It is wholly artificial and insincere to say that men are brothers
socially and religiously, yet are justified in marching out in millions,
with the most murderous apparatus science can devise, to meet each other
on the field of battle. We condemn crime for social reasons. We have
relegated to the Middle Ages, to which it belongs, the notion that the
criminal is a man who has affronted society, and that society may take a
revenge on him. In the sane conception of our time the criminal is a
mischievous element disturbing the social order, and, in the interest of
that order, he must be isolated or put out of existence. It is not the
_guilt_, but the _social effect_, which we regard. And from this point
of view a single great war is far more calamitous than all the crime in
Europe during whole decades. It is estimated by high authorities that if
the present war lasts only twelve months it will cost Europe, directly
and indirectly, including the destruction of property and the loss to
industry and commerce, no less a sum than L9,000,000,000; and it will
certainly cost more than a million, if not more than two million, lives,
besides the incalculable amount of suffering from wounds, loss of
relatives, outrages, and the incidental damage of warfare.
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