This is not the only basis of comparison, of course. Everyone who knows Europe at all is aware of the high standard of comfort in all the small countries—Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland. Mulhall, in Industries and Wealth of Nations (p. 391), puts the small States of Europe with France and England at the top of the list, Germany sixth, and Russia, territorially and militarily the greatest of all, at the very end. Dr. Bertillon, the French statistician, has made an elaborate calculation of the relative wealth of the individuals of each country. The middle-aged German possesses (on the established average) nine thousand francs ($1800); the Hollander sixteen thousand ($3200). (See Journal, Paris, August 1, 1910). ↩
The figures given in the Statesman’s Yearbook show that, proportionately to population, Norway has nearly three times the carrying trade of England. ↩
Major Stewart Murray, Future Peace of the Anglo-Saxons. London: Watts and Co. ↩
L’Information, August 22, 1909. ↩
Very many times greater, because the bullion reserve in the Bank of England is relatively small. ↩
Hartley Withers, The Meaning of Money. Smith, Elder and Co., London. ↩
Summarizing an article in the Oriental Economic Review, the San Francisco Bulletin says: “Japan at this moment seems to be finding out that ‘conquered’ Korea in every real sense belongs to the Koreans, and that all that Japan is getting out of her war is an additional burden of statesmanship and an additional expense of administration, and an increased percentage of international complication due to the extension of the Japanese frontier dangerously close to her Continental rivals, China and Russia. Japan as ‘owner’ of Korea is in a worse position economically and politically than she was when she was compelled to treat with Korea as an independent nation.” The Oriental Economic Review notes that “the Japanese hope to ameliorate the Korean situation through the general intermarriage of the two peoples; but this means a racial advance, and through it closer social and economic relations than were possible before annexation, and would probably have been easier of accomplishment had not the destruction of Korean independence embittered the people.” ↩
Spanish Four percents were 42½ during the war, and just prior to the Moroccan trouble, in 1911, had a free market at 90 percent.
F. C. Penfold writes in the December (1910) North American Review as follows: “The new Spain, whose motive force springs not from the windmills of dreamy fiction, but from honest toil, is materially better off this year than it has been for generations. Since the war Spanish bonds have practically doubled in value, and exchange with foreign money markets has improved in corresponding ratio. Spanish seaports on the Atlantic and Mediterranean teem with shipping. Indeed, the nature of the people seems changing from a dolce far niente indolence to enterprising thrift.” ↩
London Daily Mail, December 15, 1910. ↩
Traité de Science des Finances, vol. II, p. 682. ↩
Die Wirtschafts Finanz und Sozialreform im Deutschen Reich. Leipzig, 1882. ↩
“La Crise Économique,” Revue des Deux Mondes, March 15, 1879. ↩
Maurice Block, “La Crise Économique,” Revue des Deux Mondes, March 15, 1879. See also Les Conséquences Économiques de la Prochaine Guerre, Captaine Bernard Serrigny. Paris, 1909. The author says (p. 127): “It was evidently the disastrous financial position of Germany, which had compelled Prussia at the outbreak of the war to borrow money at the unheard-of price of 11 percent, that caused Bismarck to make the indemnity so large a one. He hoped thus to repair his country’s financial situation. Events cruelly deceived him, however. A few months after the last payment of the indemnity the gold despatched by France had already returned to her territory, while Germany, poorer than ever, was at grips with a crisis which was to a large extent the direct result of her temporary wealth.” ↩
Das Deutsche Reich zur Zeit Bismarcks. ↩
The figures of German emigration are most suggestive in this connection. Although they show great fluctuation, indicating their reaction to many factors, they always appear to rise after the wars. Thus, after the wars of the Duchies they doubled, for the five years preceding the campaigns of 1865 they averaged 41,000, and after those campaigns rose suddenly to over 100,000. They had fallen to 70,000 in 1869, and then rose to 154,000 in 1872, and what is more remarkable still, the emigration did not come from the conquered provinces, from Schleswig-Holstein, Alsace or Lorraine, but from Prussia! While not for a moment claiming that the effect of the wars is the sole factor in this fluctuation, the fact of emigration as bearing on the general claim made for successful war demands the most careful examination. See particularly, “L’Émigration Allemande,” Revue des Deux Mondes, January, 1874. ↩
The Montreal Presse, March 27, 1909. ↩
Speech, House of Commons, August 26, 1909. The New York papers of November 16, 1909, report the following from Sir Wilfrid Laurier in the Dominion Parliament during the debate on the Canadian Navy: “If now we have to organize a naval force, it is because we are growing as a nation—it is the penalty of being a nation. I know of no nation having a seacoast of its own which has no navy, except Norway, but Norway will never tempt the invader. Canada has its coal-mines, its goldmines, its wheat-fields, and its vast wealth may offer a temptation to
