From the PREFACE.
War is the greatest of all crimes. Of all the antiracial, anti-social and anti-individual phenomena war is the very worst. It is the most dysgenic of all dysgenic factors. It is evil through and through, evil without any good in it. To independent thinkers this question requires no arguments. Only those perverted by a vicious system of education, the morally defective, those utterly devoid of imagination, those with a strong sadistic strain in them, and finally those who profit financially by international murder, can speak of the "beneficent effects of war." Revolutions are sometimes good, sometimes bad; war is always bad. Some wars are unavoidable, but there is no such thing as a good war; at best war is an unavoidable evil, or the lesser of two evils, and a lesser evil is merely a lesser evil, but an evil still.
We have been treated ad nauseam to the twaddle of the weak-minded—and of the munitions makers—about the ennobling and sobering effect that war has upon a nation. If we must become periodically blood-mad, if every few years we must disembowel a few million of our physically fittest men, if we must crush, maim and mangle our fellow-men who are just as good as we are, if we must ravish, burn and devastate, if we must destroy cities, villages, cattle, crops and oil wells, if we must subject millions and millions of women and children to indescribable horrors and the awful pangs of hunger, hunger that emaciates, sickens and finally kills— a more horrible death than that of the battlefield—if we must do all these things periodically in order to ennoble and sober up humanity, then it would be better if humanity perished at once from the face of the earth, perished wholly without leaving a single representative.
Fortunately, it is not necessary. We must not indulge in periodic blood-mad murder. The beneficence and necessity of war is the most damnable of all lies. War is no more necessary than the bubonic plague is necessary; war is no more beneficent than earthquakes are beneficent. War is brought about by well-known human factors, every one of which can be eliminated. Uncontrolled, unrestricted breeding which leads to over-population is one of the chronic causes of war. Birth-control besides its marvelously beneficent effect on the individual and the family, besides its eugenic influence, would if accepted by all nations become the most efficient weapon against war. And all those who hate war, all those who hate militarism as incorporating all that is worst in human nature, should become the staunchest supporters of birth-control.
And here is an important point we must bear in mind. It is our duty to preach birth-control in our own countries, in countries which we are pleased to call civilized. But we have an equal, if not a superior, duty in spreading the principles and practice of birth-control among the backward nations, nations with a high birth-rate. It is of the utmost importance for the future of mankind that the birth-control gospel be persistently and incessantly preached among the peoples of Russia, China, Japan, India, Mexico, etc. Birth-control once introduced to a nation spreads rapidly — Germany is an excellent example of this — and even the poorest of the proletarian men and women are glad to make use of it, when they are properly instructed....
