The Merchants of Death

CHAPTER XVIII THE OUTLOOK

I join with you most heartily in rejoicing at the return of peace. I hope it will be lasting and that mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable creatures, have reason enough to settle their differences without cutting their throats; for in my opinion, there never was a good war or a bad peace.—Benjamin Franklin.

THE story of the rise and development of the arms merchants reveals them as a growing menace to world peace. When they began centuries ago to adapt gunpowder for war, their products were primitive and crude; today their death machines represent the acme of scientific achievement. For centuries the development of arms and munitions depended on the haphazard and isolated work of the individual inventor; today industrial research laboratories have systematized and accelerated invention to an appalling degree. In the early days of the industry the making of arms and munitions was literally manufacture, that is, hand work, which was naturally slow and inexact; today the Industrial Revolution and the Machine Age have brought about mass production with the greatest exactitude.

A similar significant development took place in armaments. The simple relatively inexpensive weapons of earlier ages were displaced by highly scientific death machines, and the cost of these, together with the upkeep of the huge armies, brought a rapid increase in national war budgets.

This increase is reflected in the statistics of the expenditure of ammunition since 1859 which follow:

Years	War	Country	Ammunition expended rounds
1859	Italian	Austria	15,326
1861–65	U. S. Civil	Union	5,000,000
1866	Austro-Prussian	Austria	96,472
		Prussia	36,199
1870–71	Franco-Prussian	Germany	817,000
1904–05	Russo-Japanese	Russia	954,000
1912–13	Balkan	Bulgaria	900,000
1918	World War	France and England	12,710,000 (one month)

The development is shown even more pointedly in the following table which covers one year of the U. S. Civil War and one year of the World War:

Year	War	Country	Ammunition expended rounds
1864	Civil War	Union	1,950,000
1918	World War
		U. S.	8,100,000
		Great Britain	71,445,000
		France	81,070,000

Year	Great Britain (pounds sterling)	France (francs)
1863–1864	25,796,000	540,392,787
1879–1880	25,662,094	764,293,739
1889–1890	31,021,300	759,481,775
1899–1900	47,212,000	978,382,421
1912–1913	71,945,000	1,418,546,120

Year	Russia (rubles)	Germany (Marks)
1863–1864	127,165,723	__________
1879–1880	207,761,670	410,035,949
1889–1890	261,234,866	415,088,408
1899–1900	410,971,701	588,927,600
1912–1913	775,956,153	870,047,800

The figures for the United States from 1791 down to the present are also illuminating:

Year or Average	Army and Navy Budgets
1791–1800	$  2,614,000
1851–1860	27,780,000
1871–1875	63,514,000
1880	51,654,000
1890	66,589,000
1900	190,728,000
1910	312,997,000
1914	348,032,000
1923	678,256,000
1927	684,608,000
1929	792,037,000
1931	838,547,144

No fundamental political attitudes have been changed by the World War. The nations continue their reliance on “mass murder” as a means of settling vexing problems. Armies and navies and air forces have increased, military budgets mount every year, new and more frightful weapons make their appearance every month. None of the basic causes of war have been removed and the League of Nations, the Kellogg Pact, and other agencies and methods designed to bring about a peaceful settlement of international disputes have shown a distressing ineptitude in dealing with pressing world problems.

Every modern war threatens to involve half the world, bring disaster to world economy, and blot out civilization. The question is urgent then: What will be done about the armament industry?

The future may very well bring fiercer and more destructive wars and increased business for the arms makers. Certainly one great current of world affairs is flowing strongly in that direction. The business of the arms industry is steadily increasing—it was the only industry which flourished in spite of the world depression—and governments are everywhere drawing closer the ties which bind them in a virtual partnership with the merchants of death.

If wars continue, it is not at all fantastic to predict that the arms merchants will grow increasingly important. Already the stage in national affairs has been reached where the largest item in national budgets is for past and future wars. Already war appears as the greatest and most important activity of government. The economic consequences of this new nationalistic militarism will soon be apparent in the arms industry.

The arms merchants will supply to the government its most vital necessities and inevitably they will grow constantly more important in the councils of state. An example of what the future holds along this line may be seen in Japan. There the arms industry is the very center of economic life. It was established first, and all other industries were built around it. The manufacture and trade in arms in Japan is a definite index to its entire economic life. The whole economic life of Japan is thus oriented toward war and the arms industry is naturally the heart of this economy.

It is not such a far cry from this Japanese arrangement to the system of “industrial mobilization” now adopted by most of the great powers. While these nations slur over or extemporize plans for the elimination of unemployment, for wiping out the slums, for establishing social insurance, or any of a dozen constructive measures that might be mentioned, they are preparing the most elaborate blue prints providing for action in case of war. It would almost seem as though governments exist merely to prepare for war.

This system of industrial mobilization is a long step toward placing war in the center of our economic life, or to put it another way, to make the arms industry the hub of our industrial machine. An alliance of governments with war industries threatens to make the arms makers supreme in economic life and after that in government. A world dominated economically and politically by the armament industry will eventually result, if wars continue unabated.

But other counter-currents are active also. A growing demand is being voiced that the arms merchants must be rigidly controlled. Some call for complete government ownership and operation of the industry; others put their trust in international control and supervision. Both of these expedients have a history.

The advocates of government ownership of the arms industry believe that the private arms makers with their unrestricted international sales are one of the chief obstacles to peace. If now the industry were nationalized, international sale would virtually disappear and the world could live in peace. This argument deserves close examination.

It requires great industrial skill and equipment and very considerable natural resources of a specialized kind to produce modern armaments. Only the leading industrial countries of the world command these qualifications. For other less favored nations it is far cheaper and much more efficient to buy their arms abroad than to make them at home. Only about ten countries in the world today manufacture armaments sufficient to sell to other countries, and three of these (Great Britain, France, and the United States) account for 75 per cent of all arms exports. Furthermore, no nation in the world today produces all of its arms and munitions at home; every nation imports some war materials, because some other country produces some type of armament better or cheaper than it does. Concretely this means that even France, England, and the United States import some armaments.

The nonproducing countries saw this situation clearly and nothing recurs more persistently in international conferences and treaties on disarmament than the demand of the nonproducing countries that their right to buy armaments abroad must not be restricted. The Hague Convention of 1907 declared: “A neutral power is not bound to prevent the export or transit, for the use of either belligerent, of arms, ammunition, or, in general, of anything which could be of use to an army or fleet.” The Covenant of the League of Nations is more explicit. After recognizing that the private manufacture of arms is “open to grave objections,” it continues: “The Council shall advise how the evil effects attendant upon such manufacture can be prevented, due regard being had to the necessities of those members of the League which are not able to manufacture the munitions and implements of war necessary for their safety.” The League of Nations Conference for the Supervision of the International Trade in Arms was dominated by the insistence of the nonproducing countries that the producing countries must sell. Terms like “obligation to sell,” “right of sovereignty includes right to buy,” etc., were flung about daily.

The international sale of arms, then, has far deeper roots than the “conscienceless greed” of the arms makers. If all private arms makers decided to discontinue their international traffic tomorrow, a world-wide protest of governments would not permit them to do it. As long as war is a possibility, nations will demand arms. The world economic situation makes it difficult or impossible for most, if not all, of them to manufacture all types of armaments which they demand. Hence it is laid down and affirmed in solemn international treaties that arms must at all times be sold freely, even in times of war. The rules of contraband may interrupt this traffic in war times, but in times of peace and under normal conditions the “obligation to sell” is clearly established.

Thus the program for the nationalization of armament industries clearly involves a major change in international politics, to which, as long as war clouds obscure the horizon, the nonproducing countries of the world will never agree. True enough, it might be arranged that over a period of years every nation be given its chance to establish its own national armament industry, and thus international traffic might end. But this expedient is of doubtful value. Even if all nations agreed to this arrangement—which is very questionable—the result would probably be a vast expansion of arms industries, and international trade would continue in raw materials rather than in finished products. Furthermore, has not the Japanese arms industry been government-owned from its earliest beginnings and does it not remain so—with some exceptions—to this day? Has that fact eliminated war in Japan?

From another angle there might be a real gain. It is true that the export trade in arms today is only somewhere between 2 and 15 per cent of the total arms production. But this apparently minor traffic is far more important than it would appear. It frequently brings into play the peculiar business methods of the arms merchants, including bribery of officials, control of the press, war scares, etc. It acts as a lever by which orders can be pried out of other governments. Furthermore, so many of these sales are made at times when international friction has developed, or during war, that they are a distinct contribution to the origin or continuance of wars. British arms makers selling tanks to the Soviets or airplanes to Hitler when diplomatic relations were strained are interfering in international politics. Arms merchants selling war materials to South American countries during the recent hostilities are obstructing peace.

Even more important is another aspect of the situation. Peace-time sales of arms to other countries are merely the preliminary to war-time sales. No great war has been fought in modern times without lively international traffic in arms. How long, for instance, would the World War have lasted without international sales of war materials? Or the Japanese expeditions into Manchuria? If now the nationalization of the arms industry included the complete and absolute prohibition to export arms of all kinds in times of peace, and especially in times of war, it would be a decided gain for world peace.

But viewing the problem as a whole, with its economic and political background, it seems improbable that this step will be taken, or that, if taken, it would include the most important provision of including times of war. The simple fact is that the prohibition of the traffic in arms would be almost a revolution in international politics, and the nonproducing countries would look upon it as a hostile act of the producing countries, to whose tender—or otherwise—mercies they would thereby be committed in a warring world.

Burton’s plea was obviously not personal, but represented the policy of the United States government which depends so largely on private manufacture for its armaments. As such it discloses the basic problem of international control of the arms makers, that is, that few governments, if any, really want international supervision of the traffic in war materials. Most governments believe that the unhindered international sale of arms would insure their military preparedness, especially since most of them are entirely dependent on imports for their war materials. The great arms producing countries, on the other hand, are averse to harming one of their industries on which they themselves so largely rely for their “national defense.”

If this conclusion seems unwarranted, a glance at another meeting will perhaps prove convincing. After the Geneva conference Theodore Burton introduced into the United States Congress a bill proposing an embargo in war times on all war materials. The bill was specific and aimed at actual armaments, such as guns, ammunition, cannons, machine guns, or their parts. It deliberately avoided the problem of so-called secondary war materials, such as soldiers’ shoes and uniforms. It was introduced on December 5, 1927, reported out of committee on January 30, 1928, and was ready for House action after that. Suddenly in March, 1928, the House Military Affairs Committee asked the Foreign Affairs Committee for another hearing on the bill, since it “might impair the preparedness program” or “impinge upon national defense.” Accordingly another hearing was held.

The problem of international control is further complicated by the fact that the borderline between war materials and non-war materials is exceedingly tenuous. At the Hearings just mentioned, for instance, the representative of the Chemical Foundation insisted that chemicals must not be considered war materials. Similarly it has been argued in regard to all metals, cotton, airplanes, scientific instruments, and a host of other items. All of these are useful in peace and indispensable in war. The British faced this problem during the World War in their blockade of Germany. Their orders in council finally included virtually everything, since it might prove useful in war. The very character of modern war and armaments makes effective international control difficult, yet something might be achieved if the governments themselves were not so reluctant to submit to any supervision in this matter.

There remains then but one real way out, disarmament. The various futile conferences on disarmament have not been in vain if they have opened the eyes of the peace forces to the real problem which confronts them. Disarmament has not been achieved because of the international political situation. International politics in turn are determined by our whole civilization. Our civilization has permitted and even fostered war-making forces, such as nationalism and chauvinism, economic rivalry and competitive capitalism, imperialism and colonialism, political and territorial disputes, race hatred and pressure of population. The traditional way of establishing an equilibrium between these rival forces has been and is violence, armed warfare.

Disarmament is thus a problem of our civilization. It will never be achieved unless these war-making forces are crushed or eliminated. The problem of disarmament is therefore the problem of building a new civilization. All attempts at dealing with disarmament by itself, without consideration of the deeper issues involved, are doomed to failure. Minor agreements may be reached, limited to a short period of time, but the world will never cease being an armed camp until the basic elements of our present civilization have been changed.

The same holds true of the armament industry. A world which recognizes and expects war cannot get along without an enterprising, progressive, and up-to-date arms industry. All attempts to attack the problem of the arms makers in isolation—by nationalization or by international control—are almost certain to fail.

The arms industry is plainly a perfectly natural product of our present civilization. More than that, it is an essential element in the chaos and anarchy which characterize our international politics. To eliminate it requires the creation of a world which can get along without war by settling its differences and disputes by peaceful means. And that involves remaking our entire civilization.

Meanwhile those interested in creating a war-less world need not be idle and await the dawn of a new day. They can support every move made for the peaceful settlement of international disputes; they can help to reduce the exorbitant budgets of war and navy departments; they can work for regional limitation of armaments and back all treaties which tend to avoid competition in arms; they can oppose nationalism and chauvinism wherever they show themselves, in the press, in the schools, on the lecture platform; they can strive to bring order into the chaotic economic and political conditions of the world.

The skies are again overcast with lowering war clouds and the Four Horsemen are again getting ready to ride, leaving destruction, suffering and death in their path. Wars are man-made, and peace, when it comes, will also be man-made. Surely the challenge of war and of the armament maker is one that no intelligent or civilized being can evade.