chosen of the organised democrats of the continent. Careful observation
of Mr Watson, both in and out of Parliament, impels the writer to the
reflection that Nature intended him to be undistinguished. The reasons
for coming to this conclusion are not far to seek. To begin with,
Mr Watson has no aggressive, or specially assertive characteristics,
whether physical or mental. He has not the gift of dazzling beauty on
the one hand, nor the still more useful gift of excessive ugliness
on the other. In appearance he is just an ordinary, good-looking,
well-set, upright man. In times of crisis there is nothing so
calculated to help its possessor as fanaticism; and Mr Watson cannot
boast of being a fanatic. Fortune was never kind enough to him to treat
him very unkindly. He was never assisted in his campaign on behalf of
Labour by any act of injustice or sense of gross personal wrong at the
hands of privileged persons. No friendly capitalist helped to make him
a statesman by turning his wife and family out of doors. He has had
a few ups and downs, but they have been of a minor sort. Undoubtedly
it was the intention of Nature that he should go through life without
attracting too much notice, that he should set up type and cultivate
a garden, and assist in his spare moments at those illuminating
debates that shake to their foundations the suburbs of Carlton and of
Wooloomooloo.
These original designs have been upset. Certain political currents
took possession of Mr Watson, and he could not get away from them. As
a matter of fact, he did not wish to get away from them. He was shrewd
enough to realise what an important bearing they might have on the
future of a continent, and incidently on the future of Chris. Watson.
The Federation movement was a timely one, so far as he was concerned.
The inauguration of the Commonwealth Parliament brought with it the
division of political parties into Free Trade and Protectionist, with
neither of the two sides sufficiently strong to crush or always to
out-vote the other. It was a great opportunity for a Labour party,
which did not care two constitutional straws about either Free Trade
or Protection, to hold the balance of power, and practically to usurp
the functions of Government. But the Labour party wanted a leader. It
wanted a man who would be sufficiently strong for the purpose--and it
was a tremendously important purpose--but not one who would err from
excess of strength. It did not want a notorious man, or a violent man,
or a man whose name would cause any sort of alarm. It did not want
a man who had been too extensively advertised in connection with
socialistic movements in the past. It did not want a distinguished
anarchist or a social outlaw. It wanted neither a Danton nor a
Robespierre. It discovered Mr Watson, and it has made the most of the
discovery.
It is not too much to say that this man, who was intended to be
nothing, has become the most important political figure in the
English-speaking world--or, at least, of the English-speaking world
south of the Equator. That is not to assert that he has been the most
talked of, or has wielded the most power. But the movement that he
leads in Australia is the most momentous political-cum-social movement
known to the present age, and in Australia it has gone further than in
any other part of the British dominions. It happened three years ago,
for the first time on record, that a man who was the avowed leader
of a socialistic party--for the Labour party is socialistic in aim
and purpose, if not always in detail and in method--was chosen as the
political head of four million English-speaking people. That man was
Watson. Without much notice and without much warning, he found himself
raised to a giddy height. All eyes were upon him, all responsibility
rested with him, all honours that were the gift of the electors were
showered on his head. It was a trying situation, and the predictions of
immediate and disastrous failure were numerous. However, the expected
did not happen, and the deluge, though on general principles due to
arrive, held off. Mr Watson as head of the Commonwealth Ministry acted
precisely as he had acted when private member, or when leader of the
irrepressible Labour party. Probably he knew that a tremendous head of
limelight was being turned upon him; but he gave no outward evidence
of the knowledge. If he suffered from self-consciousness, he kept the
circumstance from the world.
The man’s whole career is an object lesson in the importance of keeping
cool. Any study of the ex-compositor’s character must impress one fact
on the mind. It is a terrible thing to suffer from what the French
call _tête montée_; it is a magnificent thing to be able to keep cool.
Whether Mr Watson’s coolness is the result of temperament or of will
power, might be difficult to say. It is more than probable that it
is due to the latter. So far as temperament is concerned, the man
is impressionable, and many sided. You can tell by glancing at his
good-looking, half-oval, half-practical face, that he has sensuous as
well as mental perceptions; that he is not naturally a stoic; that the
taste of power and pleasure is not wasted on him; that “the laurel,
the palms, the pæan” are to him something more than names. If it were
merely a question of temperament, he could let himself go with the best
or the worst of us. But the man is master of himself. If Nature and
preliminary training have not given him all things; if certain magnetic
gifts such as oratorical fire and intellectual fervour are not his; if
it be that
Knowledge to his eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne’er unroll,
it is yet a fact that he has a marvellous faculty for showing the _mens
æqua in arduis_, for keeping his head, for being true to himself in
every emergency and at any hour. Temperament may have something to do
with the faculty; but it seems to be mainly the result of a resolute
and altogether admirable will. People who know Mr Watson best have
never been able to detect any difference in his manner as applicant
for work in Sydney, as political chief of a sectional party, or as
head of the Commonwealth Government. He performed the impossible when,
for the better part of a session, he led the House of Representatives
in the face of a large and hostile majority. A man who listened to
the extremists behind him, a man who could not think and reason with
bullets whistling all round him, could not have done this for a week.
Mr Watson did it for four months, and he did it very well. It is more
than likely he will have the opportunity of doing it again.
The fourth member of this famous quartette is Mr George Houston Reid.
It is melancholy to think what vast quantities of bad writing and
indifferent caricaturing have been called forth by this Prime Minister
of the Commonwealth of Australia. Melancholy, because the subject is
such a good one that it should have been reserved for adequate and
original treatment. It is only possible now to repeat a few truisms
which are known and recognised of all men. One of these truisms is
that Mr Reid represents the _apotheosis_ of intelligence, the triumph
of mind over matter. He is not beautiful, or graceful, or slim, or
heroic-looking. No one ever accused him of being a glass of fashion, or
a mould of form. The ingenious Mr Crosland tells us that a man has no
business with a figure; that it is his duty to look like a clothes-prop
in youth, and like a balloon in middle life. Mr Reid and Mr Crosland
are at one in this matter, with the difference that the Premier has put
into practice what the mentally and physically smaller person merely
suggested. Certain well-meaning but bat-eyed individuals have accused
the ex-Prime Minister of being inconsistent; they point out--good,
worthy souls!--that he is found talking in favour of a project at one
time, and talking against it at another. These people, well meaning as
they are, do not understand. Mr Reid, for his part, does understand.
We see here the whole secret of his vast popularity, of his wonderful
rise to power. He UNDERSTANDS. When one recollects how few people
understand, there is little further to be said.
The ex-Prime Minister is a wonderful talker; and for want of anything
better to talk to, he talks to public audiences. The general impression
seems to be that he enjoys himself on these occasions; that he likes
to hear the plaudits that greet his appearance, the laughter that
echoes to his jests, even the interjections that he turns to such good
account. But the writer’s opinion, derived not only from watching Mr
Reid on a platform, but from private conversation with him, is that he
knows himself to be mentally adapted for other and better things. What,
after all, does the crowd know or care about such gifts of speech, such
exquisite verbal delicacy and grace as this man possesses? True, they
can appreciate what he gives them, for he is wise enough to give what
they require, not what he himself knows to be most select and valuable.
Whenever I think of what is rare and beautiful in the mind or heart
of woman; whenever I think of those gracious and grateful beings who
flitted across this planet and died in disappointment because they
had found no intellectual mate; I regret that a mysterious Providence
did not put me in their path after endowing me with Mr Reid’s gift
of speech. It is a pity that such talent should be dissipated among
the vulgar; it is a pity that it should be harnessed to any political
engine; it is ten times a pity that it should have so often to put up
with the wrong audience, the wrong hour, and the wrong place.
Like all great men, Mr Reid has been responsible for some erroneous
impressions. One of the most popular and widespread of these is that
he is, by instinct and temperament, a humorist. Nothing could be
further from the truth. The late head of the Commonwealth Government
is undoubtedly the most serious man that the political exigencies
of Australia have ever produced. He has too much insight, too much
intelligence not to be serious. Every man who possesses the faculty
of making other people laugh must do so by presenting an effective
contrast to their own habit of thought. In other words, he must be as
different as possible from themselves. Mr Reid is entirely different in
thought and disposition from ninety-nine out of every hundred of those
who listen to him and laugh with him. _They_ are volatile, fickle,
amusement-loving; _he_ is none of these. That is the reason why, when
he throws for their delectation certain verbal pictures on a rhetorical
screen, they laugh with such boisterous mirth and such riotous abandon.
The reason why Mr Reid came to take up the _rôle_ of jester is easy to
understand. If he followed out his own inclinations, he would be either
a transcendental philosopher, or a poet of the mystic school. He would
never speak a word about politics, and he would never make a joke. He
is too clever not to recognise the essential meanness of politics; he
is too sombre in disposition not to revolt from the tinkling merriment
of a crowd. But he has never got quite free from the idea that success
is a desirable thing to obtain. It is the one infirmity that sticks to
him. He knows that distinction for a man, physically constituted as
he is, is not to be won through the channels of transcendentalism, or
by the agency of the lofty rhyme. He knows that for a clever man the
best and surest way to success is to play the fool. That is why he has
talked on such a commonplace subject as politics to tens of thousands
of people; that is why he has so successfully, so brilliantly played
the fool.
As already stated, Mr Reid is too intelligent to be wedded exclusively
to any one faith or shibboleth. But if he has one political leaning
over another, it is in favour of Protection. It is true there is a
popular idea to the contrary; but then many popular ideas flourish on
the most unsubstantial foundations. There is no difficulty whatever
in showing that Mr Reid’s one marked characteristic as a statesman is
his fondness for Protection. The importers of New South Wales chose
to make him their idol. It was not for him to object. It was apparent
to him as an intelligent man that if the importer was no better, he
was no worse than other people. So it came about that Mr Reid and Free
Trade went hand in hand for quite a number of years. But to be strictly
devoted to one faith, is to argue oneself blind to the merits of other
faiths, and therefore mentally defective. To prove his catholicity of
taste, Mr Reid put a few doses of Protection into the Free Trade dish
which his fellow colonists were asking at his hands. When at a later
stage the invitation came to him to drop fiscalism and merge his free
trade in the high-tariffism of Mr Deakin, he gladly did so. There is
no doubt that he was getting tired of the old formulas. How could it
be otherwise? Mr Reid owes it to himself, and to his reputation as a
man of broad views, to give Protection a turn, and in that direction,
beyond doubt, his desire lies. There is a foolish idea, fatuously and
blatantly insisted upon by newspaper writers, that, because a man has
been harnessed to a party at one stage of his career he should remain
harnessed to it for ever. The only universal genius is he who has come
to recognise the essential quackery and futility of all political
faiths now being foisted upon the community. I do not assert that Mr
Reid is, or is not, a universal genius. I merely repeat that he is a
man who understands. It is possible to look forward to the time when
circumstances, and his own desire to be impartial, will bring him out
as the champion of Protection in Australia. This is necessary to the
complete and artistic balancing of his career. No one knows this better
than himself. And whatever we say of G. H. Reid, whatever we think of
him, whatever broad or narrow views we take of him, we are bound to
admit that he touches nothing, and has touched nothing, he does not
adorn.
XIII
THE IMPERIALIST
Regions Cæsar never knew
Thy posterity shall sway.
The Imperialist plays an important part in the life of Australia. His
influence is to be detected everywhere. It is not always proclaimed
in words or manifested in deeds; but, like a subtle essence, it runs
through every political and social institution of the country. No one
can pretend to understand what goes on in this part of the world unless
he makes allowance for the curious blending of the Imperialistic with
the local point of view. The two currents do not always flow in unison;
but if it were a question of opposing forces, the Imperialist would
always carry the day. He is predominant both in the political and in
the social world. He is much stronger than his occasional rival, the
little “Australian.” He colours most of the legislation, and insensibly
affects the habit of thought of the people. Take away the Imperialist
from Australia, or even reduce him to a minority, and an entirely new
set of conditions, a fresh pathway of national development, would come
immediately into view.
The man who calls himself by this term, or even the man who, without
assertiveness, acknowledges that it applies to him, is apt to believe
that all who differ from him are small-souled and narrow-minded
persons. He is inclined to be egotistically self-righteous. He talks of
Imperialism as though it were not merely a justifiable political creed,
but something superior in the realm of philosophy, something splendid
in the domain of morals. The word itself is a large and impressive one.
It conjures up wide expanses of territory, great vistas of achievement.
It affords unrivalled opportunities for mouth-filling rhetoric and for
fine-sounding, platform periods. Its every association is calculated to
impress the receptive mind. There need be no astonishment, therefore,
at the fact that those who confine themselves to the local point of
view, and acknowledge no fondness for world-stretching dominions, are
not highly regarded by the majority in Australia.
Yet it is by no means difficult to show that the essential doctrines
of Imperialism are incapable of defence either from the rationalist
or from the ethical standpoint. They are, in fact, both illogical and
immoral. They are illogical, because they are based on the assumption
that a wide expanse of territory can be better looked after by a
central authority, than can a relatively small district. They ignore
the elementary truth that every community is the best judge of its
own requirements. The Imperialist is not satisfied to let any one
alone. Every race, as far as practicable, must come under the yoke
which he himself acknowledges. Every individual must slumber under the
form of Government which he himself prescribes. He believes, quite
illogically, that his own prestige is in some fashion enhanced whenever
his countrymen dethrone another potentate or lay hands on a fresh piece
of territory. He is convinced that the welfare of Australia is enhanced
by the circumstance that certain gentlemen, living at a very remote
distance, can, if they so choose, veto some of our most important
pieces of legislation, and overset some of our most intimate concerns.
If it be admitted, as it must be, that the underlying principle of
Imperialism is illogical, it will also be admitted that the same
principle is decidedly immoral. Every empire is more or less built
up by the sword. Every empire is more or less maintained in the same
fashion. And it is an elementary truth that the sword and morality
have nothing to do with each other. We can judge these things better
from a distance. We can see plainly enough that it was wrong and
immoral of Xerxes to wish to add to his territories by annexing
Greece; that it was grasping of Julius Cæsar to reach out after Gaul
and Britain; that it was wicked of Napoleon to covet Egypt; and that
it was sinful of Russia to lay hands on Poland and Manchuria. But we
are not prepared to speak thus definitely of the moral significance
of another nation’s attitude towards Cape Colony and Egypt and India.
What we do say in that connection, is that the white man has a burden
to shoulder and a duty to accomplish. We are inclined to get angry,
and to call the strict moralist--whenever he attempts to dictate the
policy of nations--a narrow-minded, insufferable prig. And so, as a
matter of fact, he may be. But no harm would be done by admitting, in a
general way, that the doctrines of Imperialism and of morality are not
precisely identical.
But neither cold reason nor hard rules of conduct can build up and
vitalise a nation. There is such a quality as _sentiment_; and it is
just this quality that gives the Imperialist his pre-eminent place.
For sentiment always has been, and always will be, the most useful and
valuable, just as it is the most illogical, faculty that an individual
or a nation can possess. When we recollect what it has given us in
the domain of poetry, of imaginative prose, of art, of music, of
sculpture, we recognise that logic does not deserve to be mentioned
with it in the same breath. Sentiment is even greater than morality,
because it creates its own morality--a morality very much finer and
very much truer than that of any conventional school. The Imperialist,
therefore, in spite of his unreason, contains within him a spark of
that which illumines and creates. The sentiment of race, the sentiment
of religion, the sentiment of patriotism, the sentiment of devotion to
an ideal, to a memory, to a national past, to a series of great names,
to a battlefield, to a grave--all this is, from the logical point of
view, incapable of a moment’s defence. It is fantastic, illusory,
absurd. But when one comes to think how unspeakably unlovely would be
any existence that was mapped out by reason, and supported by dogma,
and guided from infantile beginnings to senile decay, by a cold and
brutal calculation of the practical advantages likely to follow on
certain acts, one can only feel grateful that the sentimentalist, and
not the economist or the calculator, has still the dominating voice in
the life of the time.
The Imperialist, therefore, in the sense now being made use of, is a
person to be lightly regarded by disciples of Bentham and Bain, and to
be warmly admired and applauded by all other sections of the community.
This is he who, though he has never been within ten thousand miles
of Great Britain, speaks of it as “home,” and incidentally refers
to the place of his birth as a land of exile. This is he who, a few
years ago, talked often of the necessity of wiping out the memory of
Majuba, and who even now does not like to be reminded of Nicholson’s
Nek and Magersfontein and the Tugela River. As a member of the human
race he might be proud to think that at these places some farmers, his
fellow-beings, performed praiseworthy feats in the face of tremendous
odds. But the Imperialist assumes that the feats were performed by
the wrong people, and is not proud of them. This is he who, by virtue
of some curious and unintelligible process, manages to feel himself
a larger and more sublime personality because of the fact that, long
before he was born, men wearing red uniforms and living at the opposite
end of the world purchased with their lives the barren glory of
Badajoz, and stood unshaken through the fiery ordeal of Waterloo. And
this is he who refers to such and such an action as conceived in the
interests of that large and vague thing known as the Empire; who is
fond of talking about what “we” ought to do in Afghanistan, and what
should be “our” policy in Cochin China; who sublimely ignores the fact
that neither he himself, nor the community in which he lives, has any
more to do with Afghanistan and Cochin China than it has with the North
Pole or the mountains of the Moon.
“Even a Cecil,” observed an Irish member in the House of Commons
recently, “will not die for the Meridian of Greenwich.” The remark
illustrated a great truth. A man will only die for something that has
a history, for something that calls forth an emotion, for something
that appeals to his individual or his national pride. He will not
die for the Meridian of Greenwich, any more than he will die for the
peak of Kosciusko, or for the Sydney Town Hall, or for the Melbourne
Parliamentary buildings, or for the Federal tariff. Of what avail
is it for a poet to write about the star of Australia? It is likely
enough that the star will arise some day, and it is perfectly certain
that the event, when it does take place, will be heralded by clouds of
war. Every national constellation must rise, if it rises at all, from
such a cradle. But in the meantime there is nothing in the history of
Australia to awake sentiment of any sort--unless it be a sentiment of
disgust at the manner in which the aboriginals were treated, and of
shame for the early records of Botany Bay. A nation must have some ties
of remembrance and of vanity to hold it together. Australia is still
mainly Imperialistic--because of the force of heredity, because of the
triumph of unreason, and because of the part that sentiment plays in
the life of the people.