Cost Of A Big War

New York Times 100 years ago today, December 1, 1912:
Maintenance of Armies Alone Reckoned by Jules Roche at $5,400,000,000 a Month.
WOULD PARALYZE THE WORLD
Leroy-Beaulieu and Newmarck Emphasize in Paris Paper the Colossal Ruin Involved.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    PARIS, Nov. 30.— What would be the cost of a European war at the present day? This question is being much debated in economic circles in Paris just now, and The Gaulois has just printed some interesting opinions on that subject from recognized experts on such problems
    The most striking of these is that of M. Jules Roche, former Minister of Commerce, who made some remarkable Calculations on the point. Taking as a basis the expense incurred by France during the war of 1870, he reckons that, assuming for the sake of example, that the six Nations of the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente went to war, the cost of maintaining the armies alone would work out at no less than $5,400,000,000 a month, without taking into account the other expenses.
    "And what would be their internal condition?" he asks. "The belligerent nations would be struck with general paralysis and would see their very means of subsistence disappear. Suspension of work would be forced even on those who were not included in the general mobilization, since whom would there be to work for? To whom would they sell their products? How could they be exchanged or transported? All the large works and factories, where the division of labor is completed, would have to be shut. Even agriculture would be impossible.
    "No more purchases or sales, either the economic or the financial death of labor, an abrupt stoppage of the heart's action in the National organism of all the Nations at war, with profound reaction on all others — such would be the consequences of a general conflagration in the present conditions of European civilization."
    Similar opinions are held by Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, member of the institute, and one of France's leading economists. He thinks, however, that in such a crisis France would suffer less than the other great powers, since being self-supporting, she always has at her disposal an immense accumulation of agricultural products of the previous year whereon she could draw for a long period. She would thus be in far better circumstances than Germany for instance, which would find the greatest difficulty in obtaining imports, being cut off by the English fleet on the one hand and by Russia on the other. "But," he adds, "it is after the war that a vanquished Nation would have the hardest times, for many years would be necessary to repair the losses and heal the wounds.
    "Alfred Neymarck, Vice President of the Society of Political Economy, after pointing out the huge magnitude of commercial, industrial and financial interests as well as the enormous expansion in credit and business generally among the six Nations which would be engaged, asserts that the consequences of an abrupt cessation of all this activity through a general war, would be incalculable in its vastness.