This again takes no account of the waste of men and horses, less costly than the other material of war and not necessarily replaced. All this is piled on top of "the endless caravan of ciphers" ($30,000,000,000), which represents the accumulated and unpaid war debt of the nineteenth century.
War is indeed the sport for kings, but it is no sport for the people who pay and die, and in the long run the workers of the world must pay the cost of it. As Benjamin Franklin observed:
'War is not paid for in war time) the bill comes later.'
And what a bill!
Yves Guyot, the French economist, estimates that the first six months of war cost western Europe in cash $5,400,000,000, to which should be added further destruction estimated at $11,600,000,000, making a total of $17,000,000,000. The entire amount of coin in the world is less than $12,000,000,000. Edgar Crammond, secretary of the Liverpool Stock Exchange, another high authority, estimates the cash cost of a year of war, to August 1, 1915, at $17,000,000,000, while other losses will mount up to make a grand total of $46,000,000,000. Mr. Crammond estimates that the cost to Great Britain for a year of war will reach $3,500,000,000. This sum is about equivalent to the accumulated war debt of Great Britain for a hundred years before the war. The war debt of Germany (including Prussia) is now about the same.
No one can have any conception of what $46,000,000,000 may be. It is four times all the gold and silver in the world. It represents, it is stated, about 100,000 tons of gold, and would probably outweigh the Washington monument. We have no data as to what monuments weigh, but we may try a few other calculations. If this sum were measured out in $20 gold pieces and they were placed side by side on the railway track, on each rail, they would line with gold every line from New York to the Pacific Ocean, and there would be enough left to cover each rail of the Siberian railway from Vladivostock to Petrograd. There would still be enough left to rehabilitate Belgium and to buy the whole of Turkey, at her own valuation, wiping her finally from the map.
Or we may figure in some other fashion. The average working man in America earns $518 per year. It would take ninety million years' work to pay the cost of the war; or ninety million American laborers might pay it off in one year, if all their living expenses were paid. The working men of Europe receive from half to a third the wages in America. They are the ones who have this bill to pay.
The cost of a year of the great war is a little greater than the estimated value of all the property of the United States west of Chicago. It is nearly equal to the total value of all the property in Germany ($48,000,000,000) as figured in 1906. The whole Russian Empire ($35,000,000,000) could have been bought for a less sum before the war began. It could be had on a cash sale for half that now. It would have paid for all the property in Italy ($13,000,000,000); Japan ($10,000,000,000); Holland ($5,000,000,000); Belgium ($7,000,000,000); Spain ($6,000,000,000) and Portugal ($2,500,000,000). It is three times the entire yearly earnings in wages and salaries of the people of the United States ($15,500,000,000).
We could go on indefinitely with this, playing with figures which nobody can understand, for the greatest fortune ever accumulated by man, in whatever fashion, would not pay for three days of this war.
The cost of this war would pay the national debts of all the nations in the world at the time the war broke out, and this aggregate sum of $45,000,000,000 for the world was all accumulated in the criminal stupidity of the wars of the nineteenth century. If all the farms, farming lands, and factories of the United States were wiped out of existence, the cost of this war would more than replace them. If all the personal and real property of half our nation were destroyed, or if an earthquake of incredible dimensions should shake down every house from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the waste would be less than that involved in this war. And an elemental catastrophe leaves behind it no costly legacy of hate; even the financial troubles are not ended with the treaty of peace. The credit of Europe is gone for one does not know how long. Before the war, it is said, there were $200,000,000,000 in bonds and stocks in circulation in Europe. Much of this has been sold for whatever it would bring. Some of the rest is worth its face value Some of it is worth nothing. In the final adjustment who can know whether he is a banker or a beggar?