The Dominion. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1918. COST OF THE CRIMINALITY OF GERMANY

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 14, 11 October 1918, Page 4

The Dominion. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1918. COST OF THE CRIMINALITY OF GERMANY

In a war novel written by a Spaniard, circulated widely _in French, but not yet translated into English, a German professor makes the following proud boast: "The hour of Germanic revenge has come. We are the aristocracy of mankind —as our Emperor puts it, 'the salt of the earth.' German science, the first in the world, is indissolubly harnessed to 'militarism.' Might, Queen of the Earth, has created Right, and Might will control universal civilisation. Our armies represent our kultur, and a few weeks will suffice to deliver the : peoples from Celtic decadence and renovate the youth of the- world.'-' The book in which this German sets forth his diabolic doctrines is called The Three Knights of the Apocalypse ("Death, Pestilence, and Famine"), and the writer shows how terrifio and cruel is the cursed thing called German hultur. For fifty months this evil thing has been at work in this war, and "universal civilisation" has entered into a solemn covenant that it shall have no place in the civilised world, and that it must be destroyed utterly. To-day W.ILHELII 11, the apostle of hultur, grovels before his war god as defeat hammers at his heart and shakes his throne; and he grovels there as the selfish megalomaniac and not as the penitent; he prays for the perpetuation of his blood-stain-ed throne, and,he cries for peace ■while his soldiers blacken the. horizon of the regions they are driven from by defeat with the smoke of burning villages and towns. Coming judgment has cast its shadow on the German wav-makers, and the day is not far off when they will have to face the record of their evil career and study the bill of costs of their colossal criminality.

That bill of costs, set forth in terms of blood and treasure, is so staggering in its amount as to make the cost of all other' wars fado into insignificance. Students of sociology are trying to make up the account, and the_ unclosed account of a war still going on is so great as to bewilder the mind. The lesser loss in this German-made war is that of material treasure, and 'that loss is so colossal as to strain the mind to grasp its significance. Tn the August number of Current History the partial cost of the war is set forth in the following table, showing the increase of the public debts of the leading nations since tho war- began:—

Allied Powers. British Empiro 5,618,000,000 France 3,726,000,000 Russia ■ 4,060,000,000 Italy 977,000,000 United States 2,760,000,000 Total 17,141,000,000 Central Powers. Germany 5,767,000,000 Austria-Hungary ...: 3,006,000,000 Total 8,773,000,000 Here we have a total of nearly £26,000,000,000, and the total public debt of these nations before the war was about £5,000,000,000.. This war has sent up the British public debt from 800 millions of pounds to nearly 6000 millions. But this shows only, part of tho loss, and probably the smaller part. Some of the nations have paid part of their war bill out of special taxation—Britain found £800,000,000 in this way in two years—and a large sum should thus be added to the above. Then there is tho v economic loss arising from the killed and the wounded in war. Professor Hamon, of Paris, in his profound study, Lessons df the World War, estimates every casualty as representing a loss of £400, and on this computation it will bo seen from the figures given below that this economic loss may be set down at £7,000,000,000. But this is not all. Germany has bled white financially the regions she has vanquished; she has extorted nearly £100,000,000 from Belgium by war levies, and she has done the same elsewhere. , Her presence anywhere means pillage and destruction. Houses, churches, public buildings, factories, railways, bridges, works of art she has looted or destroyed.' "Politicus," a well-informed writer in the Fortnightly Review, estimated that it would take an indemnity of £50,000,000,000 from Germany to compensate for the material loss she has caused to the Allies, and, of course, this is exclusive of her own war bill. In the historyof the race there has been nothing like such a war bill. Germany exacted in 1870 an indemnity from France of £200,000,000, but this war is costing Britain, France, and tho United States this amount every fortnight. But it is when we come to count the dead and the wounded that we sec the real cost of the criminality of the Kaiser and his gang. The real asset of a nation is its manhood, and men have been slain and maimed in millions. The New York Times made up the bill' of human butchery the other month, just before tho tide turned on the Western front, and it is as follows:— Allied Powers. Wounded, captured or Dead. missing. British Emoiro 437,774 970,154 Franco 1,375,009 1,600,279 Russia 2,762,064 2,466,572 Italy 160,356 329,044 Belgium 63,250 182,898 Serbia 76,484 261,170 Rumania 100,000 250,000 United States 4-4,487 6,752 4,976,484 6,076,469

Central Powers. Germany 1,812,500 4509,820 Austria-Hungary ... 964,368 1,779,317 Turkey 152,1i44 370,152 Bulgaria 11,321 19,123 2,970,830 . 0,738,717 Grand totals 7,947,320 12,816,186 These figures arc not official, for authoritative casualty lists are not published, but they are careful estimates, based on such data as could be 'got, and they may be taken as not far from the truth. But the death-roll is much greater than that of the casualties of the battlefield. They do not include those killed or murdered at sea by the German pirates. They do not include the thousands of civilians murdered or starved by the German hordes. They do not include those massacred in Serbia, Armenia, and elsewhere— and we know that in Armenia alone the massacred numbered a million. And to this awful death-roil we have to add the millions that might have been born if the Kaiser had not kindled this terrible conflagration. The story of the number slain during. the last fifty months is a haunting horror, and one is tempted to wonder if the whole thing is not an awful dream. But it is no dream. "The angel of death," as John Bright said, "is passing over the land, and we can hear the beating of his wings." The civilised world will be burdened for a long period with the economic and human detriment arising from the criminality of the German war-makers. This war has slain the physical flower of the manhood of the nations, t and the progenitors ■of the coming generation will in many cases be enfeebled and shattered. The economic cost of the war does not end with the war. The American Civil War had cost when it ended £1,600,000,000, but the cost went on during long years of peace. There were pensions to bo paid, other expenses and interest to be met, and up to 1909 the total cost had amounted to £3,100,000,000. The war bill had doubled. And so it will be with us to-day. Tho_ heavy cost of German hultiir will be felt for many_ a day, even though the sternest retribution descends on the Kaiser and his gang.