The Appalling Price of an Armed Truce by George B. Thompson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 30, 1909

The Appalling Price of an Armed Truce

By George B. Thompson

G. B. THOMPSON

UNDER the above heading the Christian Endeavor World of July 15 contains the following in its editorial page, concerning the tremendous increase in war preparations being made by the United States:—

“Burns sang, ‘Facts are chiels that winna ding.’ If he were alive to-day, he would no longer sing; he would weep over some of the facts that confront us, and that we are passing on as a legacy to our children.”

“Twenty years ago the United States navy cost twenty-two million dollars a year. This year the cost is one hundred thirty-five million dollars. The population has increased thirty-five per cent, while the naval expenditures have advanced six hundred per cent. Edward Everett Hale wrote not very long ago: ‘Think of it! I heard Sumner’s peace oration in 1845. He amazed people by saying that the ship of the line, “Ohio,” then new, cost eight hundred thousand dollars, and that was more than all the gifts made to Harvard College in two hundred years. Now we propose to spend twenty million dollars on one ship!’”

“We are spending seventy-two per cent of the income of the government for purposes of war, past and present, and only twenty-eight per cent for peaceful government. The combined cost of army and navy from July 1, 1908, to April 30, 1909, that is, for ten months, was $206,483,937.37. We throw more than three hundred million dollars into the yawning maw of the war-god every year, and his appetite is increasing. The nations of the world are verily seized with insanity, lashed into madness by hysterical fear of what the other nations are going to do.”

“Nobody has any idea where it will all end. That the present rate of increase can not go on is evident, yet no nation will begin to retrench. We are treated to the amazing spectacle of a world governed by fear and jealousy and greed, and this condition, which seems to us so natural, is plunging us into a debt that is growing positively appalling. While thousands of families are starving, and millions of workmen can not find employment, we are emptying our bags of gold into this war abyss which always claims more. The high angels must weep over the superlative folly of the statesmen and the kings of the earth.”

When this terrible strain of the nations to keep their war equipment up to the highest standard will end no one knows. A recent despatch says that Japan has decided to build a monster war-ship of thirty-six thousand tons. The Christian Herald of August 25 takes from the Michigan Christian Advocate the following statement of Bishop Mallalieu concerning the “Dreadnaught” discussion, which is much to the point:—

“It costs about fifteen hundred dollars every time a twelve-inch gun is fired. This, of course, includes the wear and tear of the gun. But fifteen hundred dollars would build a neat cottage for a laboring man. It would support two first-rate female teachers. It would support a minister of the gospel of peace in heathen lands for a whole year. Then it costs ten million dollars of good money to build one of those horrible ‘Dreadnaughts;’ and one million dollars per annum to keep one of them afloat, and in ten years or less the ship that costs all this goes to the junk-heap. But what could be wrought with the twenty million dollars thus spent on one engine of war in the brief space of ten years? A thousand churches could be built, each costing twenty thousand dollars; or two thousand schoolhouses could be built, each costing ten thousand dollars; or twenty thousand school-teachers, good men and college graduates, could be employed at a salary of one thousand dollars; or five thousand farms could be bought, paying four thousand dollars for each one of them; or forty thousand young men or women could be kept in college for a whole year, allowing each one of them five hundred dollars. . . . More than fourteen million have lost their lives in the wars of the nineteenth century, and, sad to say, most of these have been slain within the bounds of Christendom.”

All this war preparation is made in view of an inevitable conflict which statesmen foresee. Just when or how the match will be applied to the great war magazine of the world which will result in an international explosion no one can exactly foretell. But this dreadful day is surely hastening on. The heathen nations are waking up. Plowshares are being beaten into swords. War is absorbing agriculture. Mr. B. F. Yoaman, the well-known railroad man, in addressing a farmers’ union in Oklahoma recently, said:—

“We would better spend more of the money we burn up in powder in making new farms. A forty-acre farm of irrigated land will comfortably support a family of five. It costs fifty-five thousand dollars to make a twelve-inch gun. The money that goes to pay for this gun would reclaim fifteen hundred seventy-one acres of land, providing homes for one hundred ninety-six persons. When all the guns on all the battle-ships are shot at one time, the government blows off in noise and smoke one hundred fifty thousand dollars. This would reclaim more than four thousand acres of land, giving homes to more than five hundred farmers and their families.”

These are stirring words. And what is true of this nation is equally true of all the great nations of the world. What will the end be? Simply this: Armageddon. The nations are preparing for a terrible conflict which they see is coming; and the armed truce can not much longer continue. Diplomacy may avert the catastrophe for a little time, but ere long the whirlwind will break loose. When all the flower of manhood, now training in all the world, and equipped with the best implements of destruction the inventive genius of man can construct, meet on the field of combat

in a death struggle, there will indeed be a time of trouble such as never was. And the day hastens on apace. It is time that the church should put on her strength and prepare for it.

Takoma Park, D. C.