IT is a delightful stroll on a sunny summer morning from the Hague to the
Huis ten Bosch, the little “house in the wood,” built for Princess
Amalia, widow of Stadtholter Frederick Henry, under whom Holland escaped
finally from the bondage of her foes and entered into the promised land
of Liberty. Leaving the quiet streets, the tree-bordered canals, with
their creeping barges, you pass through a pleasant park, where the
soft-eyed deer press round you, hurt and indignant if you have brought
nothing in your pocket—not even a piece of sugar—to offer them. It is
not that they are grasping—it is the want of attention that wounds them.
“I thought he was a gentleman,” they seem to be saying to one another, if
you glance back, “he looked like a gentleman.”
Their mild eyes haunt you; on the next occasion you do not forget. The
Park merges into the forest; you go by winding ways till you reach the
trim Dutch garden, moat-encircled, in the centre of which stands the prim
old-fashioned villa, which, to the simple Dutchman, appears a palace.
The _concierge_, an old soldier, bows low to you and introduces you to
his wife—a stately, white-haired dame, who talks most languages a little,
so far as relates to all things within and appertaining to this tiny
palace of the wood. To things without, beyond the wood, her powers of
conversation do not extend: apparently such matters do not interest her.
She conducts you to the Chinese Room; the sun streams through the
windows, illuminating the wondrous golden dragons standing out in bold
relief from the burnished lacquer work, decorating still further with
light and shade the delicate silk embroideries thin taper hands have
woven with infinite pains. The walls are hung with rice paper, depicting
the conventional scenes of the conventional Chinese life.
You find your thoughts wandering. These grotesque figures, these
caricatures of humanity! A comical creature, surely, this Chinaman, the
pantaloon of civilization. How useful he has been to us for our farces,
our comic operas! This yellow baby, in his ample pinafore, who lived
thousands of years ago, who has now passed into this strange second
childhood.
But is he dying—or does the life of a nation wake again, as after sleep?
Is he this droll, harmless thing he here depicts himself? And if not?
Suppose fresh sap be stirring through his three hundred millions? We
thought he was so very dead; we thought the time had come to cut him up
and divide him, the only danger being lest we should quarrel over his
carcase among ourselves.
Suppose it turns out as the fable of the woodcutter and the bear? The
woodcutter found the bear lying in the forest. At first he was much
frightened, but the bear lay remarkably still. So the woodman crept
nearer, ventured to kick the bear—very gently, ready to run if need be.
Surely the bear was dead! And parts of a bear are good to eat, and
bearskin to poor woodfolk on cold winter nights is grateful. So the
woodman drew his knife and commenced the necessary preliminaries. But
the bear was not dead.
If the Chinaman be not dead? If the cutting-up process has only served
to waken him? In a little time from now we shall know.
From the Chinese Room the white-haired dame leads us to the Japanese
Room. Had gentle-looking Princess Amalia some vague foreshadowing of the
future in her mind when she planned these two rooms leading into one
another? The Japanese decorations are more grotesque, the designs less
cheerfully comical than those of cousin Chinaman. These monstrous,
mis-shapen wrestlers, these patient-looking gods, with their inscrutable
eyes! Was it always there, or is it only by the light of present events
that one reads into the fantastic fancies of the artist working long ago
in the doorway of his paper house, a meaning that has hitherto escaped
us?
But the chief attraction of the Huis ten Bosch is the gorgeous Orange
Saloon, lighted by a cupola, fifty feet above the floor, the walls one
blaze of pictures, chiefly of the gorgeous Jordaen school—“The Defeat of
the Vices,” “Time Vanquishing Slander”—mostly allegorical, in praise of
all the virtues, in praise of enlightenment and progress. Aptly enough
in a room so decorated, here was held the famous Peace Congress that
closed the last century. One can hardly avoid smiling as one thinks of
the solemn conclave of grandees assembled to proclaim the popularity of
Peace.
It was in the autumn of the same year that Europe decided upon the
dividing-up of China, that soldiers were instructed by Christian monarchs
to massacre men, women and children, the idea being to impress upon the
Heathen Chinee the superior civilization of the white man. The Boer war
followed almost immediately. Since when the white man has been pretty
busy all over the world with his “expeditions” and his “missions.” The
world is undoubtedly growing more refined. We do not care for ugly
words. Even the burglar refers airily to the “little job” he has on
hand. You would think he had found work in the country. I should not be
surprised to learn that he says a prayer before starting, telegraphs home
to his anxious wife the next morning that his task has been crowned with
blessing.
Until the far-off date of Universal Brotherhood war will continue.
Matters considered unimportant by both parties will—with a mighty
flourish of trumpets—be referred to arbitration. I was talking of a
famous financier a while ago with a man who had been his secretary.
Amongst other anecdotes, he told me of a certain agreement about which
dispute had arisen. The famous financier took the paper into his own
hands and made a few swift calculations.
“Let it go,” he concluded, “it is only a thousand pounds at the outside.
May as well be honest.”
Concerning a dead fisherman or two, concerning boundaries through
unproductive mountain ranges we shall arbitrate and feel virtuous. For
gold mines and good pasture lands, mixed up with a little honour to give
respectability to the business, we shall fight it out, as previously.
War being thus inevitable, the humane man will rejoice that by one of
those brilliant discoveries, so simple when they are explained, war in
the future is going to be rendered equally satisfactory to victor and to
vanquished.
In by-elections, as a witty writer has pointed out, there are no
defeats—only victories and moral victories. The idea seems to have
caught on. War in the future is evidently going to be conducted on the
same understanding. Once upon a time, from a far-off land, a certain
general telegraphed home congratulating his Government that the enemy had
shown no inclination whatever to prevent his running away. The whole
country rejoiced.
“Why, they never even tried to stop him,” citizens, meeting other
citizens in the street, told each other. “Ah, they’ve had enough of him.
I bet they are only too glad to get rid of him. Why, they say he ran for
miles without seeing a trace of the foe.”
The enemy’s general, on the other hand, also wrote home congratulating
his Government. In this way the same battle can be mafficked over by
both parties. Contentment is the great secret of happiness. Everything
happens for the best, if only you look at it the right way. That is
going to be the argument. The general of the future will telegraph to
headquarters that he is pleased to be able to inform His Majesty that the
enemy, having broken down all opposition, has succeeded in crossing the
frontier and is now well on his way to His Majesty’s capital.
“I am luring him on,” he will add, “as fast as I can. At our present
rate of progress, I am in hopes of bringing him home by the tenth.”
Lest foolish civilian sort of people should wonder whereabouts lies the
cause for rejoicing, the military man will condescend to explain. The
enemy is being enticed farther and farther from his base. The defeated
general—who is not really defeated, who is only artful, and who appears
to be running away, is not really running away at all. On the contrary,
he is running home—bringing, as he explains, the enemy with him.
If I remember rightly—it is long since I played it—there is a parlour
game entitled “Puss in the Corner.” You beckon another player to you
with your finger. “Puss, puss!” you cry. Thereupon he has to leave his
chair—his “base,” as the military man would term it—and try to get to you
without anything happening to him.
War in the future is going to be Puss in the Corner on a bigger scale.
You lure your enemy away from his base. If all goes well—if he does not
see the trap that is being laid for him—why, then, almost before he knows
it, he finds himself in your capital. That finishes the game. You find
out what it is he really wants. Provided it is something within reason,
and you happen to have it handy, you give it to him. He goes home
crowing, and you, on your side, laugh when you think how cleverly you
succeeded in luring him away from his base.
There is a bright side to all things. The gentleman charged with the
defence of a fortress will meet the other gentleman who has captured it
and shake hands with him mid the ruins.
“So here you are at last!” he will explain. “Why didn’t you come before?
We have been waiting for you.”
And he will send off dispatches felicitating his chief on having got that
fortress off their hands, together with all the worry and expense it has
been to them. When prisoners are taken you will console yourself with
the reflection that the cost of feeding them for the future will have to
be borne by the enemy. Captured cannon you will watch being trailed away
with a sigh of relief.
“Confounded heavy things!” you will say to yourself. “Thank goodness
I’ve got rid of them. Let him have the fun of dragging them about these
ghastly roads. See how he likes the job!”
War is a ridiculous method of settling disputes. Anything that can tend
to make its ridiculous aspect more apparent is to be welcomed. The new
school of military dispatch-writers may succeed in turning even the
laughter of the mob against it.
The present trouble in the East would never have occurred but for the
white man’s enthusiasm for bearing other people’s burdens. What we call
the yellow danger is the fear that the yellow man may before long request
us, so far as he is concerned, to put his particular burden down. It may
occur to him that, seeing it is his property, he would just as soon carry
it himself. A London policeman told me a story the other day that struck
him as an example of Cockney humour under trying circumstances. But it
may also serve as a fable. From a lonely street in the neighbourhood of
Covent Garden, early one morning, the constable heard cries of “Stop
thief!” shouted in a childish treble. He arrived on the scene just in
time to collar a young hooligan, who, having snatched a basket of fruit
from a small lad—a greengrocer’s errand boy, as it turned out—was, with
it, making tracks. The greengrocer’s boy, between panting and tears,
delivered his accusation. The hooligan regarded him with an expression
of amazed indignation.
“What d’yer mean, stealing it?” exclaimed Mr. Hooligan. “Why, I was
carrying it for yer!”
The white man has got into the way of “carrying” other people’s burdens,
and now it looks as if the yellow man were going to object to our
carrying his any further. Maybe he is going to get nasty, and insist on
carrying it himself. We call this “the yellow danger.”
A friend of mine—he is a man who in the street walks into lamp-posts, and
apologises—sees rising from the East the dawn of a new day in the world’s
history. The yellow danger is to him a golden hope. He sees a race long
stagnant, stretching its giant limbs with the first vague movements of
returning life. He is a poor sort of patriot; he calls himself, I
suppose, a white man, yet he shamelessly confesses he would rather see
Asia’s millions rise from the ruins of their ancient civilization to take
their part in the future of humanity, than that half the population of
the globe should remain bound in savagery for the pleasure and the profit
of his own particular species.
He even goes so far as to think that the white man may have something to
learn. The world has belonged to him now for some thousands of years.
Has he done all with it that could have been done? Are his ideals the
last word?
Not what the yellow man has absorbed from Europe, but what he is going to
give Europe it is that interests my friend. He is watching the birth of
a new force—an influence as yet unknown. He clings to the fond belief
that new ideas, new formulæ, to replace the old worn shibboleths, may,
during these thousands of years, have been developing in those keen
brains that behind the impressive yellow mask have been working so long
in silence and in mystery.