Politics & Power Quote by Frank B. Kellogg

Kellogg frames peace not as a sentiment but as a job: “work for humanity,” measurable, laborious, and therefore political. The phrasing carries a Progressive Era faith that moral aims can be engineered through institutions. It’s also a lawyerly move: by calling peace a “cause,” he turns it into something states can publicly subscribe to, as if international conflict could be regulated the way commerce or borders are.

The subtext is where the real persuasion sits. “No greater work” elevates peace above partisan squabbles without naming any; it’s a bid to occupy the high ground while sidestepping the messy question of enforcement. Then comes the crucial hedge: peace “can only be achieved” through “earnest efforts.” That word, earnest, is doing heavy lifting. It implies sincerity is the missing ingredient, not power imbalances, imperial ambitions, or economic shocks. In other words, the obstacle is will, not structure.

Context matters because Kellogg’s name is welded to the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, which attempted to outlaw war as an instrument of national policy. The quote reads like the pact’s moral sales pitch: collective responsibility (“nations and peoples”) plus a quasi-religious faith that renunciation can be self-executing. With hindsight, it’s both noble and faintly evasive: a vision of diplomacy that wants the legitimacy of global ethics without the ugliness of coercive mechanisms. The line works because it offers a flattering mirror to publics and governments alike: peace is possible if we are good enough.