E CONF ^IC OF COLOUR W EALE ; , ; i m ' I . i ' III ,' ' '' 1 ^ 1 : . THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR THE MACMILLAN COMPANY MEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO The Threatened Upheaval throughout the World BY B. L. PUTNAM WEALE AUTHOR OF MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE; THE RESHAPING OF THE FAR EAST; THE TRUCE IN THE EAST AND ITS AFTERMATH ; THE COMING STRUGGLE IN EASTERN ASIA ; THE FORBIDDEN BOUNDARY; THE HUMAN COBWEB; ETC., ETC. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1910 Jill rigbtt reurved COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY B. LENOX SIMPSON. Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1910. J. 8. Cashing Co. Berwick St Smith Co. Norwood, MMI., U.S.A. College Library HT 53) "Die Politik is keine Wissenschaft, wie viele der Herren Professoren sich einbilden, sondern eine Kunst." Bismarck, speaking in the Reichstag on March 15, 1884. PREFACE THE writer submits these pages in the full con- sciousness that they do no more than touch on the fringe of a mighty subject. Yet because that subject world-politics and world-movements has profoundly interested him since his earliest years, he ventures to hope that in these papers some guidance may be found to a general understanding of the growing Conflict of Colour throughout the world. The subject-matter has been cast in as popular a form as possible, so that it may be easily read the more technical points being thrown into footnotes for purposes of reference. It is necessary to state that a considerable portion of these papers appeared in an abbreviated form in The World's Work in both England and America; and the writer's thanks are due to the proprietors of that journal for permission to republish his studies in their present dress. B. L. PUTNAM WEALE. PEKING, CHINA, June, 1910. vit CONTENTS PAGE GENERAL INTRODUCTION . i CHAPTER I How COLOUR DIVIDES THE WORLD OF TO-DAY ... 85 CHAPTER II THE YELLOW WORLD OF EASTERN ASIA 122 CHAPTER III THE BROWN WORLD OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE NEAR EAST 184 CHAPTER IV THE BLACK PROBLEM 228 CHAPTER V GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 264 APPENDIX I. : THE CHIEF COLONIAL POWERS AND THEIR POSSESSIONS 321 APPENDIX 1 1.: DENSITY of POPULATIONS 331 INDEX 333 IX THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR GENERAL INTRODUCTION THE task which the writer has set himself to perform in the pages that follow is at once definite and indefinite. In all matters where diligence of study and an ob- servance of facts has made it seem permissible, he has not hesitated to express himself in uncompromising terms and to draw his own very definite conclusions. 1 1 The historian Guizot (History of Civilization in France, Elev- enth Lecture) gives a singularly lucid analysis of the duties of the historical writer in the following words : "Every epoch, every historical matter, if I may so speak, may be considered under three different points of view, and imposes a triple task upon the historian. He can, nay, he should, first seek the facts themselves; collect and bring to light, without any aim than that of exactitude, all that has happened. The facts once re- covered, it is necessary to know the laws that have governed them; how they were connected; what causes have brought about those incidents which are the life of society, and propel it, by certain ways, towards certain ends. "I wish to mark with clearness and precision the difference of the two studies. Facts, properly so called, external and visible events, are the body of history; the members, bones, muscles, organs, and material elements of the past; their knowledge and description from what may be called historical anatomy. But for society, as for the individual, anatomy is not the only science. Not only do facts sub- sist, but they are connected with one another; they succeed each B I 2 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR But since in geo-politics there exists such a large num- ber of imponderables factors which, though they are not susceptible of accurate classification and estima- tion, are often more weighty than aught else in many parts of this detailed enquiry it has been necessary for him to take refuge in generalities and to evade direct deductions. This is perhaps equivalent to confessing that nothing final or decisive can be said about the very matters which are just the most interesting, and regarding which people must always be most curious. Yet though this serious limitation may be admitted as in some degree true, so clear has the conviction become in the writer's mind after an exhaustive study in one great quarter of the globe that certain forces are being inevitably ranged against one another as they have never been before, that he ventures to believe that a general consideration no matter how imperfect it may be of a subject which most intimately concerns every member of the human race, will be of very wide- spread interest. To the white races in the lands of the coloured peoples, the twentieth century, unlike all its predecessors, can only prove a century of retroaction and redemise; and it is from this point of view that the whole vast question of the conflict of colour will be considered. Though any orientation of politics based on a foregone conclusion is necessarily faulty, it is at least possible, by adopting this method, to avoid that distressing ambiguousness which, because it touches other, and are engendered by the action of certain forces, which act under the empire of certain laws. There is, in a word, an organ- isation and a life of societies, as well as of the individual. This organisation has also its science, the science of the secret laws which preside over the course of events. This is the physiology of history." GENERAL INTRODUCTION 3 on all matters in strictly qualified language, not only fails to give real guidance but actually tends to increase doubt and confusion. The time has come when facts should be boldly met when men should understand that the world, with all its inherited wisdom, is admit- tedly bewildered by being brought face to face once more with the oldest of problems the conflict between East and West. The first and main reason for this new state of affairs must be sought for solely in that vast double movement which some too confidently believe heralds the days when men will be inclined to compose their differences peacefully rather than resort to the arbitrament of war. This double movement is simply the modern growth of populations and the modern growth of real knowledge, as opposed to the old knowledge, which was so largely based on tradition and superstition and was therefore so false and so misleading; and because this movement is now so universal, it escapes the close study and attention it surely deserves. The growth of modern populations is alone porten- tous: it is not only marvellous to the statistician, but it actually means that density of population will in future decide to an ever greater extent the grand move- ments in world-politics. 1 Yet to-day, perhaps because 1 The writer is, of course, aware that there is an element of weakness in this argument, since it follows that if density of population is soon to become the determining factor in political evolution a point which he himself constantly insists upon nations which are standing still, such as France, Spain and Portugal, must sooner or later submit openly to the influence of others, who will pour in their men. This will mean war not necessarily unsuccessful to the numerically weaker nations. But to put the matter differently and to use a useful simile, Europe 4 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR they are a little weary, people are far more apt to dwell with melancholy on the solitary instance of a Euro- pean State which seems to have reached the station- ary condition France l than to reflect on the marvel may be compared to an unequal terrain on which water is steadily collecting in certain places to a greater and greater extent. An overspill is bound to occur on to the higher barren places when the level reaches a certain altitude. The greatest density of population in any European country is to-day about 600 to the square mile, in Belgium, and Belgians are already spilling into France. When Germany reaches that density a similar movement will possibly commence; and though Spain and Portugal are effectively isolated by mountain-ranges, it cannot be doubted that unless they arise from their torpor, their future is sealed. Thus we may really see one day a new infiltration of Germanic peoples over Latin Europe (with the exception of Italy), for it is impossible for populations to attain a density of 2,000 or even 1,000 to the square mile without overspilling on to more empty lands. But all this belongs to a political future too distant to be considered in any practical way to-day. A fresh mixture of Teutonic with Latin blood may cause a repetition of the history of fifteen centuries ago. 1 Alison, in his History of Europe, written more than half a century ago, has the following informing footnote on this pregnant question of French population (Vol. I., p. 119): "Now, to show the capability of the soil of a country of this description to maintain an increase of inhabitants, let us consider merely what may be raised from 40,000,000 of arable acres, little more than one half of its arable ground, and considerably less than a third of its total superficies. The average produce of arable land in all the counties of England is two quarters and five bushels to an acre M'Culloch's Statistical Account of England, p. 476. Take it as two quarters only in France, to be within the mark, and we shall have 40,000,000 acres yielding 80,000,000 quarters, which would feed 80,000,000, and that, without pressing upon the limits assigned by the physical extent of its natural capabilities to the increase of man, a hundred and twenty millions might be maintained with ease and comfort on the French territory. This calculation will excite surprise, and by many be deemed incredible: let those who are of this opinion examine GENERAL INTRODUCTION 5 of the expansion of the English, a race which in some three centuries appears to have multiplied nearly twenty- five fold. 1 When it is remembered that to-day the world and point out what is overcharged in the data on which it is founded. It leads to a conclusion of the very highest importance, and which bears with overwhelming force upon the history of the Revolution; for it shows that the French people, when that con- vulsion broke out, were far within the limits of their possible and comfortable increase; and consequently that the whole suffering which had preceded, and crimes which followed it, are nowise chargeable on Providence, but are to be exclusively ascribed to the selfishness, the vices, and the corruption of man. "Another peculiarity in the physical situation of France, both before the Revolution and at this time, is very remarkable, and de- serves to be noted, both from its important bearing on economical principles, and from rendering the dreadful devastation of the Revolution the more surprising. The agricultural population at the former period was 16,500,000, and it furnished food for 8,500,000 persons living in cities, or engaged in trade or manu- factures; at this time 22,000,000 of agriculturists, in round numbers, are engaged in raising food for 11,000,000 persons engaged in pursuits unconnected with the productive soil a quarter of grain being the average consumption of a human being for a year. This is leaving 92,000,000 acres for the support of horses, and for raising wood, vines, and butcher-meat for the use of man. If we suppose that 30,000,000 of the 76,000,000 arable acres in France are cultivated in potatoes, each acre will yield, ac- cording to M'Culloch (Commercial Diet., art. Potatoes), food for two according to Arthur Young and Newenham, for three individuals. Take it at the lowest estimate of two individuals, these 30,000,000 acres would maintain 60,000,000 more persons, or 140,000,- ooo in all; still leaving 62,000,000 acres for luxuries, roads, canals, cattle, horses, etc., for this immense population." 1 Lest exaggeration be seen in such a statement, the writer would lay the following figures before the reader. It is a well- substantiated fact that the population of England was never in excess of 2,500,000, and was often less, down to the end of the sixteenth century the Wars of the Roses having exterminated immense numbers of men who were only slowly replaced. Assum- ing that at the end of the sixteenth century the rest of the British 6 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR contains in round numbers 1,700 million people (and possibly more), and that by the end of the present century, should the present rate of increase be main- tained, that number will have grown to some 4,000 millions, the time has plainly come when the study of vital statistics and general population-movements, Isles contained 1,500,000 persons, the total population may be then set at 4,000,000. At the present moment the members of the English race may be reckoned as follows accepting as "assimilated" all sub-races in British territory such as the French in Canada and the Dutch in South Africa : (1) British Isles 45,000,000 (2) Canada 8,000,000 (3) Australasia 6,000,000 (4) South Africa 1,500,000 (5) Britis (white) in Asia, in Africa, in Atlantic islands and elsewhere scattered 1,500,000 (6) Descendants of Britons in United States (American estimates) 40,000,000 Total 102,000,000 We know that in 1752 the population of Ireland was 2,373,000: in 1841 it had grown to 8,195,000, or nearly a four-fold increase in 90 years. The Celtic race has thus proved that it can breed much faster than the Anglo-Saxon. The mixing of these two races making what may be called in a non-political sense Britons pro- duces the happiest results. 1 This is a very simple but justifiable calculation. It may be assumed that whites, yellows, browns, and blacks, in the aggregate, now increase at such a rate that the world's population doubles every 70 years. Thus by 1980 the earth should contain 3,400 millions, and twenty years later 4,000 millions. It is this vast and constant growth in populations, just as much as the rise in the standard of living, which is stimulating commerce and industry so remarkably. From now on the trade of the world should increase by leaps and bounds. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 7 instead of being entombed in the dull pages of reference-books, should be accessible to all in readable forms. For it must now be clear to every thinking man that weight of numbers, as numbers become "drilled" in- dustrially and ethically, as well as in a military sense, must soon play a much greater part in politics than here- tofore. It is this eloquent fact which already impresses the meanest Englishman when he thinks of Germany. Germany, when she fought France forty years ago, had only a slightly larger population than her western neighbour; to-day she has 25 millions more; in less than twenty years from to-day her population will be 80 millions, or twice the population of stationary France; and though even this weight of numbers may not be held sufficient to overwhelm a country justly celebrated for its resisting and recuperative powers, there must clearly be an end to the present position in Central and Western Europe when the disproportion increases to a still greater extent. It will one day be admitted that the real key to a thousand vaguely-defined problems lies in men's breed- ing capacity in their capacity to obey nature's most imperative political law, which is multiply and increase, or die. Over-population * is a shibboleth 1 Obviously over-population is something more than a mere matter of numbers, since the savage requires for his support more square miles than the civilised man needs acres, and an industrial nation can prosper in a land that produces little food or even none at all. It is only when men can neither raise food nor buy it that they must move on. In old days this produced migra- tions, or mass-movements by land; in modern days emigrations or stream-like movements over sea. Thus in very recent years we have had two remarkable instances of great streams of emi- gration setting in and then drying up. The first and capital 8 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR which only attracts the ignorant; for the expression is an absurdity, since nature will not allow the thing to stand. Yet so little have such matters been understood in the past that even that celebrated personage, Dr. Samuel Johnson, on being questioned regarding the future of Russia, a country which even in his day was mentioned as likely to become a great empire by reason of the rapid increase of its population, made the as- tounding reply that he saw no prospect of the Russians propagating more than any other nation, because " births at all times bear the same proportion to the same number of people." The unwisdom of this remark, made in a day when the science of statistics had not yet been conceived, is now being curiously illustrated all over the world; but nowhere more than in the country in question Russia where the breeding of men is going on at such a prodigious rate that, in the end, it instance, of course, is the Irish emigration to America succeeding the potato famine of 1848. Accurate statistics show that between 1851 and 1907 no fewer than 4,103,015 Irish emigrated abroad. The second and more interesting instance is that of Germany. Two generations ago hundreds of thousands of Germans began to stream across the Atlantic to the El Dorado of the United States, until it looked as if this movement would Teutonise the American Republic. But no sooner had the good effects of the Franco- Prussian War become apparent than the movement slackened. As Germany's industrialism, from the 'eighties onwards, grew by leaps and bounds, the emigration of her sons fell off more and more, until to-day it amounts to no more than some 30,000 per annum. It remains to be seen whether there is any real limit to den- sity of population in industrial countries. In agricultural re- gions the highest density is about 1,200 persons per square mile. This has been attained in three totally different regions in the West Indian island of Barbados; in Bengal; and in the Chengtu plain in the Chinese province of Szechuan. Every rood may yet have its man ! GENERAL INTRODUCTION 9 must modify the entire European situation far more than the German increase can ever do. 1 Yet though statistics have now been generally avail- able for a number of decades and their philosophy accessible to every student, it is significant that even Professor Charles H. Pearson in that informing work National Life and Character 2 in which problems very similar to the present ones are considered makes much of the fact that according to Gibbon the estimated 1 The Russian birth-rate is to-day such that, were infant mor- tality only brought as low as it is now in England, the white world might soon become all Cossack as Napoleon predicted. The net yearly increase of the population of the Russian Empire is now more than 2,500,000; and as great masses of vigorous men and women are pushed across the Ural into Siberia, there to thrive exceedingly, the birth-rate tends to expand still more. The writer was once given some remarkable figures regarding this Siberian birth-rate, which he hesitates to publish in the lack of independent confirmation; but the fact remains that by the end of the present century there should be 400,000,000 Russians I Even this immense figure will only mean a density of population equal to 50 persons per square mile of territory. 2 Professor Pearson's main argument appears in his Introduc- tion, viz. : "What we are most concerned with is not the limitation of the higher races of man to a small part of the earth; not the evolution of a new form of society an autocratic and all- pervading State, instead of a State that gave free scope to in- dividual ascendency but the question, what man himself will be- come under these changed conditions of political life, and under the influence of other changes that seem inevitable." The conclusions which Professor Pearson reaches are very pessimistic regarding the prospects of the white races. These the writer deals with in his own final chapter. It would seem that Professor Pearson gave too much weight in many parts of his inquiry to assumptions which are the assumptions of classical scholars and not those of men pursuing their inquiries from a purely politico- scientific standpoint. Already much that he wrote is hopelessly out of date. 10 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR number of subjects in all parts of the Roman Empire at the time of Claudius was 120,000,000; and that when he wrote his own work the countries included in the old empire could only claim some 200,000,000 souls, thereby tending to show that the passage of nearly a score of centuries had brought no great change. As an index to the future, however, such a method of comparison is both extremely faulty and deceptive, and is calculated to produce on the mind of the reader an entirely erroneous impression. For it should surely be noted that during a very long period after the fall of the Roman Empire the whole of Europe was in what may be called a state of solution, during which a "Law of Waste" certainly seemed in active operation. The iron Roman rule had been replaced by open lawlessness and anarchy, in which statistics have no place at all; and though with the gradual taming of the northern barbarians secular States arose, for a thousand years there was scarcely any peace from private wars, and save in fortified cities the common man remained unprotected until power was gradually centralised in the persons of monarchs, and strong military kingdoms arose. It is therefore only right to treat the entire period from the dissolution of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance and the discovery of America as one of no statistical importance as a species of interregnum during which the materials for 1 The territories included in the Roman Empire had at the time Professor Pearson wrote his work the following popula- tions: Italy, 29,000,000; France, 37,000,000; Great Britain, 33,000,000; Spain and Portugal, 21,000,000; Turkey in Europe, 15,500,000; Hungary, Dalmatia, and Bosnia, 17,250,000; Turkey in Asia, 16,000,000; North Africa, 14,000,000; total, about 202,000,000 people. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 11 the foundations of modern Europe were being slowly assembled, assorted and hammered into their required shape. Ten or twelve centuries are perhaps a somewhat long period to treat in such cavalier fashion; yet from the standpoint of the modern statistician it is impossible to consider them otherwise. Nor should it be forgotten that even after the founda- tions of modern Europe had been securely laid that is, after the historic landmark of the year 1492 brutal misgovernment, savage warfare and unchecked pesti- lence successfully foiled nature, until the vast explosions which celebrated the French Revolution throughout Europe had finally cleared the air. The downfall of Napoleon and the political settlement of 1815 may thus be said to mark the period when the value of statistics becomes thoroughly appreciable. It is not unwise to suppose that in 1815 the territories included in the most glorious period of the Roman Empire contained a population almost exactly equal to Gibbon's estimate. Thus in the last ninety-five years, in spite of the quasi- stationary condition of France, and in some degree of 1 Few people realise in these peaceful, humane, and well- ordered days, what sickness and strife once meant to Christian nations. It is customary to point to the terrible Taiping Rebel- lion in China in which too million people perished as if it were a strange visitation of Providence. Such visitations were all too common in mediaeval Europe, and even later. Leaving aside such plagues as the " Black Death," when the population of Eng- land seemed menaced with extinction, and turning to wars, it is only necessary to quote the capital instance of the ruin left in Europe by the Thirty Years' War it cost Germany four-fifths of its population. Thus Wiirtemberg, which before the war had half-a-million people, was reduced after the battle of Nordlingen to 46,000. Similarly in England the Wars of the Roses not only ruined the country, but arrested its growth for at least a century. 12 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR European Turkey and Spain during a portion of that period, it may be calculated that those numbers have approximately doubled. This gives the view which is valuable to-day. Whilst it is not necessary in this place to deal with figures relating to other regions of the world, it is quite certain that elsewhere during the nineteenth century the net gain in population has been even heavier than in the case of Europe. For purposes of comparison it is now generally assumed that blacks double their numbers in forty years; browns and yellows in sixty years; and whites in eighty years. When we consider the other part of the great movement now going on the almost universal growth of real knowledge l as opposed to knowledge largely 1 . . . "In a great and comprehensive view, the changes in every civilised people are, in their aggregate, dependent solely on three things: first, on the amount of knowledge possessed by their ablest men; secondly, on the direction which that knowledge takes, that is to say, the sort of subjects to which it refers; thirdly, and above all, on the extent to which the knowledge is diffused, and the freedom with which it pervades all classes of society. "These are the three great movers of every civilised country; and although their operation is frequently disturbed by the vices or the virtues of powerful individuals, such moral feelings correct each other, and the average of long periods remains unaffected. Owing to causes of which we are ignorant, the moral qualities do, no doubt, constantly vary; so that in one man, or perhaps even in one generation, there will be an excess of good intentions, in an- other an excess of bad ones. But we have no reason to think that any permanent change has been effected in the proportion which those who naturally possess good intentions bear to those in whom bad ones seem to be inherent. In what may be called the innate and original morals of mankind, there is, as far as we are aware, no progress. Of the different passions with which we are born, some are more prevalent at one time, some at another; but experience teaches us that, as they are always antagonistic, they GENERAL INTRODUCTION 13 based on tradition and superstition and generally incul- cated by priests we come to what is by far the most remarkable feature in the whole history of the last decades in Asia, in America, and in portions of Africa, as well as in Europe itself. Knowledge real knowledge has been lately diffused with marvellous rapidity, and darkness is everywhere giving way to light. 1 Yet though this is so, the world-influence of are held in balance by the force of their own opposition. The activity of one motive is corrected by the activity of another. For to every vice there is a corresponding virtue. Cruelty is counteracted by benevolence; sympathy is excited by suffering; the injustice of some provokes the charity of others; new evils are met by new remedies, and even the most enormous offences that have ever been known have left behind them no permanent impres- sion. The desolation of countries and the slaughter of men are losses which never fail to be repaired, and at the distance of a few centuries every vestige of them is effaced. The gigantic crimes of Alexander or Napoleon become after a time void of effect, and the affairs of the world return to their former level. This is the ebb and flow of history, the perpetual flux to which by the laws of our nature we are subject." Buckle : History of Civili- zation, Chap. IV. 1 Accepting the gospel which Buckle preached in his History of Civilization, that civilisation and culture first arose where climate and soil easiest permitted the growth of wealth Egypt, Babylonia; that it was transferred from there to the Mediterranean basin, and then on to Central and Northern Europe; that here the vigour of man exceeding the vigour of nature, it was permitted him to be- come a true master and advance farther than had been possible in any other region accepting this, surely it is an interesting spec- tacle that is now unrolled. For what do we now see ? Not only are the literate classes in Asia and Africa devouring Herbert Spencer, Hegel, and John Stuart Mill, but all the mechanical inventions of the West are being studied and applied, whilst in their leisure moments the sons of the East ponder over the works of the great European masters of comedy and pathos. Thus the East is on the highway to 14 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR this new growth, and its really vast significance are still so utterly unappreciated that the political and social unrest which this new knowledge necessarily brings in its train (in China and India, just as much as in Portugal and Spain) is attributed to the masses becoming infected with anarchistic ideas that is, to their blind devotion to destructive and not to constructive principles whereas, if the truth be known, so far from such being a true statement of the case, since masses no more than individuals do not willingly court destruction, this commotion is merely the sign that knowledge with its accompanying conviction that political salvation lies within the grasp of all is reaching the most widely- separated peoples, and therefore forcing them to refuse to accept government by a sort of half-hearted compro- mise with old-time superstition and bigotry. Though the masses may take no active part, they undoubtedly look to-day with secret approval on the actions of extremists in all lands who by the cruel use of high explosives blast away political anachronisms. They know, with the instinctive knowledge of the populace, real progress, whilst the West seems unwilling to admit that any further progress is possible. The great American inventor, Mr Edison, picturesquely designated by the daily Press as a wizard because he is wise, has quite recently been tempted to state that man has only just progressed beyond the dog-stage, and that during the next few hundred years, as he discovers the mean- ing of nature's laws and forces, he may enter into the pos- session of true knowledge, and become in the proper sense of the words a higher animal. It would be well if those who still look upon the acquirement of a mediocre knowledge of the lan- guage and literature of two ancient peoples as a complete edu- cation in itself could be made to ponder over this, and understand that their ideal is exactly similar to the old, and now discredited, Chinese ideal the learning by heart of Confucian classics and a proficiency in the wooden four-legged essay. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 15 that changes must now come; and knowing this makes them applaud the use of the world's greatest lever the lever of fear. Now, in the last analysis, it is due to science, and to the spread of scientific thought throughout the world, that such phenomenal progress has lately been made in ethical and general principles, as well as in material development. The ferment of to-day is then due to the spread of truth since science is only truth system- atised and the utter distaste which all quietist views now inspire actually makes for the increasing happiness of the entire human race. No longer will men, no matter of what colour they may be, believe in the old superstitious beliefs : no longer will they bow down to authority spiritual or temporal because it is authority. 1 They demand, and quite rightly do they demand, that such monkish nay, slavish ideas be shattered, and that henceforth mankind be governed as nearly as pos- sible on scientific principles. And it is highly significant that with this change should come a distaste for all creeds, and an increasing belief in the sufficiency of what may be called Instinctive Morality. 1 In this connection, it certainly seems doubtful whether the lead which Europe obtained over Asia several centuries ago will be permanently maintained unless the habit of attempting to reconcile antiquated superstitious beliefs with scientific dicta is abandoned. Already it can be noted in certain directions that the Japanese though accused foolishly in some quarters of " materialism," whatever that may mean are beginning to possess a distinct advantage, insomuch as they do not have to place on the same basis the Doctrine of the Trinity and such exact mathe- matical theories, as for instance, the parallelogram of forces. Before we laugh at highly-educated Hindoos and Chinese return- ing to their native lands and prostrating themselves before false gods, let us know whether our own are true. 16 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR Yet although in Europe thinking men begin to recognise that at last the downfall of dogma has come; and although there is much talk of the religion of the future as a faith which will not be racial or tribal, nor yet based on authority either spiritual or temporal in spite of this admission the rapid spread of scientific knowledge still finds the vast majority among the white races nominally committed to practices from which are spawned prejudices which should be as distasteful to a really enlightened mankind as are the crude rites of some sects of Chinese Buddhists or the unintelligible rhapsodies of the mystery-worshipping Taoists. 1 Pro- gress is in the air; superstition is no longer believed in; men are everywhere discontented; yet the old structures have been standing so long that the work of removing them can only be carried out slowly after the lapse of the very longest periods. Thus knowledge, though it has now admittedly spread far and wide, though it has accomplished much, has still an infinity of tasks to attend to; and many thousand suns must set before the work of political renovation is reasonably complete even in Europe. And this fact this stout survival of prejudice will have, as will be shown, a 1 That such remarks will sound offensive in the ears of many readers the writer well believes, but it is impossible here to refrain from expressing an opinion which will one day be very general. No one indeed who has pursued studies with a reasonably open mind can escape the belief that the vast and curious fabric which has been raised in Europe since Christianity received the official sanction of Rome, is not a whit more worthy of receiving blind homage to-day than those other fabrics raised by other priesthoods in other regions of the world. All are doubtless excellent in their way as examples of human ingenuity and credulity but they have nothing much more to recommend them. With moral codes the writer is not here concerned. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 17 most important general bearing on all political problems for many decades. Nor must it be forgotten that in Asia this spread of knowledge this conviction that humanity at last imperatively demands a new orientation of old-as-the- world facts is proceeding slowly and cannot be very much hastened; and this because of a circumstance which is something of a paradox. In Asia men have always been so close to nature that they have been crushed by her and have feared her greatly; and in their past ignorance they have found their sole relief in raising up countless idols to intercede on their behalf, and so to reduce the horrors which the uncertainty of an ever-present menace has seemed to lend to existence. The enervating climate which prevails in so great a part of this huge continent; the unequal seasons; the devastating floods; the famines; the great dreary distances which make men mad all these things taught men thousands of years ago greatly to distrust them- selves and their own limited powers, and to look with terror on this great chastising mother, whose vengeance, to their ignorant minds, knew no limits and could swallow up in a night what it had taken ten generations to evolve. Climate and environment affect man in his first stages of development far more greatly than they can affect the lower animals; for man possesses imagination. And so, no matter how much the inventions of a scien- tific age may be called into play to reinforce tropical peoples in their everlasting combat: with the exuberance of nature, in Asia very many decades must elapse before worn-out beliefs can be even partially aban- doned. Still, the progress which has been made during the last two generations is remarkable from 18 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR many points of view; and what has been already accomplished is destined to be entirely eclipsed in the near future. Education can effect greater miracles than the whole Bible records; and when Asia is as universally educated as Europe is to-day, it will be time to know that almost every old assumption regarding this great region must be modified. Gulfs which seemed un- bridgable will have been quietly bridged overnight; and thus will it come about that the dawn will find those who have not prepared themselves for such changes unable to adjust their views and still weakly talking of conspiracies and revolutions, when what they are witnessing will be nothing but the natural evolution of the human race. And yet that this strange state of affairs should exist is not surprising. Europe has always been ready to adopt the narrowest views in all matters concerning the history of its relations with Asia and Africa ; and as the years go by, and rationalism unconsciously spreads its gospel of commonsense, it becomes increasingly evident even to humble men that the rigidly conventional, or orthodox, manner of viewing world-history, and espe- cially this history of the relations of Europe with Asia and Africa, and the development of the nations which has sprung therefrom, will have to be abandoned. A strictly objective standpoint must be substituted for the old-time subjective method, which is excusable only in unenlightened peoples. Already those, who from the accident of residence in very distant regions, and their consequent detachment from old mental restraints, have seen how vast political problems, even in these artificial days, tend to work out by the play of what may be called natural forces, and not by any high-sounding GENERAL INTRODUCTION 19 decrees of rulers or any spasmodic interference by other men among these, something closely akin to amaze- ment must inevitably manifest itself whenever a close comparison is made between the political estimate based on actual experience that is, the true estimate and the conventional estimate which is spread broadcast and believed in by the outer world because it suits old pre- judices and is founded on vanity. Thus the historical importance which is to-day still attached to the exclusion of really weighty matters to insignificant feuds between the Greeks and the Persians in the pre-Christian era, as well as to the history connected with the rise of Rome (when the shores of the Mediter- ranean were merely playing the part of a cradle of civilisation, just as much for the Middle East as for the Middle West), is specially remarkable. It gives the keynote to that false manner of viewing history, and especially the history of the rise of Europe, which so greatly obscures the paramount and decisive racial influences, and which ignores vital factors that are to-day still powerfully operative. The history of the Mediterranean basin 2000 years ago is not the entire history of the civilisation of that time, as some seem to think. Confucius had been teaching for many years before Athens and Sparta were even mud vil- lages; and in those early days the difference between the Mediterranean races and the so-called Orientals of the Nearer East was so small that it needed political rivalries to keep them asunder and to prevent the types from fusing. Nothing occurred during this period which, had it happened differently, would have changed the destinies of Europe. Yet those who gain their historical inspiration from 20 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR such politically misleading works as Creasy's Decisive Battles of the World no doubt still believe in some dull way that Marathon, in which the loss of the Athenians amounted to 192 men, actually saved Europe from Asia. Indeed, this statement is made in many most serious treatises. Marathon, according to the ingenuous class of investigators who still are the teachers of the youth of Europe, was a contest in which "the noblest of causes was at stake and the interest of the world's history hung trembling in the balance. Oriental des- potism was on one side, a world united under one sovereign lord, the world of Asiatics whose prayer and ideal was a good master. On the other was the Greek, the Athenian, whose interest bade him cry: 'No master ! Liberty at any price is itself the highest good/ " ' When the minds of reasonably intelligent youths are still fed on such stuff, it may be counted small wonder that, in spite of the vast spread of knowledge in Europe during the nineteenth century, Asia of the twentieth century should still be so misjudged, the politics of that region so misapprehended, and bigotry and prejudice still so much to the fore. Such statements as the one quoted besides ignoring the vital fact that in the formative period of the white races single contests could have no abiding results start with an untrue assumption, and can therefore only be false in other particulars. For liberty, as it was understood in those too-celebrated republics of Athens and Sparta, meant abject slavery to the vast mass of the population - slavery every whit as cruel as any in the Southern States of America Union before the War of Liberation; 1 This passage is extracted from a reputable English history. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 21 and what the Athenians were continually and des- perately fighting for in all their political contests was nothing better than the aristocratic principle. In neither of these two republics did the freemen ever exceed twenty thousand, whilst the slaves ran into hundreds of thousands, and were used just as the slaves of Asiatics were used. Thus the Greek republics were simply cities in which a certain portion of the inhab- itants, little qualified to exercise them, had acquired exclusive privileges, while they kept the great body of their brethren in a state of abject servitude. 1 Even the philosophers of this high antiquity, in their speculations concerning the perfect republic, could not extend their ideas beyond a small territory ruled by a single city, in which the great body of the people had no rights at all. Their very intellectualism was thus an exotic growth, and forced to bloom as in a hot-house. The cramping influences which this narrow intellectualism has exerted in certain ways on the European mind is to-day as evident as it was hundreds of years ago : and the at- tention still given to the insignificant history of these peoples is the final proof that rationalism has still many victories to win. Marathon and Salamis were of no more real consequence to Europe than were the con- quests of Alexander to India, Persia, and the Near East generally. He who sees in such romantic history a subject of world-influence knows little of the laws of causation. 1 In these passages the writer has followed very closely what Alison has written in the introductory chapter to his History of Europe, the subject being of no real importance to political students, and being here referred to only in order to deal chronologically with Euro- pean matters. 22 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR The truth is that no wars or military expeditions that is, no wars which are not true Volkskriege, when nations, obeying irresistible impulses, sweep down on their neighbours like tidal waves can compare in political importance with nature's most simple functions, the bearing of men and their resultant distribution by the operation of definite laws. It is a fact, which any- one may verify for himself, that the temporary dis- placement of any body of armed men, however vast, in obedience to the iron will of a despot, is of scant racial importance when behind it lies no natural move- ment. Thus, even had Darius triumphed over Athens with his heterogeneous army drawn from forty nations and then formed military colonies all over Greece, such colonies could have had no more lasting effect in an era when the migration of races was still actively proceeding than did the Roman military colonies in England colonies which have affected the char- acter and institutions of England not at all. In other words military dominion, even when backed up by large numbers of males of the conquering race, was always of scant political importance in early and primitive times, when intercommunication was difficult, and, above all, when populations were thinly distributed and still in what may be called the formative state. As a matter of course assimilation had ultimately to follow, for the women captured the captors. This is exactly what has occurred with the Chinese in their four thousand years of authentic history. By the simple process of inbreeding they have virtually obliterated all traces of their many conquerors. What has been done in the past by the Chinese is going on elsewhere to-day, just as it has done in the past, thus giving GENERAL INTRODUCTION 23 predominance to the more numerous race by steadily obliterating the trace of ephemeral victories. The reason, then, why true European history the history that is of paramount importance to the living, throbbing world of to-day should be held to com- mence only with the last stages of the Roman Empire - with the break-up of that empire is not only because of the evolution of the new idea of citizenship which then commenced, nor yet because of the rise of Christianity which destroyed Graeco-Orientalism with the Slavish ideas; but also because of the peopling of the whole of Europe with those vigorous barbarian races destined to establish Europe's true hegemony over the rest of the world. That fact should be seized upon and rejoiced over to-day by everyone. With these barbarian races came the beginning of true or rational government, and therefore the beginning of a true human happiness founded on what may be called a natural equity. At last that strange formative period of Eurasia during which races, impelled by forces over which no mere monarchs or ideas had exercised control, had wandered from one land to another was at an end, and the successive waves of migration had finally spent their force. Because Roman and Greek ideals have played such a role in the formation of European society, there is no reason why the real strength and groundwork of that society should not be generally admitted. That strength and groundwork are summed up in the words, 1 This is what is going on to-day in the more tropical portions of Latin America, where the autochthonous (Indian) races are steadily assimilating the descendants of the Spanish conquerors, thus producing a new type. It cannot be doubted that in a few hun- dred years most of Latin America will be entirely dominated by this type. 24 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR Northern Barbarianism. The peculiar institutions which have arisen in Europe are due to the fact that this dominant, powerful barbarianism, as it was brought in contact with the refinement of existing civilisations, was necessarily eclectic and chose that which seemed best, irrespective of origins. Only in the matter of liberty did the northern peoples retain their essential characteristic; and this is the seed from which has sprung the modern tree of life. 1 "The system of force, that is to say, of personal liberty, was at the bottom of the social state of the Germans. Through this it was that their influence became so powerful upon the modern world. Very general expressions border always so nearly upon inac- curacy, that I do not like to use them. Nevertheless, were it absolutely necessary to express in few words the predominating char- acters of the various elements of our civilisation, I should say, that the spirit of legality, of regular association, came to us from the Roman world, from the Roman municipalities and laws. It is to Christianity, to the religious society that we owe the spirit of morality, the sentiment and empire of rule, of a moral law, of the mutual duties of men. The Germans conferred upon us the spirit of liberty, of liberty such as we conceive of, and are acquainted with it, in the present day, as the right and property of each individual, master of himself, of his actions, and of his fate, so long as he injures no other individual. This is a fact of universal importance, for it was unknown to all preceding civilisa- tions: in the ancient republics, the public power disposed all things; the individual was sacrificed to the citizen. In the societies where the religious principle predominated, the believer belonged to his God, not to himself. Thus, man hitherto had always been absorbed in the Church or in the State. In modern Europe, alone, has he existed and developed himself on his own ac- count and in his own way, charged, no doubt, charged con- tinually, more and more heavily with toils and duties, but finding in himself his aim and his right. It is to German manners that we must trace this distinguishing characteristic of our civilisation. The fundamental idea of liberty, in modern Europe, came to it from its conquerors." Guizot : History of Civilization in France, Eighth Lecture. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 25 For though the privilege of citizenship had been nominally given to the whole Roman Empire by the Emperor Antoninus, in the very last stages of the Empire slavery not only existed on a vast scale but was constantly spreading, and therefore disturbing that most vital matter in the early history of all States the question of food-supplies. The immense quantities of food raised by slaves in North Africa and poured into the Italian provinces had alone so disturbed economic conditions that the whole Roman political system had been completely undermined long before it was actually thrown down; and no matter how much it may still be eulogised as an unique polity in the world's history, the Roman imperial idea was undoubtedly nothing but an Oriental idea. In spite of the polite fiction of citizen- ship, the destinies of scores of millions were effectively disposed of by a few thousands. 1 Even Professor Pearson, who cannot be accused of any narrowness, unconsciously shows in the following passage how saturated he is with classical history and ideals, and therefore how unfitted to write on racial problems : "The preceding pages have aimed at showing that certain races which we regard as inferior, and the highest of which is certainly our inferior in military and political organisation, are likely to increase very largely in comparison with the races which at present constitute what claims to be the civilised world. Such an event has happened once before under such circumstances that its character and results are tolerably well known. An old order, which we call in the first period of its existence the Roman Empire, broke up as invaders poured down upon it from Germany and Russia, from Central Asia, and from Persia. ' It seems at first incredible that so magnificent a polity as Trajan succeeded to should not have been able to maintain itself. Lying centrally round the sea which was then the great highway and artery of com- merce, the Roman dominion was traversed by roads, which gave its armies the great advantage of concentrating rapidly on any point that was menaced. Its population was incomparably 26 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR For Roman liberty, though an improvement on Greek conceptions, was, like all liberty of antiquity, confined really to those who, being present in the capi- tal, could take an active part in the public delibera- tions. It was the liberty of a city and not of a land. It was therefore exactly similar in practice, if not in theory, to the kind of liberty which has always been understood in advanced Asiatic States the system of government by equipoise and nothing else. 1 The idea greater than that of any neighbour; its generals and engineers and the equipment of its troops were unsurpassed in the world; and the emperors of capacity were sufficiently numerous to have atoned for the incompetence of a few. An observer speculating upon mani- fest destiny, and knowing nothing more of the earth than was known a little earlier to the elder Pliny, might surely have said with reason, in Trajan's time, that sooner or later the eagles would certainly fly in triumph over the whole habitable world. Even now, though we can trace the stages of decadence, it is difficult not to be astonished at the completeness of the ruin. Summing up the most obvious causes, we seem to see that the institution of slavery deprived Italy of a large part of her natural and best defenders; that the burden of taxes produced a depopulation in the provinces, as men ceased to marry, or escaped across the border and joined the barbarians; and that while Rome was thus losing her life-blood, Germans and Parthians were acquiring the arts of war, and becoming conscious of their strength. Even so, we have to fall back upon other explanations upon famines and pestilences that desolated provinces, and upon an upheaval of peoples in the Far East, resulting in an exodus of Tartars across Europe fully to understand why the attack on the Roman Empire became so strong, and was at last so weakly combated." National Life and Character, Chap. II. Briefly, Rome fell because real Europe had to arise, and because a multiplication of municipalities can never produce a real and endur- ing nation. 1 " First of all, we must clearly represent to ourselves the nature of the Roman Empire, and how it was formed. "Rome was, in its origin, only a municipality, a corporation. The government of Rome was merely the aggregate of the insti- GENERAL INTRODUCTION 27 of giving those who lived at a distance from the capi- tal any means of representing their wishes was never tutions which were suited to a population confined within the walls of a city: these were municipal institutions that is their distinguishing character. "This was not the case with Rome only. If we turn our attention to Italy, at this period, we find around Rome nothing but towns. That which was then called a people was simply a confederation of towns. The Latin people was a confederation of Latin towns. The Etruscans, the Samnites, the Sabines, the people of Magna Graecia, may all be described in the same terms. "There was, at the time, no country that is to say, the country was wholly unlike that which at present exists: it was cultivated, as was necessary, but it was uninhabited. The pro- prietors of lands were the inhabitants of the towns. They went forth to superintend their country properties, and often took with them a certain number of slaves; but that which we at present call the country, that thin population sometimes in iso- lated habitations, sometimes in villages which everywhere covers the soil, was a fact almost unknown in ancient Italy. "When Rome extended itself, what did she do? Follow his- tory, and you will see that she conquered or founded towns; it was against towns that she fought, with towns that she contracted alliances; it was also into towns that she sent colonies. The his- tory of the conquest of the world by Rome is the history of the con- quest and foundation of a great number of towns. In the East, the extension of Roman dominion does not carry altogether this as- pect: the population there was otherwise distributed than in the West it was much less concentrated in towns. But as we have to do here with the European population, what occurred in the East is of little interest to us. "Confining ourselves to the West, we everywhere discover the fact to which I have directed your attention. In Gaul, in Spain, you meet with nothing but towns. At a distance from the towns, the territory is covered with marshes and forests. Examine the character of the Roman monuments, of the Roman roads. You have great roads, which reach from one city to another; the multiplicity of minor roads, which now cross the country in all directions, was then unknown; you have nothing resembling that 28 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR considered at all; and so it was the populace of the capital, aided by such forces as might be introduced by the contesting generals or leaders, which held all the actual political power. Representative government - the only effective guarantee of liberty of any sort - had therefore not yet been dreamt of; and since it is this principle which has to-day become the paramount principle throughout the whole civilised world (because it is admittedly the root of happiness and justice), it must be from here that is, from the entry of what may be called wholesale individualism into the political arena that the real history of Europe commences. It is essential to trace in some detail the fortunes of this principle, in conjunction with that other truly European principle, the evolution of the doctrine of the balance of power, brought into existence by overindulgence in the ancient barbarian doctrine offeree; for by so doing, in very few pages it is possible to summarise first Euro- pean history, and then world-history; and thus to gain an enlightening objective standpoint from which to survey the present conflict of colour. Alison has well said that the one priceless possession of the uncivilised Northern Barbarians was the liberty which they brought from their woods and deserts. This liberty was new in Europe and very peculiar, inso- countless number of villages, country seats, and churches, which have been scattered over the country since the middle ages. Rome has left us nothing but immense monuments, stamped with the municipal character, and destined for a numerous population collected upon one spot. Under whatever point of view you consider the Roman world, you will find this almost exclusive preponderance of towns, and the social non-existence of the country." Guizot : History of Civilization in Europe, First Lecture. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 29 much as it knew no locality and was confined to no district : it was a sentiment which burned in the breast of the entire tribe. Leaders owed their elevation solely to the choice of their fellow-warriors; and it was the settlement all over Europe of these men pos- sessing this one elective principle which for the first time in the history of white nations distributed power over vast regions instead of confining it to cities. Every barbarian warrior having received as his reward, on the break-up of the empire of the Caesars, agricul- tural lands already tilled by a skilful but subservient tenantry, he was willing to establish himself permanently on his own domains, only assembling with the rest of his race whenever an actual convocation of the military array of his principality was summoned to settle ques- tions of the day. It was the increasing difficulty of securing the universal attendance of military follow- ers which finally led to the introduction of represent- ative legislatures; and here it was that the Christian Church played a great political role by providing a concrete example of the methods which inevitably had to be pursued. From here onwards in Europe, civilisation and Christianity fitly become exchange- able terms that is, until the dawn of the scientific era. As is well known, the Councils of the Christian Church had by the sixth century introduced a perfect system of representation, so that the delegates from the most remote dioceses in Europe and Asia Minor met regularly together to order their affairs. As early as the year 325 that famous ecumenical council which promulgated the Nicene Creed had met at Nicaea for the specific purpose of settling matters arising out of 30 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR the Arian controversy; and this disciplinary measure of the Church gained for it great renown. The barbarian nations, as they accepted Christianity, accepted those methods of Christianity of which they had previously been ignorant; and amongst these methods this system of delegates is politically the most noticeable feature. But though there was this powerful example though all credit is due to the Church for the historic role it has played representative government would have never been so early possible in European countries and individualism so powerful a force, had not the rude rural aristocracy soon found it necessary to safeguard their scattered possessions by establishing an entirely new principle. That principle was primogeniture. This principle, the right of preserving in every fam- ily the regular succession from father to eldest son, although to-day an anachronism, has exercised on the history of Europe a most powerful effect : it is the root-principle in the tenure of land in early civilisations, and wielded a most beneficent political influence. By insuring continuity and conservatism, it gradually but inevitably introduced law and order, and grouped round all the great land-owning classes new elements of strength. Herein Europe at last differentiated herself in a most essential particular from her great rival Asia. 1 1 In trying to establish the difference between Europe and Asia and Asia to him only meant the Near and Middle East Alison has the following passage : "How, then, has it happened, that the same conquerors, subduing and settling in substantially the same physical circum- stances, should have given birth to nations so essentially and diametrically opposite as those of Europe and Asia ? Why have freedom and knowledge been sheltered from the lances of the one, and both invariably perished, from the earliest times, under the sabres GENERAL INTRODUCTION 31 As has been constantly pointed out, the fundamental basis in Asia, both in public and private life, has always been the principle of selection, as opposed to this other principle which rests on a well-defined law. In Asia no guarantee has ever existed that any person a son, an officer, or even the highest personage in the land - may not suddenly lose everything overnight through favouritism, thus weakening national life at every possible point. But regular succession, by locking men of the other ? And whence is it that the same corruption, which has so speedily in every age consumed or enfeebled the de- scendants of Asiatic conquest, has, after the lapse of a thousand years, still made comparatively little impression on the offspring of Gothic invasion ? Simply, because the religion of the two quarters of the globe in which the same conquerors settled was different; because polygamy has not in Europe spread its jeal- ousies, nor the harem its seductions; because superstitious be- lief, in barbarous times, restrained power by imaginary terrors, and Christian charity, in civilised, assuaged suffering by real blessings; because slavery has generally disappeared before the proclaimed equality of men, and a perpetual renovation been thus provided to the richer classes; because war has been softened by the humanity breathed into its conflicts; because learning, shel- tered under the sanctity of the monastery, has survived the devas- tation of ignorance, and freedom, nursed by devotion, has ac- quired a strength superior to all the forces of despotism." History of Europe, Vol. I. To speak soberly, never was more foolish rodomontade written by a serious historian. It is, of course, due neither to religion nor to polygamy that Europe and Asia are different since these are rather results than first causes. Climate, soil, and environ- ment are the great first causes of the difference climate alone being a sufficiently powerful factor, as those who have resided in hot climates know, to produce in a few generations the most remarkable changes. Until physiography is understood, no man is entitled to write history. The habit of speaking of Asia in the phlegethonic terms employed by Alison is merely a survival from mediaeval times. 32 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR to the soil and identifying them permanently with their own districts, soon completed in Mediaeval Europe the necessary fusion of conquerors and conquered which seemed at first so impossible. Hundreds of years, it is true, were consumed in effecting that compromise with various conflicting conditions which has given to each European country its essential present-day features; but through all this dreary blank of years is to be seen the steady preparation towards the allotted end. It was thus only natural that the Prankish empire of Charlemagne, or Karl the Great, should have been the first real polity to arise between the fifth and ninth centuries, and that from this revival of the fiction of an universal empire should spring a train of circum- stances which show their influence even to-day. Com- pounded of a mixture of Teutonic and Gallic blood, this mediaeval empire had sufficient rude barbarism and sufficient refinement to be measurably superior to the pure barbarians who still lingered in German forests or on the shores of the Baltic; whilst to its armed force the refined serfs of more southerly latitudes could offer no firm resistance. 1 Therefore attracted to Rome and 1 It is a fact which any student may verify for himself, that European history is largely the history of the development of armed force quite contrary, for instance, to the history of China, where armed force has been a disintegrating rather than a construc- tive power, Chinese reason being always inclined to reject as a valid argument a blow, or a series of blows. In Europe, however, all liberties owe their existence to violence; had there been no violence there would have been no liberties. Here it is interest- ing to quote what even a writer such as Alison has said of the Medi- aeval Italian republics, which some people still believe, like the Gre- cian republics, to have been model States : "The States of Florence, Venice, Genoa, and Pisa were not in reality free; they were communities in which a few individuals GENERAL INTRODUCTION 33 baptized the Holy Roman Empire, because Rome still remained the traditional ideal among the peoples of Europe, it was this peculiar polity which cast its shadow over the history of Europe for so many centuries and so sensibly influenced the growth and decline of nations. Though the new empire could make no lasting fabric had usurped the rights, and disposed of the fortunes, of the great bulk of their fellow citizens, whom they governed as subjects, or insulted as slaves. During the most flourishing period of their history, the citizens of all the Italian republics did not amount to 20,000; and these privileged classes held as many millions in sub- jection. The citizens of Venice were 2,500 those of Genoa, 4,500 those of Pisa, Siena, Lucca, and Florence, taken together, not above 6,000. The right of citizenship, thus limited, descended in a few families, and was as carefully guarded from invasion as the private estates of the nobility. To the conquered provinces no priv- ileges were extended; to the republics in alliance no rights were communicated. A rigid system at once of political and mercantile exclusion directed their whole policy. The privileged classes in the dominant State anxiously retained the whole powers of government in their own hands, and the jealous spirit of mer- cantile monopoly ruled the fortunes of the State as much as it cramped the industrial energies of the subject territory. From freedom thus confined, no general benefit could be expected; on a basis thus narrowed, no structure of permanent duration could be raised. Even during their greatest prosperity these States were disgraced by perpetual discord springing from so unjust and arbitrary an exclusion; and the massy architecture of Florence still attests the period when every noble family was prepared to stand a siege in their own palace, in defence of the rights which they sternly denied to their fellow-citizens. The rapid progress and splendid history of these aristocratic republics may teach us the animating influence of freedom, even upon a limited class of society; their sudden decline, and speedy loss of public spirit, the inevitable consequence of confining to a few the rights which should be shared by a large circle, and governing in the narrow spirit of mercantile monopoly, not in the enlarged views of equal admin- istration." History of Europe, Vol. I. D 34 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR out of peoples who were still in a state of solution, to the grandiose conceptions of a Charlemagne must be traced the formal addition to the already existing military system of the institution of feudalism a curious insti- tution of which many traces exist even to-day. To Dukes, Margraves, Barons, and other lieutenants of the Empire was confided the duty of preserving peace and order on the outskirts of civilisation, as it then appeared; and the great districts thus granted on military tenure were the germs from which sprang principalities and kingdoms and, later, actual nations. The private wars which soon raged between these militant notables served largely to revive the military spirit among the masses of unwarlike serfs, and, better still, to unite them to the interests of their masters. Now forced to defend themselves or to suffer extirpation, the tillers of the fields in every region became inured to new hardships. From this peculiar regionalism grew the later plant of nation- alism; and though the use of arms in Europe never obtained the general vogue it did in England where the bowmen speedily became the backbone of the nation and won for themselves through the French wars a vast European celebrity the new state of affairs hastened that movement which welded districts into provinces and provinces into kingdoms. It was not, however, until kingship * received a new 1 "There was another characteristic of royalty, not less important to observe: royalty was a power which, neither in its origin nor in its nature, was well defined or clearly limited. No one at that time could have assigned to it a special and precise origin. It was neither purely hereditary, nor purely elective, nor regarded as solely of divine institution. It was neither coronation, nor eccle- siastical anointing, nor hereditary descent, which alone and exclusively conferred the royal character. All these conditions, GENERAL INTRODUCTION 35 and definite meaning that anything resembling the divisions of modern Europe are to be found, and that the day of mere enclaves is done with. It is indeed important to note that the first necessary step for the expansion of the white races over the world was noth- ing but the perfection of this idea of kingship, as op- posed to the old idea of an ill-defined imperial sway which embraced all known peoples and really controlled none. To perfect this idea it was necessary to extin- guish temporarily the purely European notion of lib- erty the primitive form of representative govern- ment which had drifted into aristocratic privilege and to substitute therefor the despotic or personal rule of sovereigns. To trace in detail how this came about would be merely to tread well-worn ground; but it is essential keeping well in mind the special object of these pages to mention some general causes, which at the moment have particular interest. It may be boldly argued that so long as physical force properly speaking that is the strength of men's all these facts, were requisite; and other conditions, other facts, were afterwards added. You have seen the official account of the coronation of Philip I., and have recognised there evident indica- tions of election; the persons present, the grand vassals, knights, people, expressed their consent; they said: We accept, we con- sent, we will. In a word, principles the most various, princi- ples generally considered as wholly contradictory, combined and met together round the cradle of royalty. All the other powers had a simple definite origin; the manner of their erection and the date were readily assignable; every one knew that feudal suzerainty was derived from conquest, from the concession by the chief to his com- panions of territorial property; the source of that power was easily traced back, but the source of royalty was remote, various; no one knew where to fix it." Guizot : History of Civilization in France, Thirteenth Lecture. 36 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR arms was the dominant feature in European life, so long was it impossible for kings properly to combat the power of their vassals and to centralise the government in themselves. To put it differently, so long as the lance, the battle-axe, the heavy two-handed sword, and the longbow, were the decisive weapons, so long did Europe and Asia remain in their modes of government very much alike. In both regions the idea of kingship could not but be largely theocratic; though the nominal authority was immense, in all practical matters it was very small, and dependent not so much on the obedience as on the co-operation of great men. In Europe, the feudal barons, entrenched in their castles and always supported by devoted bands, howsoever loyal they might be when confronted by some imminent outer danger, were of a markedly independent spirit in times of nominal peace. To their rights and privileges they clung with passionate determination, pointing to them as the real safeguards of national liberty. Yet in reality, as the contest of Resebecque 1 conclusively proves, the ancient barbarian liberty had in the course of centuries become the liberty of a narrow class, which could not tolerate independence in any other class. But with the invention of gunpowder and the miracle 1 The instance of Resebecque is the best instance to quote, as here we have the one rival to feudal power municipal power which in the hands of the burghers of Flanders had grown to a re- spectable stature. But burghers have not the firmness of peasants; and so whilst in the fourteenth century the Swiss mountaineers secured their independence by the victory of Sempach, in the same century feudalism crushed the commercialism of municipali- ties and showed clearly that to- destroy it something sterner than mere enlightenment was required. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 37 of printing there came a vast change. The general diffusion of a knowledge concerning the immediate potency of these two agencies could not be arrested, and the real power of feudalism was automatically destroyed. It is surely a curious commentary on human nature to reflect that printing and the consequent general spread of knowledge would have meant very little to the un- imaginative white races with whom the doctrine of force is a first article of faith had not the levelling influence of gunpowder long been at work. Placing in the power of the meanest man the ability of instantly destroying any opponent, however well-armed, well- horsed, and powerful he might be, gunpowder though it first helped the power of kings might to-day well have a statue raised to it by every democracy, were its historic claims as a liberator among the races properly understood. It is no wonder that to-day anarchists see in the higher explosives the sole engines with which to secure acceptance of their higher doctrines. The immediate result of the spread of the use of gun- powder throughout Europe was remarkable, though feudalism, devoted to its privileges, died hard. Fire- arms require skilled hands to be used properly; skill requires constant practice; and constant practice could only be indulged in by those who were constantly em- ployed. In this way standing armies in the employ of the sovereign were born; and the infantryman, destined henceforth to decide the destinies of Europe, soon be- comes the leading figure in the drama of history. Now, just as it was natural that the empire of Charlemagne should have arisen at the time and in the region it did in Central Europe so was it only natural that the first dominant Power aiming at a 38 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR universal monarchy, 1 but in reality never more than a limited military monarchy at the close of the feudal period and at the dawn of modern history, should have been Spain. From the death of Charlemagne (842) to a period not long before the Reformation, there had been throughout Europe, in spite of the continued fiction of the Holy Roman Empire, but one really effective em- pire the empire of the Popes. The Crusades, by uniting all men in the belief that their spiritual welfare 1 The writer has taken the following from Lodge's Student's Modern Europe as showing very tersely and clearly this posi- tion : "In the dark ages, as in the middle ages, the political theo- rist regarded the whole of Christendom as forming one reli- gious and political State. This idea of unity which gave rise to Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire was an impossible ideal, because Church and State were divided, as had been unknown before the introduction of Christianity; and being divided, it was logical that rivalry should lead to warfare. Thus what happened was that the practical power of the Empire was weakened and finally destroyed by the long struggle with the Papacy; for after the accession of the Hapsburgs, made necessary by the great interregnum (1251-72) which followed the fall of the Hohenstaufen, the empire had sunk to an ordinary territorial lordship, whilst the championship of the temporal, as opposed to the spiritual, power fell to stronger hands, producing schisms in the Papacy which finally resulted in the Popes themselves sinking into temporal rulers of the States of the church, though until the Reformation their spiritual authority was undimin- ished." Thus the Papacy destroyed the Empire, and the Empire indirectly the Papacy. Absolutism, being only a fiction in Aus- tria, became a fact when Austrian Princes succeeded to the heritage of Spain and Spain became the leading Power. France, revived by this spectacle, introduced absolutism herself, and we are suddenly transferred from an era of anecdotes to a time when far-reaching history was rapidly made. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 39 came before all earthly things, had given the Popes marvellous authority, which it required centuries to undermine. So deeply had the theocratic conception sunk into men's hearts that even kings held their high office, in the popular view, far less by right of prescrip- tion than by right of papal sanction. The terrible threat of excommunication was a very real disciplinary measure, almost as disconcerting, because of its peculiar political force, to an absolute monarch such as the English king Henry VIII., as to a bigot such as Philip II. of Spain. Thus it is that we find throughout all those strange contests of mediaeval times the dim figure in Peter's Chair exercising an undefined influence when- ever the appeal to arms changes to an appeal to author- ity. Though Popes might be captured and imprisoned, their authority was not diminished, since it was to influence the sublime authority vested in their persons that such irreverent steps were taken. With the rise of Spain a new era opens. The astounding struggle against the Moors, in which the Spaniards had been engaged for so many centuries a struggle without parallel in European history, since the struggle against the Turks was conducted by many nations was undoubtedly responsible for the sudden and dramatic predominance of Spain in European poli- tics. For seven hundred years this conflict had been not very different from that border warfare which must always exist between two rival peoples occupying the same land. But though it may not have been as fierce as the decimating contest in south-eastern Europe against the Turk, it was more continuous and better understood by all; and it had become such an article of faith with the mass of the population, that the lesson 40 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR had sunk deep into their hearts, and made of the Spaniards the most resolute fighters in Europe. 1 With the union of the Thrones of Aragon and Castile in 1479, and the clearer definition of Spanish nationality thus given, the struggle entered a new and last phase. Ferdinand and Isabella, spurred on by a variety of causes, soon had developed such a highly offensive policy that by the year 1491 the year before the discovery of America Moorish rule was completely broken and swept from the Iberian peninsula, and such Mahommedans as remained quickly sank to the miser- able position of serfs. A united Spain at last existed, and buoyed up by a religious faith which had been purified in the fire of adversity and which saw in the Cross not merely a symbol of faith but a perpetual in- spiration, world-wide results of the most remarkable nature followed each other in quicl^ succession. The valour, the intelligence, and the energy which the Spaniards displayed at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, as Macaulay has well remarked, were the direct fruits of the ancient institu- tions of Aragon and Castile 2 institutions eminently 1 The writer is reserving for his final chapter the more par- ticular effect of the struggle of Europe against Asiatic and African foes from the days of the fall of the Roman Empire first on the soil of Europe, then out of Europe. This introduction merely examines certain internal aspects in Europe, the better to under- stand the present position throughout the world as dealt with in the body of the book. 2 The liberal nature of the ancient institutions of Spain is best examined in Spanish America, whither were transplanted the old rights of Spaniards after the Spanish conquests had been made. A striking similarity exists between the old Anglo-Saxon town-rights and Castilian town-rights. The Castilian Pueblo System was based upon the laws and lib- GENERAL INTRODUCTION 41 favourable to the growth of public liberty and calcu- lated to make Spain one of the first nations of the world, because the liberty and rights of the individual were openly acknowledged and most carefully safe- guarded. But this was not all. The fact that the Moor was not only a foreigner but a coloured infidel as well, had long accustomed the Spanish people to look on the outer world of Asia and Africa very differently from Central and Northern Europe. The Moor possessed erudition and skill; he had proved conclusively to the Spaniard that beyond the narrow boundaries of Europe were forces of unknown strength; and in Spain's proximity to Portugal that land of mediaeval explorers was to be found another fortunate circum- stance. Already, before the Moorish struggle had reached its last phase, Portuguese explorers had voyaged far down the coast of Western Africa, seeking for new lands and new routes; and as early as 1487 the Cape of Good Hope had actually been doubled by Bartholomew erties of Castile compiled in the Fuero Juzgo (A.D. 693), the Siete Partidas (A.D. 1348), and the Castilian code of Montalvo (A.D. 1485), known as the Ordenancias Reales, supplemented by additional Codes in the time of Queen Isabella. It was the great wish of that "good queen" to have the Municipal Law of Castile codified for the use of her subjects in Spanish America, and the work was in progress at the time of her death, and was subsequently known as the "Laws of the Indies." In the Laws of the Indies (Book II., Title i., Law 2) we read the following legal status of Spanish America : "We decree and command that, in all cases not decided nor provided by the laws contained in this compilation, the laws of our kingdom of Castile shall be observed according to the Law of Toro." The Cortes of Castile held at Toro in 1505 was largely devoted to the confirmation of town-rights. 42 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR Diaz. 1 The noise and celebrity which these voyages were making throughout Southern Europe and the Mediterranean basin spurred Columbus to his yet greater discoveries; and therefore while to Portugal fell by Papal Bull the heritage of the older world of Africa and Asia, for Spain was reserved the richer heritage of the New World. To put it differently, then, it was sudden contact with extra-European forces which at the dawn of modern history became the greatest propelling agency in the advance of the white nations; and Spain, being better situated than Portugal to use that agency in relation to the rest of Europe being much larger and much stronger speedily assumed the 1 It is curious to see how, as the Turkish assaults on the Eastern Empire became fiercer, and the old communications with the East rapidly closed, at the other extreme end of Southern Europe men became quickened with desire to find a new and more open route. As early as 1415, Prince Henry of Portugal surnamed "the navigator" had made his name at the taking of Ceuta, the southern Pillar of Hercules, from the Moors. In 1418 he stationed himself on a rocky promontory at the extreme south- west of Portugal and built his observatory. Studying stars and maps year after year, he sent ship after ship down the African coast, gradually lifting the veil from land and sea. In 1434 Cape Bojador was discovered. In 1445 Diniz Diaz discovered Cape Verde; and by the time of the Turkish capture of Constantinople (1453) the first Portuguese had reached the Gambia. In 1471 the Portuguese flag had been carried across the equator; in 1484 Diego Cam reached the Congo; in 1487 Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope. In 1498 Vasco da Gama reached successively the island of Mozambique and the long-sought shores of India. Thus the century which saw the last lingering re- mains of the Roman Empire swallowed up, and the book of the past finally closed, was rich with promise. Whilst the east- ern half of the ancient Mediterranean world was merged in Asia, the western half, cut adrift from its old moorings, turned its back on bygone days, and became the starting-point for a magnifi- cent future. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 43 lead. Had she been wise, nothing could have taken that lead from her. Unfortunately three weapons were even then being forged which, while centralising power in the hands of the Spanish kings and thus making the rulers of Madrid, with their new and vast sources of wealth, the rulers of Europe were destined ultimately to destroy the nation. These weapons, because they are two-edged swords, merit being thoroughly understood. The first of these was the succession of the House of Austria to the Spanish Throne, with all that that succession necessarily implied; the second was the reflex action of the Reformation in this, the most catholic of all countries; the third was the acquisition of the riches of the New World, unaccompanied by any corresponding increase of national energy save in a military sense. Thus the three destroyers of Spanish greatness were absolutism, bigotry, and militarism national foes in every age and in every clime. By the marriage of Philip, son of the Emperor Maximilian, to Joanne, sole daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, tradi- tions utterly foreign to Spain were introduced into the country 1 those imperial traditions which had become 1 During the long reign of the Emperor Charles V., who abdicated a century before, the head of that house had united in his own person the two crowns of Austria and Spain, which carried with them, among other possessions, the countries we now know as Holland and Belgium, together with a preponderat- ing influence in Italy. After his abdication the two great mon- archies of Austria and Spain were separated; but though ruled by different persons, they were still in the same family, and tended toward that unity of aim and sympathy which marked dynastic connections in that and the following century. To this bond of union was added that of a common religion. During the century before the Peace of Westphalia, the extension of 44 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR centred in the House of Hapsburg ever since the ruin of the House of Hohenstaufen; those imperial traditions full of ominous pretensions regarding the control which princes may legitimately exercise over their subjects; those imperial traditions which only a French Revolution and the military blows of a counter-tyrant such as Napoleon could completely shatter in Europe. Grafted on to a united people, entrenched in a shut- off peninsula, this imperialism soon took a concrete form which was impracticable in a country with open land-frontiers, such as the old Germanic empire, and with numberless petty yet powerful princes to dispute the authority of the overlord. In a very few decades the old liberties of Spain were trampled under foot. The rapid march of the Reformation in Teutonic lands served only to intensify the already dominant note of clericalism in Spanish life, which, released from the secular warfare with the Moor, made bigotry and intolerance the order of the day, and soon so utterly transformed the ancient spirit of the Spanish Church, that its good qualities were completely sub- merged in the false zeal it now displayed against schismatics. The gold and silver of the New World transported in galleons soon fascinated the imagination of all Europe and seemed inexhaustible. The Spanish monarchy, become all-powerful, thanks to the devotion of a population steeped in traditions of combat and adventure, was pleased to find in Philip II. family power, and the extension of the religion professed, were the two strongest motives of political action. This was the period of the great religious wars which arrayed nation against nation, principality against principality, and often, in the same nation, fac- tion against faction." Mahan: Influence of Sea Power upon His- tory, Chap. II. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 45 the supreme expression of its genius; and Spain, fed by the riches of the New World secured for her by a valiant generation, and battening on the carcases of vanquished European nations, in many cases conquered because they differed in doctrine, seemed destined to become as powerful as Rome had been. 1 It is a significant fact, that in spite of the glory which surrounds the names of Ferdinand and Isabella, it was they who estab- lished the hateful Inquisition in Spain as early as 1483, two Dominicans being the first judges of the Holy Office. Mahom- medans and Jews were cruelly persecuted, and heretics of all sorts hunted out. Thus it may be said that the soil of Spain contains a malignant germ the germ of intolerance and that to escape from this curse will need something more than paper constitu- tions and the proclamation of the people's rights. An immense corps of educators a sanitary corps in every sense of the words is needed to neutralise the effects of a pestilential soil. This is how Mahan brilliantly summarises the great religious struggles brought about by the Reformation : "The main interest of the history of all European countries during the last half of the sixteenth century centres round the success or failure of the counter- Reformation. In Italy and Spain Catholicism succeeded, not only in holding its ground, but also in sternly repressing all opposing beliefs. In France the long wars of religion ended in a compromise, the Edict of Nantes, but, on the whole, victory rested with the Catholics. In the Nether- lands the grand conflict with Spain produced a division be- tween the provinces. The northern States formed a republic under the House of Orange. The Wallon provinces, more ex- posed to Romish influence, returned to the Spanish allegiance. In England the Catholic reaction failed altogether owing to the na- tional spirit evoked by Spanish intervention. In Sweden the Jesuits almost accomplished the conversion of John III. (1568-92), the second son of Gustavus Vasa; but national interests proved in the end too strong for them. John's son, Sigismund, an avowed Catholic, was elected King of Poland, but forfeited the Swedish crown to his uncle, Charles IX. Germany, the starting- point of the Reformation, was affected no less than other countries by the reactionary movement. The Thirty Years' War, to which 46 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR The evils produced by a bad government and a shameful religion for every government is bad which is despotic, and every religion is shameful which is intol- erant require much time to become openly manifest; for it is well to remember that in spite of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 nearly a century after Spain had attained national unity and the ultimate loss of Holland, Portugal, and other territories, as well as the eclipse sustained by the Spaniards in the Orient by the advent of the Dutch, Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century was still mightier than any other European Power. Yet she was doomed; for by stamp- ing on liberty she had stamped on her own soul and had prepared the way for the transference of the dominant power in Europe to France. No chapter in European history is more interesting than that which traces the rise and fall of the dominant power, and which, from the sixteenth century onwards, supplies the keynote of all diplomacy. For, in spite of the doctrine of the balance of power, invented in a more sophisticated age, a balance requires a pivot on which to swing; and that pivot is the dominant power. For four hundred years there has been in Europe at one time but one leading Power though for the position of that Power to emerge clear and unmistakable has sometimes needed decades. To-day, as four hundred years ago, the same law applies. From Spain, the sceptre of power passed to France. In France the methods pursued to lay the foundations of absolute power were not very different from those this ultimately gave rise, proved a more desolating and extensive conflict than any of the other religious wars." Influence of Sea Power upon History, Chap. II. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 47 used in Spain, though the conditions were necessarily not the same. Once again was it shown that the prime note of absolutism can only be a disastrous illiberalism, which must bring about a downfall in very few genera- tions. In Richelieu, allied to Mary of Medicis, guardians of the infant Louis XIII. , the loose-jointed French monarchy found the divine instrument which introduced imperialism. By the conversion of the territorial nobility into a race of courtiers not only was French provincialism largely swept away, but France became politically great. 1 1 It is best again to quote Mahan regarding the rise of France : "It was natural that in France, one of the greatest sufferers from religious passions, owing to the number and character of the Protestant minority, this reaction should first and most markedly be seen. Placed between Spain and the German States, among which Austria stood foremost without a rival, internal union and checks upon the power of the House of Austria were necessities of political existence. Happily, Providence raised up to her in close succession two great rulers, Henry IV. and Richelieu, men in whom religion fell short of bigotry, and who, when forced to recognise it in the sphere of politics, did so as masters and not as slaves. Under them French statesmanship received a guidance, which Richelieu formulated as a tradition, and which moved on the following general lines: (l) Internal union of the kingdom, appeasing or putting down religious strife and centralising authority in the king; (2) Resistance to the power of the House of Austria, which actually and necessarily carried with it alliance with Protestant German States and with Hol- land; (3) Extension of the boundaries of France to the east- ward, at the expense mainly of Spain, which then possessed not only the present Belgium, but other provinces long since incorporated with France; and (4) The creation and development of a great sea-power, adding to the wealth of the kingdom, and intended specially to make head against France's hereditary enemy, England; for which end again the alliance with Holland was to be kept in view. Such were the broad outlines of policy 48 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR The condition of France, previous to the reign of the weak Louis XIII., had been somewhat remarkable. Although one of the oldest monarchies in Europe, the powerful territorial nobility of France had often directly challenged the authority of the throne, and had so weakened that authority that at times it only extended a few leagues beyond Paris. Thus France, though nominally a kingdom such as England, was very different in point of fact; actually it may be said, in- deed, to have resembled, in the diversity of its de facto rulers, the so-called German Empire, where petty princes frequently disputed the nominal overlordship of the emperor. Many causes contributed to this condi- tion: none more than France's peculiar geographical position. The long and bitter contest between England and France during the middle ages, in spite of its happy termination for the French kings, had devastated the country and weakened respect for all authority which could not make itself instantly felt through the stern use of the sword. The nobles of France, possessed of countless feudal privileges and dwelling in the utmost state on their own domains, felt none of that respect for the Crown which had existed in England from days far anterior to the Norman conquest. Though the origin of their privileges was much the same as in England, a gradual development had carried the French nobles to a position no English populace would have tolerated in their peers. Holding the common people in contempt, laid down by statesmen in the front of genius for the guidance of that country whose people have, not without cause, claimed to be the most complete exponent of European civilisation, foremost in the march of progress, combining political advance with individual development." Influence of Sea Power upon History, Chap. II. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 49 their insolence regarding the ordinary rights of humanity went to lengths which are not readily to be believed, did not documentary proofs exist. Thus it is once more advertised that the remote causes of progress and decay must be sought for in what may be called original territorial conditions. The problem that Richelieu had then to solve was first to destroy this independent power which still openly challenged even that of the throne. The methods which he adopted showed his masterly know- ledge of men. By a variety of manoeuvres he suc- ceeded in attracting the great nobles in increasing numbers to the brilliant courts of France; and gradually making them more and more dependent on their royal master, in a generation he brought about a political metamorphosis of the first importance. Ex- hausting their fortunes in their attempts to outrival one another, the nobles of France soon found that kingly favour was necessary for their continued existence. 1 Now irrevocably divorced from their accustomed life of rural magnificence, with their estates mortgaged for huge sums on which they had to pay exorbitant interest, they soon looked on absence from the capital as the most hateful of exiles; and thus by the time 1 The economic crisis which had already arisen in Europe, through the enormous influx of gold and silver from the New World, as well as by the wealth brought from Africa and Asia, was very far-reaching in its effect on the privileged classes. A very general rise in values and in the standard of living occurred, the landowners being, as usual, the first to suffer from this. Unfortunately it is only in chance remarks made by chroniclers living in these times that the great politico-social influence of this change is seen; but several Venetian ambassadors, with the shrewdness natural in a trading Republic, have told how sorely this revolution pressed on great continental landowners. E 50 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR of the commencement of the reign of Louis XIV., a new France existed, because the great nobles had been transformed into great courtiers and nothing else. The immediate result was that French imperialism was not only possible but quickly grew in a remarkable manner; and soon the boundaries of this central kingdom became the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Rhine. Just as the Court of Philip II., in the previous century, had disposed of the destinies of Europe, so now did the Court at Versailles display a similar mastery. The power of the empire across the Rhine the phantom Holy Roman Empire finally undermined by the Thirty Years' War, 1 which had been fed by the astute diplomacy of Richelieu was so lowered, that until the nineteenth century the Teutonic races ceased to have general political importance. For though the genius of Frederick the Great succeeded later in creating the 1 "The great result of the Thirty Years' War, and of the religious differences from which it had arisen, was the complete annihilation of German unity. The name of the Empire was retained, but it had no longer any practical reality. Ferdinand II. had identified the imperial authority with the suppression of Protestantism. Protestantism survived the danger, and the result was the destruction of the authority which had menaced it. Germany became a loose federation in which the territorial princes were all-powerful. The right to determine the religion of their subjects, which had been admitted in the peace of Augsburg, was confirmed in that of Westphalia. The Imperial Diet continued its meetings, but it became a congress of pleni- potentiaries. One great blessing the peace brought with it, the absolute termination of those religious quarrels which had pro- duced such havoc and misery, and which were ended less by agree- ment than by exhaustion." . . . "The Treaty of Nystadt finally settled the great question of the supremacy in Northern Europe. The position which the disunion of Germany and the genius of Gustavus Adolphus had GENERAL INTRODUCTION 51 Prussian State in the teeth of French opposition, until 1866 and 1870 Prussia was internationally negligible. In France first occurred on a formidable scale that rise of mere talent to a position of high importance which soon became a new feature in European life. The age of Louis XIV., ushered in in this magnificent manner, and yet sapping the life of the nation to con- tribute to the glory of kings, blotted out the memory of dominant Spain. Colbert, one of the greatest of many great French statesmen, controlled the finances. Louvois, never surpassed even by Napoleon as an organiser and administrator of armies, evolved a vast military machine which assured success in war. The French infantry, trained by an officer whose very name has passed into every language Martinet surpassed even the famous Spanish infantry of Alva. Vauban, the greatest of military engineers, carried the art of fortifying to a degree of perfection never before known. The creation of a powerful fleet of one hundred ships of the line, manned by 60,000 disciplined sailors, reduced maritime England to a position of extraordinary inferiority, and completed the disrating of Holland as a sea-power; and British merchant-men were no safer in the English Channel than on the high seas. Thus France, borrowing from Spain the new idea of an absolute monarchy founded on militarism, materially assisted in rendering still more antiquated and valueless the old theocratic idea of kingship, which during previous won for Sweden was henceforth transferred to Russia. The only thing which to some extent neutralised the results of the transfer was the as yet almost unnoticed development of Prussia into a State of first-rate importance." Lodge's Student's Modern Europe. 52 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR ages had been almost unchallenged. Henceforth kings to be kings had really to rule. Though the rage of ambition, which spurred Louis XIV. to develop his grandiose schemes and to interfere in the Spanish succession, ended in ruin because it aroused universal concern and arrayed half Europe against him, the lesson he taught travelled far. 1 Though from the date of the famous battle of Blenheim, fought in 1704, it was amply clear that fortune was turning against Louis, so strong was this centralised militarism, which he had erected, that it was not until 1713 and 1714 that those far-reach- ing treaties which are comprehended under the general title of the "Peace of Utrecht" were concluded, and France having single-handed defied Europe was proclaimed no longer the arbiter of European destinies. Now it is important here to note that France, at the turning-point in her history which the reign 1 "During the last thirty years of the seventeenth century, amid all the strife of arms and diplomacy, there had been clearly fore- seen the coming of an event which would raise new and great issues. This was the failure of the direct royal line in that branch of the House of Austria which was then on the Spanish throne; and the issues to be determined when the present king, infirm both in body and mind, should die, were whether the new mon- arch was to be taken from the House of Bourbon or from the Austrian family in Germany; and whether, in either event, the sovereign thus raised to the throne should succeed to the entire in- heritance, the Empire of Spain, or some partition of that vast inheritance be made in the interests of the balance of European power. But this balance of power was no longer understood in the narrow sense of continental possessions; the effect of the new arrangements upon commerce, shipping, and the control both of the ocean and the Mediterranean, was closely looked to. The in- fluence of the two sea-powers and the nature of their interests were becoming more evident." Mahan : Influence of Sea Power upon History, Chap. V. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 53 of Louis XIV. evidently constitutes, deliberately con- centrated her energies on a false objective that is, on winning the acknowledged hegemony of Europe by a policy of conquest, when such a policy had become impossible owing to the very general growth in the sense of nationality, and to the universal growth of armies armed with modern arms. 1 Herein lay her fatal 1 Two passages from Mahan may here be quoted : (a) "The changes effected by this long war and sanctioned by the peace, neglecting details of lesser or passing importance, may be stated as follows: i. The House of Bourbon was settled on the Spanish throne, and the Spanish empire retained its West In- dian and American possessions; the purpose of William III. against her dominion there was frustrated when England under- took to support the Austrian Prince, and so fastened the greater part of her naval force to the Mediterranean. 2. The Spanish em- pire lost its possessions in the Netherlands, Gelderland going to the new kingdom of Prussia and Belgium to the emperor; the Spanish Netherlands thus became the Austrian Netherlands. 3. Spain lost also the principal islands of the Mediterranean; Sardinia being given to Austria, Minorca with its fine harbour to Great Britain, and Sicily to the Duke of Savoy. 4. Spain lost also her Italian possessions, Milan and Naples going to the emperor. Such, in the main, were the results to Spain of the fight over the succession to her throne." (b) "The demands made by England, as conditions of peace in 1711, showed her to have become a sea power in the purest sense of the word, not only in fact, but also in her own consciousness. She required that the same person should never be king both of France and Spain; that a barrier of fortified towns should be granted her allies, Holland and Germany, as a defensive line against France; that French conquests from her allies should be re- stored; and for herself she demanded the formal cession of Gibral- tar and Port Mahon, whose strategic and maritime value has been pointed out, the destruction of the port of Dunkirk, the home-nest of the privateers that preyed on English commerce, the cession of the French colonies of Newfoundland, Hudson's Bay, and Nova Scotia, the last of which she held at that time, and 54 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR mistake a mistake which Napoleon hoped to repair a century later with his dreams of Eastern empires. But it was too late. Instead of aspiring to the dominion of the outer world the world of colour which had already been clearly mapped by the men of the Iberian peninsula, and which she could have easily wrested from Spaniard and Portuguese France chose rather to grasp at the laurels of European conquest; and in so doing she missed her destiny. By this false policy she gave time to her historic rival England to gather strength and to enter successfully into a struggle in which little was really in the favour of the island- Power. One spe- cial advantage, and one only, did England possess, and this differentiated her sharply from all other European Powers. Secure in her own islands, she was able to issue forth suddenly, and by throwing her weight on the side which seemed to her the most reasonable, to adjust the balance of power so that it never weighed down too far. From the days of the War of the Spanish Succession, it is this priceless advantage which has given her the exceptional position she still enjoys. Unlike the Powers of the Continent, which must carry out their defensive policy by massing ever-ready land-armies, for England such armies are only for offence the sea being her de- fence. It was therefore possible for her gradually to grow in power, because every augmentation in her defen- sive strength her fleets unconsciously impelled her to seek, not expansion in Europe, but expansion overseas. Thus the rise of England the purely maritime Power finally, treaties of commerce with France and Spain, and the concession of the monopoly of the slave trade with Spanish America, known as the Asiento, which Spain had given to France in 1701." Influence of Sea Power upon History, Chap. V. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 55 forced international politics along a different road. That road was the sea. The ruin of France's imperial policy in Europe was therefore the signal for a most momentous change; and from now on, the struggle for real power, after having been confined to the narrow limits of a relatively small continent, peopled by the same races, was to be transferred to wider spheres ; and under tropical suns, in lonely forests, on great rivers, and on every open sea, the nations seek for final mastery. From the beginning of the eighteenth century, European history, from being more or less provincial, becomes truly international history or world-history. Events follow each other in rapid succession; one nation displaces another in con- tested regions; new forces arise; and we pass from a 1 "We have now reached the opening of a series of great wars, destined to last with short intervals of peace for nearly half a century, and having, amid many misleading details, one broad characteristic distinguishing them from previous and from many subsequent wars. This strife embraced the four quarters of the world, and that not only as side issues here and there, the main struggle being in Europe; for the great questions to be determined by it, concerning the world's history, were the dominion of the sea and the control of distant countries, the possession of colonies, and, dependent upon these, the increase of wealth. Singularly enough it is not till nearly the end of the long contest that great fleets are found engaging, and the struggle transferred to its proper field, the sea. The action of sea-power is evident enough, the issue plainly indicated from the beginning; but for a long time there is no naval warfare of any consequence, because the truth is not recog- nised by the French Government. The movement toward colonial extension by France is wholly popular, though illustrated by a few great names; the attitude of the rulers is cold and mis- trustful; hence came neglect of the navy, a foregone conclu- sion of defeat on the main question, and the destruction for the time of her sea-power." Mahan : Influence of Sea Power upon History, Chap. VII. 56 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR dreary old world, overcrowded with unimportant events, to a new world, in which nothing of the traditional provincialism of a dozen centuries is to be discerned. It is quite certain that the ultimate consequences of those daring voyages, undertaken by the early navigators of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, were never dreamed of by their unsophisticated generations. The Turkish capture of Constantinople, and the virtual clos- ing of those trade-routes to the East which had been in growing use ever since the days of the Crusades, urgently demanded some remedy; but from Columbus even down to the days of Cook, no single navigator clearly saw that the immense change which was thus wrought in European relations by the gradual transfer of power from the land to the sea must infallibly alter the whole course of European history. It was ocean-navigation the issuing-out of Europe on to the vast waters of the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian oceans which destroyed forever old relations and old conditions. Hitherto commercial contact, just as the great shocks of war, had been achieved on land or on land-locked seas; now the decisive factor had become the open sea - the ocean. 1 This is the reason, as Macaulay well 1 It is well to insert here two extracts from Mahan to emphasise (a) the value of sea-power as a war-machine, (b) the position to which England was gradually rising. (a) "The noiseless, steady, exhausting pressure with which sea- power acts, cutting off the resources of the enemy while maintain- ing its own, supporting war in scenes where it does not appear itself, or appears only in the background, and striking open blows at rare intervals, though lost to most, is emphasised to the care- ful reader by the events of this war and of the half-century that followed. The overwhelming sea-power of England was the determining factor in European history during the period men- tioned, maintaining war abroad while keeping its own people in pros- GENERAL INTRODUCTION 57 remarks, why Napoleon, though he appeared mightier than any other man since the time of Charlemagne, possessed an empire truly less grand than that of Philip II. of Spain. His dominion was strictly limited to land; his empire a miraculous tour de force an attempted revival of a state of affairs that was an evident anachronism. Even transcendent genius cannot efface the extraordinary results of three centuries of transoceanic endeavour; and at the close of the eight- eenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, sea- power had already risen to be that dominant factor in European life which it still remains, because of the vital economic relations which it had established with so many distant regions of the world. Spain, because she had been the first Power to employ extra-European aids, had been the first Power in Europe to rise supreme. Spain could have remained great had she remained liberal. She it was who definitely upset the received perity at home, and building up the great empire which is now seen; but from its very greatness its action, by escaping opposition, escapes attention." (b) "The sea-power of England, therefore, was not merely in the great navy, with which we too commonly and exclusively asso- ciate it; France had had such a navy in 1688, and it shrivelled away like a leaf in the fire. Neither was it in a prosperous commerce alone; a few years after the date at which we have ar- rived, the commerce of France took on fair proportions, but the first blast of war swept it off the seas as the navy of Cromwell had once swept that of Holland. It was in the union of the two, carefully fostered, that England made the gain of sea-power over and beyond all other States; and this gain is distinctly associated with and dates from the War of the Spanish Succession. Before that war England was one of the sea-powers; after it she was the sea-power, without any second. This power also she held alone, unshared by friend and unchecked by foe." Influence of Sea Power upon History, Chap. V. 58 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR opinion of the middle ages that Europe was all in all; that the mediaeval Papacy and the mediaeval Empire were to remain permanent and all-embracing edifices, contrasted with which other European States were nothing but political enclaves. 1 France, having out- rivalled Spain and the Austro-Spanish Hapsburgs, had she followed her true path, could never have been rivalled and eclipsed by England in the rapid manner which now occurred. It is important here to note that this new factor was introduced primarily by the development of the American Continent and the adjacent island-groups, and by nothing else. Without America and her islands that development would never have then occurred. 2 1 "The peace of Cateau-Cambresis closed the long series of wars which had commenced with the accession of Charles V. to the empire in 1519. It marks an epoch in the international relations of the European States. France had succeeded in its task of resisting the formation of a Hapsburg monarchy which threatened the independence of Europe. Germany and Spain are henceforward separated. For some time after this religious rather than political differences divide Europe; and when something like the old rivalry re-commences at the close of the century, it takes the form of a national duel between Spain and France. "For forty years the dominant personality in Europe had been Charles V. His disappearance necessarily effected a great change. European history loses its unity when it ceases to group itself round one central figure. With the great emperor vanished all prospect of a compromise between the two rival faiths. Hence- forth Roman Catholicism hardens itself in its remaining strongholds, and prepares not only to repress all attempts at internal change, but also to carry on a determined war against the hostile Protestant sep- aratists." Lodge: Modern Europe, Chap. VI. 2 If we take the single example of the island of San Domingo only part of which belonged to France records show that the French commerce of the eighteenth century with this island GENERAL INTRODUCTION 59 Whilst the half-way houses on the coasts of Africa, and the trading-posts in the East Indies and in the archipel- agoes of the Further East, soon furnished great sources of wealth to companies of traders who had established their depots from Cape Verde to Canton and now covered the seas with their fleets of merchantmen, that such a trade existed was not of supreme importance to Europe. But with the two Americas it was different. Here was no question of trading-posts ; efforts built to serve as bases from which to conduct politico-commercial intercourse; of slave-depots. Here was a question of real empire. In the Americas the white races took per- manent root, and by so doing completely altered Europe's destinies. The contests on the Atlantic, waged because of this wide dispersal of these dominant races, and the fierce rivalries which sprang therefrom, soon profoundly maintained no less than sixteen hundred French vessels manned by twenty-seven thousand sailors; while as late as 1789 the year of the French Revolution, when Colonial France was elsewhere in decay French exports from this island amounted to no less than 250,000,000 francs and the imports to 189,000,000 francs, a total trade of 17,560,000 sterling. It is very doubtful if the entire trade of Great Britain at this period amounted to more than thrice this figure. Here it is useful to call attention to the well-known fact that so little was political geography understood even one hundred and twenty years ago that it was generally held that the West Indies were really more important and more valuable than the vast unde- veloped stretches of the Northern American continent. Thus did it happen that the evanescent riches of the West Indian Islands the sugar, the spices, the rum were confounded with real riches, which can only be free men. Even in the eighteenth century so little was political science understood that in the struggle between the nations the glitter of gold formed the main lure. 60 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR influenced the march of events from Lisbon to Moscow, and invested such contests with world-wide significance. The rest of the globe the world of coloured men - was still asleep, save where there was fitful contact with the white world. And just because of this happy circumstance because Asia and Africa were quiescent - Europe marched forward with the stride of a giant. As early as the seventeenth century all the five great seafaring nations of Europe Portugal, Spain, Holland, France, and England had important stakes in Amer- ica, and all were therefore directly interested in this vital question. But Holland, ruined by European warfare, was already of little account ; and Portugal, having been once made the vassal of Spain and being very small, was also negligible. Thus by the eighteenth century there were three rivals and only three; and the history of the wavering fortunes of these three becomes largely the history of Europe. The great struggle, which was to have such a lasting effect on the march of events everywhere, was fought in regions which are comprised in a map which need only include the waters of the Atlantic and the Western Mediterranean. It was a sea- struggle, to which the extraordinary series of land-wars which raged in Europe from 1689 to 1763 l was only 1 These conflicts continued with very little intermission from the year of the expulsion of the House of Stuart in 1689 to the formal peace with France and the cession of Canada by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The first of these four wars waged from 1689 to 1697 was a contest in which the newly elected sovereign William III. vindicated British independence of for- eign control against the king of France. The second the war of the Spanish Succession, waged from 1702 to 1713 settled the great effort of Louis XIV. to become predominant in Eu- rope. The third the war of the Austrian Succession, waged from 1739 to 1748 was the one in which England was the least GENERAL INTRODUCTION 61 an unimportant accompaniment, so far as the destinies of the New World were concerned. This struggle clearly proclaimed the rapid growth of a New Europe and of a new balance of power. For England the real struggle was never in Europe itself; for her it was a matter of life and death who was to be dominant be- yond Europe. Her insular position permitted her to concentrate her strength on her true objective, which was to drive her rivals from all distant seas. And thus, very slowly and very painfully, in the face of the greatest odds, England definitely displaced France. 1 concerned, but which had necessitated her taking part because of her conflict with Spain in the New World, where British vessels were attempting to break down the old Spanish monopoly. The fourth and last contest the Seven Years' War, waged from 1756 to 1763 was one in which England assisted the efforts of Prussia against the most formidable coalition which had yet arisen in Europe, the coalition of France, Austria, and Russia. 1 It is necessary to quote Mahan again, since he advances his argu- ments as few men can do : "Instead of concentrating against England, France began another continental war, this time with a new and extraordinary alliance. The Empress of Austria, working on the religious superstitions of the king and upon the anger of the king's mis- tress, who was piqued at sarcasms uttered against her by Fred- erick the Great, drew France into an alliance with Austria against Prussia. This alliance was further joined by Russia, Sweden, and Poland. The empress urged that the two Roman Catho- lic Powers should unite to take Silesia away from a Protes- tant king, and expressed her willingness to give to France a part of her possessions in the Netherlands, which France had always desired. "Frederick the Great, learning the combination against him, instead of waiting for it to develop, put his armies in motion and in- vaded Saxony, whose ruler was also King of Poland. This movement, in October, 1756, began the Seven Years' War; which, like the War of the Austrian Succession, but not to the same extent, drew some of the contestants off from the original cause 62 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR The riches drawn by Spain from the New World have engaged at the hands of historians a far greater share of attention than they deserve, save from the strictly economic point of view; for though some mines in the hands of the Spaniards gave fabulous returns, as a matter of fact they only served to enrich temporarily the Spanish Court and a few grandees, whilst indirectly impoverishing for a long term not only Spain but all Europe by upsetting all the old standards of values. Spanish commerce was virtually a State enterprise; ordinary traders had no interest in those galleons which romance has filled with such inexhaustible supplies of gold and silver and which served only to sap the vitality of a brave people. Her empire was an empire based on false conceptions. But with the Atlantic possessions of both France and England it was very different; for the colonies of both these Powers had grown immensely wealthy from the trade of the planta- tions with which they were covered, and from the shipping which was nurtured in their ports. France, of difference. But while France, having already on hand one large quarrel with her neighbour across the Channel, was thus needlessly entering upon another struggle with the avowed end of building up that Austrian empire which a wiser policy had long striven to humble, England this time saw clearly where her true interests lay. Making the continental war subsidiary, she turned her efforts upon the sea and the colonies; at the same time supporting Frederick both with money and cordial sympathy in the war for the defence of his kingdom, which so seriously diverted and divided the efforts of France. Eng- land thus had really but one war on hand. In the same year the direction of the struggle was taken from the hands of a weak ministry and given to those of the bold and ardent William Pitt, who retained his office till 1761, by which time the ends of the war had practically been secured." Influence of Sea Power upon History, Chap. VIII. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 63 having the richer islands, had perhaps drawn home greater wealth during the time when her commerce filled the ports of Europe; but in another important particular she was already beaten before the armed struggle began. For although French commerce and French shipping filled the Atlantic, she had been completely outdistanced in the matter of implanting colonies of her own people. This vital factor in the continued success of the English race the capacity of the people to emigrate in increasing numbers has had the greatest historical influence. Because such colonies have become common- places, the immense significance of the first thriving English colonies on the Atlantic seaboard is to-day lost sight of. But it is a fact, surely worth remember- ing and emphasising, that these North American colonies were the first real colonies of white men destined to make a nation which had ever been founded on a true self-governing scale out of Europe. The Spanish colonies were more in the nature of military dominions maintained over subject races, and in most of these colonies a fusion between the white and the coloured peoples was in full progress. The French colonies were but little better although situated in New France or Canada, as they had but a scanty population which looked with aversion on the cultiva- tion of the soil. Very different was the case with the British. Though different motives had prompted the formation of the different settlements, a common race and a common pride united the men of New England with the men of Virginia and Maryland; and the soil which they held was tilled and tilled again. By the middle 64 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR of the eighteenth century these settlements possessed no less than two million inhabitants, and because they were so rich in men became the real key to the series of problems which were then unfolded. Though France, like Spain, had been humbled in the contest for supreme power in Europe, the genius of her people was so utterly different from the genius of the Spanish, that owing also to her central and dominating geographical position and her great coast- line, territorial losses at home soon served largely to increase her oceanic activities. In that rich land, first named New France and only later Canada, her clear- headed statesmen saw more than a compensation for contracted European frontiers. Had France been content to confine herself to territory which was clearly hers by right of pre-emption had she remembered the valuable political maxim that he who goes slowly goes safely it is not unwise to assume that the French flag would yet be waving above the waters of the St. Lawrence, and the French tongue spoken exclusively over a vast belt of country stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But in America, as in India under Dupleix, France could not brook the idea of a rival : and so Frenchmen than whom none have a clearer strategical outlook believing that if they could only obtain possession of the sole roadways throughout this vast untamed New World, the waterways, they would soon become supreme, commenced at once that adventurous policy which, in view of the numerical superiority of the English in the contested hemisphere, could only lead to disaster. The hinterland of British North America was studded with lake and riverine forts; the banks of GENERAL INTRODUCTION 65 the Mississippi and the Missouri resounded with the voices of French voyageurs, coming in advance of their soldiers; the hope was openly cherished that soon the great colony of New France would be linked to the great colony of Louisiana, and the British effectually confined to the coast regions. The West Indies lent their valuable aid; and all Frenchmen became suddenly confident that England, which in the wars of the Austrian and Spanish successions had shown them the same old implacable hatred, would be finally humbled. 1 The psychology of this bold movement must be sought for not so much in the actual conditions of the day 1 Abroad, i.e. out of Europe, war was practically continuous, as this extract shows : "The urgency with which peace was desired by the principal parties to the War of the Austrian Succession may perhaps be inferred from the neglect to settle definitely and conclusively many of the questions outstanding between them, and notably the very disputes about which the war between England and Spain began. It seems as though the Powers feared to treat thoroughly matters that contained the germs of future quarrels, lest the discussion should prolong the war that then existed. England made peace because the fall of Holland was otherwise inevitable, not because she had enforced, or surrendered, her claims of 1739 against Spain. The right of uninterrupted naviga- tion in West Indian seas, free from any search, was left un- determined, as were other kindred matters. Not only so, but the boundaries between the English and French colonies in the val- ley of the Ohio, toward Canada, and on the land side of the Nova Scotian peninsula, remained as vague as they had before been. It was plain that peace could not last; and by it, if she had saved Holland, England surrendered the control of the sea which she had won. The true character of the strife, shrouded for a moment by the continental war, was revealed by the so-called peace; though formally allayed, the contention continued in every part of the world." Mahan : Influence of Sea Power upon History, Chap. VIII. 66 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR as in the traditions which remained from other times. As late as the middle of the eighteenth century England was still very generally looked upon as a minor Power which had gained exceptional renown mainly through the predatory instincts of her people, and their strange mastery over the sea. Such a Power, in the opinion of the statesmen of the Continent, was not to be spoken of in the same breath as France; England was merely a second Holland a common carrier the home of an adventurous sea-people. Even Macaulay admits that until Clive went to India the English "were despised as mere pedlars, while the French were revered as a people formed for victory and command." In the view of the great kingdoms of Europe, neither the vic- tories of Marlborough, nor the successes of adventurers and traders in most distant regions, entitled her to a higher place, because of two facts : England, compared to other great countries, was small in area, and weak in men. These facts seemed to gain further emphasis from the internal condition of England, which, after having possessed, under the last Tudors and the Stuarts, a highly centralised and autocratic authority, had by the Revolution been surrendered for more than two generations to the control of an effete oligarchy with no man, until a Chatham arose, who dared to revive the Cromwellian tradition. Bearing this well in mind, it is not difficult to under- stand the ambitions of the French in America, though a census taken after the actual surrender of Canada showed that the total French population in that territory only numbered 76,000 people. At home they were so GENERAL INTRODUCTION 67 populous that they refused to believe in any possibility of English overseas supremacy; and until Chatham assumed the sole direction of affairs, the fitful nature of the struggle in the New World seemed to endorse that view. But Chatham infused his own zeal into everyone under him; he preached the frank gospel that France was the only Power England need fear; the American militia, answering his call, soon ran into tens of thousands of men, owing to the enthusiasm which the policy of complete defiance to France aroused; and victory was assured. In 1759, with the surrender of Quebec and the entire chain of lake and riverine posts on which French strategy had been based, England suddenly became supreme in the New World; in India the victory of Plassey founded a yet vaster empire. By the treaty of Paris, signed in 1763, France admitted these stubborn facts. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a totally new situation had arisen. England had displaced France. 1 1 "The one nation that gained in this war was that which used the sea in peace to earn its wealth, and ruled it in war by the extent of its navy, by the number of its subjects who lived on the sea or by the sea, and by its numerous bases of operations scattered over the globe. Yet it must be observed that these bases themselves would have lost their value if their communica- tions remained obstructed. Therefore the French lost Louisburg, Martinique, Pondicherry; so England herself lost Minorca. The service between the bases and the mobile force between the ports and the fleets is mutual. In this respect the navy is essentially a light corps; it keeps open the communications between its own ports, it obstructs those of the enemy; but it sweeps the sea for the service of the land, it controls the desert that man may live and thrive on the habitable globe. These remarks, always true, are doubly so now since the introduction of steam. The renewal of coal is a want more frequent, more urgent, more peremptory, than any known to the sailing-ship. It is vain to look for energetic 68 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR It is from this moment, and from this moment only, that the history of England becomes world-history, and that Englishmen became covered with a renown which remains to them to this day. From being a minor Power, with a major fleet but with only a small home territory, England, by her victory over France not only in America but in all parts of the Atlantic, in India and in Africa as well, became a great Power, and therefore the object of secret envy and hatred among European nations, which instinctively understood that the old balance had disappeared, never to return, and that a new pivot had been made on which to swing events. France had definitely given up her long contest for the mastery of the East, and left the British to estab- lish their rule over scores of millions of people; in Africa, too, she had lost everything. France, the leading representative of European culture and civilisation, had been surprisingly vanquished. But most startling fact of all to those whose inland homes left them in ignorance of the outer world, the sea, from being a mere highway on which to travel to distant lands, had been demonstrated as the controlling engine of war in the hands of an island-Power. Henceforth the sea acquired new terrors. France's friend and ally, Spain still living on the tradition of her past greatness had suffered throughout the Atlantic contest in the same cruel way; once almost mistress of the world, she naval operations distant from coal stations. It is equally vain to acquire distant coaling stations without maintaining a powerful navy; they will but fall into the hands of the enemy. But the vainest of all delusions is the expectation of bringing down an enemy by commerce-destroying alone, with no coaling stations outside the national boundaries." Mahan : Influence of Sea Power upon History, Chap. VIII. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 69 had to deplore the loss of Cuba, the Philippines, and Minorca. Had it not been for the internal condition of England, the supremacy of the British Empire, so summarily established, would have long remained unchallenged. But democracy had yet to come to its own, and because of that one vital fact it needed fresh conflicts both to ensure permanency to the fabric which had been raised, and to secure the continued advance of mankind. It was the Hanoverian connection the fact that the first two sovereigns of the House of Brunswick cared more for their German Electorate than for their English throne which had dragged the British Isles so often into Continental rivalries. This European entangle- ment, and the fact that in the last struggle England was waging war in company and in alliance with Prussia, introduced a factor which went far to rob her of the fruits which her independent action in the four quarters of the globe had gathered for her. Hence, too, sprang a train of consequences, the power of which is to be seen even to this day. Since the settlement of modern Europe on its present basis dates from the days of the Seven Years' War, scant doubt can exist that had England's decision in the matter of making peace with France in the year 1763 been different, the whole course of the world's history might easily have been changed. 1 For it is clear that 1 This is how Mahan cuttingly summarises the land-contest of the Seven Years' War : "The terms of the peace were simply the status quo ante helium. By the estimate of the King of Prussia, one hundred and eighty thousand of his soldiers had fallen or died in this war, 70 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR had England followed Chatham's advice, and completely broken French maritime power by persisting in the French war until that "nursery of seamen," the Atlantic fisheries, had been destroyed and the West Indies totally annexed, French naval help would have been lacking less than twenty years later when the American colonies revolted; and without that naval help those colonies could never have obtained their independence, save by the free gift of the Mother Country. But peace was decided on because of both internal and external com- plications and thus England was left face to face with a great domestic problem of which the approaching American Revolution was to be but one phase. 1 It is out of a kingdom of five million souls; while the losses of Russia, Austria, and France aggregated four hundred and sixty thousand men. The result was simply that things remained as they were." Influence of Sea Power upon History, Chap. VIII. 1 This is what Mahan says about this peace: "The nation at large and Pitt, the favourite of the nation, were bitterly opposed to the terms of the treaty. 'France,' said Pitt, 'is chiefly formidable to us as a maritime and commercial Power. What we gain in this respect is valuable to us above all through the injury to her which results from it. You leave to France the possibility of reviving her navy.' In truth, from the point of view of sea-power and of the national jealousies which the spirit of that age sanctioned, these words, though illiberal, were strictly justifiable. The restoration to France of her colonies in the West Indies and her stations in India, together with the valuable right of fishery in her former American possessions, put before her the possibility and the inducement to restore her shipping, her commerce, and her navy, and thus tended to recall her from the path of continental ambition which had been so fatal to her in- terests, and in the same proportion favorable to the unprece- dented growth of England's power upon the ocean. The opposition, and indeed some of the ministry, also thought that so commanding and important a position as Havana was poorly paid for by the ces- sion of the yet desolate and unproductive region called Florida. Porto Rico was suggested, Florida accepted. There were other GENERAL INTRODUCTION 71 astonishing to-day to reflect that only four generations after the people had executed one king they should applaud the tyranny of another. From the moment George III. had ascended the throne, he had determined to emancipate himself from the restraint to which his ancestors had been forced to submit, and to regain the authority which had been the prerogative of the Stuarts. To this vital fact must be assigned the confusion in British foreign policy which so quickly followed, and the blind mixing of false objectives with the true. Under George I. and George II. the system of government by Parliament had been fully minor points of difference, into which it is unnecessary to enter. It would scarcely be denied that with the commanding rrulitary con- trol of the sea held by England, grasping as she now did so many important positions, with her navy overwhelmingly superior in numbers, and her commerce and internal condition very thriving, more rigorous terms might easily have been exacted and would have been prudent. The ministry defended their eagerness and spirit of concession on the ground of the enormous growth of the debt, which then amounted to 122,000,000, a sum in every point of view much greater then than now; but while this draft upon the future was fully justified by the success of the war, it also im- peratively demanded that the utmost advantages which the military situation made attainable should be exacted. This the ministry failed to do. As regards the debt, it is well observed by a French writer that 'in this war, and for years afterward, England had in view nothing less than the conquest of America and the progress of her East India Company. By these two countries her manufac- tures and commerce acquired more than sufficient outlets, and re- paid her for the numerous sacrifices she had made. Seeing the mari- time decay of Europe its commerce annihilated, its manufactures so little advanced how could the English nation feel afraid of a future which offered so vast a perspective ?' Unfortunately the nation needed an exponent in the government; and its chosen mouthpiece, the only man, perhaps, able to rise to the level of the great opportunity, was out of favour at court." Influence of Sea Power upon History, Chap. VIII. 72 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR established, and the House of Commons, though largely influenced by corruption, held the real power. George III. determined to break this system; his success in so doing helped largely to set in motion those sanguinary movements which were not stilled until two generations later. It is not necessary to consider these troublesome matters in detail; they are mentioned because they have to-day general political importance. If it were possible to see clearly where in those days the vital mistakes were committed, statesmen would possess an almost infallible guide to the handling of future problems in both Asia and Africa, which are to-day the final meeting-places of the world's rival forces. But though it is clear that a fierce and resolute use of gun- powder is still the sole means of securing the onward march of empires that is, that a centralised authority is still necessary to secure any resolute course of action in the face of imminent danger it is equally certain that restraints imposed upon the internal growth of liberalism and individual independence infallibly invite disaster by sowing within the seeds of future dissolution. It is the discovery of the happy medium between the conditions which make for external political success that is, for success of foreign policy and the conditions which produce internal content, which should engage the energies of those who would hasten the coming of a political millennium. Because the ancient barbarian principle of representation had not yet been adapted to meet the totally new conditions which had grown up overseas, England fought her own colonies and lost. 1 1 In view of the curious ideas which still linger in certain quarters in England it may be held pertinent to insert here a brilliant passage from Dr. Goldwin Smith's History of the United GENERAL INTRODUCTION 73 To the chastening of the national spirit which so quickly followed this unlawful attempt unlawful in States, which all who use English as their mother-tongue should ponder over: "Separation, again be it said, was inevitable. It was too likely that, the vision of statesmanship being clouded as it was respecting the relation of colonies to the mother-country, the separation would be angry and violent. Still it might conceivably have been amicable, and that dark page might possibly have been torn from the book of destiny. Woe, we must say, to them by whom the offence came and through whose immediate agency, cul- pable in itself, the two great families of our race were made and to a deplorable extent have remained enemies instead of being friends, brethren, and fellow-workers in the advancement of their common civilisation. Woe to the arbitrary and bigoted king whose best excuse is that he had not made himself a ruler instead of being what nature intended him to be, a ploughman. Woe to Grenville, who though not wicked or really bent on de- priving the colonies of their rights, but on the contrary most anxious after his fashion to promote their interests, was narrow, pedantic, overbearing, possessed with extravagant ideas of the authority of Parliament, and unstatesmanlike enough to insist on doing because it was technically lawful that which the sagacity of Walpole had on the ground of practical expediency refused to do. Woe above all to Charles Townshend, who, with his vain brilliancy and his champagne speeches, repeated in the face of recent and decisive experience the perilous experiment and recklessly renewed the quarrel. Woe to Lord North, and all the more because in stoop- ing to do the will of the king he was sinning against the light of good nature and good sense in himself. Woe even to Mansfield, whose supremely legal intellect too ably upheld the letter of the law against policy and the right. Woe to the Parliament a Parliament be it ever remembered of rotten boroughs and of nominees not of the nation which carelessly or insolently sup- ported the evil resolution of the ministry and the court. Woe to the Tory squires who shouted for the war, to the Tory parsons who preached for it, and to the Tory bishops who voted for it in the House of Lords. Woe to the pamphleteers of prerogative, such as Johnson, whose vituperative violence added fuel to the flame. But woe also to the agitators at Boston, who with the design of in- 74 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR the highest sense because it was inexpedient to coerce the North American colonies into slavish obedience, must be directly traced the adoption of those political and economic views which still so sharply differentiate the British polity from that of the rest of Europe, and which have secured for that polity much of its present vast renown. Had England been successful in imposing those strange views which found favour with a resolute but bigoted king, and had she at the same time vanquished her other enemies, it is not too much to suppose that the centralisation of power which would have speedily followed would in the end have been as disastrous to her as it had previously been in the cases of Spain and France. But because England failed where it was good for her to fail because she found that Cromwell and his Ironsides are really eternal figures in the history of the English race no matter where that race may wander, figures which must re- appear whenever conditions provoke a re-incarnation - it has been permitted her, instead of falling back in the race of nations, to retain and increase that mastery which Chatham and his disciples began to secure for her. dependence unavowed and of which they themselves were per- haps but half conscious, did their utmost to push the quarrel to extremity and to quench the hope of reconciliation. Woe to the preachers of Boston, who whether from an exaggerated dread of prelacy or to win the favour of the people made themselves the trum- peters of discord and perverted the gospel into a message of civil war. Woe to contraband traders if there were any, who sought in fratricidal strife relief from trade restrictions; to debtors if there were any, who sought in it a sponge for debt. Woe to all on either side who under the influence of passion, interest, or selfish ambition fomented the quarrel which rent asunder the English race." GENERAL INTRODUCTION 75 To treat of this great and eventful period the revolutionary age ushered in by the American Revolu- tion is none of our present business, save in regard to those issues which were raised and left unsolved. It may be said here that while in one sense the revolt of the North American colonies was a purely internal problem for the newly-founded British Empire, the immediate mishandling of that problem made it a great and far-reaching international event. Foolish strategy led to sudden surrenders; sudden surrenders encouraged armed intervention; and thus France, still smarting under her displacement as the leading Power of Europe, and with Spain inevitably tied to her by the Family Compact, sullenly entered the fray. Assailed within the limits of her Empire and torn with doubt, England was everywhere on the defensive reversing her well- known and well-feared policy of attack, and thereby inviting disaster. 1 The separation of the richest colonies 1 These instructions, quoted by Mahan, were issued to the French navy by Louis XVI. when France decided to aid the North American colonies : "Your duty now is to restore to the French flag the lustre with which it once shone; past misfortunes and faults must be buried out of sight; only by the most illustrious actions can the navy hope to succeed in doing this. His Majesty has the right to expect the greatest efforts from his officers. Under whatever circumstances the King's fleet may be placed, his Majesty's orders, which he expressly charges me to impress upon you, as well as upon all officers in command, are that his ships attack with the great- est vigour, and defend themselves, on all occasions, to the last extremity." And Mahan adds the following luminous commentary on the attitude of France and Spain in this struggle : "Already despoiled of Canada, she (France) had every reason to believe that a renewal of war, with Europe neutral and the Americans friends instead of enemies, would not rob her of her 76 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR she ever had became assured; the unwisdom of her truce with France twenty years before became more clear; and forced to make peace on ignominious terms, silently she nursed her rage until the genius of Nelson was able to revive the traditions of Cromwell and Chatham, and the holocaust of Trafalgar not only repaid in full her debt but restored to her her honour. Imperially the American separation had been without effect; England had remained the leading Power; and more than that, Liberalism was born again, and grew stronger and stronger until the final victory of the Reform Acts. The effect of the American Revolution, while highly favourable at once to the institutions of England, because the ground had been prepared more than a century before to profit by that lesson, was in the first instance disastrous to the rest of Europe, and led directly to a generation of terrible warfare. In England, the revolution in political and economic thought was accomplished by indirect means it began by a disaster within the limits of the Empire but away from the heart of the Empire. In the rest of Europe islands. Recognising that the Americans, who less than twenty years before had insisted upon the conquest of Canada, would not consent to her regaining it, she expressly stipulated that she would have no such hopes, but exacted that in the coming war she would retain any English West Indian possessions which she could seize. Spain was differently situated. Hating England, wanting to regain Gibraltar, Minorca, and Jamaica no mere jewels in her crown, but foundation-stones of her power she nevertheless saw that the successful rebellion of the English colonists against the hitherto unrivalled sea-power of the mother- country would be a dangerous example to her own enormous colonial system, from which she yearly drew so great sub- sidies. If England with her navy should fall, what could Spain achieve ? Influence of Sea Power upon History, Chap. IX. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 77 it was only partially accomplished after a long lapse of time by direct means, in which cruel devastation every- where played a most considerable part before the gospel of the ballot-box was accepted. It has been well said that the French Revolution, precipitated by the American Revolution and the financial embarrassments which sprang therefrom, is not yet understood in its total effect, and that like those vast subterranean convulsions which disturb the tranquillity of the earth, only that manifestation which has been seen on the surface has been properly noted. To the historical student, who avoids emotional judgments, the fact that such a convulsion should have taken place in France, instead of elsewhere, is the final proof that France, in spite of colonial defeats and in spite of all English efforts, continued to retain not only the intellectual leadership of Europe but something of the political leadership as well. 1 Hand in hand with 1 It must not be forgotten that a factor in those days was England's weakness in men. Concerning England's weakness in men, it is a noteworthy fact that even a generation later that is, at the time of the French Revolution France possessed a popu- lation of twenty-five million people against Great Britain's nine million, to which may be added a thoroughly disaffected Irish population of three and a half million. It was this almost traditional weakness in men which, combined with the geographi- cal fact that England is so small, had so large a political influence. The marvellous increase in the British population since the beginning of the nineteenth century, an increase of three hundred per cent, in a little more than one hundred years, tends to obscure the fact that in the eighteenth century England was too weak in men to exert a profound general influence in world-politics. Even in Napoleonic days the tradition largely arising out of her narrow territory and her slender population, in spite of her mari- time greatness contributed to the idea that she might be eclipsed, as Holland had been eclipsed, if she were systematically opposed by the whole strength of Europe. 78 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR the enormous centralisation of power which had been established, there existed in France a greater sense of nationalism and a greater understanding of the meaning of liberty, than in all other countries of the Continent between the Atlantic and the Ural. This great explosive movement was the first real movement in continental Europe to discover how far centralisation of political power can co-exist with strong individual liberty : that is, whether a powerful executive and a true democracy can really co-exist. And as it is this problem which has nowhere yet been fully solved, it is a problem which remains perpetually interesting. But from the international standpoint the world standpoint that such a convulsion should have come so suddenly and sharply, shows that the transoceanic and colonial activities of the various European States, which were still being conducted on almost mediaeval principles, had made men blind to the fact that on the soil of Europe itself the breakdown of old barriers had been silently and magically proceeding through the direct influence of this commerce conducted with so many distant lands. Whole classes of people who had hitherto been content to remain undistinguished from the great masses of their countrymen, were rapidly enriched through colonial trade; and thus those who relied on hereditary rights and privileges handed down from feudal days, found themselves enormously out- numbered and their influence vanishing. Swamped in the new waves of prosperity which had been impelled from distant shores, they held up their hands weakly and attempted to stay irresistible forces with mere words. Thus it may be said that to the navigators of the earlier centuries the discoverers of the Americas, GENERAL INTRODUCTION 79 the African Continent, the India of the mainland and the India of countless isles, as well as the chart-makers of the five seas directly belongs the proud honour of having found the hammer with which to strike away the iron fetters then still partially binding the common man. Out of Europe and not in Europe were gathered the materials necessary for making bonfires of the last of ancient privileges; just as out of Europe were taken Europe's religion, Europe's philosophy and much of Europe's arts. This is the immense debt which is owed by Europe to non-Europe. Yet in spite of this debt to non-Europe, the student, surveying this vast movement which took more than two generations to run even a portion of its ever- interrupted course in Europe, notes that the concessions which in the end were unwillingly made by almost every Government in Europe to their peoples did not extend to their sphere of operation beyond Europe and America that is, beyond the homes of the white man. So far indeed from any concessions being made, England became more than ever the chief and irresistible colo- nial Power, and marked her progress throughout the Napoleonic era by a series of conquests in the extra- European world as surprising as any the genius of Chatham had won for her : she remained as relentless in carrying out that peculiar doctrine that the possession of the right of eminent domain by conquest or by inheritance implies government by force of arms as George III. himself could have wished. Whilst the winged victories of Napoleon were modernising Europe, the Cape became British; Ceylon succumbed; the vast island of Java was torn from the Dutch and kept under military occupation for a decade; the Malay 80 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR Peninsula was marked down; India was more clearly made a close British preserve; no island, indeed, how- soever distant or howsoever insignificant, was safe from attack unless above it waved the Union Jack. Thus whilst that tremendous secular Palladium - " No Taxa- tion without Representation " which after having been enunciated in New England was being carried forcibly under disguised forms by Napoleon from Lisbon to Poland (in that he destroyed the ancient power), England was boldly adhering to the earlier creed of conquest and government by force of arms, wherever the pigment of the skin differentiated the autochthonous races from those who saw in themselves the heirs of Hellenic intellect and Roman military strength. To this singular circumstance must be ascribed England's present remarkable position that is, that while she had been the first to admit through force manure this new general principle among all white peoples wherever they may permanently implant them- selves, she stubbornly delayed doing so elsewhere; and, tearing by force of arms wide territories both from the grasp of alien races and from other weaker European Powers, she- made it amply clear that she was only prepared to modify her attitude when political expe- diency urgently bade her do so. Those who would, in consequence, accuse the English of perfidiousness, would do well to pause and remember that such an assumption shows slight acquaintance with first causes. The leaden air of England provokes not that desire which Goethe has said can only live in the realms of dreams happiness but the desire for comfort and perfection, perfection in all that machinery of government and in all those GENERAL INTRODUCTION 81 material things which ensure tranquillity. Therefore whilst more volatile and impressionable peoples were eager to shape their destinies by giving effect to the dreams of their wise men, made possible by the Revolutions in America and in France, the British alone, stolidly pursuing their course in the face of all difficulties, were winning for themselves a position in the extra-European world which, if the lessons of history are now taken to heart, nothing should ever be able to shake. Of all European peoples they thus stand confessed the most thoroughly European that is the most frankly barbarian a people seeing in action the only cure for ills, a people distrusting all doctrines as the devices of theorists enunciated for the purpose of misleading the ignorant. Thus it happened that long before the Congress of Vienna had met, and that marvellous chapter of human activities summed up in one word "Napoleon" had been closed, England had practically completed the work which more than made up for the loss of the American colonies. She found herself in the possession of a new vast Empire. Whilst other European nations had been engaged in their meticulous and never-ending discussions regarding international leadership and the European balance of power, England found that she had won a wider and more powerful position than Rome. Europe awoke to find its political map settled perhaps for all time, and gradually realised with dismay the position of the Island Power. Separated by the sea from the turmoil which long distracted Continental Europe, the irresistible impulse of the English race now turned men in ever-increasing numbers to regions which until then had been only 82 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR vaguely understood. Under the magic hands of stern and virile conquerors, Asia, Australasia and Africa swung the pendulum of British interests to the Indian and Pacific oceans and thus away from the narrower Atlantic, which, from being the touchstone of eighteenth century supremacy, had become only the commercial waterway of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 1 Nothing in the history of the world is more interesting than those movements which, for want of a better term, must be designated in the language of physiology as reflex actions. That no such energy as has been actually witnessed would have been lavished by English hands on the Eastern Hemisphere had not the Western 1 An interesting volume could be written showing how, with the loss of the original English empire in America and the fierce man- ner in which the British avenged themselves thereafter for this, America was effectively isolated. Americans to-day no doubt fondly imagine that it was the pronouncement of President Monroe, embodying in the form of a concrete doctrine what had previously been vaguely felt as a necessity, which has rendered the American Continent immune from fresh European interference. It is nothing of the sort, for natural movements are not arrested by words. It was the action of England itself, determined by politico-economic considerations, which had far more to do than anything else with segregating America in a political sense. Having at last most completely beaten her rivals, thanks to her sea-power, she suddenly found that her course of empire had turned eastward and not westward. Only half-believing what was manifestly true, it needed the entire first half of the nineteenth century to convince her. But as India became a mighty empire; as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the great chain of commercial entrepots from Aden to Hong Kong arose, automatic- ally the Western Hemisphere, and the classic West Indies, scenes of such immortal combats, dropped into a vague political backwater until to-day schoolboys can no longer understand the meaning of eighteenth century history. Strange indeed are the decrees of Providence ! GENERAL INTRODUCTION 83 Hemisphere been partially abandoned in acute despond- ency, must be undoubted. Possibly Australia and New Zealand would have been colonised no matter what other regions had attracted explorers, colonists and capitalists: Africa would have been encroached upon; India would have been steadily conquered; and other colonies im- planted. Yet the assumption may be permitted that had not Washington succeeded in securing the separation of the old eighteenth century empire, the new empire of to-day would not have been what it actually is; and that British energies finding full scope for their highest activity in a vast American Dominion would have been largely engaged in making of the Atlantic Ocean a British lake. But the American Revolution, more than any other movement in history, revealed the Asiatic destiny of England, and by diverting those endless streams of men from West to East has made the colour-question a supreme one for England. The dazzling panorama of events which is unfolded in British Asiatic history to-day makes men forget that rights were really acquired by the most primitive and unlawful methods, and that hardly a conquest in the East but has been stained with deeds such as those with which the memory of the Caesars is reproached. The distance and variety of the continent of Asia, which endow it with such an infinite and inex- haustible charm, has in the past made the application of a sound public morality difficult; the task of raising the magnificent fabric of Western sovereignty upon the dying embers of the gorgeous empires of the East has been pursued with no regard save for considerations similar to those which influenced Charlemagne a thousand years ago. 84 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR But now a new era is at length at hand. The old conditions have disappeared. Europe and Asia and later Europe and Africa must inevitably return to something similar to the relationship once existing between West and East. The equality between the two which once existed will surely be re-established - the relationship which has now definitely existed for more than four centuries and which owes its origin to the white man's sudden conquest of the ocean and his abandonment of land-routes must give place to some- thing which though it sounds very novel is really a revival of something very old. By his conquest of the sea, the white man gathered wealth from far and wide and shook off his provincialism. Knowledge naturally followed; with knowledge came power; and this power led to his world-dominion. Marvellous indeed is it thus to follow out the long yet eminently simple chain of antecedents which brings us to the present day. In the pages that follow some analysis is made of the tremendous new forces at work, and some opinions are ventured which in the light of experience seem sound, and in the highest sense politic. On England to-day hangs in all these questions an enormous and far-reach- ing responsibility; and on her decision truly rests the peace of the world. CHAPTER I HOW COLOUR DIVIDES THE WORLD TO-DAY THERE should be to-day few more interesting studies in the world than the study of the map providing that it is conducted with intelligence, and that the surface of this terrestrial globe presents itself to the eye as something more than a series of charts covered with fantastic blotches of colour and strangely spelt names. For never has there been any period of the world's history in which racial problems were invested with such consummate interest as they now are never has there been a time when the home of every nation had acquired such peculiar importance in the estimation of every other nation. The map outlines clearly the limits of each and every such individual problem; to maps we must therefore inevitably turn. On all sides, in every quarter of the globe, new and disturbing elements are fast arising and invite the most serious consideration; and so rapid and complex is the development of this vast movement so puzzling and so numerous are the cross-currents that what is prog- nosticated one year is often falsified the very next, whilst yesterday's impossibility becomes, through some fortuitous occurrence, to-day's firm belief. In these 85 86 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. circumstances, it is small wonder that even the most patient brains become weary of such a political phantas- magoria; and that the most just statesmen are often inclined to seek relief by cutting, instead of untying, each Gordian knot. When such a variety of interests exists; when men's ideas and ambitions are so different; and when prejudices are still so powerful a political force throughout the world, this is perhaps only as it must be. Yet, if the truth were known, in spite of all apparent contradictions, and in spite of much inevitable vague- ness in many matters, there is small doubt that a big map of the world on Mercator's projection should to-day be to every really intelligent person something very like a horoscope of the human race a horoscope, it is true, not cast as astrologers ordain, yet nevertheless one enabling men to know within certain definite limits what should and what should not happen to the various racial divisions and groups composing the human species. The reason for this is that the manner in which these divisions and groups are now distributed over the face of the earth has become virtually an index to much of the world's future history. Such a state- ment may sound, at the first blush, presumptuous; yet a little amplification will speedily show that it is nothing but a sober opinion. For the chiefest and most important fact in modern political geography the fact which has to be at once seized and insisted upon is that the grand divisions and dwelling-grounds of the races are now more or less settled for all time. The era of vast migrations and therefore of vast racial conflicts has long since passed away, and wars can never again lead to those strange i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 87 displacements which twenty centuries ago were common- places. It is inconceivable, for instance, that Europe should ever succumb to a "black" invasion, or that America should ever become a yellow man's country; only miraculous and unbelievable events could bring about such things. And since it is no part of the business of the student to believe in miracles, a detailed inquiry cannot consider any of those many engaging theories which are so constantly advanced by alarmists. It may, then, be laid down as an axiom that, within certain limits, the future of all races is now fixed. That is equivalent to declaring that migrations en masse from one continent to another having become im- possible save where such migrations are nothing but the continuation of movements long in progress it will in future only be possible for nations to win trifling expansions along their own borders. To this rule there are no exceptions. The grand reason for the migrations of history and therefore of the great conflicts which ensued in days gone-by was very simple. The world was somewhat empty; there was an appalling difference between the narrow civilised centres and the barbarians; there existed a savage contempt for life and property, owing to the predominance of muscle over brain-power; and even in the well-settled countries of the classical world, so trifling was the number of inhabitants compared to modern populations, that they were generally confined to the more fertile plains and valleys and to a few dozen overgrown cities. Nor must it be forgotten that, in ancient times, nearly all the artificial checks which now exist were entirely lacking; and just because those checks were lacking no 88 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. one felt any necessity to stay his hand. It was only natural, then, that men, as they increased greatly in numbers, should move here and there in vast irresistible hordes, impelled by an overpowering natural instinct to seek for better and broader lands in measure as their numbers and their belief in their own strength increased. This movement was accelerated because it was almost universal in Europe and Asia, as well as in parts of Africa. It was a huge, uncontrollable settlement which is among the greatest facts in history, and which is the foundation for the present position of the races. The almost universal pressure of those distant days produced universal movement. Behind every horde was some other horde, filled with equally predatory instincts; for one to advance another had to retreat; and for any single one to have stood still would have been as much against the laws of self-preservation as against the laws of nature. Thus as a bold illustration the fall of the Roman Empire was brought about as much by the Huns, who pressed on the Teutonic or Gothic Bar- barians, as by anything else; and that is exactly why this period must be selected as the period when racially the foundations of Europe were laid. It was the time when Europe had received into her bosom the powerful race stocks which were destined to proclaim her suprem- acy. Though in Asia and Africa the movement was very different, and though many other forces were at work, in most regions of these continents, as in Europe, it is subsequent to the birth of Christ that a permanent settlement was commenced. Conditions now are so entirely different that never again can it happen that the same laws operate. To- day, though the world is not yet full of the human i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 89 species, nations have in nearly every case been so very long settled in their present homes, and populations have grown so enormously great and are still growing so rapidly, that it is possible to calculate with more or less mathematical accuracy exactly when there should be one human being to every acre of arable soil in the world. This day is fast approaching. 1 Indeed so rapidly is this movement going on that numbers alone must make great displacements of men impossible in the near future. These facts, then, bury ancient history for ever; they mark the beginning of a new era, in which, though the place of might may not completely be taken by right, political expediency will with ever-growing voice 1 Those pessimists who talk lightly about the over-population of the world should seek comfort from the philosophy of statistics. There seems little doubt that the world is not only capable of easily supporting 4,000 million souls which should be the approximate population in the year 2000 but that, without taking into account what new scientific discoveries may bring about, the wheat area of the world is capable of supporting twice or thrice that number. To take but the single example of the Canadian North-West. Arable land of the finest quality extends for 500 miles north of Ed- monton, making the total area of the three Prairie Provinces available for cultivation 255 millions of acres. Assuming that only 100 million acres are sown in wheat, and remembering that the 7 million acres now under cultivation produce 115,000,000 bushels, at least 1,600,000,000 bushels could be produced by the Canadian North-West, a yield equal to half the present total pro- duction of the world ! Similarly Argentina to-day has only little more than 10 per cent, of her 250,000,000 acres of arable land under cultivation, producing about 200,000,000 bushels of wheat, whilst two per cent, probably of Siberia is growing grain. Summing up, it is probable that these three wheat-growing regions, Canada, Ar- gentina and Siberia, will one day produce sufficient grain to nourish a white population numbered in thousands of millions. More it is surely unnecessary to say. 90 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. counsel prudence and restraint, and forbid all great changes. Forms of government and rulers may change; races can no longer change their homes. 1 For real frontiers real barriers to the swaying to and fro of peoples are no longer rivers, or mountains, or seas, or any of those physical features still referred to in geography-books. These are only the frontiers of savages ; the real frontiers of civilisation are formed by masses of men distributed in proper density, highly civilised, irrevocably locked to the soil by their history and their culture, and sufficiently warlike to make their physical boundaries respected should wanton aggression menace them. It is flesh and blood, then, that forms true modern barriers; and when that flesh and blood shows an indisputable title, no one will dare to dispute it. Yet just because this is so, just because a new position is being reached throughout the world, with not merely one Monroe doctrine, but fifty of such doctrines, it is important to remember, before proceeding any further in this inquiry, that even in Europe a general rectifica- tion of frontiers undoubtedly has still to come. It is plain indeed that until that rectification has everywhere been carried out, all talk of arbitrating vital inter- national differences must necessarily be illusory. A deep instinct will continue to push men to substitute for the purely political demarcations which have come down 1 Though certain districts in India are commonly quoted as the most densely populated regions in the world, it is well to note that the island of Barbados supports a population which in 1901 worked out to 1,178 persons per square mile. To-day that figure must ex- ceed 1,200 per square mile which approaches the maximum num- ber which even the most fertile soil in the world is capable of supporting. i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 91 from other days a new class which may well be called racial demarcations. That such demarcations are necessarily blurred is no matter; this only adds one more difficulty to a question which force may attempt to solve. It is this knowledge that racial instinct and racial pride ignore political boundaries which is the nightmare of statesmen. Thus, though the forcible acquisition by Germany of Alsace-Lorraine is still looked upon by Frenchmen as an act of bare-faced territorial robbery, which some yet dream of avenging, it is important to remember that racially it was an act of restitution that is, the resto- ration of an old frontier-line. Therefore, although it has been laid down as an axiom at the beginning of this argu- ment that the era of migrations is long since past, none the less it is equally true that no race to-day, any more than yesterday, will be content permanently to accept an arbitrary frontier-line won by force of arms in more or less modern times, when across that frontier remain millions of men of the same blood. In geo-politics this is perhaps the most important minor question of the day. It is for this reason that Italian Irredentists dream of one day rescuing their brothers on the other side of the Adriatic. It is for this reason that Roumanians jealously eye the Austrian province of Transylvania; that Bulgarians gaze across the southern line of Eastern Roumelia and believe that the days are not far distant when the boun- daries laid down in the inoperative Russo-Turkish Treaty of San Stefano may be claimed by them. It is unnecessary to quote further cases : it is sufficient to say that Germans, Greeks, Russians, Servians, Italians, Austrians, and many others in Europe, believe that they have not yet gained their true and final frontiers 92 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. because across their political boundaries are men of the same race and speech, surrendered to the rule of others by former conquests. When the balance of numbers was very different from what it is to-day; when nation- ality was still largely a provincial feeling, or a so-called regionalism ; when men's horizons were bounded by the distance they could see with the naked eye; when the question of daily bread was the supreme question then was it that such vital problems of high politics were abandoned to the care of rulers. To-day that is no- where any longer true : all men or nearly all have risen from their low estate, and from now on the millions will make or mar their country. It may thus be laid down as a second axiom that every nation which has a definite sense of nationality and is virile the Bui- gars, for instance will attempt sooner or later a forcible frontier-rectification : whilst, conversely, every nation that is deficient in a sense of nationality, and is not virile that is, declines in numbers will have its frontiers pushed back. 1 That is the second great point it is necessary here to emphasise. It greatly affects the 1 In connection with the question of the possible overflow of Germans into other countries, a note on the numbers of foreigners domiciled in France and Germany is interesting as showing the prob- able natural future movements. In 1901 there were 1,033,871 foreigners in France Belgians and Italians accounting for sixty- five per cent. But in 1905 Germany herself contained 1,028,560 subjects of foreign Powers fifty per cent, being Austrians or men of the same ethnic stock. Austria has but a small number of foreigners Italy and Spain scarcely any at all. From this it seems probable that for many years Italy and Belgium rather than Germany will send their overflow into France; and that until Germany's density of population is twice as heavy as it is to-day, so-called over-population will not be a question of practical politics in that country. i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 93 first point, because it partially re-opens under a new form in Europe a question which seems at first sight closed that is, racial expansion. The reason why a proper study of population and races is as important to-day as that of the physical features of the world should now be amply clear. In the modern world it is in the debatable regions where what may be called a permanent settlement of frontier- lines has not yet been brought about that there will be a constant swaying to and fro, most probably accompanied by bloody wars, until density of popula- tion, and the consequent struggle for existence, either blots out nationality or makes its claims undeniable. In Europe there will be not so much of this, owing to the existence of many artificial checks and to the growth of that modern cosmopolitanism which, mixed with socialism, is rapidly tending to obliterate so many old differences. But in Asia that is, along Asiatic frontiers where the question of a different colour also intrudes, there are immense regions, such as the entire Amur country, the wastes of Central Asia, Eastern Turkestan, Persia, and Asia Minor, where nothing like permanent frontier-lines have yet been established; where nature cries aloud for the regulating hand of man ; where, since modern civilisation and culture are practically non-existent, the people are only swayed by unreasoning passions; where, because the new voice of reason cannot be listened to, the old voice of force will still be heard. 1 It is self-evident that in these 1 In this connection it is useful to point to the islands of the Malay archipelago, which cover an extent of land equal to half Eu- rope, and which are at present most imperfectly peopled by a population numbering 40,000,000. It has been calculated that 94 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. regions fierce conflicts must occur again and again. And it is one of the most significant facts in modern political geography that Russia must be more involved in all these contests than any other white nation, because her frontier marches sheer across Asia to the Pacific, and forms the natural advance-guard of the white man. In the other main regions of the world in the American Continent, in Africa, in Australia, and in the remaining island groups no great race-conflict, having for object the final mastery of the soil, should arise, unless Europe, and what it stands for, itself falls. The question of the mastery has already been decided. Thus the future of the entire American Continent is now definitely settled, so far as human foresight can estimate, though the present settlement is less than 400 years old. America, when it was discovered, was well- named the New World : it was a world standing utterly cut off from Asia save in the Polar zone by thou- sands of miles of ocean, and sufficiently distant from Europe and Africa to have remained equally effectively isolated during long ages. When in the sixteenth cen- tury Fate willed that white men should begin to stream across the Atlantic, it became certain that, as has hap- pened in other parts of the world, this race would colo- nise and, in the end, completely dominate the entire temperate zones both north and south of the equator. at least 200,000,000 people might settle on the four islands of Celebes, Sumatra, New Guinea and Borneo. These four islands have an area of 837,000 square miles and a population of not more than eight or nine millions. It is plain that some day this great and fertile chain of islands lying between Australia and Asia will have very great importance. I THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 95 What was not certain in the first stages of this colonisa- tion was what was to be the future of those vast regions which enjoyed a climate sufficiently tropical to have called forth a native civilisation reminiscent of that of the ancient Egyptians. The passage of four hundred years or twelve generations has been sufficient to prove beyond a doubt that the future of the races will be decided in the American Continent by climatic considerations, which here as elsewhere establish certain definite frontiers. Thus North America to the Mexican frontier will be white, save for a dense belt extending mainly round the gulf of Florida, and comprising all the low-lying unhealthy land, which will be increasingly surrendered to the negro. From the neighbourhood of the Mexican frontier to the southern frontiers of Bolivia (that is, for some twenty-three degrees on each side of the equator), the bulk of the population must be coloured that is, of mixed Indian blood not forgetting that in Brazil, as in the United States, there will grow an ever more formidable black belt, consisting of the descendants of African slaves. It is an illuminating fact that the limits of this domination of coloured blood are set with strange exactitude by the boundaries of the so-called "torrid zone" a zone about 47 degrees wide, which all the world over is in the nature of forbidden land to the white man. Save, then, for Argentine, the coast districts of Brazil, and the coastline of Chili, the pure- bred white man can only remain in so-called Latin America in a constantly decreasing minority. In Australia, too, the future is quite decided. There unless an unbelievable race suicide, of which some see signs to-day, takes place it has been secured that a 96 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. white man's home shall exist that is, a land ruled and controlled by white men. The one problem of Australia is the problem of the Northern Territory a vast tropical region, which is suitable only for a dark- skinned race, but which is at present virtually unin- habited, because the white man can barely live there and yet forbids the infiltration of any other race, because he fears, with that instinctive fear which nothing can eradicate, that the very moment such a movement begins Australia will have a colour problem far more acute than the American problem and probably as insoluble as the South African problem, where the black menace must some day weld the white minority together in a manner not yet understood. For Africa with the exception of this region in the extreme south and a small portion of Algeria, where powerful minorities still act in such a way as to decide the destinies of the dormant majorities is purely a coloured man's continent; a land where no other man may thrive; a land where climate is absolute master. Certain plateaux of East Africa may be healthy; other regions may seem attractive as colonising areas; yet nothing can really change the pregnant fact that Africa as a whole is a black man's country, which only certain Asiatic races, such as the Arabs, can really invade and conquer by that powerful levelling and assimilating influence, Islamism. Here, then, the contest of the future, save in two narrow regions, can only be political - the limits of racial conquest are already clearly marked. Thus it is not in America, or in Australia, or in Africa, that any great clash can occur. The main racial contest a contest which must be conducted not only along frontiers, but in the heart of i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 97 densely-populated countries as well can only be between the old antagonists, Europe and Asia. That this is both natural and logical cannot be gainsaid, for two simple reasons first, that Europe and Asia form really one continent containing more than three- quarters of the population of the world; and second, that contact between the two as well as between both shores of the Mediterranean has been continuous for thousands of years, it having been the action and re- action between the two which has produced all the world's great movements. It seems impossible for the real frontiers between the two to be deliminated, or for their growing relations to be remodelled on a permanent basis, until populations grow much vaster than they are at present and completely fill up all empty places, and until the standard of living and the standard of strength approximate much more closely than they do at present. In the past Europe has dominated Asia : Asia cannot any longer permit that ancient state of affairs, but Asia is slow to decide and slower to act. With her, many disabilities exist which had never had place in the case of Europe. She for ever carries a burden which is the secret of much of her past immovability the burden of climate and no matter how greatly she may exert herself, she can only imitate Europe up to a certain point, and never beyond. On her weight of numbers and her cunning she must rely to offset a permanent inferiority in many vital things. All this is now well understood. 1 1 In pondering over this subject the writer recalls to mind the melancholy sight of masses of Chinese slain in 1900. The essential difference between Europe and Asia is never made clearer than in the sight of dead men when lying in any number. 98 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR en. This struggle, however, will approach slowly and methodically, and not rapidly and dramatically as past struggles have done. Every day will bring nearer the inevitable settling day, but tens of thousands of days must elapse before even the true outlines are made clear. A hundred minor questions will engage the world's attention before the main problem rises like a mountain before all eyes; and according to the political wisdom which is now shown in dealing with these minor difficulties, so will the final settlement be consummated. At the same time that there is this large clash of conflicting ideals looming up this clash of two necessarily different civilisations, which is to be the mighty problem of the future another racial struggle of a very different nature has already begun. This question is far more subtle and already considerably complicates the other problem. Briefly, a struggle has begun between the white man and all the other men of the world to decide whether non-white men that is, yellow men, or brown men, or black men may or may not invade the white man's countries in order there to gain their livelihood. The standard of living being low in the lands of coloured men and high in the lands of the white man, it has naturally followed that it has been in the highest degree attractive for men of colour during the past few decades to proceed to regions where The vigorous white man even in death possesses a certain majesty of form a certain resolution which is totally lacking in the rice- fed Asiatic. When he leaves this world, the latter seems to shrink to a very small measure to be far weaker than the white man, even when the frame is nothing but a shell from which the spirit has fled. Is not this in itself a lasting commentary on the history of the conflict between Europe and Asia ? i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 99 their labour is rewarded on a scale far above their actual requirements that is, on the white man's scale. This simple economic truth creates the inevitable contest which has for years filled all the countries bordering on the Pacific with great dread; and which, in spite of the temporary truce which the so-called "Exclusion Policy" has now enforced, will go much farther than it has yet gone. This contest, being in the nature of an industrial struggle, is to a large extent an artificial one and can probably be successfully checked for a number of years by artificial means - that is, so long as great passions are not openly aroused. But it is well to understand at once that it is made peculiarly hazardous for the white man, not because he is not able to fight it in the face of all difficulties, not because it is beyond his strength to check it, but because in almost every part of the Asiatic and African worlds, he is still playing his old-world role of conqueror, and ruling over vast masses of the world's coloured popula- tion virtually by force. That is the real reason why this struggle must in the end prove highly dangerous. On the one hand, the white man has begun to refuse to allow coloured men of any description to enter his countries in large numbers; on the other hand, he continues to rule as conqueror immense areas of the world, the soil of which nourishes autochthonous popula- tions having little or nothing in common with him, and therefore regarding his dominion with a natural and growing aversion. But there is more than this - more to complicate a confused condition of affairs; more to render forcible adjustment in the future more than likely. The right 100 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. of eminent domain which the European thus exercises in so many parts of the coloured world was in nearly every case forcibly acquired in times past, when his superiority in the arts of war was so marked that a few fierce fights with thousands beat down opposition and forced tens of millions permanently to acknowledge the rule of those who were opposed to them in all the essentials of life that is, in colour and in creed, and therefore in ethics and in ideals. Nowhere can this truth be better seen than in India, where three hundred millions of people bow to a rule which was imposed on them as a result of a series of modest victories. In this great work of implanting everywhere the standards of Christendom, nearly all the important countries of Europe have shared at one time or another; for since the days when Spain and Portugal claimed the right to divide the entire uncharted world by Papal Bull, the overspilling of white men as relentless conquerors has been a continuous movement. Holland, France, Eng- land, Germany, and even the United States, have carried on this overseas work in every direction; whilst, moving by land, like some strange relentless Behemoth, Russia has never ceased conquering and building in Asia since the days of the first little Czars. Thus for four centuries it has happened that no sooner has one white Power lost the strength to make con- quests in alien land than other white Powers vigorous, audacious, ambitious have arisen and carried the torch farther than anyone previously dreamed of doing. To-day the position is entirely illogical from the point of view of Asiatics as well as all other enlightened coloured peoples; for whilst the white man now pro- claims the reign of justice and the equality of man, in i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 101 alien lands he still rigidly adheres, in everything that concerns his own interests, to results achieved under very different laws. And it is important to note that where logic ceases, brute force and passion are apt magically to appear. Inevitably must it follow that the world of non-whites will make the position of the white races beyond their own boundaries more and more precarious. For matters have vastly changed since the nineteenth century. In the main, continental Europe is no longer in the happy position it once occupied. Save for Russia, this narrow continent is almost entirely occupied with questions arising primarily from Euro- pean frontier-contact that is, with the question of so- called balance of power. So far as concerns the outer world the world of coloured men this European rivalry has but little meaning; the only two countries of Europe which to the men of East are World-Powers - Powers whose destinies are bound up with the destinies of Asia are England and Russia. The first escapes from the European imbroglio by sea, the second by land; and because they can do this, their inter- national value must be assessed in different terms from those which are employed in the case of all other European countries. Nowhere is this better under- stood than in Eastern Asia to-day. When we come to consider figures and the numerical strength of these opposing elements, when we remember the sapient saying, that Providence is on the side of the big battalions, the feeling of apprehension as to the out- come of the ultimate struggle between Europe and Asia can only deepen. It is to-day a most disconcerting fact that the white world is far weaker than the coloured world; and not only weaker in numbers but far more 102 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. divided against itself because of the historical in- fluence of the European doctrine of force than is the coloured world. The figures appended below, giving summaries of population based on the latest statistics, are in many ways startling, especially when it is remem- bered that to-day few white Powers are vitally interested in the colour problem. It is England, indeed, who bears the main burden. EUROPE AND ASIA. A COMPARISON OF POPULATIONS. Europe. 1. Russia 150,000,000 2. Germany 63,000,000 3. Austria-Hungary 49,000,000 4. Great Britain 45,000,000 5. France 39,000,000 6. Italy 36,000,000 7. Spain 20,000,000 8. Belgium 7,500,000 9. Rumania 6,500,000 TTTI -. 10. Portugal 6,000,000 11. Netherlands 6,500,000 12. Sweden 5,500,000 13. Bulgaria 4,000,000 14. Switzerland 3,500,000 15. Turkey (Non-Mohammedan pop.) . 3,000,000 16. Norway 2,500,000 17. Denmark 2,500,000 18. Servia 2,500,000 19. Greece 2,500,000 20. Montenegro 250,000 Total 454,750,000 Asia. 1. China and Dependencies .... 450,000,000 2. India and Dependencies .... 310,000,000 3. Japan and Dependencies .... 65,000,000 4. Dutch East Indies 38,000,000 5. Turkey in Asia 25,000,000 6. Persia 10,000,000 Coloured 7. Indo-China 20,000,000 8. Siam 8,000,000 9. Afghanistan and Himalayan States . 10,000,000 10. Philippines 8,000,000 11. Malay States 1,000,000 12. Borneo and other smaller island) 2000000 groups J Total 947,000,000 i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 103 From these tables it will be apparent that, as nearly as can be calculated, the population of Europe in which term Siberia is now ethnically included is 455 millions, whilst the population of Asia is 947 millions. Asiatics, therefore, already outnumber Europeans by two to one; and since there is reason to believe that the population of Asia is now growing much more rapidly than the population of Europe, it seems clear that the passage of each decade will emphasise more and more this remarkable discrepancy between the two rivals. There is another point. Of this great mass of 455 million highly-civilised Europeans, only half at the highest estimate is interested in any way whatsoever in Asiatic problems that is, in the question of what is to be the political status in the near future of a thousand million human beings. For of the twenty countries of Europe, only four Russia, Great Britain, France and Holland have to-day valuable stakes in Asia ; to these four Powers can be added, with a reservation, the United States, because of her possession of the Philippines. Other countries, such as Germany, cannot be placed in the same category; for their interests are still mainly commercial and not territorial, and the rise of modern Asia cannot mean so much to them as to the colonial Powers, no matter in what striking allegories the Ger- man Emperor's reputed solicitude for the fate of Europe may express itself. Unless, then, Germany takes the place Holland now occupies, Germany is not a vital factor. Europe will never match its strength with Asia under one banner as in the days of the Crusades : not only is Europe divided, but it must remain divided. Externally the position of Europe to-day is exactly similar to what it was when the Turkish conquest of 104 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. Constantinople seemed to threaten all Christendom. Then the attempts made to resuscitate the simultaneous efforts of the days of the Crusades were wholly nugatory; Europe had grown beyond such primitive racial methods, Europe had grown too old. And just as that was true in the fifteenth century, so in the twentieth century is it certain that no combination of white Powers will come to the succour of another white Power. It is well that these simple things should be remembered, not only in reference to Russia, but in reference to England; for even what was possible as recently as fifteen years ago, has to-day become impossible. Epoch-making history has been chronicled since then. There is still another point which must be here emphasised, in view of the great nationalist movement now gathering ever greater strength from the shores of the Bosphorus to the shores of the Pacific. It is that Asia still remains largely independent of the white man, though the white man commands the ocean and all sea-approaches. Asia is really divided into almost two equal portions the subjected portion and the non- subjected portion. Of the 947 millions living in the twelve different countries which have been enumerated, only some 400 millions actually acknowledge the sway of the white conqueror: the other 547 millions are completely free. And of these 400 millions who live in the subjected portions, some 310 millions have England as overlord. These are striking facts. It will thus be seen that there is a strange dis- similarity existing between the political conditions in Asiatic countries a dissimilarity which tends to increase the dangers arising from a state of affairs largely artificial, and which, indeed, makes the ferment i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 105 of the day one which cannot be easily dealt with, since there is no Asiatic country which is bound to its European masters by anything but fear. The idea that any kind of loyalty can be fostered under a system resembling the Roman system is only held by those who in the practical business of life have much to learn. It is fear and largely traditional fear which in Asia is the white man's chief safeguard; and on such an emotion no permanent edifice can be reared. The table which follows would seem to show that the attention of political students should be concentrated more on Eastern Asia than elsewhere, since the greatest mass of non-subjected Asiatics dwell on the shores of the Pacific where they are ethnically more or less homogeneous, and where climatically they are sub- mitted to what may be called non-divergent conditions. NON-SUBJECTED ASIA. Ii. China and Dependencies 450,000,000 2. Japan and Dependencies 65,000,000 3. Siam 8,000,000 Near and f 4 ' Turkey in Asia 25,000,000 Middle East 5- Persia 10,000,000 11 1 6. Afghanistan and Himalayan States . . 10,000,000 Total 568,000,000 Now, disregarding the three which can only have what may be called local political importance Persia, because it has long fallen into that decay which presages absorption by a stronger Power; Afghanistan, because its people are politically and geographically bound to a policy of seclusion; Siam, because it is merely a political enclave there remain three Asiatic countries which have great military potentiality beyond their own frontiers China, Japan and Turkey; and all of these are free from Europe's dominion. It must 106 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. be counted a happy circumstance for the white man that the first two should be separated from the third by the breadth of all Asia : for were these three nations grouped together, they would form a combination more powerful than any European triplice. For, of this non-subjected Asia, Japan and Turkey have within recent years developed an amount of military and political energy which has filled all observers with astonishment. Yet it is significant that O Japan is the one country above all others on which the stigma of colour has pressed the most heavily of late years; and it is this stigma which must remain a spur to the greatest endeavours, long after purely political disabilities have been removed. The decisive steps which both Japan and Turkey have taken to safeguard their political independence have been startlingly reflected in the general unrest and dissatisfaction which has spread in a great wave from one end of Asia to the other; and now Asia is not only not content, but begins thoroughly to understand exactly what it is that gives predominance in the modern world. If China, the other great representative of the people of Asia who remain politically free, is quickly led or forced by other Asiatics to follow in the footsteps of the two who have already advanced so far, an entirely new era in the relations between Europe and Asia will commence. For the question the discussion of which has only been temporarily adjourned of the status of the Asiatic in America, in Australia and in South Africa - must one day be re-opened; and it is possible that its solution will be worked out in a peculiar yet natural way. It is only to be expected that, having borrowed the warlike weapons of the West, the East should i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 107 finally apply all those other fallacious means which are best summed up by the word Protection; and by erecting exactly the same artificial barriers as Europe has done, radically alter the entire politico-economical position throughout the world. For, continuing the analysis of the world's population, further elements of weakness in the general position of the white man are to be found in other parts of the world. Taking the several continents one by one, and dividing up America as it should be divided, the figures which are now tabulated become invested with peculiar interest. Africa. 1. Grand total of brown and black races in the African \ Continent and adjacent islands (approximate) / I 4) oo O)o 2. Whites in Africa 1,500,00x3 141,500,000 Anglo-Saxon America. 1. Whites 85,000,000 2. Coloured (treated as a non-separate population) . . 10,000,000 95,000,000 Latin America, Cuba and West Indies. 1 Whites and mixed population 60,000,000 Australasia and Polynesia. 1. Whites 6,000,000 2. Browns 1,000,000 7,000,000 1 After several attempts to attain accuracy, the writer has had to abandon anything like a proper classification of the population of Latin America. In the first place it is never quite clear from the statistical returns what the real proportion is between pure whites and what may be euphoniously called mixed whites. It may be said roughly that save for Argentina, and certain regions in Brazil, mixed blood is the rule. Every year that passes must inevitably tend to give predominance to the mixed races; and as, in the opinion of the writer, the entire American Continent is effectively isolated, there is no need to drag into this discussion such a vexed question, since it does not possess world-importance. 108 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. Whilst the entire continent of America may be omitted from any general consideration at present, for reasons already stated, both the African Continent and the Australian Continent for entirely different reasons - are more than mere potential danger-centres for the white man. In Africa fast-breeding races are dominated by handfuls of white men who have managed to attain a respectable numerical force only in the extreme south and in the extreme north, and who even there are enormously outnumbered by the coloured inhabitants. In Australia an isolated geographical situation is by no means entirely compensated for by the firm resolve to remain "All White," since Asia lies very near, and immense regions still remain uninhabited. The signifi- cant fact needs to be insisted upon that there is a regu- lar, well-determined and most curious coloured belt, run- ning round the world, which has tended to expand in the immediate past, and which may expand very much farther in the future, when all the coloured nations of the world have reached the modern industrial stage, and have adjusted themselves thoroughly to the effect of white contact. This belt, though most dense between those imaginary lines called the Tropics, extends, especially in Asia and Africa, many degrees south and north of it though it is a fact that it gradually loses its strength where the sun's heat is lessened. In the past four centuries the pressure of the white man has in certain regions caused this belt to contract by the simple process of extermination. 1 1 The area inhabited by the white race that is the Aryan race in the ancient classical world was very small compared with what it is now, not all Europe in those days being inhabited by white men. Of course it is true that climate and environment had i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 109 Thus America was really a coloured man's land, but the white man has virtually cleared three-quarters of that immense continent, and now coloured men the Indian and the negro can only claim the same belt as runs all the way round the world. Siberia once belonged to non-Caucasian races, and so did the whole of Australasia; but here again, as in America, the pressure of the white man has virtually changed for good and all the preponderating race. In Africa, in the extreme north and in the extreme south, the same process has been going on quickly ever since the beginning of the nineteenth century, but the process has been far less successful than elsewhere. There are some who still believe that in the end the whites will win both South Africa and Algeria; but all the probabilities point the other way. As in the old slave States of America, the most the white race can hope for is to retain a parlous mastery. For after having suffered economic death and therefore virtual racial extinction in most of the regions referred to it will be one day counted one of the most remarkable facts of the twentieth century that the man of colour has at last completely recovered himself, and is forcing the pendulum to stand still if not actually to swing back. In Latin America, save in the Argentine and in portions of Brazil, this is certainly so; in South Africa statistics seem to prove that the Bantu race is breeding faster than ever: Northern Queensland not yet been sufficiently long at work to differentiate the Aryans of Europe from, for instance, the Aryans of the north of In- dia. But using the term European as the best equivalent for white man, it may be said that to-day the European inhabits a gross area at least ten times as large as he did at the birth of Christ. 110 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. may yet be regained by Polynesians; whilst the Pacific provinces of Siberia are already in real danger of being swamped by yellow-skinned men, in spite of the artificial restraints which are being imposed. The inevitable tendency of all divisions of the human race to adjust themselves to their environment, economic as well as natural, will arrest the dying-out process from now on; and where the white man has not absolutely cleared the ground of his coloured rival he may be bred down to a position of inferiority. Thus on every side of the world to which one may turn save in America, where the problem tends to adjust itself owing to geographical isolation and to regional influences to which special reference will later be made the conflict of colour possesses ever new potentialities. And it is for this reason that it may be laid down as an axiom that no sooner will one part of the problem be temporarily solved, than another part will claim attention and so must it continue until vast changes have been brought about in standards of thought, in standards of living, and in standards of morals. Changes in the standards of these things can alone diminish the present dangers; yet there is one thing which can never be altered, and that is colour. For here is the real root of the racial difficulty throughout the world. There exists a widespread racial antipathy founded on colour an animal-like instinct, if you will, but an instinct which must remain in existence until the world becomes Utopia. It is this instinct which seems to forbid really frank inter- course and equal treatment. How this is to be minimised in each separate region should be one of the first studies of statesmen, for the day is surely come i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 111 when common-sense demands that the line of least resistance should be sought for and gradually approached. If, for the sake of clearness, one last table be given here, it will be seen at a glance how, when every living being in the world is counted, the odds against the white man may be said to remain roughly two to one. TOTAL POPULATION OF THE WORLD ACCORDING TO COLOUR. Whites. 1. Europe 453,500,000 2. North America 85,000,000 3. Australasia 6,000,000 4. South America (Argentine, Brazil, &c.) . . . 20,000,000 5. Africa 1,500,000 566,000,000 Mixed Whites. (Including Indians) Mexico, Cuba, and West Indies, \ Central and South America / 40 ' 000 ' 000 Absolute Yellow, Brown and Black, i. Asia 947,000,000 2. Africa 140 ooo ooo 3. Pacific . 2 OOO OOO 4. United States 10,000,000 1, 099,000,000 1 Grand total of the world's population . . 1,705,000,000 1 These figures, while perhaps not absolutely accurate, must be very nearly so, as the writer has made it his business to investi- gate closely all doubtful figures. Africa is a case in point Poly- nesia a smaller instance. No amount of care, however, can produce really reliable statistics where the data are incomplete; and in regard to Equatorial Africa the data are notoriously mostly guess-work. What, for instance, is the real population of the Congo Free State 20 millions (the official estimate), 15^ mil- lions (Sir H. H. Johnston's estimate), or 9 millions (a mis- sionary estimate) ? It is by no means necessary to suppose that the highest estimate is the least reliable, for Korea has recently fur- nished an interesting instance of the unreliability of all guess- 112 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. Of absolute whites there are thus only 566,000,000, compared with 1,099,000,000 absolute coloured; whilst between the two may be placed the 40,000,000, of Central and South America, and those islands which are inhabitated mainly by mixed whites of Spanish- Indian descent forty millions of people who will grad- ually fuse their differences and produce a definite type of American in which Indian blood will predominate. Now, to maintain the present balance of power for very many years to come might not be such difficult work, were it not for the fact that Europe using the word here not so much in its strict sense as in a racial sense is a house divided against itself. It is perhaps this, rather than the actual problem of colour itself, which is the disconcerting factor in the present-day situ- ation. For it is evident that if an absolute agreement among the white Powers, to preserve the status quo, could be really arrived at, no great breach of the peace could occur. But such an agreement among the white Powers is not only far-off but virtually impossible; and it is a significant fact that the one single reason which is held by Continental writers to have destroyed for ever all possibility of that agreement is the British al- liance with Japan. It is noteworthy, however, that such work estimates, official or unofficial. The census which has there been almost completed the first in the history of the country places the population at roughly 15 millions. Previous to this census the Japanese estimates were generally 8 or 9 millions and native estimates 20 millions. The native estimate has thus been shown nearer the truth than anyone would have supposed pos- sible. Similarly, the Congo Free State, with its million square miles of territory, may have 30 millions of people for all we know. In such circumstances the only course open for the statistician is to strike an average. i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 113 writers, while they infer that this act has placed Eng- land outside the pale, do not grasp the fact that the whole history of British expansion has inevitably sepa- rated England for ever from pursuing a policy in common with the rest of Europe abroad. For when England, at the beginning of the twentieth century, took the sensational step of allying herself with Japan, she was simply yielding to her natural political instinct, which told her clearly that it was necessary to proclaim, not only that she had no further ambitions in Asia or Africa, but that she held that with the end of the nineteenth century the era of forcible expansion had come to an end. Russia was then showing, in a very positive form, that her views were different. To her the twentieth century had opened as the nineteenth cen- tury had for England that is, as a period of expansion and conquest. The bulk of Europe sympathised with Russia and applauded her. Manchuria, a fertile region as large as France and Germany, had been invaded and was in open danger of being annexed; beyond Man- churia lay a vast and absolutely defenceless empire, China. Undoubtedly it was primarily to arrest this movement that England took the step of allying herself with Japan. But it was not, as has so often been erro- neously stated, a fundamental departure in her foreign policy as a whole, for England has constantly formed temporary alliances for precisely the same objects as the Japanese alliance; it was a fundamental departure in her Asiatic policy that is, in her policy in dealing with coloured races. For the first time in her history she placed herself by formal treaty on an absolute equality with an Asiatic race. And by this act the power was given to Japan at once to attack Russia the old cham- 114 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. pion of Europe against Asia, and to drive her back to her own frontiers. Now, it is amply clear to those who have followed the problem in all its phases, that, taking this alliance as a starting-point, matters would not have become as in- volved as they are to-day, or the grand issues so dan- gerous, had not the well-known and narrow Indian traditions regarding the nature of the Russian menace in Asia quickly brought about the conclusion of a second alliance. It is necessary to emphasise in the strongest manner possible the remarkable general effect of this second alliance : for it is this harmful and ill-considered instrument which is largely responsible for the complex nature which the conflict of colour has now assumed throughout the world. By making this second alliance 1 1 It is necessary, owing to the great racial influence it may have, to point out the fundamental difference between the two alliance treaties made by England with Japan. In the first treaty which consisted of six articles, at the head of which stands a preamble stating that the chief objects are (a) the main- tenance of the general peace and () the maintenance of the independence and the territorial integrity of the Empire of China and the Empire of Korea the main argument is directed to assuring each signatory that war directed against either signatory by more than one Power will entail the armed assistance of the second signatory. In the second treaty, consisting of eight articles, the momentous change made is clear from the very pre- amble. No longer is the treaty concerned with territorial in- tegrity (Korea being dropped entirely from the preamble), but merely with the frank preservation of the interests of the two sig- natories not only in Eastern Asia but in India as well. And in the body of the treaty the whole force of the eight articles is di- rected towards making a series of mutual assurances of the most far-reaching nature regarding the manner in which those interests are to be preserved. The main point simply is that any attack by one Power on either of the two signatories will promptly secure the armed assistance of the second signatory, thus making to all in- i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 115 far more binding than the first by completely identify- ing her interests with the interests of Japan, before she understood what those interests might be England o o deliberately sacrificed her liberty of action not only in Eastern Asia, but in every portion of the world of colour where men are able to think and act. It was but natural that the idea should quickly spread that similar consideration and similar equality of treat- ment would at once be given, if sufficient determination and sufficient boldness were exhibited. Thus over- concentration on one phase of a really world-wide prob- lem quickly produced precisely the results which should have been reasonably expected, had there been common prescience. It is useless to argue, as has been frequently argued, that in practical politics only the political to- morrow can be considered, and not any more remote period. Such an attitude may have been defensible a century ago, when real knowledge was very scantily diffused and when even statesmen of renown trifled with serious questions. To-day, when whole nations stand instructed, when destinies are definitely fixed within certain limits, it is unreasonable in the highest degree to tents and purposes England and Japan one Power throughout all Asia. Racially the point which here merits special consideration the treaty is a very bad one, inasmuch as it puts England in a most unfavourable light not only in Europe, America and Austra- lia, but in Asia as well. For she not only endorses in this in- strument the robbery of Korea, but she confesses to 300 million Asiatic subjects that she cannot protect them from European aggression save with the help of an Asiatic ally. That Lord Lansdowne should have made such a hasty and ill- considered treaty is the last proof necessary that he was as ill-fitted to conduct the crucial business of England's foreign relations as he was her warlike operations. 116 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. cull from antiquated text-books maxims for the guidance of movements which cannot be guided, and even to em- balm those maxims in treaty preambles. For whilst it may be laid down as a fundamental principle that every civilised nation should be accorded the same equitable treatment, entirely irrespective of the questions of colour or creed, the sacrifice of certain fundamental political safeguards cannot be made with- out the very greatest danger. 1 It is precisely this that England has commenced to do, basing her action on that dangerous political excuse expediency. The day is surely not far distant when a wiser generation will reprobate in unequivocal terms the rash and ill-con- sidered haste with which much that is vital has already been surrendered; for no matter how great a change in treatment may later come, much has already been lost which can never be regained. For it is important to note that the ill-effects of bad policy do not cease within a limited and easily calculated sphere: they spread far and wide like the strange waves flung up by some seismic disturbance waves which run from one end of the world to the other. No longer may Europe say to the rest of the world, like those de- 1 There is to be found a very startling instance of race-preju- dice at the beginning of Professor Pearson's book National Life and Character : "Two centuries hence it may be a matter of serious concern to the world if Russia has been displayed by China on the Amur, if France has not been able to colonise North Africa, or if England is not holding India. For civilised men there can only be one Father- land, and whatever extends the influence of those races that have taken their faith from Palestine, their laws of beauty from Greece, and their civil law from Rome, ought to be a matter of rejoicing to Russian, German, Anglo-Saxon and Frenchmen alike." i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 117 voted Thibetans who meet all travellers in the wastes of Central Asia on their way to sacred and forbidden Lhassa, "Thus far and no farther." The secrets of supremacy have been revealed; and other countries, led by what England has done, are beginning to accept in their extra-European affairs what may be called the same clumsy doctrine of pis-aller. Neither Germany nor Russia * have much to lose in conflicts which would ruin England; and so, as the years go by, instead of the altruism of common-sense being the guiding principle, a base and short-sighted self-interest may become in- creasingly evident in the extra-European world. For in addition to the question of colour, it must never be forgotten that there is also the vital question of religion to be considered perhaps not immediately but at some not very distant time. The white Power which, for instance, can really ally itself with Islam, as Napoleon dreamed of doing, may possibly dispose in Asia and Africa of an irresistible force. England can 1 The peculiar conditions in Russia make it necessary to point out that instead of the great Muscovite Power sharing with England the responsibilities of Asia, she remains in many senses one of the real difficulties of Asia. Any Government which adheres to what may be called a Byzantine form cannot be entirely trusted; and Russia, in spite of the constitution of 1905 and the Duma, has still that peculiar Graeco-Oriental form which all liberal-minded men must hate. It is interesting to reflect from the practical example which Russia affords how impossible Euro- pean progress would have been had not those great waves of Barbarianism completely submerged Rome, and permitted the white man to escape partially from a bad tutelage. It is because a variety of circumstances made Russia look to the Byzantine Em- pire for her religion, her art, and her political ideals, that the Rus- sian people have been so long enslaved, and that the real lib- erty which lies in the heart of the people, can find no adequate expression. 118 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. never become that ally; every feeling is against it; and if it is to be some other Power, there is no soldiery in Asia which could face it with any chance of success. That is perhaps why instinctively the great movement towards Christianising the coloured world is growing stronger and stronger in Anglo-Saxon countries, as a sort of forlorn hope launched to capture an almost im- pregnable position. Yet even that hope is illusory, save in countries where no real civilisation and no real religion exist. Christianity, no matter what ardent evangelists may say to the contrary, can only really live and thrive in temperate climes; as it stands to-day it is the product of temperate climes, and only of temperate climes. Among either the warlike or the metaphysical-minded peoples of Asia and Africa, very different creeds will always hold sway. Let that be understood. In Europe Christianity has been for many centuries a strengthening force politically a very great strengthening force. But in Asia, from the moment when it was first understood, Christianity that is, the system of Christianity as taught by all the Churches has everywhere been looked upon by rulers and scholars alike as a weakening force - a disintegrating force, a purely European thing, aiming at destroying the most essential parts of social fabrics which have been so slowly and painfully built up throughout the ages by a process exactly analogous to that process of life known as the process of natural selection. It is a strange fact, which has often attracted the attention of unbiased observers, that Asiatic converts to Christianity are not only partly denational- ised but (save in rare cases) are not morally benefited, the very effort of breaking away from the support of i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR 119 their natural environment being an unnatural one and therefore visited with bad effects. Still, though these facts are to-day beyond doubt, there are not lacking such leading lights of the western world as Bishops to proclaim the strangely mediaeval belief that, as it will one day be impossible to bar out the hordes of Asia and Africa, the one and only safe guard for Europe and the white man still lies to-day as in the distant past in Christianity as if a system of thought and a system of belief were enough to act as a complete economic and political protection. For religion has little to do with the standard of living; religion has still less to do with the balance of power; and it is these things alone which have to-day paramount racial importance. Education, material improvements, and the birth-rate are the modern touch-stones of success; and it is only in African forests that those who retain the ingenuousness of a departed age can hope to find any earthly reward. Religion to-day performs no miracles. Asia and Africa must be met on their own terms; * and though 1 "The day will come, and perhaps is not far distant, when the European observer will look round to see the globe girdled with a continuous zone of the black and yellow races, no longer too weak for aggression or under tutelage, but independent, or prac- tically so, in government, monopolising the trade of their own regions, and circumscribing the industry of the European; when Chinamen and the nations of Hindostan, the States of Central and South America, by that time predominantly Indian, and it may be African nations of the Congo and the Zambesi, under a dominant caste of foreign rulers, are represented by fleets in the Eu- ropean seas, invited to international conferences, and welcomed as allies in the quarrels of the civilised world. The citizens of these countries will then be taken up into the social relations of the white races, will throng the English turf, or the salons of Paris, 120 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. in the past the Cross may have triumphed over the Crescent, though elsewhere that European Palladium has become synonymous with the flag, to-day the mastery of the world belongs to those who best follow the laws of common-sense. Political justice, in place of abstract moral maxims; a real comprehension of the historical aspect of each problem, instead of traditional prejudice; a ceaseless determination to find permanent and not temporary solutions these are the aims re- quired of intelligent men. In the chapters which follow there are considered, in the three divisions * into which they properly fall, three aspects of the conflict of colour throughout the world. The grand fact which stands out is that at bottom the complaint against the white man is everywhere the same, though it may be expressed in very different terms, and and will be admitted to intermarriage. It is idle to say that if all this should come to pass our pride of place will not be humiliated. We were struggling among ourselves for supremacy in a world which we thought of as destined to belong to the Aryan races and to the Christian faith; to the letters and arts and charm of social manners which we have inherited from the best times of the past. We shall wake to find ourselves elbowed and hustled, and perhaps even thrust aside by peoples whom we looked down upon as servile, and thought of as bound always to minister to our needs. The solitary consolation will be, that the changes have been inevitable. It has been our work to organise and create, to carry peace and law and order over the world, that others may enter in and enjoy. Yet in some of us the feeling of caste is so strong that we are not sorry to think we shall have passed away before that day arrives." Pearson: National Life and Char- acter, Chap. I. 1 The older divisions, it is well to remark, are completely out of date; and it should be understood that, just as Eastern Asia is one whole, so do the Near East and the Middle East form part and parcel of the same problem, just as Africa is one whole. The best division is simply that of colour yellow, brown and black. i THE DIVISIONS OF COLOUR sometimes, for reasons of expediency or for other reasons, still concealed. In the past Europe abroad that is Europe in Asia, Europe in Africa, Europe in every region inhabited by coloured races which it was impossible to exterminate because they were too numerous has been a most perfect illustration of Fortunatus; that man, who being on the brink of starvation and offered wisdom, strength, wealth, beauty, or life, chose the inexhaustible purse ! CHAPTER II THE YELLOW WORLD OF EASTERN ASIA As it is in the vast region of Eastern Asia, rather than in any other part of the world, that soon must be seen the making of further history eminently dis- concerting for the white man, it is necessary to approach the subject carefully and to deal with it exhaustively. It is the fault of the subject, rather than of anything else, that a certain amount of tiresome repetition is necessary; for unless certain facts are insisted upon again and again they are in danger of being forgotten. And if such leading facts are forgotten, the whole of this study becomes valueless. In the preceding chapter the strange conflict of colour proceeding to-day everywhere throughout the world, owing to the existence of certain grave first causes, was discussed in general terms, and certain basic facts were laid before the reader. The curious statistics of the world's population and its distribution showed us how the white races, in spite of their inferiority of numbers, and in spite also of the fact that all were not equally interested in the matter, not only still remained dominant in practically every region of the world, but that, owing to a variety of reasons, the growing move- 122 CH. ii THE YELLOW WORLD 123 ment against them had not yet succeeded in stripping from them to an appreciable extent the proud title of arbiters of the world's destinies. It was also established it is to be hoped clearly, for these premises have much value that the present-day conflict arose mainly owing to two vital facts being at last very generally understood throughout the non- European world : first, that in the past the white man had acquired a firm mastery over a great portion of the coloured races of the world only because they were utterly inferior to him in the arts of war, and that this mastery was now held by the doubly doubtful right of conquest and prescription; and second, that, consider- ing himself entitled to do so, the white man was begin- ning to deny in absolute terms the right of such alien races to enter his own lands and compete with his own people wherever he might consider such infiltration and competition dangerous. Not only, then, has it been noted that a large proportion of the world's coloured inhabitants are still held in bondage by the white man; but that certain other portions are virtually confined within certain limits or at least prevented from migrating freely to lands formerly seized by the white man. So far, this prohibition has applied almost entirely to the various peoples of Eastern Asia; and, because of geographical considerations, that prohibition has at once become invested with a far-reaching and ominous political importance. For if we include Siberia as it should be now included in the white man's portion of the world ; and if we measure up every mile of this vast territory, it will be found that the white man, although he is to- day only half as numerous as the coloured man, is 124 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. settled on a gross area of land more than twice as extensive as that owned by his coloured brother. The white man therefore possesses sufficient land to support a population many times as numerous as it is to-day, and many centuries may elapse before the question of overcrowding arises for him in any acute form. That is a very important consideration. Far less fortunate is the coloured man, for he is con- fined within relatively narrow limits. 1 As industrialism grows in his lands with giant strides, very few decades may make his position desperate; and the poverty and overcrowding from which he must increasingly suffer will in the end openly turn him against those who restrict him to certain regions. It is no longer possible to delude oneself on this score. Accurate and copious statistics exist to-day in the case of two great Asiatic countries India and Japan from which to draw end- less conclusions. Those statistics disclose the fact that, in spite of the existence of many of the old Asiatic re- straining influences on the growth of population, and in spite of the non-existence of widely-diffused industries such as obtain in all densely-populated European countries, vast regions already carry a population of more than 500 souls to the square mile; and, in more restricted areas, sometimes double that number. It is because of this condition of affairs that the two basic facts, on which so much insistence has been laid, form the very head and front of the racial difficulties 1 This is not so true of Africa as it is of Asia, since Africa is undoubtedly still underpopulated. Still the negro races in Africa do not possess more than half the total surface, and when they greatly grow in numbers as they must grow they will feel their confinement just as acutely as the Asiatic already does in certain countries. ii THE YELLOW WORLD 125 which now face the white world; and unless there is a total reversal of certain well-accepted principles, it is impossible to see how any really permanent solution can be arrived at. The best that can be hoped for is a continuous state of armed neutrality, broken by periodic warfare; and it would be well, at a time when dis- armament talk has not yet died away in Europe, if these facts were properly understood. For, leaving aside the question of the excessive amount of territory which the white man not only possesses as his exclusive preserve, because of the energy which he displayed during the past four centuries, but is determined perpetually to reserve for himself, and confining ourselves to the other more tangible issues, it may be said in general terms that the white man will never willingly retreat from the stand he has taken as a world-conqueror; and as he cannot be forced just yet to retreat all along the line in Asia and Africa, seeing that he still possesses the world's great stocks of gold and the mastery of the ocean, war must constantly occur as the coloured races become stronger and stronger in modern offensive strength, and attempt to win back piecemeal what they have lost in the past. 1 That they must become at least masters in their own houses can- not any longer be doubted. It may be that such long intervals will elapse between successive attempts; such artifices used to disguise the real issues; such skill employed to sow dissension before delivering actual 1 Of course this argument is based on the supposition that the only method of solving difficulties is by warfare. If, as the writer hopes to show clearly farther on, a policy of conciliation and common-sense is finally adopted by the leading colonial Power, Eng- land, the future may not be so troubled. 126 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. attacks, that it will be difficult to trace each movement back to its real causes. But if the premises which have been here advanced are correct (and there can be no reason to hold them incorrect), this solution will be natural, logical and in the highest sense lawful; and those who remain deliberately blind to such a probability will incur the punishment which inevitably falls to the lot of wilful persons. The policy of piecemeal recovery of lost rights is the common policy of all coloured peoples; and this is the policy to be apprehended. It is in view of these far-reaching considerations that the position in the vital portion of non-subjected Asia - that is, in China and Japan has just now such super- lative interest; for it is on these countries that will undoubtedly be thrown the brunt of the work of changing once and for all the relations between East and West those curiously involved and delicate relations which have imperceptibly grown up in the four hundred years during which the white man has so miraculously spread his influence over the four quarters of the globe. And since it is a fact that in the region of the world where these two races the Chinese and the Japanese- are dominant, nearly one-third of the human race is actually cradled that is, some 600 million souls live and have their being it seems tolerably certain, as has so often been predicted, that the Pacific Ocean and its shores are really destined to play the part of the world's great battle-ground during coming times, at least until the pendulum swings back and a new action is born of the latest reaction. Everything is in favour of this sup- position. Let us glance at the vital facts. The first thing to note is that the area inhabited by the yellow races is not only immense, but that the ii THE YELLOW WORLD 127 boundaries of all the yellow man's kingdoms are con- terminous, whilst his ideals and his languages are homo- logous. 1 This great region stretches from the Amur river in latitude 50 north almost to the equator line; it extends from longitude 90 east to longitude 160 ; and it comprises a land-area of roughly 3,000,000 square miles. In this region there exists practically every variety of climate from almost arctic cold to burning tropical heat; but though there are these extremes of climate, a large portion comprises what may be called the Temperate Zone of Asia, where the burden of climate does not greatly abase man or make him inherently in- ferior to other men in anything save mere physical strength. Considerably more than two million square miles of this territory, according to the best calculations, are already given over to the intensive activities of these yellow races; and in the south, in the west, and even in the north, their dominion is constantly extending at the cost of certain minor coloured races, and must very soon expand at a much faster rate. There are, for instance, millions of Chinese already in the islands of the Southern Seas; in fifty years there should be tens of millions. And just as they have every variety of climate and soil, so do these races possess within the limits of their territories all the mineral wealth that is necessary to secure their industrial welfare. Yet though they have great vitality, great indus- triousness, and great determination in brief, a great 1 It is interesting to note that there is a powerful Japanese Linguistic Society already in existence to promote closer inter- course between the various groups of the yellow race Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Mongols, Tibetans, Annamese, Siamese. Its work is attracting increasing attention. 128 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. hold on life all these so-called yellow races (the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Indo-Chinese, the Siamese and the Mongols), are by nature peaceful and not warlike in any degree in spite of what has lately been said of the Japanese, whose true characteristics are very different from what they are still commonly supposed to be. They have one and all an excellent moral and social system founded in the main on the Confucian precepts a system making for peace and contentment. 1 No matter how much the so-called sterilisation of these races during the past few centuries may be decried, they have undoubtedly managed, alone and unaided, to stand the test of 1 Dr. Eliot, the Principal of Harvard University, has recently expressed a lofty thought so clearly that the writer ventures to quote him, for the benefit of missionaries : " Religion is not fixed but fluent changing from century to century. A new religion is coming, not based on authority either spiritual or temporal; for the present generation, while willing to be led, will not be driven. In the new religion there will be no per- sonification of natural objects or deification of remarkable human beings. A new thought of God will be characteristic of the new religion, which will be thoroughly monotheistic. God to His creature will be so immanent that no intermediary will be needed. God will be to every man the multiplication of infi- nities. With a human and worthy idea of God as the central thought of the new religion, creed, dogma, and mystery will dis- appear. Its priests will try to improve the social and industrial con- ditions. The new religion will not attempt to reconcile people to present ills by promising future compensations. I believe the advent of a just freedom for mankind has been delayed for cen- turies by such promises. Prevention will be the watchword of the new religion, and the skilful surgeon will be one of its ministers. It cannot supply consolation, as did the old religions, but it will reduce the need for consolation. It may be difficult to unite the world's various religions under this new head, but I be- lieve it can be accomplished on the basis of love of God and service to one's fellow man." ii THE YELLOW WORLD 129 time; they have been happy in their lives, exact in their mutual observances, and have multiplied and fructified exceedingly. Their democratic feelings are in the main far above anything that western culture has yet evolved. The East is in many ways the home of pure democracy the region where the cobbler may always magically become the great Minister. Their sense of mutual, or family, responsibility is so great that where no alien influences have been at work, millions of people still govern themselves without police or any of those artificial restraints which the West has been methodically adding to during the past centuries; and their individual reasonableness is such that they are not easily prompted to attempt a thousand stupid things which the white man is con- stantly doing. 1 Among all these millions there has never existed the necessity for a religion such as the Christian religion, which by a system of supernatural rewards and punish- ments, in the main plays on the baser feelings of common people and by alternately alluring and frightening them, seeks to lead them to Heaven or, 1 A remarkable instance of Chinese political tolerance is evi- denced by the present treatment of the Imperial Ming Family which was driven from the Dragon Throne by the Manchu Con- quest. Every year, at the proper seasons, the lineal descendants sacrifice at the celebrated tombs of their ancestors which lie only a few miles from Peking, the capital; and they perform this ceremony under full protection of the Government. Not only this, but the fallen House is in receipt of liberal pensions. It is interesting to remember that the Stuarts were driven from England at much the same time as the Mings were driven from Peking, and the peculiar difference in the treatment shows that in certain matters the Chinese have remained far ahead of Eu- rope. 130 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. at least, to save them from Hell. 1 There has, there- fore, been the marvellous spectacle of the mass of 600 millions of people, who until the rise of modern Japan because they had all these virtues, were an easy prey to aggressive and bigoted white races pressing eagerly for- ward to grasp the riches which tradition has always associated with the gilded East. Portugal, Spain, Holland, England, France, Russia, all these nations in the past have been morally responsible for the growth of many of the present difficulties. Stealing down in trading-ships, or coming boldly in men-of-war; cross- ing frontier-rivers on rafts, as did the old-time Cossack adventurers; riding into the country concealed in caravans all these men of the West have in various ways, perhaps unconsciously and unwittingly, pro- claimed Europe's real and only gospel the gospel of force; a gospel inherently so stupid that for many decades the yellow men refused to believe it, until the Japanese, forced to do so, accepted it with sudden fervour, and by their acceptance definitely marked the beginning of a new era. Now, it is commonly held that the great nationalist movement which has swept across Asia and spread broadcast the idea that Asia must wake up and copy the West, so as successfully to fight the West, is traceable simply to Japan's remarkable success in her recent war with Russia, and to nothing else; that is, to Japan's success in driving back to her own frontiers a 1 It is true that Buddhism permits hideous gods and pictorial representations of Heaven and Hell in its temples, but these are only for the common people. The instructed man in Eastern Asia, for at least thirty centuries, has been so far civilised that he confines himself to a few observances, all of which are in the nature of honours paid to the Principle of Life. ii THE YELLOW WORLD 131 very great but somewhat simple-minded white nation. Since nothing succeeds like success, and since this one small but densely-populated yellow man's country has dramatically proved beyond all doubt how much can be effected by boldly employing the arts of modern war against modern Europeans, it may be admitted that the apparent cause of this great movement in Asia is really Japan. But the real cause lies much deeper, and has, indeed, always been in existence. It is this which must now be dealt with. Stated in simple language, this cause is simply the antipathy which must always exist between two unsympathetic elements, one of which has constantly proved itself superior to the other an antipathy which now dares to show itself where before it did not dare. This antipathy is commonly supposed to be entirely a matter of colour. It is nothing of the sort. It arises simply because Europe has lorded it over Asia for so long; has so insisted to Asia that Europe is superior in all that concerns the mastery both of man and of the forces of nature, and in the scientific accumulation of wealth, that native races in the end perforce accepted the white man at his own valuation, and marked him down as a necessary evil which would have to be tolerated until it could be fought on its own terms and so cast aside. In this process of reasoning, on the Asiatic side there is little question of colour, no matter what there might be on the European side. The white man is not hateful because he is white, but because he is strong, confident and overbearing. The Asiatic is being therefore forced to adopt his new attitude in self-defence; and though of course, colour has admittedly become a barrier and also a great 132 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. irritant, it must be remembered that it is the white man who has largely taught the coloured man that this is so. Let us repeat it. It is because Europe's standard has been so much higher than Asia's standard during the past century or two, and her strength consequently so much greater, that Europe is still disliked and feared. This is nothing but the natural dislike of a weaker man for a stronger man, who has traded on his strength. From the Asiatic side the question of colour has always been a very minor one, because other things have been so much more vital. And here we pass to a new and still stronger consideration which must be insisted upon almost tediously. No matter how much Asia may better herself, no matter how much she may succeed in the twentieth cen- tury in reversing the verdict of the nineteenth century, and in proving that she has an inherent right to be sole mistress in her own house, there exists for her one grand obstacle which nothing in the world can properly remove an obstacle which is practically insurmountable. This obstacle is climate, the modifying and destructive effect of which has never been properly understood by the Western world, and which is the real reason why no such religion as the Christian religion is suited to Asia. The climate of the East is responsible for the peculiar philosophy and social atmosphere of the East both of which are totally different from the philosophy and social atmosphere of the West, and neither of which can be really changed in their fundamentals, no matter what efforts are put forth. The changes will be in material, practical things not in the web of life long ago woven to its final form. For though in certain portions of the Far East the climate approximates to that obtaining ii THE YELLOW WORLD 133 at the other end of the hemisphere, nevertheless subtle differences exist which in a few generations would be sufficient to change the characteristics of any white race migrating to Eastern Asia and which would assimilate that race to the autochthonous race around them. So great a role does this question of climate play that the attention of statesmen should be concentrated on it as a very vital question in practical politics. For just as January and February have been the historic Russian allies, so in the future must climate be the white man's great ally in the lands of the coloured man. Many years ago Buckle, one of the first students properly to understand the inner meaning of this vital matter, correctly showed how and why it was possible for culture and civilisation to advance a certain distance in hot climates and no farther, simply because the internal incentive to progress ceased after a certain point had been reached. Here it may be parenthetically remarked that Europe is supplying the new incentive to all countries of the East; and because that incentive comes from without; because it is thus a "variable" and not a "constant," no man may yet say how much or how little it may everywhere accomplish. Still it is a regrettable fact that in spite of such works as Buckle's History of Civilisation, little or no count is to-day taken of this fundamental obstacle, which possesses such immense socio-political value, and which should always be carefully studied in order to obtain the proper perspective in the case of sadly- involved problems. No one knows better than the Japanese leaders that the greatest danger for them is not really war, since they will never embark on any purely speculative campaign, but backsliding, largely from 134 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. climatic effect, in all matters where they have borrowed from the West. 1 This is equivalent to saying that they fear most of all no external foe, but simply the possibility of a natural failure to accumulate wealth and strength in that arithmetical progression which has 1 It would be well if Japanese statesmen pondered over the following words, and understood their ultimate meaning. The capacity for planting healthy colonies is certainly not possessed by the Japanese. "In yet another way does the national genius affect the growth of sea-power in its broadest sense; and that is in so far as it possesses the capacity for planting healthy colonies. Of colonisa- tion, as of all other growths, it is true that it is most healthy when it is most natural. Therefore colonies that spring from the felt wants and natural impulse of a whole people will have the most solid foundations; and their subsequent growth will be surest when they are least trammelled from home, if the people have the genius for independent action. Men of the past three centuries have keenly felt the value to the mother country of colonies as out- lets for the home products and as a nursery for commerce and shipping; but efforts at colonisation have not had the same general origin, nor have different systems all had the same success. The efforts of statesmen, however far-seeing and careful, have not been able to supply the lack of strong natural impulse; nor can the most minute regulation from home produce as good results as a happier neglect, when the germ of self-development is found in the national character. There has been no greater display of wisdom in the national administration of successful colonies than in that of unsuccessful. Perhaps there has been even less. If elaborate system and supervision, careful adaptation of means to ends, diligent nursing, could avail for colonial growth, the genius of England has less of this systematising faculty than the genius of France; but England, not France, has been the greater coloniser of the world. Successful colonisation, with its consequent effect upon commerce and sea-power, depends essen- tially upon national character; because colonies grow best when they grow of themselves, naturally. The character of the colonist, not the care of the home government, is the principle of the colony's growth." Mahan : Influence of Sea Power upon His- tory. ii THE YELLOW WORLD 135 become the order of the day among white races. Such a failure would be due not to any sin of omission in the matter of faithful copying, but would merely spring from the fact that the home motive-power is utterly different. This is an important conclusion. The very complete and elaborate system of checks and counter-checks which has everywhere to be noted in modern Japan has no doubt been instinctively designed with the special object of fighting influences which are inherent in the East corruption, laziness, postponement, inattention, unenthusiasm, slackness, sloth influences which tend to bring things to the natural level at which they can be maintained with the minimum of physical and mental effort. 1 Though the Japanese have of late years been more successful than any other non-Aryan people in borrowing and adopting the civilisation and inventions of the West, they have not been so entirely successful as is popularly supposed. Conflict with the West just as much as contact with the West is the reviving force for them, the incentive on which they must rely, the very soul of their new life. It is safe to say that it will require hundreds of years, even with the aid of countless artificial means, before modern Japan can succeed in attaining a semblance of modern Europe. Japanese efficiency to-day is, therefore, only high when compared with the efficiency of the rest of the East, and not when compared with the efficiency of Europe or America. Yet so little is this understood that in a 1 Even as soldiers and sailors there is no doubt that the Japanese are not the equals of Europeans. Though they have great fire and dash, they are easily discouraged and easily impressed with a sense of their own limitations. The Russian war proved nothing that has not been long known to students in the Far East. 136 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. recent political work a very eminent English statesman was found to write a preface, in which he called upon his countrymen to emulate the Japanese in their signal efficiency in all things ! Still, no matter how great may be the discrepancy between the- ideal Japan, as conceived by those living many thousands of miles away, and the real Japan, there can be little doubt that in the world of Eastern Asia it is this one Island Empire which is by far the most important factor, the pivot on which the whole latter-day problem may turn. Though China be many times greater in area, riches and population, this must long remain as it is at present. And the second strange fact to-day is that though Japan is racially in the opposite camp to Europe that is, of necessity entirely opposed to the white races yet, owing to her astute diplomacy, she has ranged herself politically on the side of those who desire to maintain indefinitely the status quo throughout Asia, and therefore, inferentially, the domi- nation of Europe in Asia. This further complicates any properly-balanced consideration of the question. For though the Japanese may be considered the real head and front of the growing movement in Asia for winning that general equality which no white Power willingly concedes, they are still the political allies of England for the special purpose of holding in check undoubtedly the strongest of all white races Russia - which because of its outlying geographical situation has always been Europe's great champion against Asia. At the same time the Japanese more than any other Asiatic people, and despite their private and justifiable ambitions desire for a number of years the goodwill of the whole world, so that their commerce may greatly ii THE YELLOW WORLD 137 expand and drag them from the slough of debt in which they have been floundering ever since the great war with Russia. Japan's own problem is therefore more intri- cate and more beset by real and apparent contradictions than any other political problem in the world ; and the training which Japanese statesmen are now receiving in the school of practical politics is of a very remarkable nature. For this strong military Power, after having removed one great white peril, thanks to the covert help of two other white Powers, finds herself not only crippled by an immense debt of 2,500 million yen, but absolutely debarred from sending her surplus population to those opposite shores of the Pacific where their labour would be immediately remunerative, and where that labour would be economically in the nature of debt-repayment. And the countries which thus debar her are the very lands which only yesterday were affording her that valuable moral and financial help which allowed her to triumph in a gigantic war. Furthermore, as it is necessary for her to extract to the uttermost farthing everything of value from those regions where this war left her securely entrenched that is, Korea and Southern Manchuria the people of these regions, though they are of kindred races, are estranged and are sensibly contributing to the vague feeling of distrust which renders the peaceful winning of the hegemony of Eastern Asia more than doubtful. Nor must it be for- gotten that commerce and industry have not flourished under the bureaucratic-monopolistic system which has found such favour in Japan. We have thus a discon- tented nation, a poor nation and a restricted nation, which is yet a powerful military nation, and which is 138 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. geographically so situated that as long as China remains weak, it will always be child's play for the statesmen of Tokyo to impose their will on the statesmen of Peking in such a way that Chinese autonomy will become less of a reality than it is now. Since the vital necessity of Japan's policy is to establish a community of interests between all the yellow races, that she will begin with the strongest of them all can scarcely be doubted. For having been the very first of all Asiatic Powers to win political equality with the white Powers, Japan feels that to her belongs the proud privilege of leading that grand movement which has for object the re- establishment of a condition which undoubtedly existed at one period of the world's history that is, the absolute equality of civilised men, irrespective of colour or creed. That this is a work of gigantic proportions Japanese statesmen will understand; but experience has long shown them that if the final objective is never lost sight of ; if work proceeds night and day; if all the national energies are devoted towards consummating the desired end, and all else is strictly subordinated to that end the impossible becomes in the end possible, and is through persistence finally translated into undeniable reality. Japan's whole history proves that. When Com- modore Perry forced her fifty years ago to abandon her policy of seclusion, the humiliation of her relations with Western nations was just as great as Chinese humiliation has always been since the Canton wars of eighty years ago. In the middle of the nineteenth century certainly no one would have guessed that she would rise superior to all the many restrictions with which she was oppressed. Her commerce was virtually ii THE YELLOW WORLD 139 regulated by the foreign Powers by means of a cast- iron tariff which she was not at liberty to revise with- out their consent; her laws and her officials had no control whatsoever over foreigners resident within the limits of her Empire; she had no military importance; she was closely watched and generally given to under- stand that she was rated as inferior. That she was actually inferior in many ways is shown by the fear in which she always held decadent China, until she beat China fifteen years ago. It required the efforts of forty years to recover her judicial and commercial autonomy; she had hardly done that and established her complete independence, when the Russian peril suddenly loomed up so large that it seemed possible that, after she had escaped from the moral thraldom of Europe, she was destined to be reduced to the position of vassal to one particular European Power. 1 1 It is very necessary, when dealing with Asia and Asiatic problems, not to follow European methods of reasoning, but Asiatic methods, if a true understanding of actual conditions is really aimed at. Thus in the matter of South Manchuria, it is of the highest importance to realise that the Japanese reasoning is as follows. In 1894-5, Japan fought China and beat her ignominiously much as Turkey beat Greece in the campaign of 1897. By the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed in 1895, China ceded to Japan the Liaotung Territory a region which comprises nearly half the territory of South Manchuria now dominated by Japan. But imme- diately thereafter three Powers, Russia, France and Germany, intervened on China's behalf, and demanded the retrocession of this territory. Japan, forced to accede to this display of force, signed the Retrocession Agreement by which the Liaotung Terri- tory was restored to China on the payment of an additional indemnity of thirty million Kuping silver taels (about five mil- lions sterling in those days). The Japanese attitude then really is that morally the Liaotung 140 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. Now this recent war, successful as it was from many points of view and especially from the point of view first mentioned was harmful to Japan in one impor- tant particular where she least expected it to be. It has proved to her beyond any shadow of doubt that no matter how much the world may applaud the spectacle of a David battling with a Goliath, when it comes to allowing an Eastern David the same privileges as the ordinary white man in other regions of the world, a universal shout forbids it. To put it plainly, Japan was permitted to push back Russia a step or two; but she has since been shown that the citizenship of the world belongs to the white man and to him alone. Common honesty, therefore, requires it to be generally acknowledged that if the Island Empire of the East soon develops an intensive policy in Eastern Asia and succeeds in binding Eastern Asia into one political whole one of the most powerful contributory causes must be sought in the uncompromising attitude of the white man on those shores of the Pacific where the proximity of enormous races of coloured men has filled even a race that believes itself to be unalterably dominant full of open fear. For some years to come this welding of Eastern Asia into one whole will not become so clear as to arouse Territory belongs to Japan by an actual treaty, which was tem- porarily rendered impotent owing to alien interference. She has but to return the Chinese indemnity to enter into full enjoyment of her rights a further sum securing her tenure of the additional territory which she now dominates, thanks to the Russian war. The writer seriously invites attention to this point of view. It is not Asiatic casuistry it is Asiatic reasoning, which abhors white man's reasoning, based as that reasoning mainly is on a logic which Asia does not accept. ii THE YELLOW WORLD 141 universal concern and a new grouping of the Powers. Great financial difficulties have to be overcome by Japan; 1 England must not be estranged; China - 1 It is necessary to point out clearly that, however much Japan's relative poorness may be decried, she can if necessity demands still lay her hand on a source of revenue which would provide her with every facility for large national borrowings. This source is the land-tax which is still very light compared with the rest of Japanese taxation. In 1877, when the total revenue of the Government was yen 59,000,000, nearly two-thirds of this sum was derived from the land-tax. In 1907, when the total revenue was estimated at yen 616,000,000, less than 15 per cent., or yen 85,000,000, was contributed by the land-tax. Now these figures are especially significant in that until the Restoration in 1867 taxation rested entirely on the land. At one time, as much as seven-tenths of the produce was taken by the Government, and under the Tokugawa administration, which lasted from the close of the sixteenth century to the year 1867, the average rate of taxation was certainly never less than four-tenths of the gross produce. In 1868, the first year of Meiji, the land was virtually nationalised, the feudal barons restoring their estates to the Emperor. It was in turn bestowed by the Emperor upon the villages subject to an annual tax based upon a general assessment of the value obtained from the ruling prices of agricultural produce. The total official valuation at that time was about fifteen hun- dred million yen and the first tax was levied at the rate of a half per cent. The same valuation is in force to-day, but since the Russian war the rate of tax has been increased to 20 per cent, on City Building Land; 8 per cent, on Village Building Land; 5^ per cent, on Fields, Forests, &c. Large as these increases may appear in percentages they only double the revenue from the land- tax, and are trivial in comparison with the increased value of the land, its products or its rental. Taking the country as a whole, the official value upon which the land-tax is levied is only about one- eighth of the present market value, so that proportionately to the first levy the land-tax should yield yen 320,000,000 instead of yen 85,000,000. It is well-known that the Government of Japan is keep- ing this source of revenue untouched as a last reserve for war- purposes. Undoubtedly the land-tax in Japan could be made to provide the service of a fresh debt of one hundred millions sterling. 142 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. already suspicious, uneasy and openly restive must be handled with care; and generally no false moves attempted from vainglorious motives. Japan's first business, then, must simply consist in placing herself in such an international position as to have the leadership of the Far East gradually and naturally fall to her, and so gradually and naturally be acknowledged by all. That is the first essential; and though it may still sound a little unbelievable, it is perceptibly more possible of belief than it was a few years ago. Still, although the small yellow nations, such as Siam and Indo-China, are probably already quite willing secretly to concede to Japan such a leadership as has been outlined, in preference to Europe's open domina- tion, and although Korea has already been forced to ac- knowledge Japan's sovereignty, the question of China is undoubtedly a very different matter. Though there are to-day voices endlessly whispering messages of hope and intrigue in the vernacular Press, in the schoolrooms, in the very Yamens of the highest, China still resolutely re- fuses to lend herself to designs which even in the minds of Tokyo statesmen are necessarily shadowy and ill- defined. For one of the most remarkable Chinese national characteristics is an unbounded belief in the vitality and genius of their race a belief that political difficulties which seem at any given moment over- whelming are slowly removed by the unconscious efforts of a great and swarming population. History certainly proves to a large extent the correctness of this view; but history is sometimes a treacherous guide, and days are certainly drawing near which have an ugly look for those who pin their faith solely to the lessons of the past. ii THE YELLOW WORLD 143 Still it is admittedly by no means certain that this state of affairs this Chinese reluctance to side with Japan will last indefinitely. For one or two decades more Chinese jealousy may actually provide a valuable counterpoise to the present disturbed balance of power in Eastern Asia, and thus complicate the problem Japan has ahead of her. But in the natural order of things, other conquests will be added to those Japan has made during the past fifteen years; l and these will 1 Those who delude themselves into believing that there is no longer any basis for animadversions against Japanese militarism would do well to ponder over the following statements made by Jap- anese Ministers of War and Navy during the budget debates of the year 1910: "The military undertakings in Manchuria and Korea were being pushed on in pursuance of the policy already adopted. As regarded national defence, a Bill had been intro- duced to the Diet some years ago providing for the strengthening of armaments. At that time the Government wished to increase the standing army to 25 divisions, this expansion being based on the necessity of keeping pace with Foreign Powers. The Govern- ment, however, was compelled to yield to financial considerations, and the force was increased to 19 divisions only. The Powers of the world were strenuously exerting their efforts towards the main- tenance of peace, but the maintenance of peace depended on the balance of armaments being maintained. The Powers are ac- cordingly steadily increasing the force of their armies and navies, as they desired peace. In these circumstances, Japan could not be content with the existing force of her armaments for long, and it would be necessary for Japan to increase them in due course." From these statements, it is quite plain that what the writer has consistently affirmed that no change of programme is contem- plated by Japan and that she is determined to win the open hege- mony of the East is true. Her policy has been the clever policy of throwing dust in people's eyes until she is ready to stand un- masked. It may be added that, according to the best information, Japan has this year (1910), 1,200,000 fully-trained men, available on mobilisation; by 1916 this number will be increased to 1,637,000. Besides these fully-trained men there will be 846,000 partially- 144 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. enable her gradually to tighten her grip on Peking and force the adoption of Japanese views, for fear that something worse may happen. And it is well here to remember that this has always been the great bane of Chinese politics the purchasing of temporary relief by far-reaching and little-understood concessions. There is the strongest likelihood that something of the sort may be seen again ; it is the most probable outcome of an infinitely difficult situation. For it must be remembered that just as the Anglo- Japanese alliance is a temporising measure for England, so it is a temporising measure for Japan. The British alliance may be necessary until the second or third decade of the present century; but it certainly will not be necessary for very much longer. And its termination may be the signal for the proclamation of a new and very different combination founded on colour and geography, and taking its rise from certain stubborn facts. Already it may be said broadly that in certain ways trained men who will be quite good enough to replace casualties in the field thus giving a total mobilised strength in 1916 of 2,483,000 fighting men. Further, owing to Japan's increasing population, which has now reached nearly 53,000,000, and which multiplies at the rate of a million a year, and owing to the reduc- tion of service with the colours from three to two years, the annual peace contingent of conscripts has been increased from 80,000 in 1905 to 120,000 in 1909. As about 520,000 young men reach the age of 20 every year, those who are not taken for the conscription, and who are physically fit, are held to military service up to the age of 40, and anticipatory arrangements have been made in the event of a prolonged war for calling them out by classes and training them at the depots. These men, about 3,000,000 in number, would have to be reckoned with as a final reserve of the armed strength of Japan. ji THE YELLOW WORLD 145 the situation in the whole of Asia, though more especially in Eastern Asia, is not entirely unlike what it was in Europe when, after the French Revolution had overturned the French Monarchy, the French Republic, rising out of the ashes left by that giant conflagration, began the deliberate policy of "revolutionising" or at- tempting to "revolutionise" all neighbouring countries by sending abroad emissaries who insistently preached the gospel of liberty, and gave the promise of armed help to all who desired to sweep away the abuses and intolerances of the old regime. The success of this French propaganda after an initial period of doubt - was overwhelming in Europe; and, being encouraged to rise against their rulers, broken monarchies became the order of the day. The natural consequence of this great movement was that when the time was ripe and the god of the machine had appeared in the person of a Napoleon these "revolutionised" countries had to submit to an iron imperial sway, embracing practically all Europe. Now though it may sound singularly exaggerated and improper to see in Japan a copyist in any way of the first Napoleonic Empire, it is a very remarkable fact that in a modified form many features are to be observed in the present situation in Asia which are similar to those obtaining in Europe a century ago. It can no longer be doubted that a very deliberate policy is certainly being quietly and cleverly pursued. Despite all denials, it is a fact that Japan has already a great hold in the schools and in the vernacular news- papers all over Eastern Asia, and that the gospel of "Asia for the Asiatics" is being steadily preached not only by her schoolmasters and her editors, but by her 146 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. merchants and pedlars and every other man who travels. It is also a fact surely worthy of special note, that wherever Japan sets her foot no matter how she may have placed it there, and no matter what promises she may have given regarding evacuation there she remains for good, making her tenure indisputable under specious forms such as the great Napoleon delighted in devising. In this there is nothing exceptional: it is merely the working of that universal law which causes strong bodies to overpower and absorb the weak. Thus during the past fourteen years Japan has actually gained Formosa, Korea, the Liaotung Territory and Southern Saghalien territories far greater than the Japanese isles themselves and she is already the virtual arbiter of an immense region in Manchuria larger than Great Britain and Ireland. In both of the two wars which she fought to capture these various territories, she began by expressing the same disinterestedness and the same purity of motives protestations which seemed so true that it has actually appeared as if force majeure in the end alone necessitated a reversal of the pro- claimed policy. Yet no matter what mitigating circum- stances apologists may find, it is certain that each of these two wars one fought against China, the other against Russia was virtually settled by a territorial indemnity. Now admitting all this, and realising its significance, it is well to know that at the present moment the most urgent problem which, masked by many other forms of activity, engages the attention of the Tokyo Govern- ment is this : How can Japan ultimately best win for herself numbers ? l 1 It is an extraordinary fact, perhaps worthy of mention, that this view has been unexpectedly confirmed in the very highest quarter ii THE YELLOW WORLD 147 As a preliminary to the argument which follows and which establishes Japanese policy as the writer sees it, it is necessary thoroughly to understand that, in the eyes of Japanese statesmen, Japan has to-day no enemies: she has only rivals. To the cold and philosophic Japanese mind the sensationalism of the West, which confounds a race for power with the act of fighting enemies, is un- worthy of serious men. Japan does not want war she has never desired war like vainglorious European nations. The way the problem must be stated is this. From the Japanese view-point there exist on the shores of the Pacific nations feared by her because they possess greater wealth and greater numbers than she herself possesses or can ever possess within the territorial limits of her own Empire, unless she methodically extends those territorial limits either by direct conquest or by some indirect acquirement of the rights of eminent domain which will place at her disposal, in industry and in war, the millions she needs. This may sound an ambiguous and peculiar method of stating a plain political ideal; but it is just such ambiguous and peculiar phrasing which best exposes to view the soul of some time after the writer had set down his own argument. In the Budget Debate in Japan for the fiscal year 1910-1911, Count Komura, Foreign Minister, said that Japan had become a con- tinental nation as a result of the late great war. There was China with 400,000,000 people close by, Russia with 160,000,000 on the west and America with 100,000,000 on the east. If the Japanese were to expand in the midst of these nations they must have a population of 100,000,000 at least. Therefore the Japanese who could only number 50,000,000 people should concentrate rather than scatter themselves. With this idea the Government intended to concentrate the emigrants in Manchuria and Korea. Surely no better proof could be adduced by the writer to show that he has correctly read the Japanese mind. 148 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. that diplomacy which is so disconcerting to Western minds. The Japanese mental attitude, therefore, is to-day one of great anxiety anxiety lest a priceless opportunity be allowed to slip away and she misses in consequence a destiny which seems as manifest to her people as it was to the English people when they had beaten France in the old colonial days of the eighteenth century. In view of her abnormal armaments and her great striking power, some may refuse to believe that Japan is really so filled with anxiety; nevertheless that anxiety exists and is a very real force. For while Japan can be bold in action, she is timid when she is inactive; and, with all her armed strength, she appreciates thoroughly the fact that she possesses certain absolute limitations. Nor must it be forgotten that she is thoroughly imbued with that valuable political attribute, the habit of really taking long views whilst loudly talking short views. Now, for the time being Japan undoubtedly still fears Russia most of all her rivals because that fear is tradi- tional; because of the relatively-speaking negative results achieved by the late war; and because, more obviously still, if she is to be the arbiter of the fate of China, she must guard first against a Power whose frontiers envelop the frontiers of China. Next to Russia she fears America, because of America's wealth and what that wealth is capable of rapidly accomplish- ing. Last of all, she fears China because of China's latent strength. The Japanese problem is therefore a problem which constantly requires a threefold consideration; and it would be well if English statesmen realised once and for all that they stand completely outside that three- ii THE YELLOW WORLD 149 fold consideration. The Japanese problem, to be understood, must be considered from the point of view which has been so clearly set down. For Japan knows that if China ever comes to her own either of her own initiative or assisted by some foreign Power the Chinese Empire, by reason of its enormous popu- lation, may become to the rest of Eastern Asia what the Roman Empire in the days of her glory was to the rest of Europe. China is immense: her popula- tion extraordinary. No amount of efficiency or cunning can destroy the fact that a nation out- numbered by eight to one is a nation hopelessly handi- capped in any struggle a I' entrance. This Japan knows. These things should, then, be properly considered. At this moment, Japan is not arming against Russia in particular, or against America, or against China. She is arming merely because of the facts that these three mighty countries exist in her immediate neigh- bourhood that is, on the Pacific Ocean; that the strength of each of these three countries must mightily expand; but that by making immense pecuniary sacrifices it is still possible for her to keep sufficiently ahead of these three rivals for a few decades to enable her periodically to take advantage of any favourable circumstances which may arise arid thus to offset by quickness and completed preparations what she may lack in inherent strength. That is what she did in her Chinese War; that is what she did in her Russian War; that is what she will do again. In these few paragraphs may be read Japan's real policy; for like all island Powers, she must gather strength by sudden and unexpected action. Even in distant days Japanese statesmen have always 150 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. thoroughly understood that on basis of population, natural ability, or extent of territory, their country is really in a class far beneath the three rivals who have been named. To-day the statesmen of Tokyo realise that they can lay no permanent claim to the title of Great Power on the Pacific, when what may be called the " Dreadnought age " of Great Powers has arrived, unless the hope of creating a Greater Japan at some period before the present century is too far advanced is completely realised. Japan, having tasted the bitter-sweet of being the strongest military and naval Power in modern Asia, will never consent, without a desperate struggle, to be relegated to a more lowly place. Yet, if a new China really arises, Japan must be relegated to the relative position she occupied before the war of 1894-95 that is to the position of a Minor Power. And she is determined that this will not occur. Herein lies the real problem of Eastern Asia - herein the real difficulty, herein the tragedy of all recent history. Stripped of all useless verbiage, it may be said that Japan, by immense efforts and by foreign aid, has placed herself in a wrong class, and therefore in a permanently false position, which necessarily throws everything else out of proportion. Merely because of this strange fact, it is impossible to say what may or may not become either of her, or of the rest of the Far East, during the present century, supposing that her three real competitors continue to expand in point of population, and therefore in wealth and potential strength, just as they are expanding at present. There is really no end to the possibilities which exist. The problem is so urgent, so fraught with subtle dangers, that it is impossible to say too much. ii THE YELLOW WORLD 151 Let us tabulate some figures and understand this thoroughly. Few people give enough consideration to simple statistics; yet it is by the aid of these statistics alone that the general position can be under- stood. Numbers are what Japan needs in the populous modern world. At the present moment the Japanese population is almost exactly 53,000,000. By 1925, that is, in fifteen years, however, assuming that the birth- rate remains what it is at present, the Japanese popula- tion will equal the present population of Germany - 63,000,000 people. But in that year the population of Japan's three rivals may be as follows: Russia 200,000,000 United States 120,000,000 China 475,000,000 The passage of another quarter of a century will find this discrepancy still more marked unless Japan has conquered Manchuria and other parts of China. In 1950, Japan may have 80,000,000 or 85,000,000 people, but in that year the figures of her rivals certainly should be: Russia 275,000,000 United States 170,000,000 China 550,000,000 By the end of the present century, unless this phenomenal growth of populations is arrested by causes about which nothing can yet be written, Japan, though she may have 120,000,000 or even 140,000,000 people, will be faced by the following figures : Russia 400,000,000 United States 300,000,000 China 800,000,000 1 1 The present writer is not prepared to accept entirely Professor Pearson's statement, which forms so important a part in his main 152 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. The imagination staggers at such figures; but to the student in China, who is accustomed to immense figures, and who knows how not millions or tens of millions, but hundreds of millions are toiling in a limitless land, there is nothing very startling in them. Fifty years ago, in the Taiping Rebellion, about 100 millions perished in two decades or so of savage warfare; yet already the ground where the greatest slaughter took place has been filled. Now, bearing in mind the political rivalry which from now on should grow from year to year, in spite of all talk of peace, the great mass of this population will be so situated as to press on Japan and be a potential source of menace. Once they are educated and drilled, China's millions, with their extraordinary mental and physical activity, will man for man be more than a match for Japan in peaceful times: and in the event of war, since the superiority in numbers must remain at least six or seven to one, it would be hopeless for Japan to measure strength with the immense Dragon Empire - for all the courage of mythical St. George would be argument, that Chinese numerical preponderance must be so overwhelming in the future. While no reliable statistics exist regarding the Chinese decennial increase, we know that one white nation Russia is now adding to her population at the rate of at least twenty-five millions every decade; that that rate is bound to increase; and that she has room within her present boundaries for a population of possibly a thousand millions that is, a population of 150 persons per square mile in her seven million square miles of territory. Russia has a far greater feeding-capacity than the United States; and it is therefore this country rather than any other because its boundaries are conterminous which will ulti- mately act as a natural restraint on China, though for the moment other countries may be able to exercise a superior political in- fluence. ii THE YELLOW WORLD 153 of no avail against army corps which could be easily numbered by the hundred, if it were only a question of men. At the end of the present century Siberia alone will have a population greatly superior to the popula- tion of Japan; and this population, accustomed to the hard blows of climate and conscious of its lusty strength, will view with increasing disfavour any political effacement such as the Russian treaty-makers at Portsmouth were not ashamed to endorse. In these rapidly coming days America will be spilling its men and its products over the Pacific; and as this develop- ment grows, it will fill the broad waters of the Pacific with the signs of rival ambitions. O Surrounded thus by fully developed rivals, in place of the present undeveloped rivals, Japan, should nothing be done in the meantime, will be more unfortunately situated than Germany in Europe has ever been. The Japanese people have but little genius for trade or industry, neither have they commanding mentality. Germany, though she is admittedly surrounded, has now won for herself, apart from every other consideration, a numerical superiority which nothing can strip from her over her neighbours on all but one side. But in the case of Japan the essential point is different: her task is still ahead of her. It has been stated that Japan's task is to win numbers for herself during the present century, and that to obtain those numbers she must annex territory; but at home there is for her an element of weakness which is seldom referred to. For even the supposition that the present relative position will be maintained is un- certain: that is, it is by no means beyond doubt that the Japanese birth-rate will remain at its present figure. 154 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. Japan may actually lose strength, because the free expansion of her population overseas is impeded; and this is what she fears may actually occur during the present century. Let us look into this more closely. In the comparison just made, the rate of increase in the Japanese popula- tion during the past few decades, which has been very regular, was taken as a basis; and the conclusion reached was that by 1925 the population would number 63,000,000; by 1950, eighty or eighty-five millions; and by the end of the century one hundred and twenty millions, or even one hundred and forty millions. Bearing in mind, however, certain special economic conditions, now springing into ever greater prominence in modern Japan, and remembering that the growth of the Japanese population, like all other Asiatic popula- tions, has often been restrained by special causes other than warfare, it is not impossible that this popula- tion may gradually assume the quasi-stationary condition of the population of France. There are certain historic facts which help one to believe this; and as such a consummation would, of course, at once change the entire outlook, it is well to be more explicit. Anterior to the sixteenth century, there are few authentic data regarding the population of Japan. Japanese mediaeval records only give the numbers of persons subject to the tax-roll; the enormous number of serfs and outcasts was never estimated, whilst children were likewise ignored. In the sixteenth century, however, it is tolerably certain that the popula- tion was probably some fifteen or sixteen millions Japan being thus at least as populous as some of the great States of Europe, Austria then having sixteen, ii THE YELLOW WORLD 155 France fourteen, Spain eight, and England five million people. But after that a change gradually took place, and European investigators have brought to light some remarkable facts. From the beginning of what is known as the Great Peace in Japan (or the end of the great feudal wars), the population increased with rapidity, reaching its maximum in the year 1700. By 1721, the influence of the long calm had spent itself. It was in that year that the first regular census was taken, and hence- forward it was seen that there was no real increase of population. Two reasons have been assigned for this : the first that no efforts were made to enlarge the area of tillable land or to stimulate the productivity of the soil ; the second that the processions of the daimios, or nobles, journeying from their castles to the capital, spread everywhere terribly contagious diseases, such as small pox, dysentery and typhus-fever, which decimated the population. But in addition to disease, periodic famines made awful ravages. Thus, though in 1721 the population had been estimated at 26,061,830 souls, in 1792 it was reduced to 24,891,411 and in 1846 had only risen to 26,907,625. In a word the Japanese population for over a century was absolutely stationary. Now, in the course of some sixty-five years, it has almost exactly doubled, owing to the opening up of the country and the spread of other rejuvenating influences. Already new economic causes are beginning to appear which may once again check the growth, though not so severely as in olden times. Briefly, the Japanese Government, by adopting at home the protective principle, in its severest forms, is virtually reducing the nation to an artificial condition as 156 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. dangerous to natural expansion as the economic and general isolation existing during the Tokugawa period. Foreign capital is virtually excluded from the country, being only admitted in the form of government, quasi- government, or municipal loans; the free import of food-stuffs is impeded by taxation and other restrictions; state monopolies have invaded fields which should have been left open to private enterprise; in every direction the free activities of the people are hampered; taxation has become so irritating in that the sense of being heavily taxed is continually impressed on rich and poor alike, whilst prices are rapidly rising and trade shows no signs of great expansion. Should the force of these various factors become intensified, there can be little doubt that the causes operative in France will slowly become operative in Japan, and small families will be the order of the day. Thus, whereas in the case of the great rivals on the Pacific, Russia, America, and China, there are no such crippling conditions, and men are adding to their numbers either through the operation of the birth-rate or by wholesale immigration at an un- precedented rate, in Japan the source of all wealth - human beings is being tampered with in order to make a largely fictitious yearly balancing of the national account. Internationally this may one day have a most important and far-reaching influence. For Japan the problem is immensely serious, since all the unity and energy in the world will avail nothing if the present disproportion between her numerical strength and the strength of her rivals increases. It is this which every day convinces thinking men in Japan more and more of the necessity of annulling those political boundaries which still separate the various ii THE YELLOW WORLD 157 members of the yellow race. More than sufficient has already been said to demonstrate clearly the stand-point from which modern Japan must be always studied. It is as the nation which has started too late in the world's race, and which though isolated by sea has already acquired a firm foothold on the mainland of Asia a foothold as disastrous for Asia, as was for all concerned England's foothold on the continent of Europe in days gone by. It is as the nation which has been placed in a false position, owing to fortuitous circumstances a nation which has three other great nations, each on the threshold of a phenomenal population-expansion, openly watchful and openly nervous, since it has been due to their military under-development that the success of the military over-development of Japan was rendered possible. Now the situation in China is very favourable for the success of the Japanese policy which has been proclaimed in these pages. The passing of the last vestige of the old regime in the death of the masterful Empress Dowager, and the complete downfall of China's one strong man of action, Yuan Shih Kai both of whom understood the value of force finds the vast empire in the most curious of intermediary stages. The enthrone- ment of an infant Emperor under the tutelage of a young and inexperienced but altrustic Regent his father signifies the beginning of a provisional regime which must last for nearly a generation, and during which no firm front can possibly be shown without external help to any bold enemy. The probabilities seem to point clearly to the fact that though many changes have been sanctioned and will soon be enforced by the Peking Government; though general progress 158 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. will gradually be made .in such matters as railway building, education, taxation, and finance, internation- ally China will remain an unwieldy mass, unable to throw her great weight against any rival because of her enormous decentralisation, which has to be slowly amended. In other words, China must long remain totally unable to fight successfully against any first-class Power, no matter how many hundreds of thousands of troops she may arm and equip. It therefore seems more than likely that the waging of one more successful war on the part of Japan will ensure for her the real hegemony of Eastern Asia, and render the position of all those white Powers possessing important stakes beyond the Straits of Malacca not only one of extreme embarrassment but one of open peril. The whole outer problem for Japan is to hold the white Powers grouped against one another more or less as they stand at present, whilst cautiously she tightens her hold on China. 1 It is not even necessary 1 Owing to the methodical manner in which her step-by-step campaign of penetration and assimilation proceeds, it is possible to predict with great exactitude the manner in which Japan's pro- gramme on the continent of Asia will be developed. This is what should happen during the next few years. The formal annexation of Korea and dethronement of the Korean Emperor merely temporarily delayed for reasons of expediency will come during the present term of the Anglo-Japanese alliance. This will make Japan irrevocably a continental, as well as an island, Power: it will therefore be proclaimed suddenly necessary to safeguard the buffer State of Manchuria more adequately than is possible at present, by securing greater administrative as well as military control. The first tentative steps have already been taken (i) by making all Japanese consuls in Manchuria directly subject to the Governor-General of the Port Arthur Territory and thus establishing the web of an administration; (2) by extending policing rights, in the face of most active Chinese opposition, ii THE YELLOW WORLD 159 for her to maintain the present political combination, since by boldly abandoning the Anglo-Saxon friendship - that friendship which is illusory, because of the white communities of the Pacific who despise all dealings with the yellow man and by making a gradual Russian or Russo-German understanding, she might be better suited. Nothing then would prevent her from developing a new policy on the southern frontiers of China, and stripping from France her Indo-Chinese Colonies, as she could most easily do to-day. The Annamese, the weakest of all the yellow peoples, are yet beginning to show new possibilities in political development; and accustomed as they are to Chinese suzerainty, Japanese suzerainty would not be unwelcome to them in place of the present rule by conquest. wherever new railway links go. This has already been done in the case of the new Yalu railway; but that is not very important, inasmuch as South-Eastern Manchuria, already traversed by Japanese armies, lies in the hollow of Japan's hand. What is of the highest political importance, however, is that as soon as the Changchun-Kirin railway in Central Manchuria is completed it will be suddenly extended into Korea, linking with another Japanese railway there, and the usual administrative police control enforced. The effect of this will be to draw a ruler-line through Manchuria and surrender to almost open Japanese dominion all Manchuria south of the Sungari river. When this is done it will be possible to throw off the mask, as Japan does not contemplate going farther north than this. Her strategic position on the continent will be so strong, that acting from the three points Manchuria, Korea, and Saghalien she can so menace Russia as to put her on the defensive in twenty-four hours. Russia in the Far East is therefore in her hands. Secure, therefore, in Northern Asia, Japan will merely consolidate her position there, whilst she turns her activities elsewhere in China. All this will be done before 1915 Japan's future conduct being regulated by the developments which may come subsequent to the expiry of the present term of the British alliance. 160 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. Once Japan menaced China both from the north and the south, the statesmen of Peking might be forced to make some hard and fast arrangement which would place their growing armed strength at the disposal of Tokyo, to save them from worse reprisals. For it is an unfortunate fact that Eastern peoples are largely indifferent to outer political problems so long as it is not a question of interfering with their daily food, and so long as a loss of power does not present itself to their eyes in some tangible form such as an armed occupation. They are therefore content to leave the supreme direction in the hands of a few, who are thus able to dispose of the destinies of the many by doing what may seem temporarily expedient, but which is really criminal. Japan's star will guide her and tell her when to act; and when she does act if things are left as they are at present she will be as successful as people always are who leave nothing to chance. Now, inasmuch as the pronouncement which has just been made in regard to China's foreign policy may be misunderstood, it is necessary to be more explicit. In brief, we have to show how in the case of China, Japan, who is the present enemy, can really be metamorphosed, through European indifference, into Japan, the friend. We have already said that the millions of China are content to leave the supreme direction of affairs in the hands of a few men, so long as provincial interests that is, interests connected with the daily lives of the millions are not directly touched. As is well known, the government of China embodies in a very pronounced and successful form that strange theocratic principle which, while it has been often attempted in Europe, has never been anything in ii THE YELLOW WORLD 161 practice but an attempt. To the matter-of-fact and unimaginative European mind, the divine right of kings has always been something of an absurdity, in spite of the vigorous efforts which have been made from time to time in various countries to proclaim and enforce it. Not so in China, or in Japan, where, of course, it is only the Chinese model which has been copied. In China the Emperor has always been, in a very strict sense, the High Priest of the nation ; living in seclusion; with five thousand years of reputed authority behind him; worshipping at the altars of Heaven as the proclaimed intermediary between the unseen powers and his innumerable subjects; and obeyed not by virtue of his armed forces but by virtue of his virtue. The numberless revolutions and rebellions of which Chinese history is full are all, from the Eastern point of view, exactly similar to the Satsuma Rebellion in Japan, which occurred exactly one generation ago (1877); they were all revolts against bad advisers, but not against the constituted imperial authority, which is always sacrosanct. By one of those ingenious fictions, which are the delight of the human mind when con- fronted by an insurmountable difficulty, to destroy an emperor in China is not to destroy his authority, which simply passes like a cloak from his shoulders to the shoulders of a more vigorous successor. The authority of the emporors is never weakened even by such violent acts. The present dynasty in China is not so much a dynasty of usurpers, as a dynasty sprung from a small nation of conquerors who fought their way from Manchuria to Peking, and who succeeded in imposing their rule over the length and breadth of China only M 162 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. after a century of intermittent warfare. To-day it is very important to note this fact: that from the moment Nurhachu, the original founder of the Manchu Empire in Manchuria, 1 began his contest with the Ming sov- ereigns of China, to the time when all China openly acknowledged the Manchu sway, nearly a century was consumed. The Manchu race, when they conquered China, were under no delusions regarding the nature of their prize. They knew that, as in the case of most political conquests in civilised times, their success sprang from a variety of causes besides their military prowess. They therefore took steps to cement their hold on China both by the threat of force and by a most extensive use of the principle of compromise. On the one hand the Manchu and Mongol hordes and their Chinese allies were reorganised into eight great Banners or corps with Peking as their focal point and strong garrisons were distributed strategically over the length and breadth of China; on the other hand the 1 The Japanese have chosen an excellent means for familiaris- ing their troops with Manchuria. The South Manchurian line is guarded by a division of field troops. Every year a change in the division is made. Not long ago the loth Field Division was with- drawn and the nth Division sent from Japan to guard the line. Three years after the war the 3rd Division appeared in South Manchuria for the purpose of becoming acquainted with the possible future of the theatre of war. Such a change of troops on the railway has an enormous educative significance. The troops familiarise themselves with the locality, the climatic conditions, the language, and the manners and customs of the inhabitants. All this is obtained gratuitously and does not infringe the inter- national treaties; whilst, finally, the idea becomes generally accepted among a population knowing little of foreign affairs, that the destinies of Manchuria and Japan are inextricably mixed. ii THE YELLOW WORLD 163 new Manchu dynasty reinstated all Chinese civil officials, and thus left the ancient system of government save for a few necessary modifications entirely untouched. What was therefore done which was different from anything which had been done before in China, was to superimpose on the old civil system a fully-organised military system which directly represented the new authority of the Throne. Until the nineteenth century was well advanced - that is, during a period of some one hundred and fifty years this new dual system worked well enough. The Chinese, with their vast knowledge of the weak- nesses of human nature a knowledge as great as that displayed in mediaeval times by Macchiavelli, who lived under precisely the same political conditions were able, by pandering to the purely human side of the Manchus, to regain much of the substance, whilst to their nominal masters was left the very complete shadow, of power. But no sooner had a new factor the external or foreign factor begun to exercise much influence, than the great decay which five generations of dominion had already brought about became very evident. The Manchus, confronted like the Japanese of the seven- teenth century with a force which they despised and yet feared, made the most strenuous efforts to maintain the policy of splendid isolation which had stood them in such good stead knowing well that the splendour sprang from the isolation and nothing else. But their efforts were unavailing. Gradually but irresistibly the foreign factor became more and more important, as every armed collision showed its inherent strength. Passionate resistance and subtle diplomacy were alike useless; and so with the grand climax of the 164 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. Boxer year occurring most appropriately in the very last year of the nineteenth century it became clear that in the twentieth century some new ausgleich would have to be arranged between the people of China and the Manchu sovereigns and their supporting clans if the semblance of an undivided empire was to be maintained. Now, since all Eastern precedents and procedures had long been exhausted, since no formula could be devised to meet the situation, there was but one thing to do; to turn to the West, and to borrow from the West forms so well-tested by time that their very adoption would give to China a secular Palladium impervious to the rudest onslaughts. The coming of constitutional or parliamentary government in China was proclaimed by the late Empress-Dowager, and as a first step the organisation of Provincial Assemblies, designed to give organic unity to each province, was soon proceeded with. Already these bodies have met in each provincial capital and have debated the questions of the hour with much commonsense and skill. With constitutional govern- ment and provincial decentralisation no longer vague possibilities, but practical certainties, it has been too confidently expected by the Court of Peking that all outer difficulties would infallibly be smoothed away. That something more than mere socio-political reform is necessary to regain the ground lost by decades of indifference is, however, amply clear to impartial observers. The network of hampering treaties and protocols, with their accompanying indemnities, indeed so enmeshes modern China, that without active support from the interested Powers it is physically impossible for this great country to dream of standing erect, and ii THE YELLOW WORLD 165 proudly resuming the position to which the genius of the people entitles her. 1 But there is another difficulty. The respect in which the present dynasty is held in China varies greatly geographically. It may be said, roughly, that the respect is at its maximum in Moukden, where the dynasty had its rise, and at its minimum in Canton, which was the last capital to surrender to the conquerors in the seventeenth century. That is to say, the respect is high in the north and low in the south. But this by no means covers the whole case. The respect is high in the more northerly latitudes of the Chinese Empire proper (that is, excluding for the moment so-called colonial dominions such as Mongolia, Turkestan and Tibet), because this Northern Chinese population has long been associated with conquerors having a mixed Turanian origin, and is therefore more in sympathy with 1 This argument is not as illogical as it may seem to those who do not know the inner aspects of the Chinese imbroglio. For it may be said, summarily, that the attempted Boxer Revolution of 1900 complicated the Chinese polity to an incredible extent by throw- ing huge indemnities on the country, whilst in the decade which has since elapsed no concerted attempt has been made by the Powers, who thus penalised a weak government for weak com- plicity, to widen the foundations of the authority of the cen- tral government and thus to erect a safeguard against not only internal disorder but external complications. That authority can only be widened by giving to China the power of levying increased revenues, and those increased revenues can only be found in indirect taxation i.e., by an increase in the Customs Tariff. The series of treaties signed by some of the Powers, notably by England, America and Japan, known as the Shanghai Treaties, actually provided for such an increase; but these treaties remain dead letters until identical instruments have been signed by all the Powers. In other words, it is the direct inaction of Europe in China to which may be attributed much of the present grave menace in Eastern Asia. 166 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. men who, springing from approximately the same climatic zone, have the same outlook on life. But even in Peking it is a noticeable fact, owing to the necessary narrow nationalism, that there is much jealousy between Manchus and Chinese, largely because the former clans still form a favoured subnationality, enjoying special privileges and emoluments in all walks of life. Though numberless edicts have of recent years sought nominally to abolish the distinction between the ordinary Manchu and the ordinary Chinese, all Bannermen or clansmen still draw their monthly allowances in silver and rice; all are specially favoured in the matter of official employment; and the Manchu princes and Imperial clansmen, of whom there are many thousands, are landowners on a very large scale, and occupy indeed a position more irritating to the proletariat than the land-owning peers of Great Britain and Ireland. This land-owning on a large scale, it is true, embraces only Northern China; but where it ceases another irritation takes its place. The rich Yangtze valley was laid under tribute by the first Manchu conquerors in a very practical and effective manner the granary of China was called upon to contribute regular yearly quotas of rice and other grain sufficient to feed the entire corps of the Manchu Banners resident in Peking, as well as all their families and dependents, whilst the Tartar provincial garrisons scattered over the Empire were specially provided for by a species of matricular contributions. In addition, every district, having special fame in the production of some luxury or another, was burdened with an Imperial factory, the aim of the Manchus being to provide for themselves specially, so that they might live by direct contribution, ii THE YELLOW WORLD 167 and not by indirect taxation on the best things in the great land which they had conquered. Finally, such a province as Kwangtung province, with its unruly provincial capital of Canton, because it was rich and possessed a highly-industrious and skilful population has always been more heavily taxed in proportion than any other province; it has always been harshly treated and looked upon with open suspicion; and Cantonese officials have been kept as much as possible from the highest offices. It will thus be seen that certain regions in China have direct causes of complaint against the Manchus. Thus the Manchu conquest, although now as old as the Norman Conquest was in England at the time of Crecy and Poitiers, has not succeeded in effecting any- thing like that fusion of interests which existed between Normans and Saxons in the days of the Black Prince. Nor does all this take into account the very peculiar regionalism which exists in China, and which is some- thing more than the mere "provincial feeling" of which so much is written. Regionalism is carried to such lengths in South China especially in Kwangtung province that there villages are linked into clans, which are again subdivided against themselves into "family-names"; and the latter have preserved from ancient times the right of private war against one another, which the territorial officials are to-day still powerless to arrest. Thus whilst the whole population of China is united in its theocratic beliefs; in its love of the family life and family system; in its ethics, customs and precedents; in its dress and its symbols that is to say, whilst in one sense nationality has never been better defined than it is in China, the feeling of 168 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. nationality is no more advanced than it was in Europe in the middle ages, when love of district or town or at most province took the place of the present feeling of race. In these circumstances the peculiarity of the general problem of Eastern Asia becomes more than striking - it is unparalleled in the unique diversity of its com- ponent factors. For what can the Manchu regime really oppose to this remarkable regionalism in China ? Simply a prestige which is always careful to avail itself very bounteously of the principle of compromise, and the exercise of a remarkable political instinct. The hand- ful of Manchus in Peking the Manchu population in and around the capital is certainly under one million persons fills a very large number of metropolitan posts; dominates the Grand Council; and is careful to send to the provinces not only the so-called Tartar Generals (who command Manchu provincial garrisons and rank with Viceroys) but a large proportion of other high functionaries. The highest Chinese officials, be they Grand Councillors, Grand Secretaries, or Viceroys, know not only that it is bad policy to oppose measures espoused by the Manchu party, but that such opposition at once marks their downfall. Manchu rings exist in Peking, both in the Palace and outside the Palace, which are largely dominated not only by Princes of the reigning House, but by the "Iron-capped" Princes and other high personages; whilst another important factor is the influence of the consorts of defunct sovereigns, all of whom are immured in the Forbidden City. So many things have to be considered, so many parties conciliated before any action is taken, that when ii THE, YELLOW WORLD 169 action finally comes, it is action which is by no means final, since everyone believes that it may be indefi- nitely postponed by astute lobbying. There are those who do not hesitate to say that the success of much of the recent Japanese diplomacy is due primarily to their appreciation of the old political principle of corruption. Now the establishment of Provincial Assemblies which do not, strictly speaking, possess legislative powers, but are merely deliberative and advisory bodies, was primarily devised both as a concession to provincial feeling and to assist the work of the Central Govern- ment in reorganising the disordered finances of the country. It has been deemed necessary as the fore- runner of so-called parliamentary government; and as a forerunner it has not been unsuccessful. Yet the financial part remains unsatisfactory. For although the Peking Ministry of Finance has been making very real attempts to discover what the revenue of China really is, and to draft a Budget, scant success has so far crowned these efforts. It is to-day very generally recognised in China by every class of people that with- out more money there can be no really effective army or navy, and no improvement of the general internal or international condition. The Provincial Assemblies, by carrying through provincial schemes of taxation, and by making their own independent estimates, may be able to check the illegal levies of territorial officials, and may possibly secure a general and regular audit of accounts. They should thus be of material assistance to the Central Government at Peking. But on the other hand, each body will have its own ideas; each will instinctively oppose Viceroys and Governors, 170 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. because they represent a different principle; each will strive for more power. And since, in strict conformity with that principle of equipoise which runs all through the government of China, provinces are linked together in nearly every case in pairs under a single Viceroy - so that he may be able to throw the weight of one province against the other it will need very few complications to make the confusion worse confounded. And if the plan of summoning a general Parliament in 1917 is carried through, there will be yet one more discordant element added to the existing ones. For at bottom, the Manchu House, like the House of Romanoff, must from its nature be intolerant of a reform that weakens and finally extinguishes the divine right of kings. The democratic character of the Chinese people will never tolerate a mock constitution such as the Japanese constitution, which has brought into being a pliant and corrupt Diet, the perfunctory sessions of which are simply attended by the members to endorse measures which they are neither willing nor powerful enough to oppose. And since the Chinese people are so radically different from the Japanese people, they will never be afraid to rise in tumultuous masses against their rulers, thus further weakening China internationally, and preparing developments which all instinctively dread. This long digression into the real condition of China should establish clearly not only (i) that the country is not ripe for adopting that secular policy which alone secures the safety of a State when menaced from abroad - the policy which flows naturally from a belief in the doctrine offeree and a capacity of enforcing it; but (2) that no matter how many divisions of land troops China ii THE YELLOW WORLD 171 may succeed in organising and arming during the next decade or two, and no matter how many units of a coast- guard fleet she may slowly assemble at strategic points along her two thousand miles of vulnerability, the adoption of such a secular policy would be the very measure which Japan would welcome as an invitation to intervene. For Japan, with her powerful battle-fleet to insure the safety of her transports, can concentrate her strength rapidly wherever she wills in Eastern Asia, and is thus in a position to dominate not only South Manchuria, as she does to-day, but any part of China which may be easily attacked by naval landings. The effect of such strategy would be immediate and dramatic. As in olden days, provinces would care for their own safety before caring for the safety of Peking and the dynasty; and once more it would be amply demon- strated that the theocratic idea, even when tinctured with Western constitutionalism, is no secular safeguard. To give real political unity to China; to allow China to become a Power in the European sense of the word, requires other measures than those which are now being tentatively essayed. And the first condition which must be attained is that China shall find a real master a man of iron, who from his very nature will know how to weld together the latent strength of a vast democracy and make it as of steel. Until that man can be found, China's only hope lies without that is, in the inter- national leverage she can exert by the employment of astute diplomacy. It is the Powers the white Powers who alone can save her; not because of any high altruistic motives on their part, but for reasons of expediency. No man of commonsense can doubt that 172 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. a further Japanese advance and a further Chinese decline would be an international calamity. Now it is certain that, looking at matters broadly, the one white Power which during the first term of the present century will act as the greatest restraint on Japan will not be England, the friend, or even Russia, the old enemy it will be the United States. The completion of the Panama Canal is destined to have the most far- reaching results on the future progress of the world, and especially on the progress of the Pacific; but the actual role which the United States shall play in the develop- ment of Eastern Asia, in spite of many prognostications, must for a long interval remain totally undecided. And, as this opinion may seem to clash with many ideas which have recently grown up, it becomes necessary here to make certain explanatory comments. Three facts in regard to the United States have long been amply clear to all students of those cognate subjects, politics, statistics, and geography. The first and most important is that the Pacific Ocean is really far too vast an ocean to be dominated by any Power, or any combination of Powers, acting from the coasts of North America. 1 Just as English 1 With regard to this grave question the geographical position of the United States it is singularly unfortunate that only in such monumental works as Captain Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power upon History, are the true facts properly exhibited. This great American authority is never weary of telling his coun- trymen of the present immense maritime weakness of the United States. Such phrases as these abound in the work named : "The position of the United States upon the two oceans would be a source of great weakness or a cause of enormous expense, ii THE YELLOW WORLD 173 naval experts know that the United States cannot wage a naval war in European waters against England, owing to the distance which separates American naval bases from attackable points 3,000 miles so should it to-day be as generally known that it is virtually a naval impossibility to protect the Philippines or to menace Japan by using America as a base. The Philippines are over 7,000 miles away from American waters, Japan 5,000 miles. Even the conversion of the Hawaiian Islands into naval points d'appuis only reduces these vast distances by some 2,000 miles. So far as the present maritime (naval) problem in Eastern Asia is concerned, America then is a negligible quantity, save within the steaming-radius of the Hawaii to San Francisco naval bases, unless she undertakes to make a second Vladivostock in some land-locked harbour of had it a large commerce on both coasts." ... "If a Central American Canal be made and fulfil the hopes of its builders, the Caribbean will be changed from a terminus . . . into one of the great highways of the world. Along this path a great commerce will travel, bringing the interest of the other great nations, the Eu- ropean nations, close along our shores, as they have never been before. With this it will not be so easy as heretofore to stand aloof from international complications." . . . "The United States has not that shield of defensive strength behind which time can be gained to develop its reserve of strength. As for a seafaring population adequate to her possible needs, where is it?" Though the twenty years which have elapsed since these passages were written have brought changes in some sense beneficial to America, two new factors have entered into the problem which more than offset the advantages which have thus accrued. These two factors are, of course, the possession of the Philippines and the growth of Japan as a World-Power rendering the position of the United States as a naval Power on the Pacific more parlous than ever. 174 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. the Philippines. And it is just this that her experts have cautiously decided against doing. The second vital fact the fact which duly impresses all close observers is that at least during the present century American energies will be amply engaged in exploiting the astounding resources contained in a land having the great area of three and a half million square miles and capable of supporting, at a conservative estimate, six hundred million souls. From its very nature, then, a country such as the United States, which is really not one country but forty-five countries united in brotherly bonds, may well be temporarily excused from vigorous and direct overseas activities. It may even be excused from understanding the exact nature of the outer problems which lie across the broad waters of the Pacific, when the tremendous nature of home- problems is properly measured. For there is work for generations and generations, before intensive activities need really be supplemented by extensive activities. And even should later a real imperialism burst into flames in the United States, it will be far more likely to carry expansion southward than westward. In other words South America must inevitably be exploited more and more by North America; and though, for sentimental reasons, a vigorous Asiatic policy may remain a plank in every Presidential platform because of the possession of the Philippines, it is still possible that some day the Philippines and the necessity of playing a role in Eastern Asia may actually be looked upon as a drag and a hindrance, when set against the wondrous riches of South America. The third fact which is merely a reiteration in a new form of the second fact is that the Pacific is ii THE YELLOW WORLD 175 emphatically the back-door to the United States, because the Atlantic is so emphatically the front-door. It is not only the configuration of the coast, and the great barrier of the Rocky Mountains, which are responsible for this; history and the call of white man's blood must always keep it so. Therefore, no matter how much the population living in the States of the Pacific slope may increase, the strength of the American nation will always lie nearer the Atlantic frontage than the Pacific frontage; and consequently the political distance between extreme Eastern Asia and extreme Western America cannot be much diminished. The three facts just dealt with are nothing less than in the nature of three grave disabilities to the taking of any forceful action in the Far East. How then, in these circumstances, comes it that the writer still holds America to be the greatest restraint on Japan ? The answer is peculiar in that it is illogical. It rests, indeed, largely on those curious things which are justly termed the imponderables of politics. The fact that the United States represents in the popular mind the supreme expression of a triumphant democracy a free State totally detached from all European rivalries is everywhere a very great factor in the movements of world-politics, but nowhere more so than in the politics of Eastern Asia, where this belief postulates a liberty of action such as no other predominant white Power, forced to give first and last attention to the European situation and to the European balance of power, can command. On America the right rests to pose as a truly disinterested party in all foreign politics, and thus to rally behind her not only the public opinion of other 176 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. countries, but the active support of a majority of the European Powers. For these Powers, however much they may disregard all so-called moral and ethical considerations in their own local European matters, are forced, when it comes to larger general issues, on which the limelight of the world's collective sense of responsibility is turned, to act in agreement with the principles of the higher morality, and to sup- port, by word if not by deed, the call of international honour. Furthermore, the United States, because of her kin- ship with England, can count in a very marked way on the tacit support of those English democracies of the Southern Pacific which some day will inevitably be called upon to play a role no less remarkable than that of the United States. For it is necessary to point out that Australia, and especially New Zealand, are fast be- coming almost as much American in sentiment as they are English in appearance. Because of their geographi- cal situation, their eyes are perforce directed not solely in one direction but in two : and where their hopes and fears are not realised by one country, instinctively they must turn to the other. Herein lies one of those imponderables which are of such weight in the affairs of the world. For, being morally supported in this intangible manner, the Wash- ington Government, though as a matter of fact it is strategically ill-placed to dominate the entire Pacific, can yet almost venture to dominate it by a sort of moral force, having its origin in the fact that to check the rise of an unjust hegemony in Eastern Asia, it silently calls into existence another hegemony based also on colour and blood. Furthermore, the influence which this ii THE YELLOW WORLD 177 attitude at once exerts in China is so marked that it is equivalent to lessening by one-half the very great diffi- culties of the general geographical situation. Finally, it must never be forgotten that the immense and grow- ing wealth of the United States which in any just cause would permit the expenditure of an untold num- ber of millions, without injury has such an effect on national imaginations that though the transmutation of dollars into Dreadnoughts is no lightning alchemist's act but a slow and laborious working of system, the threat of effective military action looms up like some Gargan- tuan spectre, which may be materialised into a giant in the flesh by the united will of a sovereign people. The completion of the Panama Canal will accentuate these various factors, and may be counted upon to do for America what fifty years ago the cutting of the Suez Canal did for England. Thus against three stern facts can be set three modifying imponderables. Of the four other World-Powers England, Russia, Germany and France no single one has anything like the same general liberty of action which America's price- less geographical situation confers on her. Germany and France are indeed of such minor importance in Eastern Asia that they need not be considered in any light save as possible allies and supporters of some given policy. Even Russia, which one day may be a supreme Power, is not only admittedly on the defensive in the Far East the Japanese war having crippled her for a generation but is troubled by a new complication which did not exist six years ago during her conflict with Japan. Because she is first and last a land Power, Russia's European frontiers are more valuable to her than her 178 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. Asiatic frontiers; and this at last Japanese statesmen have fully and completely realised. It is impossible to disguise any longer the importance which the Austrian Government has suddenly assumed in the eyes of the Japanese Government; or to hide the fact that the pourparlers which have been carried on in Vienna for several years past, have finally ended in the tacit, if unwritten, agreement that in certain eventualities Japan may be able to count on a very serious Austrian con- centration on Russia's western frontiers, which will effectively prevent the great massing of Russian troops in the Far East that the doubling of the Siberian railway would theoretically permit. In other words, Japan, having stripped from Russia all possibility of playing the role of a sea Power in any part of the world by her entire destruction of Russia's fleets, is now prepared to meet her as a purely land Power, and to check her land-hunger forcibly by securing that any serious Russian movement in the Far East will produce a reflex action of the most redoubtable kind in the Far West. So long as Japan can arrange that Russia's traditional foe in the Balkans Austria is prepared to regard any offensive Russian movement as part of a general policy which might gravely affect the general balance of power in the Near East, she is safe from any war of revanche, and safe even from any Russian inter- ruption, no matter what her own policy in China may be. No better tribute than this could be paid to the far-sightedness of the statesmen of Tokyo. This development, then, highly significant in itself, becomes even more significant when considered in relation to those other factors which have already been analysed. For the situation virtually comes to this: ii THE YELLOW WORLD 179 that since neither Germany, nor France, nor yet Russia, are for the time being independent Powers in Asia, no barrier exists to hinder the execution of the widest ambitions of Japan in Eastern Asia, except the barrier formed by the English-speaking world of sea- peoples. This is so very remarkable, in view of the part which Anglo-Saxondom has consistently played towards Japan in the past, that it should be most seriously and deeply pondered over. For from this proposition naturally flows another proposition : that the English-speaking peoples may one day have to secure the position over the length and breadth of the Pacific by combining their newly- formed naval strength on the Pacific, or they will cease to be a factor in Eastern Asia, and their destinies else- where be most seriously affected in consequence. For it must be accepted as something very definite in the sphere of practical politics that Japan will have to declare her hand against China before 1923 the year when the lease of the Port Arthur territory expires, and the whole Manchurian position begins theoretically to return to what it once was. If China is forced, owing to the short-sighted diplomacy of those for whom the question has really supreme importance, to make common cause with Japan as a pis alter, then it may be accepted as inevitable that in the course of time there will be created a mare clausum, which will extend from the island of Saghalien down to Cochin-China and Siam, including all the island groups, and the shores of which will be openly hostile to the white man. The world of Eastern Asia, with its vast population of 600 millions of men, should it ever be effectively controlled from one centre, Tokyo, may be counted on deliberately 180 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. to impose the same restrictions on the white man as the white man is beginning to impose on the yellow man wherever there is danger of close contact. That must be accepted as something absolute. And since there will be no danger from the competition of white workmen, but rather from the white man's ships, the white's man merchants, his inventions, his produce it will be these which will be subjected to humiliating conditions, in order to restore to the Far East that old-time self-sufficiency which the white man's cannon blew away in the nineteenth century. This is, alas, no idle dream : it is the definite and ambitious goal of a far-seeing and ambitious nation. The pernicious doctrine of Protection having given to all modern States a pseudo-scientific weapon with which to deal with their competitors as tyranically as the masters of the old world did with weapons of war, it is not a very far cry from tariffs on goods to tariffs and restrictions on foreign shipping, on foreign merchants, on everything foreign restrictions which by imposing vast and unequal burdens on the activities of aliens will soon totally destroy such activities. Great, indeed, is the power of that principle, which to be rightly called is not protection but destruction. With one last word we have done. It is one of the great political misfortunes of the day that numbers of people, who really know nothing about the question, are constantly prophesying one of two evils in regard to this pregnant yellow world either that a great yellow horde will one day sweep across Asia and inundate Europe; or that the yellow man will finally swamp the markets of the world with his cheap products, and thus bring in another way the same ruin ii THE YELLOW WORLD 181 to all. Neither of these two things can ever come about; they are merely the dreams of those who will never understand involved issues. But what can very easily happen is that the federation of Eastern Asia and the yellow races will be finally arranged in such a manner as to exclude the white man and his commerce more completely than anyone yet dreams of. This is equivalent to saying that the entire economic situation throughout the world is already in very real danger of being radically altered and the present balance of power entirely upset from the mere fact that Eastern Asia, led by Japan, may step by step erect barriers so as not only to restrain the white man, but to adopt a politico-commercial retaliatory policy of the severest character. This is the policy which Japan has already instituted in Formosa and Korea with such conspicuous success; this is the policy which she is beginning to carry out in hidden ways in Southern Manchuria. It is a hard and dangerous policy to fight, for it expresses itself in such pseudo-European terms as tariffs, police, preferential treatment, shipping and industrial monopo- lies, and many other ingenious devices which are covered by a specious phraseology borrowed from the West and invented by the West. There is one means of combating this. That means lies in having it henceforth accepted as a general political maxim among all the Powers not only that China's complete independence must be secured, but that China must ultimately be made stronger than Japan. 1 Ever since the dawn of history in the Far East 1 Lest the reader imagines that such suggestions are merely Utopian and impossible of realisation, it may be affirmed in abso- lute terms that if only the same fiscal consideration was shown to 182 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. China has been the dominant Power. Ever since the dawn of history she has used that power over tributary States not unfairly or harshly. But ever since Japan has taken her place there has been nothing but compli- cation following complication, until it has become absolutely essential to secure a return to political conditions which lie rooted in what is sound because it is natural. The goal of "China stronger than Japan" China as is shown to-day to Turkey for the most sordid po- litical reasons, in a very few years China would be a vastly different country internationally. Whereas in Turkey, in order to give effect to the so-called kilometric guarantees in the new rail- way building programme, customs duties are to be increased, in China the old 5 per cent, tariff of the Treaty of Tientsin drawn up more than half a century ago is still insisted on by the Powers. Though she was the first to agree by negotiation to a change to a 12^ per cent, tariff, for obscure reasons England has left the Mackay Treaty a complete dead-letter for eight years, an-1 in 1909 actually opposed China's demand for a general Treaty- Power Conference to deal with this and other matters. Similarly in the matter of the crushing Boxer Indemnities of 1900 amount- ing to 65,000,000 sterling, but actually, owing to an archaic sinking fund system, calling for a net payment of over 200,000,000 in 39 years China is being deliberately crippled, and not only her pur- chasing power greatly curtailed but her power of regeneration most seriously interfered with. Commonsense alone should suggest that a consolidation of all Chinese indebtedness to Europe, and a generous treatment, would be the cheapest form of avoiding fresh liabilities to Eastern Asia. But, save for the United States, which has remitted some of the Boxer indemnity, no attempt has been made to ameliorate Chinese finance in ways that are perfectly plain, easy and legitimate. This folly is nothing short of a direct invitation to the forces of disorder to mass and strike. British Liberalism, before it is too late, would do well to inquire closely into these matters, so as to realise finally how true British interests have been betrayed and the insolubility of the Asiatic problem increased at a time when the utmost care should have been lavished upon creating real international safeguards. ii THE YELLOW WORLD 183 should be kept in sight; expediency demands that that goal be now approached. For, if it is not, the writer ventures to prophesy that in less than two decades America will cease to own the Philippines, and Japan will obtain the acknowledged hegemony of the Yellow World. CHAPTER III THE BROWN WORLD OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE NEAR EAST THE problem of the Middle East and the Near East is from every point of view very different indeed from the distant problem of Eastern Asia which has just been considered. This second great problem includes India, Afghanistan, Persia, Arabistan, Asia Minor, and last, but not least, Egypt. 1 It possesses such peculiar histori- cal interest that merely to mention it brings uppermost in 1 The whole question of the Middle East and the Near East is far too tangled to be intelligibly discussed in a few pages, and the writer therefore begs for the indulgence of his readers. The immense region stretching from the Hindu Kush to Palestine and the Mediterranean shores is politically one region even more to- day than it has been in the past in spite of the amazing racial diver- sity of its inhabitants, and in spite of the divisions into which it is academically divided. In Asia to-day there are only two problems the problem of the Far East, by which is understood every problem from Singapore to Kamschatka, and the problem of the Nearer East, by which should be understood every problem from India to the Mediterranean. But whereas on the Far East there is a copious and accurate literature giving all possible information, on the Nearer East there is no good work dealing with these problems as one whole, and much misunderstanding consequently exists. Some book is urgently required which will make good this deficiency. 184 CH. in THE BROWN WORLD 185 the minds of men a hundred prejudices which will not die. For this is the region which has always been in the popular mind "the East"; this is the region which has immemorial associations with Europe, since for twenty- five centuries it has been Europe's active rival; this is the region which long before the white man had dreamed of conquering the ocean when the open-sea routes were unknown had the most intimate relations with Europe. There is thus in this problem an entirely new set of factors or perhaps it would be better to say, an entirely new marshalling of opposing forces which are in themselves so complex that even the most optimistic arise from their analysis in some despondency. For whereas in the Further East, because of the new nationalism which has so magically grown up, and also (let us frankly confess it) because of masterful Japan, the white man is now willing to admit that he must abandon his territorial ambitions and confine himself strictly to trade and industry and to preserving the vaguely-defined prestige which he acquired in a simpler age in India, in Central Asia, and in all the regions adjacent to the Near East, he still boldly remains a conqueror in possession of vast stretches of valuable territory; a conqueror who has no intention of lightly surrendering his conquests, and who indeed sees in every attempt to modify the old order of things a most hateful and unjustifiable revolt which must at all costs be repressed. This is so absolutely true that no candid person will be inclined to dispute it. The spirit of the Crusaders may thus be said still to linger in those latitudes which, to give geographical and political cohesion, are here broadly named the Middle and Near East; and, to use a somewhat 186 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. dangerous but illuminating figure of speech, it may even be maintained that to-day, as of old, the white man and the Cross remain as blindly opposed to the brown man and Islamism, Hinduism and what these creeds postulate, as the most uncompromising bigot could desire. The opposing forces, then, are ranged opposite one another, as of yore, in battle array; and though the present and future generations may not be as warlike as the valiant generations which have passed away, still, even in this era of enlightenment, many of the same old motives actuate both sides, and an ineradi- cable suspicion tinges their relations. It is therefore only natural that among Englishmen, who are of necessity far more acutely interested in this special problem than other nations because they com- mand the Suez route, and are indeed the arbiters of the Near and Middle East the newly-kindled national spirit in India and Egypt now expressing itself in various ways should be looked upon almost as a traitorous conspiracy to defraud a proud race of their rightful inheritance. These lands, in spite of all political fictions, are governed by right of conquest; they represent much brave blood and good treasure spent in the past; their tenure, indeed, is sanctified by a sort of holy decree acquired by the right of prescription. To dispute such a decree is a revolt. Yet, even whilst this is so, it has to be noted that in neighbouring regions, such as Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan, a certain easy- going political cynicism, which the British often display in foreign affairs, permits the adoption of an entirely different attitude, because in these particular instances independence serves temporarily to adjust the balance of power, and to postpone the final day of reckoning. m THE BROWN WORLD 187 Thus inconsistency is to-day as remarkable a feature in the treatment of the brown world as it is in the treat- ment of the yellow world; and here again, as in Eastern Asia, the English race stands confessed as the most inconsistent of all. Now, seeing that the strength of a people resides more in their blind prejudices than in anything else since prejudices are judgments formed without due examination, and must therefore be the judgments which the vast majority of men form and retain to their death it should be frankly admitted that the individual who refuses to see things as they still appear to the mass of his countrymen, and who simply argues academically on all so-called colour questions without considering those vital prejudices, is not worthy of being read. The most important factor of the day in the regions under discussion is the white man's prejudice against new ideas against the very ideas his presence has served to inculcate as well as his firm determination to hold tightly to what his fathers acquired. It may be sad to confess, and yet it is true, that it is the figure of the ancient Crusader, striking down with his heavy mace, or great two-handed sword, the dark infidel who opposed his righteous progress, which is the proper and only figure to keep always before one, even in this enlightened twentieth century, when considering the conflict of colour in the Near East and Middle East. Too much insistence cannot be laid on this fact. This is still openly the English ideal, no matter what may be said to the contrary; it is the ideal which can be seen peeping out of all English literature, almost with- out exception, in a sort of deathless pride of race and colour; and though, of course, Russians, Frenchmen, 188 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. Spaniards, Italians, Germans and others, since they are far less interested, pretend to view it all in a detached and somewhat amused manner pointing to the Eng- lishman as a land and sea-pirate who affirms that he is a law unto himself they have only to be badly scratched (that is, to be actively opposed by other men of colour) to express much the same ideas. That is the lesson of Turkestan, of Morocco, of Abyssinia, of Shantung - the one important difference, perhaps, being that whilst the Englishman at heart still believes that he is self- sufficient, the Continental nations of Europe are apt to proclaim the inherent solidarity of the white races and to insist that the day has come when all white men should openly unite. It can therefore be stated in general terms that no matter how much it may be possible for Europeans, and especially for Americans, to view remoter Eastern Asia in a new way, and to admit that new ideals have be- come quite permissible in the case of the astute yellow man, in the older portions of Asia, which have for so many centuries been in contact with the white man, no such tolerance need be expected for years to come. In these regions the white man has been so long taught to believe that it is a question of everything or nothing, that he can believe nothing else. Either, then, he is to remain undisputed master where he now stands en- trenched, or he is to be beaten into ignominious retreat. That is the present position. In these peculiar circumstances it is with something of the start of the sleeper who wakes from grim night- mare that one turns to John Stuart Mill that one passes from the eminently practical to the eminently philosophic point of view and gazes blankly at one in THE BROWN WORLD 189 of his most remarkable political pronouncements. For no matter how much it may be desirable to hold the contrary, it is self-evident that what is fundamentally true of one mass of human beings must be equally true of another mass, irrespective of colour or creed, or else it cannot be true at all. Fundamental political doctrines do not depend on geography for their accuracy ; they are either universally true or universally false. 1 Now John Stuart Mill said: "The government of a people by itself has a meaning and a reality but such a thing as government of one people by another does not and cannot exist." It is well to ponder over this dictum before going any farther, since round it revolve all the really great present-day political and racial problems. Did the great intellect which compressed into this burning sentence the very essence of politics 1 "The actions of bad men produce only temporary evil, the actions of good men only temporary good; and eventually the good and the evil altogether subside, are neutralised by subsequent generations, absorbed by the incessant movement of future ages. But the discoveries of great men never leave us; they are im- mortal, they contain those eternal truths which survive the shock of empires, outlive the struggles of rival creeds, and witness the decay of successive religions. All these have their different measures and their different standards; one set of opinions for one age, another set for another. They pass away like a dream; they are as the fabric of a vision, which leaves not a rack behind. The discoveries of genius alone remain; it is to them we owe all that we now have; they are for all ages and all things; never young, and never old, they bear the seeds of their own life; they flow on in a perennial and undying stream; they are essentially cumu- lative, and, giving birth to the additions which they subse- quently receive, they thus influence the most distant posterity, and after the lapse of centuries produce more effect than they were able to do even at the moment of their promulgation." Buckle: History of Civilization, Chap. IV. 190 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. imply that India has really no such a thing as a govern- ment that Russia has been only a barbarous conqueror of the Khanates that Egypt is only enslaved ? Did he mean that it is mere insolence to prostitute a term which has an almost divine sound, and which should be as precious to every people as the altars of its religious faith ? Did he mean that it is a foolish dream to conceive it possible for one people permanently to rule over another people ? He did mean it, and he was quite right in meaning it; for no matter how flattering it may be to national pride to believe that the reverse is possible, it is really quite impossible. In the matter of government there is no such arcanum as obscurantists pretend. It is absolutely certain that either a people governs itself, or that people has no real government at all, but only a system of provisional administration which must instinctively be looked upon as hateful, and which because it exists encourages men to dream of what they call liberty. It would be well for nations who have proclaimed so often that death is preferable to loss of liberty, to know that in such sentiments there is no monopoly. They are common to all humanity; the meanest and least heroic people in the world instinctively realise that in the last analysis liberty is synonymous with life. Now, admitting these things, it becomes clear that in the proper sense of the word neither India nor Egypt has any real government, but only a system of pro- visional administration backed up by alien bayonets and by a traditional fear; that the possessions of Russia in Central Asia are similarly situated; that France in North Africa is just as unhappily circumstanced; and that minor Powers, such as Spain and Italy, have actually in THE BROWN WORLD 191 shown that this is so by drawing back, after attempting to copy their greater rivals. That a growing and perilous agitation is fast spreading among those who are so governed, is only logical. For sufficient time has now elapsed since the great conquests of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for the coloured man in these particular regions to realise that the domination which he was beginning to look upon as natural is in reality quite unnatural, and directly opposed to the laws of commonsense. The man of colour, therefore, now openly rejects the idea that he is the helot of the white man that it is his endless fate to reap and sow, to buy and sell, to labour and sweat, but not to govern. All the scientific aids to the white man's dominion steamships, railways, telegraphs, modern weapons, high explosives once looked upon as miracles, have become unimportant trifles, because of this sudden new knowledge and this sudden new deter- mination. Out of Asiatic brains spring ideas which must soon bind hand and foot these one-time ominous scientific things, and render them only laughable as governing instruments, since aids to government, like laws, are made for men, and not men made for them. It is only necessary, indeed, for a small percentage of India's vast population to understand thoroughly the inner meaning of Mill's dictum to be able to cripple for ever an administration which has endured for more than a century, and which, while no doubt one of the most lasting tributes to English genius that has ever been seen, is politically indefensible, save by invoking that old barbarian doctrine of force which in Europe has well-nigh vanished. And as numbers tell in the modern world as they did in the ancient, the outlook can only 192 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. be gloomy when nations possessing immense reserves of men are willing to call their full strength into play, unless something more than a vague spirit of compromise arises. India's past history is no index to India's future. A trial of strength in any part of the world is no longer an isolated circumstance, as it once was; and henceforth the waves of any racial conflict must spread across the entire globe. Loyalty is but a figment of the brain; for the loyalty of aliens is largely a matter of political expediency, and the call of race and blood is supreme. When education has advanced farther, when greater enlightenment has been won, this will no longer be doubted. Since this remarkable state of affairs the coming victory of mind over matter throughout all Asia, in the face of the greatest difficulties is now generally admitted by the thoughtful, one may boldly inquire what is really to become of India and the rest of the Middle and Near East during the present century; or, in other words, how is the present conflict of colour and conflict of ideals to adjust itself? It is best to be quite frank and to face with open eyes the new dangers which have arisen. No amount of cheerful optimism, no amount of stern resolution, no amount of prejudice, can help in the solution, unless there is an accompanying admission of what are now undeniable facts. And since India is the real key to all Nearer Asia just as Japan is the real key to all Farther Asia it is India that must be most closely considered. Now it must first be remarked, in order to clear the ground properly for this discussion, that one of the ideas which it is the hardest to get Europeans be they Englishmen or Frenchmen, Germans or Dutch in THE BROWN WORLD 193 properly to understand, is that the Asiatic is not delighted with justice per se, as the white-skinned man pretends to be; and that, indeed, the Asiatic really cares but little about it if he can get sympathy in the sense in which he understands that misunderstood word. This is a matter of such vast importance that it is well to realise at once what a great factor it is at the present moment in the whole Asiatic agitation, and how little attention is paid to it by politicians, who waste weary hours demising what seems to them sound and just, whilst they are studiously ignoring what is far more vital. This is the real reason why every Asiatic in his heart of hearts prefers the rule of his own nationality, bad though it be, to the most ideal rule of aliens. For, when he is ruled by his own countrymen, he is dealt with by people who understand his frailties, and who, though they may savagely punish him, are at least in sympathy with the motives which prompt his delin- quencies. Such rulers will always carefully consider all motives, and such rulers would never dream of imposing, no matter how sound it might seem theoretically, a mechanical scheme of life conceived in other latitudes, and naturally only to those latitudes. It is the absence of thermometric charts in the offices of statesmen which is responsible for many of the present disasters. And when there is superadded this disconcerting lack of sympathy, the only wonder is that recent years have been so tranquil. Thus, to give a good example, only a maniac among Asiatics would have ordered that fatal O step the partition of Bengal in the rude and harsh manner it was encompassed ; for no matter how just and sensible the step might have been from an administrative point of view, from the sentimental point of view, which 194 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. is the supremely important point of view where tradi- tion and custom hold absolute sway and are the very mainstays of life, it was a rough act of folly. The grand plea, then, of the white man that he is just; that he dispenses absolute justice wherever he rules; that he attends to all measures with scientific accuracy; that his presence should therefore be welcomed this grand plea is looked upon as only stupid both by Asiatics and by those who really under- stand Asia, because it totally ignores the only really essential fact regarding Europe's mastery over a large portion of Asia, which simply is that the European is disliked because he is a European, and for no other reason. That is, because he is a man who, when set in authority over Asiatics, cannot understand their point of view or their aspirations, and who, moreover, is determined to act as if latitude and longitude were only geographical terms and not political terms of the highest importance. Mr. Meredith Townsend, a writer of great ability, who certainly understood the Middle and Near East as few writers have done, wrote on this subject so luminously that it is well to quote him here, in order still further to emphasise this vital point. This is what he said about the Englishman: 1 " It is very difficult, of course, for an Englishman, conscious of his own rectitude and benevolence of feel- ing, to believe that he will not be more liked when he is better known; but a good many facts seem to show that it is so. He is not seen and talked to anywhere 1 Asia and Europe: studies presenting the conclusions formed by the author in a long life devoted to the subject of the relations between Asia and Europe. The quotation is from the study entitled: "Race-hatred in Asia." in THE BROWN WORLD 195 by men of a different race so much as he is in Ireland, and he is not hated quite so much anywhere else. He is decidedly much more disliked in Egypt since he appeared there in such numbers. He is more hated in the sea-coast towns of India, where he is prominent, busy, and consequently talked to, than he is in the interior where he is rarely seen ; much more detested in the planter districts than in the districts where he is only a rare visitor. If there is contempt for* him any- where in India, it is in the great towns, not in the rural 7 O ' stations where he is nearly invisible; and contempt is of all forms of race-hatred the most dangerous. It may be said that the Englishman in the great cities is often a low fellow, but that is not a sufficient explanation. The officers of the old Army were not low fellows. The broadest of all facts bearing on this suggestion of more intercourse is the fate of that Army. No class of natives knew the European so well as the Sepoys knew their officers, and among no class was that knowledge in itself so irritating. They were notoriously better treated than the men of any army, the etiquette was always to listen to their complaints, there was a feeling in many regiments that the relations between men and officers should be filial and paternal, and everywhere the officers have been true leaders in battle yet the Sepoys slaughtered the officers out, killing also their wives and children. Association had in that case only deepened race-hatred. It certainly does not extinguish it in the Southern States of America, the Northerners who do not live with the Blacks being far more disposed to do them justice, though when they emigrate southward they often display a harder and more bitter contempt. The Indian, who, of all the heroes of the 196 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. Mutiny, showed the most bitter enmity to the British race, as distinguished from the British Government, was Azimoollah Khan, who had lived years among them, and knew English perfectly; while no white dwellers in the tropics are quite so just and benevolent towards dark races as English Members of Parliament, who never saw them. In truth, if we are to take facts as evidence, it might fairly be said that the less the white and the coloured races come into contact with each other the less is the development of race-hatred, which only tends to become dangerous when they are interspersed, and mutually comprehend one another's strength and weakness." If this remarkable pronouncement made by Mr. Meredith Townsend some years ago were accepted as absolutely final, nothing would remain for the white man but frankly to abandon all attempts at finding a via media, and, clinging to his inherited prejudices, simply to prepare, in that portion of Asia which he has conquered, to defend them to the death with something more than the blind fury of the Allah-inspired dervish. But fortunately this statement, like every broad generalisation from facts which are difficult for any single mind to grasp in their entirety, is already out-of- date, not so much in its substance as its inferences. Furthermore, it is confessedly the pronouncement of one who has grown old and grey, and can no longer find a place in any serious argument for youthful optimism. For it is a great and illuminating fact that the changeless East is at last changing, just as the rest of the world is changing, though of course much more slowly; and one of the most remarkable developments which have come of recent years has been the widespread realisation that race-hatred in Asia is simply the hatred in THE BROWN WORLD 197 of the "under-dog" for the powerful animal which stands growling over him. To this Mr. Meredith Townsend makes not the slightest reference. Yet just as sympathy is the supreme factor in the personal relationship between governors and governed in Asia, so politically must the kernel of race-hatred be to-day sought in the position held by white men in many regions belonging to the man of colour. So long as relations established in old and ignorant days are sedulously maintained, so long will pessimism, such as Mr. Townsend expresses, be justified. But release the under-dog from his ignominious position, and at once it will be seen that much of so-called race-hatred is really only the sullen and transitory anger which beaten animals necessarily indulge in. In other words, adjust matters as they should be adjusted and a change will magically come. 1 This is no idle talk. Europeans were probably never hated in Asia more than in Japan, where there is an immense and undying pride of race greater and more 1 The treatment of India has one peculiar aspect, in that Northern India with its splendid Aryan races has as much claim to be considered magnanimously from a racial point of view as South- Eastern Europe, which is full of Mongolic elements. Not only are the Turks pure Asiatics, but so are the Bulgars, the Mag- yars, as well as other sub-races in this south-eastern corner. Similarly, all along the shores of the Mediterranean there are large traces, not only of Asiatic- African blood, but of black blood. The instinctive attitude of Americans to-day on the question of the millions of emigrants flocking to their shores is instructive. Teutonic and Celtic emigrants English, Irish, Scotch, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish are welcomed; Latins are not so welcomed; whilst the heterogeneous elements from South-Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean sea-board are frankly disliked, and fears constantly expressed that they are a debasing element. 198 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. blind even than the English pride, before the treaties with the Powers had been revised, vexatious disabilities removed, and the international status of Japan afforded full recognition. To-day it may be true that the European is still disliked by some classes of Japanese; but he is certainly no longer blindly hated simply be- cause he is a white man. Similarly, in China there has lately been an immense change of opinion a change really miraculous, considering that the Chinese treaties have not yet been revised, and seeing that the Euro- pean still often acts with the utmost harshness. When China has the privileges of equality which Japan has won, the term "anti-foreign" will have ceased to have meaning. Now just as there have been these partial volte face in Japan and China, so it is certain that in India, accord- ing to competent observers, a very remarkable develop- ment is quickly being recognised as a sign of the times, telling more clearly than any language the nature of the underlying feeling. Briefly, the bureaucracy of India is fast becoming the sole enemy, leaving the army, the merchant and nondescript classes at most only disliked because it is generally recognised that the bureaucracy stands for something which can only be intensely hurt- ful to the pride of educated men; that is, alien rule. In other words, the general hatred of the European in India is being rapidly narrowed down to a particular hatred for those who are held to have usurped the reins of government by the dangerous right of prescription. Thus to-day it has become a much more easy matter than it was fifty years ago to find the proper solution; for India of the twentieth century is not India of the nineteenth century. in THE BROWN WORLD 199 What do educated Indians demand in the way of re- forms ? Nobody has stated the present-day needs more clearly than Mr. G. K. Gokhale, who, when he visited England some years ago, advocated the following reforms as the principal and immediate ones needed to re-establish confidence in England. It is well to quote these demands here, as evidently they represent first steps only; and once these first steps have been taken, others must necessarily follow: (1) Advance in self-government. The enlargement of the Legislative Council, both Imperial and Provincial, an increase in the proportion of their elected members, and a widening of their functions, including some sort of control, however limited, over public expenditure. (2) Admission of qualified Indians to the Secretary of State's Council and to the Executive Councils of the Viceroy and of the Governors of Madras and Bombay. The nomination of Indian members of the Secretary of State's Council to be made by an electoral college com- posed of the elected members of the various Legislative Councils in India. (3) A free and unfettered career in the public ser- vices, involving a large substitution of the economical and equally efficient Indian agency for the costly foreign agency in the higher ranks of all departments, and local competitive examinations. (4) Cautious but steady improvement of the position of Indians in the army. (5) Decentralisation of district administration and extension of municipal self-government. (6) Separation of judicial from executive functions, and reconstitution of the judicial service, by placing it 200 THE CONFLICT OF COLOUR CH. under the control of the High Courts instead of under the executive Governments, and by substituting legal practitioners as judges in place of members of the Civil Service. (7) Reduction of military expenditure; also of the heavy cost of the civil administration, due to the higher branches of the public service being a virtual monopoly of Europeans, so as to set free funds to be devoted to the following objects : (