GIFT OF t "The Nations but the Guinea Stamp A man's a man for a' that." AN ADDRESS BY MR. DARWIN P. KINGSLEY PRESIDENT OF THE NEVV-YORK LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY kH RESPONDING ON BEHALF OF THE WORLD'S INSURANCE CONGRESS TO ADDRESSES OF WELCOME BY THE GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA AND THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO. OCTOBER 4, 1915 PANAMA-PACIFIC INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION PRINTED BY THE COMPANY \^> A'i ..b "The Nations but the Guinea Stamp. * * * * * H. H- H- H' >{■ A Man's a Man for a' that". Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/addressbymrdarwiOOkingrich Insurance is ordinarily regarded as a device by which life, property, and business are protected against the vicissitudes of time and circumstance. It is much more than that. It is a destroyer of prejudice and the enemy of a very dangerous kind of ignorance. It ap- peals to the mass feeling, to those impulses which fore- shadow the ultimate achievement of human solidarity. In its offices and on its streets the peoples of all lands and of all races meet and mingle daily. It is a world- exposition whose doors never close. Thus welcomed to this City of Dreams, to this epi- tome of all that was best in our recent civilization, insurance naturally feels itself no stranger and indeed flatters itself that whatever pertinance the formulas of welcome may or may not have on some occasions, the proprieties were not transgressed nor the truth surpassed in the fervent and eloquent speeches of welcome just delivered by the executive heads of the State and City. A world-exposition should reflect world-conditions; it presupposes world-wide intercourse, world-wide under- standing, and some considerable degree of world-wide sympathy and faith. Tested by this rule, the Panama-Pacific International Exposition seems not a real thing but a resurrection of 383369 an earlier and better age. It stands out like a half-sub- merged mountain peak marking the spot where a noble continent once was. It tells us that even in our daysmen did laugh together, and did love each other and did have faith. This exposition, therefore, is more than an exposition. It does not reflect the condition and present purposes of the world. If it did, it would emphasize the possibility, aye the probability, that we may not for generations have a civilization equal to that of August 1, 1914. This Capi- tal of the arts, the learning, and the achievement of the world, does not remotely suggest such reflections. It sug- gests living beauty, and international understanding and international peace. We, alas! know that its suggestion is little better than a mockery, because these splendid piles, these soaring arches stand in the forum of the world not unlike those pathetic pillars of the temple of Castor and Pollux in the Roman Forum, eloquent of the power and beauty of a dead civilization. Against the methods which resulted in the existing European horror insurance has always been a warning and a protest and has always suggested a remedy. It has been a warning and a protest because it has taught the insufficiency of the unit of anything — whether that unit be a man or a business or a nation. It has suggested a remedy not only because of the billions which it has distributed (and is distributing now) in alleviating the tragedies of life but because it has taught and practiced the doctrine of co-operation, in which lies the greater portion of any existing and reasonable hope that our civ- ilization may not after all be utterly overwhelmed. In the struggle for existence insurance is a device by which present strength unites to protect society against the weakness that lurks everywhere. Insurance is a perpetual warning that nationality as a basis for civilization is insufficient. Civilization has broken down because its units— the nations— could severally no more carry their individual risk than a man can carry the risk of his own mortality. If each great nation had a world completely to itself, the problem might be different. But our problem is gravely com- plex. Here are eight great powers and several times that number of lesser sovereignties, each struggling and developing on the theory that they severally are sub- stantially alone in the world. They recognize the exist- ence of other powers through contracts called treaties. The morality of these treaties is historically shown to be little better than the '4ionor" which exists amongst bul- lies and thieves. They are necessarily interpreted by their makers and not by an impartial court, because there is no such court, and can be none under the existing doctrine of sovereignty. The nations have, therefore, lived internationally in an order where the hazard was greater than the normal hazards of life and business. It could hardly be called a hazard at all ; it was a certainty. This world struggle was inevitable, unless radical reorganizations of international relations were agreed to, unless some plan of interna- tional insurance could be established. Little, however, was done. The god of unconditioned sovereignty was everywhere worshipped. Nationality impinged on na- tionality. The world grew smaller. The international impact grew heavier. Germans saw the significance of the doctrine of sovereignty in the time of the Great Frederick. They began to get ready. The other Euro- pean nations did not see the true significance of the situation and prepared only half-heartedly for a struggle upon which they never really expected to enter. No nation took the lead in a movement to insure the perpetuity of all through assured peace for all. Ger- many, logically following the doctrine of sovereignty, deliberately prepared to impose her civilization on the entire world. The other nations built up the elaborate fabric of their peaceful purposes without adequate prep- arations to defend that structure by force -on the one hand or a program of world-co-oi>eration to preserve it on the other. Germany aimed to insure herself by her might, which spelled world dominion and could mean nothing else. The other nations denied any ambition for world do- minion and at the same time utterly neglected to protect their integrity through co-operation. The so-called Allies have neither lived up to the logic of unconditioned sov- ereignty nor prepared the world for its opposite through international insurance. The government at Washington, whatever else it is, is a great insurance company whose chief function is to guarantee the peace and integrity of the States. It follows precisely the principles which underlie all sound insurance. Why do California and New York exist as commonwealths to-day? Would they probably exist but for the Federal Union? Have they lost any dignity or power or happiness or peace because they have duly subscribed to the great insurance compact of 1789? Would the nations fare differently if a like compact were made under the Federation of the World? When someone remarks that we must travel a long way forivard before we reach such a federation, it be- comes pertinent to reply that we have traveled a long way backward within fourteen months and at infinite cost. If the constructive forces of the world, as they existed on August 1, 1914, could have been brought into co-operation, if the bigotry that skulks behind what we call patriotism could have been exorcised, if human rights and not national sovereignty could have been made the supreme purpose of civil society, the distance which then separated us from a condition of international civili- zation and world peace, real peace, lasting peace, would have been shorter than that already measured in the existing plunge towiard chaos. The world was so led that it stupidly chose to plunge toward chaos. The man who doesn 't insure his life and his property and his business we rate as stupid. Sovereignty is to every citizen a menace as real as that of the vicissitudes of life, an enemy as certain and cruel in its average ac- tion as human mortality. Yet self-governing men, men who otherwise think and look facts in the face, make little or no provision against its operation. In seeking for a word which describes the condition of mind of the aver- age citizenship of the world in its attitude toward sover- eignty, that word *^ stupid'' fits better than any word I know. For the common man to allow his governments to force him to kill and be killed for no sufficient reason is stupid ; for him to become obsessed with the idea that the peoples of other nations want to wrong him is stupid ; for him to believe that it is his duty to slay his fellows and destroy their property is stupid; for him to raise up sons with infinite pains and at heavy cost to have those sons fed to cannon is stupid; for him not to see through the designs or unconscious errors of politicians and rulers is stupid; for him to have followed leaders so wicked or so blind that they have led him to a shambles was stupid. It was stupid — because there is nothing about this war that suggests Thermopylae or Tours or Lexington or Gettysburg, where resistance was right- eously made to tyranny or error. This war is the logical resultant of forces that were perfectly open in their operation and perfectly certain in their issue. The states- men of the world could not or did not rise above the provincialism of nationality. Remorselessly or blindly or stupidly — some will say deliberately — they drove the great machines of modern civilization into each other, head on. We have on our Northern border all the ele- ments of a similar collision. Four thousand miles of frontier separate us from Canada. Along that entire front there has been no fort and on the great inland seas which lie between no ship of war, for well nigh a century. There is nowhere in the world a more splendid people than these Canadian neighbors. For us and them to drift along in a sort of fool's para- dise with no strong and definite arrangement which will insure them and their sons and us and our sons against the insanity of war is stupid. We have been lucky for a hundred years because nothing has disturbed our dreaming, but we are infinitely stupid, now that we real- ize the brutal possibilities of present-day civilization, in continuing conditions fraught with such hideous consequences. It would be as savage and as monstrous for us to fight with Canada as it would be for California to fight with Oregon. There is no natural reason why we should — and yet, who shall say what may happen while they assert and we assert that our rights as nations are paramount to our several rights as individuals, as human beings? Consideration of our relations with Canada brings us squarely up against the question of our own condition in our relations to international problems. There are two types of international peace insurance, one already established, the other to be established : First. Peace insurance based on might,— ex- pressed generally in a great standing army and a powerful navy. Second. Peace insurance based on a League or Fed- eration, to which the nations shall have dele- gated such authority as will enable it to enforce peace internationally. The first type of insurance may be called the Euro- 8 pean plan, adopted practically by all the great trans- Atlantic powers, and most perfectly exemplified by Germany. What sort of peace that plan produces Europe now teaches us. What the system ultimately leads to Shakespeare expresses through Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida, when he says: **Then everything includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power. Must make, perforce, an universal prey, And, last, eat up himself.^' The second type of insurance may be called the American plan and is exemplified in the Federation formed by the Thirteen Colonies in 1789. What sort of peace insurance the American plan produces the status of the States under the Federal Union shows. What it shall lead to depends largely on what we do in the near future. We are now at the parting of the ways. We are living by the American plan ; as a people we are acting as we would act if the federation of the world were already an accomplished fact. As a government, on the other hand, we are acting on the European plan, asserting our rights under so-called international law, and threatening to establish those rights by force. We may now and then establish our rights internationally by what appears to be sheer moral force ; but the man is blind who does not see that in a direct issue, when nations believe their ex- istence is imperilled, the only law is still the law of might. Believing, on the other hand, that the time has come for the world to abandon the European plan, and believing that in our own Federal Government we have a model for the government of the world, we have taken .no very seri- ous steps to establish an adequate League or Federation of the Nations, without which, government ally, we are as 9 much ahead of our age as Eoger Williams was ahead of his age, and incidentally perhaps we are inviting the same fate. We, therefore, even more than the nations op- posing Germany, have neither lived up to the doctrine of sovereignty nor to the doctrine of human brotherhood. You have welcomed us to an Exposition which re- flects the civilization of the twentieth century at its zenith — possibly it reflects civilization at the highest point it ever reached — if we consider its relation to the forces of nature and its triumph over some of the mysteries which she has until recently so sedulously and so suc- cessfully kept from us. But the tragedy of it! You show us these wonders wrought out for the comfort and happiness of mankind, and behold! the wonders have become monsters, because these master achievements have been perverted into implements of wholesale mur- der. Something was lacking in the plan. What was it! The world plan which this Exposition represents lacked the principle for which this Congress stands. The Exposition represents efficiency without conscience; progress without order; power without responsibility. It represents the 'work of men far advanced into the unknown who have since become confused and instead of fighting a common enemy have fallen upon each other. They advanced so eagerly that they lost touch, they lost sympathy — they did not see the whole problem. Insurance, on the other hand, represents an intelli- gent appreciation of the whole problem. Its members do not become confused and fight each other; they help each other. In its efficiency there is the conscience of just dealing, which, outside the New England con- science, is perhaps the best of all consciences. In its progress there is the strength of an elbow touch so wide that disorder cannot break in; its power lies in regulation and order and responsibility and international democracy. 10 This Exposition represents the doctrine of sover- eignty. This Congress represents the doctrine of de- mocracy. In our adherence as a people to the doctrine of sovereignty, we are not only blind but inconsistent and very nearly unfaithful to our own political creed. In 1776 our fathers signed a declaration of principles as well as a declaration of rights and of independence. They declared their adherence to the self-evident truth that all inien— not citizens of the United States alone, but all men— are created equal, and that they are en- dowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, etc. That all men are created equal is not, of course, wholly true; but, in so far as it is sound and in so ,far as it is unsound, it is equally sound and unsound everj^where. Its error does not follow national lines. In international relations we, with all other republics, constantly forget that men are men whatever their coun- try, that the demos is the demos whatever its nationality. A democracy which is democratic within its own geo- graphic limits only and treats all other peoples claiming other allegiance as beyond the pale, is provincial and selfish and has missed the real meaning of the doctrine which Jefferson penned and the fathers signed. There are some twenty-four republics in the world. Most of them are truly democratic internally. All of them are arbitrary, autocratic and undemocratic in their relations with each other. Under the doctrine of un- conditioned sovereignty democracy dies at the frontier of every republic. The only true business democracies in the world to-day, democracies which do not change their principles at any geographic frontier and have themselves no fron- tiers, are the great insurance corporations whose mem- bership is world-wide and so soundly and. so democrati- cally related that no dynastic ambition, no claim of sover- 11 eignty, can at all change their beneficent purpose or materially modify their humane achievements. This is the doctrine that will be preached and preached and preached in the several sessions of this Congress. Never more than now has the world needed to heed its truth. Because its precepts have not been followed, governments are tottering, millions of men have already died, millions of women have been crucified, billions of dollars have been squandered. Civilization based on the doctrine of sovereignty has failed. It is time to adopt a new program. The old program is damned to all eternity. That new program must rest upon what Burns had in his mind when he wrote ^^A man's a man for a' that.'' The thing of supreme value in this world is human life — ^not because it is stamped American or English or Russian or French, but because it is in itself the sum of all values, without which no other thing has any value. Nationality is the expression of a fugitive con- dition; in sociology it is what Burns also had in mind when he said: **The rank is but the guinea stamp." Change one word in that line and without changing its philosophy you have the whole doctrine of this Con- gress, the doctrine which alone can restore and keep the world's peace. Change the word ^^rank" to the word ^'nation", and the line reads : **The Nation's but the guinea stamp." Insurance may be primarily a device for the pro- tection of lifCj property and business; but it deals with and is faithful to the principle of race solidarity, and 12 thereby has become a practical and powerful leader amongst the forces which seek the ultimate realization of the prayer and prophecy which closes Burns 's immor- tal declaration of the rights of humanity : ^ * Then let us pray that come it may, And come it will for a' that, * * # # # # 4f: That man to man the warld o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that/' 13 Caylord Bros. Makers Syracus«. N. Y. PAT. JAN. 21. 1908 YC 23423, '>S33G9 UNIVERSriY OF CAUFORNIA UBE^ARY