IF, after the foregoing, some one should need still further convincing that political struggles are not ethical struggles and that States fight one another not as ethical but as economic individualities, we might submit to his consideration facts easily observable in history but which I prefer to choose from the living present or from a past so recent as still to linger quivering in our memories.

An individual, to be moral, must maintain what we call his “dignity”; and individuals, in fact, do maintain their dignity with the most fastidious care; for they know that it is proof of their seriousness as individuals and at the same time something they owe to the moral ideal they cherish in their bosoms. So a man, who is half a man, will not yield to wrongful threats; nor will he persist in a line of conduct after its error or injustice has been brought home to him. Willingness to admit mistakes is, in fact, a test of individual character, and in such admissions a man not only does not abase, but actually ennobles himself: he who humbleth himself shall be exalted, says Holy Writ.

But States have quite another concept of dignity: it is a dignity which consists in asserting power with no other limit than the extent of that power and the opportuneness of the times, places, and manners, of asserting it.

Under no circumstances will a State confess itself in error. Why should it? It can see no reason for doing so. At the most it will admit mistakes of judgment, but privately and at home. On the other hand a State will buckle before threats when the threats are really dangerous. As is said bombastically: States recognise no master “save God and the conqueror’s sword.” The dignity of States has a counterpart in the dignity of the bully, who will yield only to a bully stronger or luckier than he. But there is an important difference even here. The bully is a man with some enlightenment even though a distorted one: he has a conscience, and a certain sense of honour. Sometimes he may prefer death or ruin to submission, and so render homage indirectly to the moral consciousness—destroying himself ad majorem gloriam of human dignity.

But States cannot do even that much. They cannot choose ruin or death in preference to salvation with dishonour. So as far as this Is concerned they would be called cowards, if they were individuals of moral responsibility. They evade this epithet for the simple reason that they have no status in the realm of ethics; and their acts of baseness are not acts of baseness but “painful renunciations” which all States, from time to time as the wind of history blows, have made, are making, and will make again.

Base and cowardly likewise (if the words were at all applicable to States, which they are not, except metaphorically), the procedures of States in their dealings with other States: sharp commands and the big stick for the weak or the weaker; respectfulness and politeness for Powers of equal power; cringing, flattery, and boot-licking for the stronger! Show me a State which, in the war just over, maintained its dignity in the ethical sense of the word! We had the spectacle of France, a trembling mendicant for aid from any one in a position to lend it; the glad hand of fellowship extended to savages and barbarians; Senegalese and Indian gurkas galloping about the “fair land of France”; words of feminine allurement for peoples she had, in better times, insulted and despised; invitations (vain ones) sent to far Nippon for yellow troops to defend her invaded territory; unctuous democratic manners, and pious ejaculations on “Latin sisterhood,” for neighbouring countries of Latin origin; consecrations to liberty, human justice, and democracy, for a republic farther removed!… Who could enumerate the full list of such acts of fawning that in an individual similarly placed would have been regarded as morally disgusting? But, the war won and over, it is a different story. France “wraps herself in her dignity.” She now steps forward as the high administratrix of justice—Monsieur de Paris, one might almost say—toward the great people that is her neighbour. Forgetful of common bonds of humanity, insolent, sarcastic, cynical, she now applies the high-sounding maxims of liberty and justice to the advantage of her exclusive interests; with an occasional descent from the high horse, even now, however, as it proves convenient to conciliate one or another of the greater powers. At the culminating point of German fortunes, at the critical moment of the war, we had the spectacle of England and the United States—not vanquished but deeply shaken—condescending to advances which were offers of compromise and peace. And these advances? They were insolently repelled by the momentary victor, the proud German State, which a short time afterwards was making advances on its own account (and what craven ones!), finally accepting, meek as a lamb, everything that was written for it on a piece of paper! An ancient Roman adage reminded conquered peoples that the only hope they had was to hope for the worst—nullam sperare salutem. But this recourse is adopted by States only when no other hope is left (the case of Saguntum and Numantia). As long as there is a ray of hope, States never risk heroic gestures and desperate casts of the dice: they think, and they are prudent. And why should they not be? States are magnificent animals, mighty, colossal; but their chief desire is to endure, and to escape destruction they will resort to any device that is available. “For the moment,” they seem to say to themselves, “for the moment we save our skins. The future will look after itself.” This is the bald truth. And there is nothing more factitious than the bragging of victorious States after wars are over—as though they had saved their honour and the vanquished had lost theirs! As a matter of fact, there was no honour to be saved and there was no honour to be lost. It was just a case of vital interests to be conserved in the best manner possible. If the bragging came from individuals, it would be sickening, nauseous. It is not so in the case of States for the reason given; and because, in a practical way, all the pompousness in question helps to rouse certain forces essential to national existence.

States therefore are not heroic, though their citizens may be—the men and women, the publics, which serve them and in the very act of obedience and devotion rise above them to far higher than political planes. As forms necessary to the progression of history, States are similar to the so-called “forces of nature” (really “forces of nature” are like States), which the individual utilises and controls but does not create. In so utilising and controlling them, he spends treasures of intelligence and will, thereby demonstrating, in his very servitude, his superiority over them. A philosopher once said that the eye of the peasant girl looking at the Sun is infinitely more precious than the Sun itself. The remark implies no censure of the Sun. So the clarifications I have just made imply no censure of States: States do just what they ought to do and just what they have to do. The above are clarifications; because their aim is to make things clearer—to afford an unprejudiced view of reality. And to see things as they are is not only an intellectual obligation: it is a moral duty.