Your Code of Honor

By Mrs. A.J. Wilder, Mansfield, Missouri

What is your personal code of honor? Just what do you consider dishonorable or disgraceful in personal conduct? It seems to me that we had all grown rather careless in holding ourselves to any code of honor and just a little ashamed of admitting that we had such a standard. At best our rules of life were becoming a little flexible and we had rather a contemptuous memory of the knights of King Arthur’s round table who fought so often for their honor and still at times forgot it so completely, while we pitied the Pilgrim Fathers for their stern inflexibility in what they considered the right way of life.

Just now, while such mighty forces of right and wrong are contending in the world, we are overhauling our mental processes a little and finding out some curious things about ourselves. We can all think of examples of different ideas of what is dishonorable. There are the persons who strictly fulfil their given word. To them it would be a disgrace not to do as they agree, not to keep a promise, while others give a promise easily and break their word with even greater ease.

Some persons have a high regard for truth and would feel themselves disgraced if they told a lie, while others prefer a lie even tho the truth were easier.

There are persons who have no scruples to prevent them from eavesdropping, reading letters not intended for them, or any manner of prying into other person’s private affairs, and to others the doing of such things is in a manner horrifying.

There are scandal-mongers who are so eager to find and scatter to the four winds a bit of unsavory gossip that they are actually guilty in their own souls of the slips in virtue that they imagine in others, and contrasting with these are people so pureminded that they would think themselves disgraced if they entertained in their thoughts such idle gossip.

I know a woman whose standard of honor demands only, “the greatest good to the greatest number, including myself.” The difficulty with this is that a finite mind can scarcely know what is good for other persons or even one’s self.

Another woman’s code of honor is to be fair, to always give the “square deal” to the other person and this is very difficult to do because the judgment is so likely to be partial.

There is a peculiar thing about the people who hold all these differing ideas of what they will allow themselves to do. We seldom with to live up to the high standard to which we hold the other fellow. The person who will not keep his word becomes very angry if a promise to him is broken. Those who have no regard for truth, in what they say, expect that others will be truthful when talking to them. People who pry into affairs which are none of their business consider the same actions disgraceful in others and gossips think that they should be exempt from the treatment they give to other people. I never knew it to fail and it is very amusing at times to listen to the condemnation of others’ actions by one who is even more guilty of the same thing.

It does one good to adhere strictly to a rule of conduct, if that rule is what it should be. Just the exercise of the will in refusing to follow the desires, which do not conform to the standard set, is strengthening to the character, while the determination to do the thing demanded by that standard and the doing of it however difficult, is an exercise for the strengthening of the will power which is far better than anything recommended for that purpose by books.

If you doubt that it pays in cash and other material advantages to have a high code of honor and live up to it, just notice the present plight of the German government. At the beginning of the war they threw away their honor, broke their pledged word and proclaimed to the world that their written agreements were mere scraps of paper. Now when they ask for a conference to discuss a “peace by agreement,” the allies reply, in effect, “but an agreement with you would in no sense be binding upon you. We cannot trust again to your world of honor since your signed pledge is a mere ‘scrap of paper’ and your verbal promises even less.”

It is plain, then, that nations are judged by their standards of honor and treated accordingly and it is the same with individuals. We judge them by their code of honor and the way they live up to it. It is impossible to hold two standards, one for ourselves and a different one for others, for what is dishonorable in them would be the same for us and that seems in the end to be the only sure test, embracing and covering all the rest, the highest code of honor yet voiced—“Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them!”

Mrs. A.J. Wilder. "Your Code of Honor." Missouri Ruralist (October 5, 1918): 26.

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