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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: there is to-day.
War itself, the old red anarch, is passing. It is safer to be a
soldier than a working-man. The chance for life is greater in an
active campaign than in a factory or a coal-mine. In the matter
of killing, war is growing impotent, and this in face of the fact
that the machinery of war was never so expensive in the past nor
so dreadful. War-equipment to-day, in time of peace, is more
expensive than of old in time of war. A standing army costs more
to maintain than it used to cost to conquer an empire. It is more
expensive to be ready to kill, than it used to be to do the
killing. The price of a Dreadnought would furnish the whole army
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