Note and Comment by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Jul 14, 1904

Note and Comment

By Editor

We are accustomed to think of the present times as fairly peaceful, and so far as great wars are concerned, this may be true. Yet there is a warlike spirit in the air which constantly finds expression in warlike expeditions into territories beyond the boundary lines of civilization, and in preparation for a great war which all anticipate. The present “peace” is less peaceful, so far as military preparations and expenditures go, than war was formerly.

As an illustration, an English journal, The Speaker, states that England has had in the last nine years fourteen wars, which have increased the national debt from £635,000,000 to £798,000,000. The following list is given of these wars, with the cost of each:—

Two in Ashanti, one in 1895–’96, the second in 1900; there were also three native wars by the Chartered Company, the first against the Matabeles, the second and the third in Mashonaland. The cost of these three expeditions was about $13,000,000. Then came a war, lasting three years, in Sudan. This cost $12,000,000. Next came a war on the northwest frontier of India, lasting eight months, at a cost of $13,000,000. This was followed by the South African war, in which 965,000 British and 82,000 colonial troops were engaged, the war lasting two years and eight months. The total cost, including interest on the war debt, up to April, 1903, was £211,000,000, equivalent to $1,055,000,000. The expedition to China in 1901 cost more than $33,000,000. And then there were five more adventures: Venezuela, Kano, Aden, Somaliland, and Tibet. At present the last two are costing several hundred thousand pounds every month.

In nine years of office, says The Speaker, the present Unionist government has been responsible for an expenditure of at least £250,000,000 on war alone, while it has also run through about £400,000,000 in the way of “normal” or peace expenditure, or $2,000,000,000 on soldiers, sailors, battle-ships, barracks, and forts. The sum total of this is over $3,000,000,000. Not since the battle of Waterloo, it is declared, has so much British treasure been spent in war in nine years, and the nation has spent on war the accumulated savings of the thirty years which began when Mr. Gladstone came to the helm in 1868.

There is a current saying that “money talks;” and if this be so, it is sounding in the world a different cry from that of “Peace, peace!”