The age-herald., 1901-04-27
From the Chicago Tribune.

From the Chicago Tribune.
 There appears to be great excitement over the fact that the war in South Africa has already. cost Great Britain more than s7s2,00oooo. Compared with the cost of some of the great wars of the last century, however. this sum is hardly drop in the bucket.
 The most costly war of all time was the civil war of 1Ss1-65 in the United States. That war cost the Northern States total of 620O million dollars. while the South spent more than 20O0 million in addition. And this does not consider the enormous expense of the pensions which have been paid for the last thirty-flve years.
 Next in cost to the war of the rebellion was the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. It cost, Tn round numbers, 25oO millions of dollars. The Crimean war stands third on the list of comparatively recent wars, with a total cost of 17OO millions.
 The little affair in South Africa has cost the British, up to date, less than one tenth of what the United States spent in the four years of it's great. .civil conflict. and less than a third as much as France and Germany poured out in their short struggle.
 The present aggregate war debts of all the nations in the world are so great as to entirely pass comprehension. They sum up more than 30,OO0 millions of dol- lars As there are nearly 1500 millions of people in the world 1t will be seen that If equally divided among them the worlds war debt would give an average of SIS apiece for every man, woman and child in the world to carry.
 Even more startling are the figures which show what war has cost in the de- struction of human life. In this line also the United States civil war stands in first place. with a total of more than S00,- 900 men killed in battle and died of wounds and diseases. Close to this terrible record Is that of the Crimean war, in which 750,oG0 men lost their lives. while in the Franco -Prussian conflict the losses were 225,000. In these three wars alone enough people were killed to more than entirely wipe out the population of Chi cago and leave 1t lonely and uninhab- ited desert. In addition to those who are recorded as dying in battle and of dis case, there were other hundreds of thou sands who were maimed in these wars or who contracted diseases from which they never fully recovered, and, doubtless, in thousands of cases death was caused by the absence from home of their nat ural providers while these great wars were being waged. How much the world lost by losing the services of all these mill lions of stalwart men it is entirely i'm possible even to estimate.
 Writers on the cost of war estimate also that every war of any consequence di- rectly affects practically everybody on earth, no matter how far distant they may be from the scene of the conflict. Thus during the civil war, for instance. the cotton mills of England were cut off from their supply of raw material and as' a result there was a "cotton famine in Lancashire, which took on the proportions of a national calamity As direct result of the civil war it has been estimated that 100,O 900 workmen in England, Germany and France were kept out of work continu- | ously for more than three years, with much misery and starvation as a result. War Is so homicidal in it's nature," | says one writer, "that it stays thousands 1 of victims even at a distance of thou | sands of miles from the battlefields."