33^ THE MILITARY AND FINANCIAL 



Every other European nation, Prussia, and the German States, 

 Italy, Belgium, and Greece, equally advancing, or rather retrograd- 

 ing, plunging deeper and deeper into debt, and rushing headlong 

 into, what must eventually be, national bankruptcy and ruin. 



The Daily Telegraph, writing on this subject, November, 1886, 

 well says : — 



" Here is, therefore, a total of between thirteen and fourteen millions (now 

 seventeen millions) of effective combatants, every man of whom is liable within a 

 few hours' notice to the dreadful obligation of risking his own life in the strenuous 

 endeavour to take that of some other human being, against whom he bears no 

 personal animosity whatsoever, whom, in fact, he does not know and has never seen. 

 If this tremendous fact be not a black blot upon our boasted civiEsation, there is 

 no such thing as right or wrong in the world. By those to whom it chiefly owes 

 its baleful existence it is extenuated, or, rather, apologised for, on the ground that 

 in reality it serves to maintain general peace ; whereas, if honestly judged by 

 the light of its true significance, it constitutes the supreme danger that menaces 

 European tranquillity from day to day. It compels the peoples of Christendom 

 — ourselves Included — to live, as It were, on the brink of a grumbling volcano, 

 the fiery contents of which may burst forth at any moment, and overwhelm us 

 with ruin. Not only is it a continuous temptation to monarchs and 

 governments to make trial of the superb and costly weapons ever ready to their 

 hands, but it contains, within itself, a force that is necessarily, and unintermittently 



exerted in a direction distinctly adverse to the conservation of peace 



The ' blood-tax,' as it is rightly designated in Continental States afflicted by the 

 curse of military conscription, affects every household, profession, business, and 

 calling with equal oppressiveness. It blights agriculture, paralyses industry, lames 

 enterprise, and hampers commerce. In realms less prosperous than France and 

 England, it sets like a perpetual nightmare on the breast of the nation, and is the 

 immediate cause of countless sufferings and sorrows. Russia and Germany, 

 Austria, and Turkey, Italy and Spain groan under the crushing pressure of their 

 Army expenses, from which they can perceive no prospect of relief." 



The Times, in a trenchant leader, a few years ago, on the military 

 and financial state of Europe, wrote thus : — 



"The sole cause of the nightmare which is riding Europe down, is, that each 

 nation is striving to steal a march upon its neighbour before its neighbour's open 

 eyes. Military budgets, and armaments might be cut down all round by half, 

 and the relative strength and security of States not be, by an ell's breadth, 

 impaired. Kings and Emperors, and their Ministers of State, and the leaders 

 of militant democracies seem absolutely blind to the manifest fact, that European 

 commonwealths run in harness. With each fraction of accelerated speed in pne, 

 all the rest, perforce, quicken their pace. Fresh martial preparations in one 

 quarter frighten Europe in every other. Not least do they terrify the very State 

 which makes them. Kingdoms and Republics shudder at the tread of their 

 own armed garrisons." 



There is a passage in the late Mr. Bright's remarkable letter 



