Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/83

Rh to what may be their own wishes, or to what they might consider good for the welfare of their people. Their necessities in this respect are determined, not by themselves, but by the performances of their neighbors and rivals. And so the ruinous competition goes on and on without end in sight, the moloch of militarism being insatiable.

A striking example of this race of competition was recently furnished in England by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Goshen, when he asked the House of Commons to appropriate the enormous sum of £26,554,000 ($132,770,000) for the British navy, saying that so startling an estimate had not originally been contemplated, but that it had been framed after a careful study of the programs of the other Powers; that the United States, Russia, France, Japan, Italy and Germany had under construction 685,000 tons of warships, and that England was compelled to shape her action accordingly. He prayed that, “if the Czar's hopes for disarmament were not realized, those who proposed to attack the country's expenditures would not attempt to dissuade the people from bearing the taxation necessary to carry on the duties of the empire.”

In France the Minister of War not long ago dolefully intimated that he apprehended France had reached the end of her possibilities, not having men enough to match the increases of the much more populous German Empire. As a member of a republican government he might have said more. He might have added that a large standing army makes a monarchy more monarchical, but that it makes a democracy not more, but less democratic; that the more absolute a monarchy is, the more a large standing army will fit it, but that the more democratic a republic is, the less a large standing army will be suitable to it; that to a monarchy it may be a standing support, but that to a democracy it will be a standing danger.