Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/177

 kept, we will say, the stone knife which you had chipped for yourself. No one might take it from you except he give an equivalent; no one might kill you except with certain definite excuses. It was further agreed that whoever broke this rule should be punished by the collective action of all the rest. No one man could thrash the Jack Dempsey of the tribe; but two or three men could, much more the whole tribe, That was the beginning of law and order—an understanding as to the rules of the game, an agreement to punish whoever broke those rules. Wise old David Lubin used to say that he believed this was also the beginning of morals. And indeed, even if there was in primitive man some inbred sense of kindness and of property right, that feeling never expressed itself in action until men drew up rules and agreed to back them by force.

Nearly everyone who thinks must have wondered at times why it is supremely wrong to kill a fellow citizen in time of peace, supremely right to kill a foreigner in time of war; why lying and deceit, despicable when used against your fellow-countryman, become noble when used against your national enemy. I have explained the reason. As soon as we organized states and tribes, we began to endow them with a personality, to give them a being. And between these beings the law did not run. They had never got together, to draw up rules of the game and provide penalties against the violators of this code of morals. Consequently, there were