| IF
the world cannot see
that war is only a yellow streak left in man from the stone age,
circumstances will force the world to see it soon, but how much better to
see it before the burdens left by circumstances are made greater even than
they are now.
The
nations increase their debts for war expenditures, they build new forts,
buy new equipment for the army, change bright uniforms for khaki, build
new long range guns, replace their obsolete war-ships with Dreadnoughts.
But
when these changes are made and all the war material scrapped, the debts
of the nation created to furnish the things that are destroyed, remain,
and interest is paid year by year, growing like the Tower of Babel and
just as useless; nothing left but the debts and some old material; nothing
to show but taxes for the war implements of the past. A terrible
burden for those living to pay for the supposed protection of those long
since gone to their rest. It cannot continue, it only spells ruin.
Had all
the increase in the debts of all nations, spent only in war preparations,
been spent on enterprises that earn incomes, the increased debts would
have something back of them as assets to earn the interest incurred, and
the nations would have grown richer instead of poorer.
Thus
nature, if it can accomplish its end in no other way, will exhaust the
strength of the nations and force them to give up this endless chain of
burdens, so that from exhaustion if from no other cause will come
peace. Then the uselessness of paying interest on ghosts of the past
will be made apparent. But what a costly lesson it will be for all
and why wait until that day comes? Why not see that this is the
inevitable result and stop now?
It is
estimated that during the next twelve months thirty-six Dreadnoughts will
be finished, and the day they are launched they will be started for the
scrap-heap, where they will all arrive in ten or twelve years. These
Dreadnoughts cost, we will say, $7,500,000 each; total cost, two billion,
two hundred and ninety-seven million. Warranted to be either the
greatest death-dealing machines the world has ever known or else the
greatest burden ever forced on the world in any twelve months of its
history, while enjoying so-called "Peace"!
Is such
security properly called "peace"? Is it not rather a
mesmeric chaos? What will future ages call such foolishness, as they
stagger under the burden of paying for the ghosts of the past and the
mesmerism that produced it?
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