WAR CALCULATIONS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume L, Issue 2641, 22 September 1919, Page 7

WAR CALCULATIONS.

I A statement has lately been made to the effect that the war has cost all the nations engaged on either side the sum of £32,000,000,000. Such a statement is not really impressive, because it conveys very little of actuality to the human mind. An American paper has, however, come to the rescue of poor humanity wallowing in a slough of figures and expressed this total in comprehensible terms. It seems that the entire cost of the American Civil War has been duplicated every twelve weeks, and each period of five weeks of the European war would pay for the Franco-Prus-sian War. These thirty-two thousand millions sterling would pay for four hundred Panama Canals, or would construct 92 world-encircling railways. But the cost in human life and limb is far more terrible than any monetary cost. If the procession of the slain were to march past in battle array four deep ten years would pass, and even then the procession would not be over. If, behind the dead came theJhost of maimed, blind dumb, and paralysed, fifty years would hardly exhaast the" terrible spectacle.

Daughter : "Papa went oft in great good-humour this morning." Mother : "Mercy ! That reminds me I .forgot to ask for anv monev !•*'