The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-02-20

to tame the human race first, and his
tory seems to show that that cannot be
done. Can't we reduce the ornaments
little by little-on a pro rata basls-oy
concert of the powers? Can't we get
four great powers to agree TO reduce
their strength 10 per cent a year and
thrash the others into doing likewise?
For, of course, we cannot expect all the
powers to be in their right minds at
one time. 1t has been tried. We are
not going to try to get all of them to go
into the scheme peaceably, are we? In
that case l must withdraw my influ-
ence; because. for business reasons, L
must preserve the outward signs of
sanity. Four Is enough if they can be
securely harnessed together. They can
compel peace, and peace without COM
pulsicn would be against nature and
not operative. A sliding scale of reduc-
ton of 10 per cent a year has a sort of
plausible look, and l am willing 20 try
that if three other powers viii join. !
feel sure that the ornaments are now
many times greater than necessary for
the requirements of either peace or war.
Take war time for instance. Suppose
circumstances made it necessary for us
to fight another Waterloo, and that it
would do what il did befCre-settle a
large question and bring peace. I will
guess that 100000 men were on hand at
Waterloo q have forgotten the figures).
In five hours they disabled So 900 men.
1t took them that tedious, long time be-
cause of firearms delivered only two or
three shots a minute But we would do
the work now. as it was done at ON
durham, with shower guns, raining 500
balls n minute. Four men to a gun
is that the number? \ hundred and
fifty shots a minute per man. Thus a
modern soldier is 149 Waterloo soldiers
in one. Thus, also. we can now retain
one man out of each $50 in service. dis
band the others and fight our Waterloos
just as effectively as we did eighty
five years ago. We should do the same
benefieent job with $500 men now that
we did with 100000 then. The allies
could take 1.4O0 Of the men and give Ma
poleon /, 400. and then whip him.
But instead. what do we see? In war
time in Germany. Russia and France,
taken together we find about 5000, 900
men equipped for the field. Each man
represents 149 Waterloo men. in useful
mes sand killing capacity. Altogether
they constitute about $1,000, 600 Water
loo men. and there are not quite that
many grown males of the human race
now on this planet. Thus we have thiS
insane fact-that whereas those three
countries could arm $4,000 men with
modern weapons and make them the
SHbe'4S VI ofOoOssVu men VI .NdpOitOH
day. and accomplish with them all ne
cessslry war work, they waste their
money and the prosperity creating
forces OF their populations in piling to-
gether 349. $50. coo extra Waterloo equiv
alents which they would have no sort
of use for if they would only stop
drinking and sit down and cipher a
little.
Perpetual peace we cannot have on
any terms. suppose; but 1 hope we can
gradually reduce the war strength of
Europe till we get ii down to where il |
ought TO be-20.000 men, properly
armed. Then We can have all the peace
that is worth while. and when we want
war anybody can afford it,
Vienna, Jan. g.
p. SIN the article sent the figures !
wrong; 1850, 100000" ought to be $50 OOO.- !
900: "349. 9S2 600" ought to be 449, 9S2. 900. |
and the remark about the sum being a |
little more than the present number of /
males on the planet-that is wrong. of /
course; it represents really once and a |
half the existing males.