The number of men destroyed as combatants in the Franco-German War was 215,000. Lapouge estimates that for the brief Franco-German War the number of deaths among the non-combatants _above_ the number that _would have died at the normal death rate_ within the period consumed by the war _if there had been peace_, was 450,000. That is to say, during that short war of 1870–71 the number of non-combatants whose death was due to the war was _more than double_ the number destroyed directly in the war. Now if this extra death-harvest rate among the non-combatants be calculated as being somewhat less than _half_ true for all the wars of the civilized world for about one hundred years following 1789, we can safely _add_ to the twenty millions slaughtered on the battlefield and in the military hospitals—to these, I say, we can add twenty millions more, who, like the four hundred and fifty thousand non-combatants in 1870–71, were smitten with the death-breath of war. [Illustration: WORN-OUT BOXING GLOVES OF THE RULING CLASS] This gives us a “grand” total of forty millions (40,000,000) men, women, and children actually slaughtered or otherwise destroyed as a result of _one hundred_ years of “splendid” and “glorious” and, “grand” and “Christianized” war;—_and_ (blessed be the “_mysterious_ will of God who reigns” but doesn’t rule under capitalism) these forty million lives were mostly WORKING CLASS LIVES. Forty million lives in one brief century slashed down by Mars, the “glorious” god of battles. One Christian century—a festival of fiends, a loud ha, ha from Hell. One Christian century—a gash in the breast of the working class. One Christian century—Mars and Caesar spitting in the face of the nobly peaceful Christ. One Christian century—a sea of blood. One Christian century—an ocean of tears. One Christian century—the butchering of brothers by brothers. One Christian century—a groan, a sigh, a sob. Mars, god of war, devourer of men, scourge of women and curse of little children; Mars, “strife and slaughter ... the condition of his existence,” rushing in “without question as to which side is right, ... on his head the gleaming helmet and floating plume”; Mars, “well-favored, stately, swift, unwearied, puissant, gigantic ... foe of wisdom and scourge of mortals”; Mars whose “emblems are the spear and the burning torch, his chosen animals the vulture and the dog”;[35] Mars, butcher of mankind; Mars fiendishly drunk on the tears of women and children; Mars, the mock of mothers,—this race-cursing god, hour after hour, _day and night_, through a whole hundred recent years, has devoured one human being, has drunk more than two gallons of human blood—every twenty minutes. A torrent of blood has gushed from the deep, damned war-wound in the breast of the working class. And in this the morning of the twentieth Christian century we _hear_ the mouthings of hypocrisy, but we see the strut and dare of crowned and flattered brutes and buccaneers everywhere.