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Show I NEED OF DEVELOPMENT Another defender of the leasing sys 8 -tern has declared that the government should keep fast hold of the national resources Howard C 3? nney of the Interior department has told the sen ate lands committee that the ideal sys tem of developing the national re sources is to retain the ownership in the government while leasing the property prop-erty to private corporations The chief objection to the leasing 4 system is that it does not encourage in Testment Lnder it development neces arily will be slow To some Amen cans espec ally those residing in tho east the slowness of development ap peals a a merit They speak glibly K)f wasting the national resources n a generat on and not permitting future generations to have their share of tho nation s wealth At the present time here is one o er power ng reason for rapid development of national resources in al) countries More than half the world is mpover ishing itself by the greatest of wars When the world finally emerges f om the shadow of this catastrophe t will be much poorer than at present If c vilized man is not to retrograde to conditions of poverty and m sfortuno , which prevailed hundreds of years ago if the present h gh scale of 1 ng and civ lizat on s to be ma nta ned the resources of the world mubt be devel o e d The war affe ts the cn to be wc ioel t almost as mu h ab tho people engaged in t It do troy ng b 11 ons of dollars m property and this wealth must be rep aoed The onlj iraj n wh ch t an be eplaced fo t e p sent gene at on & by an n t o do clo ment o nat al ro sou es E en betore the war began the whole world was be ng crushed slowly under tho we ght of mil tansm because the whole world was paying for the mam tenance of the vast E ropean armies Every sold er who was taken from the plow or the factory was pported by the labor of other men He had to be fed and clothed and other men had to work to prov do the food and cloth ng It was estimated that the standing ar mies of the world enta led an expendi ture of $4 000 000 000 a year n peace t mes That debt was pa d not in niono because there was not enough money n the world to pay t but in the wealth produced from the land It was paid in wheat in cotton n wool in metal and in a thousand other com mod t es The mill ons of men who produced were compelled to pay the way of soldiers who d d not produce and f nally the cost of living Increased in every country to Bucb an extent that the labor of man seemed hardly able to meet the strain Not that stand ng armies were the sole element in produc mg high prices or even the chief ele ment but undoubtedly they were a h ghly mportant element The war has added to the b rden the debt has been ncreased and the whole world must pay It cannot pay in money because it has not the money It must pay in commod t es for th s is the only form of wealth that ult mate ly pays obi gations To meet the obli gat ons imposed by years of armament and a few months of the costliest of wars the world must produce wealth more rapidly than ever before and to accomplish the task there must be free access to the natural resources Fu ture generat ons can wait but this generat on cannot wa t If those penny wise and pound fool ish statesmen who seek to lock up the natural resources could be made to take this new of the s tuation and it s a view which will force Itself insis tently upon the world In the next few years there would be some likelihood of the liberal policy so essent al if the natural resources are to bo developed in a manner commensurate with the needs of the world |