Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/186

 to keep peace; just as within the nations of the world law alone is not enough to prevent crime and establish order. You may happen to see this morning a beautiful automobile which you would like to own, standing unlocked and unguarded. Why don’t you jump in and drive away? First, because you fear disagreeable consequences from the law, The police will chase you, probably catch you, eventually put you in jail. But is that the only reason? No; you are restrained by an instinct first implanted in your little, savage bosom at your mother’s knee, and intensified by your whole education—the feeling that it is wrong to steal. In order to keep society together, we need both these forces.

So it goes with this question of order and morality among nations. We need the law; we need also personal ethics—international morality. By the forces of light which we have—churches, schools, all associations of men for spiritual and intellectual ends—we need to strengthen the belief that a state, including your own, can do wrong, that between nations there is such a thing as live and let live, that humanity is greater than mere race.

This does not mean abolishing the sentiment of patriotism. There are two conceptions of that noble old emotion. One ends at the mental condition of Germany in 1914—the state for the state’s sake, your hand ever on your sword to protect her honor and her interests, though every person in the state be rendered less happy by the process. The