nd
there are experts in the touching off of dynamite. When Bismarck
falsified the Ems despatch he knew exactly what its effect would be
upon the French sense of honour. But "honour" is an ambiguous word,
meaning everything, from a scrupulous regard to national obligations
freely entered upon to a mere truculent bellicosity. The honour of
nations, in the sense that nations usually fight for honour, is mere
prestige, and prestige is not much more than an acknowledgment of
formidableness. The Danes and the Dutch are honourable, but, in the
sense in which the word is ordinarily used, neither Denmark nor Holland
can afford honour. The claims of national honour, moreover, are
strangely shadowy and transitory. What seems imperatively demanded by
honour at the moment becomes insignificant later. For a number of
years the United States paid tribute to the Barbary pirates; our
citizens were sold into slavery and his Serene Majesty, the Dey of
Algiers, treated our representative in a manner which a great power
to-day would hardly adopt in an ultimatum to {198} Paraguay or San
Marino.[6] But it was not then convenient to fight and so we pocketed
our honour until a more convenient occasion. The Dey of Algiers has
long since gone to the scrap-pile of history, while the United States
remains, a respected and honourable nation.

Nations which are sure of themselves, like men who respect themselves,
are somewhat slower to resent affronts than nations which are insecure
and fearsome. In 1914 Austria was solicitous of her honour, which, she
believed, was assailed by Servia, and Russia was solicitous of hers,
for these two powers were engaged in a contest over the fears and
prepossessions of the Balkan States, and "honour" meant adherents. But
when in the same year, a Mexican government offered what was believed
to be an affront to the United States, our people were in no mood to
feel insulted. We did not need prestige. After all, questions of
honour are usually questions of interest. In the _Lusitania_
controversy, we did not receive the apologies which we believed were
due to us. But as we had no interest in fighting Germany, and as
Germany gained less from her submarine campaign than she would have
lost in a war with us, the matter was amicably, though not logically,
settled or at least postponed. Had we, however, been in a different
economic position, had a few million unemployed men been striking,
rioting and threaten