Wars are fought on battlefields. In the war of 1914-18 many of the battlefields included villages, towns, cities. These complex institutions, occupied by men, women and children were smashed and burned wholesale. The figures which I have used in listing the 1914-18 war losses were compiled by the United States War Department. They are more or less accurate, but they underline the fact that for years on end the centers of western civilization concentrated their energies and devoted every means at their disposal to cripple or destroy fellow human beings and their habitations. When we read of the destruction of the Roman Empire we console and perhaps try to fool ourselves by saying that the immense network of civilization which the Romans and their Greek associates spread across Eurasia and Africa during the historical period that began about 700 B.C. was destroyed by hordes of migrating "barbarians." When we turn to our own civilization, however, there are no barbarian hordes to take the blame. The wholesale destruction which took place in Europe from 1914 to 1918 and which was repeated and multiplied during the wars of 1936-1945 was carried on officially by spokesmen for the most advanced, most highly developed, most civilized countries of the western world. We have been using the word "murder" to describe the wholesale slaughter of Europeans by Europeans that took place from 1914 to 1918 and from 1936 to 1945. The word "murder" is inaccurate. The Europeans who carried on the wholesale destruction and mass murder during the two most general wars of modern times were committing murder in one sense. In quite another sense they were engaged in collective suicide. Europeans were blotting out the life and well-being of fellow Europeans. When the process came to a temporary halt in 1945 every European participant in the struggle was weaker in human potential and poorer in economic means than they were when the war began. Arnold Toynbee describes the entire episode as the "down grading" of Europe. He might have added two words and reported "the down grading of Europe by Europeans", as a glaring example of large scale, long continued, deliberate self-destruction. Fundamental social changes were bound to follow the revolutionary technical transformations that took place during the world-wide revolution of 1750-1970. Changes may be made in various ways. Some are slow and relatively painless, particularly when they extend over generations; other changes are so rapid that they are agonizingly painful. Involuntary changes, made under outside pressure are almost always painful. World-wide revolution, under the best of conditions, promises to be painful. When it comes from alien sources, and is under forced pressure, the costs are almost sure to be excessively high.