COST OF THE WAR.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11755, 20 July 1916, Page 4

COST OF THE WAR.

WHAT THE MONEY WOULD DO.

The cost of the. war, according to recent estimates by experts, is about a hundred million dollars a day or thirty-six thousand million dollars a year. Various other estimates are given, but this is near enough. This has been incurred by what are supposed to be the most civilised and intelligent Nations of the earth. Thirty-six billion dollars a year for slaughtering the sturdiest members of the race and destroying ships, factories and the artistic monuments of mankind, and not a soul can stato clearly what it is all about P Believe me, as the high school boy would say, some intelligence. Suppose tho rulers of men had been as sensible and as kind as the executive committee of any ono of a thousand boards of trade in America; and suppose they had got together and decided that they could and would raise thirty-six billion dollars a year for a few years, how might they have expended that sum P Thirty-six billioii dollars would'have provided schools and teachers for every child on earth to-day who is now being neglected, and growing up to be an enemy of society. Thirty-six billion dollars would cur© the ills of Mexico by the only means they will ever be cured, by a system of general education. Thirty-six billion dollars would stamp out tuberculosis, typhoid, smallpox and similar pests' from all the world. Thirty-six billion dollars would take every child from labour and put him in training for useful citizenship. Thirty-six billion dollars would secure rigid food inspection the world over. Thirty-six billion dollars, applied to the wages of workmen, and impoverishment, would reduce the death rato, insure a longer and more efficient working life and provide for tho burdens of sickness and accident by social insurance or otherwise. Thirty-six billion dollars would rebuild all the unsanitary tenements, clean up the disease breeding alleys, gutters and cesspools of all creation. Thirty-six billion dollars would extend railways and steamship lines into every dark corner of tho earth and eliminate savagery. Thirty-six billion dollars would financo a successful campaign against commercialised vice. Thirty-six billion dollars would rebuild our cities on rational, sanitary and artistic plans. Thirty-six billion dollars would relieve scientists from oconomio struggle and endow them to devote their entire efforts to improving manufactured products, making agriculture more profitable, fighting disease and furthering useful inventions of all kinds. Thirty-six billion dollars would reconstruct every prison and penitentiary on modern, humane principles. Thirty-six billion dollars would endow every mother, take her from stunting labour enable her to devote her life, to her children. Thirty-six billion dollars would pension off all the Kings, hereditary nobles and other endowed idlers and trouble makers and give the common people a chance. Thirty-six billion dollars, intelligently spent for the common good by wise government, would render all charitable contributions unnecessary. Thirty-six billion dollars would equip an international court and police to "hoid the fretful earth in awe," and make the horrific waste of war impossible for ever and ever. And yet the combined intelligence of earth can do no better than burn all that good money up in gunpowder! Belicvo me, says the high school boy once more, some intelligence!