If a war be undertaken... before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has no defense, it is a national crime.

Later years
During the first years of the twentieth century Norton spoke out in favor of legalized euthanasia. from Columbia and the LL. Legacy
Norton was widely admired for the breadth of his intellectual interests remarkable scholarship and interest in the common good.

He was a militant idealist a progressive social reformer and a liberal activist whom many of his contemporaries considered the most cultivated man in the United States.