For some reason I find this section the most jaw-dropping, the most shocking of all; I knew about the human toll of the war in so far as it’s possible to take it in, but the sheer waste of resources is truly mind-boggling…
With the money spent on the war…
You could have provided a furnished villa with garden and outbuildings to a value of 100,000 francs to EVERY family in the following countries: USA, Canada, England, France, Belgium, Germany and Russia, and afterwards you could have built, in all towns with more than 200,000 inhabitants in each of those countries: a hospital for 125 million francs; a library for the same value; a university for 250 million. That done, a reserve fund could have been set up which, at 5% interest, would have provided annuities allowing 125,000 teacher or professors, and 125,000 doctors or nurses to be employed at an average salary of 25,000 francs. And that’s not all! This building finished, and the capital set aside for investment, there would remain a sum equivalent to the total value of property in Belgium and France before the cataclysm!
(concluding the series of posts I introduced here; I hope some readers have found it informative…)