War is an expensive pastime for nations, not alone in the loss of lives and destruction of public and private property, but the expenditures in actual cash—­gold and silver—­is simply appalling.  It is claimed by close students of historical data, those who have given the subject careful study, that forty million of human beings lose their lives during every century by war alone.  Extravagant as this estimate may seem, anyone who will carefully examine the records of the great conflicts of our own century will readily be convinced that there are not as much extravagance in the claim as a cursory glance at the figures would indicate.  Europe alone loses between eighteen, and twenty million, as estimated by the most skillful statisticians.  Since the time of the legendary Trojan War (three thousand years), it is supposed by good authority that one billion two hundred thousand of human, beings have lost their lives by the hazard of war, not all in actual battle alone, but by wounds and diseases incident to a soldier’s life, in addition to those fallen upon the field.

In the wars of Europe during the first half of this century two million and a half of soldiers lost their lives in battle, and the country was impoverished to the extent of six billions eight hundred and fifty millions of dollars, while three millions of soldiers have perished in war since 1850.  England’s national debt was increased by the war of 1792 to nearly one billion and a half, and during the Napoleonic wars to the amount of one billion six hundred thousand dollars.

During the last seventy years Russia has expended for war measures the sum of one billion six hundred and seventy million dollars, and lost seven hundred thousand soldiers.  It cost England, France, and Russia, in the Crimean war of little more than a year’s duration, one billion five hundred million dollars, and five hundred thousand lives lost by the four combined nations engaged.

But all this loss, in some cases lasting for years, is but a bagatelle in comparison to the loss in men and treasure during the four years of our Civil War.

According to the records in Washington, the North spent, for the equipment and support of its armies during the four years of actual hostilities, four billion eight hundred million in money, outside of the millions expended in the maintenance of its armies during the days of Reconstruction, and lost four hundred and ten thousand two hundred and fifty-seven men.  The war cost the South, in actual money on a gold basis, two billion three hundred million, to say nothing of the tax in kind paid by the farmers of the South for the support of the army.  The destruction and loss in public and private property, outside of the slaves, is simply appalling.  The approximate loss in soldiers is computed at two hundred and nineteen thousand.

The actual cost of the war on both sides, in dollars and cents, and the many millions paid to soldiers as pensions since the war, would be a sum sufficient to have paid for all the negroes in the South several times over, and paid the national debt and perhaps the debts of most of the Southern States at the commencement of the war.