But to apprehend anything beyond the most transient embarrassments from this cause is surely to misconceive the whole subject of economics. The men at present withdrawn from productive labour by employment, either transiently (as in countries where conscription is used), or more or less permanently (as in England), have to be fed, clothed and housed in any event; and they can only be thus supplied with the commodities of life by the labour of other men. What the term of their military service happens to be is immaterial to the subject. Whether there are standing armies and navies with long or short service, and a reserve; or armies and navies served for three years by successive drafts; the amount of labour withdrawn in any community is at any one period the same in that community. The return to civil life of the volunteer armies employed in the United States during the Civil War and the war of the deliverance of Cuba did not produce troublesome economic conditions; and only those persons who think that a society is enriched by the circulation of money spent in wasteful expenditure like the fireworks and banquets consumed in celebrating an event like the visit of a foreign potentate, or commemorating more or less irrelevantly the failure of "Gunpowder treason and plot," can imagine that a nation would be impoverished by the vast accession to its productive power yielded by the abolition of armaments. Similarly, to think that the suppression of Woolwich arsenal and the closing of Krupp's gun factory would be an industrial calamity instead of an enormous saving of national money, is to adopt the uninstructed view of politics which conceives of governments as self-supported and self-created institutions whose expenditure is a gift to the people; instead of as being organisations paid by the people out of earnings which would otherwise be enjoyed by themselves. This sort of conception, fatuous as it appears when once reduced to logical terms, is common enough. Whenever any object of popular desire appears inaccessible we are always being told that the Government ought to provide it--as if Government were a sort of deity capable of producing wealth from somewhere outside the world. But such notions have only to be for a moment examined in order that their fallacy may become manifest and palpable; and it is equally easy to see that the wealth-producing power of the men composing armies would be a direct gift to the community of the world if armies were abolished, and that the moneys formerly, but no longer, expended upon their accoutrements, weapons and sustenance would be so much waste obviated. Here will, in fact, be one of the many economies of a hundred years hence. It will be convenient to digress, in passing, in order to notice one very curious contention sometimes rather fancifully introduced into discussions on the subject of universal peace.