“Such a quest is useless. We know its result beforehand. War will last
as long as the world.”
“There is nothing to prove it,” replied Langelier, “and a consideration
of the past leads one to believe, on the contrary, that war is not one
of the essential conditions of social life.”
And Langelier, while waiting for the _minestra_ (soup) which was long
in making its appearance, developed the foregoing idea, without,
however, departing from the moderation characterising his mind.
“Although the early periods of the human race,” he said, “are lost to
us in impenetrable darkness, it is certain that men were not always
warlike. They were not so during the long ages of the pastoral life;
the memory of which survives only in a small number of words common
to all Indo-European languages, and which reveal innocent manners.
And there are reasons for believing that these peaceful pastoral
centuries had a far longer duration than the agricultural, industrial,
and commercial periods which, following them in a necessary progress,
brought about between tribes and nations a state of all but constant
war.
“It was by force of arms that it was most frequently sought to acquire
property, lands, women, slaves, and cattle. At first, wars were waged
between village and village. Next, the vanquished, joining hands
with the victors, formed a nation, and wars occurred between nation
and nation. Each of these peoples, in order to retain possession of
the acquired riches, or to make further acquisitions, contended with
neighbouring peoples for the possession of strongholds securing the
command of roads, mountain passes, river courses, and the seashore. In
the end, nations formed confederations, and contracted alliances. Thus
it came about that men banded together; as they increased in strength,
instead of contending for the goods of the earth, formally bartered
them. The community of sentiments and interests gradually became
broadened. A day came when Rome imagined she had established it the
world over. Augustus thought he had inaugurated the era of universal
peace.
“We know how this illusion was gradually and savagely dissipated, and
how the barbarian hordes overwhelmed the Roman peace. These barbarians,
who had settled within the Empire, cut one another’s throats on its
ruins, for a space of fourteen centuries, and founded in carnage
countries baptized in blood. Of such was the life of nations in the
Middle Ages, and the constitution of the great European monarchies.
“In those days, a state of war was alone possible and conceivable.
All the forces of the world were organised solely for the purpose of
maintaining it.
“If the reawakening of thought, at the time of the Renaissance,
permitted a few sparse minds to conceive better regulated relations
between nations, at one and the same time, the burning desire to
invent, and the thirst for knowledge supplied fresh food to the warrior
instinct. The discovery of the West Indies, the exploration of Africa,
the navigation of the Pacific Ocean, opened up vast territories
to European avidity. The white kingdoms joined issue over the
extermination of the red, yellow, and black races, and for the space of
four centuries gave themselves up madly to the pillaging of three great
divisions of the world. This is what is styled modern civilisation.
“During this uninterrupted succession of deeds of rapine and violence,
Europeans acquired a knowledge of the extent and configuration of
the earth. As they progressed in this knowledge, so did their work
of destruction proceed apace. To the present day, the whites come in
contact with the black or the yellow races but to enslave or massacre
them. The peoples whom we call barbarians know us so far through our
crimes only.
“For all that, those navigations, those explorations undertaken in
a spirit of savage cupidity, these tracks by land and by sea opened
up to conquerors, adventurers, hunters of and traders in men, these
life-destroying colonisations, this brutal impulse which has led and
still leads one-half of humanity to destroy the other, are the fatal
conditions of a further progress of civilisation, and the terrible
means which shall have prepared, for a still undetermined future, the
peace of the world.
“This time, ’tis the whole world assimilated, in spite of enormous
dissimilarities, to the state of the Roman Empire under Augustus.
The Roman peace was the fruit of conquest. Universal peace will most
assuredly not be brought about by the same means. No Empire is there
to-day which can lay claim to the hegemony of the lands and seas
covering the globe, known and surveyed at last. But, in spite of their
being less apparent than those of political and military domination,
the bonds which are beginning to unite the whole of humanity, and no
longer merely a part of humanity, are none the less real; they are both
more supple and more solid, more intimate and infinite in variety,
since they are connected, athwart the fictions of public life, with the
realities of social life.
“The increasing multiplicity of communications and exchanges, the
compulsory solidarity of the financial markets of every capital, of
commercial markets vainly striving to guarantee their independence by
recourse to unfortunate expedients, the rapid growth of international
socialism, seem likely to guarantee, sooner or later, the union of the
peoples of every continent. If at the present moment the Imperialist
spirit of the great States and the haughty ambitions of armed
nations seem to give the lie to these previsions, and to damn these
aspirations, it will be perceived that in reality modern nationalism
amounts merely to a confused aspiration towards a more and more vast
union of intellects and wills, and that the dream of a greater England,
a greater Germany, a greater America, leads, will or do whatever you
may, to the dream of a greater humanity, and to a partnership between
nations for the common exploitation of the riches of the earth....”
The speech was interrupted by the appearance of the tavern-keeper
bearing a steaming soup-tureen and grated cheese.
And, from amid the hot and aromatic vapour of the soup, Nicole
Langelier concluded his argument with these words:
“There will doubtless be further wars. The savage instincts coupled
with the natural desires, pride and hunger, which have embroiled the
world for so many centuries, will again disturb it. The human masses
have so far not found their equilibrium. The sagacity of nations is not
yet sufficiently methodical to secure the common welfare, by means of
the freedom and the facility of exchanges, man has so far not come to
be looked up to with respect everywhere by man, the several portions
of humanity are not yet about to associate harmoniously for the purpose
of building the cells and organs of one and the same body. It will not
be vouchsafed even unto the youngest of us to witness the close of the
era of arms. But, we feel within us a presentiment of these better
times which we are not to experience. If we extend into the future the
present trend, we may even now determine the establishment of more
perfect and frequent communications between all races and all nations,
a more general and stronger feeling of human solidarity, the rational
organisation of labour, and the coming of the United States of the
World.
“Universal peace will become a fact some day, not because men will
become better (’tis more than we may hope for), but because a new order
of things, a new science, and new economic necessities will force on
men the state of peace, just as formerly the very conditions of their
existence placed and kept them in a state of war.”
“Nicole Langelier, a rose has shed a leaf in your glass,” said Giacomo
Boni. “This has not taken place without the permission of the gods. Let
us drink to the future peace of the world.”
Raising his glass, Joséphin Leclerc remarked:
“This wine of Chianti has a tart savour, and a light sparkle. Let us
drink to peace, the while Russians and Japanese are waging a bitter
war in Manchuria and in Korea Bay.”
“That war,” resumed Langelier, “marks one of the great periods in the
history of the world. And, in order to grasp its meaning, we must hark
back two thousand years.
“The Romans, assuredly, did not suspect the vastness of the barbarian
world, and had no conception of those immense human reservoirs which
were to burst on them one fine day, and submerge them. They did not
suspect that there existed in the world any other than the Roman peace.
And yet, an older and vaster one there was, the Chinese peace.
“Not but what their merchants had business relations with the
merchants of Serica. The latter were wont to bring raw silk to a spot
situated to the north of the Pamir table-land, named the Tower of
Stone. The merchants of the Empire went thither. Bolder Latin traders
penetrated as far as the Gulf of Tong-King and the Chinese coasts up
to Hang-chau-fu, or Hanoi. Nevertheless, the Romans did not conceive
that Serica constituted an Empire more densely populated than their own
one, richer, and more advanced in agriculture and political economy.
The Chinese, on their part, knew the white men. Their annals mention
the fact that the Emperor An-tung, under which name we recognise
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, despatched an embassy to them, which
was perhaps merely an expedition of navigators and merchants. But
they were ignorant of the fact that a civilisation more seething and
violent than their own, as well as more prolific and infinitely more
expansive, was spread over one of the faces of the globe of which they
covered another face: the Chinese, agriculturists and gardeners full
of experience, honest and expert merchants, led a happy life, owing to
their system of exchange and to their immense associations of credit.
Contented with their subtle science, their exquisite politeness, their
singularly human piety, and their immutable wisdom, they were doubtless
not anxious to become acquainted with the ways of life and thought
of the white men who had come from the land of Cæsar. Perchance the
ambassadors of An-tung may have seemed somewhat gross and barbarian to
them.
“The two great civilisations, the yellow and the white, continued
ignorant of each other until the day when the Portuguese, having
doubled the Cape of Good Hope, settled down to trade at Macao.
Merchants and Christian missionaries established themselves in China,
and indulged in every kind of violence and rapine. The Chinese
tolerated them, in the manner of men accustomed to works of patience,
and marvellously capable of endurance; nevertheless, they could on
occasion take life with all the refinements of cruelty. For nearly
three whole centuries the Jesuits were, in the Middle Kingdom, a source
of endless disturbances. In our own times, the Christian acquired the
habit of sending jointly or separately into that vast Empire, whenever
order was disturbed, soldiers who restored it by means of theft,
rape, pillage, murder, and incendiarism, and of proceeding at short
intervals with the pacific penetration of the country with rifles and
guns. The poorly armed Chinese either defend themselves badly or not
at all, and so they are massacred with delightful facility. They are
polite and ceremonious, but are reproached with cherishing feeble
sentiments of affection for Europeans. The grievances we have against
them are greatly of the order of those which Mr. Du Chaillu cherished
towards his gorilla. Mr. Du Chaillu, while in a forest, brought down
with his rifle the mother of a gorilla. In its death, the brute was
still pressing its young to its bosom. He tore it from this embrace,
and dragged it with him in a cage across Africa, for the purpose of
selling it in Europe. Now, the young animal gave him just cause for
complaint. It was unsociable, and actually starved itself to death.
‘I was powerless,’ says Mr. Du Chaillu, ‘to correct its evil nature.’
We complain of the Chinese with as great a show of reason as Mr. Du
Chaillu of his gorilla.
“In 1901, order having been disturbed at Peking, the troops of the
five Great Powers, under the command of a German Field-Marshal,
restored it by the customary means. Having in this fashion covered
themselves with military glory, the five Powers signed one of the
innumerable treaties by which they guarantee the integrity of the very
China whose provinces they divide among themselves.
“Russia’s share was Manchuria, and she closed Korea to Japanese trade.
Japan, which in 1894 had beaten the Chinese on land and on sea, and
had taken a part, in 1901, in the pacifying action of the Powers, saw
with concentrated fury the advance of the voracious and slow-footed
she-bear. And, while the huge brute indolently stretched out its muzzle
towards the Japanese beehive, the yellow bees, arming their wings and
stings together, riddled it with burning punctures.
“‘It is a colonial war,’ was the expression used by a high-placed
Russian official to my friend Georges Bourdon.[D] Now, the fundamental
principal of every colonial war is that the European should be more
powerful than the peoples whom he is fighting; this is as clear as
noonday. It is understood that in these kinds of wars the European is
to attack with artillery, while the Asiatic or African is of course
to defend himself with arrows, clubs, assegais and tomahawks. It
is tolerated that he should procure a few antiquated flint-locks
and cartridge-pouches; this aids in rendering colonisation more
glorious. But in no case is it permissible that he should be armed
and instructed in European fashion. His fleet must consist of junks,
canoes and ‘dug-outs.’ Should he perchance purchase ships from European
ship-owners, such ships shall naturally be unfit for use. The Chinese
who fill their arsenals with porcelain shells conform to the rules of
colonial warfare.
[D] M. Georges Bourdon, journalist, on the staff of _Le Figaro_.
“The Japanese have departed from these rules. They wage war in
accordance with the principles taught in France by General Bonnal. They
greatly outweighed their adversaries in knowledge and intelligence.
While fighting better than Europeans, they show no respect for
consecrated usages, and act to a certain degree in a fashion contrary
to the law of nations.
“’Tis in vain that serious individuals like Monsieur Edmond Théry[E]
demonstrated to them that they were bound to be beaten, in the superior
interest of the European market and in conformity with the most firmly
established economic laws. Vainly did the proconsul of Indo-China,
Monsieur Doumer himself, call upon them to suffer, and at short notice,
decisive defeats on sea and on land. ‘What a financial sadness would
bow down our hearts,’ exclaimed this great man, ‘were Bezobrazoff and
Alexeieff not to extract another million out of the Korean forests.
They are kings. Like them, I was a king: our cause is a common one. Oh
ye Japanese! Imitate in their gentleness the copper-coloured folk over
whom I reigned so gloriously under Méline.’ In vain did Dr. Charles
Richet,[F] skeleton in hand, represent to them that being prognathous,
and not having the muscles of their calves sufficiently developed, they
were under the obligation of seeking flight in the trees when face to
face with the Russians, who are brachycephalous and as such eminently
civilising, as was demonstrated when they drowned five thousand Chinese
in the Amur. ‘Bear in mind that you are links between monkey and man,’
obligingly said to them my Lord Professor Richet, ‘as a consequence of
which, if you should defeat the Russians or Finno-Letto-Ugro-Slavs, it
would be exactly as if monkeys were to beat you. Is it not plain to
you?’ They heeded him not.
[E] M. Edmond Théry, journalist, on the staff of _Le Figaro_.
Has been entrusted by the French Government with several
politico-economic missions; author of several works in this
connection.
[F] Dr. Charles Richet, a noted physician, who has written plays,
and is the author of several works on physiology and sociology.
“At the present moment, the Russians are paying the penalty, in the
waters of Japan and in the gorges of Manchuria, not only of their
grasping and brutal policy in the East, but of the colonial policy of
all Europe. They are now expiating, not merely their own crimes, but
those of the whole of military and commercial Christianity. When saying
this, I do not mean to say that there is a justice in the world. But
we witness a strange whirligig of things, and brute force, up to now
the sole judge of human actions, indulges occasionally in unexpected
pranks. Its sudden starts aside destroy an equilibrium thought to be
stable. And its pranks, which are ever the work of some hidden rule,
bring about interesting results. The Japanese cross the Yalu and defeat
the Russians in good form. Their sailors annihilate artistically a
European fleet. Immediately do we discern that a danger threatens
us. If it indeed exists, who created it? It was not the Japanese who
sought out the Russians. It was not the yellow men who hunted up the
whites. We there and then make the discovery of a Yellow Peril. For
many long years have Asiatics been familiar with the White Peril. The
looting of the Summer Palace, the massacres of Pekin, the drownings of
Blagovestchenk, the dismemberment of China, were these not enough to
alarm the Chinese? As to the Japanese, could they feel secure under
the guns of Port Arthur? We created the White Peril. The White Peril
has engendered the Yellow Peril. We have here concatenations giving to
the ancient Necessity which rules the world an appearance of divine
Justice, and must perforce admire the astonishing behaviour of that
blind queen of men and gods, when seeing Japan, formerly so cruel to
the Chinese and Koreans, and the unpaid accessory to the crimes of
Europeans in China, become the avenger of China, and the hope of the
yellow race.
“It does not, however, appear at first sight that the Yellow Peril at
which European economists are terrified is to be compared to the White
Peril suspended over Asia. The Chinese do not send to Paris, Berlin,
and St. Petersburg missionaries to teach Christians the Fung-chui, and
sow disorder in European affairs. A Chinese expeditionary force did
not land in Quiberon Bay to demand of the Government of the Republic
_extra-territoriality_, _i.e._, the right of trying by a tribunal of
mandarins cases pending between Chinese and Europeans. Admiral Togo
did not come and bombard Brest roads with a dozen battleships, for the
purpose of improving Japanese trade in France. The flower of French
nationalism, the _élite_ of our Trublions, did not besiege in their
mansions in the Avenues Hoche and Marceau the Legations of China and
of Japan, and Marshal Oyama did not, for the same reason, lead the
combined armies of the Far East to the Boulevard de la Madeleine to
demand the punishment of the foreigner-hating Trublions. He did not
burn Versailles in the name of a higher civilisation. The armies of
the Great Asiatic Powers did not carry away to Tokio and Peking the
Louvre paintings and the silver service of the Elysée.
“No indeed! Monsieur Edmond Théry himself admits that the yellow men
are not sufficiently civilised to imitate the whites so faithfully. Nor
does he foresee that they will ever rise to so high a moral culture.
How could it be possible for them to possess our virtues? They are not
Christians. But men entitled to speak consider that the Yellow Peril
is none the less to be dreaded for all that it is economic. Japan, and
China organised by Japan, threaten us, in all the markets of Europe,
with a competition frightful, monstrous, enormous, and deformed, the
mere idea of which causes the hair of the economists to stand on end.
That is why Japanese and Chinese must be exterminated. There can be
no doubt about the matter. But war must also be declared against the
United States to prevent it from selling iron and steel at a lower
price than our manufacturers less well equipped in machinery.
“Let us for once admit the truth, and for a moment cease flattering
ourselves. Old Europe and new Europe--for that is America’s true
name--have inaugurated economic war. Each and every nation is waging
an industrial struggle against the others. Everywhere does production
arm itself furiously against production. We are displaying bad grace
when we complain that we are witnessing fresh competing and disturbing
products invade the market of the world thus thrown into confusion. Of
what use are our lamentations? That might is right is our god. If Tokio
is the weaker, it shall be in the wrong and it shall be made to feel
it; if it is the stronger, right will be on its side, and we shall have
no reproach to cast at it. Where is the nation in the world entitled to
speak in the name of justice?
“We have taught the Japanese both the capitalistic _régime_ and war.
They are a cause of alarm because they are becoming like ourselves.
In truth, it is awful. They dare to defend themselves with European
weapons against Europeans. Their generals, their naval officers, who
have studied in England, in Germany, and in France, reflect honour on
their instructors. Several of them have followed the classes of our
special military schools. The Russian Grand Dukes, who feared that no
good could come out of military institutions too democratic to their
taste, must feel reassured.
“I am unable to foretell the issue of the war. The Russian Empire
opposes to the methodical energy of the Japanese its irresolute forces
which the savage imbecility of its government restrains, the dishonesty
of a voracious administration robs, and military incapacity leads to
disaster. The stupendousness of its impotence and the depths of its
disorganisation stand revealed. Withal, its golden reservoirs, kept
filled by its rich creditors, are all but inexhaustible. On the other
hand, its enemy has no other resources than onerous loans obtained with
difficulty, of which victory itself may perchance deprive them. For
while English and Americans are one in assisting it to weaken Russia,
they do not intend that it shall become powerful and to be feared. It
is hard to predict the final victory of one combatant over the other.
But if Japan makes the yellow men respected by the white men, it will
have greatly served the cause of humanity, and paved the way unawares
and doubtless against its own wish for the pacific organisation of the
world.”
“What do you mean,” said M. Goubin, raising his eyes from his plate
filled with a savoury _fritto_.
“It is feared,” continued Nicole Langelier, “that Japan grown to
manhood will educate China, teach it to defend itself and to exploit
its wealth itself, and that Japan will create a strong China. No need
to look upon such a contingency with alarm; it should, on the contrary,
be hoped for in the universal interest. Strong nations co-operate to
the harmony and wealth of the world. Weak nations, like China and
Turkey, are a perpetual cause of disturbances and perils. But we are
ever in too great a haste in our fears and hopes. Should victorious
Japan undertake to organise the old yellow Empire, it will not succeed
in its task that quickly. It will require time to teach China that a
China exists. For she knows it not, and as long as she is unaware of
it, there will not be any China. A people exists only in the knowledge
possessed by it of its existence. There are 350,000,000 Chinese, but
they are not aware of the fact. As long as they have not counted
themselves, they will not count for anything. They will not even exist
by dint of numbers. ‘Number off!’ is the first word of command spoken
by the drill-sergeant to his men. He is there and then teaching them
the principle of societies. But it takes a long time for 350,000,000
men to number themselves. Nevertheless, Ular, who is a European out
of the common, since he believes that one should be humane and just
towards the Chinese, informs us that a great national movement is
simmering in all the provinces of the huge empire.”
“And even should it happen,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “that victorious
Japan came to infuse into Mongols, Chinese, and Tibetans a
consciousness of themselves, and caused them to be respected by the
white races, in what way would the peace of the world be better
assured, and the conquering mania of nations be kept within stricter
bounds? Would not negro humanity still remain to be exterminated?
Where is the black nation which will insure the respecting of negroes
by the white and yellow races?”
“But,” interposed Nicole Langelier, “who can define how far one of the
great human races may go? The blacks are not, like the red man, dying
out through contact with the Europeans. Where is the prophet who will
venture to tell the 200,000,000 African blacks that their posterity
will never enjoy wealth and peace on the lakes and great rivers? The
white men passed through the ages of caves and lacustrine villages.
They were at that time wild and naked. They dried rude potteries in the
sun. Their chiefs led barbarian dances at which they shouted. They knew
no other sciences than those of their sorcerers. Since those days they
have built the Parthenon, conceived geometry, subjected the expression
of their thought and the motions of their body to the laws of harmony.
“Are you then going to say to the African negroes: ‘You shall for ever
carry on an internecine war between tribe and tribe, and you shall
inflict upon one another atrocities and absurd tortures; King Gléglé,
permeated with a religious idea, shall for all time have prisoners tied
up in a basket and thrown from the roof of his royal hut; you shall for
ever devour with enjoyment the strips of flesh torn from the decomposed
cadavers of your aged relations; for ever shall explorers unload
their rifles on you, and smoke you out in your kraals; the wonderful
Christian soldier will enjoy in his bravery the amusement of hacking
your women to pieces; the gay and festive sailor from the befogged seas
shall for all time kick in the bellies of your little children, just to
take the stiffness out of his knee-joints? Can you safely prophesy to
one-third of humanity a state of perpetual ignominy?
“I am unable to say whether one day, as Mrs. Beecher Stowe predicted in
1840, a life will awaken in Africa full of a splendour and magnificence
unknown to the cold-blooded races of the West, and whether art will
blossom forth in new and dazzling forms. The blacks possess a keen
appreciation of music. It may happen that a delightful negro art of
dance and song shall see the light of day. In the meanwhile, the
coloured folk of the Southern States are making rapid strides in
capitalistic civilisation. Monsieur Jean Finot[G] has recently supplied
us with information on the subject.
[G] M. Jean Finot, editor of _La Revue_, and contributor to several
French and European publications.
“Fifty years ago they did not, as a whole, own two hundred and
fifty acres of land. Nowadays their property is valued at over
£160,000,000. They were illiterate. To-day fifty per cent. of them
can read and write. There are black novelists, poets, economists, and
philanthropists.
“The half-breeds, the issue of master and slave, are singularly
intelligent and vigorous. The coloured men, both cunning and ferocious,
instinctive and calculating, will gradually (so one of them has
confided to me) reap the advantage of number, and one day lord it over
the effeminate creole race which exercises so lightly over the blacks
its fitful cruelty. It may be that the mulatto of genius, who will make
the children of the whites pay dearly the blood of the negroes lynched
by their fathers, is already born.”