The total amount that it would be necessary for the United States to invest, in order to permanently establish a Homecroft Reserve of 5,000,000 trained soldiers, would be less than it has already paid out for pensions; and its whole investment in the Homecroft Reserve Establishment would be returned to the government with interest. The amount the United States has already paid for pensions amounts to $4,729,957,370.65. Within two years it will have exceeded five billion dollars. Most people lose sight of the magnitude of the present appropriations, expenditures, and operations of the United States, as well as of their wastefulness under the present military system. We are spending over $100,000,000 a year on a standing army of less than 100,000 enlisted men. That amounts to a billion dollars in ten years. It is five billion dollars in fifty years. And we may be certain that five billion dollars will be spent, and probably much more, in the next fifty years on a standing army. When that has been spent it is absolutely gone, just as much as though it had been invested in fire crackers and they had all been set off and there was nothing left, not even noise. It is not contended that this country should spend _less_ than $100,000,000 a year on its army, _but it is contended that it should not spend more_. And for what it does spend it should get larger results. $100,000,000 a year ought to be enough to maintain an army enlisted to the full strength of 100,000 men to which the army is now limited by Act of Congress. In addition it should support the necessary organization and training schools to furnish all the officers required for the National Construction Reserve and for the National Homecroft Reserve. The officers of the Homecroft Reserve should be permanently located as residents of the community where their regiment is established. The officers for the National Construction Reserve should be attached to the Regular Army except when detailed for the work of training those reserves during the period set apart for that work each year. At least one-half of the rank and file of a regular force of 100,000 men in the Standing Army should be composed of men trained for service as officers in the National Construction Reserve, and available for instant transformation into such officers. The training of those officers should be one of the most important functions of the Regular Army. The Army should forthwith take up that work and cease any further connection with the civil work of internal improvements. _If the Standing Army of the United States were increased to an actually enlisted strength of 200,000 men as is now being urged, it would mean the addition of another $100,000,000 a year to the military burdens of the people of the United States, and we would still be without any adequate national defense in case of war with a first-class power._