any moment a war might double our National Debt and compel us to find a further £40,000,000 a year to pay for our militarism. And here, within less than twelve months, we have incurred this monstrous burden, yet we linger still on the very fringe of the mighty battlefield we have to traverse. Think what the future may be if we retain militarism. In the past one hundred years, or a little more, war has cost Europe about £4,000,000,000. In one year a modern war has cost Europe more than that sum, and may cost it double. Add to this, if you can calculate it, the value of the millions of the more robust workers who die on the field: the appalling loss to productive industry: the portentous devastation of property. I suppose that, soberly, the total cost of this war will be something between ten and twenty thousand million sterling. What will be the cost of the next war, which may come within ten years? And what might we have done in Europe with ten thousand million sterling?
I am not, it will be observed, relying on disputed speculations like those of Mr. Norman Angell. I do not accept his characteristic theory; but it need not now be discussed, as our experience rather suggests that a modern war will prove so exhausting, economically, that there will be no question of substantial indemnity for the victor. But we must in any case add to this cost of war, for victor and vanquished alike, that incalculable damage which is expressed in ruined homes, ruined fortunes,
