The Soul of Democracy | Page 7

to the smallest country newspaper, we were
urged to take advantage of the disaster under which our European rivals
were suffering, win their international customers away from them and
bind those customers to us so securely that Europe would never be able
to get them back. Not that we were urged to industry and
enterprise--that is always right--but actually to seek to profit by the
sufferings of others--conduct we would regard as utterly unworthy in
personal life.

If your neighbor were to say, "My personal aspirations demand this
portion of your front yard," and he were to attempt to fence it in: the
situation is unimaginable; but when a nation says, "My national
aspirations demand this portion of your territory," and proceeds to
annex it: if the nation is strong enough to carry it out, a large part of the
world acquiesces.
The relations of nations are thus still largely on the plane of primitive
life among individuals, or, since nations are made up of civilized and
semi-civilized persons, it would be fairer to say that the relations of
nations are comparable to those prevailing among individuals when a
group of men goes far out from civil society, to the frontier, 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. For
instance, the cattle men came, pasturing their herds on the hills and
plains, using the great expanse of land not yet taken up by private
ownership. A little later came the sheep men, with vast flocks of sheep,
which nibbled every blade of grass and other edible plant down to the
ground, thus starving out the cattle. What followed? The cattle men got
together by night, rode down the sheep-herders, shot them or drove
them out, or were themselves driven out.
So on the frontier, in the early days, a weakling staked out an
agricultural 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 strong
arm, and it was evident on the frontier all across the country.
This is exactly the state that a considerable part of the world has
reached in international relationship to-day. Claim-jumping is still
accepted and widely practised among the nations. That is, in fact, the
way in which all empires have been built--by a succession of successful
claim-jumpings. Consider the most impressive of them all, the old
Roman empire. Rome was a city near the mouth of the Tiber. She
reached out and conquered a few neighboring cities in the Latin plain,
binding them securely to herself by domestic and economic ties. Then
she extended her power south and north, crossed into northern Africa,
conquered Gaul and Spain, swept Asia Minor, until a territory three

thousand by two thousand miles in extent was under the sway of her
all-conquering arm.
What justified Rome, as far as she had justification, was the remarkable
strength and wisdom with which she established law and order and the
protections of civil society over all the conquered territory, until often
the subject populations were glad they had come under the
all-dominant sway of Rome, since their situation was so much more
peaceful and happy than before. Such justification, however, is after the
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 greatest
international crime of the last five hundred years, with one exception--
the partition of Poland. It is true the Polish nobles were a nuisance to
their neighbors, ever quarreling among themselves, with no central
authority powerful enough to restrain them, but that did not justify the
action taken. Three nations, or rather the autocratic sovereigns of those
nations, powerful enough to accomplish the crime, agreed to partition
Poland among themselves. They did it, with the result that there are
plenty of Poles in the world to-day, but there is no Poland.
Consider the possession of Silesia by Prussia. Silesia was an integral
part of the Austrian domain, long so recognized. Friedrich the Great
wanted 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, and
Silesia is part of Prussia to-day. The strong arm conquest is the only
reason.
So is it with Germany's possession of Schleswig-Holstein, with Austria
in Herzegovina and Bosnia, France in Algiers, Italy in Tripoli: they are
all instances