Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 April 1917 — COST OF THE GREAT EUROPEAN WAR PLACED AT 66 BILLIONS [ARTICLE]

COST OF THE GREAT EUROPEAN WAR PLACED AT 66 BILLIONS

Almost the Equal of One-Third the Entire Wealth of the United States Is Swallowed Up—May Reach $100,000,000,000 by Next Year—Along With This Loss of Substance Goes Frightful Loss of Life.

London. —A careful estimate of the total wealth of the United States at the beginning o\ 1917 places It at a little above $200,000,000,000. A careful estimate of the cost of the war down to the beginning of the spring , campaign is $60,000,000,000. In other words, almost exactly onethird of the total wealth of the United States, by far the richest country in the world, has been swallowed in the voracious naaw of the war monster. As a matter of fact, this does not nearly represent the total cost of the war to the world. Aside from the expenditures of Great Britain the dependencies representing the outlying empire have all incurred tremendous costs hy tbtiir part in the war. The j United S’-Ktes added more than onehalf to its annual expenditures for the j fiscal year 1916-17, chiefly by reason of the war. All over the world countries have been increasing their expenditures in order to carry their part of the burden which the war has laid ■upon the worl^uiWh&the; greater part of them havd'tmen suffering and are more or less Impoverished because of the dislocation of economic processes, i And there is yet. by common consent In all probability at least aqother year of war ahead. If the struggle continues to the spring of 1918 its cost to belligerents and neutrals will by that time probably be estimated as high as $100,000,000,000. Appalling Human Losses. Along with this loss of substance *oes a frightful loss of human resources ; millions of the best manhood of the most highly developed and productive countries.

\ It is Impossible to realize the meaning of the figures which attempt to suggest what the war Is costing. Statesmen of Great Britain, France and Germany have recently been warning their peoples that after peace is declared the war basis of expenditures wilt have to go on for yet a long time. It will be impossible immediately to demobilize the. armies and return them to the business of production. The restoration of something like normal conditions will probably require, in the -view of those authorities, as long a time as the length of the war itself. Of course as the process of demobilization goes on and conditions are restored more and more toward lha.nor.. mal the extraordinary expenses will be in progressively diminishing volume. The wisest men, the ones in possession of the fullest Information on which to base judgment, shy at every attempt to lead them into discussion of the situation which the European world will have to cope with after the war.

Bonar Law's Reassurance. Bonar Law, chancellor of the British exchequer and a cool-headed man of affairs, who has no disposition whatever to fall into panic, has repeatedly admitted that England’s rate of expenditure could by no means be carried on indefinitely, though he has always coupled this with the reassuring insistence that Britain and her allies could stand the strain longer than their enemies, and that therefore-they were bound to win. ——. ■' - - At no former time in .the world's history was war so much a question of economic power as now. The one Justifiable and really worth while parallel which history presents to the struggle is of course found in the wars of the French revolutionary iand Napoleonic periods. Bonar Law hns assured the British nation that in the opinion of himself t and his colleagues in the government ithe empire will as easily bear the buridens of the war as it did those imposed by the Napoleonic struggles. Indeed, the example which was furnished by the Napoleonic struggles, of how great nations absorbed over a peiriod of years the tremendous losses caused in such a struggle, is the one ■thing which furnishes reassurance and encouragement to European statesmen as they contemplate the burden which they are piling up for the future to bear.

After the Napoleonic wars England pretty steadily reduced from year to year the principal of its debt, and by successive reorganizations was able also greatly to reduce the rate of interest. The marvelous increase of the expansion of commerce, the great development of the mercantile marine, the profitable opportunities for foreign investment that were afforded by the development all tyver the world not only of British colonies but of independent countries provided , Britain with the opportunity to rehabilitate itself. But the experience of France following die Napoleonic era was different. France did not possess a great overseas empire whose development gave 1t opportunities for great profit. Neb ther did France become a great Industrial country during the era of the factory systems development to Anything like the extent England did. Finally, France did not apply Itself ip the assiduous English fashion to wiping out the Napoleonic war debt.. France, in short, lived chiefly with-

in herself, while Great Britain became a world empire, its its domains, its irtvestments, its every interest reaching all -over the world. Yet the genius of the French people. though they went about it in an entirely different way, proved just ns capable of taking enre of the obligations handed over to it from the Napoleonic period as did that of the English people. New Heritage of Freedom. If England emerged from that struggle firmly possessed of an empire and colonies and commerce extending to all the continents and all din? seas, France emerged with a new heritage of freedom, of something like real npjmrtunlt.v. with a redistribution of its Land and wealth, which vested the average French family with a power of productiveness quite beyond anything that had been dreamed of or had been possible under the old regime of bourbonism and feudalism. If England gained in substance, France improved in spirit. If England was able to go about paying off its debts, France was able to increase its producing capacity so greatly that the burden of Us debt was borne without difficulty and without interfering ■with a vast and continuous enhancement of the national wealth.

Is it possible that this expedience of Europe following the Napoleonic wars may he repeated after the present European struggle? For answer to tills question men with visions of the future have little difficulty finding an affirmative; and they justify their confidence by pointing out that this war is as truly a war of emancipation as were the struggles that begun with the French Revolution. If the revolution wrenched France anjl the continent generally away from the institutions of political feudalism and spiritual repression, the present war will, if its event be fortunate, liberate the world from the Institutions of political militarism and industrial feudalism. __ If the land of France was democratized as to its ownership as a result of the revolution the instruments of factory production, of transportation, of finance, developed since the revolution, will be socialized as a result of the present struggle. If. the revolution brought not only to France but to the rest of fiurope a juster distribution of political power, the war of today will bring a fairer distribution of the products of the -world’s industry, a wider recognition of man’s rights In the pursuit of liberty and happiness, a great sharpening of intelligence and widening of educational opportunities. Following the Napoleonic wars the big dominating fact in the economic development of the nineteenth century was the rise of the factory system of -production and the development of modern means of transportation. Following the present war it may confidently he expected that there will be further and no less significant advances in the methods of production, currying to all the world the. benefits of those big, highly organized and intensely efficient units whose growth

has particularly marked the more recent industrial evolution in the United States and Germany. American Republic Is Model. In the direction of nation building, of peopling and utilizing for the common benefit of men the unused places of the world, the master achievement of the nineteenth century, was the building of the American republic. To the twentieth century’s aspira-■ lions in this same direction is reserved the privilege of making a truly great nnd modern nation" out teeming, essentially democratic millions of Russia; of developing Africa and Bouth America as the eighteenth and nineteenth century dev eloped America ; of buUdlng great European communities in Australia, in South Africa. in East Africa, in the Niger nnd Congo basins and in North Africa; of directing the Occidentalization of China, with its vast and capable population and almost limitless resources; of building a group of great, powerful, efficient democracies on the foun du t ions that are already firmly laid in the republics of South America. Along with this political development will go an industrial advance whose measure and results must be judged by projecting into the future tl»e gains of the last century. Your industrial democratic thinkers point <>u t a I ways that the rate of this-ad-vance is constantly being accelerated. Science is more and more coming ta the re-enforcement of invention. Productive capacity is growing at a pace that moves with the expansion of intelligence, the improvement of educational methods, and everywhere there is insistence that educational systems must, in the new era, be so improved that the intellectual potentiality of mankind shall be brought to hear upoh the problems of the race as never before. Europe Bears Strain .Well.

One of the marvels of these times is the fact that Europe is able to bear the strain so well. But for khaki everywhere and girl bus drivers London would look not particularly different from the London of normal times. Everywhere one hears people inquiring witli wonderment and almost awe, “How does this people carry the load with so little evidence of strain?” Doubtless the answer will be found in the fact that n-n appraisal of property accumulations does not include the value of the new “days’ works” that every 24 hours brings to the world. ~ ~~

The war is being paid for in great part day by day, month by month. Waste is turned from its peace channels to war channels. War-compels the community to save; to waste less in the ordinary ways in order tlpit it may waste more in guns and shells and battleships and mines and all the paraphernalia of war. A philosopher once said that if all the constructions and plants of the eartjh’s surface might be conceived a'a being destroyed in one cataclysm while leaving intact the human race in its present stage of intellect and adaptability, a single generation would see those structures restored in far more useful practical form, and mankind would be better for the privilege of that one sweeping reorganization. Not many people will want to see the experiment tried. The present war is near enough to the universal cataclysm. But to the extent that it shall teach men to utilize more effectively the power contained, in this great stream of human energy, flowing pffst file undeveloped dam site of each successive today, it will have made human effort more important and accumulated property less so. The chief wealth of the world, after all, is its people. Europe is learning this... It is getting ready for great social reforms after the war that will en a hie 'it by. a better u t iliza ti on of its human resoueges to make up the losses it is now suffering, and. by the economies it is effecting in Its daily life it is paying as it goes for li large share of the war’s cost.