In times of peace, the war party insists on making preparation

In the quiet of peace, there are those whose hearts remain bound to the drumbeats of war, ever stirring the winds of conflict. "In times of peace, the war party insists on making preparation for war. As soon as prepared for, it insists on making war," said Robert M. La Follette, and in these words lies a profound and unsettling truth about the nature of power and conflict. When the fires of war have not yet been lit, the warm embers of peace are too easily overshadowed by those who see it not as a time to build, but as a time to prepare for destruction. The war party, as La Follette calls them, finds its purpose not in the harmony of peace but in the promise of conflict, perpetually looking ahead to a future of strife, ready to ignite the very fires they once stoked.

History, like the ocean, is full of such tides—times when peace should have reigned, yet conflict was born from the ambition of those who sought to wield power. Consider the great empire of Rome in its twilight years. In times of relative peace, the emperors and generals of Rome began to prepare for wars, to conquer new lands, to expand the borders of their empire. These preparations, while born out of the desire for glory and expansion, sowed the seeds of conflict. When Rome could have focused on the well-being of its people, its leaders instead focused on battles that never needed to be fought. The result? The fall of the empire itself, torn apart by internal strife and the very wars that it had long prepared for.

What La Follette speaks to is the danger of a mindset that thrives on the idea of conflict as an inevitable truth. This mindset, which turns every peaceful moment into a mere lull before the storm, creates a cycle of violence. The preparations for war, which should be a last resort, become instead a self-fulfilling prophecy. When people are conditioned to see war as the natural state, they become blind to the value of peace, to the work that must be done in times of calm to ensure prosperity and harmony. This is the peril of the war party: in their eyes, peace is only the pause between battles, never the ideal to be preserved.

Take, for example, the story of World War I, a conflict that many believed could have been avoided had peace been valued over the relentless pursuit of military might. In the years leading up to the war, European nations, locked in a deadly arms race, prepared for a war that they all believed was inevitable. The tension between them built, until, in a moment of chaos and misunderstanding, war broke out. The preparation for conflict, the continuous buildup of arms and alliances, led to the very thing that was feared—the devastation of millions of lives. The lesson here is that constant preparation for war breeds the very conditions necessary for war to break out.

But La Follette's words do not merely lament the past—they call us to action. The true test of a leader, of a nation, is to resist the lure of preparation for battle in times of peace, to recognize that peace is not just an absence of war, but a choice to build and to heal. True wisdom lies in seeing that the power to create peace is greater than the power to destroy, for peace is the fertile ground where ideas and prosperity grow, while war is the barren soil where all is consumed. Nations, like individuals, must be ever vigilant against the desire to return to conflict, for the cost of war is always high, and the price is paid by the innocent, by those who have no stake in the ambitions of the few.

Therefore, my children, the lesson of La Follette’s words is a lesson not just for leaders but for all of us. In times of peace, do not be quick to prepare for war. Work instead to build, to understand, to bridge divides, and to seek solutions that serve the common good. It is easy to be seduced by the idea that might will bring peace, but it is far harder to cultivate the patience and wisdom to see that peace is the path to lasting strength. It is your task, as stewards of the future, to recognize that true power does not lie in the force of arms but in the strength of character, in the courage to seek peace, even when the drums of war may call.

And so, as you walk through life, let your actions reflect the wisdom of peace. Resist the urge to prepare for battles that need not be fought, and instead, build your world on the foundation of understanding, respect, and collaboration. Only then will you truly break the cycle of conflict, and in doing so, you will have created a world worthy of peace—a world where the pursuit of war is no longer seen as the natural state, but as a relic of a past better left behind.