Her Staggering Expenditures
IN introducing a bill in the Reichstag on October 27, asking for a new war credit, Count von Roedern estimated “the total expenditure of all the belligerents at $59,500,000,000, exclusive of property destroyed.” He said also, “The monthly German expenditure has risen to about $520,500,000.” That would be about $17,350,000 a day as the war expenditure of Germany alone. On October 11, Mr. Asquith asked Parliament for an additional vote of credit, which brought the appropriations in England for the conduct of the war during this year up to $6,750,000,000. “The aggregate,” said Mr. Asquith, “since the outbreak of the war, sanctioned by thirteen votes, amounts to $15,660,000,000.” Continuing, Mr. Asquith said: “It is difficult, of course, to grasp the meaning of such a stupendous total; but it may perhaps make its significance clearer if the committee is told that since the outbreak of the war, Parliament has been asked to vote in votes of credit alone, without taking into account peace expenditure or debt charges, a sum which is rather more than the aggregate of national expenditure for the twenty years which preceded the war—the years 1894-1913—a period which included the South African war.” Such facts and figures are staggeringly significant. FROM the story of creation, we read the divine decree: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.” Gen. 1:11, 12. The same soil, in the same climate, and with identity of both sunshine and moisture, will produce both sour apples and sweet; it will produce both black grapes and white; it will produce either oats or rye or barley; and all of this is because of the decree of the Almighty put into the seed itself. What a wonderful thing it is that so much character and individuality was placed in the tiny seed of wheat or of corn or of tree, so that it would ever tend to “produce its kind”! The facts throughout the world, and the statement of the Creator in His divine word, are in simple and clear accord.