Chapter VIII: Might Against Right

PRESIDENT WILSON'S speech to Congress at the beginning of April, 1917, was a notable pronouncement in many respects. It seems to have taken Congress by storm. It was a solemn call to America to intervene in the great European war in defence of her own rights and liberties, of the rights and liberties of other nations great and small, and of the universal dominion of right. The President was at pains to point out that he did not desire to make war on the German people, but on its "irresponsible Government, which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and right and is running amok." But Germany also professes to be fighting for its rights. As a great and powerful nation it claims a place in the sun and aspires to the proud position of a world-power. To attain its end it claims the right to wage ruthless submarine warfare, to sink merchant ships without warning, and to treat all who attempt to defend themselves as pirates and outlaws. It is clear that the bureaucracy which directs the war on behalf of the Central Powers has a different conception of right from that of President Wilson, and it will be worth while to examine what it is. It is a very old idea which identifies right with might. ‘The good old rule, the simple plan, That they should take who have the power And they should keep who can.’

The theory was well known to the writer of the Book of Wisdom: " Let our strength be the law of justice, for that which is feeble is found to be nothing worth." For centuries past it has had powerful advocates among English and German philosophers, beginning with Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. With the triumph of the theory of Evolution it became the pet doctrine of the materialists. That school of thought regards the universe as a vast arena of conflicting forces, in which the victory is ever for the strongest. The war of nations which is now being fought out is but the logical outcome of those theories; it has been produced by them, and it is their judgment and condemnation: " By their fruits ye shall know them." We shall get to the gist of the matter if we enquire into the origin of those rights which we call natural. We claim the right to live and not to be hindered in our endeavour to obtain the necessary means thereto; a man claims the right to marry if he choose to do so, and to bring up a family. Where do such natural rights as these come from? Materialists, evolutionists, and Pantheists assert that all rights come from the State. It is clear that the concession of Government, or of the State, is the source and origin of such positive rights as the right to vote for a member of Parliament and the right to the old-age pension. According to the schools of thought just mentioned, man's natural rights have precisely the same source and origin. The citizens belonging to a State derive their right, to devote themselves to their lawful pursuits from the law of their country, and the law of their country is ready to put in motion the whole force of the State if need be in order to protect its members in the lawful exercise of their rights. Outside the limits of the State club law prevails; the solitary individuals who inhabit those wastes have no rights except those which their own strength gives them and which their own right hand is prepared to enforce. The war has shown us to what this theory leads. It furnishes the groundwork of a very perfect and very thorough national organisation, which gives the State great advantages in a contest with other less perfectly organised peoples. But the price paid is a great deal too heavy. While the Government is everything, the individual citizen tends to become a mere pawn or cypher. The Government uses its tremendous power to turn every particle of the national energy to account for its own advantage. It directs the national system of education, and thus it can inspire the minds of the citizens with its own ideals. It can train their characters so that they become pliant instruments for the attainment of the national ambitions. Its command over the reptile press and the scarcely less obsequious leaders of public opinion in the chairs of the universities and in the pulpits of the churches makes it an easy matter for the Government to colour and interpret events as it chooses. The docile people are certain to accept the interpretation which the Government wishes them to accept, whether the question be concerning the advisability of employing ruthless submarine warfare or the reducing of a conquered population to the state of slavery. Solemn treaties with foreign nations no longer bind in altered circumstances; they are merely "scraps of paper." The provisions of international law must give way before the imperative law of necessity. There is no sanction behind them to make them respected and operative. In any case where a concession either to subjects or to foreign nations is felt to be too inconvenient, it can always be revoked. What the State gave, the State can take away —salus populi suprema lex. There is another theory which makes personality the source and origin of human rights. A man has rights because he is a person, not a thing. A person is an end to himself and must not be subordinated, like a thing, to somebody else's end. All men are equal and independent of each other as far as natural rights are concerned. A man has a right to do anything he likes, provided that it does not violate the equal right of somebody else. If the first theory makes the State omnipotent and the individual nothing, this second theory makes the individual everything. He becomes a god and a supreme lawgiver in his solitary independence. If the first theory tends to absorb the individual in society, the second loses sight of society in its exaggerated individualism. Man is a social animal, and national efficiency as well as many other things of great importance imperatively require that man's social side should not be lost sight of. Competitive individualism is too well known and has done too much harm of late years to be a serious danger for the future. The whole trend of the modern world is in the opposite direction. The true theory about the source of human natural rights lies midway between these two extremes. It first of all lays down the important principle that rights connote and arise from duties. We hear a great deal about rights, while duties are left in the background. In truth the two stand and fall together. Like father and son, they are correlative terms; one implies the other. A man has certain natural rights because he has certain natural duties to fulfil. Parental right, the right of a parent to rear and educate his child, comes from the fact that he has a duty to rear and educate his offspring. That duty is imposed on him by nature and by God, the Author of nature. A man has a right not to be prevented from procuring for himself by lawful means the necessary support for himself and for his family. The reason is because it is his duty to do so; nature and God, the Creator of nature, have put him under an obligation to provide for his family. Such duties and such rights are properly termed natural, because they flow from man's very nature. They do not come from the State; they exist prior to the State, and the State is guilty of unjustifiable meddling if it interferes with those rights. If those natural duties are not fulfilled, if those natural rights are not properly exercised, the State may indeed intervene, it has authority to compel defaulters to do their duty, but it should interfere only when necessity requires its intervention. Thus there is something sacred and compelling in the notion of natural rights, and men do wisely and properly to be obstinate in their defence. The most precious part of freedom consists in the unfettered exercise of man's natural rights, and however well organised a State may be, the people are slaves if the State hampers them in the exercise of their natural rights. The Catholic Church defends those rights, and in fulfilling her task she confers one of the greatest blessings on mankind and proves herself the true friend and protector of human freedom.