War & Peace Quote by Elihu Root

Root is trying to smuggle a radical claim through the sober language of a lawyer: peace is not humanity’s default setting, it’s a technology. By framing war as the “natural reaction” of the “savage state,” he borrows the era’s evolutionary and civilizational vocabulary to make conflict feel automatic, almost physiological. Then he pivots: peace isn’t a mood or a treaty; it’s “acquired characteristics” - learned behavior, institutional habit, disciplined restraint. The argument is less about excusing war than about shifting responsibility. If peace must be acquired, it can be taught, engineered, and enforced.

The subtext is unmistakably Progressive Era: faith in systems, expertise, and law as tools that can tame the rough animal of international politics. Root, a leading advocate of arbitration and international legal structures, is positioning his project as civilizing work rather than utopian dreaming. It’s a pitch to skeptical elites: don’t expect goodwill to hold; build mechanisms that make peace durable even when instincts don’t cooperate.

There’s also a strategic chill in the phrasing. “Savage state” isn’t neutral; it flatters “civilized” nations as more advanced while quietly implying that violence can always return if the scaffolding of law weakens. Root’s intent is preventative: normalize the idea that peace requires constant cultivation - courts, treaties, norms, education - or the “natural reaction” will reassert itself. In an age shadowed by imperial conflict and rising militarization, he’s selling governance as moral evolution.