"About eight million dollars," replied Rexdale. "And a right lively war costs the country a million dollars a day, in round numbers."
"And all of it absolutely consumed, burnt up, eaten, thrown away," added the doctor. "It is not like expenses for construction; it is all for destruction."
"My idea of a good-sized navy's mission is to keep the peace, so that there'll be no war," put in Staples, who had been rather silent thus far.
"Staples was the only man in our Plebe class who actually fought a battle with a second-year man," laughed Dave. "I like to hear him preach peace!"
"Perhaps you remember," said the other grimly, "that no more fights were necessary. One good upper-cut on that fellow's jaw won peace for the whole crowd. If Dewey hadn't sunk the Spanish fleet at Manila we might have been fighting the Dons to this day."
"Will the Japs fight Russia, do you think?" asked Larkin. "If they do, that may mean a job for 'yours truly.'"
"Certainly it looks like trouble over there," said Rexdale soberly. "The Russians are steadily advancing to the Pacific—already they have one hand on Vladivostock and the other on Port Arthur. Japan, crowded in its little group of islands just out of sight of Korea, feels the danger and the menace. Both nations have been preparing for a big war for years, I am told."
"But Russia enormously outnumbers the Japanese," said Dr. Cutler. "She has an army, they say, of four and a half million men, against Japan's six hundred thousand——"
"Aye, but where are those four millions?" put in Rexdale warmly. "Separated from the fighting line, which we can call Korea and the coast of Manchuria, by six thousand miles, with only a single-track railroad between Moscow and Port Arthur. The Japs could handle them one at a time like the Spartans at—at—where was it?"
"Thermopylæ, sir," remarked Doc. Liddon, who had paused a moment in his walk, attracted by the commander's earnestness.