There was nothing upon which Sumner dwelt with greater emphasis in his first famous oration than upon the cost and waste of war and the incalculable advantage that would result from the diversion of these misapplied resources to purposes of education and the real development and progress of society. Passing from the fearful cost of war itself, he discussed the regular, permanent expense of the war footing, the preparations for war in time of peace. His survey of the armies and navies and fortifications of Europe is interesting to-day chiefly as revealing how startlingly the burden has increased in the fifty years between then and now. In the United States he found that the average annual appropriation for military and naval purposes was eighty per cent of the total annual expenses of the government. "Yes, eighty cents in every dollar were applied in this unproductive manner. The remaining twenty cents sufficed to maintain the government in all its branches, executive, legislative, and judicial, the administration of justice, our relations with foreign nations, the post-office, and all the light-houses, which, in happy, useful contrast with the forts, shed their cheerful signals over the rough waves beating upon our long coast." In the years from the formation of our government, in 1789, down to the time when Sumner spoke, almost twelve times as much was sunk under the sanction of the national government in mere peaceful preparations for war as was dedicated by the government during the same period to all other purposes whatever. Of the military expenses of the United States from that time to this. all of us know something.

But "the passage which was most striking at the time," says Sumner's biographer, "according to the testimony of hearers still living, was the one where, treating of the immense waste of war defences, he compared the cost of the Ohio, a ship-of-the-line lying in the harbor, and, on account of its decorations, a marked spectacle of the day, with that of Harvard College." He spoke of Harvard's library, the oldest and most valuable in the country, its museums, its schools of law, divinity, and medicine, its body of professors and teachers, many of them known in every part of the globe, and its distinguished president, Josiah Quincy, who had rendered such high public service in so many fields. "Such," he said, "is Harvard University; and it appears," he added, "from the last report of the treasurer, that the whole available property of the University, the various accumulations of more than two centuries of generosity, amounts"-1845 was still the day of small things at Harvard—“to $703,175."

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Change the scene," said Sumner, "and cast your eyes upon another object. There now swings idly at her moorings in this harbor a ship-of-the-line, the Ohio, carrying ninety guns, finished as late as 1836 at an expense of $547,888, repaired only two years afterwards for $233,012, with an armament which has "-1845 was cost $53,945, making an aggregate of $834,845 still the day of small things in battle-ships outlay at this moment for that single ship, more than $100,000 beyond all the available wealth of the richest and most ancient seat of learning in the land."

"as the actual

He continued in that masterly array of comparative statistics which is well known and which the reader will study in the following pages. He did

not fail to urge the great moral arguments against war; no one has ever presented them, not only in this early address, but in later ones, more strongly. But the argument that stays with us most influentially is that for the generous constructive use of national resources as the means of making destructiveness and war unnecessary and impossible. In the powerful use of this argument Sumner was the great forerunner of Jean de Bloch. In the line of Sumner's thought lies the hope of the world; and those who think as Sumner thought should, without recourse to generalities, to anything remote in time or place, apply that principle to the situation through which our Anglo-Saxon world has been passing.

We have spent $300,000,000 in the war with Spain about Cuba. We have spent more than that in the conquest of the Philippines. We are in the outer circles of the maelstrom of a policy which means larger armies, larger navies, costlier forts, and more of them, and all the paraphernalia of the Old World militarism which we have prided ourselves on being free from, with the corresponding burdens of taxation, the devotion to waste and destruction of the immense resources which might otherwise go to development and progress. The man who, seeing this, has no forebodings, is not a student of history. Is this way of spending money a wise way? Is it protective, is it constructive, is it good business, is it common sense, does it pave a good road into the future, is it the economical and promising way to secure the results we claim to aim at, will it make us a truer and safer democracy, and will it help the world? Was Sumner right, was Longfellow right,

or were they not, in claiming that, if half the wealth bestowed on camps, given to maintain armies and navies, were given to redeem the human mind, to educate the human race, there would soon be no need of armies and navies?

We have spent $300,000,000 in a war with Spain. Have we spent it well? Have we done the most that could be done with $300,000,000 to accomplish what we claimed to want to accomplish? Our object in going to war with Spain was to make Cuba free, to make it a better place to live in, to insure it better government, and make its people comfortable and happy. Have we got our money's worth? Has our way of spending our $300,000,000 been best, or would Sumner's way have been best? If in the midst of our perplexities half a dozen years ago, the senator who sits in Sumner's seat had addressed words like the following to the Senate and the nation, would they have been foolish or fallacious words?

We are clearly drifting towards a war with Spain in behalf of Cuba. Unless we show wisdom greater than the past has shown, we shall soon be in the midst of war. That war will cost us $300,000,000. Is there not a better way of spending $300,000,000? Is there not a better way of achieving what we aim at, the freedom, good government, and development of Cuba? I propose that we submit to Cuba and to Spain this offer and request: Let us establish at Havana a university as well equipped as Harvard University, with an endowment of $10,000,000, free to every young man and woman of Cuba, with the best professors who can be secured from America and Spain and England and France and Germany. Let us establish at Santiago and Matanzas and Puerto Principe colleges like Amherst and Williams, with a total endowment of $10,000,000; and in each of the twenty largest towns a high school or

Let

academy, at a cost of $10,000,000. Let us devote $20,000,000 – $1,000,000 a year for twenty years—to the thorough planting in Cuba of our American common-school system; $10,000,000 to the promotion of a system of free public libraries, making books as accessible and common in each Cuban town and village as in Barnstable or Berkshire; and $6,000,000 for the maintenance in each of the six provinces of a newspaper conducted by the best men who can be enlisted in the service, bringing all Cuban men and women into touch with all the world, giving them those things which will feed them, and not giving them those things which would poison them. Let us build a Cuban Central Railroad through the whole length of the island, from Mantua to Maysi; and let us devote the balance of $100,000,000 to the scientific organization, by proper bureaus, of Cuban agriculture, industry, and commerce. there be a truce for ten years, till these things are done and begin to show their fruits; and then let the representatives of the United States and Spain meet at Havana to settle the "Cuban question" as it then exists. This seems to me worth trying. If it succeeds, we should at least have saved $200,000,000; and it would be, I think, a kind of success more pregnant with good for Cuba and Spain and America and humanity than the success which we may be celebrating next year or the year after. There are those who will laugh and scoff, and say this thought is all chimerical and fallacious; but I say that with those who do not think so lies the hope of the world. I say that the kingdom of God can come in this world, that peace and justice and fraternity can come among men, that democracy itself has a safe future, only as some elect people, with sublime abandon, in a great opportunity, does this thing, — taking, in this world of undeniable and conflicting risks, the heroic risk, the risk which alone has in it hope for the world and relish of salvation.

But, it will be urged, this is to make the nation a missionary; and that is not to be expected. Unhappily it is not to be expected; but the time will come when nothing else is to be expected. The construc