and fight because they believe they are fighting for
high moral aims or for national self-preservation, whether they are
right or wrong.

When Napoleon conquered a country, often he pushed the weakling king off
the throne, and replaced him with a member of his own family--at times a
worse weakling. Think of such a thing being attempted to-day: it is
unimaginable, unless the worst tyranny on earth got the upper hand for
the next three hundred years of human history.

A more pungent illustration of progress is the feverish desire, shown by
each of the combatants in this world struggle, to prove that he did not
begin it. Now some one began it. A hundred years ago belligerents would
not have been so anxious to prove their innocence: then victory closed
all accounts and no one went behind the returns. The feverish anxiety
each combatant has shown to establish his innocence of initiating this
devastating War is conclusive proof that even the worst of them
recognizes that they all must finally stand before the moral court of
the world's conscience and be judged. The same tendency is shown in the
efforts of Germany--grotesquely and tragically sophistical as they are--
to justify her ever-expanding, freshly-invented atrocities. At least
she is aware that they require justification.

This explains why we react so bitterly even on what would have been
accepted a century ago. What was taken for granted yesterday is not
tolerated to-day, and what is taken for granted to-day will not be
tolerated in a to-morrow that maybe is not so distant as in our darker
moments we imagine.

What would be the conclusion of this process? It would be, would it
not, the complete application to the relations of the nations, of the
moral principles universally accepted as binding upon individuals? If
it is true that the moral order of the universe is one and unchanging,
then _what is right for a man is right for a nation of men, and what is
wrong for a man is wrong for a nation_; and no fallacious reasoning
should be allowed to blind us to that basic truth.

This would mean the end of all diplomacy of lying and deceit. The
relations of the nations would be placed on the same plane of relative
honesty and frankness now prevailing among individuals: not absolute
truth--few of us practice that--but that general ability to trust each
other, in word and conduct, that is the foundation of our business and
social life.

It would mean the end