The total relative displacement of a permutation f of vertices of a connected graph G is , where the sum is taken over all unordered pairs of distinct vertices of G. Let π(G) denote the smallest positive value of δf(G) among the n! permutations f. Aitken [J Combin Theory Series A 87 (1999), 1–21] proved that π(Pn) = 2n − 4 for the n‐path Pn, which was conjectured by Chartrand et al. [Proceedings of the 1996 Eighth Quadrennial International Conference on Graph Theory, Combinatorics Algorithms, and Applications I, New Issues Press, Kalamazoo, 1999, pp. 181–192]. This article gives a short proof of the result. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 68:323‐325, 2011