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to an end.’ > > “We have today representative governments in nearly all of Europe, and none the less the expenditures for war and for its preparation are increased in a frightful proportion. > > “Evidently the folly of the princes has passed down to the governing classes. At the present time they no longer make war because a prince was disrespectful to a courtesan, as such things happened in the time of Louis XIV , but by exaggerating the respectable sentiments, like that of the national dignity and of patriotism, by exciting public opinion against a neighboring nation, there will come a day when it will be sufficient to say, though the information may not be true, that the ambassador of your government was not received by the chief of a state, in order to make break forth the most terrible and disastrous of wars ever seen. > > “At the present time Europe keeps under arms more soldiers than there were in the time of Napoleon’s great wars. All citizens, with few exceptions, are obliged on our continent to pass several years in the barracks. They build fortresses, construct arsenals and ships, constantly manufacture arms, which after awhile have to be replaced by others, because science, which ought always to be directed toward the well-being of men, unfortunately lends its aid to works of destruction, invents at every instant new engines for killing great masses of men as rapidly as possible. > > “And in order to maintain so many soldiers and to make such vast preparations for murder, they spend yearly hundreds of millions, that is, what would be sufficient