Tossed to Mars, the red-stained god of war!
While the human race festers in ignorance!
$8,000,000,000—to blind and blindfold the multitude with their own blood and rags while their lives are robbed and ravaged by the eminent and respectable profit-glutton parasites of mankind.
$8,000,000,000—this huge sum baffles comprehension. Pronounce it: “Eight Billion Dollars.” That sum embarrasses not only the mind, but the lips and the tongue.
Think that sum for a moment.
Now consider the fact that in twenty-one countries, namely, those of Europe and also Japan and the United States, militarism costs more than eight billion dollars—every twelve months.
One item alone in this cost of militarism is almost four billion dollars per year. That single item is the wealth that is not produced, but could be produced if the six million five hundred thousand strong, carefully selected young men in the standing armies of these twenty-one countries were engaged in producing wealth with modern tools, modern machinery, and modern knowledge of production. It is to be noted that in this estimate all of South America, China and other large parts of the world are not included.
Eight Billion Dollars—$8,000,000,000.
Men and women shudder when the telegraph flashes over the world that a city has suffered a ten-million or a twenty-million dollar fire. Let us try to get an idea of the cost of wealth-wasting militarism by expressing it in terms of loss by the devourer, fire.
$8,000,000,000—Eight Billion Dollars.