THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 1909. IF ALL THE WORLD WERE PEACE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9527, 26 June 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 1909. IF ALL THE WORLD WERE PEACE.

Apparently no deadly conflict threatens to divide the nations of the earth; and yet, in nearly every country there are supreme efforts to be fully prepared for coming strife. That the burdens of these effo.ts ara becoming more and more oppressive is only too evident. The i derails of the Budget of the United [ Kingdom shovv ,^ a t the Mother Country asks*for over £62,500,000 for r.aval an 1 miliiary services for the current jea ', irrespective of the colonial contributions; while Germany, we are tt Id, has advanced her naval requirements to £19,500.000, or to more than double what her expenditure was eight years ago. The increase is everywhere, and, ineluding the British Empire, European nations are expending £330,600,000 annually out of revenue and large sums out of borrowed money in continuous efforts to secure a mastery of

cne position. Alliances, cttensive and defensive, are entered into with the same objects in view, and in a time of so-called peace, Europe has nearly five millions of men under arms and Zully an equal number engaged in the'manufacture of engines of destruction and in the maintenance of these armed hosts. Is - there the wmallest doubt that if these hundreds of millions of money were saved, and these ten millions of workers were drafted into peaceful industries the world would be lightened of a wellnigh intolerable burden? Two-thirds of the taxation of Europe and probably of the world is sunk in the maintenance of the semblance uf a peace which is almost as oppressive in its long-continued struggle as an actunl conflict would be. Where, too, is this struggle to stop? In the past ten years the increase in expenditure has been well over £100,000,000,

and if this is to continue, another decade will find European nations involved in an annual outlay of something like £450,000,00.0, and the effect upon the nations will be one of vast exhaustion. At present, beyond the confines of Europe there is not, perhaps, the same intense struggle to surpass their neighbours in the attributes of war. But both the United States and Japan have raught the infection; South American

States are building Dreadnoughts, and it looks as-though it may be only a question of time ere the whole civilised world is involved in the same titanic work. The world's expenditure on armaments, now over £400,000,000 annually, will become £550,000,000 or £600,000,000, and possibly be doubled; and all the time the distrust and hostility, which such efforts inevitably breed, will increase. If only the nations could save half their taxation and train their entire manhood in the r.rts of peace, what a different world it would be. Besides all this, the modern world has never for long tolerated a dictatorship, and still less are these the days in which it would be submitted to In the end every man's hand would be against a Napoleon, as it was a century ago. Certainly the two great English-speaking nations will stand in the way, anJ in the matter of expenditure there can be small doubt on whic'i side the exhaustion will come first —that is, if the test is made ccmpulsory.