The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1899. THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE WAR AND THE PEOPLE WHO PAY.

New Zealand Tablet, Issue 43, 26 October 1899, Page 17

The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1899. THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE WAR AND THE PEOPLE WHO PAY.

sockets rifled for the paltry sake of some petty SQions of Calty, or k "the sordid interests of capitalist manufacturers who needed fresh markets for their wares. In^ every case the chief share of the cost was drawn from theveua and picked from the pockets of the workers of every degree In few instances-and, as we have frequently shown not in that of the present South African campaign— were the onginai matters in dispute of sufficient importance to jastifytfte destruction of life and property, the enormous expenditure of money, the wide-spread misery, and the enduring legacy of racial or national hatreds which count among the ordinary accompaniments of every serious war.

Commercial rivalry drew England into the vortex of the great struggle which raged between her and France from 1754 to 1763. The successful issue of this conflict— and not the < open Bible,' as some would have us teheve--contributed enormously to develop the colonial territory of Great Britain. It conferred upon her great foreign possessions both in the East and West, opened to her the Universal empire of a sole market,' gave her the first great impetus towards that industrial revolution which turned l her into a mighty trading nation, and secured her against serious competition from old rivals whose home territories were being constantly devastated by war. The struggle for independence was forced upon the American people by tne commercial exactions of the Whig Minister <^nville ; who endeavoured to secure a British monopoly of the colonists' trade with South America, and to compel them to pay their quota of the cost of the Seven W War The simpler and more guileless portion of the British population of the period long fancied that the fierce .and exhausting conflict' with France (1793 to 1815) into which Pitt plunged the country was undertaken for the defence of the principles of Monarchy a nd . against Republicanism and the rampant Atheism of the great Revolution. People know better now. Pitt was the statesman of the capitalists, who were at that period equal with the land-owners as the ruling P° we \ °^ D ft ' 5S saw that the conquests of the new French Republic > would land her again into her old position as the most {onmdaWe rival of English commerce. Let France be but struck down and Great Britain was secure in her control of the world's markets. The threat of the Republicans to invade Holland was too good an opportunity to be flung away. Pitt promptly declared war in 1793 and Engknd wasa*ain for purely commercial reasons-p unged into the mad vortex of one of the longest and most disastrous wars of all her history. It created fearful suffering among the working classes But England had this great advantage over ConUnental nations : it was the only country whu* wa not made the battle-ground of hostile armies And so her trade grew with the war. Napoleon struck a blow at it with hi Berlin Decree of 1806, which Oontanental countries to trade with her. And yet he had to clothe his soldiers in Yorkshire woollens on their march to Moscow. The ong war crippled the resources of the nations engaged in it Great Britain's resources were simply less exhausted 'than those of the other participants in this The manufactures of her rivals were ruined. Hers were undisturbed She held in her hands the ocean carrying trade secured to her by her undoubted naval supremacy ; and with everything in her favour, set about completing ffi change from the domestic to the factory system which brought such a world of woe and anj i moral degradation to the workers, but which made Great Britain the workshop of the world. • * • The brief struggle with the Algerines, the toy conflict with Persia, the tllee wars with China, and nearly all the other British wars of the century had also ,for tbeir chief object the preservation or protection of existing markets the recovery of lost ones (as in the Soudan}, or tne acqusS of fresh ones. The war against the Transvaal

leverage of coiistitufcionaLiigitation.. Of the. other armed straggles of the century : The Crimean War was forced on by private interests. The French invasion of Mexico in 1862-1»66, the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, and the titanic struggle between France and Germany in 1870-1871, were all dynastic struggles. They had no sufficient cause, no pretence of relation to the well-being of the people who had to bleed in them or pay for them. Blood was spilled in them and life sacrificed almost as wantonly as when within the circling arena of the Coliseum Christian slaves, prisoners of war, and gladiators were 'butchered to make a Roman holiday.'

We readily confess to a sense of grief, if not of impatience, when we see the working-classes toss up their caps (metaphorically, of course) and huzza for war. For — as we have often pointed out — it is they that hear the chief burden of its cost both in good red blood and in the bits of stamped metal which we call coins of the realm. Thus, the great war that raged between England and France from 1793 to 1815 cost 1,900,000 lives— mostly working men— and £1,250,000,000. At its beginning the National Debt stood afc £247,874,434. At* its close in 1815, the Debt amounted to £861,039,049. The annual taxation amounted to £70,000,000, and £622,000,000 was added to the debt which British subjects have ever since been engaged in vainly endeavouring to pay off. In the year of Waterloo exports were double the value ao which they had stood at the beginning of the war. But the profits went into the pockets of the manufacturers. To pay the cost of the long campaign, the faces of the poor were ground with taxes which were placed on every article of necessity and convenience of daily life. The price of wheat rose to famine rates ; but a heartless or fat-witted Parliament practically prohibited the importation of foreign grain. And all the time wages went on rapidly falling. The distress among the industrial classes was keen and grinding to a degree. In 1816 — the year after Waterloo — riots (which were in reality hunger riots) broke out over wide areas throughout England. And at a time when the wealth of the country was advancing by leaps and bounds, pauperism increased at such a rate that in 1818 the Poor Rate reached the sum of £7,870,000, or 13s 3d per head of the population. While the manufacturers were making vast fortunes, the distress among the workers continued for many a long and dreary year. The celebrated statist, Mr. Giffen, tells us that as recently as 1830-1, ' pauperism was nearly breaking down the country.' Ten years later, in 1841, there were still no fewer than 1200 articles on the customs tariff, chiefly to meet the enormous annual charge of those old wars. Mulhall states that the British wars from 1599 to 1856 involved the country in the enormous expenditure of £1,359,000,000,000. The wars of Europe and America from 1793 to 1877 involved a loss of 4,470,000 men and an expenditure of £3,047,000,000,000. The veins and the purse of the workers have paid most of this mighty butcher's bill. A fraction of this mountain of gold would suffice, if rightly expended, to kill off grinding poverty and to make this world as nearly a terrestrial paradise as money could well make it. And yet the worker huzzas the sword that is sharpened to slit his carotid artery, and applauds the ringed finger that picks his pocket in order to purchase the sword and to fee the hand that wields it.