The men who have stood highest in our history, as in
the history of all countries, are those who scorned injustice, who were
incapable of oppressing the weak, or of permitting their country, with
their consent, to oppress the weak, but who did not hesitate to draw
the sword when to leave it undrawn meant inability to arrest triumphant
wrong.
All this is so obvious that it ought not to be necessary to repeat it.
Yet every man in active affairs, who also reads about the past, grows
by bitter experience to realize that there are plenty of men, not only
among those who mean ill, but among those who mean well, who are ready
enough to praise what was done in the past, and yet are incapable of
profiting by it when faced by the needs of the present. During our
generation this seems to have been peculiarly the case among the men who
have become obsessed with the idea of obtaining universal peace by some
cheap patent panacea.
There has been a real and substantial growth in the feeling for
international responsibility and justice among the great civilized
nations during the past threescore or fourscore years. There has been a
real growth of recognition of the fact that moral turpitude is involved
in the wronging of one nation by another, and that in most cases war is
an evil method of settling international difficulties.
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