Two notable doctrines of the courts point ways for ethics. The first is that of property affected with public interest. Applied thus far by the courts to warehouses, transportation, and similar public services, what limits can we set ethically to the doctrine that power of one man over his fellows, whether through his office, or through his property, is affected with public interest?
The police power, which sets the welfare of all above private property when these conflict, is a second doctrine whose ethical import far outruns its legal applications.
Yet it is by neither of these that the most significant progress has been made toward removing that handicap of inequality which is the chief injustice of our economic system. It is by our great educational system, liberal in its provisions, generously supported by all classes, unselfishly served, opening to all doors of opportunity which once were closed to the many, the most successful department of our democratic institutions in helping and gaining confidence of all—a system of which this University of California is one of the most notable leaders and the most useful members—that fair conditions for competition and intelligent coöperation in the economic world are increasingly possible.
V
What bearing has this sketch of the significance and progress of coöperation upon the international questions which now overshadow all else? Certainly the world cannot remain as before: great powers struggling for empire; lesser powers struggling for their separate existence; great areas of backward peoples viewed as subjects for exploitation; we ourselves aloof. It must then choose between a future world order based on dominance, which means world empire; a world order based on nationalism joined with the non-social type of competition, which means, every nation the judge of its own interests, continuance of jealousies and from time to time the recurrence of war; and a world order based on nationalism plus international coöperation, "to establish justice, to provide for common defense, to promote the general welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
It is not necessary to discuss in this country the principle of dominance and world empire. It contradicts our whole philosophy. Safety for dominance lies only in a civilization of discipline from above down, in ruthless repression of all thinking on the part of the subject class or race.
Nor can I see any genuine alternative in what some advocate—reliance by each nation on its own military strength as the sole effective guarantee for its interests. After the military lessons of this war, the concentration of scientific, economic, and even educational attention upon military purposes would almost inevitably be vastly in excess of anything previously conceived. What limits can be set to the armies of France and Great Britain if these are to protect those countries from a German empire already double its previous extent, and taking steps to control the resources of eastern Europe and the near East? What navy could guarantee German commerce against the combined forces of Great Britain and the United States? What limits to the frightfulness yet to be discovered by chemist and bacteriologist? What guarantee against the insidious growth of a militarist attitude even in democratically minded peoples if the constant terror of war exalts military preparations to the supreme place? Something has changed the Germany of other days which many of us loved even while we shrank from its militarist masters. Is it absolutely certain that nothing can change the spirit of democratic peoples? At any rate, America, which has experimented on a larger scale with coöperation—political, economic, and religious—than any other continent, may well assert steadily and insistently that this is the more hopeful path. It may urge this upon distrustful Europe.
The obstacles to coöperation are:
1. The survival of the principle of dominance, showing itself in desire for political power and prestige, and in certain conceptions of national honor.
2. The principle of non-social competition, exhibited in part in the political policy of eliminating weaker peoples, and conspicuously in foreign trade when the use of unfair methods relies upon national power to back up its exploitation or monopoly.