WE have now discussed the more recurrent problems of the individual, and pointed out the salient duties that private life entails. But there remains something to be added before we shall have clearly pointed the way to personal happiness. "Mere morality," even when coupled with good fortune, is not enough; a sinless man, scrupulous to fulfill the least command of the law, may yet be anxious, restless, depressed, unsatisfied. We need more than morality, as the word is commonly used; we need religion - or something of the sort. There is no doubt that for the attainment of a pervasive and stable happiness there is nothing so good as the best sort of religion; but, as in discussing self- control, we must here steer clear of religious controversy and phrase what we have to say in the colder terms of "mere morality." And though there will be a great loss in feeling, in persuasiveness and unction thereby, there will be gain in clearness. It is possible to express in the drab tones of morality the profound insights which have made religion the great guide to happiness; and even the man who deems himself irreligious may, if he takes to heart these more prosaic counsels, find something of the peace that has been the boon of true believers.
The threefold key to happiness:
The one thing above all others that makes life worth living is the utter devotion of the heart and will to the commands of morality. To throw one's self whole-heartedly into the game, to play one's part for all it is worth, transforms what were else a grim and unhappy necessity into a glorious opportunity. The happy man is the loyal man, the man who has taken sides, who has enrolled himself definitely on the side of right and tastes the zest of battle. He has something to live for, and something lasting. He has put his heart into a cause that the limitations and accidents of life cannot take from him, he has laid up his treasure in heaven, where moth and rust doth not corrupt or thieves break through and steal.
Any cause, any ambition, any great endeavor that can stir the blood, and give a life direction, purpose, and continuity of achievement, has the power to rescue life from ennui, from emptiness, and give it positive worth. But most ambitions pall in time, and many a cause that has taken a man's best energies has come to seem mistaken or futile with the years. There is only one great campaign which is so eternal, so surely necessary, so clear in its summons to all men, that the heart can rest in it as in something great enough to ennoble a whole life. That is the age-long war against evil, the unending summons to duty, the service of God. Once a man learns this deepest of joys, nothing can take it from him; whatever his limitations, however narrow his sphere, there will not fail to be a right way, a brave way, a beautiful way to live. There is comradeship in it; in this common service of God - or of good, if we must avoid religious terms - we stand shoulder to shoulder with the saints and heroes of all races and times, with all, of whatever land or tongue, who are striving to push forward the line, to make the right prevail and banish evil. Every effort, every sacrifice, has its inextinguishable effect; in his moral conquests a man is no longer an individual, he is a part of the great tide that is resistlessly making toward the better world of the future, the Kingdom of God. The great Power in the world that makes for righteousness is back of him, and in him; in no loyal moment is he alone. . . . Inevitably the tongue slips into religious language in dealing with these high truths; but nonetheless are they scientific truths, matters of plain every day observation.
The essential point is, that it is not enough to obey the Law; we must ESPOUSE the Law, clasp it to our bosoms, love it, and give ourselves to it utterly. We must - to use the pregnant words of James "base our lives on doing and being, not on having"; base our lives solidly upon it, so that everything else is secondary. The pleasures of life are well enough in their time, but they must not usurp the chief place in a man's thought.[Footnote: Cf. J. S. Mill, Autobiography, p. 142: "The enjoyments of life are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life."] His first concern must be to keep true, to play the game; he must seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, if he would have these other things added unto him. He must lose his life his worldly interests, his dependence upon ease and luxury, and even love if he would truly find it. In a hundred such phrases from the Great Teacher's lips one finds the secret. More baldly expressed, it comes to this, that only through putting the main emphasis upon doing the right, obeying the call of duty, only through the courageous attack and the giving of our utmost allegiance, can we keep a positive zest in living, exorcise the specter of aimlessness and depression, and lift ordinary commonplace life to the level of heroism. Blessed is the man whose DELIGHT is in the law of the Lord.
The fighter, for whatever cause, can bear the blows that come as a part of the battle; if a man has put his heart into living by his ideal, he is immune from the disappointments and irritations that beset man upon a lower level. But it is well to take thought also for this side of the matter, to cultivate deliberately the spirit of acquiescence in the inevitable pain and losses of life. Many of the sweetest pleasures are by their nature uncertain or transient; these we must hold so loosely that, while not refusing to enjoy their sweetness, we are ]ot dependent upon them and can let them go without losing sight of the steady gleam that we follow. However dear to us are the people we love, and the material things we own, we must keep the underlying assurance that if they be taken from us life will still bring us in other ways renewed opportunities for that loyalty to duty, that faithful living, which is after all the end for which we live. We must count whatever comes to us, whether sweet or bitter, as the conditions under which we serve, the material with which we have to work, the stuff which we have to "try the soul's strength on." For there is no way to be armor-proof against unhappiness but by seeing to it that our hearts are not set on anything but doing or being; nothing else is reliably permanent amid the fitful sunshine and shadow of human life. "Make hy claim of wages a zero; then hast thou the world at thy feet." [Footnote: In Maeterlinck's Measure of the Hours, he speaks of a sundial found near Venice by Hazlitt with the inscription, Horas non numero nisi serenas and quotes Hazlitt's remarks thereon: "What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of things and letting the rest slip from our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten."] This necessity of detaching the heart from dependence upon uncertainties found extreme expression in the various historic forms of asceticism and monasticism. Such a running away from the world does not satisfy our age, with its eagerness for life and life more abundantly; if it escapes the poignant sorrows it cannot happiness, or make life better for others. But we may well take to heart the half-truth taught by the hermits and monks of the past. We may be "in the world," indeed, but not "of it"; we, too, may make no claims upon life, while putting our hearts into playing our own part in it well. The writings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are full of passages that express the gist of the matter, such as the following: "It is thy duty to order thy life well in every single act; and if every act does its duty as far as is possible, be content; no one is able to hinder thee so that each act shall not do its duty. But something external will stand in the way? Nothing will stand in the way of thy acting justly and soberly and considerately. But perhaps some of thy active powers will be hindered? Well, by acquiescing in the hindrance, and being content to transfer thy efforts to that which is allowed, another opportunity of action is immediately put before thee in place of that which was hindered." What is this but saying in other words that not in having lies our life, but in doing and being. Not even in succeeding, we must remember; and this is perhaps the hardest part of our lesson. It is one thing to bear with serenity those blows of fortune against which we are obviously defenseless; it is another thing, when there seems a chance for averting the disaster, when our whole heart and soul are thrown into that effort, to await the outcome with tranquility, to bear failure without complaint. The "might have been's" and the "perhaps may yet be's" are the greatest disturbers of our peace. To use our keenest wits for attaining what seems best, to use our utmost persuasion for protecting ourselves from the selfishness and stupidity of others, and then if we fail, if the fair hope slips from our grasp, if the thoughtlessness or cruelty of men prevails against us, to smile and attack the next problem with undaunted cheerfulness, requires, indeed, to attain to that level may well be called "the last infirmity of noble minds." For the very concentration of life upon doing and being carries with it the danger of staking happiness upon the success of the doing, the attainment of the ideals. We must count even the stupidity and impulsiveness of our own mental make-up as among the materials we have to work with, and not allow remorse for our own part in past failures to interfere with the joyful earnestness with which we attack the problems of the eternal present. We may, indeed, often succeed, and that may be a very great and pure joy to us; but we are not to count upon success; or, to put it another way, we are to think of the real success as lying in the dauntless renewal of the effort rather than in the show of outward result. "To have often resisted the diabolic, and at the end to be still resisting it, is for the poor human soldier to have done right well. To ask to see some fruit of our endeavor is but a transcendental way of serving for reward." This is not pessimism, it is the first step toward a sound and invulnerable optimism. We must recognize once for all that this world is not the world of our dreams, and cease to be so pathetically surprised and hurt when it falls short of them. Were we to be rebellious at life for not being built after the pattern of our ideals there would be no limit to our faultfinding. We may, indeed, long in our idle hours with Omar "To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, shatter it to bits-and then Remould it nearer to the heart's desire!" But in our daily life a braver and saner attitude befits us; for it is not in such an ideal world but in the actual world that we have to live. Evils there are in it and will yet be-why we cannot tell and need not know; the only alternative we have is to take them cheerfully or gloomily, to rebel or to accept the situation. Our duty then is clear. To face the events of life as they come to us, without discouragement or dismay, to laugh at them a little and learn to carry on our lives through them with steadfast heart and smiling face- surely that is the part of wisdom and of true manliness. The ugly things in life seem much less formidable when thus boldly faced than when we try to shut our eyes to them, with the consequent disillusion at their continual reappearance. Confess frankly the faults of life and it becomes tolerable, is even in a fair way to become lovable. For after all, when its obvious imperfections do not blind us to its good points, it is a dear old world we live in, and the healthy minded man loves it, as he loves his friends in spite of their faults loves it, and finds it a world gloriously worth living in.
Finally, when we have our great purpose in life, and have overcome the fear of pain and loss, we must learn to see and appreciate the beauty of the world we live in. The man who refuses to be downed by trouble is in a condition to enjoy each bit of good fortune that comes to him, to welcome each as a pure gift or addition to life, and to know that gifts of some sort or other will always come. Holding all things with that looser grasp that is ready to let them go if go they must, he can relish the good things of life the more freely for not having counted on them, as he can the more freely admire the virtues of his friends for not having expected them to be perfect. He can feel the beauty of the world without being dependent upon it, not looking for mortal things to be immortal or human things to be ideal, but whole-heartedly enjoying today what he has today and tomorrow what he shall have to-morrow. The things he cannot have at all, instead of spoiling his happiness in what he has, will rather add to it by forming another dimension of the actual, full of beautiful visions and glorious possibilities. And meantime the real world, of events that actually occur, will not fail, in spite of its flaws and rebuffs, to bring him ever-fresh delights. Let no one minimize these delights. There is more beauty, more interest here in this mundane existence of ours, more inspiration, more inexhaustible possibility of enjoyment than the keenest of us has dreamed of. We need some sort of shaking up to rouse us to the beauty of common things- the freshness of the air we breathe, the warmth of sunshine, the green of trees and fields and the blue of the sky, the joy in exercise of brain and muscle, in reading and talking and sharing in the life of the world; and in such daily things as eating at the family table when we are hungry, or a good night's sleep when we are tired. We need some teacher like Whitman to open our eyes to the beauty not only of flowers but of leaves of grass, to the picturesqueness and significance of so dull a thing as a ferryboat; or like Wordsworth, with his picturing of homely country scenes and events, with his emotion at the sight of the sleeping city- "a sight so touching in its majesty." This sense of the meaning of common things floods most of us at one time or another, and we see what in our blindness we have been overlooking. Go without your comfortable bed for a while, your well-cooked food, your home, friends, neighbors, and you will discover how rich you have been. Your mother's face hinted by some stranger in a foreign land will some day overcome you with the realization of the comfort of her love; and unless you are a crabbed egotist the life of your fellows can furnish you with endless pleasures. It is not necessary to own things to enjoy them; our interests and enjoyments may well overlap and include those of our friends and neighbors, and even those of strangers. The smile of a happy child, a friend's good fortune a sunrise or moonlit cloud-strewn sky, should bring a pure gladness to any one who has eyes to see and heart to feel. We must "Learn to love the morn, Love the lovely working light, Love the miracle of sight, Love the thousand things to do." [Footnote: These lines are Richard Le Gallienne's. Cf. also Matthew Arnold's lines: "Is it so small a thing To have enjoyed the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done, To have advanced true friends and beat down baffling foes? The sports of the country people, A flute note from the woods, Sunset over the sea; Seed-time and harvest, The reapers in the corn, The vinedresser in his vineyard, The village girl at her wheel. . ."] The true lover of beauty will not need to seek forever-new scenes and objects to admire. He will find that which can feed his heart in the clouds of morning, the blue of noon, or the stars of night. One graceful vase with a flower-stalk bending over to display its drooping blossoms, will fill him with a quiet happiness; the merry laughter of a child, the tender smile of a lover, the rugged features of a weather beaten laborer, will stir his soul to response; a few lines of poetry remembered in the midst of work, a simple song sung in the twilight, a print of some old master hanging by his bedside, a bird-call heard at sunset or the scent of evening air after rain, may so speak to his spirit that he will say, "It is enough!" It is not the number of beautiful things that we have that matters, but the degree in which we are open to their influence, the atmosphere into which we let them lead us. Our hearts must be free from self-seeking, from regret, from anger, from restlessness. The vision comes not always to the connoisseur, comes to him whose life is simple, earnest, open-eyed and openhearted. In the pauses of his faithful work he will refresh his soul with some bit of beauty that tells of attainment, of peace, of perfection. That is a proof to him of the beauty in the midst of which he lives, inexhaustible, hardly discerned; it carries him beyond itself into the ideal world of which it is a sample and illustration; unconsciously during the duties of the day he lives in the light of that vision, and everything is sweetened and blessed thereby.
Can we maintain a steady under glow of happiness?
Happiness—happiness sufficient to make life well worth living is, for most men at least, at most times, a real possibility. To be won it has but to be sought vigorously enough. It is to be sought, however, not primarily by changing one's environment but by changing one's self; not by acquiring new things, but by acquiring a new attitude toward things; not by getting what could make one happy, but by learning to be happy with what one can get. THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS WITHIN YOU! This is not merely a moralist's theory, or an empirical observation; it is a scientific fact. We may restate the matter in psychological language by saying that happiness and unhappiness are responses of the organism to its environment, reactions upon a stimulus, our attitude of welcome or dissatisfaction toward the various matters of our experience. True, we often think of the quality of pleasantness as inhering in the things we enjoy, and speak of troubles and sorrows as objective. But this is only a shorthand way of describing experience. In reality the pleasure we feel in eating when we are hungry or in seeing a friend we love is something added to and different from the taste sensations, or the complex visual perceptions and memory images the friend arouses in us. So a cutting or burning sensation, the thought of a friend's death, or of our failure, on the one hand, and our unhappiness thereat on the other hand, are two distinct things, closely bound together in our minds but separable.
The separation is, indeed, difficult to bring about, because the age long struggle for existence has made unhappiness at physical pain and pleasure at the healthy exercise of our organs or satisfying of our appetite instinctive and immediate, that we may avoid what is harmful to life and pursue what is useful. All our cravings and longings and regrets have this biological value; they are the machinery by which nature spurs us on to better adjustment to the conditions of life. And in learning to do without the spur we must learn not to need it. Discontent is better than laziness, remorse better than callous selfishness, suffering under extreme cold better than recklessly exposing the body till it is weakened. But as soon as we have reached that stage of rationality where we can choose the better way and stick to it without the stinging goad of pain, the pain is no longer necessary and we may safely learn to weed it out.
A few blessed souls we know who have learned the secret, who go about with perpetually radiant face and take smilingly the very mishaps that worry and sadden the rest of us. To some extent this may be merely a matter of better nerves, of less sensitive temperament, of more abounding vitality; but there are many of the weakest and most sensitive among those who have learned that better way; they can turn everything into happiness as Midas turned everything into gold. It is surprising, looking through such a one's eyes, to see how full life is of delight. Yet in the same situations there may be room for endless complaint if "every grief is entertained that's offered." It all depends on the attitude taken. In trouble one man will fall to fretting, while another does what can be done and then turns his thoughts to something else; in discomfort one will lower the corners of his mouth and feel wretched, while the other finds it all vastly amusing; one will have his day quite spoiled by some disappointment which the other takes as a mere incident; one will find the same environment dull and stupid which the other finds full of interest and opportunity; and so out of like conditions one will make an unhappy, the other a happy life. [Footnote: Cf. "In journeying often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watching often, in hunger and thirst, in fasting often, in cold and nakedness . . . yet always rejoicing!" "Rejoicing in tribulation" even, because to the brave man every obstacle and failure is so much further opportunity for courage and contrivance, for matching himself against things. "Human joy," writes the author of the Simple Life, "has celebrated its finest triumphs under the greatest tests of endurance." The Apostle Paul is but one of many who have welcomed each rebuff, and proved that if rightly taken life almost at its worst can be transmuted by courage into happiness.] This, then, is the philosophy of happiness in a nutshell: PUT YOUR HEART INTO DOING YOUR DUTY; DEMAND NOTHING ELSE OF LIFE THAN THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO YOUR DUTY; ENJOY FREELY AND WITHOUT FEAR EVERYTHING GOOD AND BEAUTIFUL THAT COMES IN YOUR WAY.
To acquire and keep this attitude of mind requires of course resolution and persistence. We must rouse ourselves and take sides. We must definitely pledge ourselves once and for all to happiness; and if we] cannot at a leap attain to it, we must still remember that we have committed ourselves to that side. We must pretend to be happy, throw aside all complaining and sighs and long faces; whatever comes, we must remember that we are on trial to preserve our buoyancy, our power not to be downcast. We shall not be able] to disuse our habit of unhappiness at once. But if we stick to our colors and refuse to add to whatever depression masters us by brooding upon it and giving it right of way; if we remember the conditions of happiness stated above, and thrust resolutely from us all thoughts and words incompatible with living according to them, the unhappiness will be gone before we know it. It is a well-known psychological law that if we choke the expression of an emotion, we shall presently find that we have smothered the emotion itself. It may seem like hollow pretense at first, but it will pay to pretend hard; when we have pretended long enough, we shall find we no longer need to pretend. There will always be those, no doubt, who will declare it impossible, and they will continue to be unhappy; there will be many others who will concede the possibility of it, but will not have the determination and persistence to effect it; but there will always be some who will say, "Happiness is possible!" who will set out to get it, and who will get it, as they will deserve to. Some men are born happy, some seem to have happiness thrust upon them, but some achieve happiness. It will not be the same kind of happiness that we had as children, before the shocks of life awoke us. It will be a happiness that meets and rises above pain. Life will always have its tragedies, sickness and separation, pain and sudden death. They are the common inheritance of mankind. But it is not these things in themselves that make life unendurable, it is the way we take them, our fear of them, our worry over them, our longings and rebelliousness, our magnifying and brooding over and shrinking from them; when we resolve to lift our heads and assert our power, we shall find life tragic, yes, but endurable, and full of a deep joy. The little worries and disappointments will cease to trouble us. And the same attitude that enables us to rise above them will, when more staunchly held, lift us over the great sorrows also, and keep alive in us an under glow of joy. An under glow of joy-that is what can be found in life in any but its highly abnormal phases, by conforming to its conditions and taking it for what it is, stuff which, we have to shape into service to the ideal. It should be recognized as the final word of personal morality that a man must train himself to a happiness that is independent of circumstances. We need no mystical painting out of the shadows, no blindness to facts, only a will to serve the right, a readiness to accept the imperfect, and eyes to see the beauty that surrounds us. "If I have faltered more or less In my great task of happiness, If I have moved among my race And shown no glorious morning face, If beams from happy human eyes Have moved me not; if morning skies, Books" and my food, and summer rain, Knocked on my sullen heart in vain. If, in short, we have not disciplined ourselves to happiness, it may well be maintained that we have left undone our highest duty to our neighbor and ourselves. And he may with good reason declare that he has solved the greatest problem of life who can proclaim with Tolstoy, "I rejoice in having taught myself not to be sad!" or with the Apostle Paul, "I have learned in whatsoever state I am therein to be content." Much of the secret of happiness is to be found in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and, of course, in the Gospels. Of modern writers, among the most useful are Stevenson and Chesterton. See, for example, Stevenson's Christmas Sermon, and J. F. Genung's Stevenson's Attitude toward Life. Chesterton's counsels are too sattered to make reference practicable.
See also C. W. Eliot, The Happy Life. C. Hilty, Happiness. P. G. Hamerton, The Quest of Happiness. P. Paulsen, System of Ethics, book m, chap, n, sees. 3, 6; chap, iv, sees. 1, 2. H. C. King, Rational Living, chap, x, sec. iv. J. Payot, Education of the Will, book iv, chap. iv. A. Bennett, The Human Machine, chaps, VI; Mental Efficiency, chap. ix. In Royce's Philosophy of Loyalty, Roosevelt's Strenuous Life, and Gannett's Blessed be Drudgery, we get valuable notes; and Carlyle has many, especially ID the latter chapters of Sartor Resartm.
THE goal of personal morality is reached with the adoption of that mode of life that leads to the stable and lasting happiness of the individual. Such a happiness necessarily presupposes relations of kindness and cooperation with those other persons that form the immediate environment. But it is quite compatible with a neglect of those wider aspects of duty that we call public morality. The Stoics, the anchorites, some communities of monks, and many a well-to-do recluse today, are examples of those who have found a selfish happiness for themselves without taking any hand in forwarding the general welfare. Yet the greatest total good is not to be attained in any such way; if man is to win in his inexorable war with a hostile and grudging environment, men must march EN MASSE, must work for ends that lie far beyond their personal satisfactions, for the welfare of the State and posterity. It is these larger, public duties that we must now consider. And it is here that our greatest stress must be laid; for these obligations are too easily overlooked, and toward them the contemporary conscience needs most sharply to be aroused. The first great public problem, historically, is that of war. And theoretically it may well come first, since the attainment of peace is the prerequisite of all other social advance. While a nation's energies are absorbed in war, nothing, or nearly nothing else can be done. So we turn to a consideration of war; and first, of that emotion, patriotism, whose training and redirection must underlie the movement toward universal peace.
What is the meaning and value of patriotism?
Matthew Arnold began his famous American address on Numbers by quoting Dr. Johnson's saying, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." We must admit that to certain forms of it the gibe is pertinent. But in its essence, patriotism is that most useful of human possessions, an emotion that turns a duty into a joy. It is necessary for men, however burdensome they may find the obligation, to be loyal to the interests of the State of which they are members. But the patriot feels it noburden; he loves his country, and serves her willingly, as his privilege and glad desire. To be conscious of belonging to a social group, whose interests are regarded as one's own, to mourn its disasters and rejoice in its successes, and give one's hands and brains without reluctance, when needed, to its service- that is patriotism. For the individual, its value is that it widens his sympathies, gives him new interests, stimulates his ambition, warms his heart with a sense of brotherhood in common hopes and fears; the "man without a country" is, as Dr. Bale's story graphically depicted, like a man without a home; the "citizens of the world," who voluntarily expatriate themselves, miss much of the tang of life that is tasted by him who keeps his local attachments and national loyalty. For the State, its value is that it welds men together, softens their civil strife, lifts them above petty jealousies, rouses them to maintain the common weal against all dangers, external and internal. Especially in view of our hybrid population is it necessary to stimulate patriotism, by the celebration of national anniversaries, the salutation of the flag in the public schools, and whatever other means help to enlist the emotions on the side of civic consciousness. But while seeking to foster patriotism, for its great potentialities of good, we must guard diligently against its lapse into forms that are really harmful to the community which it avowedly serves. Like every other great emotion, it needs to be controlled, developed along the lines of greatest usefulness, directed into proper channels. How should patriotism be directed and qualified?
(1) Patriotism must be rationalized, so as to be an enthusiasm for the really great and admirable phases of the national life. Instead of a pride in the prowess of army and navy, of yachts or athletes, it should become a pride in national efficiency and health, in the national art, literature, statesmanship, and educational system, in the beauty of public buildings and the standards of public manners and morals. It should think not so much of defending by force the national "honor," as of maintaining standards of honor that shall be worth defending. There may, indeed, still be occasions when we can learn the truth of the old Roman verse, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori; but the newer patriotism consists not so much in willingness to die as in willingness to live, for one's country-to take the trouble to study conditions, to vote, and to work for the improvement of conditions and the invigorating of the national life. The real anti-patriots are not the peace-men, but the selfish and unscrupulous money-makers, the idle rich, the dissolute, the ill-mannered, all those who put private interest or passion above the public weal, help to weaken national strength and solidarity, and bring our country's name into disrepute.
(2) Patriotism must not merge into conceit and blind self-satisfaction. The superior, patronizing air of many Americans, their insufferable boasting and dogmatism, does more, perhaps, to prejudice foreigners against us than any other thing. We must teach international good manners, a becoming modesty, a generosity toward the prejudices of others, and a recognition of our own shortcomings. The blind patriotism that will not confess to any fault, that shouts, "Our country, right or wrong," leads in the direction of arrogance, wrongdoing, and dishonor. We must be free to criticize our own government; we must have no false notions about national "honor" such as were once held concerning personal "honor" in the days of dueling. We shall doubtless be in the wrong sometimes; we must welcome enlightenment and try to learn the better way. Apologizing is sometimes nobler than bluster; and he is no true lover of his country who seeks to condone, and so perpetuate, her errors.
(3) Patriotism must not imply a hatred of, or desire to hurt, other countries. The sight of one great civilization seeking to injure another is the shame of humanity. For in the end our interests are the same; we should not profit by Germany's loss any more than Connecticut would gain by injury to Vermont. Jingoism, contempt of other peoples, and purely selfish diplomacy, are sinful outgrowths of patriotism. We must learn to be fair and good-tempered, to appreciate the admirable in other nations, to thrill to their ideals, and banish all suspicious, sneering, or hypercritical attitudes toward them. It is a pity that the mass of our people get their conceptions of foreign peoples and rulers so largely through newspaper cartoons and caricatures, which emphasize and exaggerate their points of difference and inferiority instead of revealing their power and excellence. It is a stupid provinciality that conceives a distaste for foreigners because of their alien manners and to us uncouth language, their different dress and habits. As a matter of fact, they feel as superior to us as we to them, and on the whole, perhaps, with as good a right. No one of the nations but has some noble ideals and achievements to its credit; if we do not appreciate them, we are thereby proved to be in need of what they have to give. And underneath these usually superficial differences, we are all just men and women, with the same loves and hatreds, the same needs, the same weaknesses and repentances and aspirations. If we realized our common humanity, we should try to treat them as we should wish to be treated by them; the Golden Rule, the Christian spirit, the method of reason and kindness, is as applicable to international as to inter-personal relations. We should not be too sensitive to the trivial breaches of manners, the intemperate words and selfish acts of neighbor-nations, but make allowances and preserve our good-fellowship, as we do in our personal life. We should beware of letting our own patriotism lead us into like misconduct. Above all, we must refuse to let it lead us into the lust of conquest; we must respect the rights and liberties of other peoples, keep strictly to our treaty obligations, honor less the patriots who have inflamed national hatreds and led us to battle against other peoples than those who have wrought for their country's righteousness and true honor, and let it be our pride to stand for international comity and good will. A question that may properly be discussed here is whether it is permissible to shift patriotism from one country to another. Such a change of loyalty is, in times of war, called treason, and naturally evokes the resentment of the deserted side. Even as impartial judges, we are properly suspicious of such action, as denoting a vacillating nature, devoid of the true spirit of loyalty, or as indicative of a selfishness that follows its own personal advantage. And so far as that suspicion is well founded, we must condemn the traitor. But certainly, if a man experiences a sincere change of conviction, he should not be required to continue to serve the side that he now feels to be in the wrong; every man must be free to follow his conscience, even if it leads him to disavow his own earlier allegiance. Suppose Benedict Arnold to have developed a sincere conviction that the American revolutionists were in the wrong, and that the true welfare of both America and Britain lay in their continued union. In such a case he must, as a conscientious man, have transferred his allegiance to the Tory side. So a man who has been a worker for the saloon interests, who should become convinced of the anti-social influence of the liquor trade, would do right to come over to the anti- saloon side and work against his former associates. The really difficult question lies rather here: may such a man use for the advantage of the cause he now serves the knowledge he gained, the secrets entrusted to him, the power he won, as a worker for the opposite cause? If Benedict Arnold was a sincere convert to the British cause, did he do right in trying to deliver West Point into their hands? Or are we right in execrating him for his attempted breach of trust? May the former saloon-worker use his inside knowledge of the saloon men's plans, and his familiarity with the business, to help the cause to which he has transferred his allegiance? The two cases may be closely parallel; but each will probably be decided by most people according to the side upon which they stand. An impartial judgment will, perhaps, condemn all breaches of faith, all use of delegated power for ends contrary to those for which the power was delegated, including secrets deliberately entrusted, but will not condemn the use for the new cause of knowledge gained by the individual's own observation, or influence won through the power of his own personality.
What have been the benefits of war?
War has not been an unmitigated evil. In fairness we must note the following points:
(1) In spite of its danger, and its pain, war has been a great excitement and joy to men. Tennyson is doubtless true to life in making Ulysses exclaim "All times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly. . . And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, As though to breathe were life!"
In the Iliad, indeed, we read: "With everything man is satiated, sleep, sweet singing, and the joyous dance; of all these man gets sooner tired than of war." In primitive times, and even, though decreasingly, in modern times, the cause of war has lain not merely in the ends to be attained thereby, but in the sheer love of war for its own sake-the quickened heartbeats, the sense of power and daring and achievement, the joy in martial music and uniforms, in the rhythmic footsteps of marching men, in the awakened thrill of patriotism, the love of effort and sacrifice for a cherished cause.
To some extent this primitive lure of war still persists. But, fortunately, the glory and excitement of hand-to-hand conflict, the picturesque valor and visible achievement of earlier battles, are now gone. The soldier is but a cog in a machine, usually at a considerable distance from his enemy. He does not know whether his shot has hit or not; if he is wounded it is by an invisible hand. All the strain and fatigue and pain of war remain, but little of its glory and delight. Moreover, whatever normal satisfaction has been found in war can be had, as we shall presently note, in other ways- in all sorts of generous rivalries and useful as well as exciting endeavors that are open to the modern man.
(2) War has necessitated discipline, organization, courage, self- sacrifice, and has thus been a great stimulus to virtues which to some extent have carried over into other fields. It has kept men from sinking into inertia or mere pleasure seeking, fostered energy and hardihood, quieted civil strife, taught the necessity of union and justice at home. The patriotism awakened by struggle against a common enemy has often persisted when the conflict was over, given birth to art and history, and many an act of devotion to the State. But national solidarity and a regime of justice within the State are now our stable possession, while the hardier and heroic virtues can be awakened in other and less disastrous ways. War has ceased to have its former usefulness as a spur to personal and social morality.
(3) Wars of self-defense have often been necessary, to preserve goods that would have been lost by conquest; as when the Greeks at Marathon repelled the barbaric hordes of Asia, or when Charles Martel and the Franks checked the advance of the Saracens at Tours. Offensive wars, even, may have been necessary to wipe out evils, such as slavery or the oppression of neighboring peoples. But in modern times the moral justification of war on such grounds has usually been a flimsy pretext; and certainly the occasion for legitimate warfare is becoming steadily rarer. Nearly always the good aimed at could have been attained without the evils of war. If the American colonies had had a little more patience, they could have won the liberty they craved without war and separation from the mother country-as Canada and Australia have done. If the United States had had a little more patience and tact and diplomacy, it is probable that Cuba could have been saved from the intolerable oppression of Spain without war. Now that the moral pressure of the world's opinion is becoming so strong, and the Hague tribunal stands ready to adjust difficulties, there is seldom excuse for recourse to brute strength. The real cause of war lies far less often in the moral demand that prefers righteousness to peace than in the touchiness, selfishness, and resentments of nations, or their desire for glory and conquest.
(4) War has, directly or indirectly, been the means of spreading the blessings of civilization. Alexander's campaigns brought Greek culture to the Eastern world, the Roman conquests civilized the West, the famous Corniche Road was built by Napoleon to get his troops into Italy, the trans-Siberian railway, the subsidized steamship lines of modern nations, the Panama Canal, owe their existence primarily to the fear of war. But today all lands are open to peaceful penetration; missionaries and traders do more to civilize than armies. And if the building of certain roads and railways and canals might have been somewhat postponed in an era of stable peace, many more material improvements, actually more imperative if less spectacular, would certainly have been carried out with the vast sums of money saved from war expenditures. Whatever good ends, then, war may have served in the past, it is now superfluous, a mere survival of savagery, a relic of our barbaric past, a clear injury to man, in ways which we shall next consider.
What are the evils of war?
(1) We need not dwell on the physical and mental suffering caused by war; General Sherman's famous declaration, "War is hell!" sums the matter up. Agonizing wounds, pitiless disease, the permanent crippling, enfeeblement, or death of vigorous men in the prime of life, the anguish of wives and sweethearts, the loneliness of widows, the lack of care for orphans-it is impossible for those who have not lived through a great war to realize the horror of it, the cruel pain suffered by those on the field, the torturing suspense of those left behind. It is, indeed, a sad commentary on man's wisdom that, with all the distress that inevitably inheres in human life, he should have voluntarily brought upon himself still greater suffering and premature death.
(2) But the moral harm of war is no less conspicuous than the physical. It fosters cruelty, callousness, contempt of life; it kills sympathy and the gentler virtues; it coarsens and leads almost inevitably to sensuality. After a war there is always a marked increase in crime and sexual vice; ex-soldiers are restless, and find it hard to settle down to a normal life. There is a permanent coarsening of fiber. Even the maintenance of armies in time of peace is a great moral danger. The unnatural barrack-life, the requisite postponement of marriage, the opportunity for physical and moral contagion, make military posts commonly sources of moral contamination. Prostitution flourishes and illegitimacy increases where soldiers are quartered; the army is a bad school of morals.
Add to this indictment the stimulus to national hatreds caused by war, the inflaming of resentments and checking of international good will. Frenchmen still nourish a bitter animosity against the Germans for the possession of Alsace and the occupation of Paris. The instinctive racial antipathies of the Balkan peoples have been immeasurably deepened by the recent wars on the peninsula. The eventual brotherhood of man is indefinitely postponed by every war and by every rumor of war.
The interest in war also takes attention and effort away from the remedying of social and moral evils; it is useless to attempt any moral campaign while a war is on. Jane Addams tells us, in Twenty Years at Hull House, that when she visited England in 1896 she found it full of social enthusiasm, scientific research, scholarship, and public spirit; while on a second visit, in 1900, all enthusiasm and energy seemed to be absorbed by the Boer War, leaving little for humanitarian undertakings.
(3) A less obvious, but even more lasting, evil is that caused by the loss of the best blood of a nation. In general, the strongest and best men go to the field; the weaklings and cowards are left to produce the next generation. The inevitable result is racial degeneration. The decline of the Greek and Roman civilizations was doubtless in large part due to the continual killing off of the best stocks, until the earlier and nobler breed of men almost ceased to exist. The effect of modern war is the exact opposite of that of primitive war, where all the men had to fight, and the strongest or bravest or swiftest survived; strength and valor and speed avail nothing against modern projectiles, and it is the stay-at-homes who are selected for survival, in general the weakest and least worthy. War is the greatest of dysgenic forces, and undoes the effect of a hundred eugenic laws.
(4) The vast and increasing expense of war is a very serious matter for the moralist, because it means a drain of the resources that might otherwise be utilized for the advance of civilization. The cost of a modern war goes at least into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and any great war would cost billions. Every shot from a modern sixteen inch gun costs approximately a thousand dollars! Add to this direct cost the indirect costs of war, not reckoned in the usual figures-the loss of the time and work of the hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men, the economic loss of their illness and death, the destruction of buildings, bridges, railways, etc, the obstruction of commerce, the paralysis of industry and agriculture, the ravages and looting of armies, the maintenance of hospitals and nurses, and then, finally, the money given in pensions.[Footnote: The recent Balkan war is reckoned to have cost nearly half a million men killed or permanently disabled, a billion and a half dollars of direct] Add further the cost of the expenditure, besides many billions of indirect expense. The colossal European war just beginning as these pages go to press bids fair to cost immeasurably more aintenance of armies upon a peace-footing-the feeding and clothing of the men, the building and maintenance of barracks and forts, of battleships and torpedo boats, of guns and ammunition, automobiles, aeroplanes, and the increasing list of expensive modern military appurtenances. Europe spends nearly two billion dollars a year in times of peace on its armies and navies-money enough to build four or five Panama canals annually. The entire merchant marine of the world is worth but three billion dollars. More than this, over four million strong young men are kept under arms in Europe, a million more workers are engaged in making ships, weapons, gunpowder, military stores. Over a million horses are kept for army use. This money and these men, if used in the true interests of humanity, could quickly provide adequate and comfortable housing for every European, adequate schooling, clothing, and food for every one. Here is the great criminal waste of our times. In America our waste is less flagrant, but it is steadily increasing. We throw away money enough in these fratricidal preparations to cover the country with excellent roads in short order, or give every child a high school education.
In a way, however, the rapidly growing cost of war and preparation for war is to be welcomed. For it is this that is creating, more than all our moral propaganda, a rising sentiment against war, and will presently make it impossible. When the German militarists became excited over the Morocco incident in 1911, a financial panic ensued, credit was withdrawn, pockets were touched, and a great protest arose which did much to quench the jingo spirit. Japan was induced to sign her treaty of peace with Russia because her money was giving out. Turkey was unable, in the winter of 1913-14, to renew war with Greece for the Aegean Islands, because she could not raise a loan till she promised peace. The growing international financial network, and the revolt of the taxpayers against the incessant draining of their pocketbooks, promise a change for the better in European militarism before very long.
What can we do to hasten world-peace?
There are powerful forces, which without our conscious effort are making for the abolition of war: its growing cost; the extension of mutual knowledge, through the newspapers and magazines, through travel, through exchange professorships and Rhodes scholarships and all international associations; the growing sensitiveness to suffering; the spread of eugenic ideals; and the increasing interest in worldwide social, moral, and material problems. But the epoch of final peace for man can be greatly accelerated by means which we may now note.
(1) We may stimulate counter-enthusiasms to take the place of the passion for war. After all, the great war of mankind is the war against pain, disease, poverty, and sin; the real heroes are not those who squander human strength and courage in fighting one another, but those who fight for man against his eternal foes. The war of man against man is dissension in the ranks. We must make it seem more glorious to men to enlist in these humanitarian campaigns than in the miserable civil wars that impede our common triumphs. [Footnote: Cf. Perry, Moral Economy, p. 32; "War between man and man is an obsolescent form of heroism. . . . The general battle of life, the first and last battle, is still on; and it has that in it of danger and resistance, of comradeship and of triumph, that can stir the blood." And cf. President Eliot's fine eulogy of Dr. Lazear, who died of yellow fever after voluntarily undergoing inoculation by a mosquito, in the attempt to learn how to stay the disease: " With more than the courage and] Further, we should awaken interest in innocent devotion of the soldier, he risked and lost his life to show how a fearful pestilence is communicated and how its ravages may be prevented."] excitements and rivalries-in sports, in industrial competition, in missionary enterprise. A world's series in baseball, or an intercollegiate football season, can work off the restless energies of many thousands who in earlier days would have lusted for war. The revival of the Olympic games was definitely planned as a substitute for war. And men must have not only excitements and rivalries, but real difficulties and dangers-something to try their courage and endurance and train them in hardihood. For this we have exploration and mountaineering, the prosecution of difficult engineering undertakings, the attacking of corruption and the achievement of political and social reforms. [Footnote: Cf. W. James, "The Moral Equivalent of War" (in Memories and Studies), p. 287: "We must make new energies and hardihood's continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues must be the enduring cement, intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon which states are built. The martial type of character can be bred without war. The only thing needed henceforward is to inflame the civic temper as past history has inflamed the military temper."]
(2) We may spread popular knowledge of the evils of war. It is incredible that this barbarous method of deciding disputes could be continued if the people generally had a lively realization of its cost in pain, money, and degradation. Already many societies exist for the diffusion of literature on the matter, [Footnote: And of course for other work in the direction of peace. The oldest such organization in this country is the American Peace Society. The Association for International Conciliation, founded in Paris by Baron d' Estournelles de Constant, in 1899, has branches now in all the important countries. Lately we have Mr. Carnegie's endowments for international peace] conscientious editors of journals and newspapers use their columns for peace propaganda, public schools teach children the evils of war, ministers use their pulpits to denounce it. All this, effort must be pushed in greater degree until a general public sentiment is aroused that will insist on the peaceful settlement of all international difficulties.
(3) Indirectly, too, education and association can make war more and more unlikely. We can create a greater knowledge of and sympathy with other nations. We can to considerable extent train out pugnacity, quick temper, resentfulness, and train in sensitiveness to suffering, sympathy, breadth of view. All such moral progress helps in the war against war. We can encourage the interchange of professors and scientists between countries, increase the number of professional and industrial international organizations. The International Socialist party, with its threatened weapon of the general strike against war, may actually prove to be- whether we like it or not the most efficient of all forces. The International Federation of Students (Corda ratres), founded at Turin in 1898, with its branches in all civilized countries, may be of great use. A censorship of the press to exclude all jingoistic and inflammatory utterances may at times be necessary. It is even questionable whether uniforms and martial music ought not to be banished for a while, until the habit of peaceful settlement becomes fixed.
(4) Politically, we must make our public policies so high and unselfish that other nations cannot justly take offense. Most wars are provoked by national greed or selfishness, lack of manners, or the breaking of treaty obligations. The United States, it must be confessed, has to some extent lost the respect and trust of other nations for its high- handed methods and disregard of treaties. Congress is allowed to modify or abrogate any treaty without consultation with the other nation involved; and we have what many critics deem acts of grave dishonor upon our record. [Footnote: For example, the recent abrogation of our long-standing treaty with Russia, without her consent, which has forfeited her friendship; or what seemed to many the violation of our treaty-promise to England by Congress in its exemption, now repealed, of American coastwise shipping from canal tolls. It would be well to engrave over the entrance to the Capitol the Psalmist's words: "He that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not."] ways we have needlessly offended and insulted other nations. The voter must watch the conduct of parties and work to elect men who, refraining from provoking other nations, will aim for peace.
(5) Practical steps in the direction of peace may be mentioned. Most important are arbitration treaties. They must be made binding, and made to apply to all matters; the loophole which permits a nation to refuse to arbitrate a matter which it believes to involve its "honor" practically invalidates the treaty altogether, as every matter in dispute may be so construed. Alliances in which one country agrees to help another if the latter has agreed to arbitrate a matter and its enemy has refused, may be of great value. Treaties that guarantee existing boundaries and bind a nation not to extend its territory are useful, even if there is no adequate method as yet of enforcing such guaranties. The question whether we shall increase or decrease our army and navy is hotly disputed. The United States might well lead the way in disarmament, since the oceans that separate us from Europe and Asia are a better protection than forts or fleets, and no nation has enough to gain by fighting us to make it worth the cost. With the great European nations the case is different, and disarmament will probably have to come by mutual agreement. The only valid reason for an American army and navy lies in the power they give us to protect our citizens abroad, or to protect our weaker neighbors against foreign aggression. Perhaps until there is formed an international army and navy, it will be necessary for the most civilized and pacific nations to keep armed, since the less scrupulous nations would remain armed and acquire the balance of power. But the contention that a great armament is the best guaranty of peace is untrue, for two reasons: it is an inevitable provocation to other nations to match it with other great armaments; and the very existence of battleships and weapons creates a temptation to use them. The professional soldier is always eager to see active service, to prove his efficiency, have excitement, win glory and advancement. As the Odyssey puts it, "The steel blade itself often incites to deeds of violence."
(6) The ultimate solution for international difficulties must, of course, be world organization. The beginnings of an international court we have already, the outcome of the first two Hague Conferences, in 1899 and 1907. It must be given greater powers, and backed up by an international executive, legislature, and police. Perhaps the police will be the combined armies of the world put at the service of international justice. This "parliament of nations, federation of the world" is not a Utopian dream; it is hardly a greater step than that by which savage tribes, or the thirteen States of North America, or the South African and Australian States, became welded into nations. It is to be remembered that the wager of battle was the original method of settling private disputes; and even when trial by jury was authorized, the older form of settlement persisted long-being legally abolished in England only as late as 1819. Similarly, the peaceful settlement of international disputes will doubtless before many generations become so universal that it will be difficult for our grandchildren or great- grandchildren to realize that as late as early in the twentieth century the most civilized nations still had recourse to the old and barbarous wager of battle.
H. Spencer, "Patriotism,", " Rebarbarization" (in Facts and Comments).G. K. Chesterton, "Patriotism" (in The Defendant). G. Santayana, Reasonin Society, chap. VII. Outlook, vol. 92, p. 317; vol. 90, p. 534.International Journal of Ethics, vol. 16, p. 472. The AmericanAssociation for International Conciliation (Sub-Station 84, New YorkCity) sends free literature on request. A bibliography of peaceliterature will be found in their pamphlet No. 64. E. L. Godkin,"Peace" (in Reflections and Comments). W. James, "Speech at the PeaceBanquet," and "The Moral Equivalent of War" (in Memories and Studies').Jane Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace, chaps. I, VII; The Arbiter inCouncil. J. Novicow, War and its Alleged Benefits. N. Angell, The GreatIllusion. W. J. Tucker, The New Movement of Humanity. V. L. Kellogg,Beyond War, chap. I. D. S. Jordan, War and Waste. R. C. Morris,International Arbitration and Procedure. International Journal ofEthics, vol. 22, p. 127. World's Work, vol. 20, p. 13318; vol. 21,p. 14128. Independent, vol. 77, p. 396. Outlook, vol. 86, pp. 137,145; vol. 83, p. 376; vol. 84, p. 29; vol. 98, p. 59. HibbertJournal, vol. 12, p. 105.
AND EFFICIENCY THE attainment of a stable peace is the first public duty; the second is the achievement of an efficient government. Where politics are corrupt and inefficient all social progress is obstructed; and all such ideals of a reshaped human society as the Socialists yearn toward must be postponed until we have learned to run the machinery of government smoothly and effectively. The backward condition of peoples whose government is unintelligent needs no examples. The Russo-Japanese War brought into sharp contrast a nation of limitless resources and fine human stock handicapped and crippled by a selfish bureaucracy, and a much smaller nation, inexperienced and remote from the great world currents, but strengthened and made efficient by an intelligent and patriotic administration. In Persia and Mesopotamia we find poverty, ignorance, desert, where once flourished mighty empires: bad government is the cause. Greece and Italy and Egypt are struggling to recover from centuries of misgovernment. In this country government has been far wiser and more responsive to the community's needs; and yet the apathy of the intelligent public and the intrusion of private greed have distorted and obstructed legislation until social reformers throw up their hands in despair. But there are hopeful signs. The causes of this political mismanagement are being more generally recognized today, and it is probable that the next few decades will witness great strides toward improving the mechanism of American government and banishing corruption.
What are the forces making for corruption in politics?
(1) By one means or other, unscrupulous rulers and officeholders have always been able to replenish their private income by misuse of their official powers. Since popular government was first tried there has existed a class of professional politicians with little regard for the public welfare and ready to do anything to keep themselves in power and fatten their pocketbooks. We have in America the well-known phenomena of the "machine," the "ring," and the "boss," whose motto is "Politics is politics," and who are unashamed to put their interests above those of the people at large. Their control of the machinery of government enables them, unless ingenious provisions prevent, to wink at illegal voting and fraudulent counting of votes, to get the dregs of the population out to the polls, and perhaps intimidate their opponents from voting. The police power has often been misused for such purposes; the gerrymander is another clever method of manipulating the results of elections. Such means, together with the use as bribe money of funds deflected from the public treasury, the blackmail of vice, and the acceptance of "contributions" from favored parties, create a vicious circle which tends to keep in power corrupt officials who have once got hold.
(2) But the power of unscrupulous politicians is made far greater by the support of those whose personal interests they make a business of furthering. Whole sections of the people are pleased and placated and bribed by special legislation in their favor, and as many individuals as possible are given positions. Behind every "boss" there are always hundreds of men who owe their "jobs" to him, and many others who cherish promises and hopes for personal favors. Jane Addams tells us that upon one occasion when the reformers in Chicago tried to oust a corrupt alderman they "soon discovered that approximately one out of every five voters in the nineteenth ward at that time held a job dependent upon the good will of the alderman." [Footnote: Twenty Years at Hull House, p. 316.]
(3) Of especial importance are the great "interests" that are always to be found behind a corrupt administration. These corporations are so dependent upon the good will of the Government for their prosperity, and even for their very existence, that from the primitive instinct of self-preservation as well as from the greed of exorbitant profits, they stand ready to give liberal bribes, or at least to back with money and moral support the party machine that promises to favor them. They control a large proportion of the newspapers and magazines, and are thus able to distort facts, protect themselves from attack, and even stir up a factitious distrust of would-be reformers. As every little contractor naturally favors the "ring" that awards contracts to him, so the great corporations publicly or secretly support it. The liquor trade and the vice caterers-the keepers of gambling dens, illegal "shows," and disorderly houses-back by their money and votes the "machine" that they know will let them alone. But, indeed, the most "respectable" trusts and public-service corporations are often most culpable, and the greatest power behind the throne. Their interest in the personnel of the Government is far keener than that of the average citizen; they can usually succeed, by cleverly specious presentations of the situation, in dividing the forces against them, and often, by "deals," in effecting secret alliances of the "rings" in control of supposedly opposing parties. The poor are right in supposing that these powerful "interests" are their greatest enemy; as that keen observer of our national life, Mr. Bryce, has put it, "the power of money is for popular governments the most constant source of danger."
(4) But, after all, this combination of forces in defiance of the common weal would not be effective but for the comparative indifference of the people, which may thus be called a contributing factor. The average voter feels no stimulus of self-interest in the matter; "what is everybody's business is nobody's business," and the individual finds his personal influence so slight that it seems hardly worth his pains to do anything about it. Occasionally popular passions become aroused and reform movements make a clean sweep; but the result is usually temporary, and when the general attention is turned elsewhere the bosses creep back to power. Modern life has so many more personal interests in it than the ancient republics had, that public affairs seldom become so big and absorbing an interest. And the more public affairs become the concern of a special group of men with dubious reputations, the more politics are shunned by the average citizen. Home life and business, social life and amusements, aesthetic, intellectual, and religious interests, are so much more attractive to him, that he gives little heed to political conditions, lets himself be duped by newspaper talk, and votes blindly some party ticket, without realizing his gullibility and his poor citizenship.
What are the evil results of political corruption?
(1) The obvious result of these conditions is inefficiency of administration and waste of the public moneys. The real interests of city or State are neglected. Streets become filthy, unsanitary tenements are built, firetrap factories and theaters allowed; every effort to improve public health is sidetracked, and the will of the people is subordinated to the will of the gang. Officials are nominated or appointed not for their competence but for their subservience to the organization; the boss himself, inexpert in administration, responsible to no one, and usually bribable, dictates public policy. The public funds disappear as in a quicksand; extravagant prices are paid for building lots and contracts, in return for political support or a share of the loot. Philadelphia before the reform movement of 1911 borrowed fifty-one million dollars in four years, and at the end had practically nothing to show for it, with the city dirty, buildings out of repair, and everything important neglected. One contractor in the "ring" was paid $520,000 a year to remove the city garbage-a privilege which is actually paid for in some cities, the value of the garbage for fertilizer and the manufacture of other products making the collection of it a profitable business.
(2) Another evil result lies in the subordination of general to local interests. The scattered and ineffective "pork-barrel" appropriations of Congress are dictated not by intelligent consideration for the public weal, but by the desire to throw a sop to this and that section of the country, and thereby win votes. Costly buildings are authorized in many towns where they are not needed, river and harbor improvements proceed at a halting pace in a hundred places at once, unnecessary navy yards and custom houses are maintained at heavy cost, the army is scattered at many small and expensive posts. Even the tariff is largely a deal between various manufacturing interests, rather than an instrument of the public good. Most officials consider themselves bound to exert all their influence in favor of their particular constituency's desires; if they cross those wishes they will probably not be reelected, while if they sacrifice the interests of the people as a whole they will be immune from punishment. Most of the state universities, normal schools, asylums, and other institutions have been located where they are as the result of a deal between different sections rather than with a view to the most advantageous site.
(3) To these grave evils we must add the moral harm of selfish and corrupt politics. Standards of honor are blurred, the spirit of public service is almost lost sight of, and the cheap materialism to which our prosperous age is too easily prone flourishes apace. The man who would succeed in politics-unless he is a man of extraordinary personality and favored by good fortune-must be disingenuous and a time-server, must truckle to bosses and do favors for the ring; he must appeal to prejudice and passion and put his personal advancement before his ideals. No one can estimate the evil effect that corruption in politics has had upon the national character. When we add the indirect effects- the distortion of the public news-service, the protection of vice, the insecurity of justice-the moral evils of political corruption are seen to be of gravest importance.
What is the political duty of the citizen?
(1) In the present chaotic state of our machinery of government, where corruption is so easy and efficiency so difficult to obtain, the burden must rest upon every conscientious voter to play his part with intelligence. He must study the situation, keep himself informed as to candidates and issues, watch the conduct of officials, vote at primaries and elections, however irksome and fruitless this effort may seem. Above all, he must use independence of judgment, and not let himself be duped by disingenuous appeals to "party loyalty"; where blind party voting is prevalent there is little stimulus to party managers to nominate able and honorable men or to promote needed legislation. Public opinion must be kept aroused, the sense of individual responsibility awakened, and political matters kept in the glare of publicity. At election times whoever can spare the time should, after learning the local situation, take some part in the campaign, by public speaking, personal soliciting of is a shame that the peaceable home-loving citizen should have to be dragged into this business of politics, which ought to be left to experts to manage; but at present there seems no help for it in most communities.
(2) An important service lies in joining or forming local branches of the leagues which now exist for the pushing of specific political measures, for the investigation and publication of impartial records of candidates, or for the investigation of the expenditures and results of administrations. Under the first head we may classify, for example, the National Short Ballot Organization; under the second head the Good Government Association, that makes it its business to send to each voter in a community a printed statement of the past history of each candidate for office, including the record of his vote on important matters; under the third head there are the Bureaus of Municipal Research. The New York Bureau, incorporated in 1907, conducts a yearly budget exhibit that shows graphically what is being done with the money raised by taxation. Inefficiency and corruption are ferreted out, waste is demonstrated, suggestions are made for economy, for the improvement of administration in every detail, and the amelioration of evil social conditions. By its determined publicity it can do much to energize and modernize city government. [Footnote: Cf. World's Work, vol. 23, p. 683. National Municipal Review, vol. 2. p. 48.]
(3) The outlook for clean and public-spirited young men, with expert knowledge and ideals, who wish to enter a political career, is gradually becoming more encouraging. The reformer in politics must be not merely an idealist, but a man who can do things. He must show his constituents that reform government serves them better than the ringsters. Reform tactics have too often been negative; stopped, but no positive measures for social welfare have been passed. To be successful, a politician must show the people that he understands and is able to satisfy their needs. More effective than any moral house- cleaning in securing the tenure of an administration is its efficiency in promoting better living and working conditions, improving opportunities for recreation and education, or loosening the clutch of the predatory "interests." Moreover, the politician must be a good mixer, willing to work with those who do not share his idealism, good- natured and conciliatory, ready to postpone the accomplishment of much that he has at heart in order to get something done. As organization is in most matters necessary for effectiveness, he must usually work with a party, do a lot of distasteful detail work, and make compromises for the sake of agreements. Happily, the Progressive party has made an out- and-out stand for the application of morals to politics; and the growing movement in the cities toward seeking experts to manage their affairs gives hope that the way will soon be generally open for men of scientific training and high ideals in political life.
What legislative checks to corruption are possible?
It is, of course, an unnatural situation when the ordinary citizen has to spend a lot of time and effort if he would guard against being misgoverned. He ought to be able to tend to his own affairs and leave the machinery of government to those who have been trained to it and whose business it is. And while no political mechanism will ever wholly run itself, without watchfulness on the part of the people, experience shows clearly that it is possible by a wise system to make corruption much more difficult and more easily checked. We Americans are beginning to awake from our complacent self-gratulation and realize that our political machinery is clumsy and antiquated and a standing invitation to inefficiency. The discussion of the relative advantages of legislative schemes belongs to the science of government rather than to ethics; but their bearing upon public morality is so important that certain typical movements must be explained. The stages by which the advanced form of popular government which we have now attained has been reached need not, for our purposes, be considered-the extension of suffrage to the masses, government by representatives, registration laws, the secret ballot, and the like. We need only discuss several reforms now being agitated and tried, whose aim is to make government more responsive to the real wishes and needs of the people, and more difficult of usurpation by selfish interests.
I. We may first speak of several reforms whose aim is to improve our mechanism of election, in order that merit, rather than "pull," shall lead to office, and that officials shall represent the people rather than the political rings. It is not generally true that good and able men are unwilling to accept public office; what they are unwilling to do is to truckle to bosses, to do all the questionable things that will keep them in with the ring, or to spend large sums of money in advertising their claims to the public. So thoroughly have political machines entrenched themselves that it is often practically useless for any one to oppose the machine candidate. Appointees receive their positions for "political services" rendered, or in return for a "campaign contribution" for which they may hope to recoup themselves when in office. To destroy utterly this political "graft" will be impossible until human nature becomes more generally moralized; but to render it more difficult and less common is the purpose of a number of measures, of which we may mention the following:
(1) CIVIL SERVICE LAWS. These require appointments to office, made by officials, to be made on the basis of competitive examinations which shall test the ability and knowledge of the applicants. By this means, within a generation, tens of thousands of positions have been put beyond the reach of spoilsmen, and men of worth have replaced political henchmen. Instead of a great overturn with every new political regime, the man who has now fairly won his position retains it for life, except in case of proved inefficiency. The quality of the public service has been immeasurably improved, the subservience of office-holders to political chiefs abolished. [Footnote: See Atlantic Monthly, vol. 113, p. 270. National Municipal Review, vol. 1, p. 654; vol. 3, p. 316.] But there are still many thousands of offices that have not been brought within the civil service, and there are continual attempts on the part of politicians to withdraw from it this or that class of appointments, that they may have "plums" to offer their constituents. To the most important positions the civil service method is, however, inapplicable; imagine a President having to appoint as his Secretary of State the man who passed the best examination in diplomacy! So many other considerations affect the availability of a man for such posts that the elected officials must be given a free hand in their choice and held responsible therefore to the people. These important appointees will be enough in the public eye to make it usually expedient for the career of the appointers that they pick reasonably honest and able men-especially if the recall (of which we shall presently speak) is in operation.