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ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR, 209
serious in its magnitude if measured against the busi-
ness of South Africa only, yet because of the magnitude
of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, against
which the interruption bas really to be measured, it is
hardly sensible. What it comes to, as far as the United
Kingdom is concerned, is mainly the stoppage of the
labour of the reservists and volunteers who have been
called out and who have left the country for service in
South Africa. There is no industrial loss, additional
to what was going on in time of peace, as far as the
services of those soldiers who were with the colours
when war broke out are concerned. They are main-
tained by the country in time of war just as they were
maintained in time of peace. The case, however, is
different with the reservists and those who have volun-
teered, numbering about 120,000. They represent so
much labour diverted from its usual occupation. Es-
timating the product of the labour of 120,000 men as
worth on the average to themselves and to the com-
munity about £80 each per annum, we have a sum of
about £10,000,000 sterling annually lost to the com-
munity by the diversion of industry which the war oc-
casions. This is not all. It is a fair calculation that for
every person actually in the fighting rank, another per-
son in civil occupation is employed in manufacturing
implements of war, clothing, saddlery and harness, and
other requisites for the field army; and as our field
army is altogether about 200,000 men, we must assume
that there are 200,000 men in civil employments in
this country practically as much engaged in working for
the war as if they were in the field army itself. In other
words, besides the £10,000,000 which we lose through
the abstraction of the people from industrial pursuits
to engage in the fighting line itself, we must lose from·
£ I 6,000,000 to £20,000,000 annually by' the abstrac-
tion of people from ordinary civil occupations into the
business of making things for those who are engaged
in the fighting line.
This is the economic loss of the war properly s()
II. p