The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.

The line expresses a humane, anti-war sentiment: suffering and accident (“hurts and mischances”) are already abundant in ordinary life, so war is an unnecessary, deliberate mechanism for amplifying misery. In Tolkien’s moral universe, evil often consists not only in causing harm but in choosing to intensify the world’s inherent grief through pride, domination, or vengeance. The phrasing also suggests a practical ethic of restraint—recognizing the fragility of life and refusing to add avoidable catastrophe. Read alongside Tolkien’s broader themes, it aligns with his suspicion of power and his emphasis on pity, mercy, and the tragic costs of conflict even when undertaken for ostensibly just ends.