A pagan spoke of one man owning ten slaves just as a modern business man speaks of one merchant sacking ten clerks; “It’s very horrible; but how else can society be conducted?” A medieval scholastic regarded the possibility of a man being burned to death just as a modern business man regards the possibility of a man being starved to death; “It is a shocking torture; but can you organise a painless world?” It is possible that a future society may find a way of doing without the question by hunger as we have done without the question by fire. It is equally possible, for the matter of that, that a future society may reestablish legal torture with the whole apparatus of rack and faggot. The most modern of countries, America, has introduced with a vague savour of science, a method which it calls “the third degree.” This is simply the extortion of secrets by nervous fatigue; which is surely uncommonly close to their extortion by bodily pain. And this is legal and scientific in America. Amateur ordinary America, of course, simply burns people alive in broad daylight, as they did in the Reformation Wars. But though some punishments are more inhuman than others there is no such thing as humane punishment.