Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/108

 hundred and twenty-five million dollars annually on her army and navy. At the same time, she was paying about a hundred and fifty millions annually in interest on the debts of old wars—she was still financing the campaigns of the two Napoleons. Such figures mean nothing to the average mind; but here is a basis of comparison. France is strongly centralized. Most of her popular education is financed not by the city or county as with us, but by the national government. And in the years when it was paying more than two hundred millions for the next war, a hundred and fifty millions for old wars, the national government spent on education about forty-six millions.

Now this was almost dead economic loss. In the ordinary processes of industry, part of the receipts at least are going to increase the world’s wealth. Take for example the ultimate destiny of a dollar paid into the cotton manufacturing business. Most of it buys someone bread and meat and shelter and clothing. But just so many cents or mills of that dollar buy factories, machinery, swifter transportation—something which will make more wealth and still more wealth. It is like a crop of which the greater part is eaten, the lesser part kept for seed. The money spent on armies and navies in no wise increases the world’s real wealth, even when the shells merely lie and disintegrate in the magazines, the guns grow old-fashioned in the barracks. And when