Arizona republican., 1917-09-01

break of the war has been the tax upon cost or war profits It has been the spoicy of Germany to pay for the war by great loans raised by popular subscription, after authorization by the Reichstag I calculate that the amounts thus raised, together with the floating indebtedness, amount to date to about eighty billions of marks.
 For a long time the Germans expect ed that the expenses of the war would
 be paid from the indemnities to be re-
 covered by Germany from the nations
 at war with it.
 Helfferich shadowed this forth in his speech in the Reichstag on August 20. 1915, when he said:
 If we wish to have the power to set tie the terms of peace according to our interests and our requirements, then we must not forget the question of cost. l We must have in view that the whole | future activity of our people, so far as | this is at all possible, shall be free from | burdens. The leaden weight of billions i has been earned by the instigators of l this war, and they in the future, rather l than we, drag it about after them. l Of course by "instigators of the war | Helfferich meant the opponents of Ger | many, but think that unconsciousiy he was a true prophet, and that the
 'leaden weight of the billions" which
 this war has cost Germany will be
 dragged about after the war by Ger
 many, the real instigator of this world
 calamity
 In December. 1915, Helfferich voiced
 the comfortable plea that, because the
 Germans were spending in Germany
 their money raised by the war loans the weight of these loans was not a
 real weight upon the German people He said: We are paying almost ex- ! clusively to ourselves the money, while
 the enemy are paying abroad thcii loans-a guarantee that in the future f we shall maintain the advantage"
 This belief of the Germans and Helf- ferich is one of the notable fallacies oi
 the war. The German war loans have ! been subscribed mainly by the great
 companies of Germany, by the savings banks, the life and fire insurance and | so on.
 . Furthermore, these loans have beer pyramided; that is to say, a man wht subscribed and paid for one hundred thousand marks of Loan No l could when Loan No. ? was called for, talk, : the bonds he had bought of Loan No l to his bank, and, on his agreement tt l ha 1c in c1thc prih !. l Loan No. 2, borrow from the banl eighty thousand marks on the securit ,. of his first loan bonds, and so on. There is an annual increment, no 5 easily ascertainabIe with eXactness, bu approximately ascertainable, to tn wealth of every country in the world es Just as, when a man is working farm there is in normal years an incremen
 or accretion of wealth or income to hir u above the cost of production of the pro
 ducts or the soil which he sells, there i such an annual increment to the wealt e of each country taken as a whole. Som
 experts have told me they calculate that at the outside, in prospertOu ' peace times the annual increment ( 'A German wealth is ten billion marks. Prospective German Social and Mori < Bankruptcy
 Now when we have the annual il ' terest to be paid by Germany exceedir 10 the annual increment of the countr io the social and even moral bankruptt
 of the country must ensue. If repudi; tion of the loan or any part of it is tho forced the loss naturally falls upC .A those who have taken the loan. I'll workingman or small capitalist WI n- n puts all his savings in the war joan without support for his old age, al so with the man who took insurance - the insurance companies or put |
 savings in a bank if that bank becom = bankrupt through repudiation of, t =. war loan You then have the count