The Soil of Peace

I cannot responsibly write a description of this work. I do not have reliable documentation of Douglas Steere's 1946 essay The Soil of Peace: its original place of publication, the occasion that prompted it, or the shape of its argument. The rules for this library require that a fact be concrete or absent, and any account of what the essay claims, or of the situation that called it forth, would have to be reconstructed from the title and from what I know of Steere's wider career rather than from the text itself. That would be invention presented as description.

What can be said with confidence is limited. Douglas V. Steere was an American Quaker philosopher who taught at Haverford College and was a prominent voice in twentieth-century devotional and ecumenical writing. He wrote in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, when questions of what could sustain peace beyond treaties and institutions were pressing, and the title suggests an argument that peace grows from an inner and communal ground rather than from political arrangement alone. That is an inference from the title, however, and not a documented account of the essay's moves.

Who should read this: no recommendation can be made until the essay has been read against a verified copy and its argument confirmed. A description of this work should be written by someone with the text in hand, or drawn from a reputable reference work on Steere or Quaker spiritual writing, and not from this note.