I suppose no thoughtful Englishman would attempt to justify, on high moral grounds, the building up of the British empire: for instance, the possession of Egypt and India by Britain. How does India happen to be a part of the British realm? Every one knows the answer. The East India Company was simply the most adventurous and enterprising trading company then in the world. It grew rich trading with the Orient, established the supremacy of the British merchant marine, got into difficulties with French rivals and native rulers, fought brilliantly for its rights, as it had every reason to do, conquered territory and consolidated its possessions, ruling chiefly through native princes. It became so powerful that it did not seem wise to the British government to permit a private corporation to exercise such ever-growing political authority. It was regulated, and in the end abolished, by act of Parliament; its possessions were taken over by the Crown; the conquests were extended and completed, and India today is a gem in the crown of the British empire.
What justifies Britain, as far as she has justification, is the remarkable wisdom and generosity with which she has extended, not onlylaw and order and protection to life and property, but freedom and autonomous self-government, to her colonies and subject populations, with certain tragic exceptions, about as fast as this could safely be done. It is that which holds the British empire together. Great irregular empire, stretching over a large part of the globe: but for this it would fall to pieces over night. It would be impossible for force, administered at the top, to hold it together. The splendid response of her colonies in this War has been purely voluntary. That Canada has four hundred thousand trained men at the front, or ready to go, is due wholly to her free response to the wise generosity of England's policy, and in no degree to compulsion, which would have been impossible. This justification of the British empire is, nevertheless, as in the case of Rome, after the fact, and does not justify morally the building up of the empire.
Our own hands are not entirely clean. It is true we came late on the stage of history, and, starting as a democracy, were instinctively opposed to empire building. Thus our brief record is cleaner than that of the older nations. Nevertheless, there are examples of claim-jumping in our history. The most tragic of all is a large part of our treatment of the American Indians. It is true, with Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy, we tried to make every steal a bargain. Many an expanse of territory has been bought with a jug of rum. The Indian knew nothing about the ownership of land; we did. So we made the deed, and he accepted it. Then, to his surprise, he found he had to move off from land where for generations his ancestors had hunted and fought, with no idea of private ownership. So we pushed him on and on. Of late decades we have become ashamed, tried in awkward fashion to render some compensation for the wrongs done, but the larger part of the story is sad indeed.
There is, of course, another side to all this: the more highly developed nations do owe leadership and service in helping those below to climb the path of civilization; but let one answer fairly how much of empire building has been due to this altruistic spirit, and how much to selfishness and the lust for power and possession.
VI
THE ETHICS OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIP
We have seen that all empires have been built up by a series of successful aggressions, and that claim-jumping still characterizes the relations of the nations. Nevertheless, there has been some progress in applying to groups and nations the moral principles we recognize as binding upon individuals. Consider again our internal life: it was twenty years ago that we coined and used so widely the phrase "soulless corporations" for our great combinations of capital in industry. To-day that phrase is rarely heard. One sees it seldom even in the pages of surviving "muck-raking" magazines. Why has a phrase, used so widely in the past, all but disappeared? Again the answer is illuminating: there has been tremendous growth in twenty years, on the part of our great corporations, in treating their employees as human beings and not merely as cog-wheels in a productive machine. When the greatest corporation in the United States voluntarily raises the wages of all its employees in the country ten per cent., five several times, within a few months, as the Steel trust has recently done, something has happened. It may be said, "they did it because it was good business": twenty years ago they would not have recognized that it was good business. It may be said, "they did it to avoid strikes": twenty years ago they would have welcomed the strikes, fought them through and gained what selfish advantage was possible. The point is, there has been vast increase in the consciousness of moral responsibility on the part of corporations toward their artisans. This has been due partly to legislation, but mainly to education and the awakening of public conscience. If you wish to find the greatest arrogance and selfishness now, you will discover it, not among the capitalists: they are timid and submissive—strangely so. You will find it rather in certain leaders of the labor movement, with their consciousness of newly-gained powers.
Some growth there has been in the application of the same moral principles even to the relations of the nations. For instance: a hundred years ago the Napoleonic wars had just come to an end. In the days of Napoleon men generally gloried in war; to-day most of them bitterly regret it, and fight because they believe they are fighting for high moral aims or for national self-preservation, whether they are right or wrong.
When Napoleon conquered a country, often he pushed the weakling king off the throne, and replaced him with a member of his own family—at times a worse weakling. Think of such a thing being attempted to-day: it is unimaginable, unless the worst tyranny on earth got the upper hand for the next three hundred years of human history.
A more pungent illustration of progress is the feverish desire, shown by each of the combatants in this world struggle, to prove that he did not begin it. Now some one began it. A hundred years ago belligerents would not have been so anxious to prove their innocence: then victory closed all accounts and no one went behind the returns. The feverish anxiety each combatant has shown to establish his innocence of initiating this devastating War is conclusive proof that even the worst of them recognizes that they all must finally stand before the moral court of the world's conscience and be judged. The same tendency is shown in the efforts of Germany—grotesquely and tragically sophistical as they are— to justify her ever-expanding, freshly-invented atrocities. At least she is aware that they require justification.