War & Peace Quote by Christian Lous Lange

Lange is trying to rescue propaganda from its own bad reputation by dressing it in Sunday clothes. Read closely and you can hear the pitch: persuasion shouldn’t lean on panic or cheap hatred; it should flatter the public’s sense that it is rational, moral, and headed somewhere brighter. “Better judgment” is a strategic phrase, not a purely ethical one. It tells the audience they are the kind of people who can be convinced by reason, even as it quietly legitimizes mass messaging as a civic tool rather than a manipulative weapon.

The second sentence turns that legitimacy into a moral escalator. By borrowing the Biblical cadence of “the valley of the shadow of death,” Lange frames war not as a political failure but as a grim stopover on a purposeful journey. “War station” is chillingly bureaucratic: conflict becomes infrastructure, a scheduled transfer point on the route to “the blessed summit.” That metaphor does two things at once. It comforts publics asked to endure catastrophe, and it launders responsibility by making suffering feel inevitable, even useful.

Context matters: Lange was a Norwegian politician and Nobel Peace Prize laureate shaped by the early 20th century’s faith in internationalism and arbitration, then battered by World War I’s scale. The intent isn’t to glorify war, but to keep belief alive when belief is politically necessary. The subtext is a warning and a blueprint: propaganda works best when it promises moral continuity, when it turns endurance into evidence that the future is still possible.