… is from page 1 of the original edition of Edwin Cannan’s 1927 collection, An Economist’s Protest; specifically, it’s from an essay – “The Cosmopolitan Interest of Labour” – that Cannan contributed to the May 1914 issue of War and Peace:
It is, no doubt, well to convince financiers and wealthy owners of property that war does not pay; but they can often afford it, and are, unfortunately, often willing to afford it, as a mere luxury, so that it is better still to make the prospect of war unpopular with the mass of the people, who cannot afford expensive luxuries.
