war

70:5.5It has been hard for man­kind to learn that nei­ther peace nor war can be run by a de­bat­ing so­ci­ety. The prim­i­tive “palavers” were sel­dom use­ful. The race early learned that an army com­manded by a group of clan heads had no chance against a strong one-man army. War has al­ways been a king­maker.

• weeded out most abnormal and defective strains

52:2.11This prob­lem of race im­prove­ment is not such an ex­ten­sive un­der­tak­ing when it is at­tacked at this early date in hu­man evo­lu­tion. The pre­ced­ing pe­riod of tribal strug­gles and rugged com­pe­ti­tion in race sur­vival has weeded out most of the ab­nor­mal and de­fec­tive strains. An id­iot does not have much chance of sur­vival in a prim­i­tive and war­ring tribal so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion. It is the false sen­ti­ment of your par­tially per­fected civ­i­liza­tions that fos­ters, pro­tects, and per­pet­u­ates the hope­lessly de­fec­tive strains of evo­lu­tion­ary hu­man stocks.

• by selective survival, w. improved dawn-mammal species

62:2.5These dawn mam­mals de­vel­oped more of a tribal spirit than had ever been pre­vi­ously ex­hib­ited. They were, in­deed, highly gre­gar­i­ous but nev­er­the­less ex­ceed­ingly pug­na­cious when in any way dis­turbed in the or­di­nary pur­suit of their rou­tine life, and they dis­played fiery tem­pers when their anger was fully aroused. Their bel­li­cose na­tures, how­ever, served a good pur­pose; su­pe­rior groups did not hes­i­tate to make war on their in­fe­rior neigh­bors, and thus, by se­lec­tive sur­vival, the species was pro­gres­sively im­proved. They very soon dom­i­nated the life of the smaller crea­tures of this re­gion, and very few of the older non­car­niv­o­rous mon­key­like tribes sur­vived.

• Badonan survivors of w. were most intelligent and desirable of all then living

64:5.1500,000 years ago the Bado­nan tribes of the north­west­ern high­lands of In­dia be­came in­volved in an­other great racial strug­gle. For more than one hun­dred years this re­lent­less war­fare raged, and when the long fight was fin­ished, only about one hun­dred fam­i­lies were left. But these sur­vivors were the most in­tel­li­gent and de­sir­able of all the then liv­ing de­scen­dants of An­don and Fonta.

• requires organization

70:1.4But there could be no such phe­nom­e­non as war un­til so­ci­ety had evolved suf­fi­ciently far to ac­tu­ally ex­pe­ri­ence pe­ri­ods of peace and to sanc­tion war­like prac­tices. The very con­cept of war im­plies some de­gree of or­ga­ni­za­tion.

• instituted social changes and new ideas

70:2.1In past ages a fierce war would in­sti­tute so­cial changes and fa­cil­i­tate the adop­tion of new ideas such as would not have oc­curred nat­u­rally in ten thou­sand years. The ter­ri­ble price paid for these cer­tain war ad­van­tages was that so­ci­ety was tem­porar­ily thrown back into sav­agery; civ­i­lized rea­son had to ab­di­cate. War is strong med­i­cine, very costly and most dan­ger­ous; while of­ten cu­ra­tive of cer­tain so­cial dis­or­ders, it some­times kills the pa­tient, de­stroys the so­ci­ety.

70:2.2The con­stant ne­ces­sity for na­tional de­fense cre­ates many new and ad­vanced so­cial ad­just­ments. So­ci­ety, to­day, en­joys the ben­e­fit of a long list of use­ful in­no­va­tions which were at first wholly mil­i­tary and is even in­debted to war for the dance, one of the early forms of which was a mil­i­tary drill.

70:2.3War has had a so­cial value to past civ­i­liza­tions be­cause it:

70:2.41. Im­posed dis­ci­pline, en­forced co-op­er­a­tion.

70:2.52. Put a pre­mium on for­ti­tude and cour­age.

70:2.63. Fos­tered and so­lid­i­fied na­tion­al­ism.

70:2.74. De­stroyed weak and un­fit peo­ples.

70:2.85. Dis­solved the il­lu­sion of prim­i­tive equal­ity and se­lec­tively strat­i­fied so­ci­ety.

• indispensable scaffolding; now bankrupt, must be abandoned
• instituted social changes and new ideas

70:2.9War has had a cer­tain evo­lu­tion­ary and se­lec­tive value, but like slav­ery, it must some­time be aban­doned as civ­i­liza­tion slowly ad­vances. Olden wars pro­moted travel and cul­tural in­ter­course; these ends are now bet­ter served by mod­ern meth­ods of trans­port and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Olden wars strength­ened na­tions, but mod­ern strug­gles dis­rupt civ­i­lized cul­ture. An­cient war­fare re­sulted in the dec­i­ma­tion of in­fe­rior peo­ples; the net re­sult of mod­ern con­flict is the se­lec­tive de­struc­tion of the best hu­man stocks. Early wars pro­moted or­ga­ni­za­tion and ef­fi­ciency, but these have now be­come the aims of mod­ern in­dus­try. Dur­ing past ages war was a so­cial fer­ment which pushed civ­i­liza­tion for­ward; this re­sult is now bet­ter at­tained by am­bi­tion and in­ven­tion. An­cient war­fare sup­ported the con­cept of a God of bat­tles, but mod­ern man has been told that God is love. War has served many valu­able pur­poses in the past, it has been an in­dis­pens­able scaf­fold­ing in the build­ing of civ­i­liza­tion, but it is rapidly be­com­ing cul­tur­ally bankrupt—in­ca­pable of pro­duc­ing div­i­dends of so­cial gain in any way com­men­su­rate with the ter­ri­ble losses at­ten­dant upon its in­vo­ca­tion.

70:2.10At one time physi­cians be­lieved in blood­let­ting as a cure for many dis­eases, but they have since dis­cov­ered bet­ter reme­dies for most of these dis­or­ders. And so must the in­ter­na­tional blood­let­ting of war cer­tainly give place to the dis­cov­ery of bet­ter meth­ods for cur­ing the ills of na­tions.

70:2.11The na­tions of Uran­tia have al­ready en­tered upon the gi­gan­tic strug­gle be­tween na­tion­al­is­tic mil­i­tarism and in­dus­tri­al­ism, and in many ways this con­flict is anal­o­gous to the age­long strug­gle be­tween the herder-hunter and the farmer. But if in­dus­tri­al­ism is to tri­umph over mil­i­tarism, it must avoid the dan­gers which be­set it. The per­ils of bud­ding in­dus­try on Uran­tia are:

70:2.121. The strong drift to­ward ma­te­ri­al­ism, spir­i­tual blind­ness.

70:2.132. The wor­ship of wealth-power, value dis­tor­tion.

70:2.143. The vices of lux­ury, cul­tural im­ma­tu­rity.

70:2.154. The in­creas­ing dan­gers of in­do­lence, ser­vice in­sen­si­tiv­ity.

70:2.165. The growth of un­de­sir­able racial soft­ness, bi­o­logic de­te­ri­o­ra­tion.

70:2.176. The threat of stan­dard­ized in­dus­trial slav­ery, per­son­al­ity stag­na­tion. La­bor is en­nobling but drudgery is be­numb­ing.

70:2.18Mil­i­tarism is au­to­cratic and cruel—sav­age. It pro­motes so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion among the con­querors but dis­in­te­grates the van­quished. In­dus­tri­al­ism is more civ­i­lized and should be so car­ried on as to pro­mote ini­tia­tive and to en­cour­age in­di­vid­u­al­ism. So­ci­ety should in ev­ery way pos­si­ble fos­ter orig­i­nal­ity.

70:2.19Do not make the mis­take of glo­ri­fy­ing war; rather dis­cern what it has done for so­ci­ety so that you may the more ac­cu­rately vi­su­al­ize what its sub­sti­tutes must pro­vide in or­der to con­tinue the ad­vance­ment of civ­i­liza­tion. And if such ad­e­quate sub­sti­tutes are not pro­vided, then you may be sure that war will long con­tinue.

70:2.20Man will never ac­cept peace as a nor­mal mode of liv­ing un­til he has been thor­oughly and re­peat­edly con­vinced that peace is best for his ma­te­rial wel­fare, and un­til so­ci­ety has wisely pro­vided peace­ful sub­sti­tutes for the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of that in­her­ent ten­dency pe­ri­od­i­cally to let loose a col­lec­tive drive de­signed to lib­er­ate those ever-ac­cu­mu­lat­ing emo­tions and en­er­gies be­long­ing to the self-preser­va­tion re­ac­tions of the hu­man species.

• compelled arrogant individualists to submit to chief executive

70:2.21But even in pass­ing, war should be hon­ored as the school of ex­pe­ri­ence which com­pelled a race of ar­ro­gant in­di­vid­u­al­ists to sub­mit them­selves to highly con­cen­trated au­thor­ity—a chief ex­ec­u­tive. Old-fash­ioned war did se­lect the in­nately great men for lead­er­ship, but mod­ern war no longer does this. To dis­cover lead­ers so­ci­ety must now turn to the con­quests of peace: in­dus­try, sci­ence, and so­cial achieve­ment.

• forced tribal organization onto clans

70:3.3Fam­i­lies be­came united by blood ties in clans, ag­gre­ga­tions of kins­men; and these sub­se­quently evolved into tribes, ter­ri­to­rial com­mu­ni­ties. War­fare and ex­ter­nal pres­sure forced the tribal or­ga­ni­za­tion upon the kin­ship clans, but it was com­merce and trade that held these early and prim­i­tive groups to­gether with some de­gree of in­ter­nal peace.

• early w. spread culture

81:3.7The trav­el­ing trader and the rov­ing ex­plorer did more to ad­vance his­toric civ­i­liza­tion than all other in­flu­ences com­bined. Mil­i­tary con­quests, col­o­niza­tion, and mis­sion­ary en­ter­prises fos­tered by the later re­li­gions were also fac­tors in the spread of cul­ture; but these were all sec­ondary to the trad­ing re­la­tions, which were ever ac­cel­er­ated by the rapidly de­vel­op­ing arts and sci­ences of in­dus­try.

• persists because man evolved from fighting animals
• w. is natural state of evolving man

63:4.9It is im­pos­si­ble to in­duce such prim­i­tive be­ings long to live to­gether in peace. Man is the de­scen­dant of fight­ing an­i­mals, and when closely as­so­ci­ated, un­cul­tured peo­ple ir­ri­tate and of­fend each other. The Life Car­ri­ers know this ten­dency among evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures and ac­cord­ingly make pro­vi­sion for the even­tual sep­a­ra­tion of de­vel­op­ing hu­man be­ings into at least three, and more of­ten six, dis­tinct and sep­a­rate races.

• without help from superhuman sources, society breaks down

68:3.4Hunger and love drove men to­gether; van­ity and ghost fear held them to­gether. But these emo­tions alone, with­out the in­flu­ence of peace-pro­mot­ing rev­e­la­tions, are un­able to en­dure the strain of the sus­pi­cions and ir­ri­ta­tions of hu­man in­teras­so­ci­a­tions. With­out help from super­hu­man sources the strain of so­ci­ety breaks down upon reach­ing cer­tain lim­its, and these very in­flu­ences of so­cial mo­bi­liza­tion—hunger, love, van­ity, and fear—con­spire to plunge man­kind into war and blood­shed.

68:3.5The peace ten­dency of the hu­man race is not a nat­u­ral en­dow­ment; it is de­rived from the teach­ings of re­vealed re­li­gion, from the ac­cu­mu­lated ex­pe­ri­ence of the pro­gres­sive races, but more es­pe­cially from the teach­ings of Je­sus, the Prince of Peace.

• for gain or glory

69:1.31. The in­sti­tu­tions of self-main­te­nance. These in­sti­tu­tions em­brace those prac­tices grow­ing out of food hunger and its as­so­ci­ated in­stincts of self-preser­va­tion. They in­clude in­dus­try, prop­erty, war for gain, and all the reg­u­la­tive ma­chin­ery of so­ci­ety. Sooner or later the fear in­stinct fos­ters the es­tab­lish­ment of these in­sti­tu­tions of sur­vival by means of taboo, con­ven­tion, and re­li­gious sanc­tion. But fear, ig­no­rance, and su­per­sti­tion have played a promi­nent part in the early ori­gin and sub­se­quent de­vel­op­ment of all hu­man in­sti­tu­tions.

• for gain or glory

69:1.53. The in­sti­tu­tions of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. These are the prac­tices grow­ing out of van­ity pro­cliv­i­ties and pride emo­tions; and they em­brace cus­toms in dress and per­sonal adorn­ment, so­cial us­ages, war for glory, danc­ing, amuse­ment, games, and other phases of sen­sual grat­i­fi­ca­tion. But civ­i­liza­tion has never evolved dis­tinc­tive in­sti­tu­tions of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

• earliest w. fought over mineral deposits

69:4.6Mod­ern writ­ing orig­i­nated in the early trade rec­ords; the first lit­er­a­ture of man was a trade-pro­mo­tion doc­u­ment, a salt ad­ver­tise­ment. Many of the ear­lier wars were fought over nat­u­ral de­posits, such as flint, salt, and met­als. The first for­mal tribal treaty con­cerned the in­ter­trib­al­iz­ing of a salt de­posit. These treaty spots af­forded op­por­tu­nity for friendly and peace­ful in­ter­change of ideas and the in­ter­min­gling of var­i­ous tribes.

• w. is natural state of evolving man

70:1.1War is the nat­u­ral state and her­itage of evolv­ing man; peace is the so­cial yard­stick mea­sur­ing civ­i­liza­tion’s ad­vance­ment. Be­fore the par­tial so­cial­iza­tion of the ad­vanc­ing races man was ex­ceed­ingly in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic, ex­tremely sus­pi­cious, and un­be­liev­ably quar­rel­some. Vi­o­lence is the law of na­ture, hos­til­ity the au­to­matic re­ac­tion of the chil­dren of na­ture, while war is but these same ac­tiv­i­ties car­ried on col­lec­tively. And wher­ever and when­ever the fab­ric of civ­i­liza­tion be­comes stressed by the com­pli­ca­tions of so­ci­ety’s ad­vance­ment, there is al­ways an im­me­di­ate and ru­inous re­ver­sion to these early meth­ods of vi­o­lent ad­just­ment of the ir­ri­ta­tions of hu­man in­teras­so­ci­a­tions.

• persists because man evolved from fighting animals

70:1.2War is an an­i­mal­is­tic re­ac­tion to mis­un­der­stand­ings and ir­ri­ta­tions; peace at­tends upon the civ­i­lized so­lu­tion of all such prob­lems and dif­fi­cul­ties. The San­gik races, to­gether with the later de­te­ri­o­rated Adamites and Nod­ites, were all bel­liger­ent. The An­don­ites were early taught the golden rule, and, even to­day, their Es­kimo de­scen­dants live very much by that code; cus­tom is strong among them, and they are fairly free from vi­o­lent an­tag­o­nisms.

70:1.3An­don taught his chil­dren to set­tle dis­putes by each beat­ing a tree with a stick, mean­while curs­ing the tree; the one whose stick broke first was the vic­tor. The later An­don­ites used to set­tle dis­putes by hold­ing a pub­lic show at which the dis­putants made fun of and ridiculed each other, while the au­di­ence de­cided the win­ner by its ap­plause.

70:1.5With the emer­gence of so­cial group­ings, in­di­vid­ual ir­ri­ta­tions be­gan to be sub­merged in the group feel­ings, and this pro­moted in­tra­tribal tran­quil­lity but at the ex­pense of in­ter­tribal peace. Peace was thus first en­joyed by the in-group, or tribe, who al­ways dis­liked and hated the out-group, for­eign­ers. Early man re­garded it a virtue to shed alien blood.

70:1.6But even this did not work at first. When the early chiefs would try to iron out mis­un­der­stand­ings, they of­ten found it nec­es­sary, at least once a year, to per­mit the tribal stone fights. The clan would di­vide up into two groups and en­gage in an all-day bat­tle. And this for no other rea­son than just the fun of it; they re­ally en­joyed fight­ing.

• persists because man evolved from fighting animals

70:1.7War­fare per­sists be­cause man is hu­man, evolved from an an­i­mal, and all an­i­mals are bel­li­cose. Among the early causes of war were:

70:1.81. Hunger, which led to food raids. Scar­city of land has al­ways brought on war, and dur­ing these strug­gles the early peace tribes were prac­ti­cally ex­ter­mi­nated.

70:1.92. Woman scarcity—an at­tempt to re­lieve a short­age of do­mes­tic help. Woman steal­ing has al­ways caused war.

70:1.103. Van­ity—the de­sire to ex­hibit tribal prowess. Su­pe­rior groups would fight to im­pose their mode of life upon in­fe­rior peo­ples.

70:1.114. Slaves—need of re­cruits for the la­bor ranks.

70:1.125. Re­venge was the mo­tive for war when one tribe be­lieved that a neigh­bor­ing tribe had caused the death of a fel­low tribesman. Mourn­ing was con­tin­ued un­til a head was brought home. The war for vengeance was in good stand­ing right on down to com­par­a­tively mod­ern times.

70:1.136. Recre­ation—war was looked upon as recre­ation by the young men of these early times. If no good and suf­fi­cient pre­text for war arose, when peace be­came op­pres­sive, neigh­bor­ing tribes were ac­cus­tomed to go out in semifriendly com­bat to en­gage in a foray as a hol­i­day, to en­joy a sham bat­tle.

70:1.147. Re­li­gion—the de­sire to make con­verts to the cult. The prim­i­tive re­li­gions all sanc­tioned war. Only in re­cent times has re­li­gion be­gun to frown upon war. The early priest­hoods were, un­for­tu­nately, usu­ally al­lied with the mil­i­tary power. One of the great peace moves of the ages has been the at­tempt to sep­a­rate church and state.

70:1.15Al­ways these olden tribes made war at the bid­ding of their gods, at the be­hest of their chiefs or med­i­cine men. The He­brews be­lieved in such a “God of bat­tles”; and the nar­ra­tive of their raid on the Mid­i­an­ites is a typ­i­cal recital of the atro­cious cru­elty of the an­cient tribal wars; this as­sault, with its slaugh­ter of all the males and the later killing of all male chil­dren and all women who were not vir­gins, would have done honor to the mores of a tribal chief­tain of two hun­dred thou­sand years ago. And all this was ex­e­cuted in the “name of the Lord God of Is­rael.”

70:1.16This is a nar­ra­tive of the evo­lu­tion of so­ci­ety—the nat­u­ral out­work­ing of the prob­lems of the races—man work­ing out his own des­tiny on earth. Such atroc­i­ties are not in­sti­gated by De­ity, not­with­stand­ing the ten­dency of man to place the re­spon­si­bil­ity on his gods.

70:1.17Mil­i­tary mercy has been slow in com­ing to man­kind. Even when a woman, Deb­o­rah, ruled the He­brews, the same whole­sale cru­elty per­sisted. Her gen­eral in his vic­tory over the gen­tiles caused “all the host to fall upon the sword; there was not one left.”

70:1.18Very early in the his­tory of the race, poi­soned weapons were used. All sorts of mu­ti­la­tions were prac­ticed. Saul did not hes­i­tate to re­quire one hun­dred Phil­is­tine fore­skins as the dowry David should pay for his daugh­ter Michal.

70:1.19Early wars were fought be­tween tribes as a whole, but in later times, when two in­di­vid­u­als in dif­fer­ent tribes had a dis­pute, in­stead of both tribes fight­ing, the two dis­putants en­gaged in a duel. It also be­came a cus­tom for two armies to stake all on the out­come of a con­test be­tween a rep­re­sen­ta­tive cho­sen from each side, as in the in­stance of David and Go­liath.

70:1.20The first re­fine­ment of war was the tak­ing of pris­on­ers. Next, women were ex­empted from hos­til­i­ties, and then came the rec­og­ni­tion of non­com­bat­ants. Mil­i­tary castes and stand­ing armies soon de­vel­oped to keep pace with the in­creas­ing com­plex­ity of com­bat. Such war­riors were early pro­hib­ited from as­so­ci­at­ing with women, and women long ago ceased to fight, though they have al­ways fed and nursed the sol­diers and urged them on to bat­tle.

70:1.21The prac­tice of declar­ing war rep­re­sented great prog­ress. Such dec­la­ra­tions of in­ten­tion to fight be­to­kened the ar­rival of a sense of fair­ness, and this was fol­lowed by the grad­ual de­vel­op­ment of the rules of “civ­i­lized” war­fare. Very early it be­came the cus­tom not to fight near re­li­gious sites and, still later, not to fight on cer­tain holy days. Next came the gen­eral rec­og­ni­tion of the right of asy­lum; po­lit­i­cal fugi­tives re­ceived pro­tec­tion.

70:1.22Thus did war­fare grad­u­ally evolve from the prim­i­tive man hunt to the some­what more or­derly sys­tem of the later-day “civ­i­lized” na­tions. But only slowly does the so­cial at­ti­tude of amity dis­place that of en­mity.

• chiefs not fond of peace

70:5.6At first the war chiefs were cho­sen only for mil­i­tary ser­vice, and they would re­lin­quish some of their au­thor­ity dur­ing peace­times, when their du­ties were of a more so­cial na­ture. But grad­u­ally they be­gan to en­croach upon the peace in­ter­vals, tend­ing to con­tinue to rule from one war on through to the next. They of­ten saw to it that one war was not too long in fol­low­ing an­other. These early war lords were not fond of peace.

70:5.7In later times some chiefs were cho­sen for other than mil­i­tary ser­vice, be­ing se­lected be­cause of un­usual physique or out­stand­ing per­sonal abil­i­ties. The red men of­ten had two sets of chiefs—the sachems, or peace chiefs, and the hered­i­tary war chiefs. The peace rulers were also judges and teach­ers.

• early administrations only changed by civil w.

70:7.17These so­ci­eties gave rise to the first po­lit­i­cal par­ties. The first party gov­ern­ment was “the strong” vs. “the weak.” In an­cient times a change of ad­min­is­tra­tion only fol­lowed civil war, abun­dant proof that the weak had be­come strong.

• overpopulation

81:6.12You are some­times shocked at the rav­ages of war, but you should rec­og­nize the ne­ces­sity for pro­duc­ing large num­bers of mor­tals so as to af­ford am­ple op­por­tu­nity for so­cial and moral de­vel­op­ment; with such plan­e­tary fer­til­ity there soon oc­curs the se­ri­ous prob­lem of over­pop­u­la­tion. Most of the in­hab­ited worlds are small. Uran­tia is av­er­age, per­haps a tri­fle un­der­sized. The op­ti­mum sta­bi­liza­tion of na­tional pop­u­la­tion en­hances cul­ture and pre­vents war. And it is a wise na­tion which knows when to cease grow­ing.

• absence of ideals on part of national leaders

111:4.10Ideas may take ori­gin in the stim­uli of the outer world, but ide­als are born only in the cre­ative realms of the in­ner world. To­day the na­tions of the world are di­rected by men who have a super­abun­dance of ideas, but they are pov­erty-stricken in ide­als. That is the ex­pla­na­tion of pov­erty, di­vorce, war, and racial ha­treds.

• symptom of disease of national sovereignty

134:5.2War on Uran­tia will never end so long as na­tions cling to the il­lu­sive no­tions of un­lim­ited na­tional sov­er­eignty. There are only two lev­els of rel­a­tive sov­er­eignty on an in­hab­ited world: the spir­i­tual free will of the in­di­vid­ual mor­tal and the col­lec­tive sov­er­eignty of man­kind as a whole. Be­tween the level of the in­di­vid­ual hu­man be­ing and the level of the to­tal of man­kind, all group­ings and as­so­ci­a­tions are rel­a­tive, tran­si­tory, and of value only in so far as they en­hance the wel­fare, well-be­ing, and prog­ress of the in­di­vid­ual and the plan­e­tary grand to­tal—man and man­kind.

• symptom of disease of national sovereignty

134:5.7As sov­er­eignty passes from smaller groups to larger groups, wars are less­ened. That is, mi­nor wars be­tween smaller na­tions are less­ened, but the po­ten­tial for greater wars is in­creased as the na­tions wield­ing sov­er­eignty be­come larger and larger. Pres­ently, when all the world has been ex­plored and oc­cu­pied, when na­tions are few, strong, and pow­er­ful, when these great and sup­pos­edly sov­er­eign na­tions come to touch bor­ders, when only oceans sep­a­rate them, then will the stage be set for ma­jor wars, world-wide con­flicts. So-called sov­er­eign na­tions can­not rub el­bows with­out gen­er­at­ing con­flicts and even­tu­at­ing wars.

• symptom of disease of national sovereignty

134:5.10Uran­tia will not en­joy last­ing peace un­til the so-called sov­er­eign na­tions in­tel­li­gently and fully sur­ren­der their sov­er­eign pow­ers into the hands of the broth­er­hood of men—man­kind gov­ern­ment. In­ter­na­tion­al­ism—Leagues of Na­tions—can never bring per­ma­nent peace to man­kind. World-wide con­fed­er­a­tions of na­tions will ef­fec­tively pre­vent mi­nor wars and ac­cept­ably con­trol the smaller na­tions, but they will not pre­vent world wars nor con­trol the three, four, or five most pow­er­ful gov­ern­ments. In the face of real con­flicts, one of these world pow­ers will with­draw from the League and de­clare war. You can­not pre­vent na­tions go­ing to war as long as they re­main in­fected with the delu­sional virus of na­tional sov­er­eignty. In­ter­na­tion­al­ism is a step in the right di­rec­tion. An in­ter­na­tional po­lice force will pre­vent many mi­nor wars, but it will not be ef­fec­tive in pre­vent­ing ma­jor wars, con­flicts be­tween the great mil­i­tary gov­ern­ments of earth.

• symptom of disease of national sovereignty

134:6.6It is not a ques­tion of ar­ma­ments or dis­ar­ma­ment. Nei­ther does the ques­tion of con­scrip­tion or vol­un­tary mil­i­tary ser­vice en­ter into these prob­lems of main­tain­ing world-wide peace. If you take ev­ery form of mod­ern me­chan­i­cal ar­ma­ments and all types of ex­plo­sives away from strong na­tions, they will fight with fists, stones, and clubs as long as they cling to their delu­sions of the di­vine right of na­tional sov­er­eignty.

134:6.7War is not man’s great and ter­ri­ble dis­ease; war is a symp­tom, a re­sult. The real dis­ease is the virus of na­tional sov­er­eignty.

• self-assertiveness

194:3.18Pen­te­cost was de­signed to lessen the self-as­sertive­ness of in­di­vid­u­als, groups, na­tions, and races. It is this spirit of self-as­sertive­ness which so in­creases in ten­sion that it pe­ri­od­i­cally breaks loose in de­struc­tive wars. Man­kind can be uni­fied only by the spir­i­tual ap­proach, and the Spirit of Truth is a world in­flu­ence which is uni­ver­sal.

• secularism

195:8.5Ma­te­ri­al­ism de­nies God, sec­u­lar­ism sim­ply ig­nores him; at least that was the ear­lier at­ti­tude. More re­cently, sec­u­lar­ism has as­sumed a more mil­i­tant at­ti­tude, as­sum­ing to take the place of the re­li­gion whose to­tal­i­tar­ian bond­age it one­time re­sisted. Twen­ti­eth-cen­tury sec­u­lar­ism tends to af­firm that man does not need God. But be­ware! this god­less phi­los­o­phy of hu­man so­ci­ety will lead only to un­rest, an­i­mos­ity, un­hap­pi­ness, war, and world-wide dis­as­ter.

71:5.1Com­pe­ti­tion is es­sen­tial to so­cial prog­ress, but com­pe­ti­tion, un­reg­u­lated, breeds vi­o­lence. In cur­rent so­ci­ety, com­pe­ti­tion is slowly dis­plac­ing war in that it de­ter­mines the in­di­vid­ual’s place in in­dus­try, as well as de­cree­ing the sur­vival of the in­dus­tries them­selves. (Mur­der and war dif­fer in their sta­tus be­fore the mores, mur­der hav­ing been out­lawed since the early days of so­ci­ety, while war has never yet been out­lawed by man­kind as a whole.)

• great handicap confronting Urantia

55:3.21The great hand­i­cap con­fronting Uran­tia in the mat­ter of at­tain­ing the high plan­e­tary des­tiny of light and life is em­braced in the prob­lems of dis­ease, de­gen­er­acy, war, mul­ti­col­ored races, and mul­ti­lin­gual­ism.

• will become almost suicidal

134:5.17With sci­en­tific prog­ress, wars are go­ing to be­come more and more dev­as­tat­ing un­til they be­come al­most racially sui­ci­dal. How many world wars must be fought and how many leagues of na­tions must fail be­fore men will be will­ing to es­tab­lish the gov­ern­ment of man­kind and be­gin to en­joy the bless­ings of per­ma­nent peace and thrive on the tran­quil­lity of good will—world-wide good will—among men?

• all participants met with defeat

194:3.12Pen­te­cost en­dowed mor­tal man with the power to for­give per­sonal in­juries, to keep sweet in the midst of the gravest in­jus­tice, to re­main un­moved in the face of ap­palling dan­ger, and to chal­lenge the evils of hate and anger by the fear­less acts of love and for­bear­ance. Uran­tia has passed through the rav­ages of great and de­struc­tive wars in its his­tory. All par­tic­i­pants in these ter­ri­ble strug­gles met with de­feat. There was but one vic­tor; there was only one who came out of these em­bit­tered strug­gles with an en­hanced rep­u­ta­tion—that was Je­sus of Naz­a­reth and his gospel of over­com­ing evil with good. The se­cret of a bet­ter civ­i­liza­tion is bound up in the Mas­ter’s teach­ings of the broth­er­hood of man, the good will of love and mu­tual trust.

• more killed 1900–1933 than since Jesus’ day
• more terrible destruction yet to come

195:8.13The com­plete sec­u­lar­iza­tion of sci­ence, ed­u­ca­tion, in­dus­try, and so­ci­ety can lead only to dis­as­ter. Dur­ing the first third of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury Uran­tians killed more hu­man be­ings than were killed dur­ing the whole of the Chris­tian dis­pen­sa­tion up to that time. And this is only the be­gin­ning of the dire har­vest of ma­te­ri­al­ism and sec­u­lar­ism; still more ter­ri­ble de­struc­tion is yet to come.

54:1.10Evo­lu­tion­ary man may have to con­tend for his ma­te­rial lib­er­ties with tyrants and op­pres­sors on a world of sin and in­iq­uity or dur­ing the early times of a prim­i­tive evolv­ing sphere, but not so on the mor­ontia worlds or on the spirit spheres. War is the her­itage of early evo­lu­tion­ary man, but on worlds of nor­mal ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion phys­i­cal com­bat as a tech­nique of ad­just­ing racial mis­un­der­stand­ings has long since fallen into dis­re­pute.

69:8.2Not long ago en­slave­ment was the lot of those mil­i­tary cap­tives who re­fused to ac­cept the con­queror’s re­li­gion. In ear­lier times cap­tives were ei­ther eaten, tor­tured to death, set to fight­ing each other, sac­ri­ficed to spir­its, or en­slaved. Slav­ery was a great ad­vance­ment over mas­sacre and can­ni­bal­ism.

69:8.3En­slave­ment was a for­ward step in the mer­ci­ful treat­ment of war cap­tives. The am­bush of Ai, with the whole­sale slaugh­ter of men, women, and chil­dren, only the king be­ing saved to grat­ify the con­queror’s van­ity, is a faith­ful pic­ture of the bar­baric slaugh­ter prac­ticed by even sup­pos­edly civ­i­lized peo­ples. The raid upon Og, the king of Bashan, was equally bru­tal and ef­fec­tive. The He­brews “ut­terly de­stroyed” their en­e­mies, tak­ing all their prop­erty as spoils. They put all cities un­der trib­ute on pain of the “de­struc­tion of all males.” But many of the con­tem­po­rary tribes, those hav­ing less tribal ego­tism, had long since be­gun to prac­tice the adop­tion of su­pe­rior cap­tives.

52:6.64. Po­lit­i­cal wis­dom. Emo­tional ma­tu­rity is es­sen­tial to self-con­trol. Only emo­tional ma­tu­rity will in­sure the sub­sti­tu­tion of in­ter­na­tional tech­niques of civ­i­lized ad­ju­di­ca­tion for the bar­barous ar­bitra­ment of war. Wise states­men will some­time work for the wel­fare of hu­man­ity even while they strive to pro­mote the in­ter­est of their na­tional or racial groups. Self­ish po­lit­i­cal sagac­ity is ul­ti­mately sui­ci­dal—de­struc­tive of all those en­dur­ing qual­i­ties which in­sure plan­e­tary group sur­vival.

71:8.1311. The end­ing of war—in­ter­na­tional ad­ju­di­ca­tion of na­tional and racial dif­fer­ences by con­ti­nen­tal courts of na­tions pre­sided over by a su­preme plan­e­tary tri­bu­nal au­to­mat­i­cally re­cruited from the pe­ri­od­i­cally re­tir­ing heads of the con­ti­nen­tal courts. The con­ti­nen­tal courts are au­thor­i­ta­tive; the world court is ad­vi­sory—moral.

79:8.1While the red man suf­fered from too much war­fare, it is not al­to­gether amiss to say that the de­vel­op­ment of state­hood among the Chi­nese was de­layed by the thor­ough­ness of their con­quest of Asia. They had a great po­ten­tial of racial sol­i­dar­ity, but it failed prop­erly to de­velop be­cause the con­tin­u­ous driv­ing stim­u­lus of the ever-pres­ent dan­ger of ex­ter­nal ag­gres­sion was lack­ing.

79:8.2With the com­ple­tion of the con­quest of east­ern Asia the an­cient mil­i­tary state grad­u­ally dis­in­te­grated—past wars were for­got­ten. Of the epic strug­gle with the red race there per­sisted only the hazy tra­di­tion of an an­cient con­test with the archer peo­ples. The Chi­nese early turned to ag­ri­cul­tural pur­suits, which con­tributed fur­ther to their pa­cific ten­den­cies, while a pop­u­la­tion well be­low the land-man ra­tio for agri­cul­ture still fur­ther con­tributed to the grow­ing peace­ful­ness of the coun­try.

79:8.5Be­tween 4000 and 500 B.C. the po­lit­i­cal re­uni­fi­ca­tion of the yel­low race was con­sum­mated, but the cul­tural union of the Yangtze and Yel­low river cen­ters had al­ready been ef­fected. This po­lit­i­cal re­uni­fi­ca­tion of the later tribal groups was not with­out con­flict, but the so­ci­etal opin­ion of war re­mained low; an­ces­tor wor­ship, in­creas­ing di­alects, and no call for mil­i­tary ac­tion for thou­sands upon thou­sands of years had ren­dered this peo­ple ul­tra­peace­ful.

62:3.4When the num­bers of this new and su­pe­rior group grew great, war, re­lent­less war, broke out; and when the ter­ri­ble strug­gle was over, not a sin­gle in­di­vid­ual of the pre-ex­is­tent and an­ces­tral race of dawn mam­mals re­mained alive. The less nu­mer­ous but more pow­er­ful and in­tel­li­gent off­shoot of the species had sur­vived at the ex­pense of their an­ces­tors.

55:5.4War has be­come a mat­ter of his­tory, and there are no more armies or po­lice forces. Gov­ern­ment is grad­u­ally dis­ap­pear­ing. Self-con­trol is slowly ren­der­ing laws of hu­man en­act­ment ob­so­lete. The ex­tent of civil gov­ern­ment and statu­tory reg­u­la­tion, in an in­ter­me­di­ate state of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion, is in in­verse pro­por­tion to the moral­ity and spir­i­tu­al­ity of the cit­i­zen­ship.

72:7.7The fed­eral gov­ern­ment can­not go in debt, and a three-fourths ref­er­en­dum is re­quired be­fore any state can bor­row ex­cept for pur­poses of war. Since the fed­eral gov­ern­ment can­not in­cur debt, in the event of war the Na­tional Coun­cil of De­fense is em­pow­ered to as­sess the states for money, as well as for men and ma­te­ri­als, as it may be re­quired. But no debt may run for more than twenty-five years.

72:7.14Fed­eral ap­pro­pri­a­tions, ex­cept war funds as­sessed by the Na­tional Coun­cil of De­fense, are orig­i­nated in the up­per leg­isla­tive house, con­curred in by the lower house, ap­proved by the chief ex­ec­u­tive, and fi­nally val­i­dated by the fed­eral bud­get com­mis­sion of one hun­dred. The mem­bers of this com­mis­sion are nom­i­nated by the state gov­er­nors and elected by the state leg­is­la­tures to serve for twenty-four years, one quar­ter be­ing elected ev­ery six years. Ev­ery six years this body, by a three-fourths bal­lot, chooses one of its num­ber as chief, and he thereby be­comes di­rec­tor-con­trol­ler of the fed­eral trea­sury.

72:11.4Al­though these peo­ple main­tain a pow­er­ful war es­tab­lish­ment as a de­fense against in­va­sion by the sur­round­ing hos­tile peo­ples, it may be re­corded to their credit that they have not in over one hun­dred years em­ployed these mil­i­tary re­sources in an of­fen­sive war. They have be­come civ­i­lized to that point where they can vig­or­ously de­fend civ­i­liza­tion with­out yield­ing to the temp­ta­tion to uti­lize their war pow­ers in ag­gres­sion. There have been no civil wars since the es­tab­lish­ment of the united con­ti­nen­tal state, but dur­ing the last two cen­turies these peo­ple have been called upon to wage nine fierce de­fen­sive con­flicts, three of which were against mighty con­fed­er­a­tions of world pow­ers. Al­though this na­tion main­tains ad­e­quate de­fense against at­tack by hos­tile neigh­bors, it pays far more at­ten­tion to the train­ing of states­men, sci­en­tists, and philoso­phers.

72:11.5When at peace with the world, all mo­bile de­fense mech­a­nisms are quite fully em­ployed in trade, com­merce, and recre­ation. When war is de­clared, the en­tire na­tion is mo­bi­lized. Through­out the pe­riod of hos­til­i­ties mil­i­tary pay ob­tains in all in­dus­tries, and the chiefs of all mil­i­tary de­part­ments be­come mem­bers of the chief ex­ec­u­tive’s cab­i­net.

66:5.30Tut and his as­so­ciates la­bored to pro­mote group as­so­ci­a­tions of a peace­ful na­ture, to reg­u­late and hu­man­ize war­fare, to co-or­di­nate in­ter­tribal re­la­tions, and to im­prove tribal gov­ern­ments. In the vicin­ity of Dala­ma­tia there de­vel­oped a more ad­vanced cul­ture, and these im­proved so­cial re­la­tions were very help­ful in in­flu­enc­ing more re­mote tribes. But the pat­tern of civ­i­liza­tion pre­vail­ing at the Prince’s head­quar­ters was quite dif­fer­ent from the bar­baric so­ci­ety evolv­ing else­where, just as the twen­ti­eth-cen­tury so­ci­ety of Capetown, South Africa, is to­tally un­like the crude cul­ture of the diminu­tive Bush­men to the north.

99:3.8There is al­ways the great dan­ger that re­li­gion will be­come dis­torted and per­verted into the pur­suit of false goals, as when in times of war each con­tend­ing na­tion pros­ti­tutes its re­li­gion into mil­i­tary pro­pa­ganda. Love­less zeal is al­ways harm­ful to re­li­gion, while per­se­cu­tion di­verts the ac­tiv­i­ties of re­li­gion into the achieve­ment of some so­ci­o­logic or the­o­logic drive.

70:3.4The peace of Uran­tia will be pro­moted far more by in­ter­na­tional trade or­ga­ni­za­tions than by all the sen­ti­men­tal soph­istry of vi­sion­ary peace plan­ning. Trade re­la­tions have been fa­cil­i­tated by de­vel­op­ment of lan­guage and by im­proved meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion as well as by bet­ter trans­porta­tion.

69:3.74. Mas­ter and slave. The next dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of la­bor grew out of the re­la­tions of the con­queror to the con­quered, and that meant the be­gin­ning of hu­man slav­ery.

69:8.1Prim­i­tive man never hes­i­tated to en­slave his fel­lows. Woman was the first slave, a fam­ily slave. Pas­toral man en­slaved woman as his in­fe­rior sex part­ner. This sort of sex slav­ery grew di­rectly out of man’s de­creased de­pen­dence upon woman.

69:8.4The hunter, like the Amer­i­can red man, did not en­slave. He ei­ther adopted or killed his cap­tives. Slav­ery was not preva­lent among the pas­toral peo­ples, for they needed few la­bor­ers. In war the herders made a prac­tice of killing all men cap­tives and tak­ing as slaves only the women and chil­dren. The Mo­saic code con­tained spe­cific di­rec­tions for mak­ing wives of these women cap­tives. If not sat­is­fac­tory, they could be sent away, but the He­brews were not al­lowed to sell such re­jected con­sorts as slaves—that was at least one ad­vance in civ­i­liza­tion. Though the so­cial stan­dards of the He­brews were crude, they were far above those of the sur­round­ing tribes.

70:8.53. Chance—war and em­i­gra­tion re­sulted in the sep­a­rat­ing of hu­man groups. Class evo­lu­tion was pow­er­fully in­flu­enced by con­quest, the re­la­tion of the vic­tor to the van­quished, while slav­ery brought about the first gen­eral di­vi­sion of so­ci­ety into free and bond.

121:3.7Slav­ery, even of su­pe­rior peo­ples, was a fea­ture of Ro­man mil­i­tary con­quest. The power of the mas­ter over his slave was un­qual­i­fied. The early Chris­tian church was largely com­posed of the lower classes and these slaves.