INCREASING CURSE OF EUROPEAN MILITANCY. 523 



again. Then consider the equipment, clothes, arms, and ammunition 

 of all these great European armies ; the manufactories of powder and 

 explosives, the monster guns and projectiles, the rockets and torpedoes, 

 the horses and horse accoutrements, and all the innumerable variety of 

 stores that are required to supply a modern army in the field — and 

 then follow back every one of these things to the raw material brought 

 from various parts of the world, and to the numerous processes of 

 manufacture through which it has to pass — and further consider the 

 amount of purely intellectual power required, the origination and im- 

 provement and detailed designs for the rifles and cannons, the pro- 

 jectiles and explosives, the pontoons, the fortifications, the torpedo- 

 boats, and the iron-clads — and we shall probably think it not an ex- 

 travagant estimate that for every ten thousand men in a modern army 

 and navy at least another ten thousand are wholly employed in making 

 the necessary equipment and war-material, the labor of the whole 

 twenty thousand being utterly wasted, inasmuch as all that they pro- 

 duce is consumed, not merely unproductively and uselessly, but de- 

 structively. We may fairly estimate, then, that the military prepared- 

 ness of modern Europe involves a total loss to the community of the 

 labor of about sevex million men, and a corresponding amount of 

 animal and mechanical power and of labor-saving machinery. If, 

 now, we consider that the weight of guns, the thickness of armor- 

 plating, the size and engine-power of ships, and the complex require- 

 ments of an army in the field, have all been rapidly increasing during 

 the last ten or fifteen years, we may fairly estimate that one fourth or 

 one fifth of this number of men have been abstracted from the pro- 

 ductive workers of Europe during the last ten years, the period over 

 which the commercial depression has extended. 



Let us next consider the heavy burden of taxation upon all the 

 chief European peoples, the increase of which during recent years has 

 been almost wholly caused by increased military expenditure and the 

 interest on debts incurred for wars or preparations for war, for forti- 

 fications, or for military railways. This increase may be best esti- 

 mated by comparing the expenditure of 1870, the year before the 

 Franco-German War, with that of 1884. During this period of four- 

 teen years our own expenditure has increased from £75,000,000 to 

 £87,000,000 ; that of Austria from £55,000,000 to £94,000,000 ; that 

 of France from £85,000,000 to £142,500,000 ; that of Germany from 

 £54,000,000 to £112,500,000; that of Italy from £40,000,000 to 

 £61,500,000; and that of Russia from £66,000,000 to £114,500,000. 

 Altogether the expenditure of the six great powers of Europe has in- 

 creased from £345,000,000 to £612,000,000, an additional burden of 

 £266,500,000 a year. The population of these six states is now a little 

 over 269,000,000, so that they have to bear, on the average, an addition 

 of taxation amounting to nearly a pound a head, or about five pounds 

 for each family, a most oppressive amount when we consider the ex- 



