Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/110

 Germany amounted to $530,000,000 and of the United States to $170,000,000. Since then Germany has increased its exports of manufactures 150 per cent and the United States 300 per cent.

It is evident that the United States is already pushing Germany hard as an industrial nation.

And in this situation, while the United States in the period from 1900 to 1907 reduced its national debt in the neighborhood of $230,000,000, Germany increased its load of debt during the same period about $360,000,000. And even now, while this is being written, new colossal increases in expenses and higher taxation to raise a half million more are being planned.

The working class are struck hardest by these loads and crushed down, and this hampers industry, and handicaps the nation in its competitive struggle, which again reacts upon the laborers, upon whose shoulders this whole battle is fought. But there is a limit to the burden the laborers can bear, so at last this competitive armament cripples industrial progress.

At the same time the national antagonisms grow sharper, which stirs up the danger of war. Each government finds the constant and ever revolutionized war preparations more unbearable, but none of the ruling classes seeks the fault in the world politics that they follow. They dare not see it there, for this is the last refuge of capitalism. So each one finds the fault with the other, the German with England and the English with Germany. All become more and more nervous and suspicious, which in turn creates a new spur, to add new haste to the warlike preparations, until they are at last ready to cry. "Better a terrible end than an endless terror."

Long ago this situation would have led to war, as the only alternative except revolution by which to escape from this crazy situation of reciprocal screwing up of the national burdens, had it not been for the fact that this