how antiquated is the Russian system we shall answer, "Yes; that is the
superiority of Russia." Their institutions are part of their history,
whether as relics or fossils. Their abuses have really been uses; that
is to say, they have been used up. If they have old engines of terror or
torment, they may fall to pieces from mere rust, like an old coat of
armor. But in the case of the Prussian tyranny, if it be tyranny at all,
it is the whole point of its claim that it is not antiquated, but just
going to begin, like the showman. Prussia has a whole thriving factory
of thumbscrews, a whole humming workshop of wheels and racks, of the
newest and neatest pattern, with which to win Europe back to reaction
* * * infandum renovare dolorem. And if we wish to test the truth of this,
it can be done by the same method which showed us that Russia, if her
race or religion could sometimes make her an invader and an oppressor,
could also be made an emancipator and a knight errant. In the same way,
if the Russian institutions are old-fashioned, they honestly exhibit the
good as well as the bad that can be found in old-fashioned things. In
their police system they have an inequality which is against our ideas
of law. But in their commune system they have an equality that is older
than law itself. Even when they flogged each other like barbarians, they
called each other by their Christian names like children. At their
worst, they retained all the best of a rude society. At their best, they
are simply good, like good children or good nuns. But in Prussia, all
that is best in the civilized machinery is put at the service of all
that is worst in the barbaric mind. Here again the Prussian has no
accidental merits, none of those lucky survivals, none of those late
repentances, which make the patchwork glory of Russia. Here all is
sharpened to a point and pointed to a purpose; and that purpose, if
words and acts have any meaning at all, is the destruction of liberty
throughout the world.
*V.*
*The "Bond of Teutonism"*
In considering the Prussian point of view we have been considering what
seems to be mainly a mental limitation--a kind of knot in the brain.
Toward the problem of Slav population, of English colonization, of
French armies, and of reinforcements it shows the same strange
philosophic sulks. So far as I can follow it, it seems to amount to
saying, "It is very wrong that you should be superior to me, because I
am superior to you." The spokesman of this system seems to have a
curious capacity for concentrating this entanglement or contradiction
sometimes into a single paragraph, or even a single sentence. I have
already referred to the German Emperor's celebrated suggestion that in
order to avert the peril of Hunnishness we should all become Huns. A
much stronger instance is his more recent order to his troops touching
the war in Northern France. As most people know, his words ran: "It is
my royal and imperial command that you concentrate your energies, for
the immediate present, upon one single purpose, and that is that you
address all your skill and all the valor of my soldiers to exterminate
first the treacherous English and to walk over Gen. French's
contemptible little army." The rudeness of the remark an Englishman can
afford to pass over. What I am interested in is the mentality, the train
of thought that can manage to entangle itself even in so brief a space.
If French's little army is contemptible it would seem clear that all the
skill and valor of the German Army had better not be concentrated on it,
but on the larger and less contemptible allies. If all the skill and
valor of the German Army are concentrated on it it is not being treated
as contemptible. But the Prussian rhetorician had two incompatible
sentiments in his mind, and he insisted on saying them both at once. He
wanted to think of an English Army as a small thing; but he also wanted
to think of an English defeat as a big thing. He wanted to exult, at the
same moment, in the utter weakness of the British Nation in their attack
and the supreme skill and valor of the Germans in repelling such an
attack. Somehow it must be made a common and obvious collapse for
England and yet a daring and unexpected triumph for Germany. In trying
to express these contradictory conceptions simultaneously he got rather
mixed. Therefore he bade Germania fill all her vales and mountains with
the dying agonies of this almost invisible earwig, and let the impure
blood of this cockroach redden the Rhine down to the sea.
*Prof. Harnack's Reproach*.
But it would be unfair to base the criticism on the utterance of any
accidental and hereditary Prince; and it is quite equally clear in the
case of the philosophers who have been held up to us, even in England,
as the very prophets of progress. And in nothing is it shown more
sharply than in the curious, confused talk about race, and especially
about the Teutonic race. Prof. Harnack and similar people are
reproaching us, I understand, for having broken "the bond of
Teutonism"--a bond which the Prussians have strictly observed, both in
breach and observance. We note it in the open annexation of lands wholly
inhabited by negroes, such as Denmark. We note it equally in their
instant and joyful recognition of the flaxen hair and light blue eyes of
the Turks. But it is still the abstract principle of Prof. Harnack which
interests me most, and in following it I have the same complexity of
inquiry, but the same simplicity of result. Comparing the professor's
concern about "Teutonism" with his unconcern about Belgium, I can only
reach the following result: "A man need not keep a promise he has made.
But a man must keep a promise he has not made." There certainly was a
treaty binding Britain to Belgium, if it was only a scrap of paper. If
there was any treaty binding Britain with Teutonism it is, to say the
least of it, a lost scrap of paper--almost what one might call a scrap
of waste paper. Here again the pedants under consideration exhibit the
illogical perversity that makes the brain reel. There is obligation and
there is no obligation; sometimes it appears that Germany and England
must keep faith with each other; sometimes that Germany need not keep
faith with anybody and anything; sometimes that we, alone among European
peoples, are almost entitled to be Germans; sometimes that besides us
Russians and Frenchmen almost rise to a Germanic loveliness of
character. But through all there is, hazy but not hypocritical, this
sense of some common Teutonism.
Prof. Haeckel, another of the witnesses raised up against us, attained
to some celebrity at one time through proving the remarkable resemblance
between two different things by printing duplicate pictures of the same
thing. Prof. Haeckel's contribution to biology, in this case, was
exactly like Prof. Harnack's contribution to ethnology. Prof. Harnack
knows what a German is like. When he wants to imagine what an Englishman
is like he simply photographs the same German over again. In both cases
there is probably sincerity, as well as simplicity. Haeckel was so
certain that the species illustrated in embryo really are closely
related and linked up that it seemed to him a small thing to simplify it
by mere repetition. Harnack is so certain that the German and Englishman
are almost alike that he really risks the generalization that they are
exactly alike. He photographs, so to speak, the same fair and foolish
face twice over, and calls it a remarkable resemblance between cousins.
Thus he can prove the existence of Teutonism just about as conclusively
as Haeckel has proved the more tenable proposition of the non-existence
of God.
*Germans and English.*
Now, the German and the Englishman are not in the least alike--except in
the sense that neither of them are negroes. They are, in everything good
and evil, more unlike than any other two men we can take at random from
the great European family. They are opposite from the roots of their
history--nay, of their geography. It is an understatement to call
Britain insular. Britain is not only an island, but an island slashed by
the sea till it nearly splits into three islands, and even the midlands
can almost smell the salt. Germany is a powerful, beautiful, and fertile
inland country, which can only find the sea by one or two twisted and
narrow paths, as people find a subterranean lake. Thus the British Navy
is really national because it is natural. It has cohered out of hundreds
of accidental adventures of ships and shipmen before Chaucer's time and
after it. But the German Navy is an artificial thing, as artificial as a
constructed Alp would be in England. William II. has simply copied the
British Navy, as Frederick II. copied the French Army, and this Japanese
or antlike assiduity in imitation is one of the hundred qualities which
the Germans have and the English markedly have not. There are other
German superiorities which are very much superior. The one or two really
jolly things that the Germans have got are precisely the things which
the English haven't got, notably a real habit of popular music and of
the ancient songs of the people; not merely spreading from the towns or
caught from the professionals. In this the Germans rather resemble the
Welsh, though heaven knows what becomes of Teutonism if they do. But the
difference between the Germans and the English goes deeper than all
these signs of it. They differ more than any other two Europeans in the
normal posture of the mind.
Above all, they differ in what is the most English of all English
traits--that shame which the French may be right in calling "the bad
shame," for it is certainly mixed up with pride and suspicion, the
upshot of which we call shyness. Even an Englishman's rudeness is often
rooted in his being embarrassed. But a German's rudeness is rooted in
his never being embarrassed. He eats and makes love noisily. He never
feels a speech or a song or a sermon or a large meal to be what the
English call "out of place" in particular circumstances. When Germans
are patriotic and religious they have no reactions against patriotism
and religion, as have the English and the French. Nay, the mistake of
Germany in the modern disaster largely arose from the facts that she
thought England was simple, when England is very subtle. She thought
that because our politics have become largely financial they had become
wholly financial; that because our aristocrats had become pretty cynical
they had become entirely corrupt. They could not seize the subtlety by
which a rather used-up English gentleman might sell a coronet when he
could not sell a fortress; might lower the public standards and yet
refuse to lower the flag. In short, the Germans are quite sure that they
understand us entirely because they do not understand us at all.
Possibly, if they began to understand us they might hate us even more,
but I would rather be hated for some small but real reason than pursued
with love on account of all kinds of qualities which I do not possess
and which I do not desire. And when the Germans get their first genuine
glimpses of what modern England is like they will discover that England
has a very broken, belated, and inadequate sense of having an obligation
to Europe; but no sort of sense whatever of having any obligation to
Teutonism.
*Slippery Strength of Stupidity.*
This is the last and strongest of the Prussian qualities we have here
considered. There is in stupidity of this sort a strange, slippery
strength, because it can be not only outside rules, but outside reason.
The man who really cannot see that he is contradicting himself has a
great advantage in controversy, though the advantage breaks down when he
tries to reduce it to simple addition, to chess--or to the game called
war. It is the same about the stupidity of the one-sided kinship. The
drunkard who is quite certain that a total stranger is his long-lost
brother has a great advantage until it comes to matters of detail. "We
must have chaos within," said Nietzsche, "that we may give birth to a
dancing star."
In these slight notes I have suggested the principal strong points of
the Prussian character--a failure in honor which almost amounts to a
failure in memory; an egomania that is honestly blind to the fact that
the other party is an ego, and, above all, an actual itch for tyranny
and interference, the devil which everywhere torments the idle and the
proud. To these must be added a certain mental shapelessness, which can
expand or contract without reference to reason or record--a potential
infinity of excuses. If the English had been on the German side the
German professors would have noted what irresistible energies had
evolved the Teutons. As the English are on the other side, the German
professors will say that these Teutons were not sufficiently evolved; or
they will say they were just sufficiently evolved to show that they were
not Teutons. Probably they will say both. But the truth is that all that
they call evolution should rather be called evasion. They tell us they
are opening windows of enlightenment and doors of progress. The truth is
that they are breaking up the whole house of the human intellect that
they may abscond in any direction. There is an ominous and almost
monstrous parallel between the position of their overrated philosophers
and of their comparatively underrated soldiers. For what their
professors call roads of progress are really routes of escape.
*South Africa's Boers and Britons*
*By H. Rider Haggard.*
The heart of South Africa, Boer and Briton, is with England in this war.
Here and there you will find an individual who cherishes bitter and
hostile memories, of which there has been an example in Mr. Beyers
letter the other day, so effectually answered by Gen. Botha. But such
instances, I believe, are so rare that really they are the exceptions
which seem to prove the rule. Of course, it goes without saying that
every person of English descent is heartily with the mother country, and
I do not suppose it would be an overestimate to add that quite 80 per
cent, of the Dutch are of the same way of thinking.
Still, there is a party among the South African Dutch that sees no
necessity for the invasion of German Southwest Africa. This party
overlooks the fact that the Germans have for long been preparing to
invade them; also that if by any chance Germany should conquer in this
war South Africa would be one of the first countries that they would
seize.
In speaking of this I talk of what I understand, since for the last two
and a half years it has been my duty to travel around the British Empire
upon the service of his Majesty. In addition to South Africa, I have
visited India, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and Canada. I have
recently traveled throughout South Africa as a member of the Dominion's
Royal Commission. It was my first visit there after the lapse of a whole
generation, and I can only say that everywhere I have found the most
intense loyalty and devotion to the old mother land. The empire is one
and indivisible; together it will stand or together it will fall.
South Africa is united; it has forgotten its recent labor troubles. I
answer "absolutely" all such things are past history, blown away and
destroyed by this great wind of war. South Africa, down to its lowest
Hottentot, has, I believe, but one object, to help England to win in
this vast battle of the nations. Why, even the natives, as you may have
noticed, are sending subscriptions from their scanty hoards and praying
to be allowed "to throw a few stones for the King." Did not Poutsma say
as much the other day?
In the old days, of course, there were very strained relations between
the English and Boers, which had their roots in foolish and inconsistent
acts carried out by the Home Government, generally to forward party
ends. I need not go into them because they are too long.
Then came the Boer war, which, as you know, proved a much bigger
enterprise than the Home Government had anticipated. It cost Britain
20,000 lives and £300,000,000 of English money before the Boers were
finally subdued. Only about half a score of years have gone by since
peace was declared. Within two or three years of that peace the British
Government made up its mind to a very bold step and one which was viewed
with grave doubts by many people--namely, to give full self-government
to the Transvaal and the Orange River Colonies.
*Astonished at Results.*
When I traveled through South Africa the other day this new Constitution
had been working for a few years, and I can only say that I was
astonished at the results. Here and there in the remoter districts, it
is true, some racial feeling still prevailed, but taken as a whole this
seems absolutely to have died away. Briton and Boer have come together
in a manner for which I believe I am right in saying there is no
precedent in the history of the world, so shortly, at any rate, after a
prolonged and bitter struggle to the death. I might give many instances,
but I will only take one. At Pretoria I was asked to inspect a company
of Boy Scouts, and there I found English and Dutch lads serving side by
side with the utmost brotherhood. Again I met most of the men who had
been leaders of the Boers in the war. One and all professed the greatest
loyalty to England. Moreover, I am certain that this was not lip
loyalty; it was from the heart. Especially was I impressed by that great
man, Gen. Botha, with whom I had several conversations. I am convinced
that at this moment the King has no truer or more faithful servant than
Gen. Botha. Again and again did I hear from prominent South Africans of
Dutch or Huguenot extraction that never more was there any chance of
trouble between Boer and Briton.
I know it is alleged by some that this is because the Dutch feel that
they have on the whole made a good bargain, having won absolute
constitutional liberty and the fullest powers of self-government, plus
the protection of the British fleet. There may be something in this
view, but I am sure that the feeling goes a great deal deeper than
self-interest. Mutual respect has arisen between those who ten years ago
were enemies fighting each other.
*Appeal to People's Imagination.*
Moreover, the Boer now knows a great deal more of the British Empire and
what it means than he did then. Lastly, the supreme generosity evinced
by Britain in giving their enemy of the day before every right and
privilege that is owned by her other oversea dominions with whom she has
never had a quarrel appeals deeply to the imagination of the Dutch
people. Now, the world sees the results. Germany, which has
miscalculated so much in connection with this war and the part that the
British Empire would play in it, miscalculated nowhere more than it did
in the case of South Africa. The German war lords hoped that India and
Egypt would rise, they trusted that Canada and Australia would prove
lukewarm, but they were certain that South Africa would seize the
opportunity to rebel. How could it be otherwise, they thought, seeing
that but yesterday she was at death grips with us. Then came the great
surprise. Lo and behold! instead of rebelling, South Africa promptly
cabled to England saying that every British soldier might be withdrawn
from her shores, and, further, that the burghers of the land would
themselves undertake the conquest of the German possessions of Southwest
Africa for the Crown. They are doing so at this moment. I believe that
today there is no British soldier left at the Cape, and I know that now
a great force is moving on Southwest Africa furnished by Boer and Briton
alike. Can the history of the world tell us of any parallel case to
this--that a country conquered within a dozen years should not only need
no garrison, but by its own free will undertake war against the enemies
of its late victor? Surely this is something of which Britain may feel
proud.
*Deep Distrust of Germany.*
Now, some of your readers may ask: "Why is it? How did this miracle, for
it is little less, happen?" My answer is that it has been caused first
by a supreme and glorious trust in the justice and generosity of
England, which knows how to rule colonies as no other nation has done in
the history of the earth, and secondly by a deep distrust of Germany. To
my own knowledge, Germany has been intriguing in South Africa for the
last quarter of a century. I remember, I suppose it must be almost
twenty years ago, sending to the late Mr. Chamberlain, who was then
Colonial Secretary, information to this effect which reached me from
undoubted sources in South Africa. Again, not long ago, I was shown a
document which was found among the papers of the Zulu Prince Dinizulu,
son of King Cetewayo, who died the other day. It was concluded between
himself and Germans, and under it the poor man had practically sold his
country nominally to a German firm, but doubtless to more powerful
persons behind. In short, there is no question that for many years
Germany has had its eye upon South Africa as a desirable field of
settlement for its subjects under the German and not the British flag.
Now, the Boers are perfectly well acquainted with this fact and have no
wish to exchange the beneficent rule of Britain for that of Potsdam, the
King Log of George V. for the King Stork of Kaiser Wilhelm.
You ask me if I think that the Boers are likely to succeed in their
attack on Southwest Africa, where it must be remembered that the Germans
have a very formidable force; indeed, I have been told, I do not know
with what accuracy, that they have accumulated there the vast arsenal of
war material that was obviously intended to be used on some future
occasion in the invasion of the Cape. I answer: "Certainly, they will
succeed, though not easily." Remember what stock these Boers come from.
They are descendants of the men who withstood and beat Alva in the
sixteenth century.
*Botha of Huguenot Descent.*
I happen to be well acquainted with that period of history. I wrote a
story called "Lysbeth" concerning it, and to do this I found it
necessary not only to visit Holland on several occasions, but to read
all the contemporary records. In the light of the information which I
thus obtained, I state positively that the world has no record of a more
glorious and heroic struggle than that made by the Dutch against all the
power of Spain. Well, the Boers are descended from these men and women
(for both fought). Also, they include a very large dash of some of the
best blood of Europe, namely, that of the Huguenots. For instance, Botha
himself is of Huguenot descent. It is impossible for a person like
myself, who have that same blood in me, to talk with him for five
minutes without becoming aware of his origin. Long before he told me so
I knew that he was in part a Frenchman. Men so great are not easily
conquered, as we know to our cost. Why, it took quite 250,000 soldiers
and three years of strenuous guerrilla warfare to enable Britain to
defeat 40,000 or 50,000 Dutch farmers. Therefore I have personally not
the least fear of the ultimate result of the campaign against Southwest
Africa.
I went as a lad as Secretary to the Governor of Natal. That was in 1875.
Subsequently I accompanied Sir Theophilus Shepstone, one of the greatest
men that ever lived in South Africa, on his famous mission to the
Transvaal. I am now, I believe, the only survivor of that mission, and
certainly the only man who knows all the inner political history of that
event. Afterward I held office in the Transvaal, and was in the country
during all the disastrous period of the first Boer war. For instance, I
dined with Gen. Colley the night before he started on his ill-fated
expedition. I think there were thirteen of us present at that historical
dinner. Within a few weeks six or eight of these were dead, including
Colley himself, killed in the fight of Majuba, of which I heard the
guns. Of those present at that dinner party there now survive only Lady
Colley, my wife, and myself.
*Felt Like Rip Van Winkle.*