Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/93

Rh end in sight. We must therefore look for a considerable increase of the pension charge for an incalculable period—the number of new pensioners over-balancing the number of those who in the natural course of things may be expected to drop out—that dropping out being notoriously very slow. Our annual pension expenditure now exceeds the whole cost of the great German army on the peace footing, its pension roll included. As our pension charge threatens to become, it may approach for a time the annual cost of the whole peace establishments of the empire of Germany and the kingdom of Italy combined.

Taking it all in all, assuming our standing Army not to exceed 100,000 men, but a large part of it to be engaged in the tropics, and our Navy to be gradually enlarged to the strength which it “must have” in order to enable this Republic to play the part of a colonial Power, we are sure to have, including our pension roll, an annual expenditure for army and navy purposes not only far exceeding that of any European Power, but not falling very much short of two-fifths of the expenses for the same purposes of all the six great Powers of Europe together—that is not far from $400,000,000 a year. By honest and strenuous effort we have paid off the bulk of the heavy National debt left by the civil war, and we have been very proud of that achievement. We are now in the way of running up a new National debt, of which, if we go on with the new policy, nobody can foretell to what figures it will rise.

It may be said that the American people, owing to their large and ever-increasing numbers and to their extraordinary resources, will be much more capable than other nations of bearing such taxation, and therefore feel it less. That is true. But it is also true that it will yet be a painful burden upon the labor of the people, and contribute neither to their well-being nor to their contentment unless the burden, as well as the resulting benefit,