Page:Freud - Reflections on war and death.djvu/27

Rh maintenance, finally, of all the international projects and institutions in which the civilized community of peace times had expressed its corporate life.

Such a war would still be horrible enough and full of burdens, but it would not have interrupted the development of ethical relations between the large human units, between nations and states.

But the war in which we did not want to belleve broke out and brought—disappointment. It is not only bloodier and more destructive than any foregoing war, as a result of the tremendous development of weapons of attack and defense, but it is at least as cruel, bitter, and merciless as any earlier war. It places itself above all the restrictions pledged in times of peace, the so-called rights of nations, it does not acknowledge the prerogatives of the