some action, or lack of action, on our part in the way of refusing to
accept responsibilities at the proper time, or failing to prepare for
war when war does not threaten. An ignoble peace is even worse than
an unsuccessful war; but an unsuccessful war would leave behind it a
legacy of bitter memories which would hurt our national development for
a generation to come. It is true that no nation could actually conquer
us, owing to our isolated position; but we would be seriously harmed,
even materially, by disasters that stopped far short of conquest; and
in these matters, which are far more important than things material,
we could readily be damaged beyond repair. No material loss can begin
to compensate for the loss of national self-respect. The damage to our
commercial interests by the destruction of one of our coast cities
would be as nothing compared to the humiliation which would be felt by
every American worthy of the name if we had to submit to such an injury
without amply avenging it. It has been finely said that “a gentleman
is one who is willing to lay down his life for little things”; that is
for those things which seem little to the man who cares only whether
shares rise or fall in value, and to the timid _doctrinaire_ who
preaches timid peace from his cloistered study.
Much of that which is best and highest in national character is made
up of glorious memories and traditions. The fight well fought, the
life honorably lived, the death bravely met--those count for more
in building a high and fine type of temper in a nation than any
possible success in the stock market, than any possible prosperity in
commerce or manufactures. A rich banker may be a valuable and useful
citizen, but not a thousand rich bankers can leave to the country
such a heritage as Farragut left, when, lashed in the rigging of
the _Hartford_, he forged past the forts and over the unseen death
below, to try his wooden stem against the ironclad hull of the great
Confederate ram. The people of some given section of our country may
be better off because a shrewd and wealthy man has built up therein a
great manufacturing business, or has extended a line of railroad past
its doors; but the whole nation is better, the whole nation is braver,
because Cushing pushed his little torpedo-boat through the darkness to
sink beside the sinking _Albemarle_.
Every feat of heroism makes us forever indebted to the man who
performed it. All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune,
all devotion to the ideal of honor and the glory of the flag, make for
a finer and nobler type of manhood. It is not only those who do and
dare and endure that are benefited; but also the countless thousands
who are not themselves called upon to face the peril, to show the
strength, or to win the reward. All of us lift our heads higher because
those of our countrymen whose trade it is to meet danger have met it
well and bravely. All of us are poorer for every base or ignoble deed
done by an American, for every instance of selfishness or weakness or
folly on the part of the people as a whole. We are all worse off when
any of us fails at any point in his duty toward the State in time of
peace, or his duty toward the State in time of war. If ever we had to
meet defeat at the hands of a foreign foe, or had to submit tamely to
wrong or insult, every man among us worthy of the name of American
would feel dishonored and debased. On the other hand, the memory of
every triumph won by Americans, by just so much helps to make each
American nobler and better. Every man among us is more fit to meet the
duties and responsibilities of citizenship because of the perils over
which, in the past, the nation has triumphed; because of the blood
and sweat and tears, the labor and the anguish, through which, in the
days that have gone, our forefathers moved on to triumph. There are
higher things in this life than the soft and easy enjoyment of material
comfort. It is through strife, or the readiness for strife, that a
nation must win greatness. We ask for a great navy, partly because
we think that the possession of such a navy is the surest guaranty
of peace, and partly because we feel that no national life is worth
having if the nation is not willing, when the need shall arise, to
stake everything on the supreme arbitrament of war, and to pour out its
blood, its treasure, and its tears like water, rather than submit to
the loss of honor and renown.
In closing, let me repeat that we ask for a great navy, we ask for an
armament fit for the nation’s needs, not primarily to fight, but to
avert fighting. Preparedness deters the foe, and maintains right by the
show of ready might without the use of violence. Peace, like freedom,
is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of cowards, or of those
too feeble or too short-sighted to deserve it; and we ask to be given
the means to insure that honorable peace which alone is worth having.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[20] Address as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, before the Naval War
College, June, 1897.
[Illustration]
XIII
NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER[21]
In _National Life and Character; a Forecast_, Mr. Charles H. Pearson,
late fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and sometime Minister of
Education in Victoria, has produced one of the most notable books of
the end of the century. Mr. Pearson is not always quite so careful as
he might be about his facts; many of the conclusions he draws from them
seem somewhat strained; and with much of his forecast most of us would
radically disagree. Nevertheless, no one can read this book without
feeling his thinking powers greatly stimulated; without being forced to
ponder problems of which he was previously wholly ignorant, or which he
but half understood; and without realizing that he is dealing with the
work of a man of lofty thought and of deep and philosophic insight into
the world-forces of the present.
Mr. Pearson belongs to the melancholy or pessimist school, which has
become so prominent in England during the last two or three decades,
and which has been represented there for half a century. In fact, the
note of despondency seems to be the dominant note among Englishmen
of high cultivation at the present time. It is as marked among their
statesmen and publicists as among their men of letters, Mr. Balfour
being particularly happy in his capacity to express in good English,
and with much genuine elevation of thought, a profound disbelief in
nineteenth century progress, and an equally profound distrust of the
future toward which we are all travelling.
For much of this pessimism and for many of the prophecies which it
evokes, there is no excuse whatsoever. There may possibly be good
foundation for the pessimism as to the future shown by men like Mr.
Pearson; but hitherto the writers of the stamp of the late “Cassandra”
Greg who have been pessimistic about the present, have merely betrayed
their own weakness or their own incapacity to judge contemporary
persons and events. The weakling, the man who cannot struggle with
his fellow-men and with the conditions that surround him, is very apt
to think these men and these conditions bad; and if he has the gift
of writing, he puts these thoughts down at some length on paper. Very
strong men, moreover, if of morose and dyspeptic temper, are apt to
rail at the present, and to praise the past simply because they do not
live in it. To any man who will consider the subject from a scientific
point of view, with a desire to get at the truth, it is needless to
insist on the fact that at no period of the world’s history has there
been so much happiness generally diffused among mankind as now.
At no period of the world’s history has life been so full of interest
and of possibilities of excitement and enjoyment as for us who live
in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This is not only true
as far as the working classes are concerned, but it is especially
true as regards the men of means, and above all of those men of means
who also possess brains and ambition. Never before in the world’s
history have there been such opportunities thrown open to men, in
the way of building new commonwealths, exploring new countries,
conquering kingdoms, and trying to adapt the governmental policy of
old nations to new and strange conditions. The half-century which is
now closing, has held out to the people who have dwelt therein, some
of the great prizes of history. Abraham Lincoln and Prince Bismarck
have taken their places among the world’s worthies. Mighty masters
of war have arisen in America, in Germany, in Russia; Lee and Grant,
Jackson and Farragut, Moltke, Skobeleff, and the Red Prince. The work
of the chiefs of mechanical and electrical invention has never been
equalled before, save perhaps by what was done in the first half of
this same century. Never before have there been so many opportunities
for commonwealth builders; new States have been pitched on the banks
of the Saskatchewan, the Columbia, the Missouri, and the Colorado, on
the seacoast of Australia, and in the interior of Central Africa.
Vast regions have been won by the sword. Burmah and Turkestan, Egypt
and Matabeleland, have rewarded the prowess of English and Russian
conquerors, exactly as, when the glory of Rome was at its height,
remote Mediterranean provinces furnished triumphs to the great military
leaders of the Eternal City. English administrators govern subject
empires larger than those conquered by Alexander. In letters no name
has been produced that will stand with the first half-dozen of all
literature, but there have been very many borne by men whose effect
upon the literatures of their own countries has been profound, and
whose works will last as long as the works of any men written in the
same tongues. In science even more has been done; Darwin has fairly
revolutionized thought; and many others stand but a step below him.
All this means only that the opportunities have been exceptionally
great for the men of exceptionally great powers; but they have also
been great for the men of ordinary powers. The workingman is, on
the whole, better fed, better clothed, better housed, and provided
with greater opportunities for pleasure and for mental and spiritual
improvement than ever before. The man with ability enough to become a
lawmaker has the fearful joy of grappling with problems as important
as any the administrators and legislators of the past had to face.
The ordinary man of adventurous tastes and a desire to get all out
of life that can be gotten, is beyond measure better off than were
his forefathers of one, two, or three centuries back. He can travel
round the world; he can dwell in any country he wishes; he can explore
strange regions; he can spend years by himself in the wilderness,
hunting great game; he can take part in a campaign here and there.
Withersoever his tastes lead him, he finds that he has far greater
capacity conferred upon him by the conditions of nineteenth-century
civilization to do something of note than ever a man of his kind had
before. If he is observant, he notes all around him the play of vaster
forces than have ever before been exerted, working, half blindly, half
under control, to bring about immeasurable results. He sees going
on before his eyes a great transfer of population and civilization,
which is making America north of the Rio Grande, and Australia,
English-speaking continents; which has filled Central and South America
with States of uncertain possibilities; which is creating for the first
time a huge Aryan nation across the entire north of Asia, and which
is working changes in Africa infinitely surpassing in importance all
those that have ever taken place there since the days when the Bantu
peoples first built their beehive huts on the banks of the Congo and
the Zambezi. Our century has teemed with life and interest.
Yet this is the very century at which Carlyle railed: and it is strange
to think that he could speak of the men at that very moment engaged
in doing such deeds, as belonging to a worn-out age. His vision was
clear to see the importance and the true bearing of England’s civil
war of the seventeenth century, and yet he remained mole-blind to
the vaster and more important civil war waged before his very eyes
in nineteenth-century America. The heroism of Naseby and Worcester
and Minden hid from him the heroism of Balaklava and Inkerman, of
Lucknow and Delhi. He could appreciate at their worth the campaigns
of the Seven Year’s War, and yet could hardly understand those waged
between the armies of the Potomac and of Northern Virginia. He was
fairly inspired by the fury and agony and terror of the struggle
at Kunnersdorf; and yet could not appreciate the immensely greater
importance of the death-wrestle that reeled round Gettysburg. His eyes
were so dazzled by the great dramas of the past that he could not see
the even greater drama of the present. It is but the bare truth to say
that never have the rewards been greater, never has there been more
chance for doing work of great and lasting value, than this last half
of the nineteenth century has offered alike to statesman and soldier,
to explorer and commonwealth-builder, to the captain of industry, to
the man of letters, and to the man of science. Never has life been more
interesting to each to take part in. Never has there been a greater
output of good work done both by the few and by the many.
Nevertheless, signs do not fail that we are on the eve of great
changes, and that in the next century we shall see the conditions of
our lives, national and individual, modified after a sweeping and
radical fashion. Many of the forces that make for national greatness
and for individual happiness in the nineteenth century will be
absent entirely, or will act with greatly diminished strength, in the
twentieth. Many of the forces that now make for evil will by that time
have gained greatly in volume and power. It is foolish to look at the
future with blind and careless optimism; quite as foolish as to gaze
at it only through the dun-colored mists that surround the preachers
of pessimism. It is always best to look facts squarely in the face,
without blinking them, and to remember that, as has been well said, in
the long run even the most uncomfortable truth is a safer companion
than the pleasantest falsehood.
Whether the future holds good or evil for us does not, it is true,
alter our duty in the present. We must stand up valiantly in the fight
for righteousness and wisdom as we see them, and must let the event
turn out as it may. Nevertheless, even though there is little use in
pondering over the future, most men of intelligence do ponder over it
at times, and if we think of it at all, it is well to think clearly.
Mr. Pearson writes a forecast of what he believes probably will, or at
least very possibly may, happen in the development of national life
and character during the era upon which we are now entering. He is a
man who has had exceptional advantages for his work; he has studied
deeply and travelled widely; he has been a diligent reader of books and
a keen observer of men. To a careful training in one of the oldest of
the world’s universities he has added long experience as an executive
officer in one of the world’s youngest commonwealths. He writes with
power and charm. His book is interesting in manner, and is still more
interesting in matter, for he has thought deeply and faithfully over
subjects of immense importance to the future of all the human race. He
possesses a mind of marked originality. Moreover, he always faithfully
tries to see facts as they actually are. He is, it seems to me, unduly
pessimistic; but he is not pessimistic of set purpose, nor does he
adopt pessimism as a cult. He tries hard, and often successfully, to
make himself see and to make himself state forces that are working for
good. We may or may not differ from him, but it behooves us, if we do,
to state our positions guardedly; for we are dealing with a man who has
displayed much research in getting at his facts and much honesty in
arriving at his rather melancholy conclusions.
The introduction to Mr. Pearson’s book is as readable as the chapters
that follow, and may best be considered in connection with the first
of these chapters, which is entitled “The Unchangeable Limits of the
Higher Races.” I am almost tempted to call this the most interesting
of the six chapters of the book, and yet one can hardly do so when
absorbed in reading any one of the other five. Mr. Pearson sees what
ought to be evident to every one, but apparently is not, that what
he calls the “higher races,” that is, the races that for the last
twenty-five hundred years (but, it must be remembered, only during the
last twenty-five hundred years) have led the world, can prosper only
under conditions of soil and climate analogous to those obtaining in
their old European homes. Speaking roughly, this means that they can
prosper only in the temperate zones, north and south.
Four hundred years ago the temperate zones, were very thinly peopled
indeed, while the tropical and sub-tropical regions were already
densely populated. The great feature in the world’s history for the
last four centuries has been the peopling of these vast, scantily
inhabited regions by men of the European stocks; notably by men
speaking English, but also by men speaking Russian and Spanish. During
the same centuries these European peoples have for the first time
acquired an enormous ascendency over all other races. Once before,
during the days of the Greco-Macedonian and Roman supremacy, European
peoples possessed a somewhat similar supremacy; but it was not nearly
as great, for at that period America and Australia were unknown, Africa
south of the Sahara was absolutely unaffected by either Roman or Greek,
and all but an insignificant portion of Asia was not only without the
pale of European influence, but held within itself immense powers of
menace to Europe, and contained old and peculiar civilizations, still
flourishing in their prime. All this has now been changed. Great
English-speaking nations have sprung up in America north of the Rio
Grande, and are springing up in Australia. The Russians, by a movement
which has not yet fired the popular imagination, but which all thinking
men recognize as of incalculable importance, are building a vast
State in northern Asia, stretching from the Yellow Sea to the Ural
Mountains. Tropical America is parcelled out among States partly of
European blood, and mainly European in thought, speech and religion;
while tropical Asia and Africa have been divided among European powers,
and are held in more or less complete subjection by their military
and civil agents. It is no wonder that men who are content to look
at things superficially, and who think that the tendencies that have
triumphed during the last two centuries are as immutable in their
workings as great natural laws, should speak as if it were a mere
question of time when the civilized peoples should overrun and occupy
the entire world, exactly as they now do Europe and North America.
Mr. Pearson points out with great clearness the groundlessness of
this belief. He deserves especial praise for discriminating between
the importance of ethnic, and of merely political, conquests. The
conquest by one country of another populous country always attracts
great attention at the time, and has wide momentary effects; but it
is of insignificant importance when compared with the kind of armed
settlement which causes new nations of an old stock to spring up in new
countries. The campaigns carried on by the lieutenants of Justinian
against Goth and Vandal, Bulgarian and Persian, seemed in the eyes
of civilized Europe at that time of incalculably greater moment than
the squalid warfare being waged in England between the descendants of
Low Dutch sea-thieves and the aboriginal British. Yet, in reality,
it was of hardly any consequence in history whether Belisarius did or
did not succeed in overthrowing the Ostrogoth merely to make room for
the Lombard, or whether the Vandal did or did not succumb to the Roman
instead of succumbing to the Saracen a couple of centuries later; while
it was of the most vital consequence to the whole future of the world
that the English should supplant the Welsh as masters of Britain.
Again, in our own day, the histories written of Great Britain during
the last century teem with her dealings with India, while Australia
plays a very insignificant part indeed; yet, from the standpoint of
the ages, the peopling of the great island-continent with men of the
English stock is a thousand fold more important than the holding
Hindoostan for a few centuries.
Mr. Pearson understands and brings out clearly that in the long
run a conquest must fail when it means merely the erection of an
insignificant governing caste. He shows clearly that the men of our
stock do not prosper in tropical countries. In the New World they leave
a thin strain of their blood among and impose their laws, language,
and forms of government on the aboriginal races, which then develop on
new and dimly drawn lines. In the Old World they fail to do even this.
In Asia they may leave a few tens of thousands or possibly hundreds of
thousands of Eurasians to form an additional caste in a caste-ridden
community. In tropical Africa they may leave here and there a mulatto
tribe like the Griquas. But it certainly has not yet been proved that
the European can live and propagate permanently in the hot regions of
India and Africa, and Mr. Pearson is right in anticipating for the
whites who have conquered these tropical and sub-tropical regions
of the Old World, the same fate which befell the Greek kingdoms in
Bactria and the Chersonese. The Greek rulers of Bactria were ultimately
absorbed and vanished, as probably the English rulers of India will
some day in the future--for the good of mankind, we sincerely hope and
believe the very remote future--themselves be absorbed and vanish.
In Africa south of the Zambezi (and possibly here and there on high
plateaus north of it,) there may remain white States, although even
these States will surely contain a large colored population, always
threatening to swamp the whites; but in tropical Africa generally,
it does not seem possible that any white State can ever be built up.
Doubtless for many centuries European adventurers and Arab raiders
will rule over huge territories in the country south of the Soudan
and north of the Tropic of Capricorn, and the whole structure, not
only social, but physical, of the negro and the negroid peoples will
be profoundly changed by their influence and by the influence of the
half-caste descendants of these European and Asiatic soldiers of
fortune and industry. But it is hardly possible to conceive that the
peoples of Africa, however ultimately changed, will be anything but
negroid in type of body and mind. It is probable that the change will
be in the direction of turning them into tribes like those of the
Soudan, with a similar religion and morality. It is almost impossible
that they will not in the end succeed in throwing off the yoke of the
European outsiders, though this end may be, and we hope will be, many
centuries distant. In America, most of the West Indies are becoming
negro islands. The Spaniard, however, because of the ease with which he
drops to a lower ethnic level, exerts a much more permanent influence
than the Englishman upon tropic aboriginal races; and the tropical
lands which the Spaniards and Portuguese once held, now contain, and
always will contain, races which, though different from the Aryan of
the temperate zone, yet bridge the gulf between him and the black, red,
and yellow peoples who have dwelt from time immemorial on both sides of
the equator.