524 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



treme poverty of the masses in all these states, and that even before this 

 period of inflated war expenditure they had already to support a heavy 

 and often an almost unbearable load of taxation. AVe must, therefore, 

 admit that this great addition to their fiscal burdens in the last four- 

 teen years must have seriously diminished the purchasing power of 

 more than two hundred millions of people, and this alone is calculated 

 to produce, and must actually produce, a depression of trade in all the 

 countries which supply their wants, and therefore in none more seri- 

 ously than in our own. 



There remains yet to be considered the injury done by the actual 

 destruction of life and property which occurs whenever this elaborate 

 and costly war-machinery is put to its destined use. Owing to the 

 "wide extent and endless ramifications of modern commerce, wherever 

 life and property are destroyed by war all nations with an extensive 

 foreign trade must feel some of the consequences. When villages and 

 towns are burned or bombarded, crops devastated, and domestic animals 

 taken by invading armies, troops quartered on the inhabitants and 

 forced contributions made, the result must be the impoverishment of 

 the population for several years. For a long time they have a severe 

 struggle even to exist. Their houses have to be rebuilt, their lands to 

 be again cultivated, seed and domestic animals to be procured, fresh 

 capital to be accumulated ; and till all this is done they have no means 

 of purchasing foreign goods or of indulging in anything beyond the 

 barest necessaries of life. And, when the war is long and destructive, 

 there is, in addition, the loss of human life, not merely by slaughter in 

 battle, but by the distress and exposui*e, the disease and famine which 

 are the inevitable consequences of w^ar, a loss often to be counted, not 

 merely by thousands and tens of thousands, but even by millions. And 

 all these lost lives are, from our present point of view, lost customers, 

 and thus still further increase the sum total of injury to commerce 

 which war produces. 



Now, during the last twenty years there have been a continued 

 series of wars which have all, more or less, tended to produce these 

 injurious effects. Beginning with the New Zealand war in 1865, we 

 have in succession the Abyssinian war of 1867, the great Franco-Ger- 

 man war of 1871-'72, the Ashantee war in 1875, the terrible Russo- 

 Turkish war of 1878, the Transvaal, Zooloo, and other South African 

 wars of 1879-'80, the Afghan war of 1881, the Egyptian war of 1883, 

 and the Soudan war perhaps not yet concluded. Who can calculate 

 the amount of life and property destroyed, and the consequent misery 

 and impoverishment of large populations during these twenty years ? 

 Traders have, unfortunately, often considered war to be advantageous 

 to them, on account of the rapid and reckless expenditure of public 

 money on war-materials and stores, and the opportunity of making 

 large profits by war-contracts. But this is a very partial effect and 

 limited to but few departments of trade, while the depressing effect of 



