MASTER NEGA TIVE NO. 91-80003 MICROEDLMED 1991 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States ~ Title 17, United States Code - concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material... Columbia University Library reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. AUTHOR: GIDDINGS, FRANKLIN TITLE: RESPONSIBLE STATE PLACE: BOSTON DA TE : 1918 I ' COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT Master Negative # BTBUOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET Original Material as Filmed •• Existing Bibliographic Record 5' .» , ■,,fij*>,jKi pidjjxng^ ♦"^ '.^ijt^''^ »-,'.'''^».' Y^J V Frtnklin Henry.\l855- 1931* Tho rosporu 061B81 07*^4 , 1918 Giddings, Franklin Henry, 1855- 1931. ■ ... The responsible state; a reexamination of funda- mental political doctrines in the light of world war and the menace of anarchism, by Franklin Henry Giddings ... Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin company, 1918. X, ilj, 107, ill p., 1 I. 19J'"'". (Brown university. The Colver lectures, 1918) ^hm Another copy. 1. State, The. i. Title. Library of Congress /^^ JC325.G5 €«pr2. {^ y( Continued on next card) 9>- n ^'siileWiJite. 1918'. (Card g) in,Hjfatoyy Hoading Room. ■ 18-16987. ^ ^ Copyright A 501561 Restrictions on Use: [s25eli ^I'ich r* )320 [36 ; ^^ CopyWButler Library of Q^r D320.1 G36 \ t •. of philosophy. D S aOjl -fi o py nnr- Gul lu g o S ti jd y, | ,101 ftj t r Copy in Barnard College Library. - i TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA FILM SIZE: :^rr\cr\^ IMAGE PLACEMENT: L\(^) IB IIB DATE FILMED:_4ljiti3j REDUCTION RATIO:. 1\ INITIALS DTT HLMEDBY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODBRIDGE. CT r Association for information and Image Management 1 1 00 Wayne Avenue. Suite 1 1 00 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 M Centimeter im TTT 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiilliiiiliiiiliii ij^^ Inches I I I I I 1 ^1 T| I I I .0 I.I 1.25 9 10 11 liiiiliiiilmi TTT 12 13 14 15 mm TTTiTi^^^^M iM 2.8 2.5 111^ ■^ 1^ 2.2 1^ ■ 80 2.0 LL U: » tiilau 1.8 1.4 1.6 MRNUFRCTURED TO flllM STflNDfiRDS BY APPLIED IMflGE, INC. "D'b'^O '^ntkv Mbvwrp at iltlFFICll - ETBENillVENDl ^ %DI5ClPilNAA\ r?.- >' A l\ Si m mm . iiiiiii mi SM^mS S ^stmSwmm isi C!)e Colber iecturect PUBLISHED BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY MEDICAL RESEARCH AND HUMAN PROGRESS. By W. W. Keen. 1917. THE RESPONSIBLE STATE A Reexamination of Fundamental Political Doctrines in the Light of World War and the Menace of Anarchism. By Franklin Henry Giddings. 1918- THE COLVER LECTURES IN BROWN UNIVERSITY 1918 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE By Franklin Henry Giddings IT3E" t (gvo^mi Uttii7et0it^. ^^e Cofber ^ututtn, 1918 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE A Reexamination of Fundamental Political Doctrines in the Light of World War and the Menace of Anarchism BY FRANKLIN HENRY GIDDINGS, LLJ>. Frc^essor of Sociology and the History of Civilization in Columbia University. Sometime Professor of Political Science in Bryn Mawr College « BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY ^J)e mitoeri^itie pce^^ Cambcitige 1918 If tA .^ o 9 . <-.-■ COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY BROWN UNIVERSITY ALL RIGHTS RKSERVBD Published August rgiS I i THE Colver lectureship is provided by a fund of $10,000 presented to the University by Mr. and Mrs. Jesse L. Rosenberger of Chicago in memory of Mrs. Rosenberger's father, Charles K. Colver of the class of 1842. The following sentences from the letter accompanying the gift explain the purposes of the foun- dation : — "It is desired that, so far as possible, for these lectures only subjects of particular importance and lecturers emi- nent in scholarship or of other marked qualifications shall be chosen. It is desired that the lectures shaU be dis- tinctive and valuable contributions to human knowledge, known for their quality rather than their number. In- come, or portions of income, not used for lectures may be used for the publication of any of the lectures deemed desirable to be so published." Charles Kendrick Colver (1821-1896) was a graduate of Brown University of the class of 1842. The necrologist of the University wrote of him: "He was distinguished for his broad and accurate scholarship, his unswerving personal integrity, championship of truth, and obedience to God in his daily life. He was severely simple and un- worldly in character." The lectures aheady published in this series are: — 1916 The American Cmceptian of Liberty and Government, by Frank Johnson Goodnow, LL.D., President of Johns Hopkins University. In boards, 63 pages; price, 50 cents. 1917 Medical Research and Human Welfare, by W. W. Keen, M.D., LL.D. (Brown), Emeritus Professor of Sur- gery, JeflFerson Medical CoUege, PhUadelphia. In cloth, 160 pages; price, $1.25. 1 PREFACE These lectures make in print a small booJc ; nevertheless, it is a product of long reflection checked up by a varied experience. As professor of political science I taught the orthodox theory of the state. As professor subsequently of sociol- ogy, somewhat severely conceived as a study sta- tistical in method, and in content bordering on psychology and on history, I have increasingly felt the unreality of Teutonic political philos- ophy, while 05 an editorial writer on the staff of " The Independent'' since 1900 I have been compelled to take account of momentous hap- penings in a world under than the academic. From time to time I have printed more tech- nical discussions of some of the topics here pre- sented. Readers who may be interested in them are referred to the chapters: " The Nature and Conduct of Political Majorities," " The Des- tinies of Democracy,'' ''The Consent of the Governed," ''The Survival of Civil Liberty," and " The Gospel of Non-Resistance" in "De- mocracy and Empire" ; to an article on "Sov- ereignty and Government" in the "Political Science Quarterly," vol, xxi, no, 1 ; to the presi- vu i PREFACE dential address, ^^ Social Theory and Public Policy,'' before the American Sociological Soci- ety in 1910, ^^ American Journal of Sociology,'* vol, XVI, no, 5 ; and to the Carroll D, Wright lecture, *' Americanism in War and in Peace," published a year ago by Clark University, To my colleagues, in particular to Professor Munroe Smith and to Professor Howard Lee McBain, I am indebted for valued suggestions, Franklin Henry Giddings New York, May, 1918 CONTENTS I ORIGINS OF THE STATE 1. Primitive Social Cohesion ... 1 St, Political Beginnings 6 S. Patriotism IS n POWERS OF THE STATE 1. The Few and the Many .... 17 Protocracy 19 2. Extent of Domination .... 20 (1) Absolutism 23 (2) Anarchy 28 (3) Privileged Aristocracy .... 29 (4) Radical Democracy .... 30 (5) Natural Aristocracy in the Demo- cratic Republic 33 3. Sovereignty 36 (1) The Metaphysical Conception . . 37 (2) The Sociological Conception . . 45 Powers of the Sovereign not abso- lute • 46 (a) Cosmic Limitations . . 46 (6) International Limitations 47 iz CONTENTS (c) Limitations within: Con- sent of the Many . (d) Moral Limitations : Re- sponsibiHty (3) Sovereignty the Dominant Hmnan Power, Individual or Pluralistic, in a Politically Organized and PoHti- cally Lidependent Population 4. The State Finite and Responsible 47 47 48 48 m RIGHTS OF THE STATE 1. The Good and the Right .... 49 2. Natural Rights 5D (1) of the Community (a) to exist; (6) to grow on equal terms with other communities 65 (2) of the Individual 65 S. Positive Rights 68 (1) Rights of the Sovereign as Trustee (a) for the community; (6) for the individual 68 (2) The Right of the Sovereign to coerce 68 (3) Rights of the Subject (a) Life; (6) Security; (c) Liberty; (d) Oppor- tunity 68 4. Grounds and Limits of the Right to COERCE 69 z CONTENTS 5. The Safeguarding of Rights ... 73 (1) Constitution and Laws .... 74 (2) The Habits of the People ... 74 IV DUTIES OF THE STATE 1. To SAFEGUARD THE COMMONWEALTH . . 81 2. To FURTHER A CIVILIZATION THAT (1) cherishes honor ^^ (2) ameliorates ^^ (3) humanizes ^ (4) enlightens ^^ (5) makes polite ^ 3. To BE Efficient . . • . • . * ' ^ Avoiding (a) a mechanical socialism; (6) an ineffective individualism . . .106 / < THE RESPONSIBLE STATE ORIGINS OF THE STATE The heads of wheat are heavy, in the great field across the way. They are yel- lowing, and nearly ripe. The swift onrush of a summer storm will snap some of them off. The others are safe, for their yet green stalks are strong to resist, and the sheets of rain under a dragging thunder- cloud will only bend them over. In the meadow beyond, horses and cattle push their faces obstinately into the blast. Men work furiously, tumbUng up windrows of hay, and pitching great forkfuls to the "last load." Life is a combat. Plants, animals, hu- man beings, perish when they cease to contend with environing forces. Animals and men, driven by fear and desire, strug- gle not only for physical existence, but 1 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE also for conscious satisfactions. Human beings toil to exist, they work for satis- factions, they strive to attain. They strive to attain possessions and power, character and excellence, knowledge and wisdom. The struggle for existence and for at- tainment, unceasing and all-comprising, is more than an individual affair. For each individual it is complicated by the struggles of other individuals more or less hke himself. Also, efforts are combined. There is team work: there is cooperation. There is roaming together in bands and herds. There is dwelling together in ham- lets and burgs, in cities and nations. There are mobs and town meetings, there are battles and parliaments, carnivals and pil- grimages; there are worshiping throngs. There is ordered activity in mills, and bargaining in marts. There are group struggles and class struggles, there are national and imperial struggles, as well as individual struggles, for existence and for attainment. ORIGINS OF THE STATE How collective effort began we may guess, and our guessing need not be un- profitable, but we never shall perfectly know. When the first chapters of written history were stamped on bricks man al- ready lived in towns. For uncounted mil- lenniums, before any town was built, he had consciously experimented with social relations no less than with useful arts and material possessions. Back of those mil- lenniums lay dim ages through which he only groped his way, making accidental discoveries and catching glimpses now and then of possibilities that he could neither understand nor greatly profit by. If we try to supplement archaeology and tradition by comparative studies of human groups yet surviving in differing stages of culture, we find the undertaking beset with diflSculties, and our conclusions at best are little more than probabilities. Three or four things only are certain. Before town dwellers devised political institutions men Uved in tribal aggrega- tions. The bond of cohesion was under- 3 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE stood to be blood kinship. Often it was more nominal than real. Sometimes it was admittedly fictitious, and sometimes it was disregarded or broken through by the rising power of chieftains command- ing bands of personal followers recruited from the outcasts and outlaws of aUen or conquered tribes. In many parts of the world kinship was traced in the mother Une, as, for example, it was in the Iroquois tribes of central New York. Elsewhere and in other races it was traced in the father hne, as it was among the Hellenic Greeks, among the Romans, among many, if not all of the Celts, and among the ancient Germans. It is probable that in many instances, but not in all, a patrilinear kinship was pre- ceded by a matrihnear kinship. Back of all tribal organizations were smaller and less definite groupings Uke those of the South African Bushmen, or of the Veddas of Ceylon. It is by no means certain that these groups attached impor- tance to blood kinship or even recognized ORIGINS OF THE STATE it. Fragments of evidence indicate that primitive social cohesion was essentially a religious phenomenon. Everywhere we find belief in an uncanny power, imper- sonal and contagious, which our students of religious origins have agreed to call "mana," the name by which it is known among the Malay peoples. North Ameri- can Indian names for it were '^Orenda and'Wakunda." The Greek and Roman names for it have survived in words for things demoniac, or virile, or virtuous, and the elemental meaning of ''virtue appears in the King James version of the words of Jesus to the woman who touched his garment: "I perceive that virtue is gone out of me." ^'Mana" could heal or it could kill. It could curse or it could bless. It was the wisdom of the sage, the courage of the warrior, the fear of the coward. It is probable that the ear- liest social bond holding together more individuals than composed a single fam- ily was a sense of sharing a common "virtue" or of possessing or having ac- THE RESPONSIBLE STATE cess to a common source or supply of "mana." I have prefaced what I am about to say upon ''The Responsible State" by these allusions to social origins because at the present moment they have a new and peculiar significance. The thoughts of sober-minded men have turned anew to theories of political life because a Teutonic philosophy of authority has incited, has directed, and has sought to justify the most diabolical collective conduct that the human race, in all its career since the Heidelberg jaw was clothed in flesh, has infamously committed. This theory has seized upon a creation of the demoniac imagination and called it The State, spelled with a large ''T" and a capital "S." To this metaphysical monstrosity it has attributed resistless might and ab- solute righteousness. It proclaims that a Prussianized empire may without guilt perpetrate acts that a civilized state would brand as crime if they were perpe- 6 ' J ORIGINS OF THE STATE trated without orders by an individual subject. To exorcise this monstrosity and cast it out forever, the civilized world is arrayed against the Hohenzollern in deso- lating conflict. Back of all immediate aims lies the ulterior purpose of the allied nations to define the powers and to estab- lish the supremacy of a responsible state, accountable to the conscience of mankind. That state is finite, concrete, and histori- cal. To understand it, in its origins, its character, and its functioning, is to know for what cause we gladly give all else that men hold dear. Essentially, the issue is simple and plain. But concrete human life is not sim- ple, and the human mind is far more a thing of conflicting instincts and turbu- lent passions than of clear vision and logically ordered thought. Cowardice and folly have ever been the handmaidens of iniquity, and in the mighty endeavor to which we are committed we have to meet not only the gun-fire of the Hun, but, as well, the specious objections of men and 7 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE women who try to exploit reasonableness in the name of a conscientious pacifism, or, with ill-concealed treachery, to abet a German peace. These persons have seized upon what they ignorantly conceive to be our scientific knowledge of social ori- gins and social psychology to prove that "what men fight for" is only the animal satisfaction of brutal combativeness, or the hysterical explosion of herd instinct. In particular they try to identify pa- triotism with herd instinct and thereby to discredit patriotic feeUng. Now, patriot- ism is not herd instinct and the difference is not merely one of degree. Between herd instinct and patriotism there is a pro- found difference of kind and ages of social evolution, and the wish to make this fact quite clear is my reason for going back to social origins before attempting to de- scribe the responsible state. Patriotism arose when herd instinct failed. It grap- pled with a task for which herd instinct, helped out by tribal habit, proved to be inadequate. 8 ORIGINS OF THE STATE Neither the primitive horde, nor its suc- cessor the tribe, was in any true sense of the word a poUtical society. Even the tribal confederation was not, strictly speaking, a state. PoUtical society came into existence when it became necessary to devise a plan of organization broad and elastic enough to include men of more than one cult and of more than one kinship, or, as often happened, of personal allegi- ance to more than one chieftain. That necessity confronted practical men when they began to live in towns. The earliest towns grew up, we may sur- mise, about sacred places, or at places that could be defended against the elements or against enemies. To guard the shrine or the stronghold garrisons were appointed. Priests, soldiers, and craftsmen specialized their functions. Pilgrims came, bearing gifts. Barter flourished. Stores of food were accumulated, and suppUes of uten- sils and weapons. Barter became trade and traders became merchants, and all V THE RESPONSIBLE STATE this while the inhabitants were still clans- men and tribesmen, jealous of clan names and rights, perpetuating clan feuds and counting men of other breeds than their own as enemy aliens. But enemy aliens, the broken and ruined men of conquered tribes, there always were in primitive society. Tribal forays multi- plied them. Here and there they found pro- tection and gave service as the personal followers of ambitious chieftains strong enough to defy tribal resentment. Towns gave them new opportunities. They could hide themselves there. If skillful craftsmen, they might be tolerated openly or even welcomed, and their children were accepted as inhabitants, as a matter of course. So town populations both differentiated and segregated. The older stock, proud of its purer blood and cherishing its tra- ditions, became an aristocracy, patrician, gentile, and genteel. The newer stocks, sprung from enemy aliens tolerated or made welcome within the walls, lived on and multiplied as social inferiors. At best 10 ORIGINS OF THE STATE they were protected men, or clients. At worst they were dependents, organized by tens and hundreds in humiUating demo- cratic equality, to mark them off sharply from the men of the gentes, among whom distinctions of rank and station were per- petuated. In any case they were the demos, the plebeians. We do not need to argue that no in- stinct of the herd held together the het- erogeneous factions of a demos, or bound them to a ruUng aristocracy. Moreover, they were many, and always they multi- pUed and grew strong, until they threat- ened patrician supremacy. What, then, were the ties or the pres- sures that held together the nondescript inhabitants of a town and made possible the city-state? A sense of community un- doubtedly there was. The people were more than an aggregation of units as- sembled to exploit economic opportunity. They thought of their polis as an entity, and developed a strong feeUng for it. This idea and the associated feeling were a 11 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE rudimentary political consciousness. It had two origins, one religious, the other miUtary. Plebeians could not share in the sacred rites perpetuated by patrician gentes. But there were gods and divine influences to which patricians and plebeians aUke could turn. These were the local or regional sacra, the gods of the land. They were quite as truly sources of strength and heal- ing and assurances of safety, and therefore as much to be propitiated as were the an- cestral ghosts of the aristocratic groups. Regional reUgion tended from the first to supplant gentile reUgion and to become the common cult of townsmen. In mili- tary matters a parallel development oc- curred. The older groups were as jealous of their right to bear arms as they were of their gods. But they found it increas- ingly diflScult, unaided, to defend their privileges and possessions. Accumulating wealth tempted attack by enemies, and to its enemies a city was even more truly an entity than it was to its inhabitants. Re- 12 ORIGINS OF THE STATE curring wars left no alternative: it was necessary to organize plebeians for armed defense and to muster them into the city's mihtary forces. Then, of course, full pub- lic rights could not longer be denied. The legal fiction of naturaUzation was in- vented. Ancient tribes and their subdi- visions had long been locaUzed. They had their metes and bounds within which aUens had been admitted to Uve. For civic and military purposes all dwellers within the territorial metes and bounds of a locaUzed clan or moiety thereof were now declared to be nominally members of that clan or moiety. So the ancient gentile system survived in name. A new poUtical system supplanted it in fact. As it developed, the political system became itself an object of thought and of sentiment. Coerced by the necessity of adaptation to changed and changing con- ditions, members of the body poUtic be- came habituated to thinking more in ternis of adjustment and less in terms of tradi- 13 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE tion; more in terms of the present and of future possibilities than in terms of the past; more in terms of a broadening co- operation by citizens, less in terms of kin- ship. Have we not now caught glimpses of the origins of patriotism and learned some- thing of its nature? Attachment to a place or region in distinction from love of kindred, reverence for the gods of the land or other regional sacra in distinction from tribal gods; a conamon interest in economic opportimities; a concurring will to maintain by arms the defense against enemies, and a rising consciousness of pos- sibiUties through continuing adaptation, — all these had blended in a new senti- ment. That sentiment was patriotism, a growing volume of emotion shot through with thought. Herd instinct survived; it survives now, but subordinated to ideas. The feehng for kindred survived, but sub- ordinated to a more inclusive emotion and to poUtical imagination. Herd instinct was blind; patriotism was intelligent. Herd u ORIGmS OF THE STATE instinct excluded; patriotism included and assimilated. Herd instinct and tribal feel- ing perpetuated the past; patriotism con- structed the future. Then millenniums went by while patriotism broadened and deepened. The city-state lost itself in the national state, and the national state merged itself in the federal nation wherein to-day dwell men of all the kindreds of the earth. Patriotism claiming them exacts sacrifices from them, but also it exalts them, and generation after generation it rebuilds the futiu'e. So constituted and so functioning pa- triotism is the soul of politically organized society, and poUtically organized society animate with patriotism is the concrete state, the subject of our present concern. Upon "the pure idea" of the state, Pla- tonic or HegeUan, ethical or demoniac, we shall not Unger. "The state as idea" is disembodied and irresponsible. The re- sponsible state is a Uving population en- gaged in political experimentation. Its origins are discovered in human behavior. 15 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE Its evolution is historical. Its powers are finite. Its rights are conditional. Its du- ties are practical. We have looked at its origins, in a swift but necessary glance, to get our bearings. Now we shall turn our attention upon the powers of the respon- sible state, its rights and its duties. n POWERS OF THE STATE The city-state contained two embodi- ments and sources of poUtical power, — one, the older gentile folk, aristocratic and proud; the other, an immigrant populace and its descendants. The aristocracy was a minority of the total population, and al- ways it was tending to become relatively smaller as generations passed. In this opposition of the few to the many there was nothing exceptional. In any aggregation of human beings it may be found by the discerning, and an under- standing of its origin and significance is the beginning of any scientific knowledge of the powers of the state. The causes of it He deep in the psy- chology of pluralistic behavior. Every- thing that animals do and everything that human beings do is a reaction to stimula- tion. The reactions of different individ- 17 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE uaJs to the same given stimulus are not equally prompt, they are not equally vigorous, they are not equally persistent. Also, the reactions of different individ- uals differ in complexity and in volume. The timid start, and scurry out of the way. The less timid, but dull-witted and nu- merous, betray emotion, — of fear or of anger, or of satisfaction, or possibly of exultation. Exceptional individuals react intellectually. These begin to inquire, to examine. Perhaps they think and plan. They may compare observations and ideas and enter into discussion. Only a very few out of all the reacting units begin sys- tematic work to put in operation a more or less well-considered plan. With varying degrees of persistence and of success these few make the adjustments and carry on the further activities called for by cir- cumstances. No accident ever happens in the street, no excursion or outing is ever enjoyed, no fluctuation of supply or demand occurs in the market, no unfore- seen exigency arises in a political cam- 18 POWERS OF THE STATE paign that does not reveal to us these dif- ferences of reaction among our fellow- beings. These facts are simple and familiar, but their import is tremendous. For the few who react systematically and persistently to new situations as they arise, are the nucleus, in human society, of a ruUng group or class. It has been my habit in my lectures on "Social Evolution" to call this dynamic nuclear group a "protocracy." Every kleptocracy of brigands or conquerors, every plutocracy, every aristocracy, and every democracy begins as a protocracy. It comes into existence and begins its career as a httle band of alert and capable persons who see the situation, grasp the opportunity, and, in the expressive slang of our modern competitive Ufe, "go to it" with no unnecessary delay. We now have arrived at the first in- duction, the fundamental principle of political science, which is, namely: The few always dominate. Invariably the few 19 f THE RESPONSIBLE STATE rule, more or less arbitrarily, more or less drastically, more or less extensively. De- mocracy, even the most radical democ- racy, is only that state of poUtically or- ganized mankind in which the rule of the few is least arbitrary and most responsi- ble, least drastic and most considerate. But how, it is proper at this point to inquire, does protocracy achieve dominat- ing influence and power, aijd how does it estabUsh its rule? How does it make itself a kleptocracy, or a plutocracy, or an aris- tocracy.^ And how, at length, is its power limited and conditioned by the many, who thereby estabUsh democracy.^ Again we must begin with pluraUstic behavior. When the few react to a new situation more systematically and ade- quately than the many do, the few thereby create yet another new situation, and it is one to which the many must adapt them- selves as best they can. The action of the few is approved by numerous individuals who could not or did not initiate, but who SO POWERS OF THE STATE are wilHng to cooperate under direction and encouragement. If the enterprise suc- ceeds, the ranks of these followers who aid and abet, but who never take responsibil- ity, are rapidly filled, and from that mo- ment the indifferent and the recalcitrant, the men on the side Unes, and the objec- tors, have to conform to the ways and purposes of a going concern. The history of American entrance into the European war affords us a perfect ex- ample of these phenomena. From the first day of August, 1914, there were men in the United States who saw the situation as it was. They understood the issues of a conflict that would menace civiUzation. They knew that, however long delayed, the day would come when, in aid of France and of Great Britain, and in de- fense of the responsible state, we should have to make our sacrifices and take our part, or be forever disgraced as a craven people. It was a stubborn fight that those men then began, to persuade a pub- lic that did not clearly see, to arouse a 91 nil tli THE RESPONSIBLE STATE people wedded to prosperity, and to con- vince a government loath to break with our traditions of aloofness from European quarrels. Those men did not admit that they were under any obhgation, moral or legal, to remain *' impartial in thought." They did not beheve that descendants of Revolutionary soldiers and sons of Civil War veterans really were "too proud to fight." " Peace without victory" did not allure them, and they repudiated the proposition that with the "causes" and the "objects" of this war we were "not concerned." They did not have a pleas- ant time, those men of 1914 and 1915, but they held their ground, and they made their way. They won increasingly re- spectful attention, throughout the nation and at Washington. And when at length the hour came that choice had to be made between declaring war and surrendering our sovereignty to the Imperial German Government, it was an imdivided nation that gave momentous decision. The re- spected author himself of the phrases 22 POWERS OF THE STATE that I have reluctantly quoted because they are an essential and indelible part of the record, atoned then for them, by warn- ing the Imperial German Sovereign that we now should devote our last dollar and our last life, if necessary, to the righteous task of destroying him. Out of the deference, the complaisance, and the voluntary cooperation of the many, the few build up their own ascend- ancy and achieve domination. By quite other means they estabUsh their rule. Because they are the first to react in a systematic and adequate way to new sit- uations that arise, the few are in a posi- tion to take quick advantage of new op- portimities, economic or poUtical, and history has not recorded reluctance on their part. It has been easier for them than for the many to grasp power, and easier for them than for the many to get rich. Expending neither more nor less foresight and energy than other men ex- pend, the man advantageously placed can get more wealth and more power of other 23 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE kinds than the man not advantageously placed. In turbulent times, and among lawless men, he pursues his advantage without scruple. He conquers and loots. In days of peace, and among law-abiding men, he keeps, if he is wise, within the law, and, if perchance he is a good man, within the limits imposed by moral law. Scrupulous or unscrupulous, he is in a position to bestow or to withhold favors. To other men he can open or close the gates of opportunity, and those to whom he opens them, in return of gratitude can serve him in divers ways as opportunity oflFers. There springs up about him, there- fore, an ever-enlarging group of benefi- ciaries, eager to take and to execute his orders. If he is a successful miUtary ad- venturer, he divides among his followers lands riven from the conquered, as Wil- liam of Normandy apportioned the earl- doms of England among the men that fought with him at Senlac. If he is only the poUtical boss of a democracy, he dis- tributes offices and franchises. If he is a POWERS OF THE STATE statesman, he broadens justice and redis- tributes pubUc burdens. Whatever his relative greatness, if his station and its perquisites be ever so Uttle greater than those held and enjoyed by other men, he can protect other men and advance them, or he can throw them over and break them down. Herein lies the crude, relentless power, wherewith he can rule, and does rule, in distinction from the intellectual and moral ascendancy through which he dominates. All actual rule of man by man which falls short of the despotism or the slavery instituted by physical force, all rule, that is to say, in which there is a coefficient of consent on the part of the ruled, is resolv- able into the relation of patron and bene- ficiary, of protector and protected, of of- fice-bestower and office-holder, or some other form of that protean relationship between man and "his man" which in feudal days was understood to consist in the beneficium and the commendatio. Actual day-by-day rule over a politi- I THE RESPONSIBLE STATE cally organized community by a domi- nant person or group is political gov- ernment, and according as this rule is arbitrary or responsible, vigorous or weak, efficient or incompetent, government as- sumes one or another of the various forms with which history acquaints us, and with which we are familiar in current poUtical discussion. The extremes are absolutism and anarchy. Between these extremes are privileged aristocracy, bordering upon absolutism, and radical democracy bor- dering upon anarchy. Between privileged aristocracy and radical democracy is a democratic repubUcanism. Absolutism is the arbitrary rule of a monarch or of a miUtary chieftain who has risen above competitors and subjected them to his will. The rise of a miUtary leader to poUtical power is effected through the active cooperation of practically the entire community. In the stress of war all other desires and interests sink to insignifi- cance by comparison with the issues of hfe and death, and the commander who can 26 POWERS OF THE STATE make an enemy fear him is hailed as the savior of the state. So long as he succeeds, there is Uttle disposition to call his acts in question. Unless, however, he was born a king, the miUtary chieftain never can become a king in the strict meaning of the word. He may become an emperor as Caesar did, or as Napoleon did. His children may be kings. But neither Caesar nor Napoleon, great as their prestige was, and vast as was the power they wielded, was truly a king. The king is a product, not of the tur- moil of his own short day and his individ- ual success. He is a product of history. He rules in divine right, and to that right he must have been born. The right itself came into existence ages upon ages ago. The stuflf and essence of divine right is divine power, inherited from men who themselves were embodiments and mani- festations of it. In the days when all men beUeved in that "mana" or sacred virtue of which some account has been given, the men that could perform mighty deeds 1 ly m W THE RESPONSIBLE STATE were looked upon and explained as per- sons full of sacred and superhuman power. In the language of the Greeks, they were **daimons," Uterally "demoniacs," and other men feared them. They ruled not only by might, but also with authority. When they died they became gods, omnipo- tent and omniscient to guide and to help their sons, inheritors of their divinity and their power. Their line has been long, but Gotterdammerung at last has fallen. The sultan and the czar are gone. The Kaiser only yet goes forward with his exclusive God. Absolutism has held its ground through the ages because mankind, unenlightened, unemancipated from superstition, driven often to desperation by impending starva- tion, has travailed in war. Distracted by war it has looked to its daimons to save society from anarchy and the race from death. Anarchy is the chaos of conspiring and competing protocracies, none of which is strong enough to estabhsh a general rule. It is the breakdown of all ordered 9S POWERS OF THE STATE and disciplined collective effort. It is that war of every man against every man, to escape from which, as John Hobbes told us, men gladly surrender their natural Uberties and individual wills to a sovereign competent to rule. Aristocracy arises in one of three ways. The original and earUest way has been described. The first aristocrats were those tribesmen, organized in clans or gentes^ who founded city-states and clung tena- ciously to their gentile organization, to their traditions and to their gods, long after they had admitted immigrant in- habitants to work and trade within the walls of the polis. Aristocracy of a dif- ferent kind was created by conquering chieftains who bestowed lands and titles upon their more efficient and most loyal followers. A third kind of aristocracy is developed from plutocracy. Inherited wealth takes on graces and refinements, and is permitted to buy titles and estates. Aristocracy may or may not rule. It cannot rule through long periods of stren- 29 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE uous war. The resolute king, the military dictator, the strong president, or the com- mittee of safety governs then. In days of peace, aristocracies have governed success- fully and wisely for a time. There were good historical as well as personal and philosophical reasons for Aristotle's pref- erence for aristocracy as potentially the best of governmental forms. As in days of violence, anarchy is the extreme alternative to absolutism, so in less turbulent times the extreme alterna- tive to plutocratic or aristocratic rule is found in radical democracy. All democracies, radical or conservative, have cast oflF historical dominations. They have aboUshed hereditary distinctions and continuing rule through successive generations by royal family or privileged class, and they submit themselves only to those new dominations that arise from hour to hour, to be overthrown as easily as they are estabhshed. Choosing and deposing their governing ministries in fre- quently recurring elections, they attempt 30 POWERS OF THE STATE to level inequalities of condition and of opportunity. Experiment has demonstrated that it is possible to estabhsh many objective equal- ities in a population not too heterogeneous in composition and fortunate enough to enjoy prolonged peace. Adult individuals may be made poUtically equal by allowing to each one vote. All men may be made equal before the law. Equal educational opportunities may be provided and, witlj approximate equality, the burden of taxa- tion may be distributed. Radical democracy attempts to go fur- ther. It proclaims the justice and the de- sirabiUty of economic equality, and it ex- periments with socialistic or communistic policies. By conservative minds social- istic objectives are commonly regarded as the most radical purposes of the radical programme. That is far from being the fact, and the error is a dangerous one. The most radical idea in poUtics is an assump- tion that all men, having been endowed by a denaocratic state with equal power 31 \ THE RESPONSIBLE STATE to vote, are equally competent to hold office and to rule. This is the essence of ultra-radicaUsm under all its forms. It was the dogma of that Jacksonian cult in the United States which glorified a shirt- sleeves democracy. It is the soul of Tam- manyism in our great cities. It is the shib- boleth of the Industrial Workers of the World, and of all anarchistic communists and Bolsheviki. Whether admitting it in words or not, radical democracy beheves as strongly in subjective as in objective equaUty. It attributes to diflFerences of nurture and to inequaUties of educational opportunity the undeniable variability of individual efficiency and the range of behavior from brutaUty or treachery to honorable dealing and self-sacrifice. It denies that through biological heredity some men are by nature of nobler mould and greater ability than others. Civilization is fighting for its hfe to- day against foes without and foes within. Warned of impending doom in a worid enlightened and free, absolutism and di- ss POWERS OF THE STATE vine right, Junkerism and miUtarism, con- ceived the mad purpose to subjugate and rule the earth. Quick to take advantage of chaos and disaster, anarchistic democ- racy proclaims that the social revolution is at hand. Happily, between these perils the or- ganized common sense of civilization is intrenched and armed. Between aristoc- racy bordering on absolutism and radical democracy bordering on anarchy exists a democratic republicanism which reason- ably well exempUfies the principles and fulfills the functions of that mixed govern- ment which Aristotle extolled as being all in all the best practically attainable in a concrete historical world of finite men. In the history of philosophy I do not find a more wonderful instance of clear and penetrating insight than this judgment arrived at by the first great inductive student of poUtical phenomena. There were not many examples of democratic repubUcanism, with or without an admix- ture of nominal monarchy or harmless 33 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE aristocracy, two thousand years ago, and they offered but sorry resistance to im- perial ambitions. Nor did they flourish in the long night of medisevalism, nor in the strenuous age of modern nation-making. The first undoubtedly successful one, which now has become the mightiest one, was founded less than one hundred and fifty years ago. Yet in that short time it has demonstrated its superiority as a com- bination of strength and adaptability to all other organizations of poUtical power. England and her colonial dominions, France, Switzerland, Italy, and the na- tions of South America have adopted it, not always in form, but in substance and essential features. To democratic repub- hcanism the world looks to-day to save and safeguard the priceless values of civ- iUzation. Democratic repubhcanism at its best distributes pohtical power with a close approximation to equaUty among adult citizens. It measurably succeeds in estab- lishing even-handed justice in the courts S4 POWERS OF THE STATE of law. It distributes public burdens with a wise regard to abiUty to bear them. It provides equal educational opportunities for all. It strives to protect the health and to conserve the strength of the popula- tion. Slowly at first, but in the long run surely, it curbs and abolishes privilege. It may go far — how far, no one now can predict — to achieve approximate equal- ity of economic conditions. But the dogma that men are or can be subjectively equal, it does not and will not concede. It takes the common-sense posi- tion that biologists know what they are talking about when they declare that by heredity men are not only different, but also are unequal, anatomically, physio- logically, and psychologically. It no more beheves that the citizens of a state are equal in resourcefulness, or in trustwor- thiness, or in constructive genius than that they are equal in muscular strength, or in swiftness to run, or in health, or in longev- ity. Acting on these common-sense con- victions democratic republicanism looks 35 if THE RESPONSIBLE STATE about for men of exceptional and special- ized ability to perform legislative, admin- istrative, and judicial tasks. It ungrudg- ingly acknowledges their superiority and listens to their counsel. It puts and keeps them in positions of authority and power. As the clear-seeing Harrington in '* Oce- ana" demonstrated that it should, it es- tablishes in the state the pohtical rule of "a natural aristocracy," and under that rule it builds strongly and to endure the fabric of human freedom. * Pohtical power is the dynamic content of sovereignty. In all the dictionaries there is no other word than this noun ** sovereignty" that has more disastrously been conjured with by the metaphysical juggler. I shall not attempt to tell its his- tory. Centuries ago its connotations sub- merged its denotations. Jurists and poht- ical theorists, losing sight of concrete fact, gave their minds to abstractions and wasted disquisition upon conceptual dis- tinctions. And sovereignty became for S6 POWERS OF THE STATE pohtical science a thing that never was on sea or land. In every state, the metaphysician argues, there "resides" and may be found a power to which individuals yield uncon- ditional obedience. If it resides in a per- son, the state has "a" sovereign. If it re- sides in a class, or in a majority, or in an assembly, or in a people, that class or majority, assembly, or people, is "the" sovereign. Obeying individuals are "sub- jects" of sovereignty. So far the metaphysician is on fairly safe ground, yet to this statement of his premise one exception must be filed. The morally responsible human being does not yield "unconditional" obedience to any earthly power. Somewhere there is a hue that he cannot cross. He shrinks back from it, but, if driven on, he side-steps to the block or the gallows. So the meta- physician adds to his premise the saving clause, " under penalty of death " ; but that clause, as we shall see directly, does not help his case. It only lands him in another 37 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE untruth, namely, that sovereignty is an irresistible power to "compel" obedience. The metaphysician now has arrived at a conception, and relentlessly he elabo- rates its impUcations. Sovereignty is "original"; no antecedent poUtical power created it. It is "independent"; no other poUtical power controls it. Within the state it is " universal " : no subject can hide himself from it or in any act of his Ufe dis- regard it, for, being a power to compel, sovereignty is by impUcation "irresisti- ble." These impUcations suggest others. As St. Paul logically remarked: "But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him." Sov- ereignty, therefore, is unconditioned. It is absolute. It is the source and creator of rights and itself the judge of right. As a creation of the "pure" reason the metaphysical notion of sovereignty is very nearly a masterpiece, and the Kantian intellect, unfortunately, has taken it seri- ously. 38 POWERS OF THE STATE Let us, however, plant our feet upon the ground and look about us. What personal sovereign, ruUng despotically, ever ad- mitted that his sovereignty was "origi- nal"? What one has not vehemently de- rived his power and his authority from God.'* And where has a sovereign's rule within his own state been universal.^ What significance, if any, attaches to that dear old tale of the sword that hung by a hair over the head of Damocles, or to the dread words written at Babylon the night that Belshazzar, King of the Chaldeans, was slain: "Mene, mene, tekel upharsin"; "God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it"? Monarchs there have been who could ride down any individual antag- onist. WilUam of Normandy is said to have been formidable; but what monarch ever rode down an army or a mob? Backed by men who superstitiously beUeve in his divinity, or who repose confidence in his personal quaUties, and who profit through their relationship to him, the personal sovereign can compel obedience within 89 rt THE RESPONSIBLE STATE limits, here and there, and now and then. Beyond this he only commands obedience. That is to say, he demands and gets obedi- ence, although he could not, if he tried, compel it. He gets it, more or less will- ingly rendered, so long as his subjects rev- erently, or calculatingly, beUeve in him and feel that on the whole they profit by his rule. When we turn from the consideration of personal sovereignty to an examination of class or mass sovereignty, we find that the facts are not greatly different. A class, a majority, a committee, or a mob can compel a Umited obedience, here and there, now and then. An aristocracy long estabUshed and owning land, or a capitaUst class, controlUng modern means of pro- duction, can exact an enormous volume of obedience, which it could not actually compel if resistance were offered. In a psychological sense, a popular majority may compel a large measure of obedience for a time, through the sheer impressive- ness of numbers, and the potentiaUties of 40 POWERS OF THE STATE superior physical force. And finally an organized people, through the evolution of common sentiments and of pubUc opin- ion, evokes obedience. It calls it forth through the play of moral soUdarity upon the individual mind. Here and there, now and then, it compels, but that is not its characteristic or normal procedure. Study of the circumstances under which governments become arbitrary or become responsible yields further cause for sus- picion that the metaphysical notion of sovereignty will not bear too close exam- ination. In technical distinction from the state, governments are the agencies or organs through which sovereigns rule. Nevertheless, government itself, regarded as an operation or process, is a sovereign's activity. When actual social conditions approxi- mate the hypothetical war of every man against every man, only the iron hand can establish social order. In our own day this condition has been exemplified tragi- cally in Mexico. A heterogeneous popula- 41 I THE RESPONSIBLE STATE tion, Ignorant and superstitious, unable to create a state through a meeting of minds, was held together for a time by the strong rule of Diaz. Boss rule in oiu- cities is a product of substantially similar con- ditions. Where they exist the hypothesis upon which Hobbes erected his poUtical system holds good. Then, without im- posing conditions, men surrender their wills and entrust their fate to a sover- eign powerful enough to hold them in order. The mistake that Hobbes made was in assuming that the state of nature is al- ways so desperate. John Locke made the opposite mistake of assimiing that it al- ways is a condition of mutual toleration and spontaneous cooperation. It may, however, be very nearly such, and when it is, men do not surrender self-govern- ment to an instituted sovereign, or to a sovereign self-imposed. They delegate governing powers conditionally, retaining the right from time to time to Umit them further and, if they choose, to depose the POWERS OF THE STATE government exercising them. They may continue to Uve under a monarch, but his rule is hmited and made constitutional. It is, however, — let us never forget, — only a relatively homogeneous, intelli- gent, and instructed population that be- haves in this fashion. Like a personal sovereign a majority may rule arbitrarily or rule responsibly. Arbitrary majority rule, as Rousseau per- ceived, is a product of oppression, to es- cape from which men merge their individ- ual wills in a common will. The history of trade-unionism is perhaps the most illuminating case of untrammeled majority rule. As, in the covenanted state conceived by Hobbes, an anarchist is one who elects to remain in a state of nature which is a state of war, and, therefore, may not ra- tionally complain if the state makes war upon him, so, in a community divided into exploiters and exploited, the "scab" is one who elects to remain under oppres- sion and, therefore, may not reasonably complain if an organized majority, pro- 4S THE RESPONSIBLE STATE voked to revolt and fighting for liberty and amelioration, oppresses him. Over against this or any other justifica- tion of imconditional majority rule, stands the contention of the great founders of our American poUtical system. Majority despotism, they protested, — and their ar- gument is perhaps most clearly set forth in the writings of Samuel Adams and of Thomas Paine, — is not more tolerable than the despotism of a king. Therefore, broadly general and imdefined govern- ing powers should never be delegated. Governments should exercise only spe- cific powers, expressly conferred and care- fully defined, and these, for the further protection of minorities and individuals, should be conditioned by checks and bal- ances. What the founders of our Repubhc and the Constitution builders who suc- ceeded them did not clearly see, or, at any rate, did not fully reaUze, was the fact that, just as a people must be homogene- ous and enhghtened before it can impose constitutional Umitations upon personal 44 POWERS OF THE STATE sovereignty, so must it be free and demo- cratic before it can impose restrictions upon majority rule. If the foregoing criticism of the meta- physical notion of sovereignty is vahd and of consequence, it appears that actual sovereignty and actual government are phenomena determined by conditions that have more adequately been studied and perhaps are better understood by the sociologist than by the a-priori poUtical theorist. A population at peace with its neighbors, relatively homogeneous in its composition, enhghtened, not exploited by a privileged class, delegates governing powers to parhaments and ministries, or to congresses and presidents, but does not merge all individual wills in a collec- / tive will or surrender itself to an insti- tuted sovereign. When, however, op- pression exists, there is sooner or later a subordination of individuals and minori- ties to a majority arrayed against the op- pressors. If a population, not homogene- ous, is or becomes too miscellaneous for 45 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE cooperation, restrictions upon authority, if any have existed, are broken down and there is a concentration of extraordinary powers in the hands of strong men. And if at any time, in any state, heterogene- ous or homogeneous, ignorant or enUght- ened, war supervenes, personal hberty goes by the board and arbitrary govern- ment is accepted as a thing inevitable and of course. Yet never in practice, never in the con- crete world of Uving men, does sover- eignty become that absolute power and authority which metaphysical theorizing has conceived it to be. Taking words at their face value, nothing corresponding to the textbook definitions of sovereignty exists or ever has existed in the world. The state itself is not absolute. Only Treitschkes and Kaisers so think of it. Like everything else concrete and actual, it is a phenomenon of relativity. It is con- ditioned by reaUties beyond and wider than itself. It is subject to cosmic Umi- tations, and sovereignty cannot tran- 46 POWERS OF THE STATE scend the laws of an orderly and ordering imiverse. Nor can it transcend the limi- tations imposed by the circumstance that mankind is pohtically organized in many nations, and that no nation can safely rim amuck among its neighbors. Sovereignty, therefore, is subject, as the signers of our Declaration acknowledge, to "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." Moroever, it is subject further to limita- tions imposed by the human nature of its own subjects. Not only in democracies, but everywhere and always, rulers and ruUng groups exist by the consent of the « many. Finally, Uke every intellectual being the sovereign is subject, as Greek and Roman saw, to the rule of reason; and Uke every ethical being it is morally re- sponsible to the intelUgent conscience of all mankind, now Uving and hereafter to Uve. Sovereignty, accordingly, is not, itj never was, it never can be, "an original, unconditioned, universal, and irresistible power to compel obedience." Neverthe- 47 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE less, it is something very real and very great, for in all its forms and expressions it is — and in these words we may define it — the dominant human power y individ- ^ual or pluralistic y in a politically organized and politically independent population. And the state, the mightiest creation of the himian mind, is also the noblest expression of human purpose.. Were it, however, absolute, it would defeat all pur- pose. Finite and relative it is, of neces- sity. To fulfill its destiny it must hold itself responsible. ~ ' ('. %,' f *■ ^ m RIGHTS OF THE STATE The story is told that a distinguished jurist, long on the supreme bench of his state, warned his son, lately admitted to the bar, not to suppose that the primary purpose of the law is to render justice. The first business of the law, he said, is to set- tle disputes. The thought is not new. Indeed, it is older than the law itself; for adjudication was invented to terminate quarrels sub- versive of social order. For unnumbered generations it was appUed to put a stop to clan vengeance and private feuds. Admitting that the aphorism quoted is crudely true, the common sense of man- kind accepts it with reservations. Justice is one of the matters that common sense jealously cares about. The plain man is sure that he knows what justice is and cannot understand why philosophy and 49 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE jurisprudence find difficulty in defining it. He holds that it is the basis of endur- able and so of enduring, social relations, and he insists, therefore, that a dispute is not settled really until it is settled justly. The state makes law, and, as the phrase goes, it "administers" justice. Does the state, then, create justice? Or, is justice of independent origin and prior to the state, and its moral foundation? The question is one on which wise men have differed. A third hypothesis may be entertained. Are justice and the state pos- sibly identical, and coeval? The first broadly philosophical discus- sion of the subject we find in Plato: in the incomparable "Republic." Plato did not think of justice in terms of equivalence. It was neither an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, nor yet a mere rendering of equal values in the market-place. As Plato conceived it, justice is adjustment; and not so much an adjustment of per- sonal claims, and thereby a settling of dis- 50 RIGHTS OF THE STATE putes, as an adjustment of social services, to the end that all men may Uve the good Ufe. Men differ, he observed, in aptitudes and in abilities. There are wise men, com- petent to govern. There are brave men, qualified to be soldiers. There are skillful men fit to be craftsmen, hardy men fit to go forth in ships, and sturdy men fit to till the soil. K every man, then, does that which he can do best, all profit, and the community prospers. The division of labor assures economic gain. It assures, also, something more; shall we say something higher, or nobler? Plato discovered in speciahzation ethical values which Adam Smith, if he rediscovered them, did not attempt to analyze. In do- ing what he can do well, the normal hu- man being finds rational satisfaction. He Uves sincerely. He is conscious of power, and of worth. He strives, he thinks and plans, he becomes right-minded. So liv- ing, he attains and follows the good life, which, as Plato saw it, consists of actions 51 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE and satisfactions that reason, reviewing and pondering, approves of. It is not enough to say that Plato here anticipates our best educational psychol- ogy. He anticipates, also, our educational sociology. Only organized society can put the square pegs in the square holes and the round pegs in the round holes. Therefore, only in organized society are justice, true education, and the good hfe possible. The community which makes social adjustments by assigning to citizens different functions according to their sev- eral aptitudes and abilities, so inviting and committing them to the good hfe, is the republic, an ideal state. In one detail only did Plato fail to see the problem whole. His repubUc is a static state. If the adjustments that he contemplated could once be made, an equilibrium of moral forces would be established which no one would wish to disturb. The interests of individuals would balance one another, and the in- terests of citizens, regarded as individuals, 52 RIGHTS OF THE STATE would balance the interests of the com- munity, regarded as an entity. The state would be perfect, and its individual mem- bers as nearly perfect as man can be. Con- tinuing progress toward an unattained goal would no longer occupy attention. Plato had seen governments rise and fall, but the processes of poUtical change did not greatly interest him, and he made no attempt to explain how, within the rhythms of war and peace and under the ebb and flow of tides of human migration, the ideal republic could be brought to pass. He does, indeed, in the "Laws," give us a masterful analysis of actual social forces; but nowhere does he undertake to show that a long enduring state may at one time assume one character, and at another time another character. Of course, therefore, he does not try to set forth the causes that effect transformation. Aristotle did try, but he did not get beyond a theory of cycles. Monarchy he thought tends to become the repubhc, the republic tends to become democracy, de- 53 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE mocracy tends to become tyranny, and so round and round. Until Herbert Spencer gave us his generalization of the antithesis of militarism to industriaUsm, no student of politics had ever seen exactly how shift- ing circumstantial pressures make the so- cial type regimental or contractual, make governments despotic or representative, and stamp out Uberty or estabUsh and broaden it. Increasing circimistantial pressures, the resistless pressures of war, above all, standardize behavior, unify in- terests, and consolidate power. While they last they nearly destroy the kind of justice that Plato described: but when peace re- turns coercive pressures diminish, Uberty is reasserted, behavior tends to become spontaneous, men freely differ from one another, variant types of individuahty are tolerated, finer and yet finer adjustments are made, and the state approximates the ideal republic of Plato's dream. In these generalizations there Ues a vital impUcation as to justice conceived as adjustment. In the enduring state, 54 RIGHTS OF THE STATE now at war, and now at peace, adjust- ments cannot be made once for all. Noth- ing is or can remain static. A "moving equiUbrium" is the nearest possible ap- proach to order. Conformity and Uberty themselves, now more of one, now more of the other, are subject to never-ending readjustment. If justice is, indeed, adjust- ment, in the Platonic sense, then the necessary adaptations of conformity and Uberty one to the other, of standardized social requirement and individual varia- ' biUty one to another, are the supreme justice. But it is a justice infinitely difficult to attain. Plato lived when law, as we moderns know it, hardly existed. The Hammurabi Code is evidence that the Romans, the first reaUy great law-makers, had some- thing to build on, as the English and the Americans, the great modern law-makers, have had Roman law to build on; yet law on the whole is Western and modern. Its development in the West has been a great intellectual enterprise which has 55 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE absorbed the thought of exceptionally able men. In this fact we find an explanation, I think, of the singular difference between our modern approach to the problem of justice, and that which was made by Plato and later Greek and Roman writers down to Cicero. Unless we happen to be steeped in classical philosophy, or have become interested in justice through eco- nomics or biology, we approach it through an exanunation of juristic rights and their relations to that right or rightness which conscience apprehends, and the moral judgment of mankind proclaims. A right, in distinction from the right, or that which is right, is a claim or an im- munity or a Uberty, that is not only as- serted by an individual or by a group, but that also (and this is the important mat- ter) is allowed and confirmed by othei in- dividuals and other groups. It is frankly and wholly objective. A juristic right, accordingly, is a claim, an immunity, or a Uberty that is created or allowed, con- 56 ' RIGHTS OF THE STATE firmed, and enforced by a state. To minds that think clearly without too exhausting effort, it is suflSciently plain that a juristic right may or may not be right. It may embody and express rightness or wicked- ness. Rights sturdily upheld by one gen- eration may be branded infamous by an- other. It was only two generations ago that property in a slave was a juristic right upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. Looking over the moral and legal his- tory of Western civihzation through four or five centuries past, we discover oc- casional brief periods in which juristic rights seem to have parted company with moral right, and other, longer periods, in which there has been earnest striving to identify state-made law with popular moral judgment. On the whole a great advance has been made in morally rectify- ing juristic right. Progress in this direc- tion has not been Umited to municipal law. It was conspicuous in the growth of that important body of rules called inter- 57 \n THE RESPONSIBLE STATE national law, or the law of nations, which, until it was flaunted by the German in- vasion of Belgium and by subsequent acts of faithlessness, we had dared to hope had limited the possibilities of war and for all time mitigated its horrors. Confident that the law of nations will be reestabUshed broadly and strongly when peace returns, I venture to think that in the approxi- mation of juristic rights to moral re- quirements we find the most convincing proof of moral, in distinction from a merely material or economic, progress. Mankind does become better, as well as richer and more comfortable, as the ages pass. The various aspects of right have not, however, received equal attention in any generation, and from time to time interest has shifted from one to another phase. Yet one exception to inconstancy there has been and is. Since the democratic movement began there has been a pro- gressively insistent demand that funda- mental rights of life, liberty, and oppor- 58 RIGHTS OF THE STATE tunity shall be secured equally to all men. Privilege is declared to be unrighteous, and is denounced as unjust because in- equitable. Here we arrive at the modern conception of justice. It is derived from an examination of rights and their dis- tribution. A majority of men now Hving in the democratic nations hold that jus- tice consists in an equal possession and enjoyment of fundamental rights. Plato, I suppose, could easily have rec- onciled this conception of justice with his own. To secure to every man opportunity to render his best service to the commu- nity and thereby most fully to develop his own powers, Plato might well have said is the most effective way to equalize rights among citizens. In the struggle to make law ethical, ap- peal has over and over again been made, as it was made in the American Declara- tion of Independence, to an alleged prior- ity and independent existence of so-called "natural rights." To the legalistic mind S9 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE the term is objectionable. It seems to confound rights with right. Admitting that the morally right may be prior to positive law and have an independent au- thority of its own, the lawyer is disposed to hold that, strictly speaking, there are no objective rights other than the juristic rights created by the state. German po- litical and juristic philosophy in recent years has boldly gone further and aflBrmed that the state is the source and creator of moral, no less than of juristic, right. The argument in form is tortuous, as becomes Teutonic thinking, but essentially it is simple. Our ideas of right, it asserts, are derived in part from the data, the pro- cedures, and the discriminations of ad- judication, and in part from the struggles of states to hold their own against ene- mies and to make for themselves a place in the sun. The state, therefore, truly creates these ideas, it interprets and ap- pUes them, and is the final judge of their vaUdity. Upon this argument is built the further and monstrous contention that the 60 RIGHTS OF THE STATE state is morally absolute and can do no wrong. There is, nevertheless, in the Teutonic view a modicum of truth, and it is the ele- ment of truth that makes it dangerous. For this reason it is imperative that in justification of our theory of the respon- sible state we should reexamine the doc- trine of natural rights. It is true, then, that in the evolution of himian intelUgence, ideas of right and wrong have been suggested and shaped by actual cases of alleged wrong-doing and by countless trial and error attempts to punish or to give redress, or to prevent recurrence. The vital question is. Did at- tempts to define and to check wrong-do- ing begin only when a political organiza- tion of mankind had come into existence? It is at this point that we have to fall back upon a scientific and defensible account of social origins. There never has been a community of men from which the individual could not escape if he felt that he must. The earth 61 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE has been apportioned by its nations, but unpeopled regions remain where the her- mit can exist if he prefers isolation to so- ciety. Therefore, if men generally elect to live in society, it is because they are more secure and more comfortable among neigh- bors than they could be alone in the wil- derness. But they could not be secure, cer- tainly they could not be comfortable, if hour by hour they were beset by assassin, marauder, or meddler. They are secure and comfortable in communities only if they enjoy immunities and Uberties. In so- ciety they do in fact enjoy immunities and Uberties because most men most of the time mind their own business and keep hands off their fellows. Not even the men of Ulster in the glad days of Cuchulain fought literally every man against every man. On occasion they could keep the tribal peace. "Their horses were in one enclosure that night," the story runs, "and their chariot drivers at one fire." Now, minding one's own business and keeping hands off from fellow-beings are 62 RIGHTS OF THE STATE habits, and habits are "natural" in every sense of the word. They are not insti- tuted, they are not invented; they grow. Habits of toleration are older than men, older than reason. They are products of ineffective conflict. Countless generations of group-dwelKng animals, and innumer- able generations of primitive men one after another learned that creatures of one kind are approximately equal in strength, while creatures of different kinds are un- equal. Physical similarity carries with it approximate equahty of power, and equal- ity of power insures a measure of freedom from meddUng by one's neighbors. Group- dwellers are not born free and, therefore, equal. They are born approximately equal and, therefore, acquire freedom. In the last analysis, toleration is a behavior habit expressive of an equilibrium of phy- sical strength. About toleration as a habit, ideas of immunity and liberty began to cluster as human intelligence developed. Men quarreled and settled their differences. THE RESPONSIBLE STATE Bystanders approved or disapproved, and slowly the fabric of custom grew. Dimly at first, and then more clearly, men saw that social cohesion is imperative if the group is to be strong in war, and they be- gan to understand that immunities and liberties, preventive of internal strife, are necessary conditions of social cohesion. So, imperceptibly, I suppose, and with un- imaginable slowness and difficulty, animal habits of toleration became human mores, or customs of immunity and liberty. As mores they were entirely objective. The customary claims, immunities, and liberties of the individual not only were asserted by him; they also were consented to and confirmed by his fellows. They were not merely right; they were rights. In a word, they were "natural rights" — not instituted, not invented, but products of an unconscious growth and inheritance. Collectively, they were the stuff or content of natural justice. They held men to- gether in effective social cohesion for ages before political organization came into 64 RIGHTS OF THE STATE being. They underlie pohtical organiza- tion now. They are the moral foundations of the responsible state, which adapts it- seK to them and builds upon them. Natural rights are of two categories. There are natural rights of the commu- nity, and natural rights of the individual. Both the community and the individual have a natural right to exist and a nat- ural right to grow or develop. K mankind or any moiety of the human race has a moral right to exist, a commu- nity or society has such a right because it is only through mutual aid that human life is possible, and only through social rela- tionships that the intellectual and the moral life of man can be sustained. The natural right embodying and expressing the moral right to exist is the right of self- defense, comprising on the part of the community the right to wage defensive war. The right to grow or develop is involved in the right to exist. When growth ceases, in mind or body, death begins. This is not 65 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE disputed. But actual growth brings things to pass over which controversy rages and wars are fought. Has the individual a moral right to grow at the cost of his neighbor? Has the conununity a right to grow by invading and colonizing, or by conquest and annexation? Teutonic ar- rogance has made to these questions an answer abhorrent to the conscience of the civilized world. Grotesquely misappre- hending Darwinian doctrine, it has pro- claimed the superman. The survival of the fit it conceives as the survival of the brutal. Mercy toward the weak it de- nounces as immoral. Now, it happens that "the fit," as the phrase is used in biology, are those that are adapted to the environment in which they happen to Kve. If the environment is the jungle, tooth and claw, strength and cunning, ferocity and cruelty, may have survival value. But if the environment is human society, toleration and group feel- ing have survival value. Civilized human society is a moral environment which calls 66 RIGHTS OF THE STATE for intelligence, comprehension, justice, and good faith. If, then, society is to endure, individual growth is subject to imperative limita- tions. It must be a function of inhibi- tions no less than of spontaneous actions. Natural justice prescribes the limitations. The individual has a moral right, con- firmed in natural rights, to develop on equal terms with fellow individuals. All have equal, but only equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In like manner, if civilized human so- ciety is to survive and civilized man is to continue his career of progressive achieve- ment, the growth of communities must proceed within the limitations set by nat- ural justice. Nations may not equally de- velop. Probably they never will or can. But they must develop on equal terms. No more than individuals may they grow by murder, theft, or fraud. They have equal but not unequal natural right to utilize the resources of the earth, to trade, to navigate the seas. Only on this basis of 07 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE natural justice can an enduring peace be established. With the rise of political organization rights of a new order come into existence. These are the rights that lawyers call posi- tive or juristic. They may be, and, as we have seen, they tend to become embodi- ments and expressions of natural rights; but in their character as positive or juris- tic they are created by the state. They are of two categories, namely, rights of the sovereign and rights of the subject. Rights of the sovereign are immunities and liberties which the state asserts and main- tains in its own behalf. They comprise, first, rights of the sovereign as trustee for the community and for the individual; and, second, the right of the sovereign to coerce any individulal or group or organiza- tion of individuals. Rights of the subject comprise rights to life and security, rights to liberty, and rights to opportunity. In- cidentally, and as means to ends, they comprise domestic rights, including rights 68 RIGHTS OF THE STATE of marriage, the right of property, and rights to bring action for redress of in- jury. For practical purposes all of these rights center in the right of the sovereign to coerce. If that one right were not main- tained, law would become admonition only. Positive rights would become no more than natural rights. It would be idle for the subject to look to the state for security or redress. The sovereign would cease to be a trustee for community or in- dividual and would become either a mere adviser or an oppressor. Anarchism, and pacifism of the thor- oughgoing sort, deny the moral rightful- ness of any government of man by man which involves resort to force. Anarch- ists and pacifists have hitherto been rela- tively ineffective minorities, but at the present time their number is increasing, and their influence threatens to be not in- considerable. It is, therefore, important to see clearly what their creed involves. Broadly, it involves the resolution of 69 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE political society into natural society and of positive rights into natural rights. Specifically, it means disintegration and a probable resumption throughout the world of local wars now repressed by national states. Aggressive ambition will not cease to invade. Jealousy and hatred, envy and fanaticism, ignorance and fear, will lend support to ruthlessness. The feeble- minded, as now and always, will aid and abet the unprincipled. Again there will be private vengeance, family feuds, race riotings, and a net increase of violence. It is true that there are pacifists who profess to believe that organized wrong- doing is a product of preexisting force and would cease if armed resistance were dis- continued. The evidence is overwhelm- ingly against them. More than any war hitherto, the conflict to which we now are committed has clarified intelligence upon the absurd proposition that the makers of aggressive war would cease to slay and loot if the makers of defensive war should cease to fight. 70 RIGHTS OF THE STATE It is true, also, that the amount of war in the world has not diminished, although minor wars have been stopped by polit- ical integration. Statistical attempts to prove that war, on the whole, has been diminishing are not convincing. The true explanation of this regrettable fact, how- ever, gives no support to the pacifist con- tention. We still have to arm and to fight for the very simple, and, to clear-seeing minds, very obvious, reason that the work of defensive war is not yet done. The makers of aggressive war have not yet been put out of business, and until they are put out of business completely and forever, we need not look to see a steep descent of the statistical curve of war activities. If with sincere hearts we de- sire to see the end of war, we must with grim determination translate from the potential into the imperative mood the word of Holy Writ, "They that take the sword shall perish by the sword." There is one contingency that troubles many minds, otherwise clear upon the 71 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE rightfulness of defensive war, upon which a word should be said. We have seen that the community has a natural right to grow as well as to exist, but not to grow by aggression. Can the state, then, under any circumstances engage in war in order that it may grow? Can a war in assertion of the right to grow be construed as defen- sive? If the principle of natural justice at which we arrived through our analysis of moral right and natural rights is true, the answer to this question is reasonably cer- tain. Communities have a natural right to grow on equal terms. If that right is denied, the community that suffers thereby clearly has a moral right to assert its nat- ural right in the premises. War in defense of that right is defensive war. Further- more, in a broad view of natural justice and of the grounds upon which enduring peace may be established, it is defensive war if a strong nation aids a weak one to maintain its natural right to grow on equal terms with its neighbors. 72 RIGHTS OF THE STATE Greek and Roman writers were inter- ested in the problem of safeguarding rights. They saw how easily an unscru- pulous sovereign may ignore the rights of subjects or ruthlessly override them, and they perceived the immense importance of sound political knowledge, shared and alertly attended to by free citizens. In particular, they insisted that freedom is possible only if the will of the sovereign is formulated and declared in advance of action by subjects. Institution and pro- mulgation are of the essence of legality. Far deeper and broader has been the interest of the Western mind in the safe- guarding of rights since the days of King John and Magna Carta. Rights were there formulated and set down in a docu- ment. From that day until the Civil War in America there was a growing reverence for written guarantees of hberty and an increasing reliance on them. Probably no secular writing has ever been held so nearly sacrosanct by multitudes of men as the written constitution of the United States. 73 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE Yet the wiser interpreters of constitu- tional law have not failed to warn that written constitutions are but ineffective barriers to governmental encroachment imless generation by generation upheld, adapted, and apphed in the decisions of concrete cases by the courts. In our own country we have fallen into the habit of supposing that this function can ade- quately be discharged only by a supreme court endowed with great and unique powers. That this beUef is not necessarily true has been adequately demonstrated in Professor A. V. Dicey's illuminating exposition of England's unwritten consti- tution, made up of usages and precedents, **The Law of the Constitution." In recent years we have begun to see that the real restrictions of arbitrary gov- ernmental action and the real guarantees of Uberty he even deeper in concrete fact than judicial decisions do. They are in- herent in the temper and habits of the ' people. These, it is true, are not always stable, and wise men have distrusted 74 RIGHTS OF THE STATE democracies. Edmund Burke thought them vacillating and dangerously radical. Sir Henry Sumner Maine, on the contrary, believed that they would prove to be slow- minded and unprogressive. Between these opposite opinions is the view entertained by a majority of men experimentally ac- quainted with the actual workings of democracy in western Europe and in America at the present time. The basis of their faith that democra- cies can cohere, can maintain order by giving adequate authority to their govern- ments and yet restrain their governments from arbitrary action, and can safeguard adequately the liberty of individuals, is a procedure: a popular habit. The pro- cedure is this: Democracy bows to the decision of a majority, freely made in ac- tual and lawful election by a broadly dem- ocratic electorate. By so yielding to the major will a democratic people coheres and achieves. This action, however, pro- ceeds upon a condition, which is, that the minority or the minorities shall at all 75 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE times be free to dissent intellectually, to protest in speech, to agitate and persuade, to conduct campaigns openly, and en- deavor in all peaceful and lawful ways to detach individuals from the majority and win them to the support of a minority in the hope that thereby the minority may presently become the majority. By insist- ing upon this condition and resolutely standing for all its legitimate impHca- tions, a democratic people safeguards and keeps its Uberty. One reservation must be made. In time of war the liberty of minorities and of in- dividuals is inevitably curtailed. In time of war the state rightly demands the loyal and active cooperation of all citizens. Putting upon its government extraor- dinary and herculean tasks, sending youth and manhood to die that children and children's children may Uve, the state in time of war rightfully says that those who safely stay at home shall *'play the game " and not stand carping on the side lines. While war lasts things cannot be or con- 76 RIGHTS OF THE STATE tinue "as usual," whether business, or pleasure, or freedom of speech. The su- preme business in war is to overwhelm the enemy; the supreme pleasure, to antici- pate his unconditional surrender; the su- preme freedom, to shatter and destroy the menace of his eflSciency. Criticism of blundering and ineffectiveness there must be: discussion of questionable methods and policies is requisite : but criticism and discussion must be ordered intellectually and held to the point. Open or disguised obstruction may not be tolerated. Not until victory is won and just peace is made: tolerated then it must be. If in days of peace the natural rights of minori- ties are abridged by positive law or denied by administrative action, the dissatisfied resort to secret meetings, conspiracies, and force. When laboring under political stress a majority may be embarrassed seriously if hampered in quick, decisive action by an obstinate minority; never- theless, full recognition of the natural rights of minorities is the condition upon 77 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE which the working unity of a democratic people is maintained, and any attempt to abridge by law or otherwise the natural rights of morally decent speech and peace- able assemblage is a blow at the founda- tions of democratic government in the responsible state. IV DUTIES OF THE STATE The responsible state not only has pow- ers and rights; it also has duties. No one that has had patience to follow so far the present examination of political facts and theories will expect now a defense of any doctrinaire philosophy of governmental functions. The dogma which so often we have heard repeated in our own country, that the government is best which gov- erns least, is doctrinaire if this word has any intelligible meaning. So also is the opposed dogma of state socialism, which avers that governments should take over most of the functions now discharged through individual enterprise and volun- tary cooperation. Once, in an ironical mood, I said, in an- swer to a classroom question, and with warning that my words must not be taken too literally, that the anarchist is a man 79 WK:^BS£ »a Wi>Wr ; asi^feiMEP»*a^»gi^WSfeait<* THE RESPONSIBLE STATE who wants law and government for no- body and for no thing; the sociaHst, a man who wants law and government for everybody and for everything; and the individualist, a man who wants law and government for everybody and everything except himseK and his own business. There is just enough truth m this exaggerated way of putting the matter to admonish us that we should approach the problem of the duties of the state with open minds and a sincere desire to discover what is socially possible and practically expedi- ent no less than what is fundamentally right. We may start upon our quest from the presumption that the duties of the state are not the same at all times and under all circumstances. It is reasonable to assume that they are neither so simple nor so in- disputable in the immensely complex so- ciety of modern Europe and America as they were under relatively primitive con- ditions. Above all, they cannot be the same when the nation is at war, or is men- 80 DUTIES OF THE STATE aced by militarism, that they can and should be when the world is at peace and sincerely desirous of maintaining peace. The one duty of the state, that all citi- zens, except the philosophical anarchists, admit, is the obligation to safeguard the commonwealth by repelling invasion and keeping the domestic peace. To discharge this duty it is necessary to maintain a police force and a militia, and, presum- ably, to keep up a miUtary and a naval establishment. Such dissent from this proposition as we hear now and then is negligible for practical purposes. Serious differences of opinion arise, however, when it becomes necessary to decide how large the military and the naval forces should be, and how they should be raised. With good reason and out of bitter experience the democratic peoples in their thinking have associated great armies with great tyrannies and despotic oppression. Gen- erally they have opposed conscription and universal military training. Great Britain and the United States have relied on small 81 ■a-r^jatlW^ity^^'fi''' THE RESPONSIBLE STATE professional armies supplemented In time of need by volunteer forces and, in the United States, by a militia or national guard. France, warned by historic dis- asters has laid upon all her men of suit- able age the obligation of military service. We saw that the problem of the rights of the state resolves itself into the ques- tion of the moral right of a state to coerce the individual. In like manner, it has be- come obvious, under the blazing light of world-wide war, that the problem of the duty of the state to safeguard the com- monwealth resolves itself into the ques- tion whether national defense should be organized on a basis of unpartial con- scription and universal training or upon some less thoroughgoing plan. For the purposes of our present discussion ob- jections to universal military service that spring from selfishness and fear may be dismissed. Our busmess is to bring con- siderations of right and expediency under rational examination. From the standpoint of common sense 82 DUTIES OF THE STATE the first thing to be said is that the amount of danger that a nation presumably will have to face is a paramount considera- tion. As long as England was in fact ade- quately protected by a navy, she did not need a great army for defensive purposes. So long as the United States in fact en- joyed a practical isolation, we did not need either a great army or a great navy. Actually, as events since 1914 have dem- onstrated, England remained blind to facts that ought to have been seen and met, and deluded herself with false be- liefs about a security that had ceased to exist; and actually the cherished freedom of the United States from entanglements in world-politics was already doomed. If in the early summer of 1914 England had possessed the army that her clearer- headed publicists had warned her to get ready, the unspeakable calamity of this war would not have fallen upon the world. And if the United States had heeded the call for preparedness, we should not now be asking how much longer the war is to 83 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE last. Of all the follies that the human mind can be guilty of, the least excusable is to put trust in an inadequate army. Let us either accept the pacifist contention, lay down our arms and trust in the suf- ficiency of sweetness and light to save us from the blood-lust of the super-savage, or, believing that the super-savage can be restrained only by the kind of might that he is capable of understanding, let us make it mighty enough to restrain him. K this principle be accepted the case becomes fairly clear. One disastrous ex- perience after another, including the de- plorable errors of our Civil War, has dem- onstrated that no nation can safely rely on a volunteer system when it is caught in the maelstrom of military struggle. Why, then, not face the facts in a straight- forward and business-like way? The day may come — from the depths of agonized hearts we hope that it will come — when the spear and the sword shall be made into ploughshare and pruning hook; but it has not come yet. It may long be de- 84 DUTIES OF THE STATE layed. It cannot come until every nation that asserts the right to grow by conquest has been cracked and scrapped by supe- rior physical force. Until then it is the plain duty of the responsible state to make its armed forces adequate to the work in hand. A consideration less immediate than present danger, but in the long run gravely important, we find in the reactions of a military system, good or bad, upon the character of the state itself. Before 1914, unfortunate reactions, assumed or taken for granted, held the attention of earnest men and women who were working de- votedly to bring about general disarma- ment and, in particular, to discourage mili- tary preparedness in the United States. In apprehensive minds military prepara- tions, and, in particular, universal mili- tary training and obligation, were iden- tified with militarism. Almost without argument the opponents of preparedness insisted that these things must necessa- rily foster the growth of a military spirit 85 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE which sooner or later would rush our country into unjustifiable war. It was a view, as we now know, which completely misapprehended militarism, and was blind to its real menace. Mili- tarism is not so simple, and it cannot be created by instructing citizens in the tasks and duties of the soldier. The soul of mili- tarism is a will to conquer which is rooted in aggressive instinct, and the seat of that soul is the dark brain of a personal mon- arch who identifies his own ambitions with the purposes of the Most High and proclaims to his people that he rules by divine right. The instruments of mili- tarism are a dynastic family and a priv- ileged class, ever fearful that a rising tide of democracy will destroy their heredita- ments and sweep themselves into obliv- ion. In all the world and the pages of his- tory there is no record of a democratic militarism. And, finally, the voices of militarism are those ecclesiastical and professorial retainers who expound and instill the obligation to spread kultur by 86 DUTIES OF THE STATE the sword. It was one of these, Professor Doctor Werner Sombart, who said: "The idea that we are the chosen people im- poses upon us very great duties. ... If it is necessary to extend our territorial possessions so that the increasing body of the nation shall have room to develop itself, we will take for ourselves as much territory as seems to us necessary. We shall also set our foot wherever it seems to us important for strategic reasons in order to preserve our unassailable strength." And thirty-five hundred Ger- man professors and lecturers like him said: "Our belief is that the salvation of the kultur of Europe depends upon the vic- tory which German militarism is about to achieve." On the frontiers of Germany and under the shadow of her crimes stands the demo- cratic republic of Switzerland. Necessa- rily, her citizens hold themselves in instant readiness for military defense. Switzer- land has universal military training and universal military obligation, but the soul 87 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE of Switzerland is free. The souls of all the nations are free from which the demon soul of divine dynastic right has been cast out. In those nations, however thoroughly they may prepare themselves against the day of defensive war, militarism, in any reasonable meaning of the word, does not and cannot exist. It is unhappily true that small repub- lics have now and then surrendered their wills to a military dictator, and that a plausible argument could be made that two militaristic empires. Imperial Rome and Napoleonic France, were born of such surrender. Fairly examined, the facts do not bear out the contention. Caesar and Napoleon were not made dictators by democracies organized for war and bent on conquest. They rose to power because they were competent to exercise it in de- mocracies unorganized and unprepared for war when their existence was imper- iled by aggressive foes. They saved their states from impending ruin brought peril- ously near by social disintegration and un- 88 DUTIES OF THE STATE preparedness. It is not a fantastic notion that the history of Europe would have been altogether diflFerent from the record as it stands if republican Rome in the cen- tury before Christ had been sincerely pa- triotic, honest and business-like in its af- fairs, and if republican France, after the revolution, had been adequate to the great enterprise of democratic govern- ment. This reflection brings us to one further consideration upon expedient policies and essentially right ways and means of safe- guarding the commonwealth. Military training and obligation react not only upon the character of the state as an en- tity, but also upon individuals in their capacity as citizens. The evidence is abundant that these reactions are not such as the pacifist argument has assumed. Universal military training and obliga- tion do not brutalize, they do not impair the moral sense or the intellectual vision, they do not blunt the democratic con- science. Experience has demonstrated 89 14 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE that their actual eCFect is, all in all, the precise opposite of these things. Where- ever they have fairly and adequately been tried, as in Switzerland and in France, and wherever some approach to them has been made, as in Australia and of late, in Great Britain and the United States, they have demonstrated their educational value. They have diminished hoodlumism and rudeness. They have made the average man alert, cheerful, careful, and thought- ful of his fellows. They have made him orderly and diligent. They have not made him abjectly obedient, as the German sol- dier is, but intelligently and loyally obedi- ent, conscious that his obedience is ren- dered not to a tyrant, but to a community and as part of a great social cooperation. These results spring from the nature of the facts. Universal military training and universal military obligation are demo- cratic. They are equitable and, therefore, just. As such they strongly appeal to the average sense of a square deal. They place all men upon the same footing in the face 90 DUTIES OF THE STATE of danger and death. The draft resorted to in our Civil War was not equitable and it provoked a just resentment. A volun- teer system is not equitable. It throws the burden of defending the commonwealth upon the conscientious and lets the slacker escape. It is not only morally indefensi- ble, it is also biologically and socially in the long run disastrous: it kills off a rel- atively large proportion of the best stocks and saves alive the worst stocks to per- petuate the race. Democracy must build upon the broad and deep foundations of equity and wisdom, or it will fail. It is not enough to equalize voting power and to make men equal before the law. They must be made equal in obligation. In France more clearly than elsewhere this truth has been perceived by the average man. He knows that his military system is just, and this knowledge is one of the great factors in the making of that noble comradeship which is the solidarity of the armies of France and of the French people. 91 I THE RESPONSIBLE STATE I realize that these statements as I have made them are in form dogmatic, but they are not, I think, dogmatic in sub- stance. Rather, they are broad inductions from concrete facts brought home to us by the war to which we are committed and which, I hope, will receive increasing attention from patriotic and thoughtful men. When the state has discharged its ob- ligation to safeguard the commonwealth, it must decide whether it has then fulfilled its whole duty. The political philoso- phers of Greece did not think so. Those great teachers, to whom our debt can never be paid, believed that the state is organized civilization, and that it is rec- reant if it fails to cherish civilization or neglects to promote and perfect it. The classical writers did not draw that dis- tinction between the state and the govern- ment with which we are familiar, and it was, therefore, reserved for modern theo- rists to advance the proposition that while DUTIES OF THE STATE the promotion of civilization is undeniably a function of organized society, it is not properly a function of government. The sole business of government, they have argued, is to make life so secure and in- dividual activity so free that citizens may spontaneously and without fear devote themselves to interests and pursuits which are the content of civilization and by which, from age to age, it is enriched. The doctrine of minimal governmental function, which already I have charac- terized as doctrinaire, has not been acted on consistently by any state, nor even by a political party. Only one writer of first importance, Herbert Spencer, has con- sistently held to it in theory. Spencer denies the moral rightfulness of govern- ment that does more than defend the state and enforce the law of equal liberty. He has made few converts, and partly, I think, because, even as pure theory and apart from practical considerations, his argument gets wrecked on the question. How, concretely and actually, shall the 93 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE law of equal liberty be enforced if we con- ceded the rightfulness of coercion to that end? If undertaking to enforce equal lib- erty, the state may invade my pocket-book or my bank account to pay for courts of justice, and may keep me in jail if I com- mit crime or tort, why may it not obtain unforced obedience to basic moral law by training my boy in school? If a govern- ment may righteously quell riot, why may it not prevent riot by abating riot-breed- ing conditions? Mr. Spencer's answers to questions like these are not his most con- vincing words, and I doubt if the human mind has yet discovered a logical middle ground between anarchistic denial of the moral rightfulness of any government whatsoever, and admission that govern- ments may promote civilization as well as defend it. What, then, is civilization? It is easier now to answer this question than it was a generation ago. Objective contrasts aid intellectual discrimination. Comprehen- sively, civilization is all that kultur is not. 94 DUTIES OF THE STATE Civilization is the sum of urbane achieve- ment since men began to live in towns. It is not circumscribed by age, or region, or race. It is a measureless heritage, and the possession of mankind. Kultur by con- trast comprises the social order, impedi- menta, and purpose of a tribally minded folk that has not evolved beyond the con- ceit that it is a peculiar and chosen people. Arts and processes, wealth and splen- dor, monuments and temples, industry and trade, science and letters, are civiliza- tion in its outward aspect. Subjectively, inwardly, civilization is honor, fidelity to obligations, and human comprehension. As its name denotes, it arose with the city- state. It grew with the expansion of polit- ical organization, and through the cen- turies it was fed by the interminglings of men and contacts established between one culture and another throughout the known world. Honor was its soul at birth be- cause, as has been shown, nothing less than good faith could hold together men of diflFerent breeds when tribal organiza- 9S THE RESPONSIBLE STATE tion oroke down. The performance of obligations, the fulfiUing of contracts, the keeping of treaties, has ever been the habit of civihzation, because honor de- mands these things, and without them there could be no truce of feud or petty war, and, therefore, no periods of peace in which the creative arts could flourish and gam ground. Comprehension of man by man civilization has striven for and taught, because only thereby can the countless varieties of men be incorporated and as- similated in the expanding state. Kultur can scorn an alien race because its aim is not to assimilate but to conquer. It can make scraps of paper of its obligations be- cause it recognizes no other source of right than its own imperial will. Civilization ameliorates human misery. It humanizes conduct. It enlightens the human mind. It makes social intercourse polite. All these things it does as recog- nizing in amelioration and in kindliness, in urbanity and in enlightenment, quali- ties which are their own justification. It 96 DUTIES OF THE STATE holds a deep and burning indignation against wanton destruction and savagery, and it does not permit us to forget that the outward bearing of the cultivated man or woman, a product of the life of towns, is unmistakably different from rudeness. It admires intellect and renders homage to it. Kultur cares only for efficiency, and supremely only for the efficiency that masters and rules. For mental power it cares, as a means to mastery. For eco- nomic amelioration it cares, as a thing necessary to the maintenance of armies and the vigorous growth of a soldier- breeding population. For social order it cares, as a means of discipline. For educa- tion it cares, as a teaching of obedience and a preparation for war. It prefers rude- ness to civility, and brutality to gentle- ness, as more aggressive and fear-inspiring. The forgiveness of enemies, the out-reach- ing of mercy, and the uncommanded play of intellect in the sheer joy of scientific discovery or of artistic creation, it cannot understand. 97 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE For the responsible state the under- standing of civUization is a duty; a duty as clear as that of understanding the dif- ference between barbaric tribahsm and political organization. Understanding a civilization that holds fast by honor, that ameliorates and humanizes, that enlight- ens and makes urbane, the responsi- ble state is under moral obligation to strengthen and promote it. Is it, however, under obligation — we return now to our question — to foster the enterprises of civilization through gov- ernmental activity, maintained by taxa- tion and resorting to force? To be more specific, is it the duty of the modern re- sponsible state — above all, of the demo- cratic state — to ameliorate the economic and the social lot of man through eco- nomic activity beyond the protection of property and the enforcement of con- tracts. The sociahst answers "yes." The ex- treme individualist says "no." We have seen reason to doubt whether a morally 98 DUTIES OF THE STATE authoritative answer can be found in the principles of natural justice. Expediency must be our guide, and upon grounds of expediency a majority of disputants are content to rest. The socialists contend that we are now living under a social order that is wasteful and unjust, and which individualism can- not make right. The basis of this order is private property in land and in the in- struments of economic production. The state has created private property, it en- forces contracts which it assumes are freely made, and it encourages competi- tion by forbidding or discouraging com- binations in restraint of trade. These legal conditions of economic activity having been established, waste and injustice, the socialist declares, are inevitable conse- quences and have become menacing. The wastefulness of competition, he al- leges, has always been acknowledged, and by none more openly than by the ablest captains of industry and finance, who have persistently attempted to prevent it by 99 THE BESPONSIBLE STATE entering into understandings and creating combinations which the law discounte- nances. The state has msisted on competi- tion in the beUef that, even if not econom- ical, it is none the less an automatically working means of effecting equitable dis- tribution- This belief the socialist tells us is false. Land comprises not only agri- cultural terrain, but also mineral re- sources, water power, forests, and areas advantageous for industry and trade. Held as private property they become the possession of a relatively small class of owners. Supplementing natural monopo- lies are corporate rights and franchises which the state creates. Enjoying these, men of superior business courage and sagacity have been able to gather to them- selves opportunity, profit, and power, and the multitude more and more has been placed at capitalistic mercy. Nominally, and in legal assumption, there may be freedom of contract between the employer and the wage-earner, but practically, be- cause of the power of the one and the help- 100 DUTIES OF THE STATE lessness of the other, the wage contract is made under duress. The individualist, answering, says that the resources of the earth are by no means yet monopolized, and that the way to suc- cess is open to every man who has the per- sisting will to fare forth upon it. Competi- tion may be wasteful, — undoubtedly it is; unscrupulous political influences may have created privileges and rewarded henchmen with franchises, — we know that they have, — and men may not be equal in bargaining power. Nevertheless, under the relatively great economic liberty of individualism, an economic organiza- tion, industrial, commercial, and finan- cial, has grown up which is staggering in its magnitude and amazing in its com- plexity. Working in it and through it, the industrial nations have produced a volume of material goods that has enabled theu- populations to multiply and to live not only above the plane of want, but in comfort. Furthermore, the individual initiative and enterprise which have created mate- 101 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE rial well-being, have organized also count- less agencies of specific amelioration- Sci- entific research has been supported and encouraged. Medicine, surgery, and san- itation have diminished physical suffer- ing to an extent beyond the power of imagination to picture. The relief of ac- tual need is in general assured. With vol- untary activity in these humane tasks governments have cooperated. They have permitted wage-earners to organize in un- ions. They have restricted the hours of labor of women and children. They have required the stated payment in lawful money of wages earned. They have re- quired safe construction of the dwellings of the poor, and wholesome living condi- tions. They have cleaned the streets, and opened parks, playgrounds, and libraries. They have provided schools and required children to attend them. Between the socialist and the individ- ualist, who shall decide .f^ Has the one or the other made out a convincing case of the duty of the state? 102 DUTIES OF THE STATE Assuredly, no. The only thing made clear is that the question remains open, and therefore the duty of the state in re- spect to it is, I think we shall agree, to keep it open until there shall be a more de- cisive and satisfying meeting of minds upon the issues involved than is possible now. This means, it will be said, a waiting or drifting policy. I should prefer to say that it means experiment and an experimental policy. Experiments in cooperation, in- cluding so-called "syndicalism" and local communism, experiments in the municipal ownership and control of public utilities and of basic trades and industries, ex- periments in national ownership of rail- roads and mines, are being tried, and per- haps will more extensively be tried as time goes on. I doubt if any one is wise enough to say that they certainly will fail or that they certainly will work out well. Whatever happens, it will be the part of wisdom to observe them and to learn from them. As guardian of the commonwealth and 103 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE of civilization the state is under obliga- tion to be efficient, but its efficiency must be a civilized efficiency, and it must not break the spirit of a free people or dis- courage their initiative. Great has been the vaunting and the praise of German efficiency. The world looked on in admiration as the German Empire, through nearly half a century of peace, extended its commerce, created in- dustries, perfected municipal administra- tion, organized education, diminished un- employment, and mitigated misfortune. To-day the world stands aghast at the power of German militarism to destroy and lay waste. Admiration is dead and no resurrection awaits it, for we know that the whole intent of efficiency under Hohen- zollern rule was to put "Deutschland liber AUes" and make its Kaiser lord of the earth. Other things, too, we know, for in exposing her purpose Germany has revealed the moral and intellectual dev- astation of her people, made craven by authority and fear. 104 DUTIES OF THE STATE The nations that have summoned their manhood and devoted their resources to the mighty task of destroying the power and the menace of militarism were not efficient for military achievement. They were in no way prepared for war. Sud- denly, and in the face of difficulties al- most insuperable, they have been forced to create armies, to produce munitions, and to organize the mechanism of society for prolonged and relentless fighting. Necessarily, they have centralized com- mand. Industry and trade have been brought under authoritative regulation. The wastes and ineptitudes of an indi- vidualistic regime which socialism de- nounced, were encountered as realities, and the strong hand of government was laid upon them. Small wonder it is that thoughtful men to-day are apprehensive. To save themselves from Prussian domi- nation must free peoples Prussianize them- selves? Is German efficiency the only efficiency that can now survive? A calm survey of all the facts should re- 105 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE assure us. It was the spontaneous power, the individual initiative, and the quick, voluntary cooperation of free peoples that met the first onrush of Teuton hosts. It was the democratic habit of facing emer- gencies courageously, the democratic re- silience, and the democratic readiness to make new adjustments demanded by altered conditions that made possible and rendered certain the successful reconsti- tution of the social order for the tasks of war. In these qualities of democracy we may trust. The democratic state is in- deed a mechanism infinitely complex, but not an inflexible, unalterable mechanism as of brass or steel. It is a vital mechan- ism, flexible and adaptive. A living body, animate and conscious, it can meet crises or fall into habit. It can learn by trial and error, and it can anticipate by reason. The war will end, and the necessity for centralized command will once more be less imperative. It is improbable, how- ever, that the old individualism will come back in all its irresponsibility and inade- 106 DUTIES OF THE STATE quacy. We shall demand coordination and correlation. We shall demand con- servation and economy. We shall insist upon a more equitable distribution of the net product of toil. But socialism of a mechanical, static type we may be very sure will not appeal. The social system will become not simpler, but more com- plex; not harder and more resistant, but more adaptive; not more authoritative, but more intelligent. These things will happen because, after all, democracy does learn from experience, and, after all, natural selection goes on in the human race and slowly the race im- proves. The incompetent and the irre- sponsible are many, but increasing social pressure and the struggle for existence make their lot ever harder and will con- tinue to eliminate them. Next after mili- tarism, their number and their political power is the greatest present menace to civilization. They are the stuff that an- archism is made of. Only as their relative influence diminishes, only as democracy 107 THE RESPONSIBLE STATE develops a more generous admiration of intellect and a deeper appreciation of character, and more clearly sees that while all men rightly may vote, not all men are competent to organize and to govern, can the responsible state become in the high- est degree eflScient. Not by the crass sub- stitution of a new social order for an old, not by revolution nor by authority, but through mental and moral evolution will justice come, and the good life. For, let us never forget, the responsible state is not an abstraction. It is a politi- cally organized people, and a politically organized people is a body of citizens. If the state is eflScient, it is because they are competent. If its poHcies are wise, it is because they have the open mind. Only in their individual hearts can the honor of the state be kept untarnished; in their individual souls its glory lives. THE END 0)e miter^ibe J^xtjSH CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES This book is due on the date indicated below, or at the expiration of a definite period after the date of borrowing, as provided by the rules of the Library or by special arrange- ment with the Librarian in charge. DATE BORROWED DATE DUE DATE BORROWED ■: m 1 2 1951 ,^yGJ-2J962 DATE DUE caa(ii40Mioo / Butler D320 G36 Y^AMM^-^ iiUlv 4- ;4B6? fe