WAR AS A MEASURE OF ECONOMY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 154, 25 November 1914, Page 7

WAR AS A MEASURE OF ECONOMY.

(From the Portland Oregonian). Some of the belligerent nations may have calculated that actual war was less expensive than peace armed to the last man and to the last dollar. Chairman Gary, of the Lnited States Steel Corporation, estimates the cost of the war much higher than others, who have placed it at £10,0(10,000 a day er 1 £.3,'.T00,000,000 a year. His estimate is £6,000,000,000 a year, but even at that figure war may prove cheaper than the sort of peace Europe had had for forty yearn. In twenty-five years armed peace had cost the great Powers £5,000,000,000, and the pace had grown at such a rapid rate year by year that a French economist places the army and navy expenses of the six great Powcps at £400,000,000 in 1013 alone. That is at the -rate of £10,000,000,000 in twenty-five years. Judge Gary estimates that a year of war costs fifteen times as much as a year of the kind of peace Europe, has recently "enjoyed," leaving out of consideration indirect and remote cost. If the Powers could be confident- that a year of war would end militarism and settle finally all the disputes which give rise to it, they might see ah ultimate saving in spending fifteen times a year's outlay in one year.

Tliey may liave been driven to this | desperate war by signs that tliey liatl reached the limit of their military capacities to pay military expenses. France and Austria-Tlungary had given signs tliat they would raise 110 money by taxes. In Oreat Britain and (lermany -military expenses have increased faster tlian the average income of their people for the last forty years. Realising that tliey were near the point of financial exhaustion, the nations may have welcomed the opportunity of ending it all in one grand struggle to death. The, - war is a contest, not only of military skill and valor, but of financial endurance. The Powers are, in effect, 'spending in advance the amount they would have spent on armament in the next fifteen years, assuming that they would continue the present scale. BritI ish income tax and naval expenses each doubled in the last fourteen years, and tlie people might have endured another 'doubling in the next fourteen years. That amount of increased taxation 1 now threatens to be spent in one year. Should the war last a year, the British nation can pay the principal of its cost by doubling the income tax for 'fifteen years, but will need further taxes to pay the interest. That done, they can settle down to paying interest on tlieir pre-existing debt, and, if the settlement should be such as to justify reducing the scale of armaments, they cun begin paying off the debt itself. One pan see from the estimates that great armament provokes war between nations of approximately equal strength. It is a lasting guarantee of peace only as against a nation of known inferior .power. The tendency is to adc? more armament in a struggle for superiority over a rival until a breaking pofnt is .finally reached. When a nation realises that it cannot raise money to add another ship, another cannon or another regiment, the disposition is to fight and get it over with, lest further delay 011'nhles the foe to gain superiority. That 'thought may have led the, nations to 'seize upon the Servian dispute as an occasion good as any other for bringing things to an issue.