The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1874-03-22
@ornIne Star and Catholic Messenger.
NV oRIEA,s SUNDAY MARCH ~ 1874
Count Moltke on European Armaments.


Count Moltke on European Armaments
louisville Courier Journal
FOR yeara. for generations we might say,
one of the great problems of European
Cabinets has been how to M ct the expen
,6iSurea of civil government. Within the
laat two centuries national debts first came
into e1iaterce, with all the elaborate nm
aocial machinery necessary to work theLi.
-eoormous rapidty. AT the accession OF
william of Orange, the national debt OF
Great Britain, the first, we believe, 10
create one, and still enjoying the excep
Sioual distinction of possession the iarRest
90 the globe, was about five and a half mil. :.
lions. The Bank of England grew OUT u,en oi
cheese national obligations, and Sui man
ares the fund, whose evils 1T was brought
into existence to mitigate. But If it was
slow TO come into being, it sprung rapla'y
into appalling proportions. The expensive
wars OF Queen Anne in the effort to pre-
vent the upion of the French and Spanish
crowns by the succession to the crown OF
Spain of Philip of Apjou increased it epor-
saaously, and the almost continuous hostili-
" existing between France and England
during we'll nigh the whole of the reign Of
George III. brought it up at the close OF
the war in 1850 to fl22 600. 900. The loss
Of the American Colonies in the war of in
close of the campaign of Waterloo witness
cd the unprecedented indebtedness of over
SS4O 600, 600 though this has since been
reduced to something like f70O ,OOU,OOO.
Exclusive of terminable annuites more
than one third of the vast annual revenue
of GO, 600 600 Is consumed in paying the
interest even at the low average rate of
three and half per, cent.
France owes the revolution of 1889 to her
debt. The desperate condition of her fn
ances drove her to the verge Of bankruptcy,
Co avoid which the States General was
called. The pecuniary necessities of the
pation had made her exactions rigorous.
The peasant and the merchant saw their
revenues eaten mp by the ax-gatherer, de-
dcit followed upon deficit till no resource
was left but to call together the long dis
used Parliament. The result every one
Knows. The upheaveal which followed
swept away both throne and Parliament.
concentrating power at last in the hands of
q despot who made the world tremble.
Pre-revolutionary debts were extinguished,
and yet France to-day is second only to
Great Britain in the magnitude of her in
Eebtedness.
For years our debt was small-now it
ranks third in the list of national obliga-
lions. Niheteen-twentieths of it's total
was accumulated during our late unhappy
civil war, and, though in process of ex
tinctior, many years must elapse before
We again enjoy the happy distinction o.
owing nothing. But our resources al
large, greater, prospectively, than all Eu-
rope put together, and we can afford to
await their development.
knssia, Austria, Italy and Spain all feel
che incubus of their national Indebtedness.
Three out of the four have IT ore than once
been in sore straits for money. Their an
nually deficient revenues have for years
&Elven them to borrow at ruinous rates.
each successive war only pluDging them
deeper and deeper in the me elstrom whence
they can scarcely ever hope to emerge.
Prussia alone, of all the Greet Powers,
has no debt or next to none. Her animal
ordinary expenditures are met out of the
current revenue, and when she engages in
war, the vanquished are required to pay
the cost of their own defeat. The Danish
6shleswig- Holstein war cost Prussia little,
the Austro- Prussian and the Franco Prus-
sian each nothing. The heavy indemni-
ties levied upon the unfortunate losers,
more than compensated for the expendi-
lures incurred in their vanquishment.
It is not what is actually expended in
time of war which impeverishes nations SO
much as the constant apprehension of war.
Wars are the episodes of national history.
1t 10 the expenditure entailed in maintain
ing armies and navics which exhausts the
resources OF natious, and paraly yes
t'em. Not to speak of the millions of
e&6le- bodied men annually withdrawn from
production by mutual jealousies of nations,
"Sss annual outlay for their maintenance,
tJr ammunition, artillery, firearms, and
all the adjuncts of standing armies is sim
ply amazing. England, for example. spends
a1early 900, 600, 600 annually on her army
and navy. Suppose this were applied to
the reduction of her national debt, within
two generations we should sec it's cXtinc-
ton. What that means the British tax
payer could tell us. France expends more
than England. Every nation in Europe is
strained to the girth to keep its peace es-
Enlistment up to the cxigencies of war.
Prussia, as Count Won Moltke lately said
in his speech, or rather circular note, for
IL was both, spends l70,000,oOO of thalers
TO keep her army on peace footing. The
aggrapdizement of Germany, though she
abjures any intention of further territorial
Icauisition, has increased the annual out
tay under which every European power
already groaned. Holland has begun to
repair her defeuses Belgium, looking to
the possibility of absorption, increases her