THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1910. WAR AND WASTE.
The statement that the carrying out of the new naval programme of the British Government will give employment to two hundred thousand men for two years is a grizzly satire on the boasted enlightenment of the age in which we live. What it really will do is prevent two hundred thousand men from being productively employed during, that time. For however unavoidable it may be that they should be engaged in this work, in an economic sense the result of their labour will be nil. It will produce nothing by which the world will be made one bit better off. The best use the ships can be put to is no use, as after all the money spent in buildjrg them everyone would be delighted to know that their destiny was to peacefully rust nw«v to the scrap heap, without ever being called upon to a* single stroke of the grim work for which they are to he so elaborately "deigned Of course it may be said that even though never called upon to fire an angry shot, the navy does the Empire an incalculable' service by ensuring it against attack. Perfectly and pitiably true. And for '
that reason there is nothing for it but to withdraw armies of men from the ' work of producing things the people need, and keep them employed at putting up international scarecrows, where, if the wort:! waa only a little bit wiser, no scarecrows would be required. And while so engaged the rest of the community has to labour for their support. In ail the civilised countries of the world at the present moment there is a similar waste of human .energy in building battleships at each other, and by the impish irony of fate the more highly civilised the nations the irore painfully they have to bend their backs to this useless work. To an outsider surveying the human scene it would appear utterly incomprehensible. For none of the nations want to squander their resources in this way, and if each could satisfy itself that its neighbour had no aggressive designs, all the ruinous folly of it would cease. But human nature has not yet so advanced as to render this possible, and so the awful penalty has to be paid. If a mob in a burning building could trust each other to ! walk out calmly there would be uo danger, but although no one wants a deadly crush, mutual distrust renders it unavoidabla. And the nations are only a mob of rrobs.
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Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10003, 26 March 1910, Page 4
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432THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1910. WAR AND WASTE. Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10003, 26 March 1910, Page 4
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