Peace

Abstract

It is not the purpose of this study to lay down the international law. New codes of international behaviour can be formulated only through the collective procedures available for that purpose within international organisations. All that can be shown here is that new norms of conduct are required: that the laws of Grotius can no more cater for the types of international crime now favoured than the statutes of Charles I’s day could provide against the delinquencies favoured in twentieth-century Britain. New taboos must be related to the forms of social intercourse which prevail. They must consider the way nations do, as well as the way the should, behave. If attempts to create a more peaceful international system are to be successful, therefore, the same techniques may need to be applied to the study of the behaviour of nations as are applied to that of individuals There is no branch of sociology so important to mankind as the study of the psychology and social habits of nations, and none that has been so neglected. Yet without some such attempt, many of the efforts made to pacify the self-destructive urges of nations will fail in their purpose.