The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-09-06

I expensive ever devised by the brain l Of man. and it seems to cost J1v1e l Sam more than any other nation on
 earth. We are now spending $180, ,000.- l GOO a year in pensions. Since the es- | tabIishment of the government our | pension bill has amounted to $4383, l 368, ,163. .88 and that represents only a
 small part of our war bill. It does | not cover the cost of maintaining the 1 armies in the field and the navies on | the sea. It represents merely the pit | tance we have tossed to the shattered | human Wrecks who survive in the i conflict.
 Our war with Spain did not amount | to much as wars go. As Colonel
 Roosevelt says that war with Mex
 ico would only be a 'Lieutepant' l War; the Spanish-American war could not have been much more than 1 a corporaPs war. While the war with Spain might have been summers s day frolic for our boys, there is hard 1 iy a hamlet in this land that does not contain pathetic evidence of the fear full price we paid for our triumph. l Already 23,841 of the survivors of l that little war on Cuban soil and off | the Cuban coast, have been placed on OUT pension rolls as invalids, and up to date the government has paid them l S39, 900, 900. And that is only a begin ning- Thousands of fresh claims are pending before congress and in the pension bureau. Experts declare that the number will increase from year to year, and statisticians claim that 1t will be about the year 1890 be- i fore we have paid the last pension claim resultant from the Spanish Am erican war
 | When these men who are inva1ids now sailed away to Cuba and the Philippines few years ago they were
 the flower of the youth of the nation l S~1r, tered in health and incapable of talk ing their proper places in the race of life. There were the thousands of their companions who never returned.
 They perished miserab1y in Southern fever camps fell in battle.
 What have they to show for the su-
 preme sacrifice they made. The sugar
 trust seems to have gobbled up Cuba
 and Porto Rico and many believe that
 our possession of the Philippines may
 eventually embroi1 us in one of the bloodiest wars of history.
 These are few facts that the great, kind patient man in the White House
 is turning over in his mind as he seeks the key to the Mexican riddle. I am 1 sure that he would not sacrifice the life of one red checked, warm hearted
 American lad to protect all of the l investments which Wall street bucca-
 neers have made south of the Rio
 Grande. He undoubtedly feels like
 rest of us, that if the Morgans, the
 GuggenheimS and Roc1efelIers want a war, the scions of these noble houses should shoulder their guns and do the fighting. The President is 1aboring right and day now to esta b1ish peace
 in Mexico,-lasting permanent peace,
 foun ded on constitutional government
 and not on the knife of the assassin,
 If he succeeds he will have done a
 great work But at any rate tho pso-
 pie can be assured that theic Presi-
 dent will not stampede, and SC long
 as his stea 3y hand is at the helm
 there is no need of any of us getting
 hysterical every time we read a bris-
 ting despatch sent from Mexico either
 under the direction of Huerta's gov
 er1lnent or under the pay of some of
 the big corporations who want us to
 get busy for the spoi1s.