Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/110

 rose from three and a half billions to thirty-nine billions; of France from six and a third billions to forty-six billions; of the United States from one billion to nearly twenty-five billions.

By certain comparisons, we may arrive at an understanding of these figures. Again I will take France as the best example at hand. Her total national wealth—farms, mines, factories, buildings, railroads, canals, everything she owns—was estimated in 1920 at ninety-two and a half billion dollars. Her debt, as I have said, is forty-six billion dollars—almost exactly half her total wealth. That wealth was her heritage. When the first Gaul, long before Julius Cesar came, cleared land on the borders of the Seine, he was creating national wealth for the France of 1920. It had been accumulating for more than twenty centuries. Now we will say that you own a factory worth, at current market rates, something like one hundred thousand dollars. There comes a period of unprecedented hard times, in the midst of which you have a fire which—since you carry no insurance—destroys the value of a part of your plant. You find that your business is worth ninety-two thousand and five hundred dollars; and that you have been forced to put upon it a mortgage of forty-six thousand dollars. Then you face another period of hard times, with money tight, markets poor, raw materials hard to get. That, in terms of business, is the situation of France. Great Britain is only a little less affected. Her national