THE SOUL OF DEMOCRACY

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD WARIN RELATION TO HUMAN LIBERTY

BY

EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS

Man for the State means autocracy and imperialism;MAN FOR MANKIND is the soul of democracy. 

1918

CONTENTS

I THE WORLD TRAGEDYII THE CONFLICT OF IDEAS IN THE WARIII THE IDEAS FOR WHICH THE ALLIED NATIONS FIGHTIV MORAL STANDARDS AND THE MORAL ORDERV THE PRESENT STATE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSVI THE ETHICS OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIPVII AMERICA'S DUTY IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSVIII THE GOSPEL AND THE SUPERSTITION OF NON-RESISTANCEIX PREPAREDNESS FOR SELF-DEFENSEX RECONSTRUCTION FROM THE WARXI THE WAR AND EDUCATIONXII SOCIALISM AND THE WARXIII THE WAR AND FEMINISMXIV THE TRANSFORMATION OF DEMOCRACYXV DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATIONXVI MENACES OF DEMOCRACYXVII THE DILEMMA OF DEMOCRACYXVIII PATERNALISM VERSUS DEMOCRACYXIX THE SOLUTION FOR DEMOCRACYXX TRAINING FOR MORAL LEADERSHIPXXI DEMOCRACY AND SACRIFICEXXII THE HOUR OF SACRIFICE

THE SOUL OF DEMOCRACY

I

THE WORLD TRAGEDY

We are living under the shadow of the greatest world tragedy in thehistory of mankind. Not even the overthrow of the old Roman empire wasso colossal a disaster as this. Inevitably we are bewildered by it. Utterly unanticipated, at least in its world extent, for we had believedmankind too far advanced for such a chaos of brute force to recur, itoverwhelms our vision. Man had been going forward steadily, inventingand discovering, until in the last hundred years his whole world hadbeen transformed. Suddenly the entire range of invention is turnedagainst Man. The machinery of comfort and progress becomes the engineryof devastation. Under such a shock, we ask, "Has civilizationover-reached itself? Has the machine run away with its maker?" Theimagination is staggered. We are too much in the storm to see acrossthe storm. 

When the War began, it was over our minds as a dark cloud. It was thelast conscious thought as we went to sleep at night, and the first towhich we awakened in the morning: wakening with a dumb sense ofsomething wrong, as if we had suffered a personal tragedy, and then aswe came to clear consciousness we said, "O yes, the War!" The days havepassed into weeks, the weeks into months and years: inevitably we becomebenumbed to the long continued disaster. It is impossible to thinkdeaths and mutilations in terms of millions. Even those who stand inthe immediate presence of it and suffer most terribly become callousedto it: much more must we who stood so long apart and have not yet feltthe brunt of it. Even our entrance into the whirling vortex, drawingever nearer our shores, has failed to waken us to a realizing sense ofit. Nevertheless, these years through which we are now living are themost important in the entire history of the world. It is probable thatthe future will look back upon them as the years determining the destinyof mankind for ages to come. 

How this terrible fact of War falls across all philosophies! Complacentoptimisms, so widely current recently, are put out of court by it. Thepleasant interpretations mediocrity formulates of the universe are tornto tatters. There is at least the refreshment of standing face to facewith brute actuality, though it crash all our "little systems" to theground. Philosophy must wait. The interpretations cannot be hastened, while the facts are multiplying with such bewildering rapidity. The onecertainty is that an entirely new world is being born--_what_ it willbe, no one knows. 

Nevertheless, we have gone far enough to recognize that all our thinkingwill be transformed under the influence of the struggle. It will beimpossible for us, after the War, to do what we have done so widelyhitherto: proclaim one range of ethical ideals and standards, and liveto something widely different in practice. Either we shall have toabandon the standards, or bring our conduct measurably into harmony withthem. We shall be unable longer to hold unconsciously in solutionChristianity and the gospel of brute force. One or the other must berejected, or both consciously reconstructed. The effect on the thoughtlife of the world will be even greater--vastly greater--than that of theFrench Revolution. The twentieth century will differ from thenineteenth more than that did from the eighteenth. The effect on therelations of different social groups throughout the world will be sofar-reaching that possibly the democracy and socialism of the nineteenthcentury may look like remote historic phenomena, such as the Atheniantribal system or mediaeval feudalism. 

Thus our whole social philosophy will have to be remolded. We Americansare still in the patent medicine period of politics, trusting topolitical devices on the surface for the cure of any evils that arise. All across the country, like an epidemic of disease has gone the notion--if anything is the matter with us, just pass another law. Thus we aresuffering under an ill-considered mass of legislation, while blindlytrusting to it to solve all problems. Legislation is no solution formoral evils. It is possible, to some extent, to suppress vice bylegislation, but not to create virtue. Virtue can be developed only byconduct and education. You cannot drive men into the kingdom of heavenwith the whip of legislation; and if you could, you would so change theatmosphere of the place that one would prefer to take the other road. 

If our democracy is to survive, we must think it through; carrying itdown, from these superficial political devices, into our industry andcommerce, still so largely dominated by feudal ideas of the middle age, into our science and art, far more completely into our education, intoour social relationship, and beyond all else, into our fundamentalattitude of mind. Democracy is, at bottom, not a series of politicalforms, but a way of life. 

Thus the War will be the supreme test of democracy. The question itwill settle is this: can free men, by voluntary cooperation, develop anefficiency and an endurance which will make it possible for them tostand and protect their liberties against the machinery and aggressiveambitions of autocratic empires where everything is done paternally fromthe top? If they can, then democracy will survive and grow as thehighest form of society for ages to come; if not, then democracy willpass and be succeeded by some other social order. 

That is why this War has been our war from the beginning, though we haveentered it so late. As we look back upon the struggle of Athens and theother free Greek cities with the overwhelming hordes of Asia, atMarathon and Salamis, as the conflict that saved democracy for Europeand made possible the civilization of the Occident, so it is probablethat the world will look back upon this colossal War as the samestruggle, multiplied a thousand times in the men and munitions employed, the struggle determining the future of democracy and civilization forgenerations, perhaps for all time. 

II

THE CONFLICT OF IDEAS IN THE WAR

The world has been confused as to the issue in this War, because of themultitude of its causes and of the antagonisms it involves; yet underall the national and racial hatreds, the economic jealousies, certaingreat ideas are being tested out. 

Apologists for Germany have told us, even with pride, that in Germanythe supreme conception is the dedication of Man to the State. This wasnot true of old Germany. Before the formation of the Prussian empire, her spirit was intensely individualistic. She stood preeminently forfreedom of thought and action. It was this that gave her noblespiritual heritage. Goethe is the most individualistic of world masters. Froebel developed, in the Kindergarten, one of the purest ofdemocracies. Luther and German protestantism represented theaffirmation of individual conscience as against hierarchical control. It was this spirit that gave Germany her golden age of literature, herunmatched group of spiritual philosophers, her religious teachers, herpre-eminence in music. 

Nevertheless, the Prussian state, autocratic from its inception, received philosophic justification in a series of thinkers, culminatingin Hegel, who regarded the individual as a capricious egotist, thestate, incarnate in its sovereign, as the supreme spiritual entity. Hejustified war, regarding it as a permanent necessity, and practicallymade might, right, in arguing that a conquering nation is justified byits more fruitful idea in annexing the weaker, while the conquered, inbeing conquered, is judged of God. Here is the philosophicjustification of that Prussian arrogance which in Nietzsche is carriedinto glittering rhetoric. Thus the Prussian state from afar back wasopposed to the general spirit of old Germany. 

Since 1870, it must be admitted, that spirit is gone. With theformation of the Prussian empire and for the half century of itsexistence, every force of social control--press, church, state, education, social opinion--was deliberately employed to stamp on theGerman people one idea--the subordination of the individual to thestate, as the supreme and only virtue. How far has the policy succeeded?Apparently absolutely. To the outside observer the old spirit seemsutterly gone. How far this policy has been helped by the cultivation ofthe fear of the Slav, one cannot say. Looking at the map of Europe, onesees that the geographical relation of Germany to the great Slavicempire is not unlike the relation of Holland to Germany. Thus thedeliberate fostering of fear of the vast empire of the East has donemuch to strengthen the hands of the Prussian regime in its chosen task. 

Nevertheless, when one recalls the spiritual heritage of Germany: whenone thinks of Herder, Schiller and Goethe; Tauler, Luther andSchleiermacher; Froebel, Herbart and Richter; Kant, Fichte and Novalis;Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner; one feels that something of the old Germanheritage must survive. When the German people find out what has happenedto them and why, that heritage surely ought to show in some reactionagainst the present autocratic regime, after the War closes, if notbefore, perhaps even to the extent of making Germany a republic. Thatwould be some compensation for the waste and destruction of the War. Meantime Germany stands now, ruthlessly, for the dedication of Man tothe State. 

One can understand why a Prussian minister forbade the teaching ofFroebel's ideas in Prussia during the latter period of the educator'slife. So one understands the hatred of Goethe because he refusedallegiance to a narrow nationalism and remained cosmopolitan in hisworld-view. Similarly Hegel, with his justification of absolutemonarchy and his theory of the German state as the acme of all spiritualevolution, was the acclaimed orthodox philosopher of Prussia, while theindividualist, Schopenhauer, was neglected and despised. 

One must have lived in Germany to realize the absolute control of theState over the individual--the incessant surveillance, the pettyregulations, the constant interference with private life. It was toescape just this vexatious control, with the arduous militarism in whichit culminates, that so vast a multitude of Germans left their nativeland and came to the United States--not all of whom have shownappreciation and loyalty to the free land that welcomed them. 

III

THE IDEAS FOR WHICH THE ALLIED NATIONS FIGHT

In contrast to the idea for which Germany now stands, the Anglo-Saxoninstinctively and tenaciously believes in the liberty and initiative ofthe individual. We, of course, are no longer Anglo-Saxon. When DeTocqueville in 1831 visited our country, surveyed our institutions and, after returning home, made his trenchant diagnosis of our democracy, hecould justly designate us Anglo-Americans. That time is past; we areto-day everything and nothing: a great nation in the womb of time, struggling to be born. 

Nevertheless, Anglo-American ideas still dominate and inspire ourcivilization. It is, indeed, remarkable to what an extent this is true, in the face of the mingling of heterogeneous races in our population. As English is our speech, so Anglo-American ideas are still the soul ofour life and institutions. 

This is evident in the jealousy of authority. We resent the intrusionof the government into affairs of private life, and prefer to submit toannoyances and even injustice on the part of other individuals, ratherthan to have protection at the price of paternalistic regulation by thestate. We resent any law that we do not see is necessary to the generalwelfare, and are rather lawless even then. This shows clearly in ourreaction on legislation in regard to drink. The prohibition ofintoxicating liquor is about the surest way to make an Anglo-Saxon wantto go out and get drunk, even when he has no other inclination in thatdirection. In Boston, under the eleven o'clock closing law, men inpublic restaurants will at times order, at ten minutes of eleven, eightor ten glasses of beer or whiskey, for fear they might want them, whereas, if the restriction had not been present, two or three wouldhave sufficed. 

Not long ago we saw the very labor leaders who forced the Adamson lawthrough congress, threatening to disobey any legislation limiting theirown freedom of action, even though vitally necessary to the freedom ofall. 

The general behavior under automobile and traffic regulation illustratesthe tendency evenmore clearly. Thinking over the list of acquaintanceswho own automobiles, one finds it hard to recall one who would not breakthe speed law at a convenient opportunity. Even a staid collegeprofessor, who has walked the walled-in path all his life: let him get aFord runabout, and in three months he is exultant in running as close aspossible to every foot traveler and in exceeding the speed limit at anyfavorable chance. These are not beautiful expressions of our nationalspirit, but they serve to illustrate our instinctive individualism. 

Especially are we jealous of highly centralized authority. DeTocqueville argued that we would never be able to develop a strongcentral government, and that our democracy would be menaced with failureby that lack. That his prophecy has proved false and our federalgovernment has become so strong is due only to the accidents of ourhistory and the exigency of the tremendous problems we have had tosolve. 

The same individualistic spirit is strong in England. It has beenparticularly evident, during the War, in the resentment of militaryauthority as applied to labor conditions. The artisans and theirleaders dreaded to give up liberties for which they had struggledthrough generations, for fear that those rights would not be readilyaccorded them again after the War. It must be admitted that this fear isjustified. The same spirit was evident in the fight on conscription. This attitude has been a handicap to England in successfully carrying onthe War, as it is to us; but it shows how strong is the essential spiritof democracy in both lands. 

In France, the Revolution was at bottom an affirmation of individualism--of the right of the people, as against classes and kings, to seek life, liberty and happiness. The great words, _Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, _that the French placed upon their public buildings in the period of theRevolution, are the essential battle-cry of true democracy, --as it is tobe, rather than as it is at present. 

Through her peculiar situation, threatened and overshadowed by potentialenemies, France has been forced to a policy of militarism, with a largesubordination of the individual to the state. The subordination, however, is voluntary. That is touchingly evident in the beautifulfraternization of French officers and men in the present War. With ourAnglo-Saxon reserve, we smile at the pictures of grave generals kissingbearded soldiers, in recognition of valor, but it is a significantexpression of the voluntary equality and brotherhood of Frenchmen inthis War. The reason France has risen with such splendid courage andunity is the consciousness of every Frenchman that complete defeat inthis War would mean that there would be no France in the future, thatParis would be a larger Strassburg, and France a greaterAlsace-Lorraine. While the subordination has been thus voluntary, surely the French soldiers, man for man, have proved themselves theequal of any soldiers on earth. 

The anomaly of the first two years of the War was the presence of thevast Russian autocratic empire on the side of the allied democracies. For Russia, however, the War was of the people, rather than of theautocracy at the top, and one saw that Russia would emerge from the Warchanged and purified. What one could not foresee was that, under theawakening of the people, Russia could pass, in a day, through aRevolution as profound in its character and consequences as the greatexplosion in France. It would be almost a miracle if so complete aRevolution, in such a vast, benighted empire, were not followed bydecades of recurrent chaos and anarchy. If Russia avoids this fate, shewill present a unique experience in history. The tendency to abrogateall authority, the spectacle of regiments of soldiers becoming debatingsocieties to discuss whether or not they shall obey orders and fight, are ominous signs for the next period. Emancipated Russia must learn, if necessary through bitter suffering, that liberty is not license, thatdemocracy is not anarchy, but voluntary and intelligent obedience tojust laws and the chosen executors of those laws. Meantime, whateverher immediate future may be, Russia's transformation has clarified theissue and justified her place with the allied democracies. However longand confused her struggle, there can be no return to the past, and, inthe end, her Revolution means democracy. 

Thus, in democracy, the State exists for Man. Other forms of societyseek the interest or welfare of an individual, a group or a class, democracy aims at the welfare, that is, the liberty, happiness, growth, intelligence, helpfulness of _all the people_. Under all the welter ofthis world struggle, it is therefore these great contrasting ideas thatare being tested out, perhaps for all time. What is their relativevalue for efficiency, initiative, invention, endurance, permanence;beneath all, what is their final value for the happiness and helpfulnessof all human beings?

IV

MORAL STANDARDS AND THE MORAL ORDER

There is only one moral order of the universe--one range of moral as ofphysical law. For instance, the law of gravitation--simplest ofphysical principles--holds the last star in the abyss of space, roundsthe dew-drop on the petal of a spring violet and determines the symmetryof living organisms; but it is one and unchanging, a fundamental pull inthe nature of matter itself. So with moral laws: they are notsuperadded to life by some divine or other authority. They are simplythe fundamental principles in the nature of life itself, which we mustobey to grow and be happy. 

If the moral order is one and unchanging, man does change in relation toit, and moral standards are relative to the stage of his growth. History is filled with illustrations of this relativity of ethicalstandards. 

For instance: human slavery doubtless began as an act of beneficence onthe part of some philanthropist well in advance of his age. The firstman who, in the dim dawn of history, said to the captive he had made inwar, "I will not kill you and eat you; I will let you live and work forme the rest of your life": that man instituted human slavery; but it wasdistinctly a step upward, from something that had been far worse. 

Homer represents Ulysses as the favorite pupil of Pallas Athena, goddessof wisdom: why? Baldly stated, because Ulysses was the shrewdest andmost successful liar in classic antiquity. If Ulysses were to appear ina society of decent men to-day, he would be excluded from theircompanionship, and for the same reason that led Homer to glorify him asthe favorite pupil of the goddess of wisdom. Thus what is a virtue atone stage of development becomes a vice as man climbs to higherrecognition of the moral order. 

Just because the moral standard is relative, it is absolutely bindingwhere it applies. In other words, if you see the light shining on yourpath, you owe obedience to the light; one who does not see it, does notowe obedience in the same way. If you do not obey your light, yourpunishment is that you lose the light--degenerate to a lower plane, andit is the worst punishment imaginable. 

Thus the same act may be for the undeveloped life, non-moral, for thedeveloped, distinctly immoral. Before the instincts of personal modestyand purity were developed, careless sex-promiscuity meant somethingentirely different from what a descent to it means in our society. Whena man of some primitive tribe went out and killed a man of anothertribe, the action was totally different morally from . The murder by aman of one community of a citizen of a neighboring town to-day. 

This gradual elevation of moral standards, or growth in the recognitionof the sacredness of life and the obligation to other individuals, canbe traced historically as a long and confused process. There was atime, in the remote past, when no law was recognized except that of thestrong arm. The man who wanted anything, took it, if he was strongenough, and others submitted to his superior force. Then follows an agewhen the family is the supreme social unit. Each member of the familygroup feels the pain or pleasure of all the others as something like hisown, but all outside this circle are as the beasts. This is thecondition among the Veddahs of Ceylon, studied so interestingly byHaeckel. Living in isolated family groups, scattered through thetropical wilderness: one man, one woman and their children forming thesocial unit: they as nearly represent primitive life as any other bodyof people now on the earth. 

Then follows a long roll of ages when the tribe is the highest socialunit. Each member of the tribe is conscious of the sacredness of life ofall the other members and of some obligation toward them; but men ofother tribes may be slain as freely as the beasts. Then comes a periodwhen appreciation of the sacredness of life is extended over all thoseof the same race, tested generally by their speaking somewhat the samelanguage. That was the condition in classic antiquity: it was "Jew andGentile, " "Greek and barbarian"--the very word "barbarous" coming fromthe unintelligible sounds, to the Greeks, of those who spoke other thanthe Hellenic tongue. Even Plato, with all his far-sighted humanism, says, in the _Republic_, that in the ideal state, "Greeks should dealwith barbarians as Greeks now deal with one another. " If one rememberswhat occurred in the Peloponnesian war--how Greek men voted to kill allthe men of military age in a conquered Greek city and sell all the womenand children into slavery--one will see that Plato's dream of humanitywas not so very wide. 

From that time on, there has been further extension of the appreciationof the sacredness of life and of the consciousness of moral obligationtoward other human beings. We are far from the end of the path. Oursympathies are still limited by accidents of time and place, race andcolor; but we have gone far enough to see what the end would be, were weto reach it: a sympathy so wide, an appreciation of the sacredness oflife so universal, that each of us would feel the joy or sorrow of everyother human being, alive to-day or to be alive to-morrow, as somethinglike his own. Moreover, in all civilized society, we have gone farenough to renounce the right to private vengeance and adjustment ofquarrels: we live under established courts of law, with organized civilforce to carry out their judgments. This gives relative peace andsecurity, and a general, if imperfect, application of the moral law. 

V

THE PRESENT STATE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

The astounding anomaly of modern civilization is the way we have laggedbehind in applying to groups and nations of men the moral laws, universally recognized as binding over individuals. For instance, abouttwenty years ago we coined and used widely the phrase, "soullesscorporation, " to designate our great combinations of capital in industryand commerce. Why was that phrase used so widely? The answer isilluminating: we took it for granted that an individual employer wouldtreat his artisans to some extent as human beings and not merely ascog-wheels in a productive machine; but we also took it for granted thatan impersonal corporation, where no individual was dominantlyresponsible, would regard its artisans merely as pieces of machinery, with no respect whatever for their humanity. 

The supreme paradox, however, is in the relation of nations: it is therethat we have most amazingly lagged behind in applying the moral lawsuniversally accepted in the relations of individuals. For instance, long before this War began we heard it proclaimed, even proudly, bycertain philosophers, in more than one nation, that the state is thesupreme spiritual unit, that there is no law higher than its interest, that the state makes the law and may break it at will. When a greatstatesman in Germany, doubtless in a moment of intense anger andirritation, used the phrase that has gone all across the earth, "_scrapof paper_, " for a sacred treaty between nations, he was only making apungent practical application of the philosophy in question. 

Do we regard self-preservation as the highest law for the individual?Distinctly not. Here is a crowded theater and a sudden cry of fire, with the ensuing panic: if strong men trample down and kill women andchildren, in the effort to save their own lives, we regard them withloathing and contempt. On the other hand, it is just this plea ofnational self-preservation that the German regime has used in cynicaljustification of its every atrocity--the initial violation of Belgium, the making war ruthlessly on civil populations, the atrocious spying andplotting in the bosom of neutral and friendly nations, the destructionof monuments of art and devastation of the cities, fields, orchards andforests of northern France, and finally the submarine warfare on theworld's shipping. No civilized human being would, for a moment, thinkof using the plea of self-preservation to justify comparable conduct inindividual life. 

Consider international diplomacy: much of it has been merely shrewd andskillful lying. If you will review the list of the most famousdiplomats of Europe for the last thousand years, you will find that aconsiderable portion of them won their fame and reputation by being alittle more shrewd and successful liars than the diplomats with whomthey had to deal in other lands. In other words, their conduct has beenexactly on the plane that Ulysses represented in personal life, afarback in classic antiquity. 

Take an illustration a little nearer home. If you were doing businesson one side of the street and had two competitors in the same line, across the way, and a cyclone swept the town, destroying theirestablishments and sparing yours: you, as an individual, would beashamed to take advantage of the disaster under which your rivals weresuffering, using the time while they were out of business to lure theircustomers away from them and bind those customers to you so securelythat your competitors would never be able to get them back. You wouldscorn such conduct as an individual; but when it comes to a relation ofthe nations: during the first two years of the War, from the highestgovernment circles down to the smallest country newspaper, we were urgedto take advantage of the disaster under which our European rivals weresuffering, win their international customers away from them and bindthose customers to us so securely that Europe would never be able to getthem back. Not that we were urged to industry and enterprise--that isalways right--but actually to seek to profit by the sufferings ofothers--conduct we would regard as utterly unworthy in personal life. 

If your neighbor were to say, "My personal aspirations demand thisportion of your front yard, " and he were to attempt to fence it in: thesituation is unimaginable; but when a nation says, "My nationalaspirations demand this portion of your territory, " and proceeds toannex it: if the nation is strong enough to carry it out, a large partof the world acquiesces. 

The relations of nations are thus still largely on the plane ofprimitive life among individuals, or, since nations are made up ofcivilized and semi-civilized persons, it would be fairer to say that therelations of nations are comparable to those prevailing amongindividuals when a group of men goes far out from civil society, to thefrontier, beyond the reach of courts of law and their police forces:then nearly always there is a reversion to the rule of the strong arm. That is what Kipling meant in exclaiming, "There's never a law of God or man runs north of fifty-three. "

That condition prevailed all across our frontier in the early days. Forinstance, the cattle men came, pasturing their herds on the hills andplains, using the great expanse of land not yet taken up by privateownership. A little later came the sheep men, with vast flocks ofsheep, which nibbled every blade of grass and other edible plant down tothe ground, thus starving out the cattle. What followed? The cattlemen got together by night, rode down the sheep-herders, shot them ordrove them out, or were themselves driven out. 

So on the frontier, in the early days, a weakling staked out anagricultural or mining claim. A ruffian appears, who is a sure shot, jumps the claim and drives the other out. It was the rule of the strongarm, and it was evident on the frontier all across the country. 

This is exactly the state that a considerable part of the world hasreached in international relationship to-day. Claim-jumping is stillaccepted and widely practised among the nations. That is, in fact, theway in which all empires have been built--by a succession of successfulclaim-jumpings. Consider the most impressive of them all, the old Romanempire. Rome was a city near the mouth of the Tiber. She reached outand conquered a few neighboring cities in the Latin plain, binding themsecurely to herself by domestic and economic ties. Then she extendedher power south and north, crossed into northern Africa, conquered Gauland Spain, swept Asia Minor, until a territory three thousand by twothousand miles in extent was under the sway of her all-conquering arm. 

What justified Rome, as far as she had justification, was the remarkablestrength and wisdom with which she established law and order and theprotections of civil society over all the conquered territory, untiloften the subject populations were glad they had come under theall-dominant sway of Rome, since their situation was so much morepeaceful and happy than before. Such justification, however, is afterthe fact: it is not moral justification of the building of the empire. That represented a succession of claim-jumpings. 

For an illustration from more modern history, take the greatestinternational crime of the last five hundred years, with one exception--the partition of Poland. It is true the Polish nobles were a nuisance totheir neighbors, ever quarreling among themselves, with no centralauthority powerful enough to restrain them, but that did not justify theaction taken. Three nations, or rather the autocratic sovereigns ofthose nations, powerful enough to accomplish the crime, agreed topartition Poland among themselves. They did it, with the result thatthere are plenty of Poles in the world to-day, but there is no Poland. 

Consider the possession of Silesia by Prussia. Silesia was an integralpart of the Austrian domain, long so recognized. Friedrich the Greatwanted it. He annexed it. The deed caused him many years of recurring, devastating wars; again and again he was near the point of utter defeat;but he succeeded in bringing the war to a successful conclusion, andSilesia is part of Prussia to-day. The strong arm conquest is the onlyreason. 

So is it with Germany's possession of Schleswig-Holstein, with Austriain Herzegovina and Bosnia, France in Algiers, Italy in Tripoli: they areall instances of claim-jumping, reprehensible in varying degrees. 

I suppose no thoughtful Englishman would attempt to justify, on highmoral grounds, the building up of the British empire: for instance, thepossession of Egypt and India by Britain. How does India happen to be apart of the British realm? Every one knows the answer. The East IndiaCompany was simply the most adventurous and enterprising trading companythen in the world. It grew rich trading with the Orient, establishedthe supremacy of the British merchant marine, got into difficulties withFrench rivals and native rulers, fought brilliantly for its rights, asit had every reason to do, conquered territory and consolidated itspossessions, ruling chiefly through native princes. It became sopowerful that it did not seem wise to the British government to permit aprivate corporation to exercise such ever-growing political authority. It was regulated, and in the end abolished, by act of Parliament; itspossessions were taken over by the Crown; the conquests were extendedand completed, and India today is a gem in the crown of the Britishempire. 

What justifies Britain, as far as she has justification, is theremarkable wisdom and generosity with which she has extended, notonlylaw and order and protection to life and property, but freedom andautonomous self-government, to her colonies and subject populations, with certain tragic exceptions, about as fast as this could safely bedone. It is that which holds the British empire together. Greatirregular empire, stretching over a large part of the globe: but forthis it would fall to pieces over night. It would be impossible forforce, administered at the top, to hold it together. The splendidresponse of her colonies in this War has been purely voluntary. ThatCanada has four hundred thousand trained men at the front, or ready togo, is due wholly to her free response to the wise generosity ofEngland's policy, and in no degree to compulsion, which would have beenimpossible. This justification of the British empire is, nevertheless, as in the case of Rome, after the fact, and does not justify morally thebuilding up of the empire. 

Our own hands are not entirely clean. It is true we came late on thestage of history, and, starting as a democracy, were instinctivelyopposed to empire building. Thus our brief record is cleaner than thatof the older nations. Nevertheless, there are examples of claim-jumpingin our history. The most tragic of all is a large part of our treatmentof the American Indians. It is true, with Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy, wetried to make every steal a bargain. Many an expanse of territory hasbeen bought with a jug of rum. The Indian knew nothing about theownership of land; we did. So we made the deed, and he accepted it. Then, to his surprise, he found he had to move off from land where forgenerations his ancestors had hunted and fought, with no idea of privateownership. So we pushed him on and on. Of late decades we have becomeashamed, tried in awkward fashion to render some compensation for thewrongs done, but the larger part of the story is sad indeed. 

There is, of course, another side to all this: the more highly developednations do owe leadership and service in helping those below to climbthe path of civilization; but let one answer fairly how much of empirebuilding has been due to this altruistic spirit, and how much toselfishness and the lust for power and possession. 

VI

THE ETHICS OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIP

We have seen that all empires have been built up by a series ofsuccessful aggressions, and that claim-jumping still characterizes therelations of the nations. Nevertheless, there has been some progress inapplying to groups and nations the moral principles we recognize asbinding upon individuals. Consider again our internal life: it wastwenty years ago that we coined and used so widely the phrase "soullesscorporations" for our great combinations of capital in industry. To-daythat phrase is rarely heard. One sees it seldom even in the pages ofsurviving "muck-raking" magazines. Why has a phrase, used so widely inthe past, all but disappeared? Again the answer is illuminating: therehas been tremendous growth in twenty years, on the part of our greatcorporations, in treating their employees as human beings and not merelyas cog-wheels in a productive machine. When the greatest corporation inthe United States voluntarily raises the wages of all its employees inthe country ten per cent. , five several times, within a few months, asthe Steel trust has recently done, something has happened. It may besaid, "they did it because it was good business": twenty years ago theywould not have recognized that it was good business. It may be said, "they did it to avoid strikes": twenty years ago they would havewelcomed the strikes, fought them through and gained what selfishadvantage was possible. The point is, there has been vast increase inthe consciousness of moral responsibility on the part of corporationstoward their artisans. This has been due partly to legislation, butmainly to education and the awakening of public conscience. If you wishto find the greatest arrogance and selfishness now, you will discoverit, not among the capitalists: they are timid and submissive--strangelyso. You will find it rather in certain leaders of the labor movement, with their consciousness of newly-gained powers. 

Some growth there has been in the application of the same moralprinciples even to the relations of the nations. For instance: ahundred years ago the Napoleonic wars had just come to an end. In thedays of Napoleon men generally gloried in war; to-day most of thembitterly regret it, and fight because they believe they are fighting forhigh moral aims or for national self-preservation, whether they areright or wrong. 

When Napoleon conquered a country, often he pushed the weakling king offthe throne, and replaced him with a member of his own family--at times aworse weakling. Think of such a thing being attempted to-day: it isunimaginable, unless the worst tyranny on earth got the upper hand forthe next three hundred years of human history. 

A more pungent illustration of progress is the feverish desire, shown byeach of the combatants in this world struggle, to prove that he did notbegin it. Now some one began it. A hundred years ago belligerents wouldnot have been so anxious to prove their innocence: then victory closedall accounts and no one went behind the returns. The feverish anxietyeach combatant has shown to establish his innocence of initiating thisdevastating War is conclusive proof that even the worst of themrecognizes that they all must finally stand before the moral court ofthe world's conscience and be judged. The same tendency is shown in theefforts of Germany--grotesquely and tragically sophistical as they are--to justify her ever-expanding, freshly-invented atrocities. At leastshe is aware that they require justification. 

This explains why we react so bitterly even on what would have beenaccepted a century ago. What was taken for granted yesterday is nottolerated to-day, and what is taken for granted to-day will not betolerated in a to-morrow that maybe is not so distant as in our darkermoments we imagine. 

What would be the conclusion of this process? It would be, would itnot, the complete application to the relations of the nations, of themoral principles universally accepted as binding upon individuals? Ifit is true that the moral order of the universe is one and unchanging, then _what is right for a man is right for a nation of men, and what iswrong for a man is wrong for a nation_; and no fallacious reasoningshould be allowed to blind us to that basic truth. 

This would mean the end of all diplomacy of lying and deceit. Therelations of the nations would be placed on the same plane of relativehonesty and frankness now prevailing among individuals: not absolutetruth--few of us practice that--but that general ability to trust eachother, in word and conduct, that is the foundation of our business andsocial life. 

It would mean the end of empire building. Those empires that existwould fall naturally into their component parts. If those partsremained affiliated with the central government, it would be onlythrough the voluntary choice of the majority of the population dwellingupon the territory. Thus every people would be affiliated with thegovernment to which it naturally belonged and with which it wished to beaffiliated. 

It would mean finally a voluntary federation of the nations, with theestablishment of a world court of justice; but no weak-kneed, spinelessarbitration court: rather a court of justice, comparable to thoseestablished over individuals, whose judgments would be enforced by aninternational military and naval police, contributed by the federatednations. 

People misunderstand this proposal. They imagine it would mean thegiving over of the entire military and naval equipment of each federatednation to the central court. Far from it: each nation would retain, fordefense purposes, the mass of its manhood and the larger fraction of itslimited equipment, while a minor fraction would be contributed to theworld court. 

When this is achieved there will be, for the first time in the historyof the world, the dawn of the longed-for era of universal and relativelypermanent peace for mankind. 

It is a far-off dream, is it not? Let us admit it frankly, and it seemsfurther off than it did four years ago; for the approximations to it, achieved through international law, we have seen go down in a blindwelter, through the invention of new instruments of destruction and thewillful perpetration of illegal and immoral atrocities in this horribleWar. 

Nevertheless, it is not so far off as in ourdarker moments we fear. Ifthis world War ends justly; which means if it ends so that the peopledwelling on any territory are affiliated with the government to whichthey naturally belong and with which they wish to be affiliated, thedream will be brought appreciably nearer. If the War ends unjustly, which means if it ends with the gratification of the ambitions ofaggressive tyranny, the dream will be put remotely far off. If a peaceis patched up meantime, with no solution, it will mean Europe sleepingon its arms, and the breaking out of the war with multiplied devastationwithin twenty years. That is why these blithely undertaken peacemissions and other efforts at peace without victory, even when notcloaks for pro-German movements, are such preposterous absurdities orelse play directly into the hands of tyranny. 

At best, however, the dream is a long way ahead. Men dislike to give uppower, nations equally. It will take a long process of internationalmoral education to induce the nations to renounce their arbitrarypowers, their right to adjust all their own quarrels, and lead them toenter voluntarily a federation under a world court of Justice. This, nevertheless, is the hope of the world, toward which we should work withall our might. 

VII

AMERICA'S DUTY IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Since the world solution is, at best, so remote, our question is: whatare we to do meantime? Our entrance into the War partially answers thequestion. We have before us the immediate task of aiding inoverthrowing autocracy and tyranny and of defending our liberties andthose of the nations that stand for democracy. This is the first duty, but not the only one. 

More definitely than any other nation we have thrown down to the worldthe challenge of democracy. We have said, "Away with kings, we willhave no more of them! Away with castes and ruling classes, we will haveno more of them!" As a matter of fact, democracies have no rulers--theword survives from an older order of society--they have guides, leadersand representatives. If you wish to use the word, in a democracy everyman is the ruler--and every woman too, we hope, before long. To thisideal we are committed and it carries certain obligations; for everyright carries a duty, and every duty, a right. Often the best way toget a privilege is by assuming a responsibility. That is a truth itwould be well for the leaders of the feminist and labor movements torecognize. The obligations carried by the challenge of our democracy areclear. 

We Americans should have done, once and for all time, with the diplomacyof lying and deceit. Fortunately our recent traditions are in harmonywith this demand; but we should not depend upon the happy accident of anadministration which takes the right attitude. It should be the openand universal demand of the American people that those who represent usshall place the relations we sustain to other nations permanently on thesame plane of frank honesty, generally prevailing among individuals. Incidentally, any politician or statesman who, at this heart-breakingcrisis of the world's life, dares play party politics with ourinternational relations, should be damned forever by the vote of theAmerican people. 

Further, it is our duty to have done with all dream of empire building. It is not for us: let us abandon it frankly and forever. Thosedependencies which have come to us through the accidents of our historyshould be granted autonomous self-government at the earliest moment atwhich they can safely take it over--which does not necessarily meanto-morrow. If they remain affiliated with us it should be only throughthe voluntary choice of the majority of the population dwelling uponthem. 

It is, moreover, our duty to lead the world in the effort to form afederation of the nations and establish the aforesaid world court ofjustice, with the international military and naval police to enforce itsjudgments. 

More than this is demanded: on the basis of the challenge of ourdemocracy, it is our duty to rise to the point of placing justice higherthan commercial interest. It is a hard demand; but, with the latentidealism in our American life, surely we can rise to it. For instance, the vexed puzzle of the tariff will never be justly and permanentlysettled, till it is settled primarily as a problem of moralinternational relationship, and not as one merely of economic interestand advantage. 

For example, a tariff wall between the United States and Canada is aspreposterous an absurdity as would be a long line of bristlingfortifications along the three thousand and more miles of internationalboundary. We are not protecting ourselves from slave labor over there. They are not protecting themselves from slave labor here. Barring a fewlines of industry, there are the same conditions of labor, productionand distribution both sides of the line. The only reason for a tariffwall is their wish, or our wish, or the wish of each, to gain someadvantage at the expense of the other party. Now every business manknows that any trade that benefits one and injures the other party to itis bad business, as well as bad ethics, in the long run. Good businessbenefits both traders all the time. 

On the other hand, when it comes to protecting our labor fromcompetition with slave labor in other quarters of the earth, we have notonly the right, but the duty to do it. So when it is a matter ofprotecting our industries from being swamped by the unloading of vastquantities of goods, produced under the feverish and abnormalconditions, sure to prevail in Europe after the War, we have again, notonly the right, but the duty to do it. 

Finally, a still higher call is upon us: we must somehow rise to thepoint of placing humanity above the nation. It is true, "Charity beginsat home, " certainly justice should. One should educate one's ownchildren, before worrying over the children of the neighborhood; cleanup one's own town, before troubling about the city further away. Oftenthe whole is helped best by serving the part; but it is with nationalpatriotism as it is with family affection. The latter is a lovelyquality and the source of much that is best in the world; but whenfamily affection is an instrument for gaining special privilege at theexpense of the good of society, a means of attaining debauching luxuryand selfish aggrandisement, it is an abomination. The man who praysGod's blessing on himself, his wife and his children, and nobody else, is a mean man, and he never gets blessed--not from God. Similarly, theman who seeks the interest of his own nation, against the welfare ofmankind, who prays God's blessing only on his own people, is equally amean man, and his prayer, also, is never answered from the Most High. The world has advanced too far for the spirit of a narrow nationalism. The recrudescence of such a spirit is one of the sad consequences ofthis world War. Only in a spirit of international brotherhood, indedication to the welfare of humanity, can democracy go towards itsgoal. 

These are the obligations following upon the challenge of democracy wehave proclaimed to the nations. 

VIII

THE GOSPEL AND THE SUPERSTITION OF NON-RESISTANCE

The first condition of fulfilling the responsibilities imposed upon usby the challenge of our democracy is, now and hereafter, readiness andwillingness for self-respecting self-defense, defense of our libertiesand of the principles and ideals for which we stand. There is muchnonsense talked about non-resistance to evil. It is a lovely thing incertain high places of the moral life. It was well that Socratesremained in the common criminal prison in Athens and drank the hemlockpoison; but nine times out of ten it would have been better to run away, as he had an opportunity to do. It was good that Jesus healed the ear ofthe servant of the high priest, --and good that St. Peter cut it off. 

In other words, acts of non-resistance and self-sacrifice are fineflowers of the moral life; but you cannot have flowers unless theirroots are below ground, otherwise they quickly wither. Thus, to havesound value, these acts of non-resistance and self-sacrifice must reston a solid foundation of self-affirmation and resistance to evil. 

As with the individual, so with the nation: there come high moments in anation's life, when a strong people might resist and deliberatelychooses not to. As an illustration, take our Mexican problem. Theannouncement that under no circumstances would we intervene, may haveled to misunderstanding. Our purpose to let the Mexican people work outtheir own problem may have been taken to mean that we would not justlyprotect ourselves, with consequent encouragement to border raiding. Nevertheless, if there has been any error in handling the situation, ithas been on the better side--on the side of patience, generosity, long-suffering, giving the other fellow another chance, and another andanother, even though he does not deserve them. Now that is not the sideon which human nature usually errs. The common temptation is toselfishness and unjust aggression. Since that is the case, if we cannotstrike the just balance, it is better to push too far on the other sideand avoid the common mistake. 

Suppose, after the War, Japan, alone or in conjunction with one oranother European power, closes the door to China: one can imaginecircumstances where we, with the right to insist that the door be keptopen, and perhaps, by that time, something of the strength to enforcethat right, might deliberately say, "No, we will not resist. " Not that, with our present situation, such action is desirable, but that one canimagine conditions arising where it might be the higher choice. 

Let me repeat that, for the nation as with the individual, these highmoments must rest on something else. They are the high mountain peaksof the moral life; but detached mountain peaks are impossible, --exceptas a mirage. They must rest upon the granite foundation of the hillsand plateaus below. So these high virtues of non-resistance, magnanimityand self-sacrifice must always rest upon the granite foundation of themasculine virtues of self-affirmation, endurance, heroism, strongconflict with evil. It takes strength to make magnanimity andself-sacrifice possible, if their lesson is not lost. A weak mancannot be magnanimous, since his generosity is mistaken for servilecowardice. After all, the best time to forgive your enemy, for his goodand yours, is not when he has his foot on your neck: he is apt tomisunderstand and think you are afraid. It is often better to waituntil you can get on your feet and face him, man to man, and then if youcan forgive him, it is so much the better for you, for him and for allconcerned. 

Thus there are two opposite lines of error in the moral life. Thephilosophy of the one is given by Nietzsche, while Tolstoy, in certainextremes of his teaching, represents the other. Nietzsche, I suppose, should be regarded as a symptom, rather than a cause of anythingimportant; but the ancestors of Nietzsche were Goethe and Ibsen, withtheir splendid gospel of self-realization. Nietzsche, on the contrary, with his contempt for the morality of Christianity as the morality ofslaves and weaklings, with his eulogy of the blond brute striding overforgotten multitudes of his weaker fellows to a stultifying isolationapart--Nietzsche is self-realization in the mad-house. It has alwaysseemed to me not without significance that his own life ended there. 

On the other hand, when Tolstoy responded to an inquirer that, if he sawa child being attacked by a brutal ruffian, he would not use force tointervene and protect the child: that, too, is non-resistance fit forthe insane asylum. One of these is just as far from sane, balanced humanmorality as the other. 

It is a terrible thing to suffer injustice; it is far worse toperpetrate it. If one had to choose between being victim or tyrant, onewould always choose to be victim: it is safer for the moral life andthere is more recovery afterward. If, however, it is better to sufferinjustice than to perpetrate it, better than either is to resist it, fight it and, if possible, overthrow it. 

It has been said so many times by extreme pacifists that even sane humanbeings sometimes take it for granted, that "force never accomplishedanything permanent in human history. " It is false, and the reasoning bywhich it is supported involves the most sophistical of fallacies. Alldepends on who uses the force and the purpose for which it is used. Theforce employed by tyranny and injustice accomplishes nothing permanentin history. Why? Because tyranny and injustice are in their very naturetransient, they are opposed to the moral order of the universe and, inthe end, must pass. On the other hand, the force employed on the part ofliberty and justice has attained most of the ends of civilization wecherish to-day. The force of the million of mercenaries, collectedthrough Asia and Africa by Darius and Xerxes, to overwhelm a few Greekcities, accomplished nothing permanent in history; but the force of theten thousand Athenians who fought at Marathon and of the other thousandsat Salamis, saved democracy for Europe and made possible thecivilization of the Occident. The force employed by King Louis ofFrance to support a tottering throne and continue the exploitation ofthe people by an idle and selfish aristocratic caste, accomplishednothing permanent in history; but the force of those Frenchmen whomarched upon Paris, singing the Marseillaise, made possible the freedomand culture of the last hundred years. The force employed by KingGeorge of England, to wring taxes without representation from reluctantcolonies, accomplished nothing permanent in history, but the forcewhich, at Bunker Hill and Concord Bridge, "fired the shot heard roundthe world, " achieved the liberty and democracy of the Americancontinent. 

It may be freely admitted that all use of force is a confession offailure to find a better way. If you use force in the education of achild, it is such a confession of failure. So is it if force is used incontrolling defectives and criminals, or in adjusting the relations ofthe nations; but note that the failure may be one for which theindividual parent, teacher, society, state or nation is in no degreeresponsible. Force is a tragic weapon--and the ultimate one. 

IX

PREPAREDNESS FOR SELF-DEFENSE

Since force is still the weapon of international justice, readiness andwillingness to use it for defense, when necessary, is then the firstcondition of fulfilling the aims and serving the causes for whichAmerica stands. In other words, since the relations of the nations arestill so largely those of individuals under the conditions of frontierlife, as with the honest man on the frontier, so for theself-respecting, peace-loving nation to-day, it is well to carry a gunand know how to shoot. 

Carrying a gun is a dangerous practice, for two reasons: it may go offin your pocket; you may get drunk and shoot when you ought not. Thoseare the only two rational arguments against national preparation fordefense, in the present state of the world. Let us see. The gun may gooff in your pocket: that is, if a strong armament for defense is builtup, there is always danger that it may be used internally, against thepeople, unjustly. That, indeed, has been one of the curses of Europefor a thousand years. It is a grave danger, but recognizing it is partlyforestalling it; moreover, we would better face that danger than one farworse. So with the other menace: you may get drunk and shoot when youought not. Nations get drunk: they get drunk with pride, arrogance, aggressive ambition, revenge, even with panic terror, and so shoot whenthey should not. This, also, is a grave danger; but here, as well, recognizing it is part way forestalling it, and this danger, too, wewould better face than one far more terrible. Moreover, it is armamentfor the gratification of aggressive ambition, and under the control ofthe arbitrary authority of a despotic individual or group, that tends toinitiate war, not armament solely to defend the liberties of a people. 

Thus, under the conditions cited, it is well to be armed and prepared. If a wolf is at large, if a mad dog is loose, if a madman is abroad withan ax, it is the part of wisdom to have an adequate weapon and beprepared to use it. If the Athenians had not resisted the hordes ofAsia, what would have been the history of Europe? If the French had notresisted tyranny and injustice in the Revolution, what would have beenthe civilization of the last hundred years? If the English colonistshad not resisted taxation without representation, what would be thepresent status of America? If the artisan groups had not united andfought economic exploitation, what would be their life to-day? IfBelgium had not resisted Germany, what would be the future of democracyin Europe? Thus, now and after the War, the need is for all necessaryarmament for self-respecting self-defense and not an atom to gratifyaggressive ambition. This does not mean that, once involved in war, themilitary tactics of democracy should be merely defensive. As has oftenand wisely been said, in war the best defense is a swift and hardattack. 

It is widely argued, however, since our aim is peace and a world-courtof justice to settle the disputes among the nations, making generaldisarmament possible, should not one great nation, fortunately free fromthe quarrels of Europe, occupying the major portion of a continent, itsshores washed by two great oceans, with peaceful friendship on the northand weak anarchy on the south--should not such a nation take the lead, disarm and set an example to mankind? It is a beautiful dream! Wouldthat those who really believe in non-resistance to evil would belogical, and apply it to internal as well as external policy. What is apolice force? It is a body of men, trained, employed and paid to useforce in resisting evil. If you wish to try out non-resistance, why notlet some city apply it? Let Chicago do it: abolish its police force andset the example to the rest of the benighted cities of the country. What would happen? As long as there are criminals in all cities of theland, how they would flock to that fat pasturage. What devastation ofproperty, destruction of life, injury to innocent women and children!Until the best men of Chicago would get together, form a vigilancecommittee, shoot some of the criminals, hang others, drive the rest out;and Chicago would get back to law and order, with courts of justice anda regular police body, composed of men trained, employed and paid to useforce in resisting evil. 

The example of Canada and the United States is cited, and a nobleexample it is: three thousand and more miles of international boundary, with never a shining gun or bristling fortress on the entire frontier. A glorious example, prophetic of what is coming all over the world, perhaps more quickly than we dare hope to-day; but what made itpossible? Agreement in advance, and that at a time when one of theparties was too weak to be feared. Canada is getting strong: she has atpresent four hundred thousand trained men at the front or ready to go. Before the War closes she will have over a half million. Now supposeCanada fortified: we would be compelled to, there would be no other way. 

Thus one nation cannot disarm while the others are strongly armed, andamong them are those whose autocratic rulers and imperialistic castesare watching for signs of weakness in order to perpetrate internationalclaim-jumping. 

It is true that, on the frontier, in the early days, there wereindividuals who went about unarmed among the gun men, did itsuccessfully, and some of them died peacefully in their beds: Christianministers--sky-pilots, they were called. Please note, however, that thesky-pilot never had any money. He had no claims to be jumped. 

We are not sky-pilots--far from it. As to money: the wealth of theworld has been flowing into our coffers in a golden stream, to theembarrassment of our financial institutions, to the exaltation of thecost of living to such a point that, with more money than we everdreamed of having, we find it more difficult to buy enough to eat andwear. As for claims to be jumped: they are on every hand: Panama Canal, Hawaiian Islands, Philippine Islands, ports of New York and SanFrancisco, vast reaches of unprotected coast. No, we are notsky-pilots, we cannot claim exemption on that ground. 

Suppose, after the War, we attempted to disarm, without the protectionof a world court and international police, while the other nationsretained war armament. They, the victors and perhaps the defeated, would possess a great army and navy, manned with seasoned veterans, andbe burdened with an intolerable debt; for the War has gone too far forany one to be able to pay adequate indemnity. We, rich, young, heedless, sure that no one on earth could ever whip us, chiefly becauseno one worth while has ever seriously tried: suppose we were completelydisarmed. It would require only a little meddling with Mexico orBrazil, and we should have to give up the Monroe Doctrine or fight. Well, perhaps we shall give it up: it has even been suggested in thehalls of Congress that we should--to the shame of the suggester, be itsaid. People do not understand the Monroe Doctrine: they talk of it asif it were a law. It is in no sense a law, but is merely a ratherarrogant expression of our desires. We said to the other nations: "Wedesire that none of you henceforth shall fence in any part of our frontor back yard, or the front or back yard of any of our neighbors, dwelling on the North and South American continents. " That is theMonroe Doctrine, and that is all that it is: an expression of ourwishes. All very well if others choose to respect them, but supposesome one does not? Perhaps, as stated, we may abandon the MonroeDoctrine: that is the easiest way, and the easiest way, for a nation oran individual, is usually the way of damnation. Even so, suppose thenation in question to say, "My national aspirations demand the PanamaCanal, the Philippine Islands, or Long Island and the Port of New York. "Why not? The Atlantic Ocean is only a mill-pond. It is not half so wideas Lake Erie was fifty years ago, in relation to modern means oftransportation and communication. People say, "Do we want to give upour traditional isolation?" They are too late in asking the question:that isolation is irrecoverably gone. That should be now evident evento people dwelling in fatuously fancied security between the Allegheniesand the Rockies. We are inevitably drawn into relation with the rest ofmankind. The question is no longer, "Shall we take a part in worldproblems?", but "What part shall we take?"

The point is, that if, under the circumstances cited, any one wished todo so, we could quickly be driven to such a condition of abjecthumiliation that we should be compelled to fight. Now suppose, disarmed, we should enter the conflict utterly unprepared? The resultwould be, hundreds of thousands of young men, going out bravely inobedience to an ideal--untrained and half equipped--to be butchered, ahumiliating peace, and an indemnity of many billions to be groaned underfor fifty years. 

On the other hand, if we were adequately armed for defense, there wouldbe much less temptation to any one to trouble us; and if we werecompelled to fight, would it not be better to fight reasonably prepared?

There is a story, going the rounds of the press, about the bandit, JesseJames: telling how, on one occasion, he went to a lonely farm house tocommandeer a meal. Entering, he found one woman, a widow, alone andweeping bitterly. He asked her what was the matter, and she repliedthat, in one hour, the landlord was coming, and if she did not have hermortgage money, she would lose her little farm and home and be out inthe world, shelterless. The heart of the bandit was touched. He gaveher the money to pay off the mortgage, hid in the brush and held up thelandlord on the way back. 

Need the moral be pointed? We have been getting the mortgage money. During the first years of the War it rolled in, an ever-increasinggolden stream, until we held a mortgage on numerous European nations. We have the mortgage money, but _beware of the way back!_

Thus the agitation, in one nation, for disarmament, unpreparedness and apatched up peace, while the other nations are armed and embittered, notonly renders the situation of the one people critically perilous, butactually cripples its power to serve the cause of world peace andhumanity. If only the peace-at-any-price people had to pay the price, one would be willing to wait and see what happened; but they never payit, they take to cover. It is those hundreds of thousands of splendidyoung men, going out blithely in obedience to duty, to be butchered, itis the millions of women and children, who cannot escape from adevastated area, who pay that price. 

Every people in the past that turned to money and mercenaries fordefense has gone down. No people ever survived that was unable andunwilling to fight for its liberties and spend, if necessary, the lastdrop of its blood for the principles it believed. 

X

RECONSTRUCTION FROM THE WAR

We have seen how impossible it is to forecast the new world that willfollow the War, we know merely that it will be utterly new. Nevertheless, the great tendencies already at work we can partly discernand recognize something of what they promise. It is well to try to seethem, that we may be not too unready to welcome the opportunity andaccept the burden of the world that is being born in pain. 

Peace and prosperity produce a peculiar type of conservatism. Peopleare then relatively free in action and expression, things are going wellwith them, and they are instinctively inclined to let well enough alone. Thus in thought they tend to a conservative inertia. 

On the other hand, in periods of great strain and suffering, as in wartime, thought is stimulated, all ordinary views are broken down and themost radical notions are widely disseminated and even taken for grantedby those who, shortly before, would have been scandalized by them. Action and certain phases of free speech are, in such a period, muchmore widely restrained by authority. There is a swift and strongdevelopment of social control, urged by necessity. 

Thus, in war time, there is the curious paradox of ever wideningradicalism in thought, with constantly decreasing freedom in action andexpression. When the discrepancy becomes too great, you have theexplosion--Revolution. This cause hastened and made more extreme theRussian Revolution, which had been simmering for a century. It has notyet appeared in Germany because of the forty years of successful work indrilling the mind of the German people to march in goose-step; yet theincreasing signs of questioning the infallibility of the existing regimeand system in Germany give evidence that there, too, the conflict is atwork. 

With ourselves, the opposition appears, as yet, only in minor degree. Nevertheless, it is here. On the one hand, are the registration, conscription and espionage measures, the effort to control news, thegovernmental supervision of food supplies, transportation, productionand corporation earnings, the war taxes. On the other hand, thought isso stimulated that everything is questioned: our political system, oursocial institutions--marriage, the family, education. As some one says, "Nothing is radical now. " We probably shall escape a sudden revolution, but the conflict must produce profound readjustment in every aspect ofour life; for thought and action must come measurably together, sincethey are related as soul and body. 

There are singular eddies in the main current both ways. For instance, the exigencies and sufferings of war produce a reaction toward narrower, orthodox forms of religion and a harsher spirit of nationalism; while infields of action apart from the struggle, freedom and even license mayincrease, as in sex-relations. Nevertheless these cross-currents, whilethey may obscure, do not alter the main tendencies, which move swiftlyand increasingly toward the essential conflict. 

Even before our actual entrance into the War, its profound influenceupon both our thinking and our conduct and institutions was evident. Now that we are in the conflict that influence is multiplied. We arearoused to new seriousness of thought. The frivolity and selfishpleasure-seeking that have marked our life for recent decades aredecreasing. We may reasonably hope that the literature of superficialcleverness and smart cynicism, which has been in vogue for the lastperiod, will have had its day, that the perpetrators of such literaturewill be, measurably speaking, without audience at the conclusion of theWar. 

The philosophy of complacency, at least, will be at an end, and theworld will face with new earnestness the problem of life. Thisgeneration will be tired, perhaps exhausted, by the titanic struggle;but youth comes on, fresh and eager, with exhaustless vital energy, andthe generations to come will take the heritage and work out the newphilosophy. As Nature quickly and quietly covers the worst scars wemake in her breast, so Man has a power of recovery, beyond all that wecould dream. It is to that we must look, across the time of demoniacdestruction. 

We may even dare to hope that the next half-century will see a greatdevelopment of noble literature in our own land. War for liberty, justice and humanity always tends to create such a productive period inliterature and the other fine arts. The struggle with Persia was behindthe Periclean age in Athens. It was the conflict of England with theovershadowing might of Spain that so vitalized the Elizabethan period. The Revolution was behind the one important school of literature our owncountry has produced hitherto. 

Since this War is waged on a scale far more colossal than any other inhuman history, and since liberty and democracy are at stake, not only inone land, but throughout the world and for the entire future ofhumanity, it is reasonable to expect that the stimulation to thecreation of art and literature will be far greater than that followingany previous struggle. Where the sacrifice for high aims has beengreatest, the inspiration should be greatest, as in France. Theliterature currently produced, as in the books of Loti, Maeterlinck andRolland, is scrappy and disappointing, it is true; but that is to beexpected when the whole nation is strained to its last energy andgasping for breath, under the titanic struggle, and is no test of whatwill be. In spite of the destruction of so large a fraction of hermanhood, France will surely rise from the ashes of this worldconflagration regenerated and reinspired. The pessimism of her latedecades will be gone. The literature and other art she will producewill be instinct with new earnestness and exalted vision, and she mayexcel even her own great past. 

We too are awakening. Since the War began, all over the United States, men and women have been thinking more earnestly and have been morewilling to listen to the expression of serious thought than ever beforefor the last quarter century. Now that the hour of sacrifice hasstruck, this earnestness must greatly deepen. Perhaps we, too, may haveour golden age of art. 

The same inspiration carries naturally into the religious life. It istrue, as we have seen, that there is a cross-current of reversion tonarrower orthodoxy, caused by the War. The Gods of War are all nationaland tribal divinities. While they rule, the face of the God of Humanityis veiled. The Kaiser's possessive attitude toward the Divine is but theextreme case of what War does to the religious life. Even amongourselves the tendency shows in such phenomena as the current popularevangelism--an eloquent, if artfully calculated and vulgarized preachingof the purely personal virtues, with an ignorance that there is a socialproblem in modern civilization, profound as that displayed by amediaeval churchman. The evangelist's list of inmates, whom he relegatesto the kingdom of the lost, makes the place singularly attractive to thelover of good intellectual society. 

Nevertheless, the reversion to narrower creeds but indicates the newlyawakened hunger of the religious life. Men who sacrifice live withgraver earnestness than those who are carelessly prosperous. Cynicismand pessimism are children of idleness and frivolity, never of heroicsacrifice and nobly accepted pain. These latter foster faith in lifeand its infinite and eternal meaning. Thus, with all the tragicsubmerging of our spiritual heritage the War involves, we may hope thatit will cause a revival, not of emotional hysteria, but of deepenedfaith in the spirit, in the supreme worth of life, until at last we maysee the dawn of the religion of humanity. 

XI

THE WAR AND EDUCATION

Equally far-reaching are the changes the War must produce in oureducation. Temporarily, our higher institutions will be crippled by thedrawing off of the youth of the land for war. This is one of theunfortunate sacrifices such a struggle involves. We must see to it thatit is not carried too far. One still hears old men in the Southpathetically say, "I missed my education because of the Civil War. " Letus strive to keep open our educational institutions and continue all ourcultural activities, in spite of the drain and strain of the War. Fornever was intellectual guidance and leadership more needed than in thepresent crisis. 

The paramount effect of the War on education is, however, in themultiplied demand for efficiency. This is the cry all across thecountry to-day, and, in the main, it is just. Our education has beentoo academic, too much molded by tradition. It must be more closelyrelated to life and to the changed conditions of industry and commerce. Each boy and girl, youth and maiden, must leave the school able to takehold somewhere and make a significant contribution to the society ofwhich he or she is an integral part. Vocational training must begreatly increased. The problems of the school must be increasinglypractical problems, and thought and judgment must be trained to thesolution of those problems. This is all a part of that socialization ofdemocracy which must be achieved if democracy is to survive in the newworld following the War. 

There is, nevertheless, an element of emotional hysteria in the demandfor efficiency and only efficiency. Efficiency is too narrow a standardby which to estimate anything concerning human conduct and character. In the effort to meet and conquer Germany, let us beware of the mistakeof Germany. One of the world tragedies of this epoch is the way in whichGermany has sacrificed her spiritual heritage, first for economic, thenfor purely military efficiency. When we recall that spiritual heritage, as previously described, when we think of Schiller, Herder and Goethe, Froebel, Herbart and Richter, Tauler, Luther and Schleiermacher, Kant, Fichte and Schopenhauer, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner, we stand aghastat the way in which she has plunged it all into the abyss, --for what?Shall it profit a people, more than a man, if it gain the whole worldand lose its own soul?

In such a time, then, all of us who believe in the spirit must hold highthe torch of humanistic culture. Education is for life and not merelyfor efficiency. Of what worth is life, if one is only a cog-wheel inthe economic machine? It is to save the spiritual heritage of humanitythat we are fighting, and it is that heritage that education must bringto every child and youth, if it fulfills its supreme trust. Educationfor the purposes of autocratic imperialism seeks to make a people aperfect economically productive and militarily aggressive machine. Education for democracy means the development of each individual to themost intelligent, self-directed and governed, unselfish and devoted, sane, balanced and effective humanity. 

XII

SOCIALISM AND THE WAR

One of the surprises of the War was the complete breakdown ofinternational socialism. Not only socialists, but those of us who hadbeen thoughtfully watching the movement from without, had come tobelieve that the measure of consciousness of international brotherhoodit had developed in the artisan groups of many lands, would be apowerful lever against war. We were wrong: the superficialinternational sympathy evaporated like mist under the rays of a revivednationalism. The socialists fell in line, almost as completely as anyother group, with the purely nationalist aims in each land. 

This must have gratified certain despots; for one cause of the War, notthe cause, was undoubtedly the preference on the part of variousautocrats, to face an external war rather than the rising tide ofdemocracy within the nation. Temporarily, they have been successful, but surely only for a brief time. The victory of democracy will vastlyaccelerate the growth of the spirit of brotherhood throughout the world. 

The terrible waste of the War must of itself produce a reaction of thepeople on kings and castes in all lands. The suffering that will followthe War, in the period of economic readjustment, will accentuate this. Surely the _people_, in England, France, America, Italy, Russia, andamong the neutral nations, will strive that no such war may come again. Even in Germany, when the people find out what they have paid and why, inevitably they must struggle so to reform their institutions that noruler or class may again plunge them into such disaster for the selfishbenefit or ambitions of that ruler or class. How our hearts have warmedto Liebknecht!

The realignment of nations must work to the same end. War, likepolitics, makes strange bed-fellows. Germany and Austria, for centuriesrivals, and, at times, enemies, we behold united so completely that itis difficult to imagine them disentangled after the War. 

France and England, long regarding each other as natural enemies, arefused heart and soul. Strangest of all, we have seen England strugglingto win for Russia that prize of Constantinople, which for generations ithas been a main object of British diplomacy to keep from Russian grasp. Most impressive of all, has been the new consciousness of unity andcommon cause among the nations of the earth, and the groups within allnations, standing for democracy. 

Thus the tide, checked for a time, will inevitably break forth withrenewed force. It is probable that the next fifty years will be aperiod of great change--even of revolutions, peaceful or otherwise, throughout the earth. 

To understand the effect on the whole socialist movement, one mustdistinguish clearly the two contrasting types of socialism. It is thecurse of the orthodox, or Marxian, type of socialism, that it was "madein Germany. " Its economic state is modeled directly on the Prussianbureaucratic and paternalistic state. Its dream realized, would meanPrussian efficiency carried to the _nth_ power, in a society of asmerciless slavery as that prevailing among the ants and the bees. It isdoubtless this characteristic that has made so many bureaucratic ororthodox socialists instinctively Pro-German in sentiment and sympathyduring the War. 

The contrasting type of socialism is that which is really the fulldevelopment of democracy, its movement from a narrow individualism toever wider voluntary co-operation. It moves, not toward governmentownership, but toward ownership by the people, of natural monopolies. It means, not the turning over to a bureaucratic government, of plantsand instruments of production, but the progressive cooperative ownershipof them by the workers themselves. It will end, not in the overthrow ofthe capitalist regime, but in all workers becoming co-operativecapitalists, and all capitalists, productive workers, since no idlerich--or poor, will be tolerated. Such socialism, if it be so called, will depend upon the highest individual initiative, the most voluntaryco-operation and will include the individualism which is the cherishedboon of democracy. It is significant that those who represent this typeof socialism and who think for themselves, are breaking away from theorthodox party, under the courageous leadership and example of JohnSpargo, in increasing numbers, since our entrance into the War. Theyare as instinctively American and democratic in sympathy, as those ofthe opposite type are Pro-German. 

Even in the most democratic countries, however, the War has caused avast increase of the undesirable type of socialism: that is one of itstemporary penalties. To carry on such a war successfully, it isnecessary to multiply the authority of the central government. That hasbeen the experience of England, now being repeated here. Men, who were_citizens_ of a democracy, become, as soldiers, and in part as workers, _subjects_ of the government in war. To some extent we are forced toimitate the tendencies we deplore and seek to overthrow in Germany, tobe able to meet and defeat Germany. 

Even so, the difference is profound. The subordination to thegovernment is, for the people as a whole, voluntary, achieved throughlaws passed by chosen representatives of the people, and not by thearbitrary will of a kaiser and ruling caste. Thus the freedom, voluntarily relinquished for a time, can be quickly regained when thecrisis is past. Subjects will become citizens again, when soldiersreturn to civil life. 

Nevertheless, there will be no return to the old, selfishlyindividualistic regime. The lesson of organized action will have beenlearned, and a vast increase of voluntary co-operation, that is, of thesocialism that is true democracy may be anticipated as a beneficentresult of the War. This will be one of the great compensations for thewaste of our heritage, spiritual and material, through the War. _Thevoluntary socialization of previously individualistic democracy will bethe next great forward movement of the human spirit_. 

XIII

THE WAR AND FEMINISM

Of all consequences of the War, perhaps none is more significant thanits effect upon the position of women. Militarism and feminism arecounter currents in the tide of history. All recrudescence of bruteforce carries the subjugation of women. In the degree to whichprofessional militarism prevails in any society, women are forced intohard industrial activities, despised because fulfilled by women. On theother hand, a group of carefully protected women is held apart as a fineadornment of life. Both ways militarism accentuates the property idea inreference to women: the one type, useful, the other, adorning, property. The one shows in marriage by purchase, the other in the dowry system. It is hard to say which is more dishonoring to women. It would, perhaps, seem preferable and less offensive to be bought as useful, rather than accepted with a money payment, as an adorning but expensivepossession, where, as with the automobile, "it is the upkeep thatcounts. " Surely, however, either attitude is degrading enough. 

The accentuation, in the present War, of the notion of women asproperty, is evident in more brutal form in the horrors of rape, in thedeliberate and organized use of women as breeders, with the sameefficiency with which Germany breeds her swine. 

Nevertheless, here, too, strong counter currents are at work. As thisis a war of nations, not of armies, it is the whole people that, in eachinstance, has had to be mobilized and organized. In all the democracieswomen have voluntarily risen to this need, just as citizens havevoluntarily become soldiers. Thus women, by the legion, are working inmunition factories, on the farms, in productive plants of every kind, inpublic service and commerce organizations. The noble way in which womenhave accepted the double burden has created a wave of reverentadmiration throughout the world. Thus where professional militarismtends to despise the industrial activities into which it forces women, war for defense and justice causes reverence for the same sociallynecessary activities and for the women who so courageously undertakethem for the sake of all. 

Moreover, the increased freedom of action for women will outlast itstemporary cause. Once so admitted to new fields of industrial, businessand professional activity, women can never be generally excluded fromthem again. Thus when the soldiers become citizens, many of the womenwill remain producers, working beside men under new conditions ofequality. 

The result, with the general stimulation of radical thinking that theWar involves, will be a profound acceleration of the feminist movementthroughout, at least, the democracies of the world. Already it is beingrecognized that all valid principles of democracy apply to women equallywith men. Regenerated, if chaotic, Russia takes for granted the farthestreaches of feminism. The regime in England, that bitterly opposedsuffrage for women, is now voluntarily granting it before the close ofthe War. 

Thus the victory of the allied nations will mean the fruition of much ofthe feminism that is a phase of humanism. It will mean freeing womenfrom outgrown custom and tradition, from unjust limitations inindustrial, social and political life. It will mean men and womenworking together, on a plane of moral equality, with free initiative andvoluntary co-operation, for the fruition of democracy. Just as thatfruition will see the end of idle rich and poor, so there will be nomore women slaves or parasites, none regarded or possessed as property, but only free human beings, each self-directed and self-controlled, andresponsible for his or her own personality and conduct. 

XIV

THE TRANSFORMATION OF DEMOCRACY

The nineteenth century was the period of rapid growth in adhesion tothose ideals of democracy for which the War is being fought. It is notso well recognized that during the same hundred years democracy was sotransformed as to be to-day a new thing under the sun. 

Up to the time of the French and American revolutions democracy restedlargely upon certain abstract ideas of human nature. Rousseau couldargue that in primitive times men sat down together to form a state, each giving up a part of his natural right to a central authority, andthus justifying it. We now know that nothing of the kind ever happened, that society had undergone a long process of development before menbegan to think about it at all. We continue to repeat the splendid atall. I refer, of course, to the women of antiquity. Where respectable, these were the head of the household slaves, scarcely removed from thecondition of the latter. The few women who did achieve freedom ofthought and action, and became the companions of cultivated men--theAspasias of antiquity--bought their freedom at a sad price. 

So Rome is called a republic, and it is true that, during the first halfof her long history, freedom gradually broadened down from the patricianclass to the plebeian multitude. When Rome reached out, however, to themastery of the most impressive empire the world has seen, she neverdreamed of extending that freedom to the conquered populations. If shedid grant Roman citizenship to an occasional community, to enjoy therights and exercise the privileges of that citizenship, it was necessaryto journey to Rome. It was the city and the world: the city ruling theworld as subject. 

The same principle holds with the republics developing at the close ofthe middle age, in Italy, in the towns of the Hanseatic League andelsewhere. Always the freedom achieved was for a city, a group or aclass, never for all the people. Our dream, on the contrary, is to takeall the men and women in the land, ultimately in the world, and helpthem, through the free and cooperative activity of each with all therest, on toward life, liberty, happiness, intelligence--all the ends oflife that are worth while. If we demand life for ourselves, we ask itonly in harmony with the best life for all. We want no specialprivilege, no benefit apart, bought at the price of the best welfare ofhumanity. "We, " unfortunately, does not yet mean all of us, but it doessignify an increasing multitude, rallying to this that is the standardof to-morrow. 

A third transformation, at least equally important with these, is in theinvention, for it is no less, of representative government. Politicalthinkers, such as John Fiske, have tried to make us understand what thisinvention means: we do not yet realize it. The development ofrepresentative government is the cause, first of all, of the tremendousexpansion of the area over which we apply democracy. Plato, in the_Laws_, limits the size of the ideal state--the one realizable in thisworld--to 5040 citizens. Why? Well, the exact number has a certainmystical significance, but the main reason is, Plato could not imagine amuch larger body of citizens than 5000 meeting together in publicassembly and fulfilling the functions of citizenship. 

We have extended democracy over a hundred millions of population, dwelling on the larger part of a continent; and if one travels North, South, East, West, to-day, one is impressed that, in spite ofunassimilated elements, everywhere men and women are proud, first ofall, of being American citizens, and only in subordinate ways devoted tothe section or community to which they belong. This has been madepossible by the invention and development of representative government. 

That is not all: it is representative government that takes the stingout of all the older criticisms of democracy. Plato devotes one of thesaddest portions of his _Republic_ to showing how in a brief time, democracy must inevitably fall and be replaced by tyranny. With thedemocracy Plato knew this was true. It was impossible for Athens toprotect and make permanent her constitution. She might pass a lawdeclaring the penalty of death on any one proposing a change in theconstitution. It did no good. Let some demagogue arise, sure of thesuffrage of a majority of the citizens: he could call them into publicassembly, cause a repeal of the law, and make any change in theconstitution he desired. There was no way to prevent it. 

It is the invention and development of representative government thathas changed all that. We chafe under the slow-moving character of ourdemocracy--over the time it takes to get laws enacted and the longertime to get them executed. We may well be patient: this slow-movingcharacter of democracy is the other side of its greatest safe-guard. Itis because we cannot immediately express in action the popular will andopinion, but must think two, three, many times, working through chosenand responsible representatives of the people, that our democracy is notsubject to the perils and criticisms of those of antiquity. 

The voice of the people in the day and hour, under the impulse of suddencaprice or passion, is anything but the voice of God: it is much moreapt to be the voice of all the powers of darkness. It is commonthought, sifted through uncommon thought, that approaches as near thevoice of God as we can hope to get in this world. It is not the surfacewhim of public opinion, it is its _greatest common denominator_ thatapproximates the truth. 

It behooves us to remember this at a time when changes are coming withsuch swiftness. Our life has developed so rapidly that the oldpolitical forms proved inadequate to the solution of the new problems. As a practical people, we therefore quickly adopted or invented newforms. Doubtless this is, in the main, right, but we should understandclearly what we are doing. 

For instance, one of the great changes, recently inaugurated, is theelection of national senators by popular vote. Our forefathers plannedthat the national upper house should represent a double sifting ofpopular opinion. We elected state legislatures; they, in turn, chose thenational senators: thus these were twice removed from the popular will. It proved easy to corrupt state legislatures; the national senate cameto represent too much the moneyed interests; and so, through anamendment to the constitution, we changed the process, and now elect oursenators by direct vote of the people. This makes them more immediatelyrepresentative of the popular will, and perhaps the change was wise; butwe should recognize that we have removed one more safe-guard ofdemocracy. 

A story, told for a generation, and fixed upon various Britishstatesmen, will illustrate my meaning. The last repetition attributedit to John Burns. On one occasion, while he was a member of Parliament, it is said he was at a tea-party in the West End of London. Thehostess, pouring his cup of tea, anxious to make talk and show her deepinterest in politics, said, "Mr. Burns, what is the use of the house ofLords anyway?" The statesman, without replying, poured his tea from thecup into the saucer. The hostess, surprised at the breach of etiquette, waited, and then said, "but Mr. Burns, you didn't answer my question. "He pointed to the tea, cooling in the saucer: that was the function, tocool the tea of legislation. That was the function intended for ournational senate. The trouble was, the tea of legislation often becameso stone cold in the process that it was fit only for the politicalslop-pail, and that was not what we wanted. So we have changed it all, but one more safe-guard of democracy is gone. 

So with other reforms, loudly acclaimed, as the initiative andreferendum. With the new problems and complications of anextraordinarily developed life, it is doubtless wise that the peopleshould be able to initiate legislation and should have the final word asto what legislation shall stand. On the other hand, if we are not tosuffer under a mass of hasty and ill-considered legislation, if laws areto stand, they must always be formulated by a body of trainedlegislators, and not by the changing whim of popular opinion. 

So with the recall, now so widely demanded in many sections of thecountry. In the old days, our candidates were most obsequious andprofuse in promises to their constituents _before_ election; but onceelected, only too often they turned their backs on their constituents, went merrily their own way, making deals and bargains, in the spiritthat "to the victor belong the spoils. " Therefore we justly demandedsome control of them, after, as before, election: hence the recall. Again the movement is right; but if the fundamentals of democracy are tobe permanent, that body of men, concerned with the interpretation of theconstitution and the fundamental law of the land, must not be subject tothe immediate whim of mob mind, and the power to recall those judgesoccupied with this task would be a graver danger than advantage. Theywill make mistakes, at times they will be ultra conservative andservants of special interests, but that is one of the incidental priceswe have to pay for the permanence of free institutions. The problem isto keep the basic principles of democracy unchanged, the forms on thesurface as fluid and adjustable as possible. 

It is these three transformations--the abandonment of the old abstractnotions and the testing of democracy by its results, the expansion ofits application over the entire population, and the invention anddevelopment of representative government--it is these three changes thatmake our democracy a new order of society, new in its problems, itsmenaces, its solutions. 

XV

DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

All just government is a transient device to make ordered progresspossible. In the kingdom of heaven there would be no government, for ifall human beings saw the best, loved the best and willed the best, thefunction of government would be at an end. Obviously there is no hopeor fear that we shall get into the kingdom of heaven soon, and thenecessity for government will exist for an indefinitely long time. Nevertheless, government is due to the imperfection of human nature and, as stated, its aim is ordered progress. Progress without order isanarchy; order without progress is stagnation and death. 

It must frankly be admitted, moreover, that democracy is not theshortest road to good government nor to economic efficiency. That werecognize this as a people is proved by the drift of our opinion and ofthe changes in our lesser institutions. Take, for instance, our citygovernment. A few decades ago our cities were so notoriously misgovernedthat they were the scandal of the world. Our boards of aldermen orcouncilmen, representing ward constituencies, with all sorts of localstrings tied to them, were clumsy and unwieldy and easily subject tocorruption. 

So, about twenty years ago, all across the country went the cry, "Get agood mayor, and give him a free hand. " That is the way our greatindustries are conducted: a wise captain of industry is secured andgiven full control. Being a practical people, and imagining ourselves tobe much more practical than really we are, we said, let us conduct ourcity business in the same way. Why not? Plato showed long ago that youcan get the best government in the shortest time by getting a goodtyrant, and giving him a free hand. 

There arc just two objections. The first is incidental: it isexceedingly difficult to keep your tyrant good. Arbitrary authorityover one's fellows is about the most corrupting influence known to man. No one is great and good enough to be entrusted with it. Responsiblepower sobers and educates, irresponsible power corrupts. Neverthelesswe pay the price of this error and learn the lesson. 

The other objection is more significant. It is the effect on the rankand file of the citizenship, for the meaning of democracy is notimmediate results in government, but the education of the citizen, andthat education can come only by fulfilling the functions of citizenship. Thus it is better to be the free citizen of a democracy, with all thewaste and temporary inefficiency democracy involves, than to be theinert slave of the most perfect paternal despotism ever devised by man. Thus the movement away from democratic city government is gravely to bequestioned, no matter what economic results it secures. 

The same argument applies to more recent changes, as the commission formof city government. As in the previous case, reacting upon thescandalous situation, we said, "Let us choose the three to five best menin the community, and let them run the city's business for us. " Nearlyevery time this change has been made, the result has been an immediatecleaning up of the city government; but why? Chiefly because "a newbroom sweeps clean, "--not so much for the reason that it is new, asbecause you are interested in the instrument. You can get a dirty roomremarkably clean with an old broom, if you will sweep hard enough. Thecleaning up is due, not primarily to the instrument, but to the handthat wields it. 

To speak less figuratively: the cleaning up of the city government withthe inauguration of the commission system, came because the change wasmade by an awakening of the good people of the community. Good peoplehave a habit, however, of going to sleep in an astoundingly short time;but _the gang never sleeps_. Now suppose, while the good people aredozing in semi-somnolence, assured that the new broom will sweep ofitself, the gang gets together and elects the three to five worstgangsters in the city to be the commission? Is it not evident that thevery added efficiency of the instrument means greater graft andcorruption?

Equally the argument applies to the most recent device suggested--thecity manager plan. As we have largely taken our schools out ofpolitics, and have a non-partisan educational expert as superintendent, so it is suggested we should conduct our city business. Again, supposethe gang appoints the city manager: he will be an expert in graft, rather than in government. 

The moment a people gets to trusting to a device it is headed fordanger. There is just one safeguard of democracy, and that is _to keepthe good people awake and at the task all the time_. Some instrumentsare better and some are worse, but the instrument never does the work, it is the hand and brain that wield it. 

If there is one field where we could reasonably expect to find puredemocracy, it is in our higher educational institutions. In a collegeor university, where a group of young men and women, and a group ofolder men and women are gathered apart, out of the severer economicstruggle, dedicated to ideal ends: there, surely, we could expect puredemocracy in organization and relationship; yet the tendency has beensteadily toward autocracy. One can count the fingers of both hands andnot cover the list of college and university presidents who have takenoffice during the last fifteen years, only on condition that they havecomplete authority over the educational policy of the institution, andoften over its financial policy as well. The reason is obvious: we runa railroad efficiently by getting a good president and giving himarbitrary control; why not a university?

There are just the two objections cited above: even in a university, itis difficult to keep your tyrant good. This, again, is the minorobjection. The real evil is in the effect upon the rank and file ofthose governed by the autocrat. There are men in university facultiesto-day who say, privately, that if they could get any other opportunity, they would resign to-morrow, for they feel like clerks in a departmentstore, with no opportunity to help determine the educational policy ofthe institutions of which they are integral parts. 

The German university, under all the autocracy and bureaucracy of theGerman state, is more democratic in its organization than our own. Itsfaculty is a self-governing body, electing to its own membership. TheRectorship is an honor conferred for the year on some faculty member forsuperior worth and scholarship. Each member of the faculty may thusfeel the self-respect and dignity, resulting from the power andinitiative he possesses as a free citizen of the institution. 

Let me suggest what would be the ideal democratic organization of acollege or university. Why not apply the same division of functions ofgovernment that has proved so successful in the state? The board ofTrustees is the natural judiciary; the President, the executive. Thefaculty is the legislative body, with the student body as a sort oflower house, cooperating in enacting the legislation for its owngovernment. Where has such a plan been tried?

If the primary purpose of democracy is thus, not immediate results ingovernment, but the education of the citizen, on the other hand, democracy rests, for its safety and progress, on the ever bettereducation of the citizen. Under the older forms of human society, lawsmay be passed and executed that are far in advance of public opinion. That cannot be done in a democracy. The law may be a slight step inadvance, and so perhaps educate public opinion to its level; but if itgoes beyond that step, after the first flurry of interest in the law ispast, it remains a dead letter on the statute books--worse than useless, because cultivating that dangerous disrespect for all law, which we haveseen growing upon us as a people. 

Thus from either side, the problem of democracy is a problem ofeducation. It rests upon education, its aim is education. In ademocracy, the supreme function of the state is, not to establish amilitary system for defense, or a police system for protection, it isnot the enforcement of public and private contract: it is to take thechildren and youth of each generation and develop them into men andwomen able to fulfill the responsibility and enjoy the opportunity offree citizenship in a free society. 

XVI

MENACES OF DEMOCRACY

Since modern democracy is a new thing under the sun, so its menaces arenew, or, if old, they take misleadingly new forms. For instance, thegreatest danger in the path of our democracy is the world-old evil ofselfishness, but it does take surprisingly new form. It is notaggressive selfishness that we have primarily to dread. There arethose, it is true, who believe we may soon be endangered by theambitions of some arrogant leader in the nation. The fear isunwarranted, for our people are still so devoted to the fundamentalprinciples of democracy, that if any leader were to take one clear steptoward over-riding the constitution and making himself despot, that stepwould be his political death-blow. No, we are not yet endangered by theaggressive ambitions of those at the front, but we are in grave dangerfrom the negative selfishness of indifference, shown in its worst formby just those people who imagine they are good because they arerespectable, whereas they may be merely good--for nothing. 

Plato argued that society could never have patriotism in full measureuntil the family was abolished. A singular notion that any school boyto-day can readily answer, yet here is the curious situation. Familylife, among ourselves, in its better aspects, has reached a higher planethan ever before in any people. More marriages are made on the onlydecent basts of any marriage. This is the woman's land. Children havetheir rights and privileges, even to their physical, mental and moraldetriment. It is here that men most willingly sacrifice for theirfamilies, slaving through the hot summer in the cities, to send wife andchildren to the seashore or the mountains; yet it is just here that menmost readily unhinge their consciences when they turn from private topublic life. 

Some cynic has said that there is not an American citizen who would notsmuggle to please his wife. Of course the statement is not true, but ifyou have ever crossed the ocean on a transatlantic liner, and watchedthe devices to which ordinarily decent men--men who would be ashamed tosteal your pocket handkerchief or to lie to you as an individual--willresort, in order to lie to the government or steal from the government, you begin to wonder if the cynic was not right. The law, obviously, maybe unjust: if so, protest against it and seek to have it changed, butwhile it is the law, does it not deserve your respectful obedience, unless you would add to the dangerously growing disrespect for all law?

Next to the menace of selfishness is that of ignorance, and this, too, takes confusingly new form. It is not ignorance of scientific fact andlaw, dangerous as that is, that threatens, but ignorance of what ourinstitutions mean, of what they have cost, of the ideal for which westand among the nations. The celerity with which, even during the pasttwo decades, the younger generation has abandoned old standards andideals, is an ominous illustration. It is true:

"New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient goods uncouth; 'Theymust upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth. "

Those words of Lowell's are as fully applicable to the present crisis, as to that for which Lowell wrote them; but to give up the past, withoutknowing that you are letting go, is surely not the part of wisdom. 

A third menace shows in that fickleness of temper and false standard oflife that cause us to admire the wrong type of leader. Probably onehalf of all the attacks on men of unusual wealth and success come fromother men, who would like to be in the same situation with those theyattack, and have failed of their ambition. Part of the attack issincere, no doubt, but if you assumed that all the abuse heaped uponconspicuous men came from moral conviction, you would utterly misreadthe situation. 

On the other hand, men of moral excellence make us ashamed. Now ittakes a rarely magnanimous spirit to be shamed and not resent it. Weare apt to feel that, if we can pull another down, we raise ourselves. To realize this, consider the growl of joy that comes from the worsesort of citizen and newspaper when some public leader is caught in aprivate scandal. As if pulling him down, raised us! We are all tarredwith his disgrace. There are, indeed, two ways of stating the ideal ofdemocracy: you can say, "I am just as good as any one else, " which inthe first place, is not true, and, in the second, would be unlovely ofyou to express, were it true. You can say, on the contrary, "Everyother human being ought to have just as good a chance as I have, " whichis right; and yet you will hear the ideal of democracy phrased a dozentimes the first way, where it is expressed once in the second form. 

That democracies are fickle is one of the oldest criticisms upon them. We had thought that we were not subject to that criticism, and in theold days we were not. We had the country debating club and the villagelyceum. We were an agricultural people, sober and slow-moving. We hadfew books, they were good books and we read them many times. We had fewnewspapers, we knew the men who wrote in them, and when we read aneditorial, our mind was actively challenged by the sincere thinking ofanother mind. 

To-day, everywhere, we have moved into the cities. The strength of thecountry-side is sobriety and slow incubation of the forces of life. Itsvice is stupidity. The strength of the city is keen wittedness, versatility, quick response. Its vice is fickleness, morbidity, exhaustion. We have our great blanket sheet newspapers, representing aparty, a clique, a financial interest, with writers lending their brainsout, for money, to write editorials for causes in which they do notbelieve. We have the multitude of books, incessantly and hastilyproduced; we read much, and scarcely think at all. We have got rid ofthe old "three decker" novel, reduced it to a single volume, and thentaken out the climax of the story, publishing it in the corner of thedaily newspaper, as the short story of the day, so that he who runs mayread. If he is a wise man he will run as fast as he can and not readthat stuff at all. We have our ever increasing "movies, " with theirincessant titillation of the mind with swift passing impressions, asdisintegrating to intellectual concentration, as they are injurious tothe eyes. The result of it all is an increasing fickleness of temper, so that the same people who shout most loudly when the popular hero goesby, the next week cover his very name with vituperation and abuse, if heoffends their slightest whim. 

This evil breeds another: fickleness in the people means demagoguery inthe leader, inevitably. We have said to our public men--not in words, but by the far more impressive language of our conduct--"get money, power, success, and we will give you more money, power and success, andnot ask you how you got them nor what ends you serve in using them. "That so many have refused the bribe is to their credit, not ours; wehave done what we could to corrupt them. 

Finally, we are the most irreverent people in the world. We believe inyouth, we scorn age. We have splendid enthusiasm, we do not know whatwisdom means. One hears college presidents say--half jokingly, ofcourse--that there is no use appointing a man over thirty to the facultythese days. So one hears Christian ministers, in those denominationswhere the minister is called by the particular church, say there is nouse trying to get another call after one is fifty! Of course, it is nottrue, but it is true enough to be a serious criticism upon us. For whatother vocation is there where the mellowness that comes only from timeand long experience, from presiding at weddings and standing beside opengraves, sharing the joys and sorrows of innumerable persons, is soindispensable, as in the pastor, the physician of the spirit? Still, wewill turn out some wise, shy, mellow old man, just ripened to the pointof being the true minister to the souls of others, and replace him witha recent graduate of a theological school, because the latter can talkthe language of the higher criticism or whatever else happens tointerest us for the moment. Obviously, we pay the price, but think whatit indicates of our civilization. 

XVII

THE DILEMMA OF DEMOCRACY

We have seen that the gravest menaces of democracy are the faults inmind and character in the multitude. Selfishness, fickleness, ignorance, irreverence in the people, with demagoguery in the leader--these are the menaces of American democracy. How then can the people betrusted, since democracy depends upon trusting them? This is an oldindictment, searching to the very heart of democracy. Plato made it ofancient Athens, while, more recently and trenchantly, Ibsen has made itfor all modern society. 

The argument runs thus: democracy means the rule of the majority. Well, there are more fools than wise men in the world, more ignorant thanintelligent. Thus the rule of the majority must mean the rule of thefools over the wise men, of the ignorant over the intelligent. Such isthe significant indictment, and we are compelled to admit that ourpolitical life is filled with illustrations that would seem tosubstantiate it. The ward bosses, the demagogues and grafters who aregiven power by the multitude, one campaign after another, would seem tojustify the pessimism of Plato and Ibsen. 

Is there not, however, a subtle fallacy in the very phrasing of theindictment? The majority does not "rule": it elects representatives whoguide. That is something entirely different. When the worst is said ofthem those representatives of the people are distinctly above theaverage of the majorities electing them. Take the roll of ourpresidents, for instance. With all the corruption and vulgarity of ournational politics, that list, from Washington, through such altitudes asJefferson and Lincoln, to the present occupant of the White House, issuperior to any roster of kings or emperors in the history of mankind. 

What does this mean? It means that _the hope of democracy is theinstinctive power in the breast of common humanity to recognize thehighest when it appears_. Were this not true, democracy would be themost hopeless of mistakes, and the sooner we abandoned it, with itsvulgarity and waste, the better it would be for us. The instinctivepower is there, however: to recognize, not to live, the highest. 

How many have followed the example of Socrates, remaining in prison andaccepting the hemlock poison for the sake of truth? Yet all who know ofhim thrill to his sacrifice. Of all who have borne the name, Christian, how many have followed consistently the footsteps of Jesus and obeyedliterally and unvaryingly the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount? Ofthe millions, perhaps ten or twenty individuals--to be generous in ourview; but _all the world recognizes him_. 

Here, then, is the hope that takes the sting from the indictment ofPlato, Ibsen and how many other critics of democracy. Plato said, "Until philosophers are kings, . . . Cities will never have rest fromtheir evils, --no, nor the human race, as I believe. " Once, perhaps onceonly, Plato's dream was realized: in that noblest of philosopheremperors, wholly dedicated to the welfare of the world he ruled withautocratic power; yet the soul of Marcus Aurelius was burdened with animpossible task. It is one of the tragic ironies of history that, inthis one realization of Plato's lofty dream, the noble emperor couldpostpone, he could not avert, the colossal doom that threatened theworld he ruled. So he wrapped his Roman cloak about him and lay down tosleep, with stoic consciousness that he had done his part in the placewhere Zeus had put him, but relieved that he might not see the disasterhe knew must swiftly come. 

How different our dream: it is no illusion of a happy accident ofphilosopher kings. We want no arbitrary monarchs, wise or brutal: fromthe noblest of emperors to the butcher of Berlin, we would sweep themall aside, to the ash-heap of outworn tools. Our dream is the awakeningand education of the multitude, so that the majority will be able andglad to choose, as its guides, leaders and representatives, the noblestand best. When that day comes, there will be, for the first time in thehistory of mankind, the dawn of a true _aristocracy_ or rule of thebest; and it will come through the fulfillment of democracy. A long andtroubled path, with many faults and evils meantime? Yes, but not sohopelessly long, when one considers the ages of slow struggle up themountain and the swiftly multiplying power of education over the mind ofall. 

XVIII

PATERNALISM VERSUS DEMOCRACY

The contrast between paternalism and democracy in aim and method is thusextreme. Paternalism seeks directly organization, order, production andefficiency, incidentally and occasionally the welfare of the subjectpopulation. Democracy seeks directly the highest development of all menand women, their freedom, happiness and culture, in the end it hopesthis will give social order, good government and productive power. Itis willing, meantime, to sacrifice some measure of order for freedom, ofgood government for individual initiative, of efficiency for life. Paternalism seeks to achieve its aims, quickly and effectively, throughthe boss's whip of social control. Democracy works by the slower, butmore permanently hopeful path of education, never sacrificing life tomaterial ends. Paternalism ends in a social hierarchy, materiallyprosperous, but caste-ridden and without soul. Democracy ends in theabolishment of castes, equality of opportunity, with the freestindividual initiative and finest flowering of the personal spirit. Whichshall it be: God or Mammon, Men or Machines?

There is no doubt that efficiency can be achieved most quickly under awell-wielded boss's whip, but at the sacrifice of initiative andinvention. Moreover, remove the whip, and the efficiency quickly goes topieces. On the other hand, the efficiency achieved by voluntary effortand free cooperation comes much more slowly, but it lasts. Moreover, itdevelops, hand in hand, with initiative and invention. 

The negro, doubtless, has never been so generally efficient as beforethe civil war, in the South, under the overseer's whip; yet every negrowho, to-day, has character enough to save up and buy a mule and an acreof ground, tills it with a consistent and permanent effectiveness ofwhich slave labor is never capable. In the one case, moreover, there isthe average economic result, in the other, the gradual development ofmanhood. 

Organize a factory on the feudal lines so prevalent in current industry. Get a strong, dominating superintendent and give him autocraticauthority. Quickly he will show results. Always, however, there is thedanger of strikes, and if the strong hand falters, the organizationdisintegrates. On the other hand, let a corporation take its artisansinto its confidence, give each a small proportionate share in the annualearnings. Each worker will feel increasingly that the business is hisbusiness. He will take pride in his accomplishment. Gradually he willattain efficiency, and work permanently, without oversight, with aconsistent earnestness no boss's whip ever attained, The experience of the National Cash Register Company at Dayton, Ohio, proves this. The experiments of Henry Ford are a step toward the samesolution. So, in lesser measure, is the plan of the Steel trust topermit and encourage its employees to purchase annually its stock, somewhat below the current market price, giving a substantial bonus ifthe stock is held over ten years. 

If you wish an illustration on a larger scale, consider the massformation tactics of the German soldiers, in contrast to the individualcourage, initiative and action of the French. There are the two typesof efficiency in sheerest contrast, but beyond is always the question oftheir effect on manhood. France has saved and regenerated her soul; butGermany--?

Further, the breakdown of paternalistically achieved efficiency has beenevident in Germany's utter failure to understand the mind of otherpeoples, particularly of democracies. She had voluminous data, gatheredby the most atrociously efficient spy system ever developed, yet sheutterly misread the mind of France, England and the United States. Thesame break-down is evident in Germany's failure in colonization incontrast to England's success. 

For offensive war, it must be admitted, the efficiency under the boss'swhip will go further. For defensive war, or war for high moral aims, itis desirable that the individual soldier should think for himself, respond to the high appeal. Thus for such warfare the efficiency ofvoluntary effort and cooperation is superior. An autocracy would betterrule its soldiers by a military caste; there can be no excuse for suchin a democracy. Thus, the utmost possible fraternization of officersand men is desirable, and social snobbery, the snubbing of officers whocome up from the ranks, and other anachronistic survivals, should bestamped out, as utterly foreign to what should be the spirit of themilitary arm of democracy. 

Further, in estimating the two types, one must remember that paternalismmay exercise its power in secret and that it accomplishes much in thedark. Democracy, on the other hand, is afflicted and blessed withpitiless publicity. Thus its evils are all exposed, it washes all itsdirty linen in public; but the main thing is to get it clean. 

When it comes to invention and initiative, as already indicated, democracy has the advantage, immediately, as in the long run. We arethe most inventive people on earth, and that quality is a direct resultof our democratic individualism. It is a significant fact that most ofthe startling inventions used in this War were made in America--but_developed and applied in Germany. _ There, again, are evident thecontrasting results of the two types of social organization. Theindefatigably industrious and docile German mind can work out and applythe inventions furnished it, with marvelous persistency andeffectiveness, under paternal control. We have the problem of achievingby voluntary effort and cooperation a persistent thoroughness in workingout the ideas and inventions that come to us in such abundant measure. 

The path of democracy is education. 

XIX

THE SOLUTION FOR DEMOCRACY

When we say that the path of democracy is education, we do not mean thatthere is an easy solution of its problem. There is no patent medicinewe can feed the American people and cure it of its diseases. There isno specific for the menaces that threaten. Eternal vigilance and effortare the price, not only of liberty, but of every good of man. Letthings alone, and they get bad; to keep them good, we must struggleeverlastingly to make them better. Leave the pool of politics unstirredby putting into it ever new individual thought and ideal, and howquickly it becomes a stagnant, ill-smelling pond. Leave a churchunvitalized, by ever fresh personal consecration, and how quickly itbecomes a dead form, hampering the life of the spirit. Leave auniversity uninfluenced by ever new earnestness and devotion on the partof student and teacher, and how soon it becomes a scholastic machine, positively oppressing the mind and spirit. 

There is a true sense in which the universe exists momentarily by thegrace of God. Take light away, and you have darkness. Take darknessaway, and you have not necessarily light; you might have chaos. Takehealth away, and you have disease. Take disease away, and you have notnecessarily health; you may have death. Take virtue away, and you havevice. Take vice away, and you have not necessarily virtue; you mighthave negative respectability. Thus it is the continual affirmation ofthe good that keeps the heritage of yesterday and takes the step towardto-morrow. 

Nevertheless, if there is no easy solution of the problem, there arecertain big lines of attack. If we are right in our diagnosis, that theproblem of democracy is a problem of education, then our whole system ofeducation, for child, youth and adult, should be reconstructed to focusupon the building of positive and effective moral personality. 

American education began as a subsidiary process. Children got organiceducation in the home, on the farm, in the work shop. They went toschool to get certain formal disciplines, to learn to read, write andcipher and to acquire formal grammar. With the moving into the cities, the industrial revolution and the entire transformation of our life, theschool has had to take over more and more of the process of organiceducation. If children fail to get such education in the school, theyare apt to miss it altogether. 

With this entire change in the meaning of the school, old notions of itspurpose still survive. Probably no one is so benighted to-day as toimagine that the chief function of the school is to fill the mind withinformation; but there are many who still hold to the tradition that thechief purpose of education is to sharpen the intellectual tools of theindividual for the sake of his personal success. This notion is amisleading survival, for tools are of value only in terms of thecharacter using them. The same equipment may serve, equally, good orbad ends. Only as education focusses on the development of positive andeffective moral character can it aid in solving the problem ofdemocracy. 

Need it be added that this does not mean teaching morals and manners tochildren, thirty minutes a day, three times a week? That is a minorfragment of moral education. It means that all phases of the process--the relation of pupil and teacher, school and home, the government anddiscipline, the lessons taught in every subject, the environment, theproportioning of the curriculum, of physical, emotional and intellectualculture--all shall be focussed and organized upon the one significantaim of the whole--_character_. 

Further, if education is to overcome the menaces and solve the dilemmaof democracy, it must be carried beyond childhood and youth and outsidethe walls of academic institutions. The ever wider education of adultcitizenship is indispensable to the progress and safety of democracy. Itis one of the glaring illustrations of the inefficiency of our democracythat there are still communities where school boards build school houseswith public money, open them five or six hours, five days in the week, and refuse to allow them to be opened any other hour of the day ornight, for a civic forum, parents' meeting, public lecture or otheractivity of adult education; and yet we call ourselves a practicalpeople! Surely, in a democracy, the state is as vitally interested inthe education of the adult citizen as of the child. 

Herein is the significance of those various extensions of education, developing and spreading so widely to-day. University-extension andChautauqua movements, civic forums, free lectures to the people byboards of education and public libraries, summer schools, night schoolsfor adults--all are illustrations of this movement, so vital to theprogress of democracy. Through these instrumentalities the popularideal may be elevated, the public mind may be trained to more logicaland earnest thought, citizenship may be made more serious andintelligent, and finally a most helpful influence may be exerted on theacademic institutions themselves. It is an easily verifiable truth thatany academic institution that builds around itself an enclosingscholastic wall, refuses to go outside and serve and learn in the largerworld of humanity, in the long run inevitably dies of academic dry rot. 

In the endeavor to solve the problem of democracy cannot we do more thanwe have done hitherto in cultivating reverence for moral leadership--thequality so much needed in democracy at the present hour? This may beachieved through many aspects of education, but especially throughcontact with noble souls in literature and history. History, above all, is the great opportunity, and, from this point of view, is it notnecessary to rewrite our histories: instead of portraying solelystatesmen and warriors, to fill them with lofty examples of leadershipin all walks of life?

Women as well as men: for surely ideals of both should be fostered. Acolleague, interested in this problem, recently took one of the mostwidely used text-books of American history, and counted the pages onwhich a woman was mentioned. Of the five hundred pages, there werefour: not four pages devoted to women; but four mentioning a woman. What does it mean: that women have contributed less than one part in ahundred and five to the development of American life? Surely no onewould think that. What, then, are the reasons for the discrepancy?There are several, but one may be mentioned: men have written thehistories, and they have written chiefly of the two fields of actionwhere men have been most important and women least, war andstatesmanship. Surely, however, if American history is to reveal theAmerican spirit, exercise the contagion of noble ideals and developreverence for true moral leadership, it must present types of bothmanhood and womanhood in all fields of action and endeavor. 

One who has stood with Socrates in the common criminal prison in Athensand watched him drink the hemlock poison, saying "No evil can happen toa good man in life or after death, " who has heard the oration of Paul onMars Hill or that of Pericles over the Athenian dead, who has thrilledto the heroism of Joan of Arc and Edith Cavell, the noble service ofElizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale, the high appeal of Helen HuntJackson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who has heard Giordano Brunoexclaim as the flames crept up about him, "I die a martyr, andwillingly, " who has responded to the calm elevation of Marcus Aurelius, the cosmopolitan wisdom of Goethe, the sweet gentleness of Maeterlinck'sspirit and the titan dreams of Ibsen, can scarcely fail to appreciatethe brotherhood of all men and to learn that reverence for the truemoral leader, that dignifies alike giver and recipient. 

XX

TRAINING FOR MORAL LEADERSHIP

Since the path of democracy is education, moral leadership is morenecessary to it, than in any other form of society; yet there areexceptional obstacles to its development. We speak of "the white lightthat beats upon a throne": it is nothing compared to the search lightplayed upon every leader of democracy. With our lack of reverence, wedelight in pulling to pieces the personalities of those who lead us. Thus it is increasingly difficult to get men of sensitive spirit to paythe price of leadership for democracy. 

Is it not possible to do more than we have done, consciously to developsuch leadership? Where is it trained? In life, the college anduniversity, the normal school, the schools of law, medicine andtheology. Yes, but if not one boy and girl in ten graduates from thehigh school, surely we want one man and woman in ten to fulfill somemeasure of moral leadership, and the high school is directly concernedwith the task of furnishing such leadership for American democracy. 

If that is true, is it not a pity that the high school is so largelydominated from above by the demand of the college upon the enteringfreshman? It is not to be taken for granted that the particular regimenof studies, best fitting the student to pass the entrance examinationsof a college or university, is the best possible for the nine out of tenstudents, who go directly from the high school into the world, and mustfulfill some measure of moral leadership for American democracy. Thepresumption is to the contrary. College professors are human--some ofthem. They want students prepared to enter as smoothly as possible intothe somewhat artificial curricula of academic studies they havearranged. The Latin professor wishes not to go back and start with therudiments of his subject, as the professor of mathematics with thebeginnings of Algebra and Geometry. The result is they demand of thehigh school what fits most smoothly into their scheme. 

Now if it is not possible to serve equally the needs of both groups, would it not be better to neglect the one tenth of the students, goingon to college, even assuming they are the pick of the flock, which theyare not always? They have four more years to correct their mistakes andround out their culture. If any one must be subordinated, it would bebetter to neglect them, and focus upon the needs of the nine out of ten, who go directly from the high school into life and have not anotherchance; yet there are states in the Union, where it is possible for acommittee of the state university at the top to say to every high schoolteacher in the state, "Conform to our requirements, or leave the state, or get out of the profession. " The threat, moreover, has been carriedout more than once. 

That situation is utterly wrong. We want organization of theeducational system, with each unit cooperating with the next higher, butif education is to solve the problem of democracy and furnish moralleadership for American life, we want each unit to be free, first ofall, to serve its own constituency to the best of its power. Theproblem is not serious for the big city high school, with its multipliedelective courses, but for the small rural or town high school, with itslimited corps of teachers and its necessarily fixed courses, the burdenis onerous indeed. 

Is the American college and university doing all that it might do incultivating moral leadership for American democracy? The last decadeshave seen an astounding and unparalleled development of higher educationin America. In the old days, the college was usually on adenominational foundation. It was supported by the dollars and penniesof earnest religionists who believed that education was necessary toreligion and morality. The president was generally a clergyman of thedenomination; he taught the ethics course, and all students wererequired to take it. There was compulsory chapel attendance, and once aday the entire student body gathered together to listen to some moraland religious thought. 

Then came the immense expansion of higher education. Courses weremultiplied and diversified. Universities were established or endowed bythe state. Academies became colleges, and colleges, universities. Institutions were generally secularized. Compulsory chapel attendancewas rightly abandoned. Each department served its own interest apart. Until to-day certain of our great universities are not unlike vastintellectual department stores, with each professor calling his goodsacross the counter, and the president, a sort of superior floorwalker, to see that no one clerk gets too many customers. It is an impressiveillustration of what has happened to our higher institutions that, incertain of them, the one regular meeting place of the entire studentbody in a common interest, is the bleachers by the athletic field. Onecontinues to believe in college athletics, in spite of the frequentabsurdities and worse, done in their name; only if the numbers of thoseplaying the game and those exercising only their lungs and throats fromthe bleachers, were reversed, better all-round athletic education wouldresult. Is it not, however, a trenchant criticism on the situation inour higher education, that so often the one common interest should be insomething that is, at least, aside from the main business of theinstitution?

Moreover, no institution can rightly serve democracy, unless it isitself democratic. Thus the growth of an aristocratic spirit in ourcolleges and universities is an ominous sign. For instance, it is stilltrue that any boy or girl, with a sound body and a good mind and nofamily to support, can get a college education. Money is notindispensable: it is possible to work one's way through. Will thisalways be true? One wonders. It is significant that it is easiest towork your way through college, and keep your self-respect and therespect of your fellows, in the small, meagerly endowed college on thefrontier. It is most difficult, with a few exceptions one gladlyrecognizes, in the great, rich universities of the East. What does thatmean?

Straws show the tide: it was announced some time ago by the president ofone of our richest and oldest universities that henceforth scholarshipsin that institution would be given solely on the basis of intellectualscholarship, as tested by examination; and applause went up from thealumni all across the country; yet what does it mean? It means that theboy who has to work on a threshing machine, sell books to anunsuspecting public, or do some other semi-honorable work all summer toget back into college in the Fall, cannot pass those examinationsequally with a rich man's son of equal mind, who can take a tutor to theseashore or the mountains and coach up all summer. Thus foundations, established by well-meaning people to help poor boys self-respectinglythrough college, become intellectual prizes for those who do not needthem. That is all wrong. 

Take the special student problem. When a college or university isfounded, it needs students: they are the life-blood of the institution. Really all that is needed to make a college is a teacher and somestudents: buildings are not indispensable, but students the school musthave. Thus it is apt to keep its bars down and its entrancerequirements flexible. Special students, often mature men and women, who are not prepared to pass the freshman examinations, are admitted onthe recommendation of heads of d epartments, to special courses they arewell fitted to take. Students are admitted freely, and then sifted outafterward, if they prove unworthy of their opportunity: not a badmethod, by the way. 

A dozen years pass, and the institution wants to become respectable. It is just as with the individual: the man, at first, is absorbed inmoney-getting, and when he has it, yearns for respectability. Nowgetting respectable, for a college or university, is called "raising thestandard of scholarship. " Let this not be misunderstood: painstaking, infinitely laborious, accurate scholarship is a noble aim, well worththe consistent effort of a lifetime; but there are two sides to raisingthe standard of scholarship. Does an educational institution exist forthe sake of its reputation, or to serve its constituency? If it seeksto advance its reputation at the expense of its fullest and best serviceto those who need its help, is it not recreant to its duty andopportunity?

Well, in the mood cited, the institution raises and standardizes itsentrance-requirements and generally excludes special students. Onereadily sees why: it is much easier to work with the regularly preparedfreshman, he fits much more smoothly and comfortably into the machineryof the institution. Many a wise teacher will admit, nevertheless, thatthe best students he ever taught and the ones whose lives he is proudestof having influenced, were often men and women, thirty, forty, fiftyyears of age--teachers who suddenly realized that the ruts of theircalling had become so deep they could no longer see over them, ministersawakening to the fact that they had given all their store and must get anew supply, business men aware of a call to another field of action--working with a consistent earnestness the average fledgling freshmancannot imagine--he is not old enough; yet generally the tendency is toexclude such students, unless they will go back and do the arduous, andoften for them useless, work of preparing to pass the examinations forentrance to the freshman class. That, too, is all wrong. 

The American college and university stands to-day at the parting of theways: this generation will largely determine its future. If theAmerican college and university ever becomes a social club for the sonsand daughters of the rich, an institution making it easy for them tosecure business and professional opportunity and advancement, to theexclusion of their poorer fellows, it may be as necessary todisestablish the foundations of our great universities, as statesmen inEurope thought it necessary to disestablish the monastic foundations atthe close of the middle age. They, too, began as educationalinstitutions. If, on the other hand, the American college and universityremains true to its task, if it keeps its doors open and its spiritdemocratic, if it seeks to render ever larger service to the greatpublic and to develop moral leadership for American democracy, then, indeed, it will go ever forward upon its noble path. 

XXI

DEMOCRACY AND SACRIFICE

We have seen the conflict of ideas in the War: the German philosophythat man exists for the state, the contrasting idea of democracy thatthe state exists for man. We may well ask why any institution should beregarded as sacred, except as it has the adventitious sacredness, comingfrom time, convention and hoary tradition. It was said long ago that"the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, " and thestatement may be universalized. Every institution on earth--marriage, the family, education, the church, the state--was made for man and notman for the institution. Humanity must always be the end. Why shouldwe perpetuate any institution that does not serve life? Kant voiced theprinciple in his second imperative of duty: "Always treat humanity, whether in thine own person or that of any other, as an end withal, andnever as a means only. " Kant was a Prussian philosopher: one wonderswhat he would have thought of the "Kanonen-Futter" theory of manhood!

An organization or institution is only a machine, an instrument for apurpose. Thus always it is a means, never an end: its value lies inserving its purpose--the end of human life. So the whole existing ordermust justify itself. Where it rests on forms of injustice, it must bebroken or destroyed, and there is no reason to fear the breaking. 

Thus there is no "divine right" of kings. They represent a vestedinterest, surviving from the past. They must justify themselves by theservice of those under them, or pass. 

Similarly, there is no divine right of a class or caste, enjoyingsupremacy or special privilege. It also is a surviving vested interest, that must justify itself, or be swept aside as an incubus. 

The same test applies to an empire. It, too, is a vested interest, developed out of conditions prevailing in the past. If it does notjustify itself by the largest service of all within it, then it, too, isan anachronistic survival, no longer to be tolerated. 

The principle is universal: the institution of private property, thecontrolling power of captains of industry, the capitalistic system, finally, the state itself, in every form: all are vested interests thatmay be permitted to continue in the exercise of power only as they provetheir superiority to any other form of organization in serving the goodof all. 

This does not mean that, under democracy, the individual shall fail ofsacrifice and the dedication to something higher than himself. That isthe glory of life, transfiguring human nature, and without it, lifesinks to sordid selfishness. Your life is worth, not what you have, butwhat you are, and what you are is determined by that to which youdedicate yourself. Is it creature comforts, pleasure, selfishprivilege, or the largest life and the fullest service of humanity? Whatyou have is merely the condition, the important question is, what do youdo with it? Is it wealth, prosperity: do you sit down comfortably onthe fact of it, to secure all the selfish pleasures possible; or do youregard your fortunate circumstances as so much more opportunity andobligation of leadership and service? Is it poverty, even starvation:do you whine and grovel, or stand erect, with shut teeth, andwringheroic manhood from the breast of suffering?

That is why peace can never be an end: it, too, is merely a condition ormeans. The question is, what do you do with your peace, for peace maymean merely sloth and cowardly ease, where war may mean unselfishheroism. That is what the peace promoters forget. War has itsbrutalities, and terrible indeed they are: unleashed hate, lust, crueltyand revenge; but war has its heroisms. It calls out the devotion tosomething higher than the individual from even the commonest of men. To-day all over the earth, ordinary men are quietly going out toprobable death or mutilation in its most horrible forms, and going forthe sake of an ideal larger than themselves. Women are doing even morethan that. For it is not so hard to die, but to send out those you love, dearer than life itself, to almost certain death--that, indeed, isdifficult, and women are doing it everywhere with a smile on their lipsand choked-back tears. 

Peace, on the other hand, has its virtues: the softening and refining oflife, gradual development of sympathy, achievement of comfort andbeauty; but peace has its vices. In times of peace and prosperity thereseems to be no great cause at stake. Of course, always it is there, butwe do not see it. We become increasingly absorbed in selfish interests, in the good of our immediate family. Thus petty, time-servingselfishness is the vice peculiarly characteristic of times of peace andprosperity. Consider, for instance, the spirit of France during theclosing years of the nineteenth century, and at the present dark, butpregnant, hour of destiny. 

Thus the question is not whether you have peace or war, but what you dowith your peace or war. It is not whether you are rich or poor, butwhat you do with your riches or poverty. 

Suppose we were able to reconstruct our entire social and industrialworld, so that every human being would have plenty to eat, plenty towear and a comfortable house to live in: would we have the kingdom ofheaven? Not necessarily: we might have merely a comfortable, well-decorated pig-sty, if men lived to nothing higher than pigs. "Mancannot live by bread alone, " important as bread is, but by dedication tothe things of the spirit. 

Thus there must ever be the capacity for self-forgetfulness, self-sacrifice, the dedication of life to supreme aims, but that doesnot mean the dedication of man to the institution. Rather it is theconsecration to the welfare of humanity. Man for the State meansautocracy and imperialism; Man for Mankind is the soul of democracy. That is the ideal to which we must rise, if democracy is to prove itselfworthy to be the form of human society for the great future. 

This ideal is realized through many lesser forms and instruments, butalways with the same final test. The family, for instance, is one ofthese lesser forms, and the subordination of the individual to thefamily unit is just. Thus there is a measure of right in seeking firstthe interest of the family group; but when this is sought to the end ofspecial privilege and debauching luxury, against the welfare of all, itbecomes, as we have seen, an evil. 

There is, similarly, a certain justice in the subordination of theindividual to the social class or group interest. It is right thatartisans should unite in trade unions, that employers should gettogether in associations for common benefit. One need only contrast theconditions where each workman had to bid in competition against allothers, and each manufacturer, the same, to realize the advance madethrough group union and cooperation. When either group, however, seeksto further its own interest at the expense of the welfare of the wholesociety, as in securing class legislation, achieving monopolies, holdingefficient workers to the level of production of the slowest and leastcapable of the group, then the class or group spirit becomes an evilthat must be fought for the good of all. 

It is exactly the same with the nation. Its interest is justly servedonly in harmony with the welfare of humanity. Any current problem willillustrate the principle, as, for instance, that of immigration. 

Certainly the nation has the right to prohibit immigration whichproduces unassimilated plague-spots and threatens to cause racialdeterioration, as in phases of Oriental immigration to the Pacificcoast. Similarly, it is right to restrict immigration that wouldfurther economic prosperity, at the expense of the manhood of thenation. We must answer the question, whether we want factories or men. It is desirable to have some of both, of course, but when one is to beobtained at the expense of the other, it is manhood that must be thedeciding end. 

On the other hand, when it comes to refusing a refuge to the poor andoppressed, who are physically and morally acceptable, but lack a smallamount of money, or are unable to respond to a literary test, then thewelfare of humanity demands the opposite decision. Better give them thefifty dollars--a healthy slave was worth more than that in the old days. So teach them to read and write. The nation, can readily pay the smalleconomic price and accept the incidental difficulties for the sake ofthe larger end. 

Thus the deciding principle must always be the welfare, happiness, growth, intelligence, helpfulness of each individual in harmony with allothers. Humanity is incarnatein each man. While, therefore, theindividual must dedicate and, at times, sacrifice himself, it is for thesake, not of the state, church or other institution, but for the welfareof all--_Man for Mankind_. 

From so many sources the view finds expression that modern life has been"weakened by humanitarianism. " If there is truth in the view, we wouldbetter take account of it and radically revise our ethical philosophy. If it is false, it is a damning error, the reiteration of which tends toundermine all that has been achieved for the spirit. 

An interesting comment on the view is the fact that, in spite of all itshorrors, this War has given _no attested instance of arrant cowardice onany front_. Cruelty, lust, brutality, hate: these have appeared inunspeakable guise, but apparently no cowardice or weak timidity; yet themail clad heroes of ancient wars, who met their adversaries face toface, were subjected to no such strain as the men standing in trencheswaiting momentarily death or mutilation from an unseen foe. No, modernlife has not lost strong fiber and is capable of supreme heroism. 

The old society secured its leadership through _noblesse oblige_--theobligation of nobility. Men of aristocratic family and rank felt that, because they stood above the people, they owed a certain leadership andservice, and they gave it, often in abundant measure, but alwayscondescendingly from above. 

We have lost "noblesse oblige": we may even be glad it is gone, if wecan substitute for it something larger and better. It is not theobligation of nobility, but the obligation of humanity that is the need:to realize that all power is obligation. As you can, you owe; and asyou know, you owe. If you have money, it is so much obligation ofleadership and service. If you have talent, education, social orpolitical influence, it is all so much obligation of leadership andservice. If, as individuals, we can generally realize that and act uponit, then indeed we may hope to carry to successful completion theexperiment of democracy and see our beloved country fulfill the measureof moral leadership to which we believe she is called among the nationsof the earth, but fulfilling it not as master over slave, nor as oneempire among others, but as a more experienced brother toward othersfollowing the same open path. 

XXII

THE HOUR OF SACRIFICE

The supreme world crisis is on. We have entered the War in the purestspirit of democracy. We state frankly in advance that we want noindemnity, no extension of territory. We war with no people, except asthat people identifies itself with aggressive autocracy and imperialism, imperilling our safety, as of all democracies, and seeking to ridetyrannically and unjustly over the rights and liberties of otherpeoples. Thus we enter the War solely for the cause of democracy andhumanity. 

The hour of sacrifice has struck for the American people: will it riseto the test? When one considers the characteristics of our surface lifefor recent decades--the devotion to money-getting, the rapid increase ofsenseless and debauching luxury, the reckless frivolity, the unthinkinghaste and selfish pleasure-seeking--one questions. Underneath, however, is a tremendous latent idealism. We are young, enthusiastic, capable ofglorious consecration. Cynical disillusionment is all upon the surface--the cult of the clique of cleverness, uprooted from the soil of commonlife and the deeps of the eternal verities. Beneath in the great massof the people is profound faith in life, deep trust in the ideal, beliefin the great future of humanity. Democracy will justify itself. Weshall rise to the test; but how we need to hear and heed the call!

"Awake America" means Americans awake! For in democracy the individualis the soul. On each person rests the responsibility. Let us acceptthe bitter burden and meet the supreme test, giving time, money, service, life and those we love better than life, for the sake of thesafer, freer, nobler world that is to be. Since we stood apart so longand entered the horrible devastation so late, it is our privilege to doall we can to save the spiritual heritage of humanity, to keep ourhearts clean from the corrosive acid of national and racial hatred, todo all in our power to remove it from the breasts of others. Injusticein high places is possible only because there is injustice in the heartsof men. To overthrow tyranny is but the initial step of emancipation:unless the tyrant hate in the heart is dethroned, the external tyrant, in some form of social injustice will surely return. He who conquershate and the lust for revenge in his own breast is spiritually free andmaster of the tyrant that wrongs him. Thus it is our privilege and dutyto hate no one; but to hate injustice, greed, tyranny, aggressiveselfishness, the wicked ambitions of autocratic imperialism, to resistand help to overthrow them, and so do our part in bringing in the freebrotherhood of the nations and peoples in one humanity, that will be thedawn of the longed-for era of universal and permanent peace for mankind.