Bankruptcy for a Hundred Years
EDGAR CRAMMOND estimates the cost of a year's warfare to Europe at $62,735,000,000. The London Times thinks the figures are excessive, but other competent authorities think they are not so far out of the way. The San Francisco Chronicle says this will leave Europe in bankruptcy for at least a hundred years, and suggests that “it is money that will end this European barbarism, and it will be money that can prevent a repetition.” University presidents and other leading men were convinced, before the European war broke out, that no such conflict could be entered upon without the consent of the money power. But there were conditions that caused the war to come as an explosion; and while the money power may have assisted in creating these conditions, yet it was powerless to prevent what has happened. The Wall Street Journal states that “the magnitude of the present war borrowings is appreciated when it is known that the five leading nations involved have increased their government debts by over twenty-five per cent.” The way in which this war is eating up money is strikingly shown through an interview by a representative of Collier's with Lloyd-George, chancellor of the British exchequer. The chancellor gave the interviewer the information that the largest amount spent by Great Britain on war in a single year before the present war was $355,000,000. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, which covered a period of twenty years, cost but $4,155,000,000. The Crimean War, the cost of which was spread over three financial years, expended only $37,500,000; while the Boer War, which was spread over four financial years, cost $1,055,000,000. But according to the chancellor, a full year of this present war will cost Great Britain $2,250,000,000. This will be more than six times as much in one year as the Crimean War cost in three years, or equivalent to an eighteen-year war of the Crimean class, and a single year of the present war, as shown by these figures, will cost more than half as much as the whole of the twenty years of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period, which recorded some of the greatest wars known in history up to that time. These figures, of course, represent merely what the governments themselves are expending, and do not take into account the losses of private individuals who suffer from the war but are not in a position to be indemnified. With this tremendous expenditure of property, to say nothing of the cost in precious lives, animosities will be created that will be far more dangerous to the world than its bankrupt financial condition. It should be as plain as daylight to every thinking man, that humanity has created world conditions that it is powerless to grapple with. Nothing short of the mighty power of the infinite Christ displayed at His second coming can ever cope with this situation. That is the great event that the conditions of the world demand, and the prophecies abundantly warrant the statement that the great day is almost here.