The Endless Chain

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 12, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 11.

The Endless Chain

(From the "Thrice-a-Week World," Feb. 9, 1912)

LARGER armaments on land and sea is the keynote of the kaiser's speech to the Reichstag. With the most formidable army in the world and the second strongest fleet, he still clamors for more regiments and more battle-ships.

It is an old story that every year grows longer. The endless chain of European militarism steadily dips deeper and deeper into the people's resources. Every Dreadnought that is built to "strengthen the defensive power of the German people" must not only be followed by another, but serves to incite England to build two, for which Germany somehow must provide an offset. Every increase in the German land forces excites France to fresh expenditures for its army.

On one hand and the other the senseless race of the powers toward excessive taxation and national bankruptcy continues. Only the industry and thrift of the people, combined with their patience under the kaiser's policy, avert disaster. But no nation, however prosperous, can forever endure the growing strain.

What Germany and France and Great Britain have done under their common pretext of acting in self-defense is to surrender the control of their own affairs and their own treasuries. Each, in its policy of overburdening the taxpayers and producers, is governed from a foreign capital. They are slowly bleeding themselves white in the delusion that they are strengthening themselves.