RUSSIA IN THE PACIFIC
Russia, for generations the victim of Asia, when at last she had won to
national greatness, was impelled by pressure from the West rather than
by a sense of requital to turn back the tide of invasion. That pressure
from the West was due to a misunderstanding in which Great Britain led
the way, and which the late Lord Salisbury happily described when he
stated that England "had backed the wrong horse" in opposing Russia and
in aiding Turkey against her.
Russia, because she broke Napoleon's career of victory by her power of
resistance, a power which was founded on a formlessness of national life
rather than a great military strength, was credited by Europe with a
fabulous might. Properly understood, the successful Russian resistance
to the greatest of modern captains was akin to that of an earthwork
which absorbs the sharpest blows of artillery and remains unmoved,
almost unharmed. But it was misinterpreted, and a mental conception
formed of the Russian earthwork as a mobile, aggressive force eager to
move forward and to overwhelm Europe. Russia's feat of beating back the
tide of Napoleonic invasion was merely the triumph of a low biological
type of national organism. Yet it inspired Europe with a mighty fear.
The "Colossus of the North" came into being to haunt every Chancellery.
Nowhere was the fear felt more acutely than in Great Britain. It is a
necessary consequence of the British Imperial expansion of the past, an
expansion that came about very often in spite of the Mother Country's
reluctance and even hostility, that Great Britain must now always view
with distrust, with suspicion, that country which is the greatest of the
European Continental Powers for the time being, whether it be France,
Russia, or Germany. If British foreign policy is examined carefully it
will be found to have been based on that guiding principle for many
generations. Whatever nation appears to aim at a supreme position in
Europe must be confronted by Great Britain.
Sometimes British statesmen, following instinctively a course which was
set for them by force of circumstances, have not recognised the real
reason of their actions. They have imagined that there was some ethical
warrant for the desire for a European "balance of power." They have seen
in the malignant disposition of whatever nation was the greatest Power
in Europe for the time being a just prompting to arrange restraining
coalitions, to wage crippling wars. But the truth is that the British
race, with so much that is desirable of the earth under its flag, with
indeed almost all the good empty lands in its keeping, must be jealous
of the next European Power. On the other hand, every growing Power in
Europe must look with envy on the rich claim which one prospector, and
that one not the earliest, has pegged out in the open fields of the
world. Thus between Great Britain and the next European Power in rank
there is always a mutual jealousy. The growing Power is credited with a
desire to seize the rich lands of the British Empire; and generally has
the desire. The holding Power is apprehensive of every step forward of
any rival, seeing in it a threat to her Empire's security. There is such
a thing in this world as being too rich to be comfortable. That is Great
Britain's national position.
Thus when the power of France was broken and Napoleon was safely shut up
in St Helena, the British nation, relieved of one dread, promptly found
another. Russia was credited with designs on India. She was supposed to
be moving south towards the Mediterranean, and her object in seeking to
be established there was obviously to challenge British naval supremacy,
and to capture British overseas colonies. British diplomacy devoted
itself sternly to the task of checkmating Russia. Russia, the big
blundering amorphous nation, to whom England had given, some generations
before, early promptings to national organisation, and who now sprawled
clumsily across Europe groping for a way out of her ice-chains towards
a warm-water port, became the traditional enemy of the British Empire.
This idea of Russian rivalry grew to be an obsession. The melodramas of
the British people had for their favourite topic the odious cruelty of
Russian tyranny. If a submarine cable to a British colony were
interrupted, or a quarry explosion startled the air, the colonists at
once turned their thoughts to a Russian invasion, and mobilised their
volunteers. Colonists of this generation can remember the thrills of
early childhood, when more than once they "prepared for the Russians,"
and the whole force of some hundreds of volunteers and cadets determined
to sell their lives dearly on the battlefield to keep Russian knouts
from the backs of their womenfolk, it being seriously considered that
the Russian always celebrated a victory by a general knouting.
Not until the idea of Russia establishing a hegemony over Europe had
been dissipated by the Russo-Japanese War did British statesmanship
really discover qualities of good neighbourliness in the Russian. But by
that time the main direction of Russian expansion had been definitely
settled as eastward instead of southward. Perhaps this was to the
ultimate advantage of civilisation, even though the decision left the
Hellenic peninsula in the grip of the Turk, for it pushed the buffer
territory between Europe and Asia far forward into Asia. Should an
Asiatic Power, with revived militancy, ever seek again the conquest of
Europe, as Asiatic Powers have done before this, the war must commence
in Manchuria, and not on the plains below the Ural Mountains.
The position which Russia has occupied as a buffer state between Asia
and Europe has kept her back in the ranks of the army of civilisation.
Not only has she had to suffer the first of the savage blows which Asian
hordes have from time to time aimed at Europe, but also she has had to
endure Asiatic additions to her population, reducing the standard of her
race.
The instinct against race-mixture which Nature has implanted in man is
the great safeguard of the work of evolution to a higher type. The White
Race, having developed on certain lines to a position which promises, if
it does not fulfil, the evolution of a yet higher type, has an
instinctive repugnance to mixing its blood with peoples in other stages
of evolution. It is this instinct, this transcendental instinct, which
is responsible for the objection to miscegenation in the United States,
and for the lynchings by which that objection is impressed upon the
negro mind. The same instinct is at the back of the "White Australia"
laws, forbidding coloured people any right of entry into Australia.
It is not difficult to argue from a point of view of Christian religion
and humanity against an instinct which finds its extreme, but yet its
logical, expression in the burning of some negro offender at the stake.
But all the arguments in the world will not prevail against Nature. Once
a type has won a step up it must be jealous and "selfish," and even
brutal in its scorn of lower types; or must climb down again. This may
not be good ethics, but it is Nature. Russian backwardness in
civilisation to-day is a living proof that the scorn of the coloured man
is a necessary condition of the progress of the White Man's
civilisation.
But the race-mixture which was of evil to Russia has been of benefit to
the rest of Europe. To borrow a metaphor from modern preventive
medicine, the Russian marches between Europe and Asia have had their
power of resistance to Yellow invasion strengthened by the infusion of
some Yellow blood.
A land of high steppes, very cold in winter, very hot in summer, and of
great forests, which were difficult to traverse except where the rivers
had cut highways, Russia was never so tempting to the early European
civilisations as to lead to her area being definitely occupied and held
as a province. Neither Greek nor Roman attempted much colonisation in
Russia. By general consent the country was left to be a No-Man's-Land
between Asia and Europe. Alexander, whose army penetrated through to
India and actually brought back news of the existence of Australia,
never marched far north into the interior of Russia. There the mixed
tribes of Finns, Aryans, Semites, Mongols held a great gloomy country
influenced little by civilisation, but often temporarily submerged by
waves of barbarians from the Asiatic steppes. Still Western Europe in
time made some little impression on the Russian mass. Byzantine culture
impressed its mark on the Southern Slavs; Roman culture, after filtering
through Germany, reached the Lithuanians of the north. In the twelfth
century we hear of Arabian caravans making their way as far as the
Baltic in search of amber.
But more important to the Russian civilisation was the advent of the
Normans in the ninth century. They consolidated White Russia during the
ninth to the thirteenth centuries, appeared as warriors before the walls
of Byzantium, and learned the Christian faith from the priests of the
Eastern communion. (Russia has since been faithful always to the Greek
Church.) That period was rich in national heroes, such as Rurik, Simeon
and Truvor, and definitely set the current of Russian national life
towards a place in the European family of nations. By the thirteenth
century the White Russians, with their capital established at Moscow,
were able to withstand for a while a new Mongol invasion. But they could
not prevent Gengis Khan's lieutenants establishing themselves on the
lower Volga, and the Grand Prince of Moscow had to be content to become
a suzerain of the Grand Khan of Tartary.
For three centuries Russia now, amid many troubles, prepared herself to
take a place amongst European Powers. She was still more or less subject
to the Asiatic. But she was not Asiatic, and her vast area stood between
Europe and Asia and allowed the more Western nations to grow up free
from interference from any Eastern people, except in the case of the
great invasion of the Turks coming up from the south-east. How great was
the service that Russia unconsciously did to civilisation during those
centuries! If the Tartar had come with the Turk, or had followed him,
the White Races and their civilisation might have been swept away.
After being the bulwark of Europe for centuries Russia at last found her
strength and became the avenger of the White Races. By the sixteenth
century the Russian power had been consolidated under the Muscovite
Czars, and a great nation, of which the governing class was altogether
European, began to push back the Asiatic. From the sixteenth to the
nineteenth centuries the Russian Power grew. The natural direction of
expansion was southward. The new nation wanted a place in the sun, and
looked longingly towards the Mediterranean. Only the Turk stood in the
path, and for the Russian Czars war with the Turk had something of a
religious attraction. It was the Cross against the Crescent. It was the
champion of the Greek Church winning back the Byzantine Empire to
Christian domination.
For Russia to march south, driving the infidel from Europe, freeing the
Greeks, establishing herself in Constantinople, winning warm-water ports
and warm-climate fields, seemed to the Russian mind a national policy
which served both God and Mammon. That it served God was no slight thing
to the Russian people. They, then as now, cherished a simplicity and a
strenuousness of faith which may be called "superstitious" or
"beautiful and childlike" as the observer may wish, but which is
undoubtedly sincere. "There has been only one Christian," wrote Heine.
If he had known the Russians he would have qualified the gibe. They have
a real faith, and it is an important factor in the making of their
national policy which has to be taken into account.
How much there was of religious impulse and how much of mere
materialistic national ambition in Russia's move southward did not in
the least concern other European Powers. Whatever its motive they
considered the development dangerous. It threatened to give the Russian
an overwhelming power, a paramountcy in Europe, and that could not be
tolerated even if it had the most worthy of motives. Above all, Great
Britain was alarmed. In the days of Elizabeth Great Britain had been a
very good friend to Russia. But Russia was then no possible rival either
on land or on the high seas. In the days of Victoria the position had
changed. Russia still wore the laurels of her "victories" over Napoleon.
She was credited with being the greatest military Power in the world,
and credited also with a relentless and Machiavellian diplomacy that
added vastly to the material resources of her armies and fleets.
The Crimean War, with its resulting humiliating restrictions on Russian
power in the Black Sea, taught Russia that Europe was determined to
block her path south and preferred to buttress Turkish misrule than to
permit Russian expansion. Baffled but still restless, Russia turned
east and marched steadily towards the Pacific, with a side glance at the
Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, which caused Great Britain fresh
apprehension as to the fate of India.
The progress of the Russian Power in Asia throughout the nineteenth
century and its sudden check at the dawn of the twentieth century make
one of the most dramatic chapters of the world's history. European
rivalry had followed Russia on her march across Siberia, and the British
Power in particular was alarmed to see the "Colossus of the North" with
a naval base in the Pacific. Alarm was deepened when, after reaching the
waters of the Pacific, Russia turned south, again eager for a warm-water
port. At the time China seemed to be on the verge of dissolution as a
national entity, and it seemed as though Russia were destined to win a
great Asiatic Empire beside which even India would be a poor prize. In
1885 Great Britain nearly went to war with Russia in the defence of the
integrity of Corea.
But the decisive check to Russia was to come from another source. The
time had arrived for Asia to reassert some of her old warlike might. The
island power of Japan, having shaken off the cumbrous and useless armour
of medievalism, set herself sturdily in the path of modern progress and
aspired to a place among the great nations of the earth. Japan saw
clearly that Russia was the immediate enemy and prepared for a decisive
war, with an uncanny determinedness and a scrupulous attention to every
detail. Vast military and naval armaments had to be prepared. The
necessary money had to be wrung from a bitterly poor population or
borrowed at usurious rates. The political art with which that was done
was not the least wonderful part of a great national achievement.
Then--the weapons of war forged--it seemed good to Japanese
statesmanship to flesh them on an easy victim. It fell to China's lot to
teach the Japanese confidence in their new warlike arts, and to pay in
the shape of an indemnity something towards the cost of the great
struggle which Japan contemplated.
Had Russia had that relentless and Machiavellian diplomacy with which
she used to be credited, she would never have permitted the Japanese
attack upon China. Constituting herself the champion of China, she would
at one stroke have pushed back the growing power of Japan and
established a claim to some suzerainty over the Celestial Empire. In
carrying out her plans Japan had to take this chance, of Russia coming
on top of her when she attacked China. She took the chance and won.
Russia would have had to take the chance of a great European upheaval if
she had interfered in the Japo-Chinese struggle. She did not take the
chance, and allowed her rival to arm at China's expense to meet her.
The Chinese war finished, Japan, equipped with a full war-chest, a
veteran army and navy, was now ready to meet Russia. But she was faced
by the difficulty that in meeting Russia she might also have to meet a
European coalition, or the almost equally dangerous eventuality of a
veto on the war on the part of the United States. Japan was convinced of
her ability to fight Russia single-handed. Probably she would, in the
last event, have decided to take the risks of any coalition and enter
upon the war, since she had to fight Russia or perish as an expanding
Power. But she determined in the first instance to attempt to obtain a
safeguarding alliance.
There are indications that Japan had in the first instance thoughts of
the United States, of Germany and of Great Britain, as alternative
allies. She thought of the United States because of her great financial
strength, her appreciable naval power in the Pacific, and her likely
value in keeping Great Britain out of the ring: of Germany because of
her military power on the Russian frontier; of Great Britain because of
her overwhelming naval power. Some held that Great Britain was only
approached in the second place. Whether that were so or not, the British
Power proved favourable.
Japan was lucky in the moment of her approach. It had become obvious at
that time to British statesmanship that the old ideal of "splendid
isolation" was no longer tenable. The British Empire needed alliances,
or at least safeguarding understandings with other nations. But it
almost seemed as though the knowledge had come too late. Apparently
there were no European friendships offering. Japan thus found Great
Britain in a somewhat anxious mood, and an alliance was concluded
between the Power which had hitherto followed a policy of splendid
isolation and the _parvenu_ Power of the Far East. Japan was now all
ready, and Russia was doomed to be ousted from her position as a great
Power in the Pacific.
A great deal of nonsense has been written and accepted as true
concerning the war between Japan and Russia. Throughout the course of
that war the Japanese took the best of care to put their own view of the
case before the world. The "wonderful heroism," "the marvellous
strategical and tactical skill," "the perfect medical and transport
arrangements" of the Japanese forces received something more than their
fair share of praise, because of the intelligent and perspicuous
industry of the Japanese publicity agencies. The Japanese conducted a
fine campaign. Their generals and admirals followed the best models in
their dispositions. Both in the movements and in the sanitary regulation
of the troops, the commanders were much helped by the habit of
discipline of a nation inured to yield blind obedience to a god-born
ruler. Still there was no inspired genius for war shown by the Japanese.
Their movements were copied from the books. A well-led White army of
much less strength would, I believe, have driven them ultimately from
Corea into the sea. Their seeming want of power of original thought and
their reliance on routine made their movements slow and flabby. They won
by the inferiority of the enemy rather than by a great genius for
warfare.
The Russians on their side fought under the dispiriting conditions of
having a well-trained enemy in front and a revolution behind. The heart
of the nation was not with them, and the Russian autocracy was hampered
at every turn by the internal disorders of European Russia. It seems
probable that the autocracy hoped to solve in part a double problem by
the mischievous ingenuity of drafting as many as possible of the
discontented at home to the war abroad. That helped things in Russia,
but added to the difficulties of the generals in Manchuria. Withal, the
Russians put up a good fight. The early engagements were but rearguard
actions, the Japanese having an enormous superiority of force, and the
Russians striving to delay rather than to arrest their advance. It was
not until Mukden that the single line of railway to Russia had brought
General Kouropatkin a fair equality of force: and he had to contend then
with the tradition of retreat which had been perforce established in his
army, and with the growing paralysis of his home government confronted
by a great revolutionary movement. Even so, Mukden was a defeat and not
a rout.
It is necessary to keep in mind these facts in order to arrive at a
sound conclusion as to the future position of Russia in the Pacific. It
is not safe to rule her out of the reckoning altogether. A second war,
waged by a united Russia against Japan, would probably have a far
different result, and would drive Japan off the Asiatic mainland were
the ring to be kept clear. For the present, however, Russia is a Power
with a great territory washed by the Pacific Ocean, but with no decisive
voice in its destinies.