MARCH, 27th Aprit. In the Queen's Diamond Jubilee year, the year in which Her Majesty completes sixty years of the most beneficent reign in English history, it is natural that we should be filled with thoughts of the pane and prosperity of the British pire, of the enormous increase in sixty years in its wealth, its area, its population, and influence, Lest' we should be carried away by these imaginings, be puffed up with the pride that goeth before a fall, Mr. A. J. Wilson comes before us every month and in the columns of his Jnvestors' Review warns us how hollow is our prosperity, what a palace of cards is the gorgeous edifice we have been rearing in the sixty-year cycle that closes in 1897. In our pride we may believe or not the warning that he gives us; but it can do us no harm to ponder what so keen a student of events and so straightforward a writer puts before us.
The first article in the March issue of Mr, Wilson's Review is headed "*Peace, Peace, and Lavish Warlike Expenditure." It begins: " Nobody ever seems to think nowadays of calling in question the wisdom of the present fashion in great expenditure upon war-ike appliances and masses of haman beings trained to slay. All past history teaches that this sort of outlay is always pure waste, and generally a source of greatdangerto public liberty. The money has been speur, the human labour and ingenuity have exhausted themselves, and the result is nil, so far even as temporary good has been done to the human race and in the progress of this subservience to the military passion a people may become fit to be only slaves." Military material, Mr. Wilson goes on to show, is the most perishable thing in the world; the inventor's brain is never idle; and the man-of-war that cost half-a-million, the armament of the whole fighting force of a country, becomes obsolete before it is used. Even fortifications become useless, and with the 54 millions which the present Parlia~ ment is to authorise, "we shall have spent about 23. millions on fortifications and such-like within less than fifty years, and it is no exaggeration to say that the round twenty of these millions have been completely thrown away." How would it be if all the nations were to agree to confine their weapons of offence to the sword and the spear, which have not changed in thousands of years? It! is Hotspur's "villainous saltpetre" which has caused the frightful waste that Mr. Wilson deplores.
Up to the time of the Crimean War our average annual expenditure on the army and-navy together was from 15 to 16 millions, and on this expenditure we carried on a good many costly little wars. "Thankful. may we be-if we get off in any future' year with an outlay of 45 millions on army and navy together." It engines of war, we are ab any rate hasten-is since the Franco-German war that img, the day when there will be no more coal in these islands. Previous to 1865 the military expenditure of Europe our coal mines never raised so much as 100 has increased by leaps and bounds. million tons of coal in any one year. The Who six Great Powers of Europe, production for 1865 was about 190 million
since 1871 in the service of their at a moderate estimate, have spent tons. Between 1870 and 1896, both years included, upwards of 4,000 million tons of coal have been mined and consumed in debts, chiefly created of wars, and on j this country, or sold, and exported. The their armies and navies some seven pace is illing, and it is every year be-thousand million pounds sterling coming a matter of increased importance to us to conserve what remains of our home (£7,000,000,000). "During this time there have been no important wars save supply of this fuel. Iron ore we may get from abroad as cheaply as we require, but that of Russia against Turkey. Europe, it will be of no use to us if we have not the asa whole, has been in profound peace, fuel to smelt it with. Our whole present yet a peace apparently of men and military and naval policy is obviously diametrically opposed to any prudent atti-nations consumed with fury against each tude towards our vanishing coal seams. It other. In such conditions all this is spend and spend, and waste and waste, money has been dissipated as the result in sheer cursedness and a spirit of vain of past wars and in preparation for wars glory, so that we may be able to borist that for every pound a foreign Power manages to come." to wring out of its toilers we have spent We have not space to follow Mi.} five. Rival war-whoops among tribes of Wilson in his description of the relief naked savages could not be more senseless; the nations would have felt if this money less criminal they might be. Will someone have the courage and perseverance to insti-had never been exacted from them, tute an inquiry as to how this momentous or if it had been spent in beneficent question stands? Before many years are, public works, Then "the expenditure over it may be too late. might have been like the seed sown In his next article, headed " What yielding a fifty-fold crop." But it is not does the Indian Famine mean Mr. only the waste of money that is to be Wilson attacks the Indian Government deplored. " Each country, in addition, for its misappropriation of the money is permanently deprived of the utilitarian that was supposed to be put aside every labours of hosts of the youngest and year to provide a Famine Insurance most vigorous of its citizens."
Fand in India, and for its constant peace strength of the armies of five of asseverations that the English rulers the Great Powers may be shown in a of India have so managed matters tabular form as follows, Mr. Wilson! as to render famines impossible in does not give the figures for Austro-future. We have drained India, he Hungary, as since 1894 they have been says, not fed it. "That its inhabitants kept secret, he following is the peace will long go on suffering what they strength of the other five Powers under now suffer, as the direct consequence of two headings the annual stripping towhich they are Officers & Men. Horses. subjected in order that the sterling obligations of the Government in London may be met, that the savings of the exiles' 50,000 who govern them, and the profits of the 50,000 mill-owners and planters as well, may be remitted, and the cost be paid of con-Austro-Hungary, ducting their oversea trade,—most of the six Great Powers maintain in a! which is carried in British ships, or in state of non-productiveness over three ships not owned by natives of Iudin,—millions of men and over half a million is more than anyone not warped in horses, and in addition about a quarter judgment and morally blindfolded can of a million of sailors; and in a general war they " might summon to arms nearly believe. India, unhappy country, has nothing she can call her own, but her 14 millions of human beings, all war-never-assuaged, always growing, hunger, ranted to be more or less efficient in a hunger which a few years of short spilling each other's blood, with the help rainfall converts always into an agony of the most perfect weapons of destruc-of black death. And we think ourselves tion known to mankind." "the most successful rulers of subject While our army is the smallest of all races in the world'!" the forces of the Great Powers, it is by Two more articles are headed "Is far the costliest. Including troops in!
India it amounts to some 375,000 men, the Rate-Paying Worm Turning 2," and "One-man Companies and there are and costs 35 millions sterling a year.! the usual invaluable trenchant and Mr. Wilson does not believe it possible incisive Economic and Financial Not: that we can go on bearing this expendi-! and Correspordence, Company Notes, ture of money and materials. We are! etc., etc., with acritical article on the using up our resources, the very matrices, New Investments of the month. of our wealth, "Must not a day come when the people will arise and say: Referring again to Mr. Wilson's open-"We are stripped of our all, have used ing article, we should like to ask him to up all our reserves, and without aid calculate how much the subjects and must perish citizens of the six Great Powers have spent in insurance premia more than At one point an answer to the problem seems easy. By our fiercely! they have recovered for losses since emulative acceleration of the si at which 1871, and whether he considers the we construct ships and other iron and steel money so spent as thrown away.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.