The Nevada County picayune., 1911-08-18
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-17-713 MI H77I71 HIM WASTE OF
 WAR
By Rev. Samuel M. Dick Pastor of Wesley N. l. Church.
 Minneapolis


 sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.-Isaiah PA.
 This prophecy is beginning to reach its fulfillment. When the awful cost in life and treasure Is reckoned with, it is astonishing that sensible civil ized men should ever resort to war to settle any question. There is an other reason apart from its destruc- tive character why war should not be resorted to- It never settles any question. The best 1t can do is to restate 1t and put it in another form. Take for illustration the Civil war in this country. Did 1t settle the race question? Did 1t settle the slavery problem? Not by any means, but if the amount of money that war cost us during its progress and for pen sions since, had been expended among the colored people of this nation for industrial education and other civil izing agencies that race today would have been further advanced in the scale of progressive peoples than 1t will 300 years from today under the present circumstances.
 Christ's kingdom does not come by the sword. It is within you, The patriotism of war rules the world with the sword. The patriotism of peace rules the world with an idea. The one is spectacular and wins instanta- neous applause; the other is quiet, moves unseen and it's marks are capD only in Cauaratiouc One ia like a derrick, it moves the mass of iron by force applied in one place; other is like a sunbeam, it moves the mass of iron by the unseen ep- pansion of it's molecules.
 The maintenance of peace by pre- paredness for war is out of harmony with the gospel, with reason, with ethics, with economics and with com mon sense, and any institution that is out of harmony with all these things should be discontinued. The prophet says the nations shall not only settle down to the great industries of peace but that they shall not learn war any more. As long as peace is main tained by overwhelming nayies the
  ress Of the world Is checked. Given national jealousy, hatred, prepared ness for war and any trife is sufIi cient to produce war. Given national fraternity, great prosperity on the part Of the people and no armament and no problem is sufficiently grave to produce war
 The logic of preserving peace by increasing the navies of the world would finally leave the world power in the hands of one nation. It would only be a matter of time when all nations but one would become bank rupt
 The foohshness of increasing arma- ment is seen in the experience of our own peaceful republic For the eight years preceding the Spanish war, our appropriations for the army were a little less than $24,O00000 per annum and for the navy a little over $27 7.000.- 900 per annum. For the eight years preceding 1911 the appropriations for the army sprang 10 $S3 ,000 per an mum. and for the navy to more than S102 ,000, ,000 We are now spending for army, navy and pensions the enor- nous sum of $470,000 ,000, or 72 per cent of the entire revenue of the United States. If this increase alone in the army and navy were turned toward the industries which make a nation rich and happy, it would en- able and maintain an industrial and agricultural experiment station in every county in the United States and give it more than $50,000 per annum for it's work What would this mean to the people? Last year our farm products of all kinds were valued at more than $4,700,000, GOO. With an experiment station conducted as Min. nesota is conducting her work among the farmers in every county, with S50, 900 per annum to operate it, the agricultural products of this country could easily be doubled, and with it's doubling every other industry would keep pace As it is now, we are spending at least $125,000,000 annual ly on our army and navy more than Is necessary for reasonable na- tional policing, and thereby losing annually more than S4.000,000,000 which we might have if we followed the law of gospel and common sense and used the amount of money to de- velop the resources of the country that we are now fooling away on war measures and getting absolutely nothing for it.
 How long, oh how long, will this wickedness and nonsense continue?
 hbidinn in Christ