persistent conference for the adjustment of our differences, the cessation of
hostilities and subversion, and the reduction of our armaments. Wherever,
outside our borders, we may find ourselves competing with you for the
allegiance of a people, we are willing to submit to a full and fair election of
the population concerned. Let us open our doors to each other, and organize
cultural exchanges that will promote mutual appreciation and
understanding. We are not afraid that your economic system will displace
ours, nor need you fear that ours will displace yours; we believe that each
system will learn from the other and be able to live with it in co-operation
and peace. Perhaps each of us, while maintaining adequate defenses, can
arrange nonaggression and nonsubversion pacts with other states, and from
these accords a world order may take form within which each nation will
remain sovereign and unique, limited only by agreements freely signed. We
ask you to join us in this defiance of history, this resolve to extend courtesy
and civilization to the relations among states. We pledge our honor before
all mankind to enter into this venture in full sincerity and trust. If we lose in
the historic gamble, the results could not be worse than those that we may
expect from a continuation of traditional policies. If you and we succeed,
we shall merit a place for centuries to come in the grateful memory of
mankind.”
The general smiles. “You have forgotten all the lessons of history,” he
says, “and all that nature of man which you described. Some conflicts are
too fundamental to be resolved by negotiation; and during the prolonged
negotiations (if history may be our guide) subversion would go on. A world
order will come not by a gentlemen’s agreement, but through so decisive a
victory by one of the great powers that it will be able to dictate and enforce
international law, as Rome did from Augustus to Aurelius. Such interludes
of widespread peace are unnatural and exceptional; they will soon be ended
by changes in the distribution of military power. You have told us that man
is a competitive animal, that his states must be like himself, and that natural
selection now operates on an international plane. States will unite in basic
