Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/371

Rh and by resolute suppression of militarism, the progress towards recovery may be more satisfactory. To be sure, the Napoleonic wars and our Civil war cost their thousands of millions of dollars each, and ruin was prophesied in both cases, but the debts are almost paid. Let us hope the war will end with a genuine trial of the experiment of Christianity and an abolition of the worship of Mars and Moloch. There is nothing to be said in favor of war as a means of settling difficulties. It has never settled anything except that the strongest and most savage usually wins. The real settlement comes afterward, by arbitration, which could better be done before the war commences, with nations as with individuals. There is nothing that so easily provokes war as to prepare for it. Had Germany not been so carefully prepared, there would have been no war this year. In the old days when every one went round armed, prepared for defense, there were in consequence countless duels and homicides. No sensible man maintains that the way to preserve peace among citizens is by preparing for private wars. No sensible man can believe in war among nations, unless brought up to it, any more than he could agree with the sixteenth-century theologians that there were children in Hell not a span long.

The newspapers have made much of our great export trade in November, but the figures show that, because of the falling off in value of cotton shipments, instead of being greater it is thirty million dollars less than in November of last year. While the rest of our crops have been unusually good, with a farm value of more than three hundred million dollars over the crops of last year, the effect of the war in our cotton crop leaves a deficiency, compared with 1913, of about twenty-five million dollars for the total value of the crops. And the cotton crop is our money crop, the sale of which abroad pays a large share of our indebtedness, and in addition turns the tide of gold shipments to this country. The cotton states are suffering far more than any other portion of the country. The impossibility of selling the cotton at remunerative prices, owing to the curtailment of the foreign demand, coupled with the size of the 1914 cotton crop, estimated at over 16,000,000 bales, the largest in history, makes the financial situation there quite serious. This will not be an unmixed evil, if it urges our southern friends to more diversified farming, and cultivate economy in production and living expenses.

The success of our foreign trade depends largely upon our ability to finance it. After the outbreak of the war it was assumed by many that since three fourths of the supplies of South America, which is our most important field of exploration, came from Europe (a large portion from Germany) the war would at once greatly increase our trade there; not realizing that South America had been financed by Europe and the war made it temporarily bankrupt. We can not expect much immediate trade from South American customers unless we can give them credit,