Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/113

 wealth is one hundred and twenty billions; her debt is nearly forty billions. So it goes, in greater or less degree, with Germany, Italy, the Austrian states, the Balkan states. This apart from the actual physical destruction of property.

There again we run into incomprehensible figures. I have spoken already of the growing disproportion between the cost of the cannon and its charge on the one hand and the destruction which it can accomplish on the other. Of that, Northern France stands as the living proof. France lost the most heavily in property, as she did in life. Proportionately to her population and wealth, Belgium’s loss is only a little less; among the greater nations, Italy stands next. Physical destruction of property was very unevenly distributed. But it all comes out of the wealth of the world; and so interlocked are the activities of modern nations that you cannot destroy any considerable body of wealth in one region without causing disturbances in others.

Let us abandon abstract figures and make this the basis of comparison: In 1906, the city of San Francisco was partially destroyed by earthquake and fire. A year or so later, we had a brief financial depression; there were lesser depressions in England and Germany, where insurance companies had been hard hit. And many economists said that it was all due to the loss of wealth and the disturbance of conditions caused by the San Francisco disaster.

In Northern France, about as many buildings