Here we touch a vital centre of the question. No nation can go to war without Money. In most cases a very great deal of this same money is required. Who provides it? The nation itself? One may doubt whether any nation could raise sufficient funds to carry on a serious war for any length of time without borrowing. Supposing this to be the case, what financial force behind the scenes so obligingly lends the cash for the purpose of carrying out schemes of wholesale murder? Wherever such cash is obtained we know it must be weighted with an exorbitant rate of interest, so that the price of human blood fills the pockets of the lenders with a certain guaranteed overflow. To stop War, therefore, it should be made impossible to borrow the sums required for warfare; and any loan started with the object of War in view, whether suggested or avowed, should be considered by a National Agreement of United Powers illegal and even criminal, as conspiring against the peace and progress of the world. If, by what is called diplomacy or political subterfuge, this law were cheated, and vast sums were loaned ostensibly for other purposes than War, and it could afterwards be proved that War _had_ nevertheless been, secretly and all along, the actual purpose of such loans, then the lenders should be compelled to forfeit all claims to repayment. For talk fine sentiment and pious platitudes as we will, the brutal truth is that no war can be carried on without money--money fully guaranteed--and if we would strike at the root of the evil, then these guaranteed supplies must be cut off.