MODERN ETHICS 271 



thing just as discouraging if we would look into a 

 mirror. The old savage spirit still circulates in 

 our veins. The ' foreigner ' is not an enemy, but 

 he is still an individual whose chief significance is 

 in his ' fleece.' If the ' foreigner ' did not ease 

 our economic theories by benevolently ' paying 

 the tax,' it would be hard to tell what would 

 become of him. Those who suffer from a different 

 government, speak a different language, or laud 

 other gods are regarded by us as distinctly inferior 

 to ourselves. Millions of dollars are annually 

 squandered by self-righteous societies in sending 

 missionaries to the other side of the planet to 

 peoples who need evangels of mercy and humanity 

 far less than we do ourselves. In these times of 

 ecclesiastical enterprise, however, missionaries are 

 being superseded, as agents of evangelisation, by 

 the more effective inventions of Messrs. Maxim 

 and Krupp. ' American ' is regarded by us as the 

 synonym of perfection, and to be 'patriotic' is to 

 give unthinking enthusiasm to every scheme in- 

 cubated by wolfish spoilsmen. Crimes of conquest 

 carried on by others become, when undertaken by 

 us, shining masterpieces of ' benevolent assimila- 

 tion.' We are not so far from the naked and 

 unkempt contemporaries of the cave-bear and 

 sabre-toothed lion as we imagine we are. To 

 carry a bayonet, and especially to redden it with 

 an alien's blood, is here in this degenerate 

 land of Jefferson, more glorious than to create 

 a book. Captains particularly competent as 

 butchers, though their characters be as coarse as a 



