"We touch with this the vital meaning of this war. There can be no doubt that the German professor is right: the opposition of England and Germany is absolute here, both in principle and in practice. We have seen what account the Germans have given of their own political theory; we know how they have carried it out. By force, in 1864, they robbed Denmark; by force, in 1866, they subjugated Austria; by force, in 1870, they dismembered France; by force, in 1914, they violated and destroyed Belgium. Their present Kultur is thus about fifty years old. The English record is seven times as long, and of a very different character. We have during the last 350 years fought in defence of the Netherlands against Spain, and in defence of Italy, Spain and Portugal against Napoleon; we guaranteed the neutrality of Switzerland in 1814, and successfully supported it in 1847; we fought against Turkey in 1825 for the independence of Greece; we guaranteed the integrity of Norway and Sweden in 1855, and protested, though vainly, against the dismemberment of Denmark in 1864; in 1914 we struggled to the last moment for peace, and only accepted war when it was necessary for the fulfilment of our solemn obligation to Belgium. Besides these efforts in the field of foreign politics, England has developed a strongly liberal and democratic policy in more domestic affairs. She has restored self-government to the conquered Boer Republics, given Home Rule to Ireland, and built up a Colonial Empire which is not an Empire at all in the German or military sense of the word, but a voluntary association of States, the nearest parallel to which in history is the Grecian Confederacy of 2400 years ago, founded upon the sea power of Athens and cemented by the ties of race and common ideals.

The parallel is not merely one of external facts: the instinctive beliefs of the English people are as near to the political theory of the ancient Greeks as the modern German ideal is far from either. For the ardent genius of Plato, the object of the State is the happiness of the entire community, and to be happy it must, he says, be wise, brave, temperate and just. For the keen analytical mind of Aristotle, the State exists in order to secure, not the advantages of mere association, or of commerce, or of military alliance, but "a complete and independent existence,' or, in other words, "a life of felicity and nobleness." To either of these great thinkers, and, indeed, to any Greek, it would have seemed ludicrous to suggest that the small size of a State could deprive it of the right to follow out such an ideal in its own way. The English are not a highly theoretical people, but by instinct and long practical experience they have re-discovered these old truths for themselves. "Live and let live," they say in their common proverb; and, again, "It takes all sorts to make a world."

Their statesmen speak for them more explicitly; Lord Bryce, historian and ex-Ambassador, in his latest article, declares that "no nation, however great, is entitled to try to impose its type of civilisation on others. No race, not even the Teutonic or the Anglo-Saxon, is entitled to claim the leadership of humanity. Each people has in its time contributed something that was distinctively its own, and the world is far richer thereby than if any one race, however gifted, had established a permanent ascendancy. We of the Anglo-Saxon race do not claim for ourselves, any more than we admit in others, any right to dominate by force, or to impose our own type of civilisation on less powerful races. Perhaps we have not that assured conviction of its superiority which the school of General Bernhardi expresses for the Teutons of North Germany. We know how much we owe, even within our own islands, to the Celtic race."

While these words were being written by Lord Bryce, the Irish Nationalist leader, Mr. John Redmond, issued his manifesto to the Irish people. "The democracy of Great Britain listened to our appeal," he wrote on September 16th, 1914, "and have kept faith with Ireland. It is now a duty of honour for Ireland to keep faith with them. The Empire is engaged in the most serious war in history. It is a just war, provoked by the intolerable military despotism of Germany. It is a war for the defence of the sacred rights and liberties of small nations, and the respect and enlargement of the great principles of nationality. Involved in it is the fate of France, our kindred country, the fate of Belgium, to whom we are attached by the same great ties of race, and by the common desire of a small nation to assert its freedom, and the fate of Poland, whose sufferings and whose struggle bear so marked a resemblance to our own. It is a war for high ideals of human government and international relations."

The British have thus no reason to repent of their ideals: their sympathy with the culture of other races, and their championship of national freedom, has brought them in return the sympathy and alliance of others. Germany and Austria stand alone in the day of decision, principal and subordinate in a shameless attack upon the liberties of Europe; the cause of England and her Allies is approved by all the most independent and enlightened opinion of the world, and supported enthusiastically by the armed force of all her daughter States and dependencies, without distinction of race, colour, or creed. When the time comes for the neutral countries of Europe to give their verdict, we confidently believe that it will be unanimously in our favour, for with us stands or falls the hope of free existence and national culture for the smaller nations of the world.

HENRY NEWBOLT.

WAR EXPENDITURE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM.

I.

The Composition and Amount of the Income of the United Kingdom in the Year 1812, and the Cost of the Contemporary War.

THE cost of the present war and its relation to the resources of this country will give interest to a comparison between the situation now existing and the situation, closely analogous to it, of the United Kingdom rather more than a hundred years ago. The particulars which will here be given relating to that earlier period are mainly taken from the elaborate analyses of Colquhon in his Treatise on the Wealth, Power, and Resources of the British Empire, published in the year 1815.

Many of Colquhon's general observations with regard to the Napoleonic War might, if divorced from their context, be supposed to be taken from newspapers of the present day. "This country," he says (his redundant sentences are here somewhat abbreviated), "has had to contend for many years with a tyrant who ravaged with fire and sword the States of Continental Europe. Terror, plunder, pestilence, and devastation marked the too successful progress of this destroyer. His success generated in his mind the hope of annihilating all the Governments of Europe, and of ultimately obtaining by treachery and the sword the subjugation of the whole and the establishment of universal monarchy on the principles of terror supported by military despotism. His whole force was at different periods employed to reduce and destroy the British power. and yet, limited as the resources of Great Britain are with respect to an army from an interior population, and unaided by those arbitrary conscriptions by which France was drained, Great Britain under every disadvantage encountered the foe on his own element (the land), whilst the British flag has for some years past been the only one seen upon the ocean. The war which His present Majesty has thus been compelled to carry on has extended to every part of the habitable globe-to all the colonies and territories of the enemy in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. A war of this kind is of such unexampled extent, and its expense so greatly exceeds anything recorded in history, that the capacity of this country to

support it could not have been conceived by the most sanguine mind if it had not been proved by the era in which we live. At the same time the comforts and conveniences of the richer classes appear not to have declined; those of the middling ranks are certainly greater than they were at the beginning of his present Majesty's reign; and though the rise in the prices of the first necessities of life was in itself a burden on the poor, they fared better, on the other hand, through an abundance of more profitable labour" (or, as we should put it to-day, an extensive rise of wages).

What then, asks Colquhon, were the nature and extent of those resources which enabled the United Kingdom to bear so great a cost and maintain at the same time a rapidly increasing population? He begins with giving an analysis of what the cost to the nation of the Napoleonic War was from the year 1803 to the year 1813, as compared with that of previous wars since the accession of George III.

Of the forty years covered by the reign of George III., from the date of his accession to the close of the eighteenth century, there had been eighteen years of war and twenty-two years of peace. In the times of peace the maintenance of the Army and Navy had not cost more on an average than £4,000,000 a year, the amount having been practically the same in the year 1792 as it was nearly thirty years before. During the successive periods of war, however, the case was widely different. Of these periods there were three-that which ended the Seven Years' War in 1763; the eight years of the American War, which began about twelve years later; and that of the French Revolutionary War, which lasted from the year 1793 till the eighteenth century ended. The annual average cost to the country of the Army and Navy, of munitions and the construction of barracks, was, during the first of these periods, about £15,000,000; during the second about £17,000,000; and during the third, after an interval of only ten years, it had almost doubled itself, being close upon £34,000,000. When, early in the nineteenth century, war broke out again, the cost of fighting Napoleon for the first five years of the struggle amounted, on a yearly average, to £44,000,000, and by the year 1813 it was very little short of £60,000,000. It may be interesting to note, in the light of current events, that the annual expenditure on munitions, which was in the year 1803 little more than £1,000,000, had by the year 1812 been quadrupled, having risen from £1,125,000 to £4,620,000.

Having commented with great emphasis on the magnitude of these latter sums, Colquhon proceeds to examine in minute detail what the wealth then annually produced in the United Kingdom

was, out of which so vast an expenditure of unremunerative effort was defrayed. On this examination he lavished extraordinary care and diligence; but, though for many of his figures he has precise and direct authority, and though for economic students these have the highest value, he admits that in many cases he is dealing with estimates and approximations only; nor does he conceal his hopes that these estimates, which he calls "splendid," will arouse "the astonishment and exultation of every British subject" by showing him how vast are the purely material forces which this country is able to bring "against a powerful and implacable enemy." In spite, therefore, of the microscopic minuteness with which he conducts his inquiry, it might naturally be expected that he would, in dubitable cases, be somewhat inclined. to exaggerate the conclusions inferable from his data, and occasionally even to overlook considerations of an obvious kind which might modify them. And that such was actually the case will be apparent to anyone who, in the light of sufficient knowledge, considers his figures carefully. If, however, we accept Colquhon's computations as they stand, minus 7 per cent. in respect of certain obvious errors, the income of England, Scotland, and Ireland in the year 1812 reached or approached the sum of £400,000,000, or £22 per head of a population of 18,000,000 persons. This would roughly mean the production per head in the United Kingdom had, in the course of ten or eleven years, increased at the rate of 10 per cent., or at an average rate of 1 per cent. annually; which is slightly though not much less than the rate at which it has increased between the year 1812 and to-day.

His figures, then, being taken as they stand (subject to the above-mentioned slight deduction), the income of the United Kingdom about the year 1812 was divisible broadly into £190,000,000, representing agricultural products, and £210,000,000 derived from mines, manufactures, trade, and industries other than agricultural. Of this latter sum the products of mines and manufactures accounted for £125,000,000; £33,000,000 was accounted for by inland trade, or the value added to goods by transport and distribution; £47,000,000 was accounted for by the foreign carrying trade; and the remaining £5,000,000 by income from abroad.

The principal items of which the £125,000,000, representing the products of mines and manufactures, was composed are as follows:

(1) Such as his estimates of the value of jewellery, watches, leather goods, and timber. He also over-estimates the growth of the agricultural products of the country since the beginning of the reign of George III. by stating them in terms of war-prices, which were twice as great as those current thirty years previously.