The psychological effect of mobilization is tremendous. In every household home-ties are broken. The fields are stripped of men. Industry stops. Artillery rolls through the streets, bands play. An atmosphere of apprehension settles down on the country.
THE WASTE OF WAR
And the waste of it all; the criminal, unbelievable waste! Consider the vast loss of products that is due, not only to actual war, but to unceasing and universal preparation for war.
It has been stated on the highest authority that during the last decade forty per cent of the total outlay of European states has been absorbed by the armies and navies which, when war arises, seek in every way to destroy as much as they can of the remainder. Commenting on this state of affairs, Count Sergius Witte, the ablest of Russian statesmen and financiers, said in London not long ago:
“Sketch a picture in your mind’s eye of all that those sums, if properly spent, could effect for the nations who now waste them on heavy guns, rifles, dreadnaughts, fortresses and barracks. If this money were laid out on improving the material lot of the people, in housing them hygienically, in procuring for them healthier air, medical aid and needful periodical rest, they would live longer and work to better purpose, and enjoy some of the happiness or contentment which at present is the prerogative of the few.
“Again, all the best brain work of the most eminent men is focused on efforts to create new lethal weapons, or to make the old ones more deadly. For one of the arts in which cultured nations have made most progress is warfare. The noblest efforts of the greatest thinkers are wasted on inventions to destroy human life.
“When I call to mind the gold and the work thus dissipated in smoke and sound and compare that picture with this other villagers with drawn, sallow faces, men and women and dimly conscious children perishing slowly and painfully of hunger I begin to ask myself whether human culture and the white man who personifies it are not wending toward the abyss.”
In “War and Waste” Dr. David Starr Jordan quotes the table of Richet to show the cost of a general European war.
Per day the French statistician figures the war’s cost thus:
Feed of men …………………………………. $12,600,000
Feed of horses ……………………………….. 1,000,000
Pay (European rates) ………………………….. 4,250,000
Pay of workmen in arsenals and ports ……………. 1,000.000
Transportation (sixty miles, ten days) ………….. 2,100,000
Transportation of provisions …………………… 4,200,000
Munitions
Infantry, ten cartridges a day …………….. 4,200,000
Artillery, ten shots per day ………………. 1,200,000
Marine, two shots per day …………………. 400,000
Equipment ……………………………………. 4,200,000
Ambulances, 500,000 wounded or ill ($1 per day) ….. 500,000
Armature …………………………………….. 500,000
Reduction of imports ………………………….. 5,000,000
Help to the poor (20 cents per day to one in ten) … 6,800,000
Destruction of towns, etc ……………………… 2,000,000