inaugurating an era of universal peace, it may, I think, be held that,
in spite of the wars which have occurred during the last half century,
not merely an ardent desire for peace, but also a dislike--I may almost
say a genuine horror--of war has grown apace amongst the civilised
nations of the world. The destructiveness of modern weapons of offence,
the fearful personal responsibility devolving on the individuals who
order the first shot to be fired, the complete uncertainty which
prevails as to the naval, military, and political results which will
ensue if the huge armaments of modern States are brought into collision,
the growth of a benevolent, if at times somewhat eccentric
humanitarianism, possibly also the advance of democracy--though it is at
times somewhat too readily assumed that democracies must of necessity be
peaceful--have all contributed to create a public opinion which holds
that to engage in an avoidable war is the worst of political crimes.
This feeling has found expression in the more ready recourse which, as
compared to former times, is now made to arbitration in order to settle
international disputes. Nevertheless, so long as human nature remains
unchanged, and more especially so long as the huge armaments at present
existing are maintained, it is the imperative duty of every
self-respecting nation to provide adequately for its own defence. That
duty is more especially imposed on those nations who, for one reason or
another, have been driven into adopting that policy of expansion, which
is now almost universal. Within the last few years, the United States of
America have abandoned what has been aptly termed their former system of
"industrial monasticism,"[63] whilst in the Far East a new world-power
has suddenly sprung into existence. Speaking as one unit belonging to a
country whose dominions are more extensive and more widely dispersed
than those of any other nation, I entertain a strong opinion that if
Great Britain continues to maintain her present policy of Free Trade--as
I trust will be the case--her means of defence should, within the limits
of human foresight, be such as to render her empire impregnable; and,
further, that should that policy unfortunately be reversed, it will be a
wise precaution that those means of defence should, if possible, be
still further strengthened. But I also entertain an equally strong
opinion that an imperial nation should seek to fortify its position and
to provide guarantees for the durability of its empire, not merely by
rendering itself, so far as is possible, impregnable, but also by using
its vast world-power in such a manner as to secure in some degree the
moral acquiescence of other nations in its _imperium_, and thus provide
an antidote--albeit it may only be a partial antidote--against the
jealousy and emulation which its extensive dominions are calculated to
incite.
I am aware that an argument of this sort is singularly liable to
misrepresentation. Militant patriotism rejects it with scorn. It is said
to involve an ignoble degree of truckling to foreign nations. It
involves nothing of the kind. I should certainly be the last to
recommend anything approaching to pusillanimity in the conduct of the
foreign affairs of my country. If I thought that the introduction of a
policy of Protection was really demanded in the interests of the
inhabitants of the United Kingdom, I should warmly advocate it, whatever
might be the effect produced on the public opinion of other countries.
British Free Traders do not advocate the cause which they have at heart
in order to benefit the countries which send their goods to Great
Britain, but because they think it advantageous to their own country to
procure certain foreign products without any artificial enhancement of
price.[64] If they are right in coming to this conclusion, it is surely
an incidental advantage of much importance that a policy of Free Trade,
besides being advantageous to the United Kingdom, tends to give an
additional element of stability to the British Empire and to preserve
the peace of the world.
From the dawn of history, uncontrolled commercialism has been one of the
principal causes of misgovernment, and more especially of the
misgovernment of subject races. The early history of the Spaniards in
South and Central America, as well as the more recent history of other
States, testify to the truth of this generalisation. Similarly,
Trade--that is to say exclusive trade--far from tending to promote
peace, has not infrequently been accompanied by aggression, and has
rather tended to promote war. Tariff wars, which are the natural outcome
of the protective system, have been of frequent occurrence, and,
although I am not at all prepared to admit that under no circumstances
is a policy of retaliation justifiable, it is certain that that policy,
carried to excess, has at times endangered European peace. There is
ample proof that the Tariff war between Russia and Germany in 1893, "was
regarded by both responsible parties as likely to lead to a state of
things dangerous to the peace of Europe."[65] Professor Dietzel, in his
very remarkable and exhaustive work on _Retaliatory Duties_, shows very
clearly that the example of Tariff wars is highly contagious. Speaking
of the events which occurred in 1902 and subsequent years, he says:
"Germany set the bad example.... Russia, Austria-Hungary, Roumania,
Switzerland, Portugal, Holland, Servia, followed suit.... An
international arming epidemic broke out. Everywhere, indeed, it was
said: We are not at all desirous of a Tariff war. We are acting only on
the maxim so often proclaimed among us, _Si vis pacem, para bellum_."
Can it be doubted that there is a distinct connection between these
Tariff wars and the huge armaments which are now maintained by every
European state? The connection is, in fact, very close. Tariff wars
engender the belief that wars carried on by shot and shell may not
improbably follow. They thus encourage, and even necessitate, the costly
preparations for war which weigh so heavily, not only on the
industries, but also on the moral and intellectual progress of the
world.
Mr. Oliver, in his interesting biography of Alexander Hamilton, gives a
very remarkable instance of the menace to peace arising, even amongst a
wholly homogeneous community, from the creation of hostile tariffs. The
first step which the thirteen States of America took after they had
acquired their independence was "to indulge themselves in the costly
luxury of an internecine tariff war.... Pennsylvania attacked Delaware.
Connecticut was oppressed by Rhode Island and New York.... It was a
dangerous game, ruinous in itself, and, behind the Custom-House
officers, men were beginning to furbish up the locks of their
muskets.... At one time war between Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York
seemed all but inevitable."
To sum up all I have to say on this subject--I do not for a moment
suppose that Universal Free Trade--even if the adoption of such a policy
were conceivable--would inaugurate an era of universal and permanent
peace. Whatever fiscal policy be adopted by the great commercial nations
of the world, it is wholly illusory to suppose that the risk of war can
be altogether avoided in the future, any more than has been the case in
the past. But I am equally certain that, whereas exclusive trade tends
to exacerbate international relations, Free Trade, by mutually
enlisting a number of influential material interests in the cause of
peace, tends to ameliorate those relations and thus, _pro tanto_, to
diminish the probability of war. No nation has, of course, the least
right to dictate the fiscal policy of its neighbours, neither has it any
legitimate cause to complain when its neighbours exercise their
unquestionable right to make whatever fiscal arrangements they consider
conducive to their own interests. But the real and ostensible causes of
war are not always identical. When once irritation begins to rankle, and
rival interests clash to an excessive degree, the guns are apt to go off
by themselves, and an adroit diplomacy may confidently be trusted to
discover some plausible pretext for their explosion.
In a speech which I made in London some three years ago, I gave an
example, gathered from facts with which I was intimately acquainted, of
the pacifying influence exerted by adopting a policy of Free Trade in
the execution of a policy of expansion. I may as well repeat it now.
Some twelve years ago the British flag was hoisted in the Soudan side by
side with the Egyptian. Europe tacitly acquiesced. Why did it do so? It
was because a clause was introduced into the Anglo-Egyptian Convention
of 1899, under which no trade preference was to be accorded to any
nation. All were placed on a footing of perfect equality. Indeed, the
whole fiscal policy adopted in Egypt since the British occupation in
1883 has been based on distinctly Free Trade principles. Indirect taxes
have been, in some instances, reduced. Those that remain in force are
imposed, not for protective, but for revenue purposes, whilst in one
important instance--that of cotton goods--an excise duty has been
imposed, in order to avoid the risk of customs duties acting
protectively.
Free Trade mitigates, though it is powerless to remove, international
animosities. Exclusive trade stimulates and aggravates those
animosities. I do not by any means maintain that this argument is by
itself conclusive against the adoption of a policy of Protection, if, on
other grounds, the adoption of such a policy is deemed desirable; but it
is one aspect of the question which, when the whole issue is under
consideration, should not be left out of account.
[Footnote 59: Subsequently published in _The Nineteenth Century and
After_ for September 1910.]
[Footnote 60: _Life of Cobden_, Morley, vol. i. p. 231.]
[Footnote 61: Sir Robert Peel, as is well known, did not fall into this
error, and even Mr. Cobden appears to have recognised so early as 1849
that his original forecasts on this point were too optimistic. Speaking
on January 10, 1849, he said: "At the last stage of the Anti-Corn Law
Agitation, our opponents were driven to this position: 'Free Trade is a
very good thing, but you cannot have it until other countries adopt it
too.' And I used to say: 'If Free Trade be a good thing for us, we will
have it; let others take it if it be a good thing for them; if not, let
them do without it.'"]
[Footnote 62: Hirst, _Life of Friedrich List_, p. 134.]
[Footnote 63: Essay on the Influence of Commerce on International
Conflicts; F. Greenwood, _Ency. Brit._ (Tenth Edition).]
[Footnote 64: In connection with this branch of the question, I wish to
draw attention to the fact that Professor Shield Nicholson, in his
recent brilliant work, _A Project of Empire_, has conclusively shown
that it is a misapprehension to suppose that Adam Smith, in advocating
Free Trade, looked merely to the interests of the consumer, and
neglected altogether those of the producer. Mr. Gladstone's statement on
this subject, made in 1860, is well known.]
[Footnote 65: Reports on the Tariff wars between certain European
States, Parliamentary paper, Commercial, No. 1 (1904), p. 46.]
VI
CHINA
_"The Nineteenth Century and After," May 1913_
Mr. Bland's book, entitled _Recent Events and Present Policies in China_
(1912), is full of instruction not only for those who are specially
concerned in the affairs of China, but also for all who are interested
in watching the new developments which are constantly arising from the
ever-increasing contact between the East and the West.
The Eastern world is at present strewn with the _débris_ of paper
constitutions, which are, or are probably about to become, derelict. The
case of Egypt is somewhat special, and would require separate treatment.
But in Turkey, in Persia, and in China, the epidemic, which is of an
exotic character, appears to be following its normal course.
Constitutions when first promulgated are received with wild enthusiasm.
In Italy, during the most frenzied period of Garibaldian worship, my
old friend, Lear the artist, asked a patriotic inn-keeper, who was in a
wild state of excitement, to give him breakfast, to which the man
replied: "Colazione! Che colazione! Tutto è amore e libertà!" In the
Albanian village in which Miss Durham was residing when the Young Turks
proclaimed their constitution, the Moslem inhabitants expressed great
delight at the news, and forthwith asked when the massacre of the
Giaours--without which a constitution would wholly miss its mark--was to
begin.[66] Similarly, Mr. Bland says that throughout China, although
"the word 'Republic' meant no more to the people at large than the
blessed word 'Mesopotamia,' men embraced each other publicly and wept
for joy at the coming of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."
These ebullitions provoke laughter.
Sed facilis cuivis rigidi censura cachinni.
We Europeans have ourselves passed through much the same phases. Vandal
and others have told us of the Utopia which was created in the minds of
the French when the old régime crashed to the ground. Sydney Smith
caricatured the delusive hopes excited by the passing of the Reform Bill
of 1832, when he said that all the unmarried young women thought that
they would at once get husbands, and that all the schoolboys expected a
heavy fall in the price of jam tarts. A process of disillusionment may
confidently be anticipated in Ireland if the Home Rule Bill becomes law,
and the fairy prospects held out to the Irish people by Mr. Redmond and
the other stage managers of the piece are chilled by the cold shade of
reality.
We English are largely responsible for creating the frame of mind which
is even now luring Young Turks, Chinamen, and other Easterns into the
political wilderness by the display of false signals. We have, indeed,
our Blands in China, our Milners in Egypt, our Miss Durhams in the
Balkan Peninsula, and our Miss Bells in Mesopotamia, who wander far
afield, gleaning valuable facts and laying before their countrymen and
countrywomen conclusions based on acquired knowledge and wide
experience. But their efforts are only partially successful. They are
often shivered on the solid rock of preconceived prejudices, and genuine
but ill-informed sentimentalism. A large section of the English public
are, in fact, singularly wanting in political imagination. Although they
would not, in so many words, admit the truth of the statement, they none
the less act and speak as if sound national development in whatsoever
quarter of the world must of necessity proceed along their own
conventional, insular, and time-honoured lines, and along those lines
alone. There is a whole class of newspaper readers, and also of
newspaper writers, who resemble that eminent but now deceased Member of
Parliament, who told me that during the four hours' railway journey from
Port Said to Cairo he had come to the definite conclusion that Egypt
could not be prosperous because he had observed that there were no
stacks of corn standing in the fields; neither was this conclusion in
any way shaken when it was explained to him that the Egyptians were not
in the habit of erecting corn stacks after the English model. All these
classes readily lend an ear to quack, though often very well-intentioned
politicians, who go about the world preaching that countries can be
regenerated by shibboleths, and that the characters of nations can be
changed by Acts of Parliament. This frame of mind appeals with
irresistible force to the untrained Eastern habit of thought. T'ang--a
leading Chinese Republican--Mr. Bland says, "like all educated Chinese,
believes in the magic virtue of words and forms of government in making
a nation wise and strong by Acts of Parliament." And what poor,
self-deluded T'ang is saying and thinking in Canton is said and thought
daily by countless Ahmeds, Ibrahims, and Rizas in the bazaars of
Constantinople, Cairo, and Teheran.
What has Mr. Bland to tell us of all the welter of loan-mongering,
rococo constitution-tinkering, Confucianism, and genuine if at times
misdirected philanthropy, which is now seething in the Chinese
melting-pot?
In the first place, he has to say that the main obstacle to all real
progress in China is one that cannot be removed by any change in the
form of government, whether the ruling spirit be a full-fledged
Republican of the Sun Yat-Sen type, aided by a number of "imitation
foreigners," as they are termed by their countrymen, or a savage, albeit
statesmanlike "Old Buddha," who, at the close of a life stained by all
manner of blood-guiltiness, at last turned her weary face towards
Western reform as the only hope of saving her country and her dynasty.
The main disease is not political, and is incapable of being cured by
the most approved constitutional formulae. It is economic. Polygamy,
aided by excessive philo-progenitiveness, the result of
ancestor-worship, has produced a highly congested population. Vast
masses of people are living in normal times on the verge of starvation.
Hence come famines and savage revolts of the hungry. "Amidst all the
specifics of political leaders," Mr. Bland says, "there has been as yet
hardly a voice raised against marriages of minors or polygamy, and
reckless over-breeding, which are the basic causes of China's chronic
unrest."
The same difficulty, though perhaps in a less acute form, exists in
India. Not only cannot it be remedied by mere philanthropy, but it is
absolutely certain--cruel and paradoxical though it may appear to say
so--that philanthropy enhances the evil. In the days of Akhbar or Shah
Jehan, cholera, famine, and internal strife kept down the population.
Only the fittest survived. Now, internal strife is forbidden, and
philanthropy steps in and says that no single life shall be sacrificed
if science and Western energy or skill can save it. Hence the growth of
a highly congested population, vast numbers of whom are living on a bare
margin of subsistence. I need hardly say that I am not condemning
philanthropy. On the contrary, I hold strongly that an
anti-philanthropic basis of government is not merely degrading and
inhuman, but also fortunately nowadays impracticable. None the less, the
fact that one of the greatest difficulties of governing the teeming
masses in the East is caused by good and humane government should be
recognised. It is too often ignored.
A partial remedy to the state of things now existing in China would be
to encourage emigration; but a resort to this expedient is impossible,
for Europeans and Americans alike, being scared by the prospect of
competing with Chinese cheap labour, which is the only real Yellow
Peril,[67] as also by the demoralisation consequent on a large influx of
Chinamen into their dominions, close their ports to the emigrants. That
Young China should feel this as a gross injustice can be no matter for
surprise. The Chinaman may, with inexorable logic, state his case thus:
"You, Europeans and Americans, insist on my receiving and protecting
your missionaries. I do not want them. I have, in Confucianism, a system
of philosophy, which, whatever you may think of it, suits all my
spiritual requirements, and which has been sufficient to hold Chinese
society together for long centuries past. Nevertheless, I bow to your
wishes. But then surely you ought in justice to allow free entry into
your dominions to my carpenters and bricklayers, of whom I have a large
surplus, of which I should be glad to be rid. Is not your boasted
philanthropy somewhat vicarious, and does not your public morality
savour in some degree of mere opportunist cant?"
To all of which, Europeans and Americans can only reply that the
instinct of self-preservation, which is strong within them, points
clearly to the absolute necessity of excluding the Chinese carpenters
and bricklayers; and, further, as regards the missionaries, that there
can be but one answer, and that in a Christian sense, to the question
asked by jesting Pilate. In effect they say that circumstances alter
cases, and that might is right--a plea which may perhaps suffice to
salve the conscience of an opportunist politician, but ought to appeal
less forcibly to a stern moralist.
Foreign emigration, even if it were possible, would, however, be a mere
palliative. A more thorough and effective remedy would be to facilitate
the dispersion of the population in the congested districts over those
wide tracts of China itself which are suffering in a less degree from
congestion. I conceive that the execution of a policy of this nature
would not be altogether impossible. It could be carried into effect by
improving the means of locomotion, possibly by the construction of
irrigation works on a large scale, and by developing the resources of
the country, which are admittedly very great. But there is one condition
which is essential to the execution of this programme, and that is that
the financial administration of the country should be sufficiently
honest to inspire the confidence of those European investors who alone
can provide the necessary capital. Now, according to Mr. Bland, this
fundamental quality of honesty is not to be found throughout the length
and breadth of China, whether in the ranks of the old Mandarins or in
those of the young Republicans.
The essential virtue of personal integrity [he says], the capacity
to handle public funds with common honesty, has been conspicuously
lacking in Young China. The leopard has not changed his spots; the
sons and brothers of the classical Mandarin remain, in spite of
Western learning, Mandarins by instinct and in practice.
A very close observer of Eastern affairs--Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole--has
said that the East has an extraordinary facility for assimilating all
the worst features of any new civilisation with which it is brought in
contact. This is what has happened in India, in Turkey, in Egypt, and in
Persia. Even in Japan it has yet to be seen whether the old national
virtues will survive prolonged contact with the West. Hear now what Mr.
Bland has to say of China:
Where Young China has cast off the ethical restraints and patriotic
morality of Confucianism, it has failed to assimilate, or even to
understand, the moral foundations of Europe's civilisation. It has
exchanged its old lamp for a new, but it has not found the oil,
which the new vessel needs, to lighten the darkness withal.
In the opinion of so highly qualified an authority as Prince Ito, "the
sentiments of foreign educated Young China are hopelessly out of touch
with the masses." But while there has been alienation from the ideals of
the East, there has been no real approach to the ideals of the West.
Education at Harvard or Oxford may imbue the Chinese student with
ideas and social tendencies, apparently antagonistic to those of
the patriarchal system of his native land; but they do not, and
cannot, create in him (as some would have us believe) the
Anglo-Saxon outlook on life, the standards of conduct and the
beliefs which are the results of centuries of our process of
civilisation and structural character. Under his top dressing of
Western learning, the Chinese remains true to type, instinctively
detached from the practical and scientific attitude,
contemplatively philosophical, with the fatalistic philosophy of
the prophet Job, concerned rather with the causes than the results
of things. Your barrister at Lincoln's Inn, after ten years of
cosmopolitan experience in London or Washington, will revert in six
months to the ancestral type of morals and manners; the spectacle
is so common, even in the case of exceptionally assimilative men
like Wu Ting-fang, or the late Marquis Tseng, that it evokes little
or no comment amongst Europeans in China.
Notably from the point of view of financial honesty, which, as I have
already mentioned, is of cardinal importance if the regeneration of the
country is to be undertaken by other means than by mock constitutions,
the results of Western education are most disappointing.
The opinion [Mr. Bland says] is widely held amongst European
residents and traders that the section of Young China which has
received its education in Foreign Mission schools displays no more
honesty than the rest.