Leadership Quote by Warren R. Austin

Aspirational language doing double duty: it flatters the hands that build while quietly recruiting them into a national project. "To craftsmanship we shall add statesmanship" elevates skilled labor into a civic virtue, implying that making things and governing wisely belong on the same continuum of competence. The verb "add" matters. It suggests the nation already has the productive muscle; what it needs now is the political maturity to match it. In the mouth of a politician, that is less a compliment than a gentle rebuke to the messier arts of partisanship.

The phrase "capitol of peace" is a carefully staged metaphor. It borrows the authority of a capital city - permanence, legitimacy, ceremony - and grafts it onto an ideal ("peace") that is notoriously hard to institutionalize. The subtext is postwar and internationalist: peace isn't just a feeling or a treaty, it's an infrastructure that must be designed, staffed, and defended the way any capital is. Austin, a U.S. senator and later U.N. ambassador, is speaking from the mid-century moment when America wanted to frame itself as both workshop and steward of the new world order.

The line also sells a particular version of American exceptionalism: not conquest, but competence. Craftsmanship signals industry, reliability, and modernity; statesmanship signals restraint and legitimacy. Set side by side, they promise a nation that can both build and lead, suggesting that technical mastery without political vision is incomplete - and that political power, to be justified, should look like something well-made.