1909 £11,076,551 £ 4,517,766 £ 1,758,487 £10,177,062
1910 £14,755,289 £ 4,977,682 £ 1,424,013 £11,392,856
1911 £15,148,171 £ 5,876,659 £ 3,216,396 £11,710,859
1912 £16,132,558 £ 7,114,876 £ 6,897,580 £11,491,187
1913 £16,883,875 £ 8,893,064 £12,082,516 £11,010,883
1914 £18,676,080 £11,772,862 £13,098,613 £10,316,264
These figures can not be too carefully studied by those who have been
led to think that Germany pounced upon a defenceless and unsuspecting
Europe like a cat upon a mouse. If it be thought worth while to consider
also the period of a few years preceding 1909, one finds that England's
superiority in battleships alone was 112 per cent in 1901, and her
superiority rose to nearly 200 per cent in 1904; in which year England
spent £42,431,000 on her navy, and Germany £11,659,000. Taking the
comparative statistics of naval expenditure from 1900, in which year
England spent £32,055,000 on her navy, and Germany spent £7,472,000,
down to 1914 it is absolutely impossible to make the figures show that
Germany enforced upon the other nations of Europe an unwilling
competition in naval armament.
But the German army! According to all accounts of German militarism
which were suffered to reach these shores, it is here that we shall find
evidence of what Mr. Lloyd George, on 4 August, 1917, called "the most
dangerous conspiracy ever plotted against the liberty of nations;
carefully, skilfully, insidiously, clandestinely planned in every
detail, with ruthless, cynical determination." Well, if one chooses to
hold the current view of German militarism, it must be admitted that
Germany had at her disposal some miraculous means of getting something
for nothing, getting a great deal for nothing, in fact, for on any other
supposition, the figures are far from supporting that view. In 1914
(pre-war figures), Germany and Austria together carried an
army-expenditure of £92 million; England, France and Russia together
carried one of £142 million. England "had no army," it was said; all her
military strength lay in her navy. If that were true, then it must be
said that she had as miraculous a faculty as Germany's; only, whereas
Germany's was a faculty for getting more than her money's worth,
England's was for getting less than her money's worth. England's
army-expenditure for 1914 (pre-war figures) was £28 million; £4 million
more than Austria's. Nor was this a sudden emergency-outlay. Going back
as far as 1905, we find that she laid out in that year the same amount,
£28 million. In that year, Germany and Austria together spent £48
million on their armies; England, France and Russia together spent £94
million on theirs. If between 1905 and 1913, England, France and Russia
spent any such sums upon their armies as their statistics show, and
nothing came of it but an unprepared and unsuspecting Europe in 1914, it
seems clear that the taxpayers of those countries were swindled on an
inconceivably large scale.