[1]^ At the time of the Egyptian “war,” in 1882, H.M. Hyndman published in the Nineteenth Century an excellent article telling in full of this piece of robbery.
[2]^ These lines were written and published in the Temps Nouveaux in the Summer of 1912. The striking revelations of Liebknecht, concerning the ways in which rumours of coming wars are spread in the Press by the owners of armament factories, and national hatred fostered in order to increase the orders for war material, have come since to illustrate on a grand scale this dominant feature of the present-day industry.
[3]^ A few figures will make these economic shocks the more apparent. Between 1900 and 1904 the exports of British produce from the United Kingdom were normal and fluctuated round about £300,000,000. In 1904 there was a rumour of a great war; the United States quickened her production, and English exports rose in three years from £300,000,000 to £426,000,000. But the war, so longed for, was not forthcoming, and there was a sudden decline of orders; the crisis we mentioned broke out in the United States, and exports of English produce fell to £327,000,000. In 1910, however, the anticipation of a great European war was about to be realised, and in 1910 and 1911 English exports rose to an absolutely unforeseen height which they had never approached before. Yet nobody could explain the fact. In 1911 the exports reached £454,000,000, and over £487,000,000 in 1912. Coal, steel, lead, fast vessels, cruisers, cartridges, cloth, linen, foot-gear, leather, preserved foods, — everything was in demand and was exported in huge quantities. Fortunes were heaped up visibly. Men were about to massacre one another; what good luck!
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