Life being a reaction between the individual and environing stimuli, it naturally follows that those stimuli not destructive are necessarily formative.

The health and development of nations are governed by the same law that governs the health and development of individuals. When an individual is subjected to a burden that does not break him, or to a trial that he is able to master, he is strengthened, not weakened, by the burden or the trial. Every individual is constantly being attacked by microbes of disease. So long as he possesses sufficient powers of resistance to repel invasion of disease, his ability to resist disease is strengthened, and his immunity to further attacks is increased. It is only when disease gets inside a man that it becomes a destroyer.

It is not a bad thing for a hen, but, on the contrary, it is a very good thing for a hen to lay eggs and sit on them and hunger for three weeks in order to hatch the chicks, and then to scratch for them and hunt for them until they are able to take care of themselves. She is stronger, healthier, more intelligent, more competent, and altogether a better hen because of her exertion and her sacrifice. The rearing of her chicks imposes no burden on the farmer, because she gets the wealth for their growth out of the ground.

The human mother who bears and rears sons and daughters is supremely rewarded for all the pain and the burden. The husband and wife who toil for each other and their children are able to arrive thereby, and only thereby, at most complete living and the goal of supreme happiness. Happiness is our sense of the normal exercise of faculty; consequently happiness is the feel of normal life; unhappiness the feel of abnormal life.

Just as we are strengthened by bearing all burdens that are not so heavy as to crush us beneath their weight, so the nation is enriched by the burdens it bears and the expenditures it makes for the general welfare of its people. We may help our understanding of this matter by recognizing the truth that everything primarily comes out of the ground, and that whatever comes out of the ground, whether from agriculture or mining, is newly-created wealth. Whatever stimulates a more active development of our natural resources produces accordingly a proportionate amount of new wealth.

The people have been taught, until the belief is now well-nigh universal, that the cost of establishing, equipping, maintaining, and supporting a standing army, the cost of building, manning, and supporting a large navy, and the expense of manufacturing and storing large supplies of ammunition and other war-materials, represent just so much dead loss to the taxpayers of the country.

It is necessary to correct this error, and to disseminate the truth that the building of battleships, the manufacture of arms and ammunition, the manufacture of supplies of food and clothing, require large numbers of laborers and skilled artisans, who become a great market for food and supplies of every description for their convenience and comfort, thereby giving employment to myriads of others, back to the farmer; while the money paid for wages and produce is kept constantly in circulation.

It is the difficulty of paying taxes from the pockets of poverty that makes taxes burdensome, and not their size. If the ability to pay a given amount in tax be tripled, the tax itself may be doubled, and the taxpayers still be the gainers.

Wealth is what labor gets out of the ground; and whatever stimulates labor, or creates a demand for labor, is a direct stimulus to prosperity, by increasing both the number of laborers and the hours of labor, and by affording a market for the products of labor.

If all of those thrown out of positions in a panic were to be put to work by the government in the production of war-materials, there would result no hard times, and the entire country would be better off.

The large standing army indispensable to Germany costs vast sums annually, but the standard of personal efficiency is raised so much by military training, and industry is so stimulated to meet government requirements, that the Germans have captured markets all over the world for the sale of their manufactured products in ever-increasing quantities.

According to statistics, we Americans spend every year on sensuous indulgence, on our hilarities—joy food, joy drink, joy dope, and night-outings—nine thousand million dollars, which, in gold, would weigh more than thirteen thousand tons—the weight of a good-sized battleship.

The biggest super-dreadnoughts cost $15,000,000 each, built in pairs; built a hundred at a time, they certainly would not cost over $12,000,000 each. We could build, for what we spend on sensuous indulgence, 750 super-dreadnoughts; we could build 160 super-dreadnoughts a year for what we spend on alcoholic beverages; 83 a year for what we spend on tobacco; three a year for what we spend on chewing-gum.

The total amount that we spend each year on our Army and Navy is about $250,000,000. Consequently, we spend more than twelve times as much on alcoholic drinks and tobacco as we do on our Army and Navy.

I do not mean to preach a temperance sermon, or to advise against the use of tobacco. Nevertheless, I do think that for every dollar we spend on indulgence, we might drop a couple of cents into the side-till just for insurance—for the safety of our country against war, in order that our joys of living may be continued.

The small burden of armaments in proportion to the burden of luxuries is very well stated in the following quotation from "Some Economic Aspects of War," by Professor C. Emery:—

"Certainly Bloch is not likely to minimize the extent of such expenditures, as he has been one of the leading writers to show the immensity of this burden, and yet he himself states that the military expenditures of different European countries vary from 2 per cent. to 3.8 per cent. of the total income. Even Germany, with her great organization, takes less than 3 per cent. of the actual income for its maintenance, both of army and navy; and when we think of the expenditures for luxuries, many of them harmful in themselves, the extent of military expenditures appears even less. In Germany, for instance, three times as much is spent for intoxicating drinks as for the support of military and naval establishments. One-third less consumption of beer and liquor on the part of the German people would take care of this part of the budget altogether."

There is no branch of insurance so important as insurance against war. There is no other thing insured, of which the loss is so vital as that of one's country, and there is no kind of insurance where the cost of security is so small in comparison with the value of the thing insured. Mr. Stockton puts this very clearly in his book, "Peace Insurance":—

"For insurance against loss by burglary, the nation expends $2,850,000 annually; for insurance against crime in the form of municipal, county, and state police we expend $110,000,000 annually; making a total of $112,850,000 expended for premiums on crime insurance alone.... A total annual amount on fire and crime insurance combined is $594,186,104, or about 350 million more than for all our military forces. Considering these figures we may conclude that our military expenditures are by no means greater than the probable loss by a war; that they are small compared with the amounts spent for fire and crime insurance, and that the insurance rate is low compared with that for other kinds of insurance in effect in the business world."

During periods of peace, there tends to be established an equilibrium of supply and demand between our developed industries and our undeveloped resources. Consequently, when war comes and stimulates enormously all our developed industries—arts, sciences, and manufactures—a correspondingly greater demand is placed upon our natural resources, and their development is proportionately increased.

The result is that the nation as a whole is not impoverished in the least by the burden of armaments, but is rather benefited by their support. Also, a nation may likewise be economically benefited by actual war, so long as it has such resources, number of population, industrial arts and sciences, and naval and military equipment as to prevent subjugation and the humiliation and degradation of being forced to pay ransom or tribute in the shape of a large war indemnity to a foreign Power.

The fact that a war indemnity takes gold out of the country, and gives it to another people, makes the indemnity a national calamity. But when money is spent within the country, as it is for armaments, the condition is entirely different.

The following excerpt from "The Valor of Ignorance," by General Homer Lea, admirably presents this:

"Budgets are but the sums total of the symbols of wealth. Whether they are great or small, the wealth of the nation varies not one potato. An individual measures his wealth by coinage, but a nation only by that which coinage represents.

"As a man squanders his money, he becomes impoverished; but it is only when the resources and means of producing that which money represents are destroyed or diminished that the wealth of a nation is lessened. The armament of a nation, instead of being indicative of its impoverishment, is rather an indication of its capacity."

It is a law of psychology that, when we are subjected to a supreme test, we develop unrealized resources within ourselves; resources that never would be developed, nor could be, except through such trial. By consequence, it is evident that supreme trial is an indispensability to the best development of either individuals or nations. However severe may be the trial that results in the supreme development of the natural resources of the nation, and of the dormant resources in its people, it is essentially beneficial to the nation.

Herbert Spencer said that, just as it is impossible to get a five-fingered hand into a three-fingered glove, with a separate finger in each pocket, so it is impossible to get a complex thought into a mind not sufficiently complex to receive it. It is doubtless impossible, therefore, to prove to the pacifist mind that the money spent in building warships cannot be counted as so much loss to the nation.

The money spent by the government in building fighting-ships could not be esteemed so much money lost, even if the ships were useless. The government taxes the people for the money to build the ships, and then pays the money back to the people again for the ships. The people get their money all back, and the government gets the ships. The people lose nothing, and the government is the gainer to the value of the ships. It may be argued that the labor of the people is lost, but what of it? Labor is neither money nor wealth; it merely represents time. It does not hurt the laborers to do the work; on the contrary, it does them good. They pay but an infinitesimal part of the tax for building the ships. Their occupation constitutes them a market for manufactured articles and farm produce, which pays the manufacturers and the farmers a profit far in excess of their part of the tax for the ships, since by the increased demand they both get better prices and sell more goods. The farmer exerts additional effort to supply the demand, for the laborers who build the ships, and the manufacturers who supply their wares, call upon the farmer for greater supplies of produce than they could call for if the fighting-ships were not built. The farmer, always glad to get more out of the ground when he can sell to advantage, is stimulated to extra effort to get the greater profit, and he is made richer for it. The manufacturer is made richer for it, and the laborer is helped by higher wages and by more continuous occupation.

The result is that the fighting-ships have cost nothing. On the contrary, their production has benefited all. Everybody is made better and richer through the building of them.

It is especially significant and pertinent that the added employment of labor in the construction of armaments adds greatly to the number of taxpayers. Consequently, the burden of taxation is thereby borne by a larger number of persons, with a corresponding lessening of the burden on each individual. This is one of the reasons why poverty is not increased by increased government expenditures in the employment of labor.

The enjoyment of life being derived entirely from exercise of our faculties, the more useful exercise we get within our strength, the happier we are. The building of battleships, by putting us more to use, serves the double purpose of getting more wealth out of the ground and making us happier. It may be argued that this would not be true if our economic institutions were not slack, and that, by perfecting these institutions, every one would receive his due amount of normal stimulus, and would be getting out of the ground his normal amount of wealth. This is all very true, but our economic institutions are not yet perfected, and the cost of building battleships comes out of the slack in our institutions. The work merely helps take up some of the slack.

When we have looked upon our Navy, remembering what the pacifists have told us about its enormous cost, we are strongly impressed with the colossal expenditure, not realizing that the Navy has actually cost nothing. Its production has been a source of profit and benefit to the people.

That which determines the size of a burden is the ability to bear it. Our burden of armaments, borne upon the united backs of a hundred million people, with an aggregate wealth of more than a hundred and thirty billion dollars, with an annual increase of wealth of over four billion dollars, becomes insignificant compared with the ability to support it. Size, like distance and time, has no meaning, except in a relative sense, for space and time are limitless. As compared with space, a mustard seed is exactly as large as the sun.

We hear much about the tremendous burden of the present conflict upon the warring nations. The pacifists tell us that they are destined so to exhaust themselves that, when the war is over, we need have no fear of any one of them, or of a coalition of them, because they will have neither men nor money with which to fight.

The first six months of the war cost about six billion dollars. Now, assuming that the first year of the war should cost even as much as fifteen billion dollars, this would be only five per cent. of the wealth of the warring Powers. But, it must be remembered, that the same thing largely holds true in the case of war that holds true in the case of armaments in time of peace. The cost comes out of the ground, for the most part. In short, the wealth created by the added stimulus in great measure compensates for the loss, especially when the money spent is chiefly returned to the people themselves. The actual out-of-pocket loss to the nations in the present war, taking into account its economic advantages, even during the war, will probably not exceed two and a half per cent., and I doubt if it will amount to that much.

The total number of killed and wounded in the European War during the first six months is estimated at about two million. Most of those wounded will suffer very little permanent injury.

The population of the warring nations is more than four hundred millions, taking into account only such part of the vast Indian population in proportion to the percentage of troops furnished by them as compares with the percentage furnished from the United Kingdom to the number of its inhabitants. Consequently, the total loss in killed and wounded during the first six months of the war was less than a half of one per cent. of the population, and as the number of killed does not exceed ten per cent. of the total number of killed and wounded, the loss during the first six months was about a tenth of half of one per cent.; in other words, only about a twentieth of one per cent.

After the war has run for a year, the total loss in killed and wounded will not exceed one per cent. of the inhabitants, and the total in killed will not exceed a tenth of one per cent.

When the war is over, any one of the warring Powers, unless Germany is exceedingly humbled, will be in better condition in every way to fight us than it would have been before the war broke out.