There is, of course, another side to all this:  the more highly developed nations do owe leadership and service in helping those below to climb the path of civilization; but let one answer fairly how much of empire building has been due to this altruistic spirit, and how much to selfishness and the lust for power and possession.

VI

THE ETHICS OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIP

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.