III

Only a few short months had elapsed when the indomitable hero, well

informed of the Allies' squabbling deliberations, at the seat of

Conference over the division of their conquest, and their vindictive

intentions towards himself, startled them by the news of his landing

and uninterrupted march on Paris, and was everywhere acclaimed by the

cheers of the Army and the civilian population. Louis XVIII, whom the

conquerors had set on the throne, flew in panic when he heard that the

man of destiny was swiftly nearing his palace to take his place again

as the idol and chief of a great people. Meanwhile, the Allies had

somewhat recovered from their apoplectic dismay, and one and all

solemnly resolved to "make war against Napoleon Bonaparte," the

disturber of the peace, though he was the welcomed Emperor of the

French. It was they who were the disturbers of the peace, and

especially Great Britain, who headed the Coalition which was to drench

again the Continent with human blood. Napoleon offered to negotiate,

and never was there a more humane opportunity given to the nations to

settle their affairs in a way that would have assured a lasting peace,

but here again the ruling classes, with their usual impudent

assumption of power to use the populations for the purpose of killing

each other and creating unspeakable suffering in all the hideous

phases of warfare, refused to negotiate, and at their bidding soldiers

were plunged into the last Napoleonic conflict though many other

conflicts have followed in consequence. Nothing so deadly has ever

happened. The French were defeated and their Emperor sent to St.

Helena with the beneficent Sir Hudson Lowe as his jailer.

What a cynical mockery of a man this creature of Wellington,

Castlereagh, and Lord Bathurst was! He carried out their behests, and

after the ugly deed of vindictiveness, rage and frenzy had wrought the

tragic end, they shielded their wicked act by throwing the guilt on

him, and he was hustled off to a distant colony to govern again lest

his uneasy spirit should put them in the dock of public opinion. He

pleaded with them to employ the law officers of the Crown to bring an

action against Doctor Barry O'Meara, whose "Voice from St. Helena"

teemed with as dark a story as was ever put in print, in which he and

his coadjutors figured as the base contracting parties. And the more

he urged that the book was a libel against himself, the more O'Meara

demanded that the action against him should be brought, and for very

substantial reasons it never was. The Duke of Wellington said of Sir

Hudson, "He was a stupid man. A bad choice and totally unfit to take

charge of Bonaparte." And the great French Chieftain has left on

record his contemptuous opinion of the Duke, as I have already said.

"Un homme de peu d'esprit sans générosité, et sans grandeur d'âme."

(He was a poor-spirited man without generosity, and without greatness

of soul.) "Un homme borné." (A man of limited capacity.) His opinion

of Nelson was different, although our Admiral had hammered the French

sea power out of existence and helped largely to shatter any hope

Napoleon may have had of bringing the struggle on land to a successful

conclusion.

But these tragic happenings did not bring repose to the nations. Pitt

died in 1806, so he missed seeing the fulfilment of his great though

mistaken ambition. Who can doubt, as I have said, that the lack of

diplomatic genius in preventing the spreading of the Napoleonic wars

has been the means of creating other wars, and especially the greatest

of all, in which the whole world is now engaged!

That Napoleon himself was averse to a conflict which would involve all

Europe and bring desolation in its train is shown by the following

letter, written by his own hand, to George III. How different might

the world have been to-day had the letter been received in the same

spirit in which it was conceived.

SIR AND BROTHER,--Called to the throne of France by Providence,

and the suffrages of the Senate, the people, and the Army, my

first sentiment is a wish for peace. France and England abuse

their prosperity. They may contend for ages, but do their

Governments well fulfil the most sacred of their duties, and

will not so much bloodshed uselessly, and without a view to any

end, condemn them in their own consciences? I consider it no

disgrace to adopt the first step. I have, I hope, sufficiently

proved to the world that I fear none of the chances of war,

which presents nothing I have need to fear; peace is the wish of

my heart, but war has never been inconsistent with my glory. I

conjure your Majesty not to deny yourself the happiness of

giving peace to the world, or leave that sweet satisfaction to

your children; for certainly there never was a more fortunate

opportunity nor a moment more favourable than the present, to

silence all the passions and listen only to the sentiments of

humanity and reason. This moment once lost, what bounds can be

ascribed to a war which all my efforts will not be able to

terminate. Your Majesty has gained more in ten years, both in

territory and riches, than the whole extent of Europe. Your

nation is at the highest point of prosperity, what can it hope

from war? To form a coalition with some Powers on the Continent?

The Continent will remain tranquil; a coalition can only

increase the preponderance and continental greatness of France.

To renew intestine troubles? The times are no longer the same.

To destroy our finances? Finances founded on a flourishing

agriculture can never be destroyed. To wrest from France her

colonies? The colonies are to France only a secondary object;

and does not your Majesty already possess more than you know how

to preserve? If your Majesty would but reflect, you must

perceive that the war is without an object; or any presumable

result to yourself. Alas! What a melancholy prospect; to fight

merely for the sake of fighting. The world is sufficiently wide

for our two nations to live in, and reason sufficiently powerful

to discover the means of reconciling everything, when a wish for

reconciliation exists on both sides. I have, however, fulfilled

a sacred duty, and one which is precious to my heart.

I trust your Majesty will believe the sincerity of my

sentiments, and my wish to give you every proof of the same,

etc.

(_Signed_) NAPOLEON.

This letter indicates the mind and heart of a great statesman. The

thinking people, and therefore the most reliable patriots, would

receive a similar appeal to-day from the Kaiser in a different spirit

than did the King and the Government of George III.

We believe that the war with Germany was forced upon us, and that Mr.

Asquith's Government, and especially Sir Edward Grey (his Foreign

Secretary) used every honourable means to avoid it, but the cause and

origin of it sprang out of the defects of managing and settling the

wars that raged at the beginning of the last century, and Pitt, aided

by those colleagues of his who were swayed by his magnetic influence,

are responsible to a large degree in laying the foundation of the

present menace to European concord. Napoleon's plan of unification

would have kept Prussian militarism in check. He looked, and saw into

the future, while Pitt and his supporters had no vision at all. They

played the Prussian game by combining to bring about the fall of the

monarch who should have been regarded as this country's natural ally,

and by undoing the many admirable safeguards which were designed to

prevent Prussia from forcing other German States under her dominion.

Napoleon predicted that which would happen, and has happened. He

always kept in mind the cunning and unscrupulous tricks of Frederick

and knew that if _his_ power were destroyed, that would be Prussia's

opportunity to renew the methods of the Hohenzollern scoundrel, the

hero of Thomas Carlyle, and the intermittent friend of Voltaire, who

made unprovoked war on Marie Theresa with that splendid Prussian

disregard for treaty obligations, and who then, with amazing

insolence, after the seven years' butchery was over, sat down at Sans

Souci in the companionship of his numerous dogs to write his memoirs

in which he states that "Ambition, interest, the desire of making

people talk about him carried the day, and he decided for war;" he

might have added to the majestic Hohenzollern creed, incurable

treachery, falsehood, hypocrisy, and cowardice!

But the law of retribution comes to nations as well as to individuals,

and after the disappearance of Frederick, Prussian ascendancy came to

an end and sank to the lowest depths of hopelessness before the

terrible power of Napoleon; after his fall, the old majestic arrogance

natural to their race began to revive. It took many years for the

military caste to carry their objectives to maturity, and had we stood

sensibly and loyally by our French neighbours, the tragedy that gapes

at us now could never have come to pass. Possibly the Franco-German

war would never have occurred had our foreign policy been skilfully

handled and our attitude wisely apprehensive of Germany's ultimate

unification and her aggressive aims. The generations that are to come

will assuredly be made to see the calamities wrought by the

administrators of that period, whose faculties consisted in hoarding

up prejudices, creating enmities, and making wars that drained the

blood and treasure of our land. We do not find a single instance of

Pitt or Castlereagh expressing an idea worthy of statesmanship. What

did either of these men ever do to uplift the higher phases of

humanity by grappling with the problem that had been brought into

being by the French Revolution?

When we think of responsible ministers having no other vision or plan

of coming to an understanding with the French nation except by their

screams, groans, and odour of blood, it makes one shudder, and we

wish to forget that the people allowed them to carry out their hideous

methods of settling disputes. A galaxy of brilliant writers has sung

their praises in profusion, but while the present writer admires the

literary charm of the penmen's efforts, he does not find their

conclusions so agreeable or so easy to understand. There was never a

time, in our opinion, even during the most embarrassing and darkest

phases of the Napoleonic struggle, in which our differences with

France were insoluble. Napoleon, as I have said, never ceased to avow

his willingness to make vital sacrifices in order that peace between

the two peoples should be consummated. The stereotyped cant of

maintaining the "Balance of Power" is no excuse for plunging a nation

into gruesome, cruel, and horrible wars. It is when our liberties are

threatened that circumstances may arise when it would be a crime not

to defend them. But where and when were any of our interests

threatened by Napoleon until we became the aggressors by interfering

with the policy of what he called his "Continental system"? Even

before Napoleon became Consul, First Consul, and subsequently Emperor

of the French, it was deemed high policy on the part of our statesmen

to take sides against the French Directorate in disputes that were

caused and had arisen on the Continent out of the Revolution, and once

involved in the entanglement which it is hard to believe concerned us

in any degree, the nation was committed to a long and devastating

debauch of crime which men who understood the real art of

statesmanship would have avoided.

Many of the famous statesmen who have lived since their time would

have acted differently. Fox, with a free hand, would have saved us,

and but for the senseless attitude of the Pitt-Castlereagh party, the

Grey, Romilly, Horner, Burdett and Tierny combination would have

prevented the last of Napoleon's campaigns between his return from

Elba and his defeat at Waterloo, which proved to be the bloodiest of

all the Emperor's wars.

Amongst a certain section of the community the belief is that they who

can steer the State along peaceful lines are mediocrities, and they

who involve us in war are geniuses and earn the distinction of fame

and Westminster Abbey, though it may be that they are totally void of

all the essentials that are required to keep on good terms, not only

with other Powers, but with our own masses. Take, first of all, the

unostentatious old Scotsman, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who was

regarded in the light of a mediocrity by the bellicose-minded people.

Had he lived and been in power at the time of Pitt and Castlereagh,

his finely constituted, shrewd brain and quiet determined personality

would have guided the State in a way that would have brought it credit

and kept it out of the shambles. Another personality who is possessed

of attributes that have been scantily recognized is that of Lord

Rosebery who, during his Foreign Secretaryship under Mr. Gladstone,

and when he became Premier himself, saved this country more than once

from war with Germany, leaving out of account the many other services

rendered to his country. It is a tragedy to allow such merits to be

wasted because of some slight difference of opinion in matters that do

not count compared with the advantage of having at the head of affairs

a man with an unerring tactful brain who can deal with international

complexities with complete ease and assurance.

Although Mr. Gladstone must always be associated with those who were

responsible for the guilt of dragging this country, and perhaps

France, into the Crimean war in defence of a State and a people whom

he declared in other days should be turned out of Europe "bag and

baggage" because of her unwholesome Government and hideous crimes to

her subject races, _he_ had the courage and the honesty to declare in

later life that the part he took in allowing himself to acquiesce in a

policy he did not approve, would always be a bitter thought to him.

Had he been at the head of the Government then, and had he lived at

the time of the continental upheaval that followed the French

Revolution, all the evidences of his humane spirit and prodigious

capacity lead us to the belief that there were no circumstances

affecting our vital national interests that would have led him to take

up arms against France. Nor do we think that a statesman of Lord

Salisbury's stamp would have failed to find a way out. Disraeli was a

different type. He lived in a picturesque world, and thirsted for

sensation. The enormity of war was meaningless to him. He was not a

constitutional statesman, but merely a politician who liked to arouse

emotions. Mr. Asquith, whose head is free from the wafting of

feathers, would, with strong and loyal backers, have applied his

inimitable powers of persuasion and tact in accomplishing his ends

without a rupture; and Lord Morley would as soon have thought of

dancing a hornpipe on his mother's tomb as have yielded to the clamour

for war by any number of the people or any number of his colleagues,

no matter how numerous or how powerful they might be; even though his

opinion of the French Emperor were strongly adverse, he would have

angled for peace or resigned. I would rather place the guidance of the

country through intricate courses in this man's hands than in that of

a man mentally constituted as was Pitt. The present Viscount Grey

would have taken the line his namesake took in 1815 by strongly

advocating a peaceful solution.

Take another man of our own time, the Right Hon. Arthur Balfour. He

would have parleyed and schemed until the time had passed for any

useful object to be gained by our joining in the war, always provided

that the Jingo spirit were not too irrepressible for him to overpower

and bewilder with his engaging philosophy. If George III had been

blessed with these types of statesmen to advise him instead of the

Castlereaghs, he might not have lost his reason. Napoleon would never

have gone to Egypt, and our shores would never have been threatened

with invasion. Nor would British and neutral trade have been paralysed

in such a way as to bring in its wake ruin, riots, bankruptcies, and

every form of devastation in 1811. And as a natural corollary, we were

plunged into a war with America which lasted from 1812 to 1814, and

which left, as it well might, long years of bitter and vindictive

memories in the minds of a people who were of our race and kindred.

Our people as a whole (but especially the poorer classes) were treated

in a manner akin to barbarism, while their rulers invoked them to bear

like patriots the suffering they had bestowed upon them.

But the canker had eaten so deeply into their souls that it culminated

in fierce riots breaking out in Lancashire and London which spread to

other parts and were only suppressed by measures that are familiar to

the arrogant despots who, by their clumsy acts, are the immediate

cause of revolt. Pitt and Castlereagh were the High Commissioners of

the military spirit which the Whigs detested, and when the former died

in 1806 the latter became the natural leader.

Pitt was buried peaceably enough in the Abbey, but when his

successor's tragic end came in 1822, the populace avenged themselves

of the wrongs for which they believed he was responsible by throwing

stones at the coffin as it was being solemnly borne to its last

resting place beside William Pitt. Both men made war on Napoleon

because they believed him to be the implacable disturber of peace and

a danger to their country. Pitt, as we have seen, left among his MS.

his opinion of the great soldier, and here is the latter's opinion of

Pitt, expressed to his ministers on the eve of his leaving Paris for

his last campaign against his relentless foes.

"I do not know," he said (to his ministers in speaking to them

of the new constitution he had granted), "how in my absence you

will manage to lead the Chambers. Monsieur Fouché thinks that

popular assemblies are to be controlled by gaining over some old

jobbers, or flattering some young enthusiasts. That is only

intrigue, and intrigue does not carry one far. In England, such

means are not altogether neglected; but there are greater and

nobler ones. Remember Mr. Pitt, and look at Lord Castlereagh!

With a sign from his eyebrows, Mr. Pitt could control the House

of Commons, and so can Lord Castlereagh now! Ah! if I had such

instruments, I should not be afraid of the Chambers. But have I

anything to resemble these?"[22]

This piece of pathetic history is given to us by the French historian,

M. Thiers, the lifelong enemy of his Imperial master, Napoleon III. We

are faced now with the Power that we helped to build up against

ourselves at the expense of the wreck of the First French Empire.

The political situation then and now bears no comparison. We made war

on the French without any real justification, and stained our high

sense of justice by driving them to frenzy. We bought soldiers and

sailors to fight them from impecunious German and Hanoverian princes.

We subsidized Russia, Prussia, Austria, Portugal, Spain, and that foul

cesspool, Naples, at the expense of the starvation of the poorest

classes in our own country. The bellicose portion of the population,

composed mainly of the upper and middle classes, shrieked their

deluded terrors of extinction into the minds of the people and

believed that if we did not make common cause with the downtrodden

sanctified allies who were fighting a man-eating ogre who was

overrunning their respective countries, putting every one to the

sword, we should become the objects of his fierce attention, be

invaded and ground down to slavery for ever and ever. Our statesmen,

hypocritically full of the gospel of pity, could not speak of our ally

of other days without weeping, while at the same time pouring further

subsidies into their greedy traitorous laps, in order that they might

secure their co-ordination.

It is futile for historian apologists to attempt to vindicate men who

obviously were afflicted with moral cupidity, begotten of intellectual

paralysis. It is merely an unwholesome subterfuge to state that they

were free from enmity against the French nation, and that their

quarrel was with the head of it. There would be just as much common

sense in contending that the French Government had no hostile feeling

against the British people, and that their quarrel was only against

George III. Devices such as these, under any circumstances, are not

only unworthy, but childish, and their sole object is to throw dust in

the eyes of those they flippantly call the common people. As a matter

of fact, it was not only the Emperor Napoleon whom they made it their

policy to charge with being a public danger to the world, but the

principles of the Revolution which he sprang from obscurity to save,

which was slyly kept at the back of their heads.

But the Republic, which was the outcome of the Revolution, was an

approved ordinance of the people, and in addition to Napoleon being

their duly elected representative, he was regarded by them as the

incarnation of the Republic. The difference between him and the other

monarchs of Europe was, that while they inherited their position, his

election was democratically ratified by millions of votes. These votes

were given by the people with whom a foreign Government declared it

was at peace while at the same time it was at war with their Chief,

whom they had from time to time duly elected. This is a method of

warfare which represents no high form of thought or action, and to the

everlasting credit of the French people be it said, they not only

resented it, but stood loyally by their Emperor and their country

until they were overpowered by the insidious poison of treason and

intrigue from within and without.

What a howl there would have been if the German Kaiser had sent out a

proclamation that he was not at war with the British nation, but with

their King and Government! Suppose he had committed the same act of

arrogance towards the President of the United States, the revulsion of

feeling would be irrepressible in every part of the world.

We recognize at the same time that Napoleon's position was made

insecure by an important element of his own countrymen, composed of

the Bourbons and their supporters, who never ceased to intrigue for

their return. Besides, there was a strong Republican element who never

forgave him for allowing himself to become Emperor. But the most

serious defection was that of some of his most important Generals,

amongst whom were Marmont and Bertheur. The former subsequently

became the military tutor of his son, the King of Rome, who died at

Schonbrunn on the 22nd July, 1832, eleven years after his father's

death at St. Helena.

A notable fact is that there were very few of his common soldiers and

common people who did not stand by him to the last, and who would not

have continued the struggle under his trusted and revered generalship,

had he elected to fight on. He implored the Provisional Government to

give their sanction to this, and had they done so, he has stated that

he could have kept the Allies at bay and would have ultimately made

them sue for peace. Most authorities declare that this would have been

impossible, but his genius as a tactician was so prodigious and

unrivalled, his art of enthusing his soldiers so vastly superior to

that of any general that could be brought against him, his knowledge

of the country on which he might select to give battle so matchless

that one has substantial grounds for believing that his assertion was

more than a mere flash of imagination, and that even with the

shattered, loyal portion of his army, he might have succeeded in

changing defeat into a victory which would have changed the whole

political position of Europe. He frequently reverted to his last

campaign and his last battle at Waterloo, when he was in captivity at

St. Helena, and declared he should never have lost it, as his plan of

battle at every point was never better devised, and that by all the

arts of war he ought to have defeated the Allies; then he would lapse

into sadness and soliloquize, "It must have been fate."

In the effort to crush a cause and a nation which had been brought out

of the depths of anarchy and raised to the zenith of power by the

advent of a great spirit, the British Government of that period made

their country parties to the slaughter of thousands of our

fellow-creatures, which, in the light of subsequent events, has left a

stain upon our diplomacy that can never be effaced, no matter what

form of excuse may be set forth to justify it. Never, in the whole

history of blurred diplomatic vision, has there evolved so great a

calamity to the higher development of civilization.

By taking so prominent a part in preventing Napoleon from fulfilling

the eternal purpose for which all nature foreshadowed he was intended,

we made it possible for Germany to develop systematically a diabolical

policy of treason which has involved the world in war, drenching it

with human blood. The Allies pursued Napoleon to his downfall. Their

attitude during the whole course of his rule was senselessly

vindictive. They gloated over his misfortune when he became their

victim, and they consummated their vengeance by making him a martyr.

The exile of St. Helena acted differently. When he conquered, instead

of viciously overrunning the enemy's country and spreading misery and

devastation, he made what he wished to be lasting peace, and allowed

the sovereigns to retain their thrones. How often did he carry out

this act of generosity towards Prussia and Austria, and who can deny

that he did not act benevolently towards Alexander of Russia, when at

Austerlitz and Tilsit, he formed what he regarded as lasting personal

friendship with the Czar! It is all moonshine to say that he broke the

friendship. The power of Russia, Prussia, and Austria were hopelessly

wrecked more than once, and on each occasion they intrigued him into

war again, and then threw themselves at his feet, grovelling

supplicants for mercy, which he never withheld.

Well might he exclaim to Caulaincourt, his ambassador in 1814, when

the congress was sitting at Chatillon: "These people will not treat;

the position is reversed; they have forgotten my conduct to them at

Tilsit. Then I could have crushed them; my clemency was simple folly."

The nations who treated him with such unreasonable severity would do

well to reflect over the unfathomable folly of the past, and try to

realize, at the present stage of their critical existence, that it may

be possible that human life is reaping the agonies of a terrible

retribution for a crime an important public in every civilized country

believed, and still continues to believe, to have been committed. It

is a natural law of life that no mysterious physical force ever dies,

but only changes its form and direction. Individuals and vast

communities may dare to mock at the great mystery that we do not

understand. But it is a perilous experiment to defy its visitations.

What incalculable results may arise through taking the wrong attitude

towards the great laws that govern our being!

The autocratic rulers at the beginning of the last century were never

right in their views as to how the vastly greater image than their own

should be treated. They measured Napoleon and his loftier qualities by

their own tumultuous limitations, which prevented them from seeing how

wide the gulf was between him and the ordinary man. He was a magical

personality, and they failed to comprehend it.

Heinrich Heine, the great German writer, who was pro-Napoleon, has

told a vivid story of how he visited the East India Docks, while he

was in London, and there saw a large sailing vessel with a great

number of coloured people on board, Mohammedans for the most part. He

wished to speak to them but did not know their language. He was

particularly anxious to show them some courtesy if even, as he says,

in a single word, so he reverently called out the name "Mohammed." In

an instant the countenance of these strange people beamed with

pleasure, and with characteristic Eastern devotion bowed themselves

and shouted back to him "Bonaparte."

I have no thought, in writing of Napoleon, to draw a comparison

between him and the ex-Kaiser and his guilty coadjutors in crime, who

forced a peaceful world into unspeakable war. They have been guilty of

the foulest of murders, which will outmatch in ferocity every phase of

human barbarity. There can be no pardon or pity for them. They must

pay the penalty of their crimes, as other criminals have to do. The

following letter, addressed by William II to his late colleague in

guilt, the Emperor Joseph of Austria, is enough in itself to set the

whole world into a blaze of vengeance:--

"My soul is torn," says this canting outcast, "but everything

must be put to fire and sword, men, women, children, and old men

must be slaughtered, and not a tree or house be left standing.

With these methods of terrorism, which are alone capable of

affecting a people so degenerate as the French, the war will be

over in two months, whereas if I admit humanitarian

considerations, it will last years. In spite of my repugnance, I

have, therefore, been obliged to choose the former system."

It is hard to believe that a document of this kind could be written by

any one that was not far gone in lunacy, but in any case, I repeat it

is to be hoped that St. Helena will not be desecrated by sending him

to that hallowed abode.

It is never a difficult performance to become involved in war, and it

is always a tax on human genius to find a decent way out of it;

whether it be honourable or dishonourable does not matter to those who

believe in conflict as a solution of international disputes. History

can safely be challenged to prove that anything but wild wrath and

ruin is the unfailing outcome of war to all the belligerents, whether

few or many. More often than not, it is brought about by the exulting

chatter of a few irrepressible and also irresponsible individuals who

have military or political ambitions to look after, and no other

faculty of reason or vocabulary than the gibberish "that war will

clear the air." They ostentatiously claim a monopoly of patriotism;

and convey their views on war matters with a blustering levity which

is a marvel to the astonished soul. Their attitude towards human

existence is that you cannot be a patriot or create a great nation

unless you are bellicose and warlike.

This was the deplorable condition of mind that involved us in the wars

subsequent to the French Revolution. But the diplomatists (if it be

proper to call them such) and the oligarchy were responsible for the

ruptures at that period, and certainly not the general public. In

fact, it is doubtful whether the _general public_ are ever in favour

of breaking the peace. A minority may be, but they are the noisy and

unreflecting section. There is a wide difference between the

Napoleonic wars and that which was waged against the civilized world

by the German Kaiser and his military myrmidons, who have acted

throughout like wild beasts. There never has been perpetrated so

atrocious a crime as the deliberately planned military outrage on the

peace of the world.

The brief comparison between Kaiser William and Napoleon Bonaparte is

that the one, like Frederick, the hero of Thomas Carlyle, is a

shameless traitor to every act of human decency, and the other, in

spite of what biassed writers have thought it their duty to say of

him, was an unparalleled warrior-statesman, and his motives and

actions were all on the side of God's humanity and good government.

From the time he was found and made the head of the French nation, he

was always obliged to be on the defensive, and, as he stated, never

once declared war. The continental Great Powers always made war on

_him_, but not without his thrashing them soundly until they pleaded

in their humility to be allowed to lick his boots. You may search

English State papers in any musty hole you like, and you will find no

authoritative record that comes within miles of justifying the

opinions or the charges that have been stated or written against him.

Let us not commit the sacrilege, if he is ever made prisoner and is

not shot for the murders and cruelties he and his subjects have

committed on British men and women at sea and on land, of deporting

the Kaiser to St. Helena to desecrate the ground made sacred for all

time because of the great Emperor who was an exile there. Force of

circumstances made Louis Philippe declare the truth to the world's new

generations (doubtless to save his own precious skin) that "he was not

only an emperor, but a king from the very day that the French nation

called upon him to be their ruler." The kingly Louis would have given

worlds not to have been compelled to say this truth of him, but his

crown was at stake.

The Senate voted with enthusiasm that he should be First Consul for

ten years, and he replied to the vote of confidence that "Fortune had

smiled upon the Republic; but Fortune was inconstant; how many men,"

said he, "upon whom she has heaped her favours have lived too long by

some years, and that the interest of his glory and happiness seemed to

have marked the period of his public life, at the moment when the

peace of the world is proclaimed." Then with one of those spasmodic

impulses that compel attention, he darts an arrow right on the spot;

"If," he says, "you think I owe the nation a new sacrifice, I will

make it; that is, if the _wishes of the people_ correspond with the

command authorized by their suffrages." Always the suffrages, you

observe, and never the miserable, slandering, backbiting dodges of the

treasonists.

The mind of this remarkable man was a palatial storehouse of wise,

impressive inspirations. Here is one of countless instances where a

prejudiced adversary bears testimony to his power and wisdom. A few

Republican officers sought and were granted an audience, and the

following is a frank admission of their own impotence and Napoleon's

greatness: "I do not know," their spokesman says, "from whence or from

whom he derives it, but there is a charm about that man indescribable

and irresistible. I am no admirer of his." Such persons always preface

any statement they are about to make by asserting their own

superiority in this way, and the officers, who, with others, had many

imaginary grievances against Napoleon, determined to empty their

overburdened souls to him. This gallant person emphasizes the fact

that he dislikes "the power to which he (Napoleon) had risen," yet he

cannot help confessing (evidently with reluctance) that there is

something in him which seems to speak that he is born to command. "We

went into his apartment to expostulate warmly with him, and not to

depart until our complaints were removed. But by his manner of

receiving us we were disarmed in a moment, and could not utter one

word of what we were going to say. He talked to us with an eloquence

peculiarly his own, and explained with clearness and precision the

importance of pursuing the line of conduct he had adopted, never

contradicting us in direct terms, but controverted our opinions so

astutely that we had not a single word to offer in reply, and retired

convinced that he was in the right and that we were manifestly in the

wrong." It is a common delusion with little men to believe that they

are big with wisdom and knowledge, even after they have been ravelled

to shreds by a man of real ability. The French Republican officers

were condescendingly candid in giving the First Consul a high

character, and he, in turn, made these self-assertive gentlemen feel

abashed in his presence, and sent them about their business without

having made any unnatural effort to prove that they had had an

interview with a majestic personality, who had made articulation

impossible to them. I might give thousands of testimonies, showing the

great power this superman had over other minds, from the highest

monarchical potentate to the humblest of his subjects. The former were

big with a combination of fear and envy. They would deign to grovel at

his feet, slaver compliments, and deluge him with adulation (if he

would have allowed them), and then proceed to stab him from behind in

the most cowardly fashion. There are always swarms of human insects

whose habits of life range between the humble supplicant and the

stinging, poisonous wasps.

It would have been better for the whole civilized world had there

been more wisely clever men, such as Charles James Fox, in public life

in this and other countries during Napoleon's time. He was the one

great Englishman who towered above any of the ministers who were

contemporary with him in this country, and certainly no public man had

a finer instinct than he as to the policy Great Britain should observe

towards a nation that was being dragged out of the cesspool of

corruption and violence into a democratic grandeur of government that

was the envy of Continental as well as British antiquarians. Fox saw

clearly the manifest benefit to both countries if they could be made

to understand and not to envy each other. In 1802, Fox was received in

Paris like a highly popular monarch. The whole city went wild with the

joy of having him as the guest of France. He was the great attraction

at the theatres next to the First Consul, whom Fox declared "was a

most decided character, that would hold to his purpose with more

constancy and through a longer interval than is imagined; his views

are not directed to this, i.e. the United Kingdom, but to the

Continent only." "I never saw," he says, "so little indirectness in

any statesman as in the First Consul." Had Fox been supported by

sufficient strong men to counteract the baneful influence of the weeds

who were a constant peril to the country over whose destinies George

III and they ruled, we should have been saved the ghastly errors that

were committed in the name of the British people. The King's dislike

to Fox was openly avowed. He used to talk incessantly of going back

to Hanover whenever he was thwarted in his disastrous policy of giving

the country a stab, or when the inevitable brought Fox into office.

Everything that emanated from the great statesman was viewed with

aversion and as being unjust and indecent by the royal Lilliputian,

while Fox's estimate of the King could not be uttered on a lower

plane. He says, in speaking of His Majesty, "It is intolerable to

think that it should be in the power of _one_ blockhead to do so much

mischief"--meaning, I presume, amongst many other blunders, the mess

he was persisting in making over American affairs.

Had there been capable statesmen during that crisis, the Continent of

Europe and the vast dominions of Great Britain would not have been at

war this day with the pernicious Power that we, more than any other

nation, as has been previously stated, helped to create and foster.

V

Fox was the only genius in our political life at that time, while Pitt

was a mere shadow in comparison, though it is fair to state that the

former always believed that he and Pitt would have made a workable

combination. As to the rest, they were pretty much on the level of the

Lilliputians with whom the late traveller, Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, had

such intimate and troublesome relations. The book by the Dean of St.

Patrick's, "Gulliver's Travels," is a perfect caricature of the

political dwarfs of his time, and vividly represents the men who

misruled this country in George III's reign. But the Dean's laughable

history of the pompous antics of the Lilliputians is a picture which

describes the constitution of our present administration who are

managing the critical affairs of the nation so ill that disaster is

inevitable in many forms, seen and unseen. The administrative machine

is clogged with experimental human odds and ends who have neither wit,

knowledge, nor wisdom to fill the post allotted to them, and the

appalling thought is that the nation as a whole is being blustered by

the intriguers who are forcing every national interest into certain

destruction. Truly the Lilliputians are a plague on all human

interests, _real_ patriotism, and capacity: always mischievous, always

incapable, just the same now as when, in the eighteenth century, their

type forced a peaceful and neutral Power into war because they refused

to yield their fleet to them; always seeing things that do not exist,

and foreboding perils that would never have come but for their

dwarfish interference. They discovered in their flights of frenzy and

fancy that Napoleon intended to take possession by force of the Danish

fleet, when, as a matter of fact, he had never shown any indication,

by word or thought, of committing an act so unjust and hostile to his

own interests. A strong point in his policy was to keep Denmark on

terms of friendly neutrality. Moreover, he was not, as many writers

have said (in loyalty to fashion), an unscrupulous breaker of

treaties. It was an unworthy act of the British Government to send Mr.

Jackson as their representative to bully the Danes into giving up

their fleet to the British, on the plea that they had learned by

reports through various channels what Napoleon's intentions were.

Count Bernsdorf, to whom Jackson insolently conveyed the nightmare of

his Government, very properly raged back at him that "the Danish

Government had no such information, and that he was adducing false

reports and mere surmises quite unworthy of credit to fill the measure

of British injustice in forcing Denmark into a ruinous war. It was

folly to suppose that Napoleon could gain anything by throwing Norway

and Denmark into an alliance with England and Sweden." Then he adds,

with a dignified sense of wrong, "that the Regent knew how to defend

his neutrality." "It might be possible," retorts Mr. Jackson, "though

appearances are against that supposition, that the Danish Government

_did not wish_ to lend itself to hostile views; still, it could not

resist France." Then Bernsdorf, who has right on his side, said in

accents of crushing anger, "So! because you think Napoleon has the

intention of wounding us in the tenderest part, you would struggle

with him for priority and be the first to do the deed?" "Yes,"

responds the distinguished representative of the upholders of the

rights of nations, "Great Britain would insist upon a pledge of

amity." "What pledge," demands the Count. "The pledge of uniting the

Danish forces to those of Great Britain," is the reply.

It will be seen that nothing short of vassalism will satisfy the

policy laid down by the stupid emancipationists of downtrodden

nations, as represented by the impressive effrontery of the noble

Jackson. What a terrible piece of wooden-headed history was the effort

to force Denmark to break her neutrality or make war on her! They

seized Zealand, and because the Prince Regent refused to agree to

their perfidy, they kept possession of it. The Prince sent written

instructions to burn all the ships and stores, but the messenger was

captured and the faithful person to whom the delivery of the document

was entrusted swallowed it (i.e. swallowed the instructions).

Copenhagen had been bombarded and practically reduced to destruction

by Nelson, who had settled with the Danes on favourable British terms,

one of the conditions being that they were to leave with their booty

in six weeks. The Regent subsequently declared war and outwitted the

British designs (so it is said) on Zealand.

Castlereagh sought the aid of Lord Cathcart to find a dodge by which

his Government could inveigle the Danes to commit a breach of the

Convention, but the latter stood firm by the conditions, and the

commanders, being disgusted with the whole affair, declined to aid

their Chiefs in the Government in any act of double dealing. But they

had the Emperor Alexander of Russia to deal with. He offered to act as

intermediary between Great Britain and France in order to bring about

an honourable peace. The British Government refused, and it is stated

on incontrovertible authority that Alexander was furious, and

upbraided the British with having used troops, which should have been

sent to Russia's aid, to crush Denmark. The outrage of attacking a

small State which was at peace and with which she had no quarrel was

powerfully denounced by Alexander. He accused the British Government

"of a monstrous violation of straight dealing, by ruining Denmark in

the Baltic, which it knew was closed to foreign hostilities under a

Russian guarantee."

This caused Alexander to break off relations with Great Britain and

annul all treaties he had with her. Canning feebly replied to the

Russian Emperor's taunts, and, amongst other things, accused him of

throwing over the King of the Huns. No wonder that Russia and some of

the other Powers resented the perfidious conduct of British statesmen,

employing British military and naval forces to overthrow and destroy

not only a friendly Power, but one of the smallest and most strictly

neutral States in Europe! Alexander jibed at them for using their

resources for this unjust purpose, instead of sending them to help him

when he was being so desperately driven to defeat by Napoleon. What a

loutish trick it was to imagine that any real political or practical

benefit could be derived from it! The seizure of the Danish fleet was

a low-down act, for which those who were responsible should have been

pilloried. The reasons given could not be sustained at the time, and

still remain entirely unsupported by fact. There is no more

disgraceful proceeding to be found in the pages of history than our

raid on this small and highly honourable, inoffensive, and brave

people.

This bad statesmanship was deplorable. It set the spirit of butchery

raging. It made a new enemy for ourselves, and in an economic sense

added hundreds of thousands to our national debt, without deriving a

vestige of benefit from either a military or political point of view.

It undoubtedly prolonged the war, as all those squint-eyed enterprises

are certain to do. It made us unpopular and mistrusted, and had no

effect in damaging Napoleon's activities, nor of taking a single ally

from him. There are occasions when nations have forced upon them cruel

stratagems and alternatives, revolting in their abominable

unworthiness, but in the case I am discussing I have found no

substantial justification, nor has the deed been backed up to now or

supported by a single _real_ authority. Nothing but condemnation still

hangs round the memory of those hapless ministers who made the world

so full of misery. I repeat, the greatest of all perils is to have a

Government composed of men whose brains are full of kinks, and who do

not reach beyond the bounds of basing their policy on the idea that

some foreigner or other has designs on our national wealth, our trade,

or our vast protectorates. In recent years that view has been

dissipated, and the plan of broadening the national goodwill to men

has been adopted and encouraged by a body of sound, unpretentious

thinkers who have taken pains to train important gifts in the art of

good government in all its varied aspects and international

complexities. The whole public have had to pay appalling penalties in

the past because an impulsive handful of the population is of opinion

that self-advertising, harum-scarum politicians, in and out of office,

are the geniuses who make and keep prosperity. This uncontrolled,

emotional trend of thought comes in cycles and is unerringly followed

by bitter disillusionment. It was so during the wars at the beginning

of the last century, and it is so now. We always reflect after the

tragedy has been consummated. Safe and astute administrators are

always termed the "old gang" by the political amateurs, and the

calamity is that a large public is so often carried away by the

flighty delusions of the real cranks who style themselves the saviours

of their country. At the present time we have as sure an example as

ever the known world has witnessed of the awful disaster the

resignation of the "old gang" has been to the whole of the Powers

interested in this world-war, especially to our own country. We shall

realize this more fully by and by when the naked truth presents

itself. The very people who are conspicuously responsible for the

destruction of unity always bellow the loudest to maintain it after

they have been the high conspirators in breaking it, aided by their

guilty followers. What bitter lessons this land of ours has been

subjected to in other days! For twenty years the country was kept in

the vortex of a raging war, with no more justification than giving Mr.

Jackson instructions that the one imperative idea to keep in his mind

was to take possession of the Danish fleet. Nothing was to stand in

the way of this great adventure, shameless though it might be.

Lord Malmesbury writes in his diary: "Capture of Danish fleet by

surprise on account of most undoubted information received from the

Prince Regent of Portugal of Bonaparte's intention to use the

Portuguese and Danish fleets for invasion of England. First hint of

the plan given by the Prince of Wales to the Duke of Portland. The

Portuguese refused the demand, and told the British Government of it;

the Danes accepted, kept silence, and afterwards denied it." The entry

in Malmesbury's diary has been proved to be a string of pure

inventions, for which he or some other informants are responsible. I

have said no record has been left to show that Napoleon ever had any

intention of occupying the ports of Holstein or of using the Danish

fleet for the invasion of Great Britain and Ireland. Members of

Parliament in the House of Commons and members of the House of Lords

proved beyond question that ministers' statements, taking the dates

into account, were entirely erroneous. Canning defended the sending of

the expedition, which was natural, as he was one of the principal

advocates of it. But the House would stand none of his tricks of

evasion or repudiation. He, like some more modern ministers, ventured

on the hazardous plan of deceiving Parliament, and, as was said at the

time, setting fair dealing at defiance. Canning, like all tricksters,

read extracts from documents, authentic and otherwise, to prove that

Denmark was hostile to Britain, but when a demand was made for their

inspection, he impudently refused to allow the very documents he had

based his case of justification on to be scrutinized, and in

consequence no other conclusion could be arrived at than that he was

unscrupulously misleading the country. In fact, the Government's case

was so bad it would not bear the light of God's day!

I venture to say that Mr. Fox knew more of the character, political

intricacies, and ambitions of the French race than any public man or

writer of history of his own or in subsequent years. He always based

his conclusions on a sound logical point. He was an accurate thinker,

who refused to form his judgments on light, faulty and inaccurate

newspaper paragraphs about what was going on around him. He was

opposed to Pitt and his supporters' policy of carrying on war with

France. He wanted peace, but they wanted the Bourbons, because the

Bourbon section in France and the old autocracy in his own and other

kingly countries were opposed to the new ruler the masses in France

had chosen. He ridiculed the folly of our mental nonentities for

"making such a fuss about acknowledging the new Emperor. May not the

people give their own Magistrate the name they choose?" he asks. "On

what logical grounds did we claim the right to revoke by the force of

arms the selection by the French people of a ruler on whom they wished

to bestow the title of Emperor?" Fox poured lavishly his withering

contempt on those miscreants who arrogantly claimed the right to be

consulted (for that is practically what their war policy amounted to)

as to who the French should put on the throne and what his title

should be. They had acknowledged Napoleon in the capacity of First

Consul, but they shuddered at the consequences to the human race of

having an Emperor sprung upon them whose glory was putting kingship

into obscurity. Besides, an Emperor who combined humble origin with

democratic genius and ambition created by the Revolution was a

challenge to the legitimacy of the Divine Right of Kings and a

reversal of the order of ages. George III raged at Pitt for including

Fox in his Ministry when he was asked to form a Government. "Does Mr.

Pitt," said he, "not know that Mr. Fox was of all persons most

offensive to him?" "Had not Fox always cheered the popular Government

of France, and had he not always advocated peace with bloodstained

rebels? And be it remembered the indecorous language he had frequently

used against his sovereign, and consider his influence over the Prince

of Wales. Bring whom you like, Mr. Pitt, but Fox never."

George III, King by the Grace of God, relented somewhat in his dislike

of Fox before the latter died, and his wayward son, the Prince of

Wales, said "that his father was well pleased with Mr. Fox in all

their dealings after he came into office." It is an amazing form of

intelligence that commits a nation to join in a war against another

for having brought about a revolution and for creating their first

soldier-statesman an "Emperor," and ranks him and his compatriots as

"bloodstained rebels." To class Napoleon as a bloodstained rebel and

to put him on a level with the Robespierres and the Dantons is an

historic outrage of the truth. He had nothing whatever to do with

bringing about the Revolution, though his services saved it, and out

of the terrible tumult and wreck superhumanly re-created France and

made her the envy of the modern world. The great defender of the

Rights of Kings and of the colossal European fabric was appealed to by

the man whom George III associated with the "bloodstained rebels" to

come to some common understanding so that the shedding of blood might

cease, but that robust advocate of peace (!) contemptuously ignored

his appeals to negotiate. In 1805 he was raised to the Imperial

dignity, and one of his first acts was to write with his own hand that

famous letter which I have previously quoted, pleading, with majestic

dignity, for the King of England, in the name of humanity, to

co-operate with him in a way that will bring about friendly relations

between the two Governments and the spilling of blood to an end. The

King "by the Grace of God" and his horde of bloodsucking, incompetent

ministers insulted the French nation and the great captain who ruled

over its destinies by sending through Lord Mulgrave an insolent,

hypocritical reply to the French ministers.

The rage of war continued for another decade. If George III yearned

for peace as he and his ministers pretended, why did the King not

write a courteous autograph letter back to Napoleon, even though he

regarded him as an inferior and a mere military adventurer? The nation

had to pay a heavy toll in blood and money in order that the

assumptions and dignity of this insensate monarch might be maintained,

whose abhorrence of "bloodstained rebels" did not prevent him and his

equally insensate advisers from plunging the American colonists into a

bloody rebellion, which ended so gloriously for them and so

disastrously for the motherland. They had asked for reforms that were

palpably reasonable and necessary, and received insulting replies to

their courteous demands, which compelled them to take up arms against

the King of England, with a vow that they would not sheathe the sword

until they had won complete independence from the arrogant autocracy

that had driven them to war.

They were led by the noble genius of George Washington and Dr.

Franklin, who were in turn strongly supported by and united to

colleagues of high constructive and administrative talents. Their task

was long and fierce, but the gallant, elusive Washington led them

through the tremendous struggle to victory, which culminated in

founding the greatest and best constituted of all republics, whose

sons are fighting side by side with the descendants of those who were

forced into fighting their own race, through the maladministration of

the King and his guilty Government, at the head of which was the

genial but ultra-reactionary Lord North, who was a special favourite

of George because he was accommodating; and indeed, all the King's

friends were reactionary and dangerous to the real interests of the

State when in power. The King's terrific responsibility for the great

calamities that befell the country during his reign can only be

absolved by the knowledge that he was subject to fits of prolonged

lunacy; in fact, it may be said that even in his saner periods his

acts were frequently those of an idiot. Though he cannot be accused of

lacking in integrity, he disliked men who were possessed of that

virtue, coupled with enlightened views, having anything to do with the

government of the State. In short, he was totally unsuited to govern

at any time, but especially when the atmosphere was charged with

violent human convulsions. He loved lick-spittles, because they did

his will for value received in various sordid forms, and, as I have

said, he loathed the incorruptible and brilliant Charles James Fox,

because he refused to support his fatal policies and that of the

cocksparrow members of his Government, who from time to time

threatened the very foundations of our national existence.

The more George persisted, the louder became Fox's protests. Posterity

can never accurately estimate how much it owes to statesmen who acted

with Fox, but the influences the King had behind him were too

formidable for Fox to grapple with. He would have saved us from the

fratricidal war with America, and from the unpardonable wickedness of

involving the country in the wars with France, who was fighting out

her own prodigious destiny on the Continent, which was no concern of

ours, except that the sane policy of the King and his Government

should have been to encourage the democratizing of the Continental

States. It was no love of liberty, or for the people, or for reforms

of any kind, that led George III and his satellites to wage war

against the man of the French Revolution. It was the fear of placing

more power in the hands of the people and allowing less to remain in

his own. But the main fear of the King and his autocratic subjects was

lest Napoleon would become so powerful that he would destroy the whole

monarchy of Europe! It was the view of small-minded men. Even Napoleon

had his limitations, even if this had been his object. But there was

no symptom, except that of panic, to justify the assertion that he

ever intended to include war on the United Kingdom in his policy.

There never was a truer statement made by the Emperor than "C'est avec

des hochets qu'on mène les hommes"; which is, "Men are led by

trifles." Hence we went to war with him, and the result of it is that

the race that he mistrusted most and saw the necessity of keeping

severely within limits has risen up against civilization and created a

world-war into which we and our Allies have been obliged to enter in

self-defence. That is the inevitable penalty we are having to pay for

the action we took in helping the Germans to destroy France. I know it

is asserted it was not France but Napoleon whose power they aimed at

breaking, but the one could not be broken without the other.