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Show Ill uu IjjJ WILL FINANCES END M ' THE WAR? lift ' "Modern warfare 1s no longer pos- lifj sible from tho point of view of filial fi-lial nance, and tho question whpthor Ger-ftijftl Ger-ftijftl many may yet he beaten is nowlarge-ll nowlarge-ll if ly ne ot- fmanc resources," says ffiljl the New York Evening Post. "There JjiB seems to be general agreement that Mill a vear more t&e struggle will bring fj In some of the nations to the verge of J II bankruptcy, if not actually pushing 5 1 some nations over the line. Here HI lies, perhaps, the chief hope for dls-!!ji dls-!!ji armament at the conclusion of the tjm struggle. It Is beyond doubt that jljljjl war twenty years hence, on the same HijlJ scale or even a smaller one, would nlO seem wholly Impossible If the, cost of igj conducting warfare were proportlon-Jhm proportlon-Jhm ately to increase during that, time as Kllffl it has during the last twenty years. R JM And what is true of finance is still- truer of tho question of lives. How can humanity contemplate or permit a system in which such an Incident as the expulsion of the Russians from Galicla can alonecost tho loser from a million to a million and a halt men in sixty days, with the losses of the victor confessed very heavy? The Post is right in believing war to' be almost Impossible because of the tremendous sacrifice in lives, but a question of finances never will halt a warring nation. There is Germany, Ger-many, with what may be termed a one-man government. All the resources resour-ces of the empire can be confiscated for war purposes and so long as Germany Ger-many can continue In the field self' maintained, money or credit is not an essential ' Those nations which are not self-supporting self-supporting and' must buy from foreigners for-eigners their food products and the materials that enter Into munitions of war, must havo credit and their fighting strength Is limited by the funds available. ' Germany lias been carrying on a tremendous conflict during a year, nearly all the time cut off from traffic traf-fic with tho outsido world. If In that tlmo there has been sufficient Jpod within tho empire to feed- the civilians and soldiers, and "war material ma-terial to keep up the great stream of shells that are being turned loose, without serious drain on the reserves, then there Is nothing to prevent Germany Ger-many continuing Indefinitely to fight. Every. Gorman, high or lpw, is expected ex-pected to throw his all In to the strug-rrlP strug-rrlP fnr thp fatherland, and tho ability of those Germans to go on with tho conflict. Is, therefore, limited only by the resources of Germany as a whole. With England It is different. The English are dependent on the outside for nearly all their foodstuff. They must import a great part of all they consume. They must havo credit. But Great Britain has the credit. Premier Pre-mier Asquith has said that Great Britain Brit-ain can maintain the present rate of war outlay over a period of throe years without cancelling the debt which the people of the world owe the English. At the end of three years, tho toll tho war shall have exacted In human lives will be a greater factor in forcing terms of peace than the finances fi-nances of any of the nations. |