p of a corporation
in the attitude of ordinary men and women, who, scrupulously honest in
their dealings with one another, slide almost unconsciously to an
altogether lower level in dealing with a railroad or insurance company.
This attitude is due, no doubt, partly to a resentment of the
oppressive power which great corporations are believed to exercise,
evoking a desire "to get a bit of your own back"; partly to a feeling
that any slight injury to, or even fraud perpetrated on, a corporation
will be so distributed as to inflict no appreciable harm on any
individual stockholder. But largely it is the result of a failure to
envisage a corporation as a moral being at all, to whom one owes
obligations. Corporations are in a sense moral monsters; we say they
behave as such and we are disposed to treat them as such.

The standard of international morality, particularly in matters of
commercial intercourse, is on a still lower level. If, indeed, one were
to press the theoretic issue, whether a state or a nation is a morally
independent being, or whether it is in some sense or degree a member of
what may be called an incipient society of states or nations, nearly
every one would sustain the latter view. We should be reminded that
there was such a thing as international law, however imperfect its
sanctions might be, and that treaties, alliances, and other agreements
between nations implied the recognition of some moral obligation. How
weak this interstate morality is appears not merely from the fact that
under strong temptation governments repudiate their most express and
solemn agreements--to that temptation individuals sometimes yield in
their dealings with one another--but also from the nature of the
defence which they make of such repudiation. The plea of state
necessity, which Germany made for the violation of the neutrality of
Belgium, and which was stretched to cover the brutal mishandling of the
Belgian people, is unfortunately but an extreme instance of conduct to
which every state has had recourse at times, and--still more
significant--which every state defends by adducing the same maxim,
"_salus reipublicae suprema lex_".

Here is the sharpest distinction between individual and national
morality. There are certain deeds which a good and honorable man would
not do even to save his life; there are no deeds, which it is admitted
that a statesman, acting on behalf of his country, may not do to save
that country. It is