Dwight Eisenhower and the Cost of War

 

The full text of this particular section of former US President Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower's speech is presented below:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

 

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this:

 

1. A modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

 

2. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

3. It is two fine, fully-equipped hospitals.

 

4. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is not the best way of life to be found, on the road that the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.

 

Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

 

The words of Ike do ring true.  And it was clearly spoken from the heart of someone with humble Kansas beginnings.

 

However, while we can easily put a price on the Armaments Side of the War Equation, can we really put a price on the Results side?

 

What is the price of Losing a War?

 

What is the price of a Nation's Lost Sovereignty?

 

What is the price of a People's Lost Liberty?

In view of the creeping Communist Chinese Invasion we are now facing on our western borders...

We should do some serious soul-searching on how to answer these questions as a People...