An Expensive Peace

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 31, 1911

An Expensive Peace

The battle-ship Arkansas, the largest warship ever constructed in this country, was launched recently at Camden, New Jersey. Her displacement is 26,000 tons, length 562 feet. Her main armaments will consist of twelve 12-inch guns, mounted in six heavy armor-protected turrets. She will have also a battery of twenty-one 5-inch rapid-fire guns, ten small guns, and two submerged torpedo tubes. She will have 28,000 horse-power and a speed of 20½ knots an hour. The vessel will be fitted for a flag-ship, her crew to consist of eighty-five officers and over 1000 men.

An Expensive Peace.—The peace of Europe the last quarter century, according to Edmund Thery, the French economist, has cost Europe the vast sum of approximately $29,000,000,000 (twenty-nine billion dollars!), increasing the public debt from twenty-one billion to thirty billion dollars. During this time it has excluded from productive industry in idle soldiers nearly 4,000,000 men. It is folly, isn't it?

The citizens of Liverpool, England, it is said, are greatly incensed over the fact that hundreds of girls are sent from that port every year to swell the Mormon colonies in America. Their transportation has been secured on the pretext of their becoming servants and filling other minor positions. It is thought the Home Secretary will take a hand in checking the crusade.

At Santander, Spain, 150 workmen were entombed when a mine in which they were working caved in, supposed to have been caused by a terrific explosion. Fire followed which prevented rescue of the miners. At the time of the report forty dead bodies had been removed, and it was feared that the entire force had perished, as the air supply was cut off.

Seventeen persons drowned when a barge driven by a strong wind was wrecked on a reef off the Massachusetts coast.