"It will enable the business man to visit his overseas agencies and friends, to discuss matters with them on the spot and examine the requirements of their districts, at the cost of a few _days_ instead of months of travel." [Illustration: The Awkward Squad "Left, right--one, two, three, four," was the slogan heard throughout the National Army cantonments, such as this at Camp Dodge, Des Moines, Ia., during the first days in teaching the recruits one of the first lessons of the soldier; how to keep step. Copyright International Film Service] V--THE MONEY COST OF THE WAR Over $210,000,000,000 Spent by the Belligerents--How This Stupendous Sum Was Raised--What the War Cost Uncle Sam By EDWIN R. A. SELIGMAN Professor of Political Economy and Finance in Columbia University The cost of a war may mean several different things. It may mean, in the first place, the actual money cost, or expenditure in dollars and cents, directly involved in prosecuting the war. Or, secondly, it may mean the war cost, both direct and indirect, from the economic point of view. The real cost of a war from this latter point of view may mean either actual loss of lives and property or the diminution of the annual social production. The wealth of a country measured in its social income may be reduced either by the actual loss of territory, as in Germany; by the impairment of its natural resources like the coal mines and forests, as in France; by the reduction of labor power, due to the wounded workmen or the results of starvation or privation, as in many countries of Europe; or by the loss of economic efficiency due to a reduction of the standard of life or to a changed attitude toward habits of work. The real costs of war, although often incalculable, are none the less of profound significance. The actual money costs or expenditures of government for war include not only the actual outlays for military and naval purposes, but also the whole range of expenditures incurred in industrial life to prepare the wherewithal for the Army and Navy; and they also comprise the sums devoted to the maintenance of the families of the soldiers. All these items are far greater in modern times than they used to be. It is a far cry from the meeting of two savage tribes armed only with bows and arrows or javelins, to the modern 16-inch guns, the dreadnoughts, the airplanes, the submarines, the poison gas and the innumerable technical adjuncts of modern warfare. The consequence is that the money costs of the World War have far transcended those of all previous conflicts.