Error Prevents World Organization 113 



even result in death. It is because the nations 

 believe that exploitation by means of military 

 power, aggressively used, is an effective method 

 of promoting national welfare that they refuse to 

 give up their sovereignty, — i.e., right to attack 

 each other on any occasion whatever, — and to 

 establish the federation of the entire human race. 

 The dissociation of mankind, therefore, is due to 

 error. But error cannot be eternal. Truth once 

 discovered makes its way irresistibly until it is 

 victorious. After Copernicus had discovered that 

 the earth revolved around the sun, not all the 

 forces of reaction, of persecution, of supersti- 

 tion, or of an obscurantist theology could prevent 

 the intellectual revolution which established this 

 truth in the minds of men. The great war has 

 demonstrated on a colossal scale that error means 

 death, that military force cannot be successfully 

 used for aggression in the modern world, that the 

 system of international anarchy, based upon 

 national banditism and exploitation, is disastrous 

 to the people of the nations which live under that 

 system. With the results of error so plainly 

 visible, it is only a question of time when the 

 truth will be recognized, that justice, not force 

 and exploitation, is the great secret of the expan- 

 sion of life. It is the realization of the connection 

 between the errors in the minds of men, and the 

 social disease and death which result from these 

 errors, which lies at the foundation of the great 

 prophecy of hope, "the truth shall make you free." 



8 



