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.