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 illustration, take our Mexican problem. The announcement that under no circumstances 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, Japan, alone or in conjunction with one or another European power, closes the door to China: one can imagine circumstances 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 multitudes 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.
It has been said so many times by extreme pacifists that even sane human beings sometimes take it for granted, that "force never accomplished anything permanent in human history." It is false, and the reasoning by which it is supported involves the most sophistical of fallacies. All depends on who uses the force and the purpose for which it is used. The force employed by tyranny and injustice accomplishes nothing permanent in history. Why? Because tyranny and injustice are in their very nature transient, they are opposed to the moral order of the universe and, in the end, must pass. On the other hand, the force employed on the part of liberty and justice has attained most of the ends of civilization we cherish to-day. The force of the million of mercenaries, collected through Asia and Africa by Darius and Xerxes, to overwhelm a few Greek cities, accomplished nothing permanent in history; but the force of the ten thousand Athenians who fought at Marathon and of the other thousands at Salamis, saved democracy for Europe and made possible the civilization of the Occident. The force employed by King Louis of France to support a tottering throne and continue the exploitation of the people by an idle and selfish aristocratic caste, accomplished nothing permanent in history; but the force of those Frenchmen who marched upon Paris, singing the Marseillaise, made possible the freedom and culture of the last hundred years. The force employed by King George of England, to wring taxes without representation from reluctant colonies, accomplished nothing permanent in history, but the force which, at Bunker Hill and Concord Bridge, "fired the shot heard round the world," achieved the liberty and democracy of the American continent.
It may be freely admitted that all use of force is a confession of failure to find a better way. If you use force in the education of a child, it is such a confession of failure. So is it if force is used in controlling defectives and criminals, or in adjusting the relations of the nations; but note that the failure may be one for which the individual parent, teacher, society, state or nation is in no degree responsible. Force is a tragic weapon—and the ultimate one.
Since force is still the weapon of international justice, readiness and willingness to use it for defense, when necessary, is then the first condition of fulfilling the aims and serving the causes for which America stands. In other words, since the relations of the nations are still so largely those of individuals under the conditions of frontier life, as with the honest man on the frontier, so for the self-respecting, peace-loving nation to-day, it is well to carry a gun and know how to shoot.
Carrying a gun is a dangerous practice, for two reasons: it may go off in your pocket; you may get drunk and shoot when you ought not. Those are the only two rational arguments against national preparation for defense, in the present state of the world. Let us see. The gun may go off in your pocket: that is, if a strong armament for defense is built up, there is always danger that it may be used internally, against the people, unjustly. That, indeed, has been one of the curses of Europe for a thousand years. It is a grave danger, but recognizing it is partly forestalling it; moreover, we would better face that danger than one far worse. So with the other menace: you may get drunk and shoot when you ought not. Nations get drunk: they get drunk with pride, arrogance, aggressive ambition, revenge, even with panic terror, and so shoot when they should not. This, also, is a grave danger; but here, as well, recognizing it is part way forestalling it, and this danger, too, we would better face than one far more terrible. Moreover, it is armament for the gratification of aggressive ambition, and under the control of the arbitrary authority of a despotic individual or group, that tends to initiate war, not armament solely to defend the liberties of a people.
Thus, under the conditions cited, it is well to be armed and prepared. If a wolf is at large, if a mad dog is loose, if a madman is abroad with an ax, it is the part of wisdom to have an adequate weapon and be prepared to use it. If the Athenians had not resisted the hordes of Asia, what would have been the history of Europe? If the French had not resisted tyranny and injustice in the Revolution, what would have been the civilization of the last hundred years? If the English colonists had not resisted taxation without representation, what would be the present status of America? If the artisan groups had not united and fought economic exploitation, what would be their life to-day? If Belgium had not resisted Germany, what would be the future of democracy in Europe? Thus, now and after the War, the need is for all necessary armament for self-respecting self-defense and not an atom to gratify aggressive ambition. This does not mean that, once involved in war, the military tactics of democracy should be merely defensive. As has often and wisely been said, in war the best defense is a swift and hard attack.
It is widely argued, however, since our aim is peace and a world-court of justice to settle the disputes among the nations, making general disarmament possible, should not one great nation, fortunately free from the quarrels of Europe, occupying the major portion of a continent, its shores washed by two great oceans, with peaceful friendship on the north and weak anarchy on the south—should not such a nation take the lead, disarm and set an example to mankind? It is a beautiful dream! Would that those who really believe in non-resistance to evil would be logical, and apply it to internal as well as external policy. What is a police force? It is a body of men, trained, employed and paid to use force in resisting evil. If you wish to try out non-resistance, why not let some city apply it? Let Chicago do it: abolish its police force and set the example to the rest of the benighted cities of the country. What would happen? As long as there are criminals in all cities of the land, how they would flock to that fat pasturage. What devastation of property, destruction of life, injury to innocent women and children! Until the best men of Chicago would get together, form a vigilance committee, shoot some of the criminals, hang others, drive the rest out; and Chicago would get back to law and order, with courts of justice and a regular police body, composed of men trained, employed and paid to use force in resisting evil.
The example of Canada and the United States is cited, and a noble example it is: three thousand and more miles of international boundary, with never a shining gun or bristling fortress on the entire frontier. A glorious example, prophetic of what is coming all over the world, perhaps more quickly than we dare hope to-day; but what made it possible? Agreement in advance, and that at a time when one of the parties was too weak to be feared. Canada is getting strong: she has at present four hundred thousand trained men at the front or ready to go. Before the War closes she will have over a half million. Now suppose Canada fortified: we would be compelled to, there would be no other way.
Thus one nation cannot disarm while the others are strongly armed, and among them are those whose autocratic rulers and imperialistic castes are watching for signs of weakness in order to perpetrate international claim-jumping.
It is true that, on the frontier, in the early days, there were individuals who went about unarmed among the gun men, did it successfully, and some of them died peacefully in their beds: Christian ministers—sky-pilots, they were called. Please note, however, that the sky-pilot never had any money. He had no claims to be jumped.
We are not sky-pilots—far from it. As to money: the wealth of the world has been flowing into our coffers in a golden stream, to the embarrassment of our financial institutions, to the exaltation of the cost of living to such a point that, with more money than we ever dreamed of having, we find it more difficult to buy enough to eat and wear. As for claims to be jumped: they are on every hand: Panama Canal, Hawaiian Islands, Philippine Islands, ports of New York and San Francisco, vast reaches of unprotected coast. No, we are not sky-pilots, we cannot claim exemption on that ground.
Suppose, after the War, we attempted to disarm, without the protection of a world court and international police, while the other nations retained war armament. They, the victors and perhaps the defeated, would possess a great army and navy, manned with seasoned veterans, and be burdened with an intolerable debt; for the War has gone too far for any one to be able to pay adequate indemnity. We, rich, young, heedless, sure that no one on earth could ever whip us, chiefly because no one worth while has ever seriously tried: suppose we were completely disarmed. It would require only a little meddling with Mexico or Brazil, and we should have to give up the Monroe Doctrine or fight. Well, perhaps we shall give it up: it has even been suggested in the halls of Congress that we should—to the shame of the suggester, be it said. People do not understand the Monroe Doctrine: they talk of it as if it were a law. It is in no sense a law, but is merely a rather arrogant expression of our desires. We said to the other nations: "We desire that none of you henceforth shall fence in any part of our front or back yard, or the front or back yard of any of our neighbors, dwelling on the North and South American continents." That is the Monroe Doctrine, and that is all that it is: an expression of our wishes. All very well if others choose to respect them, but suppose some one does not? Perhaps, as stated, we may abandon the Monroe Doctrine: that is the easiest way, and the easiest way, for a nation or an individual, is usually the way of damnation. Even so, suppose the nation in question to say, "My national aspirations demand the Panama Canal, the Philippine Islands, or Long Island and the Port of New York." Why not? The Atlantic Ocean is only a mill-pond. It is not half so wide as Lake Erie was fifty years ago, in relation to modern means of transportation and communication. People say, "Do we want to give up our traditional isolation?" They are too late in asking the question: that isolation is irrecoverably gone. That should be now evident even to people dwelling in fatuously fancied security between the Alleghenies and the Rockies. We are inevitably drawn into relation with the rest of mankind. The question is no longer, "Shall we take a part in world problems?", but "What part shall we take?"
The point is, that if, under the circumstances cited, any one wished to do so, we could quickly be driven to such a condition of abject humiliation that we should be compelled to fight. Now suppose, disarmed, we should enter the conflict utterly unprepared? The result would be, hundreds of thousands of young men, going out bravely in obedience to an ideal—untrained and half equipped—to be butchered, a humiliating peace, and an indemnity of many billions to be groaned under for fifty years.
On the other hand, if we were adequately armed for defense, there would be much less temptation to any one to trouble us; and if we were compelled to fight, would it not be better to fight reasonably prepared?
There is a story, going the rounds of the press, about the bandit, Jesse James: telling how, on one occasion, he went to a lonely farm house to commandeer a meal. Entering, he found one woman, a widow, alone and weeping bitterly. He asked her what was the matter, and she replied that, in one hour, the landlord was coming, and if she did not have her mortgage money, she would lose her little farm and home and be out in the world, shelterless. The heart of the bandit was touched. He gave her the money to pay off the mortgage, hid in the brush and held up the landlord on the way back.
Need the moral be pointed? We have been getting the mortgage money.During the first years of the War it rolled in, an ever-increasinggolden stream, until we held a mortgage on numerous European nations.We have the mortgage money, butbeware of the way back!
Thus the agitation, in one nation, for disarmament, unpreparedness and a patched up peace, while the other nations are armed and embittered, not only renders the situation of the one people critically perilous, but actually cripples its power to serve the cause of world peace and humanity. If only the peace-at-any-price people had to pay the price, one would be willing to wait and see what happened; but they never pay it, they take to cover. It is those hundreds of thousands of splendid young men, going out blithely in obedience to duty, to be butchered, it is the millions of women and children, who cannot escape from a devastated area, who pay that price.
Every people in the past that turned to money and mercenaries for defense has gone down. No people ever survived that was unable and unwilling to fight for its liberties and spend, if necessary, the last drop of its blood for the principles it believed.
We have seen how impossible it is to forecast the new world that will follow the War, we know merely that it will be utterly new. Nevertheless, the great tendencies already at work we can partly discern and recognize something of what they promise. It is well to try to see them, that we may be not too unready to welcome the opportunity and accept the burden of the world that is being born in pain.
Peace and prosperity produce a peculiar type of conservatism. People are then relatively free in action and expression, things are going well with them, and they are instinctively inclined to let well enough alone. Thus in thought they tend to a conservative inertia.
On the other hand, in periods of great strain and suffering, as in war time, thought is stimulated, all ordinary views are broken down and the most radical notions are widely disseminated and even taken for granted by those who, shortly before, would have been scandalized by them. Action and certain phases of free speech are, in such a period, much more widely restrained by authority. There is a swift and strong development of social control, urged by necessity.
Thus, in war time, there is the curious paradox of ever widening radicalism in thought, with constantly decreasing freedom in action and expression. When the discrepancy becomes too great, you have the explosion—Revolution. This cause hastened and made more extreme the Russian Revolution, which had been simmering for a century. It has not yet appeared in Germany because of the forty years of successful work in drilling the mind of the German people to march in goose-step; yet the increasing signs of questioning the infallibility of the existing regime and system in Germany give evidence that there, too, the conflict is at work.
With ourselves, the opposition appears, as yet, only in minor degree. Nevertheless, it is here. On the one hand, are the registration, conscription and espionage measures, the effort to control news, the governmental supervision of food supplies, transportation, production and corporation earnings, the war taxes. On the other hand, thought is so stimulated that everything is questioned: our political system, our social institutions—marriage, the family, education. As some one says, "Nothing is radical now." We probably shall escape a sudden revolution, but the conflict must produce profound readjustment in every aspect of our life; for thought and action must come measurably together, since they are related as soul and body.
There are singular eddies in the main current both ways. For instance, the exigencies and sufferings of war produce a reaction toward narrower, orthodox forms of religion and a harsher spirit of nationalism; while in fields of action apart from the struggle, freedom and even license may increase, as in sex-relations. Nevertheless these cross-currents, while they may obscure, do not alter the main tendencies, which move swiftly and increasingly toward the essential conflict.
Even before our actual entrance into the War, its profound influence upon both our thinking and our conduct and institutions was evident. Now that we are in the conflict that influence is multiplied. We are aroused to new seriousness of thought. The frivolity and selfish pleasure-seeking that have marked our life for recent decades are decreasing. We may reasonably hope that the literature of superficial cleverness and smart cynicism, which has been in vogue for the last period, will have had its day, that the perpetrators of such literature will be, measurably speaking, without audience at the conclusion of the War.
The philosophy of complacency, at least, will be at an end, and the world will face with new earnestness the problem of life. This generation will be tired, perhaps exhausted, by the titanic struggle; but youth comes on, fresh and eager, with exhaustless vital energy, and the generations to come will take the heritage and work out the new philosophy. As Nature quickly and quietly covers the worst scars we make in her breast, so Man has a power of recovery, beyond all that we could dream. It is to that we must look, across the time of demoniac destruction.
We may even dare to hope that the next half-century will see a great development of noble literature in our own land. War for liberty, justice and humanity always tends to create such a productive period in literature and the other fine arts. The struggle with Persia was behind the Periclean age in Athens. It was the conflict of England with the overshadowing might of Spain that so vitalized the Elizabethan period. The Revolution was behind the one important school of literature our own country has produced hitherto.
Since this War is waged on a scale far more colossal than any other in human history, and since liberty and democracy are at stake, not only in one land, but throughout the world and for the entire future of humanity, it is reasonable to expect that the stimulation to the creation of art and literature will be far greater than that following any previous struggle. Where the sacrifice for high aims has been greatest, the inspiration should be greatest, as in France. The literature currently produced, as in the books of Loti, Maeterlinck and Rolland, is scrappy and disappointing, it is true; but that is to be expected when the whole nation is strained to its last energy and gasping for breath, under the titanic struggle, and is no test of what will be. In spite of the destruction of so large a fraction of her manhood, France will surely rise from the ashes of this world conflagration regenerated and reinspired. The pessimism of her late decades will be gone. The literature and other art she will produce will be instinct with new earnestness and exalted vision, and she may excel even her own great past.
We too are awakening. Since the War began, all over the United States, men and women have been thinking more earnestly and have been more willing to listen to the expression of serious thought than ever before for the last quarter century. Now that the hour of sacrifice has struck, this earnestness must greatly deepen. Perhaps we, too, may have our golden age of art.
The same inspiration carries naturally into the religious life. It is true, as we have seen, that there is a cross-current of reversion to narrower orthodoxy, caused by the War. The Gods of War are all national and tribal divinities. While they rule, the face of the God of Humanity is veiled. The Kaiser's possessive attitude toward the Divine is but the extreme case of what War does to the religious life. Even among ourselves the tendency shows in such phenomena as the current popular evangelism—an eloquent, if artfully calculated and vulgarized preaching of the purely personal virtues, with an ignorance that there is a social problem in modern civilization, profound as that displayed by a mediaeval churchman. The evangelist's list of inmates, whom he relegates to the kingdom of the lost, makes the place singularly attractive to the lover of good intellectual society.
Nevertheless, the reversion to narrower creeds but indicates the newly awakened hunger of the religious life. Men who sacrifice live with graver earnestness than those who are carelessly prosperous. Cynicism and pessimism are children of idleness and frivolity, never of heroic sacrifice and nobly accepted pain. These latter foster faith in life and its infinite and eternal meaning. Thus, with all the tragic submerging of our spiritual heritage the War involves, we may hope that it will cause a revival, not of emotional hysteria, but of deepened faith in the spirit, in the supreme worth of life, until at last we may see the dawn of the religion of humanity.
Equally far-reaching are the changes the War must produce in our education. Temporarily, our higher institutions will be crippled by the drawing off of the youth of the land for war. This is one of the unfortunate sacrifices such a struggle involves. We must see to it that it is not carried too far. One still hears old men in the South pathetically say, "I missed my education because of the Civil War." Let us strive to keep open our educational institutions and continue all our cultural activities, in spite of the drain and strain of the War. For never was intellectual guidance and leadership more needed than in the present crisis.
The paramount effect of the War on education is, however, in the multiplied demand for efficiency. This is the cry all across the country to-day, and, in the main, it is just. Our education has been too academic, too much molded by tradition. It must be more closely related to life and to the changed conditions of industry and commerce. Each boy and girl, youth and maiden, must leave the school able to take hold somewhere and make a significant contribution to the society of which he or she is an integral part. Vocational training must be greatly increased. The problems of the school must be increasingly practical problems, and thought and judgment must be trained to the solution of those problems. This is all a part of that socialization of democracy which must be achieved if democracy is to survive in the new world following the War.
There is, nevertheless, an element of emotional hysteria in the demand for efficiency and only efficiency. Efficiency is too narrow a standard by which to estimate anything concerning human conduct and character. In the effort to meet and conquer Germany, let us beware of the mistake of Germany. One of the world tragedies of this epoch is the way in which Germany has sacrificed her spiritual heritage, first for economic, then for purely military efficiency. When we recall that spiritual heritage, as previously described, when we think of Schiller, Herder and Goethe, Froebel, Herbart and Richter, Tauler, Luther and Schleiermacher, Kant, Fichte and Schopenhauer, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner, we stand aghast at the way in which she has plunged it all into the abyss,—for what? Shall it profit a people, more than a man, if it gain the whole world and lose its own soul?
In such a time, then, all of us who believe in the spirit must hold high the torch of humanistic culture. Education is for life and not merely for efficiency. Of what worth is life, if one is only a cog-wheel in the economic machine? It is to save the spiritual heritage of humanity that we are fighting, and it is that heritage that education must bring to every child and youth, if it fulfills its supreme trust. Education for the purposes of autocratic imperialism seeks to make a people a perfect economically productive and militarily aggressive machine. Education for democracy means the development of each individual to the most intelligent, self-directed and governed, unselfish and devoted, sane, balanced and effective humanity.
One of the surprises of the War was the complete breakdown of international socialism. Not only socialists, but those of us who had been thoughtfully watching the movement from without, had come to believe that the measure of consciousness of international brotherhood it had developed in the artisan groups of many lands, would be a powerful lever against war. We were wrong: the superficial international sympathy evaporated like mist under the rays of a revived nationalism. The socialists fell in line, almost as completely as any other group, with the purely nationalist aims in each land.
This must have gratified certain despots; for one cause of the War, not the cause, was undoubtedly the preference on the part of various autocrats, to face an external war rather than the rising tide of democracy within the nation. Temporarily, they have been successful, but surely only for a brief time. The victory of democracy will vastly accelerate the growth of the spirit of brotherhood throughout the world.
The terrible waste of the War must of itself produce a reaction of the people on kings and castes in all lands. The suffering that will follow the War, in the period of economic readjustment, will accentuate this. Surely thepeople, in England, France, America, Italy, Russia, and among the neutral nations, will strive that no such war may come again. Even in Germany, when the people find out what they have paid and why, inevitably they must struggle so to reform their institutions that no ruler or class may again plunge them into such disaster for the selfish benefit or ambitions of that ruler or class. How our hearts have warmed to Liebknecht!
The realignment of nations must work to the same end. War, like politics, makes strange bed-fellows. Germany and Austria, for centuries rivals, and, at times, enemies, we behold united so completely that it is difficult to imagine them disentangled after the War.
France and England, long regarding each other as natural enemies, are fused heart and soul. Strangest of all, we have seen England struggling to win for Russia that prize of Constantinople, which for generations it has been a main object of British diplomacy to keep from Russian grasp. Most impressive of all, has been the new consciousness of unity and common cause among the nations of the earth, and the groups within all nations, standing for democracy.
Thus the tide, checked for a time, will inevitably break forth with renewed force. It is probable that the next fifty years will be a period of great change—even of revolutions, peaceful or otherwise, throughout the earth.
To understand the effect on the whole socialist movement, one must distinguish clearly the two contrasting types of socialism. It is the curse of the orthodox, or Marxian, type of socialism, that it was "made in Germany." Its economic state is modeled directly on the Prussian bureaucratic and paternalistic state. Its dream realized, would mean Prussian efficiency carried to thenthpower, in a society of as merciless slavery as that prevailing among the ants and the bees. It is doubtless this characteristic that has made so many bureaucratic or orthodox socialists instinctively Pro-German in sentiment and sympathy during the War.
The contrasting type of socialism is that which is really the full development of democracy, its movement from a narrow individualism to ever wider voluntary co-operation. It moves, not toward government ownership, but toward ownership by the people, of natural monopolies. It means, not the turning over to a bureaucratic government, of plants and instruments of production, but the progressive cooperative ownership of them by the workers themselves. It will end, not in the overthrow of the capitalist regime, but in all workers becoming co-operative capitalists, and all capitalists, productive workers, since no idle rich—or poor, will be tolerated. Such socialism, if it be so called, will depend upon the highest individual initiative, the most voluntary co-operation and will include the individualism which is the cherished boon of democracy. It is significant that those who represent this type of socialism and who think for themselves, are breaking away from the orthodox party, under the courageous leadership and example of John Spargo, in increasing numbers, since our entrance into the War. They are as instinctively American and democratic in sympathy, as those of the opposite type are Pro-German.
Even in the most democratic countries, however, the War has caused a vast increase of the undesirable type of socialism: that is one of its temporary penalties. To carry on such a war successfully, it is necessary to multiply the authority of the central government. That has been the experience of England, now being repeated here. Men, who werecitizensof a democracy, become, as soldiers, and in part as workers,subjectsof the government in war. To some extent we are forced to imitate the tendencies we deplore and seek to overthrow in Germany, to be able to meet and defeat Germany.
Even so, the difference is profound. The subordination to the government is, for the people as a whole, voluntary, achieved through laws passed by chosen representatives of the people, and not by the arbitrary will of a kaiser and ruling caste. Thus the freedom, voluntarily relinquished for a time, can be quickly regained when the crisis is past. Subjects will become citizens again, when soldiers return to civil life.
Nevertheless, there will be no return to the old, selfishly individualistic regime. The lesson of organized action will have been learned, and a vast increase of voluntary co-operation, that is, of the socialism that is true democracy may be anticipated as a beneficent result of the War. This will be one of the great compensations for the waste of our heritage, spiritual and material, through the War.The voluntary socialization of previously individualistic democracy will be the next great forward movement of the human spirit.
Of all consequences of the War, perhaps none is more significant than its effect upon the position of women. Militarism and feminism are counter currents in the tide of history. All recrudescence of brute force carries the subjugation of women. In the degree to which professional militarism prevails in any society, women are forced into hard industrial activities, despised because fulfilled by women. On the other hand, a group of carefully protected women is held apart as a fine adornment of life. Both ways militarism accentuates the property idea in reference to women: the one type, useful, the other, adorning, property. The one shows in marriage by purchase, the other in the dowry system. It is hard to say which is more dishonoring to women. It would, perhaps, seem preferable and less offensive to be bought as useful, rather than accepted with a money payment, as an adorning but expensive possession, where, as with the automobile, "it is the upkeep that counts." Surely, however, either attitude is degrading enough.
The accentuation, in the present War, of the notion of women as property, is evident in more brutal form in the horrors of rape, in the deliberate and organized use of women as breeders, with the same efficiency with which Germany breeds her swine.
Nevertheless, here, too, strong counter currents are at work. As this is a war of nations, not of armies, it is the whole people that, in each instance, has had to be mobilized and organized. In all the democracies women have voluntarily risen to this need, just as citizens have voluntarily become soldiers. Thus women, by the legion, are working in munition factories, on the farms, in productive plants of every kind, in public service and commerce organizations. The noble way in which women have accepted the double burden has created a wave of reverent admiration throughout the world. Thus where professional militarism tends to despise the industrial activities into which it forces women, war for defense and justice causes reverence for the same socially necessary activities and for the women who so courageously undertake them for the sake of all.
Moreover, the increased freedom of action for women will outlast its temporary cause. Once so admitted to new fields of industrial, business and professional activity, women can never be generally excluded from them again. Thus when the soldiers become citizens, many of the women will remain producers, working beside men under new conditions of equality.
The result, with the general stimulation of radical thinking that the War involves, will be a profound acceleration of the feminist movement throughout, at least, the democracies of the world. Already it is being recognized that all valid principles of democracy apply to women equally with men. Regenerated, if chaotic, Russia takes for granted the farthest reaches of feminism. The regime in England, that bitterly opposed suffrage for women, is now voluntarily granting it before the close of the War.
Thus the victory of the allied nations will mean the fruition of much of the feminism that is a phase of humanism. It will mean freeing women from outgrown custom and tradition, from unjust limitations in industrial, social and political life. It will mean men and women working together, on a plane of moral equality, with free initiative and voluntary co-operation, for the fruition of democracy. Just as that fruition will see the end of idle rich and poor, so there will be no more women slaves or parasites, none regarded or possessed as property, but only free human beings, each self-directed and self-controlled, and responsible for his or her own personality and conduct.
The nineteenth century was the period of rapid growth in adhesion to those ideals of democracy for which the War is being fought. It is not so well recognized that during the same hundred years democracy was so transformed as to be to-day a new thing under the sun.
Up to the time of the French and American revolutions democracy rested largely upon certain abstract ideas of human nature. Rousseau could argue that in primitive times men sat down together to form a state, each giving up a part of his natural right to a central authority, and thus justifying it. We now know that nothing of the kind ever happened, that society had undergone a long process of development before men began to think about it at all. We continue to repeat the splendid at all. I refer, of course, to the women of antiquity. Where respectable, these were the head of the household slaves, scarcely removed from the condition of the latter. The few women who did achieve freedom of thought and action, and became the companions of cultivated men—the Aspasias of antiquity—bought their freedom at a sad price.
So Rome is called a republic, and it is true that, during the first half of her long history, freedom gradually broadened down from the patrician class to the plebeian multitude. When Rome reached out, however, to the mastery of the most impressive empire the world has seen, she never dreamed of extending that freedom to the conquered populations. If she did grant Roman citizenship to an occasional community, to enjoy the rights and exercise the privileges of that citizenship, it was necessary to journey to Rome. It was the city and the world: the city ruling the world as subject.
The same principle holds with the republics developing at the close of the middle age, in Italy, in the towns of the Hanseatic League and elsewhere. Always the freedom achieved was for a city, a group or a class, never for all the people. Our dream, on the contrary, is to take all the men and women in the land, ultimately in the world, and help them, through the free and cooperative activity of each with all the rest, on toward life, liberty, happiness, intelligence—all the ends of life that are worth while. If we demand life for ourselves, we ask it only in harmony with the best life for all. We want no special privilege, no benefit apart, bought at the price of the best welfare of humanity. "We," unfortunately, does not yet mean all of us, but it does signify an increasing multitude, rallying to this that is the standard of to-morrow.
A third transformation, at least equally important with these, is in the invention, for it is no less, of representative government. Political thinkers, such as John Fiske, have tried to make us understand what this invention means: we do not yet realize it. The development of representative government is the cause, first of all, of the tremendous expansion of the area over which we apply democracy. Plato, in theLaws, limits the size of the ideal state—the one realizable in this world—to 5040 citizens. Why? Well, the exact number has a certain mystical significance, but the main reason is, Plato could not imagine a much larger body of citizens than 5000 meeting together in public assembly and fulfilling the functions of citizenship.
We have extended democracy over a hundred millions of population, dwelling on the larger part of a continent; and if one travels North, South, East, West, to-day, one is impressed that, in spite of unassimilated elements, everywhere men and women are proud, first of all, of being American citizens, and only in subordinate ways devoted to the section or community to which they belong. This has been made possible by the invention and development of representative government.
That is not all: it is representative government that takes the sting out of all the older criticisms of democracy. Plato devotes one of the saddest portions of hisRepublicto showing how in a brief time, democracy must inevitably fall and be replaced by tyranny. With the democracy Plato knew this was true. It was impossible for Athens to protect and make permanent her constitution. She might pass a law declaring the penalty of death on any one proposing a change in the constitution. It did no good. Let some demagogue arise, sure of the suffrage of a majority of the citizens: he could call them into public assembly, cause a repeal of the law, and make any change in the constitution he desired. There was no way to prevent it.
It is the invention and development of representative government that has changed all that. We chafe under the slow-moving character of our democracy—over the time it takes to get laws enacted and the longer time to get them executed. We may well be patient: this slow-moving character of democracy is the other side of its greatest safe-guard. It is because we cannot immediately express in action the popular will and opinion, but must think two, three, many times, working through chosen and responsible representatives of the people, that our democracy is not subject to the perils and criticisms of those of antiquity.
The voice of the people in the day and hour, under the impulse of sudden caprice or passion, is anything but the voice of God: it is much more apt to be the voice of all the powers of darkness. It is common thought, sifted through uncommon thought, that approaches as near the voice of God as we can hope to get in this world. It is not the surface whim of public opinion, it is itsgreatest common denominatorthat approximates the truth.
It behooves us to remember this at a time when changes are coming with such swiftness. Our life has developed so rapidly that the old political forms proved inadequate to the solution of the new problems. As a practical people, we therefore quickly adopted or invented new forms. Doubtless this is, in the main, right, but we should understand clearly what we are doing.
For instance, one of the great changes, recently inaugurated, is the election of national senators by popular vote. Our forefathers planned that the national upper house should represent a double sifting of popular opinion. We elected state legislatures; they, in turn, chose the national senators: thus these were twice removed from the popular will. It proved easy to corrupt state legislatures; the national senate came to represent too much the moneyed interests; and so, through an amendment to the constitution, we changed the process, and now elect our senators by direct vote of the people. This makes them more immediately representative of the popular will, and perhaps the change was wise; but we should recognize that we have removed one more safe-guard of democracy.
A story, told for a generation, and fixed upon various British statesmen, will illustrate my meaning. The last repetition attributed it to John Burns. On one occasion, while he was a member of Parliament, it is said he was at a tea-party in the West End of London. The hostess, pouring his cup of tea, anxious to make talk and show her deep interest in politics, said, "Mr. Burns, what is the use of the house of Lords anyway?" The statesman, without replying, poured his tea from the cup into the saucer. The hostess, surprised at the breach of etiquette, waited, and then said, "but Mr. Burns, you didn't answer my question." He pointed to the tea, cooling in the saucer: that was the function, to cool the tea of legislation. That was the function intended for our national senate. The trouble was, the tea of legislation often became so stone cold in the process that it was fit only for the political slop-pail, and that was not what we wanted. So we have changed it all, but one more safe-guard of democracy is gone.
So with other reforms, loudly acclaimed, as the initiative and referendum. With the new problems and complications of an extraordinarily developed life, it is doubtless wise that the people should be able to initiate legislation and should have the final word as to what legislation shall stand. On the other hand, if we are not to suffer under a mass of hasty and ill-considered legislation, if laws are to stand, they must always be formulated by a body of trained legislators, and not by the changing whim of popular opinion.
So with the recall, now so widely demanded in many sections of the country. In the old days, our candidates were most obsequious and profuse in promises to their constituentsbeforeelection; but once elected, only too often they turned their backs on their constituents, went merrily their own way, making deals and bargains, in the spirit that "to the victor belong the spoils." Therefore we justly demanded some control of them, after, as before, election: hence the recall. Again the movement is right; but if the fundamentals of democracy are to be permanent, that body of men, concerned with the interpretation of the constitution and the fundamental law of the land, must not be subject to the immediate whim of mob mind, and the power to recall those judges occupied with this task would be a graver danger than advantage. They will make mistakes, at times they will be ultra conservative and servants of special interests, but that is one of the incidental prices we have to pay for the permanence of free institutions. The problem is to keep the basic principles of democracy unchanged, the forms on the surface as fluid and adjustable as possible.
It is these three transformations—the abandonment of the old abstract notions and the testing of democracy by its results, the expansion of its application over the entire population, and the invention and development of representative government—it is these three changes that make our democracy a new order of society, new in its problems, its menaces, its solutions.