Towards an enduring peace : $b A symposium of peace proposals and programs 1914-1916
History
Towards an enduring peace : $b A symposium of peace proposals and programs 1914-1916
Peace; World War, 1914-1918 -- Peace
There is, so far as I can see, not the least ground for supposing that
the broadening of loyalty must stop at the existing frontiers. The task
of the great unifiers, like Hamilton, Cavour, and Bismarck, looked just
as difficult in their day as ours does now. They had States’ rights,
sovereignty, traditional jealousy, and economic conflicts to overcome.
They conquered them. Who dares to say that we must fail?...
Loyalty is a fluctuating force, not attached by any necessity to some one
spot on the map or contained within some precise frontier. Loyalty seeks
an authority to which it can be loyal, and when it finds an authority
which gives security and progress and opportunity it fastens itself
there. The problem of world organization is to attach enough loyalty to
the immature World State to enable it to weather the inevitable attacks.
_Walter Lippmann, “The Stakes of Diplomacy,” pp. 172-188._
THE FUTURE OF CIVILIZATION
[Sidenote: Our task is to extend the sphere of Law.]
What hopes dare we cherish, in this hour of conflict, for the future of
civilization?
The great, the supreme task of human politics and statesmanship is to
extend the sphere of Law. Let others labor to make men cultured or
virtuous or happy. These are the tasks of the teacher, the priest, and
the common man. The statesman’s task is simpler. It is to enfold them in
a jurisdiction which will enable them to live the life of their soul’s
choice. The State, said the Greek philosophers, is the foundation of
the good life; but its crown rises far above mere citizenship. “There
where the State ends,” cries Nietzsche, echoing Aristotle and the great
tradition of civilized political thought, “there _men begin_. There,
where the State ends, look thither, my brothers! Do you not see the
rainbow and the bridge to the Overman?” Ever since organized society
began, the standards of the individual, the ideals of priest and teacher,
the doctrines of religion and morality, have outstripped the practise
of statesmanship. For the polestar of the statesman has not been love,
but law. His not the task of exhorting men to love one another, but the
simpler duty of enforcing the law, “Thou shalt not kill.” And in that
simple, strenuous, necessary task statesmen and political thinkers have
watched the slow extension of the power of Law, from the family to the
tribe, from the tribe to the city, from the city to the nation, from the
nation to the Commonwealth. When will Law take its next extension? When
will warfare, which is murder between individuals and “rebellion” between
groups of citizens, be equally preventable between nations by the common
law of the world?
The answer is simple. When the world has a common will, and has created a
common government to express and enforce that will.
[Sidenote: The World is already one great Society.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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