THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JULY 6, 1915. AFTER THE WAR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXV, Issue 10713, 6 July 1915, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JULY 6, 1915. AFTER THE WAR.

What will be the effect of the war upon the commerce of the world P Will the cessation of hostilities be followed by a period <of industrial depression? Bev/eraJi months ago, it will ,be remembered, Mr Lloyd George expressed the opinion that this aftermath of the war -oulcl bring acute distress in the Mother Gauntry. On the other hand we find a financial authority like Mr Theodore H. Price, a well-known American financier, and editor of "Commerce and Finance,'; writing in a most optimistic strain. Mr Price says: "Hysterics is scarcely too strong a word to apply to the popular vision of a world made bankrupt for a generation by the war which is now raging in Europe. Unless wo are to abandon human experience as our best guide, it may be "confidently asserted that general prosperity and not general poverty will follow the conclusion of peace, and that_ of this prosperity the present combatants will enjoy the greatest measure. Of every war in modem times, it has been said that the misery of it would bankrupt the nations engaged and precipitate a general finanisM crisis. The annals of history - may be searched in vain for any fulfilment of iilio&e prophecies and for any substantial warrant for the woeful assumptions of pacifists about the effects of wars. The reason ivhy a great war creates sudh a tremendous impression ol '-ruin and disaster, the writer goes on to (point out, ia that the suffering and destruction are. concentrated into a narrow space and a brief period of Mme, and are thus, as it were, drama/cised before our eyes.- The burning up | of £60,000,000 worth of property in the San Francisco fire was the subject' of world-wide comment and sympathy, but from the -660,000,000 worth of pronerty burned up *very year in the ■ United States we r;et no big thrill. "When Ihe Tilanio sank with' 1600 men, women and -Jillc!-

ren,' the whole of civilised humattUy ; was shocked, yet wo are not stirred I to cxcitenient by the deaths ot 1600 j men, women and children a day m ■ this country from preventive causes- | So it is with war." Mr Price proto refer to the general consequences likely to flow from the prosent conflict. Ho says those may Tie predicted within reasonable limits of accuracy either .by examining the records of past wars and taking account of their results, or by looking it the broad facts of to-day in the light of cool common-son so. The Napoleonic wars were followed almost immediately by an era of economic and social progress such as Europe had never experienced before in so brief n period. During the Crimean war the busiaiess activity of France and 'miisland was not only unabated, but showed an expansion wlne'n wa.s more than sustained after the conclusion of peace. The Franco-Prussian war marks the date of Germany's entrance upon a career of phenomenal commercial growth, and in France, notwithstanding tlx© indemnity of five thousand million francs which was exacted from her, so far from poverty and distress appearing as consequences of her defeat, industrial recuperation was well under way before the Treaty of Frankfort was ratified. The Boer War, which cost England uore than £200.000,000, .ushered in a period of trade expansion whioli broke all previous records, and after the Spanish-American War the United 1 States touched a (high water of prosperity which eclipsed everything within the nation's. experience. Vhe American Civil War was one of the longest, most expensive, andl most destructive of modern conflicts, yet, after a short-lived panic in 1331, John Sherman was writing to his brother about the wonderful prosof all classes. Mr Price, in discussing the direct expenditure due to the s present war, says "If v.e could secure an annsual one-iline book keeping entry (giving the tortal sum expended by the five hundred million people of- Europe and the United States on vain, useless, and unproductive objects, we should, at the end of a decade, have before us a figure which would make war, on its money side, look like a cheap pastime. During a war all the world economises on what I may call its frivolous expenses, and it is well within the iriark to suppose that, taking the rich and poor together, everybody in Europe has made a war cut of 2s a week in the outlay. But if that is true, She war, which is said to he costing £200,000,000 a month, is being paid for as it goes i along."