A Persuasion, Authority, and Fo

We have heard much of such words as arbitration, negotiation, conciliation. They are technical terms, with many shades of meaning. But their over-all sense, in public procedure, implies the settling of differences without physical force. But something similar may also be needed in dissolving private difficulties, both with children and with adults. There are many ways of handling children even as there are many ways of handling grown men. We can use love, kindness, patience, persuasion, reason, authority or force. And sometimes a combination of almost all of them is needed. Both children and adults respond to these various methods in about the same way. And some measure of authority and physical persuasion cannot always be avoided. Certainly we cannot forever wait for an obdurate man to make up his mind to comply with law. Nor can we sit up all night waiting for a tiny tot to make up his mind that he is willing to go to bed. But it is almost always desirable to labor long by other means first for with force we may create further resistance, we may make understanding impossible, or we may break the will of a child or a man. And a man or a child with either a broken will or a hardened will is a pitiable creature. But as long as we can keep negotiations on the basis of reason and persuasion, with a little authority, as circumstances suggest, we have a chance of moving men by their own free will. The mere fact that we have the authority and the power to do a thing doesn’t mean that the best way of doing it is by physical force. “He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.” And whenever a situation deteriorates into the use of force and force alone, it is evidence that someone has failed somewhere, and that we have lost something that we can’t afford to lose.