The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-03-08

and can only extend as the industry on
which it lives extends, took advantage
OF the position. Special trades like
the armOrers arose; stocks of arms
were accumulated and men especially
trained to use them; while Ella borate
machinery was developed for provid-
ing supplies. But the size of armies,
the cost of weapons and the general
scale on which war could be waged
could never go much further than the
amount of taxation the people could
be persuaded to bear during the war
itself.
The Ruin of Dynasties.
Before the development of modern
industry and the expedient Of funding
debates it was no use inventing very
expensive instruments of destruction,
arming all the manhood or turning
the factories of the country into mu-
milton works. Nevertheless the mill
tarist after the manner Of his kind
was striving to get more money and
continually bringing kings and gov
ernments into financial difficulties
Thus our Plantagenet kings were COM
PEELED to call parliaments to vote sup
plies for their war. in France; thus
Louis XIV ultimately brought the
Bourbon dynasty to ruin.
Constitutional England and republi-
can France are results of the eternal
tendency of militarism to spend every
thing it can get and push its support
government becomes bankrupt, one of
two things must almost certainly hap
pen-either the government must be
helped out of its difficulties by finan-
cial aid from other countries or there
will be a revolution.
The extent to which continual mill
tarism has already eaten into the re-
sources upon which it lives, its econo-
mic basis, was, 1 think, largely con-
cealed from the English speaking peo-
I,rr f1a< Fna
ism had been to some extent kept in
hand.
! Great Britain and the United States
have contracted heavy debts in war;
they have always made a systematic
effort to reduce them in peace. But
such rational finance is altogether ex-
ceptional. 1t is hardly too much to
say that no country ever makes the
slghtest attempt to reduce its debts.
Huge conscript armies screw the
vicious protectionist finance of the
European government up to the high
est possible level, spend every penny
that can be spared and then stretch
the government credit by borrowing
even in time of peace.
Every one of the great continental
| powers now at war will be compelled
10 repudiate its debt, to reconstruct
its financial system from top to bot
tom, or do both.
Each European power will be faced
!
that which brought Russia to the
verge of revolution after the japanese
war; and there will be no possibility of
any of them getting money from
abroad, as Russia did from France and
England, for nobody will have any to
lend. 1 feel sure that whatever mis-
chief the devil may have in store for
Europe in the future, the military i'm
per!alism of the last fifty years is
hopelessly bankrupt.
Nations Perennial.
Even such a. catastrophe as this war
| cannot destroy nations; for as long as
the soil retains it's fertility, the rocks
| their minerals and the people their
skill, the processes of industry will
soon be resumed and society reorgan-
lied somehow.
1t is otherwise with the perisha BILE
things of a nations life, the form of
| government, the prestige and power
of kings or statesmen. with everything
| that is parasitic, ornamental or con-
ventional in the superStructure of So
ciety. These things cannot pass thru
d crisis such as this without immense
! notifications
France recovered rapidly after 1870
millions of working peasants saw to
that-but what became of the second
| empire?
After this war the nations of
/ Europe will remain, tho the military
cement by which they have been un.
willingly bound together into three
| great imperialist groups will be loos-
ened. Insofar as these groups corre-
! spond to any real unity, arising out of
conditions of geography, or of natural
affinity between peoples, I have no
doubt they will continue; but where
they are merely due to the power of
| bureaucracy supported by cOnscript
armies it should no longer be possible
to prevent the peoples grouping them
/ selves as they like.
There remain the questions of Bel
GUM and other lands overrun by the
| Germans So soon as Germany is
willing to eVacuate these countries
| every object that can be obtained by
| arms will be secured. For I do not
| believe that it will be possible to OBJ
tain an indemnity from any continent
al nation. Any indemnity payment
/ implies a loan, and when the war is
over the market will already be flood
ed with unstable German and other
imperial securities but I can not
CINE any responsible financiers I'M
dertaking to float another German
loan. l conclude, therefore:
First-That soon as the Central
| Powers are willing to evacuate the
countries they have. invaded we shall
have got all we can get and the war
ought &c stop.
Second-That tho we can not put
any stipulation in the terms of peace
that will be worth anything as a
means of crushing Prussian militar-
1 ism, the coming of peace will find not
only Prussian, but Austrian, Russian
and even French militarism hopelessly
bankrupt and therefore inpotent for
evil.
Third--That, in consequence of this
the balance of power in Europe be-
| tween the peoples and the autocracies
will be entirely changed; SO that
whereas before the war the emperors
| could do what they liked with the
peoples, after it the peoples can do
| as they like with the emperors.
Fourth-That if Belgian is to have
| only indemnity, it must come from
the only countries that have any mon
ey left to pay for it-from Great
| Britain or the United States. and not
from those whom the war has ruined.