ambition, to take a sane and balanced view of the aims which German
policy was setting before itself during these years of experiment and
preparation. What did average German opinion mean by the phrase
Weltmacht, world-power, which had become one of the commonplaces of its
political discussions? We may safely assume that by the mass of men the
implications of the term were never very clearly analysed; and that, if
they had been analysable, the results of the analysis would have been
widely different in 1890 and in 1914, except for a few fanatics and
extremists. Was the world-power at which Germany was aiming a real
supremacy over the whole world? In a vague way, no doubt, important
bodies of opinion held that such a supremacy was the ultimate destiny
of Germany in the more or less distant future; and the existence of
such a belief, however undefined, is important because it helped to
colour the attitude of the German mind towards more immediately
practical problems of national policy. But as a programme to be
immediately put into operation, world-power was not conceived in this
sense by any but a few Pan-German fanatics; and even they would have
recognised that of course other states, and even other world-powers,
would certainly survive the most successful German war, though they
would have to submit (for their own good) to Germany's will. Again, did
the demand for world-power mean no more than that Germany must have
extra-European territories, like Britain or France? She already
possessed such territories, though on a smaller scale than her rivals.
Did the claim mean, then, that her dominions must be as extensive and
populous as (say) those of Britain? Such an aim could only be obtained
if she could succeed in overthrowing all her rivals, at once or in
succession. And if she did that, she would then become, whatever her
intentions, a world-power in the first and all-embracing sense. It is
probably true that the German people, and even the extreme Pan-Germans,
did not definitely or consciously aim at world-supremacy. But they had
in the back of their minds the conviction that this was their ultimate
destiny, and in aiming at 'world-power' in a narrower sense, they so
defined their end as to make it impossible of achievement unless the
complete mastery of Europe (which, as things are, means the mastery of
most of the world) could be first attained. Certainly the ruling
statesmen of Germany must have been aware of the implications of their
doctrine of world-power. They were aware of it in 1914, when they
deliberately struck for the mastery of Europe; they must have been
aware of it in 1890, when they began to lay numerous plans and projects
in all parts of the world, such as were bound to arouse the fears and
suspicions of their rivals.
It is necessary to dwell for a little upon these plans and projects of
the decade 1890-1900, because they illustrate the nature of the peril
which was looming over an unconscious world. It would be an error to
suppose that all these schemes were systematically and continuously
pursued with the whole strength of the German state. They appealed to
different bodies of opinion. Some of them were eagerly taken up for a
time, and then allowed to fall into the background, though seldom
wholly dropped. But taken as a whole they showed the existence of a
restless and insatiable ambition without very clearly defined aims, and
an eagerness to make use of every opening for the extension of power,
which constituted a very dangerous frame of mind in a nation so strong,
industrious, and persistent as the German nation.
In spite of the disappointing results of colonisation in Africa, the
German colonial enthusiasts hoped that something suitably grandiose
might yet be erected there: if the Belgian Congo could somehow be
acquired, and if the Portuguese would agree to sell their large
territories on the east and west coasts, a great empire of Tropical
Africa might be brought into being. This vision has not been abandoned:
it is the theme of many pamphlets published during the course of the
war, and if Germany were to be able to impose her own terms, all the
peoples of Central Africa might yet hope to have extended to them the
blessings of German government as they have been displayed in the
Cameroons and in the South-West.
In the 'nineties there seemed also to be hope in South Africa, where
use might be made of the strained relations between Britain and the
Boer Republics. German South-West Africa formed a convenient base for
operations in this region: it was equipped with a costly system of
strategic railways, far more elaborate than the commerce of the colony
required. There is no doubt that President Kruger was given reason to
anticipate that he would receive German help: in 1895 (before the
Jameson Raid) Kruger publicly proclaimed that the time had come 'to
form ties of the closest friendship between Germany and the Transvaal,
ties such as are natural between fathers and children'; in 1896 (after
the Jameson Raid) came the Emperor's telegram congratulating President
Kruger upon having repelled the invaders 'without recourse to the aid
of friendly powers'; in 1897 a formal treaty of friendship and commerce
was made between Germany and the Orange Free State, with which the
Transvaal had just concluded a treaty of perpetual alliance. And
meanwhile German munitions of war were pouring into the Transvaal
through Delagoa Bay. But when the crisis came, Germany did nothing. She
could not, because the British fleet stood in the way.
South America, again, offered a very promising field. There were many
thousands of German settlers, especially in southern Brazil: the
Pan-German League assiduously laboured to organise these settlers, and
to fan their patriotic zeal, by means of schools, books, and
newspapers. But the Monroe Doctrine stood in the way of South American
annexations. Perhaps Germany might have been ready to see how far she
could go with the United States, the least military of great powers.
But there was good reason to suppose that the British fleet would have
to be reckoned with; and a burglarious expedition to South America with
that formidable watchdog at large and unmuzzled was an uninviting
prospect.
In the Far East the prospects of immediate advance seemed more
favourable, since the Chinese Empire appeared to be breaking up. The
seizure of Kiao-chau in 1897 was a hopeful beginning. But the
Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902 formed a serious obstacle to any
vigorous forward policy in this region. Once more the British fleet
loomed up as a barrier.
Yet another dream, often referred to by the pamphleteers though never
brought to overt action by the government, was the dream that the rich
empire of the Dutch in the Malay Archipelago should be acquired by
Germany. Holland herself, according to all the political ethnologists
of the Pan-German League, ought to be part of the German Empire; and if
so, her external dominions would follow the destiny of the ruling
state. But this was a prospect to be talked about, not to be worked for
openly. It would naturally follow from a successful European war.
A more immediately practicable field of operations was to be found in
the Turkish Empire. It was here that the most systematic endeavours
were made during this period: the Berlin-Bagdad scheme, which was to be
the keystone of the arch of German world-power, had already taken shape
before our period closed, though the rest of the world was strangely
blind to its significance. Abstractly regarded, a German dominion over
the wasted and misgoverned lands of the Turkish Empire would have meant
a real advance of civilisation, and would have been no more
unjustifiable than the British control of Egypt or India. This feeling
perhaps explained the acquiescence with which the establishment of
German influence in Turkey was accepted by most of the powers. They had
yet to realise that it was not pursued as an end in itself, but as a
means to further domination.
But neither the great Berlin-Bagdad project, nor any of the other
dreams and visions, had been definitely put into operation during the
decade 1890-1900. Germany was as yet feeling the way, preparing the
ground, and building up her resources both military and industrial.
Perhaps the main result which emerged from the tentative experiments of
these years was that at every point the obstacle was the sprawling
British Empire, and the too-powerful British fleet. The conviction grew
that the overthrow of this fat and top-heavy colossus was the necessary
preliminary to the creation of the German world-state.
This was a doctrine which had long been preached by the chief political
mentor of modern Germany, Treitschke, who died in 1896. He was never
tired of declaring that Britain was a decadent and degenerate state,
that her empire was an unreal empire, and that it would collapse before
the first serious attack. It would break up because it was not based
upon force, because it lacked organisation, because it was a medley of
disconnected and discordant fragments, worshipping an undisciplined
freedom. That it should ever have come into being was one of the
paradoxes of history; for it was manifestly not due to straightforward
brute force, like the German Empire; and the modern German mind could
not understand a state which did not rest upon power, but upon consent,
which had not been built up, like Prussia, by the deliberate action of
government, but which had grown almost at haphazard, through the
spontaneous activity of free and self-governing citizens. Treitschke
and his disciples could only explain the paradox by assuming that since
it had not been created by force, it must have been created by low
cunning; and they invented the theory that British statesmen had for
centuries pursued an undeviating and Machiavellian policy of keeping
the more virile states of Europe at cross-purposes with one another by
means of the cunning device called the Balance of Power, while behind
the backs of these tricked and childlike nations Britain was meanly
snapping up all the most desirable regions of the earth. According to
this view it was in some mysterious way Britain's fault that France and
Germany were not the best of friends, and that Russia had been
alienated from her ancient ally. But the day of reckoning would come
when these mean devices would no longer avail, and the pampered,
selfish, and overgrown colossus would find herself faced by
hard-trained and finely tempered Germany, clad in her shining armour.
Then, at the first shock, India would revolt; and the Dutch of South
Africa would welcome their German liberators; and the great colonies,
to which Britain had granted a degree of independence that no virile
state would ever have permitted, would shake off the last shreds of
subordination; and the ramshackle British Empire would fall to pieces;
and Germany would emerge triumphant, free to pursue all her great
schemes, and to create a lasting world-power, based upon Force and
System and upon 'a healthy egoism,' not upon 'irrational
sentimentalities' about freedom and justice.
These were the doctrines and calculations of Realpolitik. They were
becoming more and more prevalent in the 'nineties. They seem definitely
to have got the upper hand in the direction of national policy during
the last years of the century, when Germany refused to consider the
projects of disarmament put forward at the Hague in 1899, when the
creation of the German navy was begun by the Navy Acts of 1898 and
1900, and when the Emperor announced that the future of Germany lay
upon the water, and that hers must be the admiralty of the Atlantic. At
the moment when the conquest of the world by European civilisation was
almost complete, two conceptions of the meaning of empire, the
conception of brutal domination pursued for its own sake, which has
never been more clearly displayed than in the administration of the
German colonies, and the conception of trusteeship, which had slowly
emerged during the long development of the British Empire, stood forth
already in sharp antithesis.
The dreadful anticipation of coming conflict weighed upon the world.
France, still suffering from the wounds of 1870, was always aware of
it. Russia, threatened by German policy in the Balkans, was more and
more clearly realising it. But Britain was extraordinarily slow to
awaken to the menace. As late as 1898 Mr. Joseph Chamberlain was
advocating an alliance between Britain, Germany, and America to
maintain the peace of the world; and Cecil Rhodes, when he devised his
plan for turning Oxford into the training-ground of British youth from
all the free nations of the empire, found a place in his scheme for
German as well as for American students. The telegram to President
Kruger in 1896 caused only a passing sensation. The first real
illumination came with the extraordinary display of German venom
against Britain during the South African war, and with the ominous
doubling of the German naval programme adopted in the midst of that
war, in 1900. But even this made no profound impression. The majority
of the British people declined to believe that a 'great and friendly
nation,' or its rulers, could deliberately enter upon a scheme of such
unbridled ambition and of such unprovoked aggression.
VIII
THE BRITISH EMPIRE AMID THE WORLD-POWERS, 1878-1914
Throughout the period of rivalry for world-power which began in 1878
the British Empire had continued to grow in extent, and to undergo a
steady change in its character and organisation.
In the partition of Africa, Britain, in spite of the already immense
extent of her domains, obtained an astonishingly large share. The
protectorates of British East Africa, Uganda, Nigeria, Nyasaland, and
Somaliland gave her nearly 25,000,000 new negro subjects, and these,
added to her older settlements of Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast,
whose area was now extended, outnumbered the whole population of the
French African empire. But besides these tropical territories she
acquired control over two African regions so important that they
deserve separate treatment: Egypt, on the one hand, and the various
extensions of her South African territories on the other. When the
partition of Africa was completed, the total share of Britain amounted
to 3,500,000 square miles, with a population of over 50,000,000 souls,
and it included the best regions of the continent: the British Empire,
in Africa alone, was more than three times as large as the colonial
empire of Germany, which was almost limited to Africa.
It may well be asked why an empire already so large should have taken
also the giant's share of the last continent available for division
among the powers of Europe. No doubt this was in part due to the
sentiment of imperialism, which was stronger in Britain during this
period than ever before. But there were other and more powerful causes.
In the first place, during the period 1815-78 British influence and
trade had been established in almost every part of Africa save the
central ulterior, and no power had such definite relations with various
native tribes, many of which desired to come under the protectorate of
a power with whom the protection of native rights and customs was an
established principle. In the second place, Britain was the only
country which already possessed in Africa colonies inhabited by
enterprising European settlers, and the activity of these settlers
played a considerable part in the extension of the British African
dominions. And in the third place, since the continental powers had
adopted the policy of fiscal protection, the annexation of a region by
any of them meant that the trade of other nations might be restricted
or excluded; the annexation of a territory by Britain meant that it
would be open freely and on equal terms to the trade of all nations.
For this reason the trading interests in Britain, faced by the
possibility of exclusion from large areas with which they had carried
on traffic, were naturally anxious that as much territory as possible
should be brought under British supremacy, in order that it might
remain open to their trade.
It is the main justification for British annexations that they opened
and developed new markets for all the world, instead of closing them;
and it was this fact chiefly which made the acquisition of such vast
areas tolerable to the other trading powers. The extension of the
British Empire was thus actually a benefit to all the non-imperial
states, especially to such active trading countries as Italy, Holland,
Scandinavia, or America. If at any time Britain should reverse her
traditional policy, and reserve for her own merchants the trade of the
immense areas which have been brought under her control, nothing is
more certain than that the world would protest, and protest with
reason, against the exorbitant and disproportionate share which has
fallen to her. Only so long as British control means the open door for
all the world will the immense extent of these acquisitions continue to
be accepted without protest by the rest of the world.
In the new protectorates of this period Britain found herself faced by
a task with which she had never had to deal on so gigantic a scale,
though she had a greater experience in it than any other nation: the
task of governing justly whole populations of backward races, among
whom white men could not permanently dwell, and whom they visited only
for the purposes of commercial exploitation. The demands of industry
for the raw materials of these countries involved the employment of
labour on a very large scale; but the native disliked unfamiliar toil,
and as his wants were very few, could easily earn enough to keep him in
the idleness he loved. Slavery was the customary mode of getting
uncongenial tasks performed in Africa; but against slavery European
civilisation had set its face. Again, the ancient unvarying customs
whereby the rights and duties of individual tribesmen were enforced,
and the primitive societies held together, were often inconsistent with
Western ideas, and tended to break down altogether on contact with
Western industrial methods. How were the needs of industry to be
reconciled with justice to the subject peoples? How were their customs
to be reconciled with the legal ideas of their new masters? How were
these simple folk to be taught the habits of labour? How were the
resources of their land to be developed without interference with their
rights of property and with the traditional usages arising from them?
These were problems of extreme difficulty, which faced the rulers of
all the new European empires. The attempt to solve them in a
high-handed way, and with a view solely to the interests of the ruling
race, led to many evils: it produced the atrocities of the Congo; it
produced in the German colonies the practical revival of slavery, the
total disregard of native customs, and the horrible sequence of wars
and slaughters of which we have already spoken. In the British
dominions a long tradition and a long experience saved the subject
peoples from these iniquities. We dare not claim that there were no
abuses in the British lands; but at least it can be claimed that
government has always held it to be its duty to safeguard native
rights, and to prevent the total break-up of the tribal system which
could alone hold these communities together. The problem was not fully
solved; perhaps it is insoluble. But at least the native populations
were not driven to despair, and were generally able to feel that they
were justly treated. 'Let me tell you,' a Herero is recorded to have
written from British South Africa to his kinsmen under German rule,
'Let me tell you that the land of the English is a good land, since
there is no ill-treatment. White and black stand on the same level.
There is much work and much money, and your overseer does not beat you,
or if he does he breaks the law and is punished.' There was a very
striking contrast between the steady peace which has on the whole
reigned in all the British dominions, and the incessant warfare which
forms the history of the German colonies. The tradition of protection
of native rights, established during the period 1815-78, and the
experience then acquired, stood the British in good stead. During the
ordeal of the Great War it has been noteworthy that there has been no
serious revolt among these recently conquered subjects; and one of the
most touching features of the war has been the eagerness of chiefs and
their peoples to help the protecting power, and the innumerable humble
gifts which they have spontaneously offered. Much remains to be done
before a perfect solution is found for the problems of these dominions
of yesterday. But it may justly be claimed that trusteeship, not
domination, has been the spirit in which they have been administered;
and that this is recognised by their subjects, despite all the mistakes
and defects to which all human governments must be liable in dealing
with a problem so complex.
Administrative problems of a yet more complex kind were raised in the
two greatest acquisitions of territory made by Britain during these
years, in Egypt and the Soudan, and in South Africa. The events
connected with these two regions have aroused greater controversy than
those connected with any other British dominions; the results of these
events have been more striking, and in different ways more instructive
as to the spirit and methods of British imperialism, than those
displayed in almost any other field; and for these reasons we shall not
hesitate to dwell upon them at some length.
The establishment of British control over Egypt was due to the most
curious chain of unforeseen and unexpected events which even the
records of the British Empire contain. Nominally a part of the Turkish
Empire, Egypt had been in fact a practically independent state, paying
only a small fixed tribute to the Sultan, ever since the remarkable
Albanian adventurer, Mehemet Ali, had established himself as its Pasha
in the confusion following the French occupation (1806). Mehemet Ali
had been an extraordinarily enterprising prince. He had created a
formidable army, had conquered the great desert province of the Soudan
and founded its capital, Khartoum, and had nearly succeeded in
overthrowing the Turkish Empire and establishing his own power in its
stead: during the period 1825-40 he had played a leading role in
European politics. Though quite illiterate, he had posed as the
introducer of Western civilisation into Egypt; but his grandiose and
expensive policy had imposed terrible burdens upon the fellahin
(peasantry), and the heavy taxation which was necessary to maintain his
armies and the spurious civilisation of his capital was only raised by
cruel oppressions.
The tradition of lavish expenditure, met by grinding the peasantry, was
accentuated by Mehemet's successors. It inevitably impoverished the
country. Large loans were raised in the West, to meet increasing
deficits; and the European creditors in course of time found it
necessary to insist that specific revenues should be ear-marked as a
security for their interest, and to claim powers of supervision over
finance. The construction of the Suez Canal (opened 1869), which was
due to the enterprise of the French, promised to bring increased
prosperity to Egypt; but in the meanwhile it involved an immense
outlay. At the beginning of our period Egypt was already on the verge
of bankruptcy, and the Khedive was compelled to sell his holding of
Suez Canal shares, which were shrewdly acquired for Britain by Disraeli.
But financial chaos was not the only evil from which Egypt suffered.
There was administrative chaos also, and this was not diminished by the
special jurisdictions which had been allowed to the various groups of
Europeans settled in the country. The army, unpaid and undisciplined,
was ready to revolt; and above all, the helpless mass of the peasantry
were reduced to the last degree of penury, and exposed to the merciless
and arbitrary severity of the officials, who fleeced them of their
property under the lash. All the trading nations were affected by this
state of anarchy in an important centre of trade; all the creditors of
the Egyptian debt observed it with alarm. But the two powers most
concerned were France and Britain, which between them held most of the
debt, and conducted most of the foreign trade, of Egypt; while to
Britain Egypt had become supremely important, since it now controlled
the main avenue of approach to India.