Part 2 (1/2)
VII
AMERICA'S DUTY IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Since the world solution is, at best, so remote, our question is: what are we to do meantime? Our entrance into the War partially answers the question. We have before us the immediate task of aiding in overthrowing autocracy and tyranny and of defending our liberties and those of the nations that stand for democracy. This is the first duty, but not the only one.
More definitely than any other nation we have thrown down to the world the challenge of democracy. We have said, ”Away with kings, we will have no more of them! Away with castes and ruling cla.s.ses, we will have no more of them!” As a matter of fact, democracies have no rulers--the word survives from an older order of society--they have guides, leaders and representatives. If you wish to use the word, in a democracy every man is the ruler--and every woman too, we hope, before long. To this ideal we are committed and it carries certain obligations; for every right carries a duty, and every duty, a right. Often the best way to get a privilege is by a.s.suming a responsibility. That is a truth it would be well for the leaders of the feminist and labor movements to recognize. The obligations carried by the challenge of our democracy are clear.
We Americans should have done, once and for all time, with the diplomacy of lying and deceit. Fortunately our recent traditions are in harmony with this demand; but we should not depend upon the happy accident of an administration which takes the right att.i.tude. It should be the open and universal demand of the American people that those who represent us shall place the relations we sustain to other nations permanently on the same plane of frank honesty, generally prevailing among individuals.
Incidentally, any politician or statesman who, at this heart-breaking crisis of the world's life, dares play party politics with our international relations, should be d.a.m.ned forever by the vote of the American people.
Further, it is our duty to have done with all dream of empire building.
It is not for us: let us abandon it frankly and forever. Those dependencies which have come to us through the accidents of our history should be granted autonomous self-government at the earliest moment at which they can safely take it over--which does not necessarily mean to-morrow. If they remain affiliated with us it should be only through the voluntary choice of the majority of the population dwelling upon them.
It is, moreover, our duty to lead the world in the effort to form a federation of the nations and establish the aforesaid world court of justice, with the international military and naval police to enforce its judgments.
More than this is demanded: on the basis of the challenge of our democracy, it is our duty to rise to the point of placing justice higher than commercial interest. It is a hard demand; but, with the latent idealism in our American life, surely we can rise to it. For instance, the vexed puzzle of the tariff will never be justly and permanently settled, till it is settled primarily as a problem of moral international relations.h.i.+p, and not as one merely of economic interest and advantage.
For example, a tariff wall between the United States and Canada is as preposterous an absurdity as would be a long line of bristling fortifications along the three thousand and more miles of international boundary. We are not protecting ourselves from slave labor over there.
They are not protecting themselves from slave labor here. Barring a few lines of industry, there are the same conditions of labor, production and distribution both sides of the line. The only reason for a tariff wall is their wish, or our wish, or the wish of each, to gain some advantage at the expense of the other party. Now every business man knows that any trade that benefits one and injures the other party to it is bad business, as well as bad ethics, in the long run. Good business benefits both traders all the time.
On the other hand, when it comes to protecting our labor from compet.i.tion with slave labor in other quarters of the earth, we have not only the right, but the duty to do it. So when it is a matter of protecting our industries from being swamped by the unloading of vast quant.i.ties of goods, produced under the feverish and abnormal conditions, sure to prevail in Europe after the War, we have again, not only the right, but the duty to do it.
Finally, a still higher call is upon us: we must somehow rise to the point of placing humanity above the nation. It is true, ”Charity begins at home,” certainly justice should. One should educate one's own children, before worrying over the children of the neighborhood; clean up one's own town, before troubling about the city further away. Often the whole is helped best by serving the part; but it is with national patriotism as it is with family affection. The latter is a lovely quality and the source of much that is best in the world; but when family affection is an instrument for gaining special privilege at the expense of the good of society, a means of attaining debauching luxury and selfish aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, it is an abomination. The man who prays G.o.d's blessing on himself, his wife and his children, and n.o.body else, is a mean man, and he never gets blessed--not from G.o.d. Similarly, the man who seeks the interest of his own nation, against the welfare of mankind, who prays G.o.d's blessing only on his own people, is equally a mean man, and his prayer, also, is never answered from the Most High.
The world has advanced too far for the spirit of a narrow nationalism.
The recrudescence of such a spirit is one of the sad consequences of this world War. Only in a spirit of international brotherhood, in dedication to the welfare of humanity, can democracy go towards its goal.
These are the obligations following upon the challenge of democracy we have proclaimed to the nations.
VIII
THE GOSPEL AND THE SUPERSt.i.tION OF NON-RESISTANCE
The first condition of fulfilling the responsibilities imposed upon us by the challenge of our democracy is, now and hereafter, readiness and willingness for self-respecting self-defense, defense of our liberties and of the principles and ideals for which we stand. There is much nonsense talked about non-resistance to evil. It is a lovely thing in certain high places of the moral life. It was well that Socrates remained in the common criminal prison in Athens and drank the hemlock poison; but nine times out of ten it would have been better to run away, as he had an opportunity to do. It was good that Jesus healed the ear of the servant of the high priest,--and good that St. Peter cut it off.
In other words, acts of non-resistance and self-sacrifice are fine flowers of the moral life; but you cannot have flowers unless their roots are below ground, otherwise they quickly wither. Thus, to have sound value, these acts of non-resistance and self-sacrifice must rest on a solid foundation of self-affirmation and resistance to evil.
As with the individual, so with the nation: there come high moments in a nation's life, when a strong people might resist and deliberately chooses not to. As an ill.u.s.tration, take our Mexican problem. The announcement that under no circ.u.mstances would we intervene, may have led to misunderstanding. Our purpose to let the Mexican people work out their own problem may have been taken to mean that we would not justly protect ourselves, with consequent encouragement to border raiding.
Nevertheless, if there has been any error in handling the situation, it has been on the better side--on the side of patience, generosity, long-suffering, giving the other fellow another chance, and another and another, even though he does not deserve them. Now that is not the side on which human nature usually errs. The common temptation is to selfishness and unjust aggression. Since that is the case, if we cannot strike the just balance, it is better to push too far on the other side and avoid the common mistake.
Suppose, after the War, j.a.pan, alone or in conjunction with one or another European power, closes the door to China: one can imagine circ.u.mstances where we, with the right to insist that the door be kept open, and perhaps, by that time, something of the strength to enforce that right, might deliberately say, ”No, we will not resist.” Not that, with our present situation, such action is desirable, but that one can imagine conditions arising where it might be the higher choice.
Let me repeat that, for the nation as with the individual, these high moments must rest on something else. They are the high mountain peaks of the moral life; but detached mountain peaks are impossible,--except as a mirage. They must rest upon the granite foundation of the hills and plateaus below. So these high virtues of non-resistance, magnanimity and self-sacrifice must always rest upon the granite foundation of the masculine virtues of self-affirmation, endurance, heroism, strong conflict with evil. It takes strength to make magnanimity and self-sacrifice possible, if their lesson is not lost. A weak man cannot be magnanimous, since his generosity is mistaken for servile cowardice. After all, the best time to forgive your enemy, for his good and yours, is not when he has his foot on your neck: he is apt to misunderstand and think you are afraid. It is often better to wait until you can get on your feet and face him, man to man, and then if you can forgive him, it is so much the better for you, for him and for all concerned.
Thus there are two opposite lines of error in the moral life. The philosophy of the one is given by Nietzsche, while Tolstoy, in certain extremes of his teaching, represents the other. Nietzsche, I suppose, should be regarded as a symptom, rather than a cause of anything important; but the ancestors of Nietzsche were Goethe and Ibsen, with their splendid gospel of self-realization. Nietzsche, on the contrary, with his contempt for the morality of Christianity as the morality of slaves and weaklings, with his eulogy of the blond brute striding over forgotten mult.i.tudes of his weaker fellows to a stultifying isolation apart--Nietzsche is self-realization in the mad-house. It has always seemed to me not without significance that his own life ended there.
On the other hand, when Tolstoy responded to an inquirer that, if he saw a child being attacked by a brutal ruffian, he would not use force to intervene and protect the child: that, too, is non-resistance fit for the insane asylum. One of these is just as far from sane, balanced human morality as the other.
It is a terrible thing to suffer injustice; it is far worse to perpetrate it. If one had to choose between being victim or tyrant, one would always choose to be victim: it is safer for the moral life and there is more recovery afterward. If, however, it is better to suffer injustice than to perpetrate it, better than either is to resist it, fight it and, if possible, overthrow it.