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 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.