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.