Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/141

desire for food and the desire to reproduce. This desire springs from the primary desire for food. Someone has pointed out that the temperance reformers of the United States made little progress so long as they harped on the sin of drunkenness. Only when they touched the question on its economic side, showed that alcohol was a great enemy to wealth and production, did the prohibition movement go with a rush. In some fifty years of agitation, pacifists have dwelt on the cruelties and horrors of war—always the moral and sentimental side. Now we are learning that it does not pay. The victor may, relatively, lose less than the vanquished. But victor and vanquished both lose in the absolute. That may be the clinching argument.