The Soul of Democracy · Chapter 3VI
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We have seen that all empires have been built up by a series of successful aggressions, and that claim-jumping still characterizes the relations of the nations. Nevertheless, there has been some progress in applying to groups and nations the moral principles we recognize as binding upon individuals. Consider again our internal life: it was twenty years ago that we coined and used so widely the phrase "soulless corporations" for our great combinations of capital in industry. To-day that phrase is rarely heard. One sees it seldom even in the pages of surviving "muck-raking" magazines. Why has a phrase, used so widely in the past, all but disappeared? Again the answer is illuminating: there has been tremendous growth in twenty years, on the part of our great corporations, in treating their employees as human beings and not merely as cog-wheels in a productive machine. When the greatest corporation in the United States voluntarily raises the wages of all its employees in the country ten per cent., five several times, within a few months, as the Steel trust has recently done, something has happened. It may be said, "they did it because it was good business": twenty years ago they would not have recognized that it was good business. It may be said, "they did it to avoid strikes": twenty years ago they would have welcomed the strikes, fought them through and gained what selfish advantage was possible. The point is, there has been vast increase in the consciousness of moral responsibility on the part of corporations toward their artisans. This has been due partly to legislation, but mainly to education and the awakening of public conscience. If you wish to find the greatest arrogance and selfishness now, you will discover it, not among the capitalists: they are timid and submissive—strangely so. 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 moral principles even to the relations of the nations. For instance: a hundred years ago the Napoleonic wars had just come to an end. In the days of Napoleon men generally gloried in war; to-day most of them bitterly regret it, and fight because they believe they are fighting for high moral aims or for national self-preservation, whether they are right or wrong.
When Napoleon conquered a country, often he pushed the weakling king off the throne, and replaced him with a member of his own family—at times a worse weakling. Think of such a thing being attempted to-day: it is unimaginable, unless the worst tyranny on earth got the upper hand for the next three hundred years of human history.
A more pungent illustration of progress is the feverish desire, shown by each of the combatants in this world struggle, to prove that he did not begin it. Now some one began it. A hundred years ago belligerents would not have been so anxious to prove their innocence: then victory closed all accounts and no one went behind the returns. The feverish anxiety each combatant has shown to establish his innocence of initiating this devastating War is conclusive proof that even the worst of them recognizes that they all must finally stand before the moral court of the world's conscience and be judged. The same tendency is shown in the efforts of Germany—grotesquely and tragically sophistical as they are— to justify her ever-expanding, freshly-invented atrocities. At least she is aware that they require justification.
This explains why we react so bitterly even on what would have been accepted a century ago. What was taken for granted yesterday is not tolerated to-day, and what is taken for granted to-day will not be tolerated in a to-morrow that maybe is not so distant as in our darker moments we imagine.
What would be the conclusion of this process? It would be, would it not, the complete application to the relations of the nations, of the moral principles universally accepted as binding upon individuals? If it 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 is wrong for a man is wrong for a nation; and no fallacious reasoning should be allowed to blind us to that basic truth.
This would mean the end of all diplomacy of lying and deceit. The relations of the nations would be placed on the same plane of relative honesty and frankness now prevailing among individuals: not absolute truth—few of us practice that—but that general ability to trust each other, in word and conduct, that is the foundation of our business and social life.
It would mean the end of empire building. Those empires that exist would fall naturally into their component parts. If those parts remained affiliated with the central government, it would be only through the voluntary choice of the majority of the population dwelling upon the territory. Thus every people would be affiliated with the government to which it naturally belonged and with which it wished to be affiliated.
It would mean finally a voluntary federation of the nations, with the establishment of a world court of justice; but no weak-kneed, spineless arbitration court: rather a court of justice, comparable to those established over individuals, whose judgments would be enforced by an international military and naval police, contributed by the federated nations.
People misunderstand this proposal. They imagine it would mean the giving over of the entire military and naval equipment of each federated nation to the central court. Far from it: each nation would retain, for defense purposes, the mass of its manhood and the larger fraction of its limited equipment, while a minor fraction would be contributed to the world court.
When this is achieved there will be, for the first time in the history of the world, the dawn of the longed-for era of universal and relatively permanent peace for mankind.
It is a far-off dream, is it not? Let us admit it frankly, and it seems further off than it did four years ago; for the approximations to it, achieved through international law, we have seen go down in a blind welter, through the invention of new instruments of destruction and the willful perpetration of illegal and immoral atrocities in this horrible War.
Nevertheless, it is not so far off as in ourdarker moments we fear. If this world War ends justly; which means if it ends so that the people dwelling on any territory are affiliated with the government to which they naturally belong and with which they wish to be affiliated, the dream will be brought appreciably nearer. If the War ends unjustly, which means if it ends with the gratification of the ambitions of aggressive tyranny, the dream will be put remotely far off. If a peace is patched up meantime, with no solution, it will mean Europe sleeping on its arms, and the breaking out of the war with multiplied devastation within twenty years. That is why these blithely undertaken peace missions and other efforts at peace without victory, even when not cloaks for pro-German movements, are such preposterous absurdities or else play directly into the hands of tyranny.
At best, however, the dream is a long way ahead. Men dislike to give up power, nations equally. It will take a long process of international moral education to induce the nations to renounce their arbitrary powers, their right to adjust all their own quarrels, and lead them to enter voluntarily a federation under a world court of Justice. This, nevertheless, is the hope of the world, toward which we should work with all our might.
Since the world solution is, at best, so remote, our question is: what are we to do meantime? Our entrance into the War partially answers the question. We have before us the immediate task of aiding in overthrowing autocracy and tyranny and of defending our liberties and those 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 world the challenge of democracy. We have said, "Away with kings, we will have no more of them! Away with castes and ruling classes, we will have no more of them!" As a matter of fact, democracies have no rulers—the word survives from an older order of society—they have guides, leaders and representatives. If you wish to use the word, in a democracy every man is the ruler—and every woman too, we hope, before long. To this ideal we are committed and it carries certain obligations; for every right carries a duty, and every duty, a right. Often the best way to get a privilege is by assuming a responsibility. That is a truth it would be well for the leaders of the feminist and labor movements to recognize. The obligations carried by the challenge of our democracy are clear.
We Americans should have done, once and for all time, with the diplomacy of lying and deceit. Fortunately our recent traditions are in harmony with this demand; but we should not depend upon the happy accident of an administration which takes the right attitude. It should be the open and universal demand of the American people that those who represent us shall place the relations we sustain to other nations permanently on the same plane of frank honesty, generally prevailing among individuals. Incidentally, any politician or statesman who, at this heart-breaking crisis of the world's life, dares play party politics with our international relations, should be damned forever by the vote of the American 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. Those dependencies which have come to us through the accidents of our history should be granted autonomous self-government at the earliest moment at which they can safely take it over—which does not necessarily mean to-morrow. If they remain affiliated with us it should be only through the voluntary choice of the majority of the population dwelling upon them.
It is, moreover, our duty to lead the world in the effort to form a federation of the nations and establish the aforesaid world court of justice, with the international military and naval police to enforce its judgments.
More than this is demanded: on the basis of the challenge of our democracy, it is our duty to rise to the point of placing justice higher than commercial interest. It is a hard demand; but, with the latent idealism in our American life, surely we can rise to it. For instance, the vexed puzzle of the tariff will never be justly and permanently settled, till it is settled primarily as a problem of moral international relationship, and not as one merely of economic interest and advantage.
For example, a tariff wall between the United States and Canada is as preposterous an absurdity as would be a long line of bristling fortifications along the three thousand and more miles of international boundary. We are not protecting ourselves from slave labor over there. They are not protecting themselves from slave labor here. Barring a few lines of industry, there are the same conditions of labor, production and distribution both sides of the line. The only reason for a tariff wall is their wish, or our wish, or the wish of each, to gain some advantage at the expense of the other party. Now every business man knows that any trade that benefits one and injures the other party to it is bad business, as well as bad ethics, in the long run. Good business benefits both traders all the time.
On the other hand, when it comes to protecting our labor from competition with slave labor in other quarters of the earth, we have not only the right, but the duty to do it. So when it is a matter of protecting our industries from being swamped by the unloading of vast quantities of goods, produced under the feverish and abnormal conditions, sure to prevail in Europe after the War, we have again, not only the right, but the duty to do it.
Finally, a still higher call is upon us: we must somehow rise to the point of placing humanity above the nation. It is true, "Charity begins at home," certainly justice should. One should educate one's own children, before worrying over the children of the neighborhood; clean up one's own town, before troubling about the city further away. Often the whole is helped best by serving the part; but it is with national patriotism as it is with family affection. The latter is a lovely quality and the source of much that is best in the world; but when family affection is an instrument for gaining special privilege at the expense of the good of society, a means of attaining debauching luxury and selfish aggrandisement, it is an abomination. The man who prays God'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, the man who seeks the interest of his own nation, against the welfare of mankind, who prays God's blessing only on his own people, is equally a mean 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 of this world War. Only in a spirit of international brotherhood, in dedication to the welfare of humanity, can democracy go towards its goal.
These are the obligations following upon the challenge of democracy we have proclaimed to the nations.