The Risks of Peace

Peace is not a pause between two wars, like a rather long truce, nor is it a gift passively received and tranquilly kept. Peace must be won, be maintained and strengthened by effort, be defended against those who would disturb it. Peace is a continuous creation in which all share, each through the part he plays in social life.Mr. Wickham Steed, in his recent book Vital Peace, a Study of Risks, has shown how peace has its risks as war has. There can be no life without risk.The problem of the risks of life can be considered from three standpoints: the psychological, for each one of us; the national, for each State; the "communitary," for a united group of States or for the international community in general. In life these various planes are interwoven.The average upper-class young Englishman at Eton or Harrow cannot envisage a quiet life, made up of study and domestic cares, without the adventure of travel, work in the colonies, the army or politics. Sport is enticing to many, but sport for sport's sake is worse than art for art's sake; training in endurance for the sake of bodily agility without a sense of adventure would become a matter of professional exercise, to be despized. All do not feel this urge to adventure. The young working-man, brought up in a Labour environment, becomes a petit bourgeois; the young Communist is or wishes to be a fighter, and does not exclude, at least in theory, civil war. The upper- or middle-class boy tends to adopt a nationalist and conservative ideal

Citation · Library science · Computer Science · Religion and Society Interactions

• Ideal’ and ‘punch‐bag’

  M L Roi, Michael Roi et al.•Diplomacy and Statecraft•2001

  Add to list