Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/91

Rh $100,000,000, or over $76,000,000 more than our Army cost before the Spanish war. But if active campaigning is to be done, if the “mowing down” of “insurgents,” fighting for their freedom and independence, lasts long and has to be carried on during the sickly season, the replenishing of the depleted ranks, the feeding of the troops, the maintenance of an effective hospital service, the restoration of destroyed war material, the transportation of reinforcements to the theater of operations, and of the wounded or sick back to the home country, and all the multifarious things incidental to warlike action even on a small scale, would cause expenditures beyond the possibility of accurate computation.

We are not a very economical people. We are apt to become lavish and wasteful upon the slightest provocation. Even a little war will cost us much. Whether the little war with Spain, which was practically over in three months, has cost us less or more than $500,000,000 may still be a matter of doubt. I speak here only of the cost in money. The cost in blood and misery I leave you to think of.

That, if the new policy be persisted in, our naval establishment also will have to be much enlarged, is generally admitted. How much—who can tell? Certainly, we can not tell. For it will not depend upon us how many new battleships, and armored or unarmored cruisers, and light draft vessels, and torpedo boats, and destroyers we shall want. It will depend upon the naval armaments our rivals and possible enemies have on the field of competition. Until recently, when we were proud, not of possessing large armaments, but of not needing any, it has afforded us much occasion for compassionate amusement to observe the almost hysterical nervousness into which old world Governments were thrown when one of them began the building of new warships by which the