The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1914-09-22

the ultimate cost Of the existing war
will be borne by coming generations.
resting as a mighty burden upon men
and women yet unborn
Commercial disorganiZation is an
other item which defieS the statisu-
clan. Who shall say for instance.
what Germany's loss already has
been through the Punishment Of her
commercial shipping from the seas
It surely has exceeded by far the value
Of the vessels she has lost, and. be
fore the war is over. it will exceed, in
all human probability. the value II
every ton Of shipping flying Ger
many'S flag.
Losses suffered by commercial bust
nesses on land will aggregate a far
greater. and, therefore. more incon-
ceivable sum. which even more COM
pletely defIes prophecy. and. as the
United States has learned such loss, in
these days, by no means is confined To
the warning nations. but is spread. not
| thinly, over the entire surface Of the
/ civilized earth.
Interest Payments on Wars
Thus says Benjamin Truetlood.
in the thirty-five years since the
F'ranco-Prussian war, which cost
France, including her one billion dol
lars indemnity to Germany. not less
than three billion dollars. she will
have paid out. in interest alone. a
sum from two to three times the
original cost of that war, or. K
ing the interest on only three billion
dollars. a sum fully equal to the cost
of the war"
The total war debt of Europe at
the beginning of the present war as-
gregated over thirty billion dollars
Thus interest charges of more than 4
billion a year have aggregated more
t1an fhirtv Ex-o hil1inn tfn11arC SinnA
the ending of the wars which SO ter
rihly afflicted the third quarter of
the last century.
For definite examples. the Boer war
increased Great Britain'S public debt
by eight hundred millions. and the
Ru~sso-JapaEese war increased the
debts Of the two nations involved by
q billion and a half.
So these two wars, neither of them
comparable to the struSgle which now
seethes throughout all Europe, i'm
posed upon this trio OF nations an
interest charge to run on indefinitely
at fully sixty millions a year.
The European ornaments which
were maintained in preparation for
[ the wal which now progresses, and
which, in the minds Of many, are
/. responsible for it, have cost for a
1 long period more than one billion dol
> lars a year.
The absence from productive occu-
pations Of men who have been and
who will be killed and manned viii
tax the whole world, for the men who
q fight are the best men-selected stock
This is another item which cannot bt
@ estilnated-We can only realize thar
Q if we could but begin to estimate i
Y we again would find ourselves con
q fronted by unimaginable totals.
If the annual earning power of each
q of the million men who lost their live,
on both sides during our American
civil war be estimated at the extreme
" low figure Of $500, the nation los
~ by their death $500, 600, 600 a year.
The net deficit in earning power
therefore, has been. apparently, NOR,
70 than s21, $4,000 900, but a part o
this must be deducted because tn
forty-nine years would have seen, nat
urally, the DEATH, disablement, an.
~ approximation of many OF thes
workers. But this sum may be Gu
10 down far more than half and still
more than equal the original cost Q
NJ the war to the patton.
7" And this reflection inevitably lead
into consideration of the most import
20 ant phase of the whole subject. TIL
is the social or purely human phas
:. of the cost of war.
The eugenic tragedy of any war
n by far its greatest tragedy. That q
the present war will be beyond tn
dreams of theorists. 1t is esp. ciaIl
!, significant of the superiority Of tn
- force of human passion over that Z
human science that this greatest {
all wars, this greatest of eugenic trae
N edles, should have come to depIete tn
=, human stock at the very time whe
N the whole world for the first time IA
is been discussing and acknowledge
Pr this comparatively new science
IC