of him. Tho’ a freeman in the constitutional sense of the term, he has entered into a state of military serfdom. There he is but a bondman, toiling to add his few blocks to the colossal pyramid of war.... From that life there can come no song ... some malignant Fury masquerading in the garb of Peace.”
Nearly everywhere war debts are piled like mountains upon the backs of the people. Twenty-three years ago (1887) Professor H. C. Adams (University of Michigan, Department of Finance) sounded the alarm and stated the case strikingly:[[54]]