VAST EXPENSE OF A EUROPEAN WAR.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 86, 11 April 1903, Page 3 (Supplement)

VAST EXPENSE OF A EUROPEAN WAR.

The "Surtfay Strand" of February contains an article "To Prove War Impossible," whlcli is a description o' the museum collected to illustrate. his tneories by the late M. Jean de Bloch.

"According to De Bloch's calculations, the probable expenditure during a war lasting for twelve months only would, in the case of the parties to the Dual and Triple Alliances, amount to a total of over seventeen hundred millions of pounds sterling, the shares of Russia, Prance, and Germany being over four hundred millions each, and of Italy and Austria exceeding two hundred millions in eacfc case. Such a prospect is sufficient to stagger the Finance Ministers of Europe.

"Tremendous losses would, of course, be occasioned to the holders of stock by the unsettling influence of war, even before It had seriously begun. Thus, the losses occasioned to vholders of German stocfcs alone from the Ist to the 15th and 22nd July, 1870, amounted to three thousand four hundred million pounds sterling. So much for the purely financial point of view.

"During the continuance of a war, the, class that would suffer least is the agricultural, owing to the rise in vuiue of then commodities, while the other classes ot the community, those dependent on industry nnd trade, export and import—which would be largely interrupted—would be severely tried."