The era of true peace on earth will not come as long as a tremendous percentage of your taxes goes to educate men in the trades of slaughter.

Kauffman’s line is a pointed anti-militarist argument framed in civic, economic terms. By calling military training and armament-making “the trades of slaughter,” he strips war of patriotic glamour and recasts it as a learned profession funded by ordinary taxpayers. The quote suggests that “peace on earth” is not merely a moral aspiration but a structural outcome: as long as states devote large public resources to preparing for organized killing, they institutionalize the conditions for future conflict. It also implies a critique of opportunity cost—money spent on militarization is money not spent on education, welfare, or diplomacy—thereby making peace contingent on reordering public priorities.