It is now 21 years since the Journal of Conflict Resolution was founded, which is at least an excuse to ask ourselves if we have reached any kind of maturity. The peace research movement, of which the Journal of Conflict Resolution was an important component, goes back of course earlier. It is hard to put a date on it; perhaps we can regard Quincy Wright and Lewis F. Richardson in the 1920s and 1930s as the forerunners and perhaps Ted Lentz's book, Towards a Science of Peace, in 1952, as a conception. So a brief attempt at appraisal and a cautious look to the future may be appropriate.