them great distances entails heavy loss on the people and a drain on
the resources of the State. The daily expenditure will amount to a
thousand ounces of silver.
[Cf. II. §§ 1, 13, 14.]
There will be commotion at home and abroad, and men will drop down
exhausted on the highways.
[Cf. _Tao Te Ching_, ch. 30: "Where troops have been quartered,
brambles and thorns spring up. Chang Yu has the note: "We may be
reminded of the saying: ‘On serious ground, gather in plunder.’ Why
then should carriage and transportation cause exhaustion on the
highways?—The answer is, that not victuals alone, but all sorts of
munitions of war have to be conveyed to the army. Besides, the
injunction to ‘forage on the enemy’ only means that when an army is
deeply engaged in hostile territory, scarcity of food must be provided
against. Hence, without being solely dependent on the enemy for corn,
we must forage in order that there may be an uninterrupted flow of
supplies. Then, again, there are places like salt deserts where
provisions being unobtainable, supplies from home cannot be dispensed
with."]
As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded in their
labor.
[Mei Yao-ch’en says: "Men will be lacking at the plough-tail." The
allusion is to the system of dividing land into nine parts, each
consisting of about 15 acres, the plot in the center being cultivated
on behalf of the State by the tenants of the other eight. It was here
also, so Tu Mu tells us, that their cottages were built and a well
sunk, to be used by all in common. [See II. § 12, note.] In time of
war, one of the families had to serve in the army, while the other
seven contributed to its support. Thus, by a levy of 100,000 men
(reckoning one able-bodied soldier to each family) the husbandry of
700,000 families would be affected.]