A CHAPTER WHICH OUGHT TO GIVE YOU A GREAT DEAL OF POLITICAL INFORMATION
ABOUT THE LAST FIFTY YEARS, BUT WHICH REALLY CONTAINS SEVERAL
EXPLANATIONS AND A FEW APOLOGIES
IF I had known how difficult it was to write a History of the World, I
should never have undertaken the task. Of course, any one possessed
of enough industry to lose himself for half a dozen years in the musty
stacks of a library, can compile a ponderous tome which gives an account
of the events in every land during every century. But that was not the
purpose of the present book. The publishers wanted to print a history
that should have rhythm--a story which galloped rather than walked. And
now that I have almost finished I discover that certain chapters gallop,
that others wade slowly through the dreary sands of long forgotten
ages--that a few parts do not make any progress at all, while still
others indulge in a veritable jazz of action and romance. I did not like
this and I suggested that we destroy the whole manuscript and begin once
more from the beginning. This, however, the publishers would not allow.
As the next best solution of my difficulties, I took the type-written
pages to a number of charitable friends and asked them to read what I
had said, and give me the benefit of their advice. The experience was
rather disheartening. Each and every man had his own prejudices and his
own hobbies and preferences. They all wanted to know why, where and how
I dared to omit their pet nation, their pet statesman, or even their
most beloved criminal. With some of them, Napoleon and Jenghiz Khan were
candidates for high honours. I explained that I had tried very hard to
be fair to Napoleon, but that in my estimation he was greatly inferior
to such men as George Washington, Gustavus Wasa, Augustus, Hammurabi
or Lincoln, and a score of others all of whom were obliged to content
themselves with a few paragraphs, from sheer lack of space. As for
Jenghiz Khan, I only recognise his superior ability in the field of
wholesale murder and I did not intend to give him any more publicity
than I could help.
"This is very well as far as it goes," said the next critic, "but how
about the Puritans? We are celebrating the tercentenary of their arrival
at Plymouth. They ought to have more space." My answer was that if I
were writing a history of America, the Puritans would get fully one half
of the first twelve chapters; that however this was a history of mankind
and that the event on Plymouth rock was not a matter of far-reaching
international importance until many centuries later; that the United
States had been founded by thirteen colonies and not by a single one;
that the most prominent leaders of the first twenty years of our history
had been from Virginia, from Pennsylvania, and from the island of Nevis,
rather than from Massachusetts; and that therefore the Puritans ought to
content themselves with a page of print and a special map.
Next came the prehistoric specialist. Why in the name of the great
Tyrannosaur had I not devoted more space to the wonderful race of
Cro-Magnon men, who had developed such a high stage of civilisation
10,000 years ago?
Indeed, and why not? The reason is simple. I do not take as much
stock in the perfection of these early races as some of our most
noted anthropologists seem to do. Rousseau and the philosophers of the
eighteenth century created the "noble savage" who was supposed to have
dwelt in a state of perfect happiness during the beginning of time. Our
modern scientists have discarded the "noble savage," so dearly beloved
by our grandfathers, and they have replaced him by the "splendid savage"
of the French Valleys who 35,000 years ago made an end to the universal
rule of the low-browed and low-living brutes of the Neanderthal and
other Germanic neighbourhoods. They have shown us the elephants the
Cro-Magnon painted and the statues he carved and they have surrounded
him with much glory.
I do not mean to say that they are wrong. But I hold that we know by
far too little of this entire period to re-construct that early
west-European society with any degree (however humble) of accuracy. And
I would rather not state certain things than run the risk of stating
certain things that were not so.
Then there were other critics, who accused me of direct unfairness. Why
did I leave out such countries as Ireland and Bulgaria and Siam while I
dragged in such other countries as Holland and Iceland and Switzerland?
My answer was that I did not drag in any countries. They pushed
themselves in by main force of circumstances, and I simply could not
keep them out. And in order that my point may be understood, let me
state the basis upon which active membership to this book of history was
considered.
There was but one rule. "Did the country or the person in question
produce a new idea or perform an original act without which the history
of the entire human race would have been different?" It was not a
question of personal taste. It was a matter of cool, almost mathematical
judgment. No race ever played a more picturesque role in history than
the Mongolians, and no race, from the point of view of achievement or
intelligent progress, was of less value to the rest of mankind.
The career of Tiglath-Pileser, the Assyrian, is full of dramatic
episodes. But as far as we are concerned, he might just as well never
have existed at all. In the same way, the history of the Dutch Republic
is not interesting because once upon a time the sailors of de Ruyter
went fishing in the river Thames, but rather because of the fact
that this small mud-bank along the shores of the North Sea offered a
hospitable asylum to all sorts of strange people who had all sorts of
queer ideas upon all sorts of very unpopular subjects.
It is quite true that Athens or Florence, during the hey-day of their
glory, had only one tenth of the population of Kansas City. But our
present civilisation would be very different had neither of these two
little cities of the Mediterranean basin existed. And the same (with due
apologies to the good people of Wyandotte County) can hardly be said of
this busy metropolis on the Missouri River.
And since I am being very personal, allow me to state one other fact.
When we visit a doctor, we find out before hand whether he is a surgeon
or a diagnostician or a homeopath or a faith healer, for we want to know
from what angle he will look at our complaint. We ought to be as careful
in the choice of our historians as we are in the selection of our
physicians. We think, "Oh well, history is history," and let it go
at that. But the writer who was educated in a strictly Presbyterian
household somewhere in the backwoods of Scotland will look differently
upon every question of human relationships from his neighbour who as
a child, was dragged to listen to the brilliant exhortations of Robert
Ingersoll, the enemy of all revealed Devils. In due course of time, both
men may forget their early training and never again visit either church
or lecture hall. But the influence of these impressionable years stays
with them and they cannot escape showing it in whatever they write or
say or do.
In the preface to this book, I told you that I should not be an
infallible guide and now that we have almost reached the end, I
repeat the warning. I was born and educated in an atmosphere of the
old-fashioned liberalism which had followed the discoveries of Darwin
and the other pioneers of the nineteenth century. As a child, I happened
to spend most of my waking hours with an uncle who was a great collector
of the books written by Montaigne, the great French essayist of the
sixteenth century. Because I was born in Rotterdam and educated in the
city of Gouda, I ran continually across Erasmus and for some unknown
reason this great exponent of tolerance took hold of my intolerant
self. Later I discovered Anatole France and my first experience with
the English language came about through an accidental encounter with
Thackeray's "Henry Esmond," a story which made more impression upon me
than any other book in the English language.
If I had been born in a pleasant middle western city I probably
should have a certain affection for the hymns which I had heard in
my childhood. But my earliest recollection of music goes back to the
afternoon when my Mother took me to hear nothing less than a Bach
fugue. And the mathematical perfection of the great Protestant master
influenced me to such an extent that I cannot hear the usual hymns of
our prayer-meetings without a feeling of intense agony and direct pain.
Again, if I had been born in Italy and had been warmed by the sunshine
of the happy valley of the Arno, I might love many colourful and sunny
pictures which now leave me indifferent because I got my first artistic
impressions in a country where the rare sun beats down upon the
rain-soaked land with almost cruel brutality and throws everything into
violent contrasts of dark and light.
I state these few facts deliberately that you may know the personal bias
of the man who wrote this history and may understand his point-of-view.
The bibliography at the end of this book, which represents all sorts
of opinions and views, will allow you to compare my ideas with those of
other people. And in this way, you will be able to reach your own final
conclusions with a greater degree of fairness than would otherwise be
possible.
After this short but necessary excursion, we return to the history of
the last fifty years. Many things happened during this period but very
little occurred which at the time seemed to be of paramount importance.
The majority of the greater powers ceased to be mere political agencies
and became large business enterprises. They built railroads. They
founded and subsidized steam-ship lines to all parts of the world. They
connected their different possessions with telegraph wires. And they
steadily increased their holdings in other continents. Every available
bit of African or Asiatic territory was claimed by one of the rival
powers. France became a colonial nation with interests in Algiers and
Madagascar and Annam and Tonkin (in eastern Asia). Germany claimed parts
of southwest and east Africa, built settlements in Kameroon on the
west coast of Africa and in New Guinea and many of the islands of the
Pacific, and used the murder of a few missionaries as a welcome excuse
to take the harbour of Kisochau on the Yellow Sea in China. Italy tried
her luck in Abyssinia, was disastrously defeated by the soldiers of
the Negus, and consoled herself by occupying the Turkish possessions in
Tripoli in northern Africa. Russia, having occupied all of Siberia, took
Port Arthur away from China. Japan, having defeated China in the war of
1895, occupied the island of Formosa and in the year 1905 began to
lay claim to the entire empire of Corea. In the year 1883 England, the
largest colonial empire the world has ever seen, undertook to "protect"
Egypt. She performed this task most efficiently and to the great
material benefit of that much neglected country, which ever since the
opening of the Suez canal in 1868 had been threatened with a foreign
invasion. During the next thirty years she fought a number of colonial
wars in different parts of the world and in 1902 (after three years of
bitter fighting) she conquered the independent Boer republics of the
Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Meanwhile she had encouraged Cecil
Rhodes to lay the foundations for a great African state, which reached
from the Cape almost to the mouth of the Nile, and had faithfully picked
up such islands or provinces as had been left without a European owner.
The shrewd king of Belgium, by name Leopold, used the discoveries of
Henry Stanley to found the Congo Free State in the year 1885. Originally
this gigantic tropical empire was an "absolute monarchy." But after many
years of scandalous mismanagement, it was annexed by the Belgian people
who made it a colony (in the year 1908) and abolished the terrible
abuses which had been tolerated by this very unscrupulous Majesty, who
cared nothing for the fate of the natives as long as he got his ivory
and rubber.
As for the United States, they had so much land that they desired no
further territory. But the terrible misrule of Cuba, one of the last of
the Spanish possessions in the western hemisphere, practically forced
the Washington government to take action. After a short and rather
uneventful war, the Spaniards were driven out of Cuba and Puerto Rico
and the Philippines, and the two latter became colonies of the United
States.
This economic development of the world was perfectly natural. The
increasing number of factories in England and France and Germany needed
an ever increasing amount of raw materials and the equally increasing
number of European workers needed an ever increasing amount of food.
Everywhere the cry was for more and for richer markets, for more
easily accessible coal mines and iron mines and rubber plantations and
oil-wells, for greater supplies of wheat and grain.
The purely political events of the European continent dwindled to mere
insignificance in the eyes of men who were making plans for steamboat
lines on Victoria Nyanza or for railroads through the interior of
Shantung. They knew that many European questions still remained to be
settled, but they did not bother, and through sheer indifference and
carelessness they bestowed upon their descendants a terrible inheritance
of hate and misery. For untold centuries the south-eastern corner
of Europe had been the scene of rebellion and bloodshed. During the
seventies of the last century the people of Serbia and Bulgaria and
Montenegro and Roumania were once more trying to gain their freedom and
the Turks (with the support of many of the western powers), were trying
to prevent this.
After a period of particularly atrocious massacres in Bulgaria in the
year 1876, the Russian people lost all patience. The Government was
forced to intervene just as President McKinley was obliged to go to Cuba
and stop the shooting-squads of General Weyler in Havana. In April of
the year 1877 the Russian armies crossed the Danube, stormed the Shipka
pass, and after the capture of Plevna, marched southward until they
reached the gates of Constantinople. Turkey appealed for help to
England. There were many English people who denounced their government
when it took the side of the Sultan. But Disraeli (who had just made
Queen Victoria Empress of India and who loved the picturesque Turks
while he hated the Russians who were brutally cruel to the Jewish people
within their frontiers) decided to interfere. Russia was forced to
conclude the peace of San Stefano (1878) and the question of the Balkans
was left to a Congress which convened at Berlin in June and July of the
same year.
This famous conference was entirely dominated by the personality of
Disraeli. Even Bismarck feared the clever old man with his well-oiled
curly hair and his supreme arrogance, tempered by a cynical sense
of humor and a marvellous gift for flattery. At Berlin the British
prime-minister carefully watched over the fate of his friends the Turks.
Montenegro, Serbia and Roumania were recognised as independent kingdoms.
The principality of Bulgaria was given a semi-independent status under
Prince Alexander of Battenberg, a nephew of Tsar Alexander II. But none
of those countries were given the chance to develop their powers and
their resources as they would have been able to do, had England been
less anxious about the fate of the Sultan, whose domains were necessary
to the safety of the British Empire as a bulwark against further Russian
aggression.
To make matters worse, the congress allowed Austria to take Bosnia and
Herzegovina away from the Turks to be "administered" as part of the
Habsburg domains. It is true that Austria made an excellent job of it.
The neglected provinces were as well managed as the best of the British
colonies, and that is saying a great deal. But they were inhabited by
many Serbians. In older days they had been part of the great Serbian
empire of Stephan Dushan, who early in the fourteenth century had
defended western Europe against the invasions of the Turks and whose
capital of Uskub had been a centre of civilisation one hundred and fifty
years before Columbus discovered the new lands of the west. The Serbians
remembered their ancient glory as who would not? They resented the
presence of the Austrians in two provinces, which, so they felt, were
theirs by every right of tradition.
And it was in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, that the archduke
Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, was murdered on June 28 of the
year 1914. The assassin was a Serbian student who had acted from purely
patriotic motives.
But the blame for this terrible catastrophe which was the immediate,
though not the only cause of the Great World War did not lie with the
half-crazy Serbian boy or his Austrian victim. It must be traced back
to the days of the famous Berlin Conference when Europe was too busy
building a material civilisation to care about the aspirations and
the dreams of a forgotten race in a dreary corner of the old Balkan
peninsula.