g contrast between words and deeds! Of course

  governments will plead in justification of these measures that
  all their expenditure and armament are exclusively for purposes
  of defense.  But it remains a mystery to every disinterested
  man whence they can expect attacks if all the great powers are
  single-hearted in their policy, in pursuing nothing but self
  defense.  In reality it looks as if each of the great powers
  were every instant anticipating an attack on the part of the
  others.  And this results in a general feeling of insecurity
  and superhuman efforts on the part of each government to
  increase their forces beyond those of the other powers.  Such a
  competition of itself increases the danger of war.  Nations
  cannot endure the constant increase of armies for long, and
  sooner or later they will prefer war to all the disadvantages
  of their present position and the constant menace of war.  Then
  the most trifling pretext will be sufficient to throw the whole
  of Europe into the fire of universal war.  And it is a mistaken
  idea that such a crisis might deliver us from the political and
  economical troubles that are crushing us.  The experience of
  the wars of latter years teaches us that every war has only
  intensified national hatreds, made military burdens more
  crushing and insupportable, and rendered the political and
  economical grievous and insoluble."

"Modern Europe keeps under arms an active army of nine millions of men," writes Enrico Ferri,

"besides fifteen millions of reserve, with an outlay of four hundred millions of francs per annum. By continual increase of the armed force, the sources of social and individual prosperity are paralyzed, and the state of the modern world may be compared to that of a man who condemns himself to wasting from lack of nutrition in order to provide himself with arms, losing thereby the strength to use the arms he provides, under, the weight of which he will at last succumb."