period, almost half of the gold in the world. Of course, we poured all that prosperity and much more into the last two years of the world war. We multiplied our national debt by twenty-four. We are beginning for the first time to know what taxation really means. We grumble at the heavy income tax; yet if we are to meet our obligations, it must continue at something like its present scale for the lifetime of this generation. Fifty years from now, we may still be paying. We experienced during the two years following November, 1918, an era of hectic prosperity—followed by a collapse, in which we are learning that war-gold is fool’s gold. All things considered, we came as near as anyone to winning Armageddon. But everyone loses a modern war, the victors along with the vanquished; economically, we too lost.
Before we entered the great war, we were called a pacifist people and as such were the scorn of European militarists. Indeed, war had troubled us less than any other great people. Since our federation, we had fought only one first-class war, that between the states in 1861–65. The war of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish War were, socially and economically speaking, comparable only to the small colonial expeditions of Great Britain and France. Beginning with the eighties and nineties of the past century, we had built up a comparatively strong navy; by 1914, it ranked third or perhaps fourth among those of the great powers. However,
