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REPRESENTATIVE of THE NEW YORK TIMES was permitted recently to read some of the Government reports on the condition of the militia. The result was startling. In more than a score of States there is no field artillery of any sort and in the whole country there are fewer than forty officers of ordnance. In thirtyfive States there are no organizations trained for coast artillery, twenty-four have no cavalry, a large majority are without signal troops, while the whole force of organized engineers, officers, and men totals less than 1,500 for the entire country. One State, Nevada, is without militia organizations of any kind.

In the table that follows, which gives the number of officers and enlisted men of all arms in the National Guard, the figures are from regular army Inspectors, and appear in the most recent report of the Division of Militia Affairs:

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State. Of'c'rs. Men. Montana 40 636 Nebraska ..132 1,384 Nevada New Hamp. 90 1,280 New Jersey.304 4,014 New Mexico 57 910 New York..974 15,591 N. Carolina.209 2,367 N. Dakota.. 60 679 Ohio .......490 5,637 Oklahoma 77 1,330 Oregon 100 1,401 Penn. .745 10,190 Rhode Isl... 96 1,303 So. Car. ...156 1,794 So. Dakota. 68 873 Tennessee .117 1,798 Texas .....192 2,731 Utah 29 419 Vermont 75 817 Virginia ...206 2,606 Washington. 88 1,312 West Va...104 1,517 Wisconsin..193 2,931 Wyoming 54 760

..8,792,119,251

All the States, save Nevada, have infantry troops as a matter of course. In field artillery there are twenty-three that have none. Those States are Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Only thirteen States maintain coast artillery organizations, and of the total of coast artillerymen more than half is in New York. In Maine the total of coast artillerymen is thirty. The coast States of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas without coast artillery organizations.

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Nearly half of all the National Guard cavalry in the country is in New York and Pennsylvania. The States without cavalry are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada,

New Mexico, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming. It will be noted that among the States without cavalry are a majority of those in which horsemanship is supposed to be most common, such as Wyoming, Kentucky, Montana, Kansas, and New Mexico.

Of engineering troops more than 1,100 of the 1,324 are in four States-New York with 754, Ohio with 190, Pennsylvania with 123, and Michigan with 100. Of the remaining 225 officers and men Illinois claims four of the officers and 60 men and Oklahoma three officers and 61 enlisted men. Virginia has an engineering strength of three officers, Massachusetts and California two officers each, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Minnesota, Maryland, Iowa, and the District of Columbia one officer each.

The number of men between 18 and 44 fit for military service is approximately 16,500,000, divided among the States as follows:

The above figures reveal many strange situations. For instance, Alabama is surpassed by only four States in the number of males between 18 and 44 fit for military service, those States being New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois. The 1910 census gave California 200,000 more population than Alabama, yet Alabama reports that she can furnish 400,000 more men than can California. Texas, with 1,700,000 more population than Alabama, reports only 500,000 men fit for service, while Massachusetts, with 500,000 less population than Texas, offers 75,000 more men.

Minnesota, with 2,100,000 population, reports only 237,923 possible soldiers, while South Carolina, with only 1,500,000 population, comes within 20,000 of that number. Ohio, whose population is a round million greater than that of Texas, is credited with 450,000 more able men than Texas, but only 150,000 more than Alabama, which has 2,500,000 fewer people.

Mississippi, 1,800,000 population, offers more than 400,000 men, whereas Tennessee, with 2,200,000 population, returns only 376,000. Indiana, with 1,000,000 less population than Texas, reports 160,000 more fit men and 75,000 more than Massachusetts, which has 650,000 more citizens than has Indiana.

Much criticism has been leveled at the War Department because of apparent lack of interest in the militia. It is a fact, however, that never, except when the country was at war, has the Government done more for the National Guard than now. There is no press agent to keep the country informed, but the War Department is in intimate touch with the militia of every State, and now has on detail 133 of its ablest officers, who give all their time to inspection and instruction. Nineteen picked army officers are now on duty in New York.

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UROPE has adopted a financial policy of unlimited liability on account of the war. The war loans of the principal belligerents in one year have amounted to fifteen billion dollars. The cost is tending to rise. It is now estimated to be altogether not less than fifty million dollars a day, of which the share of Great Britain alone is fifteen millions a day. England is the banker, purveyor, and purse bearer of the anti-German allies. She may have muddled nearly everything else at the beginning, but nobody has been heard to criticise her financial skill so far, nor to underestimate the banking aid she has extended to her allies.

However,

Will there be any capital left in the world, and, if any, what will it be worth?

Those are questions to which the clairvoyant answer would be of immeasurable importance only, perhaps, nobody would believe it.

As England must finance the Allies' side of the war, the opinions of English economists are of special interest, and, as one might suppose, they are inconclusive. So far the cost of the war has been meet principally by war loans. That puts the settlement off upon posterity. But posterity, loaded too heavily with the principal and interest of a war debt incurred without its consent, might refuse to pay. That would play havoc with capital in the world. The moods of posterity are very uncertain. Partly for this reason and partly because war loans create a flood of fixed securities which

will incumber the exchanges for years to come, English commentators, in the main, agree that it would be better for the adult living to pay a larger proportion of the war's cost out of pocket in the form of taxation.

Edgar Crommond, in an article on the "Economic Position of the Allies," Quarterly Review, (July,) tells why Mr. Lloyd George made the last 42 per cent. loan a popular financial operation:

Ample provision has been made to enable the small investor to subscribe; and even the weekly wage earner is enabled to participate in the loan. Strong criticism has been directed against the high rate of interest offered by the Government and the expensive conversion privileges offered to holders of existing Government securities; but the bulk of this criticism may be attributed to the fact that the public are only beginning to appreciate the immense wastage of capital and the cost of the war, and the process of readjustment to the new economic conditions which have been created by the war has begun in earnest.

If people will not save their money and buy war loans they will have to be taxed:

In order to meet the cost of the war it is necessary that our savings should be doubled; and this will mean the exercise of economy to an extent which is not yet fully appreciated by the bulk of the people. The alternative to drastic economy is drastic taxation; and economy is, from all points of view, by far the most satisfactory policy. The people of Great Britain must strain every nerve to save money, in view of the further taxation, or possibly loans, that may still be necessary.

Besides what can be produced in England for war consumption, quantities of food and munitions have to be bought abroad, and there arises another problem. England is running into debt with the outside world at the rate of two billion dollars a year. Mr. Crommond asks:

How is this deficiency to be provided? It can be met to some extent by reducing our imports and increasing our exports. It is difficult to see how the latter course can be adopted if we enlist

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many more workers or transfer a much larger portion of the workers from commercial production to the production of war munitions. Another possible course is the export of gold; but our stock of the precious metal is not sufficiently great to admit of our adopting this course without grave disadvantages. A third method is to sell British securities abroad. already stated, our investments in the overseas dominions and in foreign countries have an approximate capital value of £3,904,000,000; and if we could realize only 10 per cent. of these holdings, we should be able to obtain the amount required. Unfortunately, there is only one country where sales can be effected, namely, the United States; and it is not yet clear that the New York money market is in a position to absorb securities on a sufficiently large scale. The final method is the raising of a loan in New York. The great objection to this is its extreme costliness. Money is still as cheap in London as it is in New York; and it is difficult to see how we can raise a great loan there upon terms which will not react unfavorably upon British credit at home. It should be recognized as a patriotic duty by all classes to limit consumption, and particularly the consumption of foreign manufactures and produce, to the utmost extent possible.

And beyond, after the war, Mr. Crommond sees the basis of taxation broadened in England, a revenue tariff, and years of rigorous economy.

A writer in The Edinburgh Review (July) on "The Outlook for Capital " covers a lot of ground in agreement with Mr. Crommond, and is likewise persuaded that taxation ought to be heavily increased currently; but when he comes to discuss the future he is not so sure of anything, and on the whole inclined to doubt the pessimistic view:

At first sight there does not seem to be any doubt about it. With eight to ten millions [f] of capital spent every day by the belligerent powers, to say nothing of the purely wasteful outlay to which many neutrals are forced by the war, it seems to be as obvious a platitude as ever has been put forward when one says that capital will be, must be, and cannot help being dear for a long time to come. When a huge amount of a thing that is very much wanted is destroyed its price must go up. Economic theory, common sense, and even the laws of mechanics seem to confirm such a proposition, which is so self-evident that one is almost inclined to show the thing happening in a diagram. No one can deny that capital,

even before the war, was very much wanted.

This writer proceeds to be aghast at the rate at which war loans are piling up:

If, then, at the end of the war the world finds itself swamped with a flood of securities that have been created to pay for war, while during the war the productive power of the goods on which all securities must finally be based has been, if anything, lessened, owing to the insufficient outlay on upkeep and the slaying of many of the best of the world's workers, is it possible to doubt that the price of securities will be low, and that consequently what is called the price of capital-the rate of interest paid by the borrower-will be high?

But people are contrary minded, and were perhaps not made to demonstrate the infallibility of economic theory. writer admits some uneconomic factors: in fact affirm

Some people do *

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that the price of capital will be low, because, they say, mankind will be so exhausted by the war that there will be a long pause in development, no new countries will be opened up, and no one will have the courage to think of using new capital, much less of asking for it from the money markets of the world. Here is the psychological problem that lurks, as it so often does, behind an economic question. And any one who dogmatizes beforehand about the feelings of mankind must have robur et aes triplex about his breast. All that can be said with any approach to certainty is that it will take a very long pause to allow all the present flood of securities to be absorbed so far that scarcity reigns in the stock markets and fancy prices begin to be paid for good investments. And it must be remembered that plenty of countries are outside the war zone, and making huge profits out of the needs of the belligerents. Our American cousins will not be tired at the end of the war. They will be straining every nerve and using every dollar of capital that is offered to improve the great economic advantage that the war is giving them.

And there are other psychological questions that affect the outlook for capital. Will the war end in such a way that all the nations want to spend more than ever on armaments, or will the lion lie down with the lamb? Shall we all go back as far as we can to the old habits of selfindulgence and ostentation? Or shall we recognize that no nation can be really great while the mass of its citizens lead lives of unremitting toil and poverty, and that therefore it is our first business to turn the stream of production into fields

in which it brings forth things that are really wanted?

Nobody can be very sure of anything. There are hardly any clues in all economic experience to what will happen in the future. In degree, in ratio, and in magnitude the economic phenomena now taking place are incomparable. Moreover, they are unfinished. Nobody can say how long the war will last, nor, for that matter, how long it can last at the

present rate of destruction. There is really no measure of how much modern people, under the spur of great necessity, can both produce and do without. That is what makes the future of capital so uncertain. If habits of industry and selfdenial learned in war continued afterward among several hundred millions of people, the world might have to revise all previous calculations as to the rate at which wealth can be increased.