War is productive of untold material losses. As a general rule, it cannot make the nations of the world richer. Many successive generations have for a long time to bear the crushing burden which they inherit from guilty ambitious Rulers as the only result of their thirst of vain glory. Materially, a nation may profit by an unjust war, resulting in the defeat of a weaker rival, but the riches thus acquired by the one, either by territorial acquisitions, or by the payment to her of war contributions and indemnities, or both, from the other, are merely transferred from the vanquished to the victor. The great society of nations, instead of gaining anything by it, is only losing, as a whole, the total amount of the financial cost of the military operations, of the squandering of hard earned savings, of diminished labour and production, of the waste of productive capital, of the loss of so many long days which could have been so much better employed. But most deplorable is the loss entailed by the warring nations, and the universe at large, by the sacrifice of the younger generations, of early youth and of strongly developed manhood, for the success of tyrannical and criminal purposes. There can be but one justification--and it is a noble, a glorious one--of the sacrifice of so many valuable lives and so much material wealth: the sacredness, the sanctity of the cause for which a nation, or a group of peoples, take up arms against an enemy, or enemies, only intent on crushing weaker rival, or rivals, by all the illegitimate means at his, or their command, for self-aggrandizement, for unjust domination. Such is the present war: sacred and just on the Allied side; abominable, brutal, barbarous on the German side, enhanced in its guilt by the ferocious Turks and the shameful submission of the enslaved Austrians to the overpowering will of their teutonic masters. It will not have cost too much if it has the result of freeing Mankind from the horrors of German militarism, assuring to the world a long reign of justice and moral grandeur. England can rightly claim a very large part of the merit accruing to all those who have contributed to the immense material progress of the world during the last century. She has actively and most intelligently worked for it by her vigorous industrial and commercial development, by the very numerous billions of dollars she has contributed, all over the world, to railway building and oceanic navigation. She has contributed to it by her extraordinary amount of savings which allowed her to supply the capital required for so many varied enterprises over all the continents. She has played the very important part of universal banker, distributing her immense treasures to foster production of all kinds everywhere. She has most largely contributed to the economic phenomenon of the gradual diminution of the universal rate of interest.