CHAPTER FOUR.

The Cost of War—In Blood and In Cash.

SECTION I: THE COST IN BLOOD.

“Ez fer war—I call it murder.”—James Russell Lowell.[25]

“The hero is a species of assassin.”—Victor Hugo.[26]

Human blood, human life, under the present industrial form of society, is so cheap that even a sweet child’s life, as a _wage_-earner, in the factory, can be bought for a few cents a day—almost a drug on the market, the “labor market.” So cheap indeed is the life of the wage-working class that the blood cost of war is regarded as comparatively unimportant—considered unimportant by all except those who are sneeringly referred to as “sentimental people.” These “sentimental people” presume to assert that the superiority of a nation’s civilization is more convincingly indicated by its sacred regard for the purity and dignity of human blood than by its cheap and swaggering boasts about big battleships, “blooded” cattle, “blooded” horses, and “young men not only willing but _anxious_ to fight,”[27] or by the nation’s strutting announcement of our “readiness” to spill the toilers’ blood at the factory door and on the battlefield.

Cheaply spilt human blood surely indicates a civilization fundamentally coarse and cheap.

Until human blood, human life, becomes too sacred to be sold for cash to escape starvation or bought for cash to win a profit on the bartered labor power—too sacred to be thus placed on sale, exchanged in the “labor market” as horses and sheep are bought and sold in the “live-stock market,”—until then it will simply be impossible to realize the hideousness of the blood cost of war, impossible to compute and realize the vastness of the red crime committed against the working class,—against

“The poor souls for whom this hungry war opens its vast jaws.”

The blood cost of war?

War spills the blood of slain soldiers.

War spills the blood of non-combatants.

War weakens the blood of soldiers who are smitten with befouling fevers and whose wounds and sores fester unattended on the battlefield or are ill-attended in rude military hospitals. Disease, in war, strikes with death four times as many soldiers as are killed with lead and steel.[28]

War weakens the national blood by selecting the strong-blooded for slaughter, thus reversing nature’s method of selecting the weaker blooded for destruction.

War tends to open opportunity in the struggle for existence for the relatively weaker blooded to multiply in disproportionate degree.

War, it is estimated,[29] prevents, on the average, the birth of one child per soldier slaughtered on the battlefield, or serving three years or more in peace or war.

War weakens the blood of the nation by worse than wasting enormous supplies of food material and thus underfeeding those who toil.

War weakens the national blood by tainting the blood of great numbers of soldiers and through these tainting the blood of women and children—with venereal diseases contracted in unusual degree near the barracks and during war, and immediately following war. President William H. Taft, as Secretary of War, has said:[30]

“Venereal diseases were again by far the most important diseases affecting the efficiency of the Army during the year. There were constantly on sick report for this class of affections 739 men, equal to the loss for the entire year of the service of about eleven full companies of infantry.... As a cause for discharge venereal diseases were second.”

Still more recently the Secretary of War, Mr. J. M. Dickinson, reports thus on the befouling of the blood of soldiers:[31]

“_The diseases causing the greatest non-effective rate are in the order of importance: venereal diseases, tuberculosis, malaria, rheumatism, tonsilitis, dysentery, diarrhea, bronchitis, measles, typhoid fever._

“VENEREAL DISEASES CAUSE A GREATER SICK RATE THAN ALL THE OTHERS ADDED TOGETHER.”

One of the best known publicists in the world, Mr. William T. Stead, puts the matter thus:

“Four out of five of all English soldiers who serve two years or more are tainted with venereal diseases.”[32]

In the present chapter, devoted to the cost of war in blood and in cash, there is for the “blood cost” space for but little more than some statistics sufficient to indicate, for illustrative purposes, the amount of blood _actually spilt_ in war during the last three generations. The authority for the statistical matter following is, chiefly, Chatterton-Hill’s _Heredity and Selection in Sociology_; G. de Lapouge’s _Les Selections Sociales_; and J. Bloch’s _The Future of War_.[33]

The hot, red flood gushing from the torn veins of the working class, seduced or forced to attend “Death’s feast” to slaughter and be slaughtered in little more than one brief hundred recent years, may be measured thus:

In the French Wars of the Revolution, 1789–1795—

Frenchmen 1,800,000 Other Europeans 2,500,000

Wars of the Empire, 1795–1815—

Frenchmen 2,600,000 Other Europeans 3,500,000

In European and American wars since 1815—

According to Lapouge’s estimate 9,450,000 Grand (Extremely Grand) Total 19,850,000[34]

This total does not show the spilt blood of perhaps one hundred million men wounded, in battle, but _not killed_.

It is specially important to consider also that this enormous total of twenty million—in round numbers—does not include many millions of _non-combatants_ who in one way and another were destroyed during the wars _and in consequence of the wars_, nor the immense number of non-combatants _wounded_ but not _destroyed_ nor the vast amount of blood befouled and weakened with disease.

The number of men destroyed as combatants in the Franco-German War was 215,000. Lapouge estimates that for the brief Franco-German War the number of deaths among the non-combatants _above_ the number that _would have died at the normal death rate_ within the period consumed by the war _if there had been peace_, was 450,000. That is to say, during that short war of 1870–71 the number of non-combatants whose death was due to the war was _more than double_ the number destroyed directly in the war. Now if this extra death-harvest rate among the non-combatants be calculated as being somewhat less than _half_ true for all the wars of the civilized world for about one hundred years following 1789, we can safely _add_ to the twenty millions slaughtered on the battlefield and in the military hospitals—to these, I say, we can add twenty millions more, who, like the four hundred and fifty thousand non-combatants in 1870–71, were smitten with the death-breath of war.

This gives us a “grand” total of forty millions (40,000,000) men, women, and children actually slaughtered or otherwise destroyed as a result of _one hundred_ years of “splendid” and “glorious” and, “grand” and “Christianized” war;—_and_ (blessed be the “_mysterious_ will of God who reigns” but doesn’t rule under capitalism) these forty million lives were mostly WORKING CLASS LIVES.

Forty million lives in one brief century slashed down by Mars, the “glorious” god of battles.

One Christian century—a festival of fiends, a loud ha, ha from Hell.

One Christian century—a gash in the breast of the working class.

One Christian century—Mars and Caesar spitting in the face of the nobly peaceful Christ.

One Christian century—a sea of blood.

One Christian century—an ocean of tears.

One Christian century—the butchering of brothers by brothers.

One Christian century—a groan, a sigh, a sob.

Mars, god of war, devourer of men, scourge of women and curse of little children; Mars, “strife and slaughter ... the condition of his existence,” rushing in “without question as to which side is right, ... on his head the gleaming helmet and floating plume”; Mars, “well-favored, stately, swift, unwearied, puissant, gigantic ... foe of wisdom and scourge of mortals”; Mars whose “emblems are the spear and the burning torch, his chosen animals the vulture and the dog”;[35] Mars, butcher of mankind; Mars fiendishly drunk on the tears of women and children; Mars, the mock of mothers,—this race-cursing god, hour after hour, _day and night_, through a whole hundred recent years, has devoured one human being, has drunk more than two gallons of human blood—every twenty minutes.

A torrent of blood has gushed from the deep, damned war-wound in the breast of the working class. And in this the morning of the twentieth Christian century we _hear_ the mouthings of hypocrisy, but we see the strut and dare of crowned and flattered brutes and buccaneers everywhere.

“Base distrust, the red-eyed hound of hate, Rules in a world by phantom foes alarmed.”

Everywhere we see the crowned and consecrated cut-throats preparing for war. Soon again the booming roar of “gun thunder” will terrify the world. Even now in Turkey, in Russia, in Spain and in Africa the blood of humble working class brothers is being splashed in the face of mankind.

Rouse, brothers, rouse!

Refuse! Refuse to paint this sad world red with the blood of the toilers fooled by the mocking flattery of gilded cowards.

Let us force Senators, Congressmen, and Presidents—let us force Tsars, Emperors, Kings, Lords, Dukes and the Industrial Masters also—let us force every one of these shrewd, proud cowards into the bloody mire of the firing line and compel them to stay there till by spilling their own blood they learn what war is—for the working class.

The capture of the powers of government by the working class for the working class—that is our first move.

The _working_ class must defend the _working_ class.

SECTION II: THE COST IN CASH.

Remember—always remember: All the expenses of all the wars in all the world in all time have been paid with the results of productive labor. Always—finally—the working class pay all the expenses of all wars.

In a war

(1) Soldiers cease to produce wealth,

(2) Soldiers continue to consume wealth,

(3) Soldiers actively destroy wealth.

A war involves three general items of expense; namely,

Expenses before the war:—preparation

Expenses during the war:—direct expenses, destruction of property, loss of producing power, etc.

Expenses after the war:—pensions, interest on bonds, etc.

“In determining the cost of a war,” says one writer,[36] “the items to be considered may be set down as follows:

(1) Preparations for prospective wars

(2) Direct expenditures

(3) Indirect losses

(a) Destruction and depreciation of property (b) Labor value wasted (c) Damage to trade (d) Displacement of capital

(4) Subsequent expenditures

(a) Compensation for property destroyed (b) Pensions and relief for the distressed (c) Interest on debt incurred

(5) Deterioration of population

(6) Moral results and effects on the vanquished.”

Now let us try to get an idea of the actual cash cost of war in general by studying, first, the cash cost of one war as a specimen. Let us take the American Civil War. In the statement here following, items (4b) and (5) are somewhat over-estimated; item (6) is greatly underestimated. It is to be noted also that the following on the Civil War does not include all the items of the actual cash cost of that war; for examples, the economic loss in the weakening of the _national_ blood, and the loss of the producing power of the soldiers on both sides _during_ the war, the latter loss being probably more than $2,000,000,000. Two other very heavy items omitted here are the more than $2,000,000,000 that must in future years be paid out as interest on Civil War bonds and as Civil War pensions; and the $600,000,000 paid out in Civil War pensions from 1906 to 1910. However, if the omissions are carefully noted, the itemized statement will be found helpful in realizing the cash cost of war.

The American Civil War—Its Cost in Cash:

(1) Direct expenditures, South $5,000,000,000.00 (2) Direct expenditures, North 5,000,000,000.00 (3) Increase in National Debt 2,800,000,000.00 (4) Interest on National War Debt: (a) 1865 to 1898 2,562,619,835.00 (b) 1898 to 1910 (estimated) 400,000,000.00 (5) Pensions, total to June 30, 1906 3,259,195,396.60 (6) Lost labor-power: One million selected men, slaughtered in battle or destroyed during the war by disease;[37] or from wounds and disease rendered wholly or partially unproductive for an average term of twenty-five years _following_ the war:—an average loss to society per man, thus killed or weakened, of $500 for twenty-five years for one million men 12,500,000,000.00 —————————————————— Total (“Grand” Total) $31,521,815,231.60

This sum, more than thirty-one and a half billion dollars, _this_ sum looks different from the “Cost of the Civil War” as it is commonly set forth in elementary school histories for deludable children.[38]

Here is a suggestion: Have your child or some child of your acquaintance discuss this matter in the public school. The child should be assisted in preparing an attack upon the misrepresentation in the ordinary common school “History of the United States.”

This sum, thirty-one and a half billion dollars, is well worth consideration.

This sum would pay for a 1700–dollar home and also for 400 dollars’ worth of furniture for each home—for a total population of 90 million people, estimating six per family in each home; or,

This sum is equivalent to the total savings of two million farmers for thirty weary years, supposing each farmer to save $500 per year;—and sufficient besides to establish eighty agricultural colleges and ninety teachers’ colleges, _each_ of these one hundred and seventy institutions provided with four million dollars’ worth of land, buildings and equipment, each institution also provided with four million dollars as endowment fund to pay running expenses;—with a balance sufficient to construct a double-track railway from New York City to San Francisco at a cost of more than $48,000 per mile; or,

This sum is more than equivalent to the total wheat crop worth $1.00 per bushel growing on twenty-five million acres of fine land averaging twenty bushels per acre for over sixty-three years; or,

This sum would pay all the salaries of twenty-five thousand school teachers at $625 per year from the birth of Christ to the year 1909, and leave sufficient to establish fifty universities, each institution provided with ten million dollars’ worth of buildings and equipment and each institution provided also with a ten-million dollar endowment fund for running expenses; or,

This sum is equal to the total savings of five million wage-earners, each saving one dollar per day, three hundred days per year for twenty-one years.

And we are not yet through with our Civil War expenses and shall not be for a long time. Professor Albert S. Bolles calls attention to the fact that we are not even yet through with the expenses of our Revolutionary War of more than one hundred years ago. Professor Bolles also says of the Civil War:[39]

“A hundred years are likely to pass before the account books for suppressing the Rebellion will be closed.”

This is a good place to remind the reader that, of course, as soon as the soldiers got home from the Civil War they had to go to work to help create the wealth to pay the principal and the interest on the war bonds held by the bankers and other leading citizens who were too shrewd to go to the war themselves. Professor John C. Ridpath wrote thus of the war bond-leech:[40]

“To him (the capitalist) it is all one whether this world blooms with gardens, ripens with oranges, smiles with harvest of wheat, or whether it is trodden into mire and blood under the raging charges of cavalry and the explosions of horrid shells; that is, it is all one to him if his coupons are promptly paid and his bond is extended.”

Now, my friend, when the Honorable Mr. Noisy from Washington or your legislature or elsewhere, gets you and your neighbors out in the woods next Thirtieth of May or Fourth of July and proceeds to fill the forest full of cheap and stupid noise about the grandeur and glory of war, you should promptly treat him with the contempt he deserves. You should also protect the young people of your family and community from the savage and dangerous suggestions made by many speakers on such occasions—protect them by having the “other side” of war presented. The literature of peace-born-of-justice might well be distributed on such occasions.

The cash cost of war is easily made evident by an examination of our annual current national bill for militarism. Indeed, the annual cash cost of prize-fighter statesmanship, the annual cost of developing the national fist, the annual cash cost of this hypocritical “preservation of peace” by preparing for war, needs special attention.

The combined average annual expense of militarism, that is, of the Department of War and the Department of the Navy (the Departments of Murder), is, for the United States, as follows:

The Army and the Navy $200,000,000 The loss of producing power, the worse than lost labor-power, of 121,786 “picked” men (83,286 in the Army and 38,500 in the Navy), estimated at $600 each per year 73,071,600 Interest on Public Debt (chiefly an expense of militarism), at present 22,000,000 Pensions (admittedly a war burden) 150,000,000 Depreciation of forts, arsenals, ships, weapons and other war equipments by decay, and from the necessary discarding of “outgrown” murdering machinery 5,000,000 ———————————— Total $450,071,600

Since none of the items here set down is over-estimated and since several of them are much underestimated, the grand total of four hundred and fifty millions must be regarded as an extremely conservative estimate of the annual cost (in times of peace) of keeping the national fist ready for a fight.[41]

But four hundred and fifty million dollars means nothing sufficiently definite to the human mind until it is considered in units larger than single dollars and smaller than a million dollars. The sum of money “_necessary_” to defray a year’s expenses of a _poor_ man’s son or daughter in a high-grade Middle Western college or university—may be taken as a convenient unit of expense in considering the cash cost of war.

Many worthy young men and women in the United States pay their total annual expenses in high-grade colleges and universities with $250. This estimate is confirmed by the author’s personal observation and by a letter of recent date from the President of the University of Iowa to the author.

OUR ANNUAL NATIONAL EXPENSE OF MILITARISM, $450,000,000, WOULD PAY THE ANNUAL COLLEGE EXPENSES OF 1,800,000 YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN; THAT IS, OF NEARLY TWELVE TIMES AS MANY AS THERE WERE IN THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1908, IN THE FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-THREE COLLEGES, UNIVERSITIES AND TECHNOLOGICAL SCHOOLS OF THE UNITED STATES.

_Five per cent. interest_ on $450,000,000 for _six minutes_ would provide $250 for a year’s college expenses.

_Five per cent. interest_ on one year’s expense of militarism in the United States for _two weeks and three days_ would keep one full regiment (1,000) young men in college for _four years_.

_Less than seven per cent._ interest on $450,000,000 for one year would pay one year’s college expenses for a total number of young men and women equal to the total number of men in both the Army and the Navy, officers, privates and all.

The total present-rate cost of militarism in the United States for two and a half years is $1,125,000,000. _Three and a half per cent. interest_ for _one_ year on this amount would be $39,375,000. This interest would pay the college expenses of the total number of young men and women in all the 573 colleges, universities and technological schools in the United States for the one year ending June 30, 1908 (that is, for 150,187 students), estimating the average expense at $250 for the year,—with a balance remaining of almost $2,000,000 for extra expenses.

According to Mr. E. J. Dillon,[42] “The cost of each of the new armored battleships planned for the French Navy is estimated at more than $15,000,000.”

“Chairman Tawney of the House Committee on Appropriations in promising to fight against the new $18,000,000 battleships, pledges himself to a worthy cause.”[43]

_Six and two-thirds per cent. interest_ for _one_ year on the cost of a $15,000,000 battleship would provide a _four-year_ college education for the 1,000 marines on board.

_Six per cent. interest_ for _ten hours_ on the cost of a $15,000,000 battleship would pay the total expenses of a young man or woman while doing the _four years’_ work for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the great University of Iowa.

ONE NEW-TYPE “DREADNOUGHT” OF THE SORT NOW BEING CONSTRUCTED FOR THE BRITISH NAVY (WHICH IS TO BE PRACTICALLY DUPLICATED BY ALL THE OTHER “GREAT POWERS”)—ONE OF THESE MONSTERS WILL COST THREE TIMES AS MUCH AS ALL OF THE NOBLE BUILDINGS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ERECTED UP TO JUNE 30, 1905; THAT IS, THREE TIMES AS MUCH AS ALL THE BEAUTIFUL HALLS CONSTRUCTED DURING THE UNIVERSITY’S FIRST THIRTEEN YEARS OF UNPARALLELED ACTIVITY IN BUILDING.

The total value of all gifts and bequests received by all the higher institutions of learning in the United States in the year ending June 30, 1908, was $14,820,955; that is, $179,000 less than the cost of one first class British battleship.[44]

If there are forty-five State Universities in the United States with a total of 6,750 teachers (150 each) receiving an average salary of $2,000, their combined salaries are less than the cost of one “Dreadnought.”

_Five per cent. interest_ on the cost of one “Dreadnought” would pay the combined salaries of 1,500 country school teachers at $500 per year; or, the combined salaries of 750 country preachers at $1,000 per year. (The average salary of a minister in Massachusetts is less than $800.)

ONE PER CENT. INTEREST ON ONE “DREADNOUGHT” WOULD PAY THE COMBINED SALARIES OF THE PRESIDENTS OF TWENTY-FIVE OF THE GREATEST UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES—AT AN AVERAGE SALARY OF $6,000 PER YEAR.

It is to be remembered, too, that a battleship is out-classed, out of date and useless within fifteen years after it first glides proudly into the water. But education—the systematic development of the intellectual and social powers and tastes, the ripening of the appetites for the deeper, higher, finer forms of life, charging the soul with knowledge and power for pleasure and achievement—education, which is “to the human soul what sculpture is to a block of marble,”—education, in its glorious influences, is immortal.

Prize-fighter statesmanship sounds loud and is, therefore, great; looks attractive and is, therefore, splendid—in the judgment of the gullible. Prize-fighter statesmanship rests upon the gullibility of ignorance.

Of special importance in this connection is the item of information, furnished in a personal letter to the author of the present volume, by Dr. William T. Harris, who was for many years preceding 1906 our National Commissioner of Education. The information is: _That of all the children in the United States more than 76 in every 100 never enter even the first year of the high school or schools of the high-school grade._

Think of this matter in still another way.

The total cost of militarism in the United States for the year 1907–8 was over _six and a half times as great_ as the total income ($66,790,924) of all our 464 universities, colleges and technological schools _from all sources and for all purposes for that same year_.[45]

THE TOTAL COST OF MILITARISM IN THE UNITED STATES FOR THE FIFTEEN AND A HALF MONTHS ENDING JUNE 30, 1909, WAS GREATER THAN THE TOTAL VALUE OF ALL THE BOOKS, LIBRARIES, LANDS, GROUNDS, BUILDINGS, FURNITURE, SCIENTIFIC APPARATUS, MACHINERY, AND ALL THE ENDOWMENTS, ALL THE INVESTMENTS AND ALL “PRODUCTIVE FUNDS” OF ALL KINDS BELONGING TO ALL OUR 464 HIGHER INSTITUTIONS OF LEARNING.

There are in the United States 464 colleges, universities and technological schools admitting men only and both men and women; these institutions have in their libraries a total of 12,636,656 volumes, having (according to our Commissioner of Education, in his Report for the year ending June 30, 1908, page 617) a total value of $16,262,027—which sum is almost equalled by the cost of one first-class modern murdering machine, one “Dreadnought.”

One 14–inch cannon and equipment costs $170,000. One target-practice shot costs as much as President John Adams’s education at Harvard University.

“Whether your shell hits the target or not, Your cost is six hundred dollars a shot. You thing of noise and flame and power, We feed you a hundred barrels of flour Each time you roar. Your flame is fed With twenty thousand loaves of bread. Silence! A million hungry men Seek bread to fill their mouths again.”[46]

One broadside from a modern “Dreadnought” costs almost $20,000.

“The fact that we are spending during this fiscal year 72 per cent. of our aggregate revenue in preparing for war and on account of past wars (pensions, interest and principal payments on war debts), leaving only 28 per cent. of our revenue available to meet all our other governmental expenditures, including internal improvements, the erection of public buildings, the improvement of rivers and harbors, and the conservation of our natural resources, is, to my mind, appalling.”—Congressman J. A. Tawney.[47]

“For the fiscal year 1908–9 the ordinary income of the United States was $604,000,000. Of that sum ... 70 per cent. was spent for past wars and preparations for war....”[48]

This same “civilized” savagery is rampant everywhere.

“The great countries are raising enormous revenues ... it is equally true that one half of the national revenues of the great countries in Europe is being spent on what are, after all, preparations to kill each other.”—Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary, British Cabinet.[49]

G. de Molinari sums up thus:[50]

“Two-thirds of their [European nations’] combined budgets are devoted to the service of this debt [war debt], and to the maintenance of their armed forces by sea and land.”

The New York _World_ speaks boldly thus:[51]

“The preparations for war bear with tremendous weight in times of peace.... Six million picked men in the flower of youth are in arms in Europe. They are all strong men, those who would be most useful in industry. Great Britain’s war-costs [today, in times of peace] including national debt service, $444,000,000, ... are now nearly six times as great as her elementary school costs. An even more bitter contest over a greater war deficit which must be met by increased taxation is going on in Germany.... Russia runs behind $200,000,000 a year in her national finances ... and famine is perpetual.”

All the great governments of the world are increasing their murdering equipment—to be “prepared for war”;—that is, prepared to provoke and dare. The annual expenses for war in England have doubled within the last ten years, and still the stupidity grows. England has 52 battleships, 4 armored cruisers, 16 cruisers, 84 destroyers, 20 submarines, and to these are to be added at once 8 “Dreadnoughts” costing from $12,000,000 to $15,000,000 each, and also an “appropriate” number of auxiliaries—armored and unarmored cruisers, torpedo boats, etc., the _additions_ to the present naval outfit to cost over $300,000,000. France has 21 battleships with an “appropriate” number of auxiliaries, and is building 8 more battleships with auxiliaries. In Germany militarism amounts to even greater madness. In 1872, immediately following a great war, the German Empire spent $73,750,000 as direct expense of militarism; in 1898, not including the loss in labor power, the cost of the departments of murder was $337,500,000. Increases in German militarism since 1898 have been startling, and so furious is the spirit of militarism and so insanely is the government already burdened with “war charges,” that in the year 1907–8 bonds were sold to the extent of $25,000,000, as part of a special effort to raise an extra fund with which to make additions to her murdering equipment.

And thus it is with all the other “great” nations.

Although Russia now staggers under a four-and-a-half billion dollar national debt, and in 1908 was forced to borrow $75,000,000 to meet current expenses (and did her best to borrow $400,000,000); although millions of her citizens face starvation and hundreds of thousands of them are forced into trampdom—yet Russian statesmen and naval experts are planning a billion-dollar navy.[52]

“Certain facts will surely, some day, burn themselves into the consciousness of thinking men.... The extravagance of the militarists will bring about their ruin. They cry for battleships ... and Parliament or Congress votes them. But later on it is explained that battleships are worthless without cruisers, cruisers are worthless without torpedo boats, torpedo boats are worthless without torpedo destroyers, all these are worthless without colliers, ammunition boats, hospital boats, repair boats; and these all together are worthless without deeper harbors, longer docks, more spacious navy yards.

“And what are all these worth without officers and men, upon whose education millions of dollars have been lavished? When at last the navy has been fairly launched, the officials of the army come forward and demonstrate that a navy, after all, is worthless unless it is supported by a colossal land force. Thus are the governments led on, step by step, into a treacherous morass, in which they are at first entangled, and finally overwhelmed.”[53]

J. H. Rose, in his _Development of European Nations_, Vol. II., p. 336, surveying the chief events in the evolution of Europe since 1870, writes:

“The individual is crushed by a sense of helplessness as he gazes at the armed millions on all sides of him. Tho’ a freeman in the constitutional sense of the term, he has entered into a state of military serfdom. There he is but a bondman, toiling to add his few blocks to the colossal pyramid of war.... From that life there can come no song ... some malignant Fury masquerading in the garb of Peace.”

Nearly everywhere war debts are piled like mountains upon the backs of the people. Twenty-three years ago (1887) Professor H. C. Adams (University of Michigan, Department of Finance) sounded the alarm and stated the case strikingly:[54]

“The civilized governments of the present day are resting under a burden of indebtedness computed at $27,000,000,000. This sum, which does not include local obligations of any sort, constitutes a mortgage of $722 [now about $950] upon each square mile of territory over which the burdened governments extend their jurisdiction, and shows a per capita indebtedness of $23 upon their subjects. The total amount of national obligations is equal to seven times the aggregate annual revenue of the indebted states. At the liberal estimate of $1.50 per day, the payment of the accruing interest, computed at five per cent., would demand the continuous labor of three million men.... Previous to the present [nineteenth] century, England and Holland were the only nations that had learned by experience the weight of national obligations; but at the present time the phenomenon of public debts is almost universal....

“It is all the more difficult to understand this new method of financiering, because it has made its appearance while wealth has been rapidly increasing. The world is daily growing richer as nature yields her forces with ever increasing willingness to serve the purposes of men; yet, notwithstanding increased opulence, the governments of the world are plunging headlong into debt.”

The reader should keep in mind that the burdens of debt discussed here by Dr. Adams are almost wholly war debts, and that they have, since 1887, increased heavily—to about $35,000,000,000, _almost three times the total amount of cash in the entire world_.

“Reflect for an hour upon the appalling aggregate,” wrote Professor Ridpath (De Pauw University),[55] “consider the pressure of this intolerable incubus; try to estimate the horror of this hell; weigh the woe and anguish of them who rest under it, and then—despair and die.

“Twenty thousand millions of dollars; statesmen, philanthropists, preachers, journalists, mouthpieces of civilization, one and all of you, how do you like the exhibit? Does it not suffice? Who is going to pay the account? The people. Who, without lifting a hand or turning in their downy beds, will gather this infamous harvest during all of the twentieth century? Plutocracy.

“It has been the immemorial policy of the Money Power to foment wars among the nations; to edge on the conflict until both parties pass under the impending bankruptcy; to buy up the prodigious debt of both with a pail full of gold; to raise the debt to par; to invent patriotic proclamations for preserving the National Honor; and finally to hire the presses and pulpits of two generations to glorify a crime.”

Henry Ward Beecher put the matter thus:

“Most of the debts of Europe represent condensed drops of blood.”

Reflect again:

“In one short eighteen months the [British] war party now sitting on our necks has dissipated [in the Boer War] more money than the working class managed to accumulate out of their wages during the whole reign of the late Queen Victoria.” (That is, from 1837 to 1901.) “The patient savings of two generations were [in the Boer War] dissipated at one cruel swoop.”[56]

The following table shows the proportion in which the “great” capitalist governments spend the outraged people’s substance for education and for militarism—in prize-fighter statesmanship:[57]

Education. Militarism. England $1.00 $4.25 France 1.00 4.80 Germany 1.00 2.57 Austria 1.00 4.50 United States 1.00 1.25 Denmark 1.00 3.66 Greece 1.00 5.00 Sweden 1.00 2.25 Italy 1.00 9.00 Belgium 1.00 2.00 Switzerland 1.00 .54 Russia 1.00 12.00

An American educator has written thus of the civilized savagery to be seen in these worse than wasted treasures of the people:[58]

“The national debts of Europe represent a series of colossal crimes against the people. They were incurred in the prosecution of unnecessary wars, and for the support of unnecessary standing armies. With relation to these debts the people are divided into _two_ classes—one class _owns_ them and the other _pays the interest_ on them. This relation comprehends the future generations in perpetuity. Every child born in Europe inherits either an estate in these debts or an obligation to pay interest upon them. Thus the _fruits of a great crime have been transmitted into a vested right in one class of people, or a vested wrong in another class_.

“If the European standing armies and navies had not been raised and kept up, and if the revenue devoted to their support had been expended for schools, there would not now be an uneducated person in Europe. If these standing armies and navies were now disbanded, and the revenue at present expended for their support diverted to the support of schools, and so applied for half a century, there would not be, at the end of that period, an illiterate person in Europe.”

The following paragraph by Helmuth v. Gerlach is worthy of the workingman’s special consideration:[59]

“Of all the German political parties one, viz., the Social Democratic [the Socialist] Party, has always been a consistent opponent of militarism. It looks upon militarism as the strongest support of the capitalistic régime, and therefore attacks it theoretically and actually with equal vigor. Its watchword is: ‘No men and no money.’”[60]

But everywhere these senseless burdens grow more vast. The end is not yet. The insanity of vanity and greed increases alarmingly—everywhere; but worst of all, the people are unwarned by the all-powerful capitalist press. Fortunately there are exceptions; for example, the New York _World_. Boldly and powerfully the _World_ has recently warned the people. On July 20, 1908, the _World_ said editorially:

“No more effective peace sermon could be preached than the estimate of General Blume, published by the German General Staff, as to the probable cost of a modern European war. Putting the number of troops that Germany could call to arms at 4,759,000, the cost to Germany, he says, of a war with another European power would be [_direct_ expenses] $1,500,000,000 a year as long as the war lasted. On the basis of the war between Russia and Japan, in which the Japanese lost in killed and wounded 20 per cent. of their armies, Germany would lose in the same length of time approximately 900,000 men....

“The account in blood and money would be duplicated if Germany were engaged with only one power. If three or four or even more powers were involved, as seems probable in the light of existing alliances, Europe would be ‘bled white’ and plunged in lasting disaster.

“_This is the other side of the question which public men who talk glibly about the war seek to have the people forget._ They do not dwell on the immense debt of victorious Japan, and its practical impoverishment, nor do they recall to attention the appalling waste of Russia’s resources, its rickety finances, its shrunken commerce and the tens of millions of starving subjects of the Czar. It will be many years before the public credit of Great Britain, proud of the national wealth, recovers from the setback caused by the Boer War and the government is able to face much-needed reforms at home without misgivings about its income.”[61]

Statesmanship!

“Defense of our foreign commerce” is one of the heaviest arguments offered by capitalist statesmen in defense of the vast cost of militarism—with insufferable ignorance neglecting the fact that the total annual cost of militarism for nineteen European countries and the United States and Japan (eight billion dollars) is equal to more than 66 per cent. of the total annual export trade of all the nations of all the world.[62]

Statesmanship!

“Great” men guiding the “Ship of State”—to the rocks!

Thus the nations stagger round and round in a stupid circle, the statesmen planning international wholesale butcherings, the working class blinded with blood and sweat and tears. Greater armies, greater navies,—then still greater armies and still greater navies,—and then still more powerful armies and navies: then impossible taxation, intolerable burdens: then bankruptcy:—then wrath, rebellion and revolution,—this constitutes the near-future program for at least eight “great” nations of the world, if they continue, as at present, to surrender to the vanity of kings, tsars, presidents, mikados, and give free rein to the profit-lusting capitalist masters of the world. Militarism is the international political whirlpool. The maelstrom opens—the chasm yawns, spreads wide its huge jaws for the capitalist ship of state.

_Be not deceived_:

IT IS SINCERE, WELL-FOUNDED FEAR OF BANKRUPTCY (AND IT IS NOT CONSCIENCE) THAT CHIEFLY INDUCES MANY CAPITALIST STATESMEN TO CO-OPERATE, AT PRESENT, SO LOUDLY (AND PIOUSLY) WITH INTERNATIONAL PEACE SOCIETIES.

Bankruptcy, rebellion, revolution—

It is time for Caesar to be pious and whine for “a limitation on armaments.”

THE STARVED SLAVE BEGINS TO ASK QUESTIONS OF THE FAT STATESMAN.

The ship of state begins to rock in the growing storm.

Statesmanship!

Industrial democracy stands by to seize its opportunity.

The producers will be the successors to plutocracy.

Despotism is digging its own grave.

Anent this matter a truly great authority, Professor J. E. Thorold Rogers, says:[63]

“Many parts of the earth were once occupied by rich and industrious peoples which are now wholly waste. Such a decline may come from the effects of a destructive conquest, of long and ruinous wars. But in _almost all cases, the ruin of a race_ is the fault of its _government_.... _Nations_ will not ruin themselves, said Adam Smith, but _governments_ may ruin them.... I will not say that spectacles of this kind will never be seen again, of nations perishing by the vices of those who administer their affairs.... Governments may borrow for the purpose of carrying on a war, or of defending themselves against aggression. The government generally asserts that it is the latter motive which influences it, when every one sees it is the former. Whether their subjects or citizens see it or not, governments generally, almost invariably, avow it so persistently or savagely that their subjects are brought to agree with them.”

What is the significance of the present cost of militarism for the world annually? No human mind can discern or take in the vast meaning of the blood-and-profit-lust politics that holds and damns the world today.

$8,000,000,000—Eight Billion Dollars!

Tossed to Mars, the red-stained god of war!

While the human race festers in ignorance!

$8,000,000,000—to blind and blindfold the multitude with their own blood and rags while their lives are robbed and ravaged by the eminent and respectable profit-glutton parasites of mankind.

$8,000,000,000—this huge sum baffles comprehension. Pronounce it: “Eight Billion Dollars.” That sum embarrasses not only the mind, but the lips and the tongue.

Think that sum for a moment.

Now consider the fact that in twenty-one countries, namely, those of Europe and also Japan and the United States, militarism costs more than eight billion dollars—every twelve months.

ONE ITEM ALONE IN THIS COST OF MILITARISM IS ALMOST FOUR BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR. That single item is the wealth that is _not_ produced, but _could be produced_ if the six million five hundred thousand strong, carefully selected young men in the standing armies of these twenty-one countries _were_ engaged in producing wealth with _modern_ tools, _modern_ machinery, and _modern_ knowledge of production. It is to be noted that in this estimate all of South America, China and other large parts of the world are not included.

Eight Billion Dollars—$8,000,000,000.

Men and women shudder when the telegraph flashes over the world that a city has suffered a ten-million or a twenty-million dollar fire. Let us try to get an idea of the cost of wealth-wasting militarism by expressing it in terms of loss by the devourer, fire.

$8,000,000,000—Eight Billion Dollars.

This sum, this expense of bull-dog-and-tiger statesmanship, of militarism, in twenty-one “highly civilized” countries—for twelve months in times of peace—is equivalent to a continuous loss by fire, throughout the year, day and night, of more than $913,000 an hour; or, about $15,219 per minute.

This sum, worse than wasted annually to be “prepared”—to slaughter—is equal to a loss by fire, burning day and night throughout the year, devouring seven homes per minute, each home worth $1,700 and each home containing also $475 worth of furniture.

The average working class family contains about six members—two parents and four children; and the average working class family would consider itself in good fortune to have a home worth $1,700 and provided with $475 worth of furniture. Seven such homes would contain forty-two members.

Now imagine an unbroken stream of people—men, women, and little children, frightened, pale, shuddering, the children screaming, the women in tears—fleeing past you through the street, driven by fire from their ruined homes, forty-two people rushing by you every minute, day and night, year after year, on and on, an endless stream of humbled and saddened souls, plunged in misery, their happiness swallowed by pitiless fire; or,

Imagine a fire _rushing_ faster than a strong man at a brisk walk—imagine a fire rushing forward more than _eight miles an hour, consuming fifty such homes per mile_, making each year _thirty-six round trips_, burning going and coming, from New York City to St. Louis, Missouri; or one such round trip every ten days—imagine these losses, these annual losses—and you will perhaps have some idea of what it costs these twenty-one countries to brag and strut and piously prepare to settle their disputes as tigers settle theirs—by force.

It is as if the fiends of hell were crazed and loose on the earth.

And this is statesmanship!

Eight billion dollars virtually tossed into the flames by the well-fed kings, emperors, tsars, presidents, and champagne-guzzlers in the national legislatures of twenty-one “highly civilized” countries—while tens of millions of the toilers in these same countries shiver and starve, meanly clothed, meanly housed, meanly fed, their children growing up in the dull ignorance that renders them the easy tools and fools for the firing line.

One year’s cost of militarism in these twenty-one countries ($8,000,000,000) would keep thirty-two million students in college for one year—allowing $250 each.

The cost of militarism in these twenty-one countries for less than nine hours and a half would pay all the expenses of 4,500 students in Harvard University for four years, allowing each student $500 per year.

SIX PER CENT. INTEREST ON THIS $8,000,000,000 FOR ONE YEAR WOULD PROVIDE A FOUR-YEAR COLLEGE EDUCATION FOR 480,000 YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN, ALLOWING EACH STUDENT $250 PER YEAR.

$8,000,0000,000 annually—in time of peace!

Clap your hands in stupid glee, O, blind devotees of the blood god Mars!

Celebrate!

Scream “Hurrah! Hurrah!”—in idiotic glad madness.

Yell, fool, yell: “Hurrah for hell!”

For war!

War! War! War!

It is great!

Isn’t it?

It must be great, for “_great_ men” say it is so.

“_Great_ men” never deceive humble, common working men. Never. Of course not.

When “great men” call: “Rally to the flag, boys!” will my toiling brothers become again the fools and tools for such as they who in Parliaments and Congresses vote for this red-dripping stupidity?

$8,000,000,000 every twelve months on war and preparations for war—and yet _not a single silk-hatted snob sleeps in the dingy barracks, or eats the cheap “grub” fed to the privates, or submits to humiliating insults from “superior” officers, or spills his blood on the firing line_—not one anywhere in all the world.

$8,000,000,000—the annual cost of lust—war lust.

The annual cost of jungle statesmanship.

THE COST THE WORKING CLASS PAY FOR BEING MEEK, DOCILE, OBEDIENT—READY TO SLAUGHTER THEMSELVES, READY TO BUTCHER THEIR BROTHERS OF THE WORKING CLASS.

$8,000,000,000, the price the working class pay for being prejudiced, ignorant, unwilling to read;—and for cringing, for neglecting to place the _working_ class in the _legislatures of the world_.

$8,000,000,000—this sum proves the moral bankruptcy, proves the colossal savagery—of capitalists who _want_ war, and proves also the intellectual and moral bankruptcy, the brainless incapacity and unspeakable villainy of the gilt-edged crooks called statesmen who are always ready to _declare_ wars and who perpetually bleed society by thus “preparing for wars” in which they themselves, like the “business men,” are too proud and cunning to fight on the firing line.

This sum also shows that the working class, stripped and dulled to supply this annual sum, _ignorantly consenting to and blindly hurrahing for their own destruction_, are in the condition of _hypnotized children_—almost utterly helpless, their eyes blinded with tears, their ears stopped with blood, their souls numb and dumb in a living death.

This sum—all this cash cost—is, in its last analysis, slyly _subtracted from the lives of the producing class, the working class—sucked from the veins of the humble multitude of toilers_, and the workers are so meek and weak and bloodless and stunned and stunted—so constantly in a dull, prideless stupor—that they are unable to stand erect in holy indignation, seize the powers of government and sweep this hell’s nightmare from the world.

War devours the welfare of the workers.

The _capitalist_ class dare not _place all the facts frankly before the working class_. Everywhere it is: “Hush! Hush! The _working_ class must not study the burdens of war.”

The workers? “They must not _think_. They must not _think_. They must _obey_.”

That is the word for the working class:

OBEY.

A very eminent authority on war[64] says:

“Only _once_ in recent history do I remember _any attempt_ on the part of a European government to calculate the economic consequences of war under _modern_ conditions. It was when M. Burdeau was in the French Ministry. He appointed a committee of economists for the purpose of ascertaining how the social organism would continue to function in a time of war, how from day to day their bread would be given to the French population. But _no sooner had he begun his investigation than a strong objection was raised by the military authorities_, and out of deference to their protest the inquiry was _indefinitely postponed_. Hence we are going forward blindfold.”

A real statesman, Senator Charles Sumner, has said:[65]

“All history is a vain word, and all experience is at fault, if large war preparations ... have not been constant provocatives of war. Pretended protectors against war, they have been the real instigators of war. They have excited the evil against which they were to guard. The habit of wearing arms in private life exercised a kindred influence.... The Standing Army is to the nation what the sword was to the modern gentleman, the stiletto to the Italian, the knife to the Spaniard, the pistol to our slavemaster,—furnishing, like these, the means of death; and its possessor is not slow to use it.”

“Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the world from error, There would be no need of arsenals and forts.”[66]

“Workers of the world, unite!” Rouse. Think. Rise. Hurl this curse of war from the world.

On the battlefield of industry unite.

On the battlefield of politics unite.

Seize the powers of government.

Use these powers of government—in self-defense.

Great working class multitude, great meek majority! Stand erect in your vast class might and become—authority.

The working class must themselves defend the working class.

“Do not expect your chains to forge themselves into the key of freedom.”

Begin.

Begin now.

Begin a campaign to capture the brain of your working class neighbor for the grand new Movement for the Freedom of the Working Class.

Do something.

Be Somebody.

Help conquer in our day.

War costs.

Meekness costs—costs the working class its labor, its blood and tears, its happiness—its Life.

Let us defend ourselves—AS A CLASS.

Footnote 25:

Biglow Papers.

Footnote 26:

Lecture on Voltaire.

Footnote 27:

“I want for soldiers young men not only willing but _anxious_ to fight,”—that foul and savage saying is one of the choice mouthings of Theodore Roosevelt, in a public address in which that cheap, distinguished and much flattered Noise disgraced the office of President of the American “Republic.”

Footnote 28:

See Chapter Five, Section Two; Chapter Eight, Section 11; also Index: “Disease in the Army.”

Footnote 29:

Chatterton-Hill: _Heredity and Selection in Sociology_, pp. 320–22.

Footnote 30:

Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 1907, p. 17.

Footnote 31:

Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 1909, p. 17. Emphasis mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 32:

Quoted by Elbert Hubbard in _Health and Wealth_. See _New Age_, Aug. 5, 1909.

Footnote 33:

See also President D. S. Jordan’s brilliant sociological studies of war, references in Chapter XII. of present volume. Of some interest are Victor Hugo’s estimates in _William Shakespeare_, Part Third, Book III., Chapter I.

Footnote 34:

Chatterton-Hill in _Heredity and Selection in Sociology_ makes the total 21,000,000.

Footnote 35:

See Galey: _Classic Myths of English Literature_, pp. 57–8.

Footnote 36:

Restelle: _Arena_, October, 1906.

Footnote 37:

“In round numbers ... so that it is safe to say that more than 700,000 men were killed in the war.”—Professor MacMaster: _School History of the United States_, p. 422. See Index: “Non-combatants.”

Footnote 38:

See quotation from Preface of Bloch’s _Future of War_ near close of present chapter.

Footnote 39:

_Financial History of the United States_, Vol. III., p. 241.

Footnote 40:

_Arena_, Jan., 1897.

Footnote 41:

The appropriations for the Navy alone in 1910 are $134,000,000,—which amount is just ten times as great as in 1886. The New York _World’s_ estimate (editorial, March, 1910) is $500,000,000 as the annual cost of militarism in the United States.

Footnote 42:

_The Contemporary Review_, August, 1909.

Footnote 43:

New York _World_, March 1, 1910. See also _The World_, February 1, 1910.

Footnote 44:

See Report of Commissioner of Education, 1908, Vol. II., p. 617.

Footnote 45:

See Report of Commissioner of Education for 1908, Vol. II., pp. 616–17. These 464 admit men only, or both men and women.

Footnote 46:

P. F. McCarthy in the New York _World_.

Footnote 47:

Address delivered at the Peace Banquet, Chicago, May 4, 1909; quoted in _Unity_, June 3, 1909.

Footnote 48:

New York _World_, April 4, 1910. See also New York _Times_ editorial, February 19, 1910.

Footnote 49:

In the House of Commons, March 29, 1909.

Footnote 50:

_The Society of Tomorrow_, p. 30.

Footnote 51:

Editorial, May 4, 1909.

Footnote 52:

Reference for most of the phrasing of this paragraph has been lost.

Footnote 53:

C. E. Jefferson, in the _Atlantic Monthly_, quoted in _Public Opinion_ (address?), March 26, 1909.

Footnote 54:

_Public Debts_, pp. 3, 4, 6.

Footnote 55:

_Arena_, January, 1898.

Footnote 56:

See _The Investor’s Review_, London, April, 1901, and _National Review_, London, June, 1903, respectively; quoted by Walter Walsh: _Moral Damage of War_, pp. 416–17.

Footnote 57:

See Bloch’s _Future of War_, pp. 137–39; recent _Statesman’s Year-Books_, “national expense” tables; also _Labor Leader_ (London), Nov. 1, 1907.

Footnote 58:

Kim: _Mind and Hand_, pp. 290–92. Italics mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 59:

_The International_, July, 1908.

Footnote 60:

See Index: “Socialist Party and War.”

Footnote 61:

Italics mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 62:

“The export trade of all nations combined amounts to less than $12,000,000,000 per annum.” Harold Bolce: _The New Internationalism_, p. 87.

Footnote 63:

_Economic Interpretation of History_, pp. 393–94. Italics mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 64:

Bloch: _The Future of War_, Preface, p. XLVIII. Italics mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 65:

_Addresses on War_, p. 292.

Footnote 66:

Henry W. Longfellow: “The Arsenal at Springfield.”