But the worst and most immoral action of the state, beside which a breach of treaty for selfish reasons pales to insignificance, is the war of aggression for purposes of profit, that is, for the conquest of territory, extortion of money, increase of power, or fame. War is the quintessence of all crimes against life and property, against the body and mind of a person, the prevention of which is the aim and object of all Morality and all laws derived from it. Any means are permissible whereby this wickedness may be prevented; the war of defence, waged by the party attacked, is not only justified but sacred, as are the functions of the institutions that society has developed to hunt down and punish those who do not respect Morality and Law. And just as it is the duty of every society to maintain courts of justice, police and prisons, so it is the duty of every state to be well armed, well versed in the use of weapons and strong, so long as it must count on the fact that there are practical politicians who do not recognize Morality as binding the state, and nations that are ready on the first hint of their leaders to perpetrate every crime that conscience, the Ten Commandments and penal law forbid. It is idle, in my opinion, to discuss the question whether war will ever disappear from the world. It serves no purpose to contradict those who declare it to be eternal. It is possible that it will continue to exist as long as there is vice, sin and crime; and I do not believe that these will ever be completely exterminated. Among mankind there will probably never be a lack of sick and depraved people whose selfishness is monstrously exaggerated, whose instincts urge them with stormy violence, whose powers of inhibition are scantily developed or altogether wanting, who suffer from anæsthesia of the feelings and are therefore incapable of any sympathy with their fellow men and who are mentally too weak to foresee the results of their actions. Individuals of this kind are born criminals whose existence society will probably never be able to prevent and against whom it is obliged to protect itself. Now war arises from the same psychic conditions as the antisocial actions of these born criminals, and therefore the pessimists may be right in maintaining that it can never be abolished. But it is one thing to assert the existence of a deplorable fact and quite another to glorify it. To say that war is a part of the universe constituted by God is blasphemy, even though the saying emanates from Moltke. To extol war ecstatically and to sing hymns of praise to it, to declare that it evokes the highest virtues of man is a panegyric of crime, a thing anticipated and punishable in the penal code.