Excerpt from The Cost of War, and Ways of Reducing It Suggested, by Economic Theory a Lecture
Suggestions only, not instructions, will be offered here. Looking at affairs from a somewhat distant height of abstraction, economic theory points out rather the general direction than the exact path in which steps are to be taken. There may at least be avoided the misdirection which results from indistinct general views.
Let us begin by removing the obscurity due to the ambiguity of the term 'cost'. It is defined in the leading English dictionary as 'that which must be given or surrendered in order to acquire, produce, accomplish, or maintain something'. In a secondary or, as it is called by Murray, 'transferred' sense, 'cost' may mean expenditure of labour. So Dr. Marshall distinguishes the 'money cost', the 'expenses of production' from the 'real cost of production', the efforts and sacrifices that are involved in making a commodity. In accordance with this distinction let us first consider the pecuniary cost of war, then the felt sacrifices which, though very imperfectly measured by price, are in some sense compensated by money payments. It is hardly within the province of economic theory to treat of the still more real cost which consists in the sacrifice of invaluable lives, that loss which money can neither measure nor console.
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