178 Declining Effectiveness of Force 



armament as the consecration of force for the 

 maintenance of justice, order, and peace. But 

 this is just what armament is not. Its activities 

 are confined almost entirely to defence and attack. 

 We do not speak of a mining town, with no central 

 authority for maintaining order, and with every 

 inhabitant — gamblers, thieves, and good citizens 

 alike, armed to the teeth and shooting at sight, 

 as having a very high degree of justice, order, and 

 peace, although there is armament enough and to 

 spare. This is the present condition of anarchy 

 in international relations, with no strong central 

 authority to enforce order, and armament con- 

 fined to the functions of national attack and 

 defence. 



It is easy to show that the whole problem of the 

 use of force in human relations centres about the 

 first kind of physical force — aggression. Aggres- 

 sion is the form in which physical force first makes 

 its appearance in human relations, and it calls 

 forth in turn defensive force and police force. 

 If there were no danger of aggression, of course 

 there would be no necessity for defence. Inci- 

 dentally, it is worth noting that from this point 

 of view, all effort which tends to remove the 

 motives for aggression is to be considered as a 

 work of defence. And when the futility of using 

 physical force for aggression becomes apparent 

 to a community which is sufficiently intelligent to 

 organize a co-operative effort, a division of labour 

 results and the function of defence is delegated 



