In most of the great states of Europe the increase both of men and of war expenditure has been far greater than ours. Austria up to 1874 spent less than seven millions on her army; she now spends £13,433,000, with an increase of about fifteen thousand men. France has increased her forces by fifty thousand men in the last ten years; while her military and naval expenditure has nearly doubled since the war, and now reaches the enormous sum of £35,500,000. Germany during the same period has raised her war expenditure by more than three millions, the present amount being £20,050,000. Italy has doubled her war expenses since 1873. In that year they were a little over nine millions, now they are £18,900,000. Russia has followed the same course, having increased her war expenditure from less than twenty millions in 1870 to £33,000,000 in 1884.
The loss involved in these huge armaments is of three distinct kinds: 1, by the number of men, mostly in the prime of life and of the very best physique, who are kept idle or unproductively employed; 2, by the burden of increased taxation which the rest of the community have to bear; and, 3, by the actual destruction of life and property in war, which, wherever it occurs, inevitably diminishes for a time the productive and purchasing powers of that country. Let us endeavor to form some conception of the amount of loss due to each of these causes.
From information given in successive issues of the "Statesman's Year-Book," it appears that, since 1870, the armies and navies of Europe have been increased by about 630,000 men on the peace establishments. This number of men, therefore, has been wholly withdrawn from productive labor; but during periods of war a much larger number is thus withdrawn, and the country is, to that extent, still further impoverished. But the total number thus withdrawn, though very large—the standing armies and navies of Europe being estimated at 3,683,700 men—represents only a portion, and perhaps even a small portion, of the mischief done, since the numbers employed in the equipment of this force and in the production of the vast and complex war-material now used are, not improbably, very much greater, and these are all equally lost for productive purposes. If we think of the hundreds of huge iron-clad ships which have recently been built, and try to form a conception of the number of men employed upon them directly and indirectly—from those who dug out the iron-ore, and the coal used to smelt the ore, to those who construct the huge and beautifully finished marine engines—from the men who felled the trees in Canadian and Indian forests to the skilled workmen who design and frame and finish with elaborate care the whole of the internal fittings—we shall be convinced that to build one of these monster vessels requires from first to last a small army of men, all of whose labor, so far as any benefit to mankind is concerned, might as well have been employed in pumping water out of the sea and allowing it to flow back
