78 KANSAS UNIVERSITY QUARTERLY. 



expenses of the University of Kansas for a period of two hundred 

 and fifty years. And yet tliis twenty-five million is but a fraction 

 of the total expenditure for war purposes which during the last 

 five years has amounted to four hundred and twelve millions,* an 

 average of over eighty-two millions a year — and the present Con- 

 gress has surpassed all its predecessors in extravagance and 

 voted the largest appropriations ever made and ordered the largest 

 number of battle ships ever provided for at a single time — and all 

 this in a period of peace abroad and commercial depression at home, 

 with an enormous deficit in the national treasur}^ and with wide- 

 spread distress every winter in all our large cities, that has required 

 for its relief an organization of charities hitherto unknown. Is it 

 not time to call a halt in this enormous waste of wealth? Is there 

 not some missionary work for educated men and women to do here 

 at home in the way of arousing and civilizing public opinion upon 

 this subject? " Let us," says General Walker, "f "frown indignantly 

 upon every proposed measure, upon every representative vote, 

 upon every word of every man, whether in public or private speech, 

 which assumes or gives countenance to the assumption that this 

 people are to come under the curse of the war system or which 

 threatens our friendly relations with any power on earth. Sixty- 

 five millions, transcending in all the elements of industrial, of 

 financial and, if you please, of military strength, the combined 

 resources of any two of the greatest nations of the world, who 

 shall molest us or make us afraid, who shall be so insane as to 

 wantonly attack the greatest power on earth? Why then should 

 we enter upon that career of competitive armament into which 

 mutual jealousies and mutual fears have driven the nations of 

 Europe — a career which once entered upon, has no logical stopping 

 place short of complete exhaustion, impoverishment and financial 

 bankruptcy and which in its turn finds that it has earned nothing 

 but to be the object of universal dread and universal detestation? 

 . . . .Let it then be our pride as it is our privilege to remain the 

 great unarmed nation, as little fearing harm from any as desiring 

 to wrong any. Let us follow the paths of peaceful, happy industry, 

 developing the resources with which nature has so bounteously 

 endowed us, reserving our giant strength for those competitions 

 whose results are mutual benefits, and bestowing upon schools and 

 colleges, libraries and museums, public parks and institutions of 

 beneficence that wealth which others waste on frontier fortresses 

 and floating castles." 



*" statistical Abstract of tlie United States," No. is. p. 33. 



+"Th6 Growth of tlie Nation," an Address at Urown T]niversity, .Tune 18tli, 1889, 

 printed in the Providence '"Journal." 



