How, one may ask, was it possible for such penalties as these, and others even more savage than these, to become embedded in the penal code of a civilised and a Christian State? Mainly for two reasons I believe: first the fact (referred to before) that the doctrine of unreformative punishment, as expressive of the Justice of God, was part of its religion; and secondly, that the State based itself then, as now, on the Will to Power, and not on the Will to Love. And seeking its safety in terms of power it perpetrated these atrocities. From those two premises the results were only natural. Are we going to salve our consciences to-day by mere degrees of comparison, by saying: “We are not so bad as that now”? Perhaps we are not so bad; but the basis on which we continue to act has not altered. The Will to Power (for which the State still stands) must always lag behind the Will to Love in its understanding of human nature. And while it lags behind the penal code of the State will always be a drag upon the social conscience. Now so far we have been considering this doctrine of punishment in relation to the criminal section of society--force and punitive treatment being necessary, we say, for the discipline and control of the waste products of our civilisation. But in the whole body politic what does it all come to? What type of mind is finally evolved by the State which so deals with its human material? What is the final moral aspect of the State itself? Examine that question from the international point of view. Why is every State armed? Because every State, when all is said and done, is a potential criminal whom other States cannot trust. And though these States look down upon their criminals, they are proud of themselves. We are grouped to-day, many States together, in armed alliance for what (when we took up arms) we believed to be a great and a just cause; and while we are so grouped we speak well of our Allies. But the groupings of to-day are not the groupings of yesterday; and the international spectacle which we have presented age after age has been simply this: that no nation could trust any other nation to behave morally, justly, humanely, and for the good of the whole, where single self-interest was concerned. So like to its own criminals did each nation remain, that all the others had ever to keep their instruments of punishment ready to hand in case of need. Is not that an extraordinary commentary on the law of punishment; that not merely does it fail to do away with the criminal within its own jurisdiction, but reproduces his likeness in all the high places of the world--giving him his justification by showing him that, where community of interest ends, States are no other and no better than he?