The Soul of Democracy | Page 6

Plato's dream of
humanity was not so very wide.
From that time on, there has been further extension of the appreciation
of the sacredness of life and of the consciousness of moral obligation
toward other human beings. We are far from the end of the path. Our
sympathies are still limited by accidents of time and place, race and
color; but we have gone far enough to see what the end would be, were

we to reach it: a sympathy so wide, an appreciation of the sacredness of
life so universal, that each of us would feel the joy or sorrow of every
other human being, alive to-day or to be alive to-morrow, as something
like his own. Moreover, in all civilized society, we have gone far
enough to renounce the right to private vengeance and adjustment of
quarrels: we live under established courts of law, with organized civil
force to carry out their judgments. This gives relative peace and
security, 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
lagged behind in applying to groups and nations of men the moral laws,
universally recognized as binding over individuals. For instance, about
twenty years ago we coined and used widely the phrase, "soulless
corporation," to designate our great combinations of capital in industry
and commerce. Why was that phrase used so widely? The answer is
illuminating: we took it for granted that an individual employer would
treat his artisans to some extent as human beings and not merely as
cog-wheels in a productive machine; but we also took it for granted that
an impersonal corporation, where no individual was dominantly
responsible, 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 there
that we have most amazingly lagged behind in applying the moral laws
universally accepted in the relations of individuals. For instance, long
before this War began we heard it proclaimed, even proudly, by certain
philosophers, in more than one nation, that the state is the supreme
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 great statesman in
Germany, doubtless in a moment of intense anger and irritation, used
the phrase that has gone all across the earth, "scrap of paper," for a
sacred treaty between nations, he was only making a pungent 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 and

children, in the effort to save their own lives, we regard them with
loathing and contempt. On the other hand, it is just this plea of national
self-preservation that the German regime has used in cynical
justification of its every atrocity--the initial violation of Belgium, the
making war ruthlessly on civil populations, the atrocious spying and
plotting in the bosom of neutral and friendly nations, the destruction of
monuments of art and devastation of the cities, fields, orchards and
forests of northern France, and finally the submarine warfare on the
world's shipping. No civilized human being would, for a moment, think
of using the plea of self-preservation to justify comparable conduct in
individual life.
Consider international diplomacy: much of it has been merely shrewd
and skillful lying. If you will review the list of the most famous
diplomats of Europe for the last thousand years, you will find that a
considerable portion of them won their fame and reputation by being a
little more shrewd and successful liars than the diplomats with whom
they had to deal in other lands. In other words, their conduct has been
exactly on the plane that Ulysses represented in personal life, afar back
in classic antiquity.
Take an illustration a little nearer home. If you were doing business on
one side of the street and had two competitors in the same line, across
the way, and a cyclone swept the town, destroying their establishments
and sparing yours: you, as an individual, would be ashamed to take
advantage of the disaster under which your rivals were suffering, using
the time while they were out of business to lure their customers away
from them and bind those customers to you so securely that your
competitors would never be able to get them back. You would scorn
such conduct as an individual; but when it comes to a relation of the
nations: during the first two years of the War, from the highest
government circles down