Essays in Rebellion Part 14

It is true that the education has not gone far. The Government spends less than twopence per head upon it; less than a tenth of what it spends on the army. Only ten per cent. of the males in India can write or read; only seven per thousand of the females. But, thanks chiefly to Macaulay's conviction that if everyone were like himself the world would be happy and glorious, there are now about a million Indians (or one in three hundred) who can to some extent communicate with each other in English as a common tongue, and there are some thousands who have become acquainted with the history of English liberties, and the writings of a few political thinkers. Together with railways, the new common language has increased the sense of unity; the study of our political thinkers has created the sense of freedom, and the knowledge of our history has shown how stern and prolonged a struggle may be required to win that possession which our thinkers have usually regarded as priceless. "The one great contribution of the West to the Indian Nationalist movement,"

writes Mr. Ramsay Macdonald with emphasis, "is its theory of political liberty."

It is a contribution of which we may well be proud--we of whom Wordsworth wrote that we must be free or die. Whatever the failures of unsympathetic self-esteem, Macaulay's spirit could point to this contribution as sufficient counterbalance. From the works of such teachers as Mill, Cobbett, Bagehot, and Morley, the mind of India has for the first time derived the principles of free government. But of all its teachers, I suppose the greatest and most influential has been Burke. Since we wished to encourage the love of freedom and the knowledge of const.i.tutional government, no choice could have been happier than that which placed the writings and speeches of Burke upon the curriculum of the five Indian universities. Fortunately for India, the value of Burke has been eloquently defined by Lord Morley, who has himself contributed more to the future const.i.tutional freedom of India than any other Secretary of State. In one pa.s.sage in his well-known volume on Burke, he has spoken of his "vigorous grasp of ma.s.ses of compressed detail, his wide illumination from great principles of human experience, the strong and masculine feeling for the two great political ends of Justice and Freedom, his large and generous interpretation of expediency, the morality, the vision, the n.o.ble temper." Writing of Burke's three speeches on the American War, Lord Morley declares:

"It is no exaggeration to say that they compose the most perfect manual in our literature, or in any literature, for one who approaches the study of public affairs, whether for knowledge or for practice. They are an example without fault of all the qualities which the critic, whether a theorist or an actor, of great political situations should strive by night and day to possess."

For political education, one could hardly go further than that. "The most perfect manual in any literature"--let us remember that decisive praise. Or if it be said that students require style rather than politics, let us recall what Lord Morley has written of Burke's style:

"A magnificence and elevation of expression place him among the highest masters of literature, in one of its highest and most commanding senses."

But it is frequently a.s.serted that what Indian students require is, not political knowledge, or literary power, but a strengthening of character, an austerity both of language and life, such as might counteract the natural softness, effeminacy, and the tendency to deception which Macaulay and Lord Curzon so freely informed them of. For such strengthening and austerity, on Lord Morley's showing, no teacher could be more serviceable than Burke:

"The reader is speedily conscious," he writes, "of the precedence in Burke of the facts of morality and conduct, of the many interwoven affinities of human affection and historical relation, over the unreal necessities of mere abstract logic....

Besides thus diffusing a strong light over the awful tides of human circ.u.mstance, Burke has the sacred gift of inspiring men to use a grave diligence in caring for high things, and in making their lives at once rich and austere."

Here are the considered judgments of a man who, by political experience, by literary power, and the study of conduct, has made himself an unquestioned judge in the affairs of State, in letters, and in morality.

As examples of the justice of his eulogy let me quote a few sentences from those very speeches which Lord Morley thus extols--the speeches on the American War of Independence. Speaking on Conciliation with the Colonies in 1775, Burke said:

"Permit me to observe that the use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be conquered.... Terror is not always the effect of force, and an armament is not a victory."

Speaking of the resistance of a subject race to the predominant power, Burke ironically suggested:

"Perhaps a more smooth and accommodating spirit of freedom in them would be more acceptable to us. Perhaps ideas of liberty might be desired more reconcilable with an arbitrary and boundless authority. Perhaps we might wish the colonists to be persuaded that their liberty is more secure when held in trust for them by us (as their guardians during a perpetual minority) than with any part of it in their own hands."

And, finally, speaking of self-taxation as the very basis of all our liberties, Burke exclaimed:

"They (British statesmen) took infinite pains to inculcate as a fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the people must in effect themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist."

It was the second of these n.o.ble pa.s.sages that I once heard declaimed on the sea-beach at Madras to an Indian crowd by an Indian speaker, who, following the precepts of Lord Morley, then Secretary of State for India, had made Burke's speeches his study by day and night. That phrase describing the ruling Power as the guardians of a subject race during a perpetual minority has stuck in my mind, and it recurred to me when I read that Burke's writings and speeches had been removed from the University curriculum in India. Carlyle's _Heroes_ and Cowper's _Letters_ have been subst.i.tuted--excellent books, the one giving the Indians in rather portentous language very dubious information about Odin, Luther, Rousseau, and other conspicuous people; the other telling them, with a slightly self-conscious simplicity, about a melancholy invalid's neckcloths, hares, dog, and health. Such subjects are all very well, but where in them do we find the magnificence and elevation of expression, the sacred gift of inspiring men to make their lives at once rich and austere, and the other high qualities that Lord Morley found in "the most perfect manual in any literature"? Reflecting on this new decision of the Indian University Council, or whoever has taken on himself to cut Burke out of the curriculum, some of us may find two pa.s.sages coming into the memory. One is a pa.s.sage from those very speeches of Burke, where he said, "To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we were obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself."

The other is Biglow's familiar verse, beginning "I du believe in Freedom's cause, Ez fur away ez Payris is," and ending:

"It's wal enough agin a king To dror resolves an' triggers,-- But libbaty's a kind o' thing Thet don't agree with n.i.g.g.e.rs."

XXI

UNDER THE YOKE

If ever there was a nation which ought to have a fellow-feeling with subject races it is the inhabitants of England. I have heard of no land so frequently subjected, unless, perhaps, it were northern India.

Long-headed builders of long tombs were subjected by round-headed builders of round tombs; and round-headed builders of tombs were subjected by builders of Stonehenge; for five hundred years the builders of Stonehenge were a subject race to Rome; Roman-British civilisation was subjected to barbarous Jutes and heavy Saxons; Britons, Jutes and Saxons became the subjects of Danes; Britons, Jutes, Saxons and Danes lay as one subject race at the feet of the Normans. As far as subjection goes, English history is like a house that Jack built:

"This is the Norman n.o.bly born, Who conquered the Dane that drank from a horn.

Who harried the Saxon's kine and corn, Who banished the Roman all forlorn, Who tidied the Celt so tattered and torn,"

and so on, back to the prehistoric Jack who built the long house of the dead.

Our later subjections to the French, the Scots, the Dutch and the Germans, who have in turn ruled our courts and fattened on their favours, have not been so violent or so complete; but for some centuries they depressed our people with a sense of humiliation, and they have left their mark upon our national character and language.

Indeed, our language is a synopsis of conquests, a stratification of subjections. We can hardly speak a sentence without recording a certain number of the subject races from which we have sprung. The only one ever left out is the British, and that survives in the names of our most beautiful rivers and mountains. It is true that all of our conquerors have come to stay--all with the one exception of Rome. We have never formed part of a distant and foreign empire except the Roman. Even our Norman invaders soon regarded our country as the centre of their power and not as a province. Nevertheless, nearly every strand of our interwoven ancestry has at one time or other suffered as a subject race, and perhaps from that source we derive the quality that Mark Twain perceived when at the Jubilee Procession of our Empire he observed, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Perhaps also for this reason we raise the Recessional prayer for a humble and contrite heart, lest we forget our history--lest we forget.

We pray in contrite humility to remember, but we have forgotten. In speaking of Finland's loss of liberty, Madame Malmberg, the Finnish patriot, once said that in old days, when their liberties seemed secure, the Finns felt no sympathy with other nationalities--the Poles, the Georgians, or the Russians themselves--struggling to be free. They did not know what it was to be a subject race. They could not realise the degrading loss of nationality. They were soon to learn, and they know now. We have not learned. We have forgotten our lesson. That is why we remain so indifferent to the cry of freedom, and to the suppression of nationality all over the world.

Let us for a moment imagine that something terrible has happened; that our statesmen have at last got their addition sums in Dreadnoughts right, and have learned by hard experience that we have less than two to one and therefore are wiped from the seas; or that our august Russian ally, using Finland as a base, has established an immense naval port in the Norwegian fiords and thence poured the Tartar and Cossack hordes over our islands. Let us imagine anything that might leave some dominant Power supreme in London and reduce us for the sixth or seventh time to the position of a subject race. Where should we feel the difference most? Let us suppose that the conqueror retained our country as part of his empire, just as we have retained Ireland, India, Egypt, and the South-African Dutch republics; or as Russia has retained Poland, Georgia, Finland, the Baltic Provinces and Siberia, and is on the point of retaining Persia; or as Germany has retained Poland and Alsace-Lorraine; or as France has retained Tonquin and an enormous empire in north-west Africa and is on the point of retaining Morocco; or as Austria has retained Bohemia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and many other nationalities, and is constantly plotting to retain Albania. Let us only judge of what might happen to us by observing what is actually happening in other instances at this moment.

The dominant Power--let us call it Germany for short and merely as an ill.u.s.tration--would at once appoint its own subjects to all the high positions of State. England would be divided into four sections under German Governor-Generals and there would be German Governor-Generals in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Germans would be appointed as District Commissioners to collect revenue, try cases, and control the police. A Council of Germans, with a proportion of nominated British lords and squires, would legislate for each province, and perhaps, after a century or so, as a great concession a small franchise might be granted, with special advantages to Presbyterians, so as to keep religious differences alive, the German Governor-General retaining the right to reject any candidate and to veto all legislation. A German Viceroy, surrounded by a Council in which the majority was always German, and the chief offices of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Commander-in-Chief of the army, and so forth, were always filled by Germans, would hold a Court at Windsor or at Balmoral in summer and Buckingham Palace in winter. We should have to undertake the support of Lutheran Churches for the spiritual consolation of our rulers. We should be given a German Lord Mayor. German would be the official language of the country, though interpreters might be allowed in the law courts. Public examinations would be conducted in German, and all candidates for the highest civilian posts would have to go to Germany to be educated. The leading newspapers would be published in German and a strict censors.h.i.+p established over the _Times_ and other rebellious organs. The smallest criticism of the German Government would be prosecuted as sedition. English papers would be confiscated, English editors heavily fined or imprisoned, English politicians deported to the Orkneys without trial or cause shown. Writers on liberty, such as Milton, Wordsworth, Sh.e.l.ley, Burke, Mill, and Lord Morley would be prohibited. The works of even German authors like Schiller, Heine, and Karl Marx would be forbidden, and a pamphlet written by a German and founded on official evidence to prove the injustice and tortures to which the English people were exposed under the German system of police would be destroyed. On our railways English gentlemen and ladies would be expected to travel second or third cla.s.s, or, if they travelled first, they would be exposed to the Teutonic insolence of the dominant race, and would probably be turned out by some German official. Public buildings would be erected in the German style. English manufacturers and all industries would be hampered by an elaborate system of excise which would flood our markets with German goods. Such art as England possesses would disappear. Arms would be prohibited. The common people, especially in Scotland and the North-West Provinces, would be encouraged to recruit in the native army under the command of German officers, and the Scottish regiments would maintain their proud tradition; but no British officer would be allowed to rise above the rank of sergeant-major. The Territorials would be disbanded. The Boy Scouts would be declared seditious a.s.sociations. If a party of German officers went fox-shooting in Leicesters.h.i.+re, and the villagers resisted the slaughter of the sacred animal, some of the leading villagers would be hanged and others flogged during the execution. Our National Anthem would begin: "G.o.d save our German king! Long live our foreign king!" The singing of "Rule, Britannia," would be regarded as a seditious act.

I am not saying that so complete a subjection of England is possible. We may believe that in a powerful, wealthy, proud, and highly civilised country like ours it would not be possible. All I say is that, if we a.s.sume it possible, something like that would be our condition if we were treated by the dominant Power as we ourselves are treating other races which were powerful, wealthy, proud and, in their own estimation, highly civilised when we invaded or otherwise obtained the mastery over them. I am only trying to suggest to ourselves the mood and feelings of a subject race--the humble and contrite heart for which we pray as G.o.d's ancient sacrifice. If we wish to be done by as we do, these are some incidents in the government we should wish to lie under when we were reduced beneath a dominant Power, as India and Egypt are reduced beneath ourselves. I have not taken the worst instances of the treatment of subject races I could find. I have not spoken of the old methods of partial or complete extermination whether in Roman Europe or Spanish and British Americas; nor have I spoken of the partial or complete enslavement of subject races in the Dutch, British, Portuguese, Belgian, and French regions of Africa. I have not dwelt upon the hideous scenes of ma.s.sacre, torture, devastation and l.u.s.t which I have myself witnessed in Macedonia under the Turks, and in the Caucasus, the Baltic Provinces, and Poland under Russia when subject races attempted some poor effort to regain their freedom. I have not even mentioned the old ruin and slaughter of Ireland, or the latest murder of a nation in Finland or in Persia. I have taken my comparison from the government of subject races at what is probably its very best; at all events, at what the English people regard as its best--the administration of India and Egypt--and we have no reason to suppose that Germany would administer England better if we were a subject race under the German Empire.

If Germany did as well she would have something to say for herself. She might lay stress on the great material advantages she would bestow on this country. Such industries as she left us she would reorganise on the Kartel system. She would much improve our railways by unifying them as a State property, so that even our South-Eastern trains might arrive in time. She would overhaul our education, ending the long wrangle between religious sects by abolis.h.i.+ng all distinctions. She would erect an entirely new standard of knowledge, especially in natural science, chemistry, and book-keeping. She would inst.i.tute special cla.s.ses for prospective chauffeurs and commercial travellers. She would abolish Eton, Harrow, and the other public schools, together with the college buildings of Oxford and Cambridge, converting them all into barracks, while the students would find their own lodgings in the towns and stand on far greater equality in regard to wealth. German is not a very beautiful language, but it has a literature, and we should have the advantage of speaking German and learning something of German literature and history. Great improvements would be introduced in sanitation, town-planning, and munic.i.p.al government, and we should all learn to eat black bread, which is much more wholesome than white.

In a large part of the country peasant proprietors would be established, and the peasants as a whole would be far better protected against the exactions and petty tyranny of the landlords than they are at present.

Under the pressure of external rule, all the troublesome divisions and small animosities between English, Scots, Irish, and Welsh would tend to disappear, though the Germans might show special favour to the Scots and Presbyterians generally on the principle of "Divide and Rule," just as we show special favour to the Mohammedans of India. We should, of course, be compelled to contribute to the defence of the Empire, and should pay the expenses of the large German garrisons quartered in our midst and of the German cruisers that patrolled our sh.o.r.es. But as we should have no fleet of our own to maintain, and in case of foreign aggression could draw upon the vast resources of the German Empire, our taxation for defence would probably be considerably reduced from its present figure of something over seventy millions a year.

That, I think, is an impartial statement of the reasons which some dominant Power, such as Germany, might fairly advance in defence of her rule if we were included in a foreign Empire. At all events, they very closely resemble the reasons we put forward to glorify the services of our Empire to India and Egypt. I suppose also that the Fabians among ourselves would support the foreign domination, just as their leaders supported the overthrow of the Boer republics, on the ground that larger states bring the Fabian--the very Fabian--revolution nearer. And, perhaps, the Social Democrats would support it by an extension of their theory that the social millennium can best arrive out of a condition of general enslavement. The Cosmopolitans would support it as tending to obliterate the old-fas.h.i.+oned distinctions of nationality that impede the unity of mankind, while a host of German pedants and poets would pour out libraries in praise of the Anglo-Teutonic races united at last in irresistible brotherhood and standing ready to take up the Teuton's burden imposed upon the Blood by the special ordinance of the Lord.

The parallel is false, some may say; the conditions are not the same; in spite of all material and educational advantages, we in England would never endure such subjection; we should live in a state of perpetual rebellion; our troops would mutiny; much as we all detest a.s.sa.s.sination, the lives of our foreign Governors would hardly be secure. I agree. I hope there is implanted in all of us such a hatred of subjection that we should conspire to die rather than endure it. I only wish to suggest the mood of a subject race, under the best actual conditions of subjection--to suggest that other peoples may possibly feel an equal hatred toward foreign domination--and to supply in ourselves something of that imaginative sympathy which Madame Malmberg tells us the Finns only learned after their own freedom had been overthrown.

We feel at once that something far more valuable than all the material, or even moral, advantages which a dominant Power might give us would be involved in the overthrow of our independent nationality. That something is nationality itself. But what is nationality? Like the camel in the familiar saying, it is difficult to define, but we know it when we see it. Or, as St. Augustine said of Time, "I know what it is when you don't ask me." Nationality implies a stock or race, an inborn temperament, with certain instincts and capacities. It is the slow production of forgotten movements and obscure endeavours that cannot be repeated or restored. It is sanctified by the long struggles of growth, and by the affection that has gathered round its history. If nationality has kindled and maintained the light of freedom, it is illuminated by a glory that transforms mountain poverty into splendour. If it has endured tyranny, its people are welded together by a common suffering and a common indignation. At the lowest, the people of the same nationality have their customs, their religion, generally their language--that most intimate bond--and always the familiar outward scenes of earth and water, hill and plain and sky, breathing with memories. Nationality enters into the soul of each man or woman who possesses it. Mr.

Chesterton has well described it as a sacrament. It is a silent oath, an invisible mark. Life receives from it a particular colour. It is felt as an influence in action and in emotion, almost in every thought. In freedom it sustains conduct with a proud a.s.surance of community and reputation. Under oppression, it may fuse all the pleasant uses of existence into one consuming impulse of fanatical devotion. It has inspired the n.o.blest literature and all the finest forms of art, and chiefly in countries where the flame of nationality burned strong and clear has the human mind achieved its greatest miracles of beauty, thought, and invention.

Nationality possesses that demonic and incalculable quality from which almost anything may be expected in the way of marvel, just as certain spiky plants that have not varied winter or summer for years in their habitual unattractiveness will suddenly shoot up a ten-foot spire of radiant blossom abounding in honey. Partly by nationality has the human race been preserved from the dreariness of ant-like uniformity and has retained the power of variation which appears to be essential for the highest development of life. With what pleasure, during our travels, we discover the evidences of nationality even in such things as dress, ornaments, food, songs, and dancing; still more in thought, speech, proverbs, literature, music, and the higher arts! With what regret we see those characteristics swept away by the advancing tide of dominant monotony and Imperial dullness! The loss may seem trivial compared with the loss of personal or political freedom, but it is not trivial. It is a symptom of spiritual ruin. How deep a degradation of intellect and personality is shown by the introduction of English music-hall songs among a highly poetic people like the Irish, or by the vulgar corruption of India's superb manufactures and forms of art under the blight of British commerce! You know the Persian carpets, of what magical beauty they are in design and colour. When I was on the borders of Persia in 1907 the Persian carpet merchants were selling one kind of carpet with a huge red lion being shot by a sportsman in the middle of it to please the English, and another kind decorated with a Parisian lady in a motor to please the Russians. From those carpets one may realise what the English Government's acquiescence in the subjection of Persia really involves.

No subject race can entirely escape this degradation. No matter how good the government may be or how protective, all forms of subjection involve a certain loss of manhood. Under an alien Power the nature of the subject nationality becomes soft and dependent. Instead of working out its own salvation, it looks to the government for direction or a.s.sistance in every difficulty. Atrophy destroys its power of action. It loses the political sense and grows incapable of self-help or self-reliance. The stronger faculties, if not extinguished, become mutilated. In Ireland, even to-day, we see the result of domination in the continued belief that the British Government which has brought the country to ruin possesses the sole power of restoring it to prosperity.

In India we see a people so enervated by alien and paternal government that they have hardly the courage or energy to take up such small responsibilities in local government as may be granted them. This is what a true Liberal statesman, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, meant by his wise saying that self-government is better than good government. And it might be further ill.u.s.trated by the present condition of the largest subject race in the world--the race of women--to whom all the protective legislation and boasted chivalry and lap-dog petting, fondly supposed to be lavished upon them by men, are not to be compared in personal value with just the small right to a voice in the management of their own and national affairs.

Such mutilation of character is the penalty of subjection at its best.

At its worst the subject race pays the penalty in tormenting rancour, undying hatred, and the savage indignation that tears the heart. It may be said that indignation is at all events better than loss of manhood, and again I agree. Where there is despotism it may well be that for this reason a cruel despotism is less harmful than a paternal despotism--less harmful, I mean, to the individual soul, which is the only thing that counts. But the soul that is choked by hatred and torn by indignation is not at its best. Its functions go wrong, its sight is distorted, its judgment perturbed, its sweetness poisoned, its laughter killed. The whole being suffers and is changed. For a time it may blaze with a fierce, a magnificent intensity. But we talk of a "consuming rage," and the phrase is terribly true. Rage is a consuming fire, always a glorious fire, a wild beacon in the night of darkness, but it consumes to ashes the nature that is its fuel.

Loss of manhood or perpetual rancour--those are the penalties imposed on the soul of a subject race. Nor does the dominant race escape scot free.

Far from it. On the whole, it suffers a deeper degradation. A dominant race, like a domineering person, is always disagreeable and always a bore, and the nearer it is to the scene of domination the more disagreeable and wearisome it becomes, just as a tyrannical man is worst at home. I have known English people start as quiet, pleasing, modest, and amiable pa.s.sengers in a P. & O. from Ma.r.s.eilles, but become less endurable every twenty-four hours of the fortnight to Bombay. There are n.o.ble and conspicuous exceptions alike in the army, the Indian Civil Service, and among the officials scattered over the Empire. But, as a rule, we may say that the worst characteristics not only of our own but of all dominant races, such as the French, Germans, and Russians, are displayed among their subject peoples. If, indeed, the subjects are on a level with spaniels that can be beaten or patted alternately and retain a constant affection and respect, the English son of squires thoroughly enjoys his position and does the beating and patting well. But it is always with a certain loss of humour and common humanity: it brings a kind of stiffness and pedantry such as Charles Lamb complained of in the old-fas.h.i.+oned type of schoolmaster. It exaggerates a sense of Heaven-born superiority which the English squire has no need to exaggerate.

I am not one of those who set out to "crab" their countrymen. We have lately had so much criticism and contempt poured upon us by more intelligent people like the Irish, the Germans, and an ex-President of the United States that sometimes I have been driven to wonder whether we may not somewhere possess some element worthy of respect. But, keeping the lash in our own discriminating hands, we should all perhaps confess that in regard to other people's feelings and ideas we are rather insensitive as a nation. This form of unimaginative obtuseness undoubtedly increased during the extension of our grip upon subject races between the overthrow of Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill and the end of the Boer War. Perhaps those fifteen years were the most entirely vulgar period of our history, and vulgarity springs from an insensitive condition of mind. It will be a terrible recompense if the price of our world-wide Empire is an Imperial vulgarity upon which the sun never sets.

There is another danger, not so subtle and pervading, but more likely to escape the notice of people who are not themselves acquainted with the frontiers of Empire. It is the production and encouragement of a set of scoundrels and wasters who trade upon our country's prestige to rob, harry, and even enslave the members of a subject race while they pose as pioneers of Empire and are held up by sentimental travellers, like Mr.

Roosevelt, as examples of toughness and courage to the victims of monotonous toil who live at home at ease. There is no call either for Mr. Roosevelt's pity or admiration. I have known those wasters well, and have studied all their tricks for turning a dirty half-crown. They enjoy more pleasure and greater ease in a day than any London shop a.s.sistant or bank clerk in a month. They take up the white man's burden and find it light, because it is the black man who carries it. Of all the impostors that nestle under our flag, I have found none more contented with their lot or more harmful to our national repute than the "toughs"

who devour our subject races and stand in photographic att.i.tudes for Mr.

Kipling to s...o...b..r over. These scoundrels and wasters are a far worse evil than most people think, for they erect a false ideal which easily corrupts youth with its attraction, and they furnish ready instruments for land-grabbers and company directors, as is too often seen in their onslaughts upon Zulus, Basutos, and other half-savage peoples whom they desire to exterminate or enslave. They are a singularly poisonous by-product of Empire, all the more poisonous for their brag; and though they belong to the cla.s.s whom their relations gladly contribute to emigrate, they are far worse employed in debauching and plundering our so-called fellow-subjects in Africa than they would be in the public-houses, gambling-dens, pigeon-shooting enclosures, workhouses, and jails of their native land. Of course, it is very useful to have dumping-grounds for our wasters, and it is pleasant to reflect upon the seven thousand miles of sea between one's self and one's worthless nephew, but a dumping-ground for nepotism can scarcely be considered the n.o.blest aim of conquest.

Why is it, then, that one nation desires to subjugate another at all?

Sometimes the object has simply been s.p.a.ce--the pressure of population upon the extent of ground. Pastoral and nomad hordes, like the "Barbarians" and Tartars, have had that object, but, as a rule, it has ended in their own absorption. The motives of the Roman Empire were strangely mixed. Plunder certainly came in; trade came in; in later times the slave-trade and the supply of corn to Rome were great incentives. The personal advantage and ambition of prominent statesmen like Sulla or Caesar were among the aims of many conquests. The extension of religion had little to do with it, for the Romans had the decency to keep their G.o.ds to themselves and never slaughtered in the name of Jove. But they were compelled to Empire by a peculiar conviction of destiny. They did not destroy or subdue other peoples so much for glory as from a sense of duty. It was their Heaven-sent mission to rule. Their poet advised other nations to occupy themselves with wisdom, learning, statuary, the arts, or what other trivialities they pleased; it was the Roman's task to hold the world in sway. To the Roman the object of Empire was Empire. It seemed to him the natural thing to conquer every other nation, making the world one Rome. That was, in fact, his true religion, and we can but congratulate him on the unshaken faith of his self-esteem. The Turk, on the other hand, who was the next Imperial race, boasted no city and no self-conscious superiority of laws or race. He subdued the nations only in the name of G.o.d, and to all who accepted G.o.d he n.o.bly extended the vision of Paradise and a complete equality of earthly squalor. The motives of mediaeval and more recent conquests were the strangest of all. They were usually dynastic. They depended on the family claim of some family man to a t.i.tle implying actual possession of another country and all its population. There was always one claimant contending against another claimant, this heir against that heir, as though the destinies of nationality could be settled by a strip of parchment or a love-affair with a princess. People grew so accustomed to this folly that even now we hardly realise its absurdity. Yet I suppose if the King of Spain left his kingdom by will to his well-beloved cousin George of England, not an English wherry would stir to take possession, and our newspapers would merely remark that there was always a strain of insanity in the Spanish branch of the Bourbons. Two hundred years ago such a will would have produced a prolonged and devastating war. Something is gained. We have eliminated royal dynasties from the motives of conquest.

In the extension and maintenance of our own Empire all previous motives have been combined. We have pleaded want of s.p.a.ce; we have sought slaves either for export or for local labour; we have sought plunder and also trade or "markets"; we have sought dumping-grounds for our wasters, and careers for our public school-boys; like the Turks and Spaniards, we have sought to promote the knowledge of G.o.d by the slaughter and enslavement of His creatures; like the Romans, we have thought it our manifest duty to paint the world red and rule it. But within the last sixty or seventy years we have added the further motive most aptly expressed by the late King Leopold of Belgium in the doc.u.ment by which he obtained his rights over the Congo: I mean "the moral and material amelioration" of the subject peoples. That was a motive unknown to the ancients, though the Romans came near it when they granted equal citizens.h.i.+p to all provincials--a measure far in advance of any concession of ours. And it was unknown to the Middle Ages, though Turks and Spaniards came near it when they destroyed the infidels for their good and opened heaven to converted slaves and corpses. To subjugate a nationality for its own moral and material advantage is something almost new in history. It sounds the true modern note. That is not a pleasant note, but it is a sign of change, an evidence of hope. In the Boer War our real objects were to paint the country red on the maps and to exploit the gold-mines. But some people said we were fighting for equal rights; some said it was to insure good treatment for the natives; some thought we were Christianising the Boers; one man told me "the Boers wanted was.h.i.+ng." Those excuses may have been false and hypocritical, but, at all events, they were tributes to virtue. They were a recognition that the old motives of Empire no longer sufficed. They exposed the hypocrites themselves to the retort of serious and innocent people: "Very well, then. If these were your motives, give equal rights, protect the natives, Christianise the Boers, wash them if you can." It is a retort against which hypocrisy cannot long stand out. It proves that a new standard of judgment is slowly forming in the world. But for this new standard, where would be the Congo agitation, or the movement against the Portuguese cocoa slavery, or such sympathy as exists with the Nationalists of India, Egypt, and Persia? When the doctrines of equal rights or even of moral and material amelioration are a.s.sumed, honesty will at last raise her protest and hypocrites be no longer allowed to reap the harvest of a quiet lie.