The Spectator at war: The waste of war

From The Waste of War, The Spectator, 5 December 1914:

The destruction which the Germans have wrought in the towns and villages they have occupied is a net loss to the world. Before the war began these aspects of war had impressed the minds of many writers even more than now appears to be justifiable. We had, for example, the famous book of the Russian writer M. Jean Bloch, who, at the end of the nineteenth century, demonstrated to his own satisfaction that a European war would not take place, because it would involve such wholesale destruction and such a universal increase of prices that normal human life would become impossible. M. Bloch was followed by Mr. Norman Angell. Events have shown the complete unsoundness of these calculations. So far from prices reaching a prohibitive point, they have as the war proceeded continued to fall, and a good many American and other speculators have suffered accordingly.