ABSTRACT
The authors tend to console themselves in distracted times with the reflection that their trouble cannot last; that the enemies of democratic humanism are doomed by the constellation of historic forces; that the dictators of today must crash as the dictators of the past have inevitably crashed. The authors write works on the Greek tyrants and Caesar and Genghis and Napoleon to reinforce the moral, and they point to the patent impossibility that the ethic of the knuckle-duster and the bludgeon will finally triumph. But the need for survival should not mean a case of democratic jitters. For our generation the question of war and peace is mainly relevant because it sets the framework of our other activities. A precipitous war, engulfing the world, will engross the energies that might have gone into the task of democratic construction. Even a war or a peace that resulted in a democratic triumph would be in itself no social solution.
