New Definition Of Peace Asked For by Hartz

Peace can be achieved only if the world will minimize its conflicts rather than seek to abolish them altogether, Louis Hartz '40, assistant professor of Government, told a V-J Day anniversary gathering last night in Emerson D.

Speaking to a meeting sponsored by the local AVC chapter, Hartz said that a redefinition of the "whole concept of peace" is needed if war is ever to be averted.

"Peace has always been a thing of regional tension, of compromise, and of constant insecurity," the speaker declared. "The world has never been unified."

Issues are simplified in war, according to Hartz, and "aggression is released." But peace "involves the sense of restraint and achievement."

Most desperation of the world stems from the fact that people have the wrong idea of what can be achieved, Hartz claimed. If they would realize that diversity must exist and cannot be abolished, they would be able to plan more effectively for means other than war to settle differences when they arise.

Declaring at the outset that "now is no time for onward and upward speeches," Hartz compared the two years since V-J Day to the days of the 1920s which followed World War I. He said that the same misunderstanding of the real meaning of peace that existed then prevails today.

"The democratic approach to problems of peace is one which refuses to think in terms of these old absolute Images," he said. "It recognizes that the solutions are always going to have ragged edges and will not always be entirely satisfactory to all people."

The Reverend Morris F. Arnold, rector of Grace Church, Medford, delivered the invocation.