THE SPIRIT OF CONQUEST. 527 



$12,000,000,000 for the year 1890,* and the figure goes on every 

 year increasing in geometrical progression. 



Further, the debts must be considered. The largest proportion 

 of them are consequences of the idolatry for square miles. This 

 entails an annual expenditure of $644,800,000 which we should 

 not have to bear were it not for the ctesohedonic fallacy. f 



Yet another factor has so far not been mentioned: men. The 

 wars of the last three centuries have cost, at the lowest figure, 30,- 

 000,000 or 40,000,000 victims. Some authors raise this very mod- 

 erate estimate to 20,000,000 per century. Without speaking of the 

 frightful sufferings of these unfortunates, they represent an enor- 

 mous capital.:}: Let us add, further, that these men, if they had not 

 been killed, might have had children that now have no existence. 

 "Without the wars of Napoleon I and Napoleon III Europe would have 

 had 45,000,000 more inhabitants than it has, and they might have 

 been producing $2,700,000 a year.* 



We hope the reader will admit, after these considerations, that 

 the indirect losses of war certainly exceed the direct ones. Still, 

 adhering to our method of underrating rather than exaggerating, 

 we will regard them as equal. We may therefore affirm that the 

 spirit of conquest has cost, since 1618, in the group of European 

 nations alone, the trifle of $80,156,800,000. Suppose we should go 

 farther back — into antiquity even? Imagination refuses to set 

 down the gigantic sums. 



This is not all; the cost of civil wars has to be counted, for 

 the conquest of power within the state is attended by massacres which 

 are often not inferior to those of foreign ones. The chiefs of the 

 Roman legions contending for the empire carired on as bloody and 

 costly campaigns against their rivals as against the Parthians or the 

 Germans. The war between Paris and Versailles in 1871 occa- 



* See E. Reclus, Nouvelle geograpllie universelle (French edition), vol. xvi, p. 810. 



f A justification of this figure may be found in my Luttes entre les societes humaines, 

 p. 220. 



\ A half million negroes are massacred every year in Africa in the tribal wars, which 

 also are caused by the ctesohedonic fallacy. Suppose each one of them might have earned 

 $20 a year. Capitalized at four per cent, this sum would have amounted to $400,000,000. 



* See my Luttes, p. 228. Let us say, in passing, that we owe our existing savagery 

 partly to the ctesohedonic fallacy. When we think that the most rapid way of enriching 

 ourselves is by seizing our neighbor's territories, the fewer defenders that territory has, the 

 better. So all pretended political geniuses glorify themselves on having killed the largest 

 number of their fellow-men. Caesar boasted of having killed a million and a half of Gauls. 

 At the moment of writing these lines a terrible accident has occurred at Santander. Hun- 

 dreds of persons were killed by the explosion of a boat loaded with dynamite. Great 

 pity was expressed for the victims. Collections for their benefit were taken in France. 

 Suppose France and Spain were now at war. If somebody had blown up some thousand 

 Spaniards in a fortress, we should have sung Te Deums. Oh, man's logic ! 



