Politics & Power Quote by Elihu Root

Peace, in Root's formulation, isn't maintained by treaties or great-man diplomacy so much as by mass civic literacy: what ordinary citizens believe their country is entitled to, and what they're obligated to give. Coming from a lawyer and architect of early 20th-century American foreign policy, the sentence reads like a brief against the most combustible force in democratic life: popular nationalism untethered from legal restraint.

The specific intent is prophylactic. Root is arguing that constitutional government, for all its checks and balances, can still be stampeded. If the "great mass of the people" is taught only its nation's rights, peace turns into a permanent grievance machine. If it's taught only its duties, you get a different pathology: self-abnegation that invites backlash and demagogues. The stability he wants depends on a "just conception" that binds pride to reciprocity.

The subtext is a warning about the democratic production of foreign policy. Root is quietly conceding that public opinion is not inherently wise; it must be cultivated. The word "secure" carries the paternal confidence of Progressive Era governance: peace is an outcome you engineer by shaping civic understanding, not merely by hoping voters will be enlightened.

Context matters. Root lived through the Spanish-American War, the rise of U.S. global power, and the legalist optimism that fed The Hague and the early internationalist project. His sentence is essentially international law translated into domestic pedagogy: if citizens can be trained to think of nations as rights-bearing and duty-bound actors, war becomes harder to sell as destiny.