Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1918-04-03
COST OF WAR IS
STAGGERING SUM
Greater Than World Debt Be-
fore Great Conflict
Began

The cost of the war for four years,
until April /, 1918. will be approxim-
ately $1g5.744,000.OOO taking those
I losses and expense which it is pos
sible to estimate with fair degree
of accuracy. The expenditure of the
United States for the sixteen months
it will have been in the war will be
around $4,000, 900. 900.
To estimate with any degree of eX-
actness the total cost of this great
est of wars-more destructive and
far reaching than any other con-
flict ever waged-is manifestly i'm
possible. There are elements which
cannot be computed, there are ram
ifications of expenses which can
not be entered on the worlds bal
ance sheet. But nevertheless there
is no subject more fascinating TO
bankers, statisticians and economists
and they will leave their work un-
grudginglN To- take their pencils and
figure the coSt-just to show how
impossible it is
On the basis of their calculations
the estimate given above has been
made. In it only three distinct. .phas-
es have been touched-direct eX-
penditure by the Governments at
war, losses to shipping and the pro-
mate of the first two items can be
made, and as for the second. the fig
ureS are based on estimates made
by men whose guesses are as good as
anybody can make.
There are many other elements
which should enter into an exact call,
culation; the economic value of lives
lost which has been arrived at with
some degree of exactness: the stop
1
many other widely spread results of
the war which no one will ever be
able to reckon.
Greater Than 1914 World Debt
The apparent waste which is re-
presented in these figures is pract-
ically beyond comprehension. The
single item of direct military eXpen-
ditures of the goVernments-S155
500, 600, ,OO0-is greater. for instance.
than the developed wealth of any
nation in the world with the except
ion of the United States. To use
the words of Frederick w. Gehle of
the Mechanics and Metals National
Bank. whose estimate it is:
1T means that for war there has
already been expended an amount
three times as large as the total in
debtedness of every nation in the
world as that Indebtedness stood in
1914. four times as large as the de-
posits in all the banks in the United
States, ten times as large as the val
lie of all our agricultural products
in a given year. twelve times as
large as the value of annual foreign
trade. one thousand times as large
as the amount of the annual Amer
ican gold output
1T means that this war has al
ready required a sum that would
have extended the railway mileage
of the United States to several times
its present length, and that besides
would have carried steamship lines
to every corner of the earth. rebuilt
the worlds cities on rational, Sani-
tary lines, provided schools and tea
chers for every child living. elm
mated savagery and endowed science
TO the devotion of its, efforts TO inn
prove the living conditions of all
mankind
Cost Now $4,000. 100000 Monthly
Instead of this, the money has
been spent for organized destruc-
ton. and for every month over
which hostiities continue to pro-
gress five thousand million more are
added TO the cost.
This means that there is required
of the world every month an amount
OIL money uOuDle lndI eApeuueu uui-
ing the entire Russo-Japanese war,
which lasted eighteen months. 1t
means that the Franco-Prussian
war is being fought over and over
again, it's entire cost being compress
ed each time into a space of three
weeks.
1T means that our civil war hith-
erto the greatest conflict in world
history-is being duplicated with
intensity that a counterpart of the
four-year struggle between the North
and the South is repr oduced every
fifty days. The twenty greatest wars
in the century and a quarter pre-
ceeding 1914 cost, directly, $780,
100000. That sum measures the
cost of five months fighting at the
present rate of expenditure. New
York Sun.