"The attractive idea that we can now have a parliament of man with authority to control the conduct of nations by legislation or an international police force with power to enforce national conformity to rules of right conduct is a counsel of perfection"
About this Quote
Root is needling a very American temptation: to treat global politics like a courtroom where the right statute, the right judge, and a firm bailiff can civilize everyone into compliance. Calling the vision of a "parliament of man" and an "international police force" a "counsel of perfection" isn’t praise; it’s a polite legal brief against utopianism. The phrase means an ideal so flawless it becomes unusable in practice. Root’s intent is to cool the fever around early 20th-century internationalist schemes by reminding readers that nations are not litigants under a shared sovereign. They are sovereigns.
The subtext is less anti-law than pro-reality. Root, a lawyer and statesman steeped in institutions, isn’t rejecting rules; he’s rejecting the fantasy that rules can outrun power. An international legislature implies legitimacy, consent, enforcement, and a common political identity. Those are precisely the things the world lacks when nationalism hardens and empires compete. By framing the idea as "attractive", he concedes the moral appeal, then surgically separates appeal from feasibility. It’s rhetorical jujitsu: he grants the dream to disarm it.
Context matters. Root’s career spans the age of The Hague conferences, arbitration movements, and the post-World War I push toward collective security. His skepticism anticipates the central failure point of the League of Nations: enforcement without a true monopoly on force. Beneath the lawyerly cadence is a warning about coercion disguised as morality - "conformity" enforced by an international police sounds like peace until someone asks who writes the rules, who polices the police, and which great power gets to call its interests "right conduct."
The subtext is less anti-law than pro-reality. Root, a lawyer and statesman steeped in institutions, isn’t rejecting rules; he’s rejecting the fantasy that rules can outrun power. An international legislature implies legitimacy, consent, enforcement, and a common political identity. Those are precisely the things the world lacks when nationalism hardens and empires compete. By framing the idea as "attractive", he concedes the moral appeal, then surgically separates appeal from feasibility. It’s rhetorical jujitsu: he grants the dream to disarm it.
Context matters. Root’s career spans the age of The Hague conferences, arbitration movements, and the post-World War I push toward collective security. His skepticism anticipates the central failure point of the League of Nations: enforcement without a true monopoly on force. Beneath the lawyerly cadence is a warning about coercion disguised as morality - "conformity" enforced by an international police sounds like peace until someone asks who writes the rules, who polices the police, and which great power gets to call its interests "right conduct."
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
|---|
More Quotes by Elihu
Add to List
