The German "War Tax."

New York Times 100 years ago today, March 6, 1913:
    "A declaration of the bankruptcy of our whole financial administration"; "the last desperate extreme"; "the last sheet anchor of a financially impoverished country"; a "war tax," to be imposed "only when the enemy is at the gate"; " product of a veritable state of armament drunkenness"— these are the brutally frank comments passed on the property tax proposed by the German Government to meet the cost of increasing the army. If they were found in French or English or even American organs of public opinion they would be resented by our German friends as extravagant, prejudiced and malicious. They are taken from German papers, none of them hostile to the Government, all of them loyal and patriotic and some of them reputed to be closely connected with the Ministers.
    The tax to which these energetic criticisms and protests apply is one of more than 5 per cent. on all property, and the purpose is to secure immediately $250,000,000 to be spent on the army, with a plan that requires, according to the statements of the German press, at least as much more within the next five years.
    The tax is to be levied on private fortunes, and it is reported that the Kaiser has secured the consent of the ruling Princes of the empire to waive their customary privilege of exemption. This is a shrewd political device, but is not likely greatly to reduce the extraordinary burden of the new tax or to assuage the distress and resentment sure to follow when the burden is felt. A tax of more than 5 per cent. is practically the confiscation of a year's income for the classes that rely on investments for support. In the case of property invested in commerce and in active industrial enterprises, and especially in agriculture, such a tax must necessarily interfere very seriously with their operations where the net income does not exceed the tax. Property must be sold to meet necessary expenditures and the extension of the tax to the entire empire will seriously impair, if it do not destroy, the market in which such sales are made.
    The journals of the conservative and business classes, strong as their language is, are quite within bounds in describing this tax as a war measure. It really would impose on the country the extreme consequences of actual war. It would inflict upon the labor and commerce of the land the same sort and nearly the same degree of crippling distress that might be inflicted by invasion or by a desperate resistance to actual invasion. It is a financial levy en masse, embracing for the moment all available resources. It will set all the statesmen of Europe, and especially those of the Triple Entente, to guessing why such an extreme measure is resorted to at the present moment. An intelligible answer is to be found in the writings of the most aggressive wing of the military party, such as Bernhardt. The essential principle of the party is that peace in Europe can be preserved only by making the German military power, on land and sea if practicable, on land, at any cost, obviously irresistible. And in their view the present situation demands the proposed policy, because the Balkan war has brought into the game an alliance controlling a million of men, an alliance deeply and needlessly offended by Austria. The added army which the new tax is to provide is the logical offset to the  new element thus introduced, and as such justifies the tremendous sacrifice.
    The consequences of this policy are, however, not necessarily those that the war party foresees. Whatever may be the effect upon other countries — and those of the Triple Entente will certainly strive to meet the challenge of  Germany — the effect upon the sentiment and upon the public action of the German nation cannot clearly be predicted. That the German people are prepared to make any sacrifice for the safety of the nation which they see to be really needed is not to be doubted.
    That they will accept this sacrifice as now needed is by no means certain.