FAMOUS WAR INDEMNITIES.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 265, 5 April 1917, Page 1 (Supplement)

FAMOUS WAR INDEMNITIES.

WHAT BEATEN NATIONS PAID FOR PEACE. War had always been a costly game to play. Our foreiathers held up their hands in shocked amazement at the millions squandered in tho Peninsula and tho Crimea. And yet in their day the bills Mars called on them 'to pay were almost laughably trivial compared with those presented to their successors of tho twentieth century. What, wo wonder, would have been their sensation had anyone told them that, within a few generations, Britain would Ix 3 spending every fortnight moro gold than tho entire Crimean campaign cost; and what, to come to much later days', should we have thought had we boon told that all tiio millions spent on our long and costly war against the Boers would do little more than payseven weeks' war-bill only sixteen years lator?

And a-s the cost of war has s-r.arej so prodigiously, so tho price demanded .for peace should soar. mien, within the recollection of many ot our readers, Prussia brought Franco to her knees, tho conditions of peac.! she imposed seemed to the world cruel and crushing. In addition to ceding Alsace and Lorraine to her conqueror, France was to pay a war indemnity of 5,000,000T,00 francs, and con. tinue to bo occupied by German tronps until the last franc was handed over. The sum demanded was as Iniquitous as it was colossal. France could scarcely pay it within a score of years, and for that term would be condemned to groan under the iron heel of her oppressor. So the world thought; but, to tho world's amazement, France had paid tho last franc, and the last German soldier had left her 6oil, within threo years.

Stupendous as this indemnity seemed at the time, though it represented more gold than thirty battalions of soldiers could well carry, it was actually less than the nations of Europe are now spending on war every twelve days! And yet hitherto no nation has ever had to pay so much gold for peace. When Russia vanquished Turkey nearly forty years ago it was estimated that her victory had cost her £145,000,000 —at the rate of £432,000 a day. All she asked of Turkev, however, was an indemnity of £32,000,000—a sum which, modest as it seems, represents nine piles of £5 Bank of England notes, each as high as the London Monument. When Prussia beat Austria in 1°66, all that was demanded in cash from the latter was £3,000,000. The Chinese indemnity paid to Japan was £35,000,000. the last instalment of which was paid by a single cheque—the largest on record—for £11,008,887 15s 9d. When, in 1597, the Turns had the Greeks at their mercy, a paltry £4,000,000 was all that Greece handed to her conqueror; and tho Opium War JikJL&iO-l ended in China paving the trifling srfm of £4,500,000 to Great Britain for the expenses of making war on her, in addition to £1,250,000 for opium destroyed by tho "Heathen Chinee." Such are the war indemnities ot last century. What about those of the future? What sum, when the last gun has been fired in the present war, would compensate us and our Allies, for tho mere money loss it has caused? Assuming the" war lasts only three years, tho Allies will, it is estimated, be at least £10,000,000,000 poorer through the expenses and losses of the war. As tho unaided mind fails utterly to grasp figures os colossal, it may help us to learn that they represent 15s. out of every £1 of Germany r s entire wealth, and fifty times the entire population of N'ori'olk or Leicestershire; as much as all the people in .Vlanchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Glasgow could raiso from the ground, or 3,000 powerful locomotives could draw.

Such, at a modest estimate, is the stupendous price in gold that the enemy would have to p_av to compensate the Allies for money losses, alone. We shall ho lucky if wo got Is. .in the pound.