The Soul of Democracy | Page 9

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