"War was forced upon mankind in his original civil and social condition"
About this Quote
Root’s phrasing turns war from a choice into a structural condition: something “forced upon” people at the very moment they start living together. That passive construction matters. It shifts agency away from generals and presidents and onto the architecture of early society itself, where scarce resources, weak institutions, and competing loyalties make organized violence feel less like aberration than default setting. For a lawyer-statesman, this is a prosecutorial move: establish the premise that conflict is endemic, then argue for the legal machinery that can restrain it.
The subtext is both bleak and tactical. Root isn’t romanticizing war as noble; he’s treating it as an inherited liability, like a defect in the original design of civilization. By invoking “original civil and social condition,” he’s echoing social-contract thinkers who imagined pre-modern life as unstable and insecure, then nudging the reader toward a modern solution: rules, courts, treaties, and credible enforcement. If war is baked into early social organization, then peace can’t rest on moral improvement alone; it has to be engineered.
Context sharpens the intent. Root lived through America’s rise as a global power, served as Secretary of War and Secretary of State, and helped professionalize the U.S. military while also championing international arbitration (he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912). After the Hague Conferences and on the eve of World War I’s lessons, the line reads as an argument for institutions over sentiment: don’t trust “civilization” to civilize itself. Draft it, adjudicate it, bind it.
The subtext is both bleak and tactical. Root isn’t romanticizing war as noble; he’s treating it as an inherited liability, like a defect in the original design of civilization. By invoking “original civil and social condition,” he’s echoing social-contract thinkers who imagined pre-modern life as unstable and insecure, then nudging the reader toward a modern solution: rules, courts, treaties, and credible enforcement. If war is baked into early social organization, then peace can’t rest on moral improvement alone; it has to be engineered.
Context sharpens the intent. Root lived through America’s rise as a global power, served as Secretary of War and Secretary of State, and helped professionalize the U.S. military while also championing international arbitration (he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912). After the Hague Conferences and on the eve of World War I’s lessons, the line reads as an argument for institutions over sentiment: don’t trust “civilization” to civilize itself. Draft it, adjudicate it, bind it.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|
More Quotes by Elihu
Add to List
