Page 37 - All India Magazine Oct-2025
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World-tate
This consummation would mark definitely the creation of a
World-State in place of the present international conditions. For
it can be brought into truly effective existence only if the interna-
tional authority became, not merely the arbiter of disputes, but
the source of law and the final power behind their execution. For
the execution of its decrees against recalcitrant countries or class-
es, for the prevention of all kinds of strife not merely political but
commercial, industrial and others or at least of their decision by
any other ways than a peaceful resort to law and arbitration, for
the suppression of any attempt at violent change and revolution,
the World-State, even at its strongest, would still need the con-
centration of all force in its own hands. While man remains what
he is, force in spite of all idealisms and generous pacific hopes
must remain the ultimate arbiter and governor of his life and its
possessor the real ruler. Force may veil its crude presence at ordi-
nary times and take only mild and civilised forms, — mild in com-
parison, for are not the jail and the executioner still the two great
pillars of the social order? — but it is there silently upholding the
specious appearances of our civilisation and ready to intervene,
whenever called upon, in the workings of the fairer but still feebler
gods of the social cosmos. Diffused, force fulfils the free work-
ings of Nature and is the servant of life but also of discord and
struggle; concentrated, it becomes the guarantee of organisation
and the bond of order.
CWSA 25: 483-84
Abolition of war
War can only be abolished if national armies are abolished
and even then with difficulty, by the development of some other
machinery which humanity does not yet know how to form or,
even if formed, will not for some time be able or willing perfectly
to utilise. And there is no chance of national armies being abol-
All India Magazine, October 2025 37