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ing facts. In 1907 there were 600,000 men in the German Armyand 33,000 in the Navy. In addition to these there were about i,-800,000 men in the materials industries, such as mining and metalsand forestry and in commerce and trade, whose employment wasdependent wholly on the army and naval orders of the GermanGovernment. This leaves out of account the number employed inagriculture to feed such persons and the number employed toclothe and house them. Instead of being a burden, therefore, militarismwas a great Public Works Administration and Work ProjectsAdministration rolled into one which, with public funds, providedwork for a vast army of military men and industrial workers.It is not to be supposed that this fundamental fact was not knownto German politicians but was only discovered recently by discerningAmericans. One has but to look through the pages of Germanpublic history during the past seventy years to see how it weighedon the consciousness of her political and industrial leaders. Thematter was endlessly debated. To critics of army budgets, militaristspointed out that a third of the army expenditures were returned tothe taxpayers in some form. The estimate is a modest one. The governmentindustriously cultivated the good will of the farmers fromwhom they bought vast quantities of hay and grain. But also theymade it a special point of good-will policy to pay farmers the mostliberal damages for injuries to fields during maneuvers.Military men, when confronted with the mutterings of disaffectedtaxpayers, always pointed out how good these government militaryexpenditures were for business. Stumm could imagine no expendituremore productive for the community than those for armies.Schlieffen said, when military economies were discussed: "Thenational economy, the machine with its thousand wheels, throughwhich millions find a living, cannot stand still for long." 6 One of theGerman delegates to the 1898 Peace Conference, Colonel Schwarzhoff,declared that "armies were not impoverishing the peoples andthe military service is not a burden." He said his country owedits prosperity to military service. 7 The German people believed this.Professor Snyder observes that: "In spite of the fact that millions*The History of Militarism, by Alfred Vagts, W. ¯W. Norton, New York, 1937.''Ibid.IO4