Enforced peace; . y experience in levehng suspicionagainst any scheme which offers simpUcity and beamsupon us with an easy, smiling face. It is also true,however, in aU human affairs that to seciure coopera-tion among great masses of humans the first requisiteis the provision of a vast and simple sweep of levelstanding-ground. We must presume that the relativebareness of the scheme before us represents a fair effortto bring together as a basis of organization, the maximumof that in which we can presumably agree and theminimum of that concerning which we are likely to<lisagree. Even as it is
Enforced peace; . y experience in levehng suspicionagainst any scheme which offers simpUcity and beamsupon us with an easy, smiling face. It is also true,however, in aU human affairs that to seciure coopera-tion among great masses of humans the first requisiteis the provision of a vast and simple sweep of levelstanding-ground. We must presume that the relativebareness of the scheme before us represents a fair effortto bring together as a basis of organization, the maximumof that in which we can presumably agree and theminimum of that concerning which we are likely to<lisagree. Even as it is, our optimism may have led us too far intempting us to use the word peace. The associationswhich come to us from the hopeless and Ught-winged use?of that word in organization, movements, and orationswarn us that what we perhaps meant to say was: Leagueto Enforce the Recognition of Justice. It is a delusion?and a snare to speak or think of peace as a normalstatus of human affairs, to which we must seek BENJAMIN roE , , , , , President of the University of CaJifurnia ENFORCED PEACE i8i It is a delusion to think out our problem in that order—a delusion of the same cast as the old-time argumentfrom the state of nature. This argument fromthe state of nature finds no standing in anthropology norfor that matter in zoology. Man is by anthropologyand zoology a homicidal mammal. He kills and ofteneats his enemy. The normal status of human affairs in-volves competition, contention, strife. With that hestarts; from that he must seek to advance. Advancecomes only by the intrusion of time and wider con-sideration in the place of impulse and inconsiderateviolence. Then the reasonableness begotten of timemay strike the balance we caU justice. For the recog-nition of justice we must have the check of time, and fortime we must have, so far as we know the mood ofhuman affairs, the check of power. What we need tofind is some form of expressible in
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectpeace, bookyear1916
