The Anatomy of Peace

“Open Letter to the American People”, signed by Owen J. Roberts, J.W. Fulbright, Claude Pepper, Elbert D. Thomas, and other dignitaries:

“The first atomic bomb destroyed more than the city of Hiroshima. It also exploded our inherited, outdated political ideas.

“A few days before the force of Nature was tried out for the first time in history, the San Francisco Charter was ratified in Washington. The dream of a League of Nations, after 26 years, was accepted by the Senate.

“How long will the United Nations Charter endure? With luck, a generation? A century? There is no one who does not hope for at least that much luck- for the Charter, for himself, for his work, and for his children’s children. But is it enough to have Peace by Luck? Peace by Law is what the peoples of the world, beginning with our selves, can have if they want it. And now is the time to get it.”

The Anatomy of Peace by Emery Reves, first published in 1945, is a book that expressed the world federalist sentiments shared by Albert Einstein and many others in the late 1940s, in the period immediately following World War II.

Reves argued that world law was the only way to prevent war, and the fledgling United Nations Security Council would be inadequate to preserve peace because it was an instrument of power, rather than an instrument of law.

“I have read THE ANATOMY OF PEACE with the greatest admiration. Your book is, in my opinion, the answer to the present political problems of the world, so drastically precipitated by the release of atomic energy.

“It would be most desirable if every political and scientific leader in every country would take a little time to read this book. If this could be brought about, I feel it might avert the disaster of an atomic world war.”—Letter from Albert Einstein to Emery Reves dated October 29, 1945.