War Preparations

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 24, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 42.

THE tremendous cost of war is that which causes amazement of men in the highest circles. For instance, in a speech made recently by Mr. Taft, he declared that "steadily, throughout the world, the burden of the creation of armies and fleets has grown heavier and heavier. Steadily the competition has grown more fierce that is crushing the life and the hopes of the peoples."

How true it is! A little more than twelve months ago the chancellor of the British exchequer, Lloyd-George, reckoned the annual war cost of Europe at two and a quarter billion dollars, a total nearly doubled in twenty years, and if the present rate were continued would be doubled again by 1920. Europe is now under what is called "peace conditions." Her army is on the peace footing, but she has over four million men under arms. Her war debts have been estimated at twenty-six billion dollars by a no less authority than David Starr Jordan, of Stanford University. Ex-Representative Tawney, when chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations two years ago, estimated that seventy-one per cent of the national expenditures, outside the postal service, was for wars past and to come. He declared that in the ten preceding years of unbroken peace the expenditures for future wars, excluding pensions, were within four hundred million dollars of as much as the bonded debt of the United States at the close of the Civil War, in August, 1865. The entire cost of the naval establishment of the United States for the five years of the Civil War was $326,850,000; but during the five years of profound peace of 1906 to 1910 it was $573,022,000. But these are the conditions that exist elsewhere. The recent stir in Europe over the Morocco question will lead to feverish energy in the increase of navies and armies; and one of the great factors that helps to produce this enormous expense is the fact that the battle-ships which cost ten to twelve million dollars, are soon out of date, and must give place to larger and more modern ships. The United States for the last number of years has lost more from accidents and explosions on her war-ships than through fighting.

Paris has just had a loss which has almost startled the nations, in a recent explosion of the battle-ship Liberty on September 25. Fire broke out, and before it could be controlled it had reached the magazines, the explosion of which rent the vessel asunder, and destroyed the lives of 300 officers and men—the greatest disaster that ever befell the French navy, and in magnitude almost without precedent in the annals of the world's fighting ships. Other first-class battle-ships were also crippled by the explosion.

There seems to be great haste among the nations in building aeroplanes. New patterns are described almost daily. Mighty dirigibles which can face wind and storm and tempest are demanded, and this fourth arm of the military forces is rapidly developing.

Just recently there was launched from the Fore River yards in Massachusetts the biggest battle-ship in the world, for the Argentine Republic, Rivadavia by name, with a speed of 22½ knots an hour. With a world longing for peace, we have the strange spectacle of a world feverishly preparing for war.

What is the cause? Read it in Rev. 16:13, 14,—the spirits of demons that are going out into all the world, to gather together the kings of the earth to the great battle of Armageddon. The heart that will not submit to the righteousness of Jesus Christ, does not know peace; and the heart that does not know peace, however much it may long for it, will yield to the influence of the evil spirits of war.