Egypt in 1883 and remained there in spite of the fact that Egypt was
technically a part of the Turkish Empire, nor how nearly this scramble
led to war between France and Great Britain in 1898, when a certain
Colonel Marchand, crossing Central Africa from the west coast, tried at
Fashoda to seize the Upper Nile.
Nor can we tell how the British Government first let the Boers, or
Dutch settlers, of the Orange River district and the Transvaal set up
independent republics in the inland parts of South Africa, and then
repented and annexed the Transvaal Republic in 1877; nor how the
Transvaal Boers fought for freedom and won it after the battle of
Majuba Hill (1881). Majuba Hill was made to rankle in the memory of
the English people by a persistent press campaign. A war with both
republics broke out in 1899, a three years’ war enormously costly to
the British people, which ended at last in the surrender of the two
republics.
Their period of subjugation was a brief one. In 1907, after the
downfall of the imperialist government which had conquered them, the
Liberals took the South African problem in hand, and these former
republics became free and fairly willing associates with Cape Colony
and Natal in a Confederation of all the states of South Africa as one
self- governing republic under the British Crown.
In a quarter of a century the partition of Africa was completed. There
remained unannexed three comparatively small countries: Liberia, a
settlement of liberated negro slaves on the west coast; Morocco, under
a Moslem Sultan; and Abyssinia, a barbaric country, with an ancient and
peculiar form of Christianity, which had successfully maintained its
independence against Italy at the battle of Adowa in 1896.
LXIII
EUROPEAN AGGRESSION IN ASIA AND THE RISE OF JAPAN
It is difficult to believe that any large number of people really
accepted this headlong painting of the map of Africa in European
colours as a permanent new settlement of the worlds affairs, but it is
the duty of the historian to record that it was so accepted. There was
but a shallow historical background to the European mind in the
nineteenth century, and no habit of penetrating criticism. The quite
temporary advantages that the mechanical revolution in the west had
given the Europeans over the rest of the old world were regarded by
people, blankly ignorant of such events as the great Mongol conquests,
as evidences of a permanent and assured European leadership of mankind.
They had no sense of the transferability of science and its fruits.
They did not realize that Chinamen and Indians could carry on the work
of research as ably as Frenchmen or Englishmen. They believed that
there was some innate intellectual drive in the west, and some innate
indolence and conservatism in the east, that assured the Europeans a
world predominance for ever.
The consequence of this infatuation was that the various European
foreign offices set themselves not merely to scramble with the British
for the savage and undeveloped regions of the world’s surface, but also
to carve up the populous and civilized countries of Asia as though
these people also were no more than raw material for exploitation. The
inwardly precarious but outwardly splendid imperialism of the British
ruling class in India, and the extensive and profitable possessions of
the Dutch in the East Indies, filled the rival Great Powers with dreams
of similar glories in Persia, in the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, and
in Further India, China and Japan.
In 1898 Germany seized Kiau Chau in China. Britain responded by
seizing Wei-hai-wei, and the next year the Russians took possession of
Port Arthur. A flame of hatred for the Europeans swept through China.
There were massacres of Europeans and Christian converts, and in 1900
an attack upon and siege of the European legations in Pekin. A
combined force of Europeans made a punitive expedition to Pekin,
rescued the legations, and stole an enormous amount of valuable
property. The Russians then seized Manchuria, and in 1904, the British
invaded Tibet....
But now a new Power appeared in the struggle of the Great Powers,
Japan. Hitherto Japan has played but a small part in this history; her
secluded civilization has not contributed very largely to the general
shaping of human destinies; she has received much, but she has given
little. The Japanese proper are of the Mongolian race. Their
civilization, their writing and their literary and artistic traditions
are derived from the Chinese. Their history is an interesting and
romantic one; they developed a feudal system and a system of chivalry
in the earlier centuries of the Christian era; their attacks upon Korea
and China are an Eastern equivalent of the English wars in France.
Japan was first brought into contact with Europe in the sixteenth
century; in 1542 some Portuguese reached it in a Chinese junk, and in
1549 a Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, began his teaching there.
For a time Japan welcomed European intercourse, and the Christian
missionaries made a great number of converts. A certain William Adams
became the most trusted European adviser of the Japanese, and showed
them how to build big ships. There were voyages in Japanese-built
ships to India and Peru. Then arose complicated quarrels between the
Spanish Dominicans, the Portuguese Jesuits, and the English and Dutch
Protestants, each warning the Japanese against the political designs of
the others. The Jesuits, in a phase of ascendancy, persecuted and
insulted the Buddhists with great acrimony. In the end the Japanese
came to the conclusion that the Europeans were an intolerable nuisance,
and that Catholic Christianity in particular was a mere cloak for the
political dreams of the Pope and the Spanish monarchy—already in
possession of the Philippine Islands; there was a great persecution of
the Christians, and in 1638 Japan was absolutely closed to Europeans,
and remained closed for over 200 years. During those two centuries the
Japanese were as completely cut off from the rest of the world as
though they lived upon another planet. It was forbidden to build any
ship larger than a mere coasting boat. No Japanese could go abroad, and
no European enter the country.
JAPANESE SOLDIER ON THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
JAPANESE SOLDIER ON THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
_(In the Victoria and Albert Museum)_
For two centuries Japan remained outside the main current of history.
She lived on in a state of picturesque feudalism in which about five
per cent of the population, the _samurai_, or fighting men, and the
nobles and their families, tyrannized without restraint over the rest
of the population. Meanwhile the great world outside went on to wider
visions and new powers. Strange shipping became more frequent, passing
the Japanese headlands; sometimes ships were wrecked and sailors
brought ashore. Through the Dutch settlement in the island of Deshima,
their one link with the outer universe, came warnings that Japan was
not keeping pace with the power of the Western world. In 1837 a ship
sailed into Yedo Bay flying a strange flag of stripes and stars, and
carrying some Japanese sailors she had picked up far adrift in the
Pacific. She was driven off by cannon shot. This flag presently
reappeared on other ships. One in 1849 came to demand the liberation
of eighteen shipwrecked American sailors. Then in 1853 came four
American warships under Commodore Perry, and refused to be driven away.
He lay at anchor in forbidden waters, and sent messages to the two
rulers who at that time shared the control of Japan. In 1854 he
returned with ten ships, amazing ships propelled by steam, and equipped
with big guns, and he made proposals for trade and intercourse that the
Japanese had no power to resist. He landed with a guard of 500 men to
sign the treaty. Incredulous crowds watched this visitation from the
outer world, marching through the streets.
Russia, Holland and Britain followed in the wake of America. A great
nobleman whose estates commanded the Straits of Shimonoseki saw fit to
fire on foreign vessels, and a bombardment by a fleet of British,
French, Dutch and American warships destroyed his batteries and
scattered his swordsmen. Finally an allied squadron (1865), at anchor
off Kioto, imposed a ratification of the treaties which opened Japan to
the world.
The humiliation of the Japanese by these events was intense. With
astonishing energy and intelligence they set themselves to bring their
culture and organization to the level of the European Powers. Never in
all the history of mankind did a nation make such a stride as Japan
then did. In 1866 she was a medieval people, a fantastic caricature of
the extremest romantic feudalism; in 1899 hers was a completely
Westernized people, on a level with the most advanced European Powers.
She completely dispelled the persuasion that Asia was in some
irrevocable way hopelessly behind Europe. She made all European
progress seem sluggish by comparison.
We cannot tell here in any detail of Japan’s war with China in 1894-95.
It demonstrated the extent of her Westernization. She had an
efficient Westernized army and a small but sound fleet. But the
significance of her renascence, though it was appreciated by Britain
and the United States, who were already treating her as if she were a
European state, was not understood by the other Great Powers engaged in
the pursuit of new Indias in Asia. Russia was pushing down through
Manchuria to Korea. France was already established far to the south in
Tonkin and Annam, Germany was prowling hungrily on the look-out for
some settlement. The three Powers combined to prevent Japan reaping
any fruits from the Chinese war. She was exhausted by the struggle,
and they threatened her with war.
A STREET IN TOKIO
A STREET IN TOKIO
Japan submitted for a time and gathered her forces. Within ten years
she was ready for a struggle with Russia, which marks an epoch in the
history of Asia, the close of the period of European arrogance. The
Russian people were, of course, innocent and ignorant of this trouble
that was being made for them halfway round the world, and the wiser
Russian statesmen were against these foolish thrusts; but a gang of
financial adventurers, including the Grand Dukes, his cousins,
surrounded the Tsar. They had gambled deeply in the prospective
looting of Manchuria and China, and they would suffer no withdrawal.
So there began a transportation of great armies of Japanese soldiers
across the sea to Port Arthur and Korea, and the sending of endless
trainloads of Russian peasants along the Siberian railway to die in
those distant battlefields.
The Russians, badly led and dishonestly provided, were beaten on sea
and land alike. The Russian Baltic Fleet sailed round Africa to be
utterly destroyed in the Straits of Tshushima. A revolutionary movement
among the common people of Russia, infuriated by this remote and
reasonless slaughter, obliged the Tsar to end the war (1905); he
returned the southern half of Saghalien, which had been seized by
Russia in 1875, evacuated Manchuria, resigned Korea to Japan. The
European invasion of Asia was coming to an end and the retraction of
Europe’s tentacles was beginning.
LXIV
THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN 1914
We may note here briefly the varied nature of the constituents of the
British Empire in 1914 which the steamship and railway had brought
together. It was and is a quite unique political combination; nothing
of the sort has ever existed before.
First and central to the whole system was the “crowned republic” of the
United British Kingdom, including (against the will of a considerable
part of the Irish people) Ireland. The majority of the British
Parliament, made up of the three united parliaments of England and
Wales, Scotland and Ireland, determines the headship, the quality and
policy of the ministry, and determines it largely on considerations
arising out of British domestic politics. It is this ministry which is
the effective supreme government, with powers of peace and war, over
all the rest of the empire.
Next in order of political importance to the British States were the
“crowned republics” of Australia, Canada, Newfoundland (the oldest
British possession, 1583), New Zealand and South Africa, all
practically independent and self-governing states in alliance with
Great Britain, but each with a representative of the Crown appointed by
the Government in office;
Next the Indian Empire, an extension of the Empire of the Great Mogul
with its dependent and “protected” states reaching now from Beluchistan
to Burma, and including Aden, in all of which empire the British Crown
and the India Office (under Parliamentary control) played the role of
the original Turkoman dynasty;
Then the ambiguous possession of Egypt, still nominally a part of the
Turkish Empire and still retaining its own monarch, the Khedive, but
under almost despotic British official rule;
Map: OVERSEAS EMPIRES of EUROPEAN POWERS, January 1914
Then the still more ambiguous “Anglo-Egyptian” Sudan province, occupied
and administered jointly by the British and by the (British controlled)
Egyptian Government;
Then a number of partially self-governing communities, some British in
origin and some not, with elected legislatures and an appointed
executive, such as Malta, Jamaica, the Bahamas and Bermuda;
Then the Crown colonies, in which the rule of the British Home
Government (through the Colonial Office) verged on autocracy, as in
Ceylon, Trinidad and Fiji (where there was an appointed council), and
Gibraltar and St. Helena (where there was a governor);
GIBRALTAR
GIBRALTAR
_Photo: C. Sinclair_
Then great areas of (chiefly) tropical lands, raw-product areas, with
politically weak and under-civilized native communities which were
nominally protectorates, and administered either by a High Commissioner
set over native chiefs (as in Basutoland) or over a chartered company
(as in Rhodesia). In some cases the Foreign Office, in some cases the
Colonial Office, and in some cases the India Office, has been concerned
in acquiring the possessions that fell into this last and least
definite class of all, but for the most part the Colonial Office was
now responsible for them.
It will be manifest, therefore, that no single office and no single
brain had ever comprehended the British Empire as a whole. It was a
mixture of growths and accumulations entirely different from anything
that has ever been called an empire before. It guaranteed a wide peace
and security; that is why it was endured and sustained by many men of
the “subject” races—in spite of official tyrannies and insufficiencies,
and of much negligence on the part of the “home” public. Like the
Athenian Empire, it was an overseas empire; its ways were sea ways, and
its common link was the British Navy. Like all empires, its cohesion
was dependent physically upon a method of communication; the
development of seamanship, ship-building and steamships between the
sixteenth and nineteenth centuries had made it a possible and
convenient Pax—the “Pax Britannica,” and fresh developments of air or
swift land transport might at any time make it inconvenient.
STREET IN HONG KONG
STREET IN HONG KONG
_Photo: Underwood & Underwood_
LXV
THE AGE OF ARMAMENT IN EUROPE, AND THE GREAT WAR OF 1914-18
The progress in material science that created this vast
steamboat-and-railway republic of America and spread this precarious
British steamship empire over the world, produced quite other effects
upon the congested nations upon the continent of Europe. They found
themselves confined within boundaries fixed during the
horse-and-high-road period of human life, and their expansion overseas
had been very largely anticipated by Great Britain. Only Russia had any
freedom to expand eastward; and she drove a great railway across
Siberia until she entangled herself in a conflict with Japan, and
pushed south-eastwardly towards the borders of Persia and India to the
annoyance of Britain. The rest of the European Powers were in a state
of intensifying congestion. In order to realize the full possibilities
of the new apparatus of human life they had to rearrange their affairs
upon a broader basis, either by some sort of voluntary union or by a
union imposed upon them by some predominant power. The tendency of
modern thought was in the direction of the former alternative, but all
the force of political tradition drove Europe towards the latter.
The downfall of the “empire” of Napoleon III, the establishment of the
new German Empire, pointed men’s hopes and fears towards the idea of a
Europe consolidated under German auspices. For thirty-six years of
uneasy peace the polities of Europe centred upon that possibility.
France, the steadfast rival of Germany for European ascendancy since
the division of the empire of Charlemagne, sought to correct her own
weakness by a close alliance with Russia, and Germany linked herself
closely with the Austrian Empire (it had ceased to be the Holy Roman
Empire in the days of Napoleon I) and less successfully with the new
kingdom of Italy. At first Great Britain stood as usual half in and
half out of continental affairs. But she was gradually forced into a
close association with the Franco-Russian group by the aggressive
development of a great German navy. The grandiose imagination of the
Emperor William II (1888-1918) thrust Germany into premature overseas
enterprise that ultimately brought not only Great Britain but Japan and
the United States into the circle of her enemies.
BRITISH TANK IN THE BATTLE OF THE MENIN ROAD
BRITISH TANK IN THE BATTLE OF THE MENIN ROAD
The crew came out for a breath of fresh air during a lull
_Photo: British Official_
All these nations armed. Year after year the proportion of national
production devoted to the making of guns, equipment, battleships and
the like, increased. Year after year the balance of things seemed
trembling towards war, and then war would be averted. At last it came.
Germany and Austria struck at France and Russia and Serbia; the German
armies marching through Belgium, Britain immediately came into the war
on the side of Belgium, bringing in Japan as her ally, and very soon
Turkey followed on the German side. Italy entered the war against
Austria in 1915, and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in the October
of that year. In 1916 Rumania, and in 1917 the United States and China
were forced into war against Germany. It is not within the scope of
this history to define the exact share of blame for this vast
catastrophe. The more interesting question is not why the Great War
was begun but why the Great War was not anticipated and prevented. It
is a far graver thing for mankind that scores of millions of people
were too “patriotic,” stupid, or apathetic to prevent this disaster by
a movement towards European unity upon frank and generous lines, than
that a small number of people may have been active in bringing it
about.
THE RUINS OF YPRES (ONCE A DELIGHTFUL OLD FLEMISH TOWN)
THE RUINS OF YPRES (ONCE A DELIGHTFUL OLD FLEMISH TOWN)
To show the complete destructiveness of modern war
_Photo: Topical_
THE DEVASTATION OF MODERN WAR
THE DEVASTATION OF MODERN WAR
Wire entanglements in the foreground
_Photo: Photopress_
It is impossible within the space at our command here to trace the
intricate details of the war. Within a few months it became apparent
that the progress of modern technical science had changed the nature of
warfare very profoundly. Physical science gives power, power over
steel, over distance, over disease; whether that power is used well or
ill depends upon the moral and political intelligence of the world.
The governments of Europe, inspired by antiquated policies of hate and
suspicion, found themselves with unexampled powers both of destruction
and resistance in their hands. The war became a consuming fire round
and about the world, causing losses both to victors and vanquished out
of all proportion to the issues involved. The first phase of the war
was a tremendous rush of the Germans upon Paris and an invasion of East
Prussia by the Russians. Both attacks were held and turned. Then the
power of the defensive developed; there was a rapid elaboration of
trench warfare until for a time the opposing armies lay entrenched in
long lines right across Europe, unable to make any advance without
enormous losses. The armies were millions strong, and behind them
entire populations were organized for the supply of food and munitions
to the front. Then was a cessation of nearly every sort of productive
activity except such as contributed to military operations. All the
able-bodied manhood of Europe was drawn into the armies or navies or
into the improvised factories that served them. There was an enormous
replacement of men by women in industry. Probably more than half the
people in the belligerent countries of Europe changed their employment
altogether during this stupendous struggle. They were socially
uprooted and transplanted. Education and normal scientific work were
restricted or diverted to immediate military ends, and the distribution
of news was crippled and corrupted by military control and “propaganda”
activities.
The phase of military deadlock passed slowly into one of aggression
upon the combatant populations behind the fronts by the destruction of
food supplies and by attacks through the air. And also there was a
steady improvement in the size and range of the guns employed and of
such ingenious devices as poison-gas shells and the small mobile forts
known as tanks, to break down the resistance of troops in the trenches.
The air offensive was the most revolutionary of all the new methods.
It carried warfare from two dimensions into three. Hitherto in the
history of mankind war had gone on only where the armies marched and
met. Now it went on everywhere. First the Zeppelin and then the
bombing aeroplane carried war over and past the front to an ever-
increasing area of civilian activities beyond. The old distinction
maintained in civilized warfare between the civilian and combatant
population disappeared. Everyone who grew food, or who sewed a
garment, everyone who felled a tree or repaired a house, every railway
station and every warehouse was held to be fair game for destruction.
The air offensive increased in range and terror with every month in the
war. At last great areas of Europe were in a state of siege and
subject to nightly raids. Such exposed cities as London and Paris
passed sleepless night after sleepless night while the bombs burst, the
anti-aircraft guns maintained an intolerable racket, and the fire
engines and ambulances rattled headlong through the darkened and
deserted streets. The effects upon the minds and health of old people
and of young children were particularly distressing and destructive.
Pestilence, that old follower of warfare, did not arrive until the very
end of the fighting in 1918. For four years medical science staved off
any general epidemic; then came a great outbreak of influenza about the
world which destroyed many millions of people. Famine also was staved
off for some time. By the beginning of 1918 however most of Europe was
in a state of mitigated and regulated famine. The production of food
throughout the world had fallen very greatly through the calling off of
peasant mankind to the fronts, and the distribution of such food as was
produced was impeded by the havoc wrought by the submarine, by the
rupture of customary routes through the closing of frontiers, and by
the disorganization of the transport system of the world. The various
governments took possession of the dwindling food supplies, and, with
more or less success, rationed their populations. By the fourth year
the whole world was suffering from shortages of clothing and housing
and of most of the normal gear of life as well as of food. Business
and economic life were profoundly disorganized. Every-one was worried,
and most people were leading lives of unwonted discomfort.