ssened by allowing the mind to dwell for a time on
another aspect of the subject in which the regime of peace that would
follow the discontinuance of all settlement of disputes by violence will
appear to consist not so much in the total disappearance of violence from
the earth as in the use of it for a different purpose, namely, the
preservation of the peaceful status quo, by a systematic and lawful use of
force, or at any rate, the readiness to employ it.

A state of peace, whether between individuals or nations, whether without
or within a regime of law, always partakes of the nature of an armed
truce: under one regime, however, the arms are borne by the possible
contestants themselves; under the other, by the community whose members
they are. If there is a resort to arms, violence ensues under both
regimes; in both cases it tends ultimately to restore peace, but the
action is more certain and more systematic when the violence is exerted by
the community.

These laws may apply indifferently to a community of individuals or to one
of nations. The most cogent and the most valid argument at the disposal of
the peace advocate is the fact that we no longer allow the individual to
take the law into his own hand, and that logically we should equally
prohibit the nation from doing so. This is unanswerable, but its force has
been greatly weakened by the assumption, which it requires no great
astuteness to find unwarranted, that the settlement of individual quarrels
by individual force has resulted from--or at least resulted in--the
discontinuance of violence altogether, or in the dawn of a general era of
good-will, man to man. On the contrary, it is very doubtful whether there
is less violence to-day than there would be if the operation of law were
suspended altogether; the difference, is that the violence has shifted its
incidence and altered its aim--it is civic and social and no longer
individual.

If we are to introduce the regime of law among nations as among
individuals, our first step must be similarly to shift the incidence of
violence. In so doing we may not decrease it, we may, indeed, increase
it--but we shall none the less be taking that step in the only possible
direction to achieve our purpose.

Among individuals, custom, crystallizing into law, generally precedes the
enforcement of that law by the community. Hence, a somewhat elaborate code
may exist side by side with the settlement of disputes, under that co