[Footnote 469: L'Afrique nouvelle, by E. Descamps (1903), chap. xv. Much of the credit of the early railway-making was due to Colonel Thys.]

[Footnote 470: Ibid. pp. 589-590.]

Far more important is the moral gain which has resulted from the suppression of the slave-trade over a large part of the State. On this point we may quote the testimony of Mr. Roger Casement, British Consul at Boma, in an official report founded on observations taken during a long tour up the Congo. He writes: "The open selling of slaves and the canoe convoys which once navigated the Upper Congo have everywhere disappeared. No act of the Congo State Government has perhaps produced more laudable results than the vigorous suppression of this widespread evil[471]."

[Footnote 471: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. I (1904), p. 26.]

King Leopold has also striven hard to extend the bounds of the Congo State. Not satisfied with his compact with France of April 1887, which fixed the River Ubangi and its tributaries as the boundary of their possessions, he pushed ahead to the north-east of those confines, and early in the nineties established posts at Lado on the White Nile and in the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin. Clearly his aim was to conquer the districts which Egypt for the time had given up to the Mahdi. These efforts brought about sharp friction between the Congolese authorities and France and Great Britain. After long discussions the Cabinet of London agreed to the convention of May 12, 1894, whereby the Congo State gained the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin and the left bank of the Upper Nile, together with a port on the Albert Nyanza. On his side, King Leopold recognised the claims of England to the right bank of the Nile and to a strip of land between the Albert Nyanza and Lake Tanganyika. Owing to the strong protests of France and Germany this agreement was rescinded, and the Cabinet of Paris finally compelled King Leopold to give up all claims to the Bahr-el-Ghazal, though he acquired the right to lease the Lado district below the Albert Nyanza. The importance of these questions in the development of British policy in the Nile basin has been pointed out in Chapter XVII.

The ostensible aim, however, of the founders of the Congo Free State was, not the exploitation of the Upper Nile district, the making of railways and the exportation of great quantities of ivory and rubber from Congoland, but the civilising and uplifting of Central Africa. The General Act of the Berlin Conference begins with an invocation to Almighty God; and the Brussels Conference imitated its predecessor in this particular. It is, therefore, as a civilising and moralising agency that the Congo Government will always be judged at the bar of posterity.

The first essential of success in dealing with backward races is sympathy with their most cherished notions. Yet from the very outset one of these was violated. On July 1, 1885, a decree of the Congo Free State asserted that all vacant lands were the property of the Government, that is, virtually of the King himself. Further, on June 30, 1887, an ordinance was decreed, claiming the right to let or sell domains, and to grant mining or wood-cutting rights on any land, "the ownership of which is not recognised as appertaining to any one." These decrees, we may remark, were for some time kept secret, until their effects became obvious.

All who know anything of the land systems of primitive peoples will see that they contravened the customs which the savage holds dear. The plots actually held and tilled by the natives are infinitesimally small when compared with the vast tracts over which their tribes claim hunting, pasturage, and other rights. The land system of the savage is everywhere communal. Individual ownership in the European sense is a comparatively late development. The Congolese authorities must have known this; for nearly all troubles with native races have arisen from the profound differences in the ideas of the European and the savage on the subject of land-holding.

Yet, in face of the experience of former times, the Congo State put forward a claim which has led, or will lead, to the confiscation of all tribal or communal land-rights in that huge area. Such confiscation may, perhaps, be defended in the case of the United States, where the new-comers enormously outnumbered the Red Indians, and tilled land that previously lay waste. It is indefensible in the tropics, where the white settlers will always remain the units as compared with the millions whom they elevate or exploit[472]. The savage holds strongly to certain rudimentary ideas of justice, especially to the right, which he and his tribe have always claimed and exercised, of using the tribal land for the primary needs of life. When he is denied the right of hunting, cutting timber, or pasturage, he feels "cribbed, cabined, and confined." This, doubtless, is the chief source of the quarrels between the new State and its proteges, also of the depression of spirits which Mr. Casement found so prevalent. The best French authorities on colonial development now admit that it is madness to interfere with the native land tenures in tropical Africa.

The method used in the enlisting of men for public works and for the army has also caused many troubles. This question is admittedly one of great difficulty. Hard work must be done, and, in the tropics, the white man can only direct it. Besides, where life is fairly easy, men will not readily come forward to labour. Either the inducement offered must be adequate, or some form of compulsory enlistment must be adopted. The Belgian officials, in the plentiful lack of funds that has always clogged their State, have tried compulsion, generally through the native chiefs. These are induced, by the offer of cotton cloth or bright-coloured handkerchiefs, to supply men from the tribe. If the labourers are not forthcoming, the chief is punished, his village being sometimes burned. By means, then, of gaudy handkerchiefs, or firebrands, the labourers are obtained. They figure as "apprentices," under the law of November 8, 1888, which accorded "special protection to the blacks."

[Footnote 472: The number of whites in Congoland is about 1700, of whom 1060 are Belgians; the blacks number about 29,000,000, according to Stanley; the Belgian Governor-General, Wahis, thinks this below the truth. See Wauters, L'Etat independant du Congo, pp. 261, 432.]

The British Consul, Mr. Casement, in his report on the administration of the Congo, stated that the majority of the government workmen at Leopoldville were under some form of compulsion, but were, on the whole, well cared for[473].

[Footnote 473: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 1 (1904), p. 27.]

According to a German resident in Congoland, the lot of the apprentices differs little from that of slaves. Their position, as contrasted with that of their former relation to the chief, is humorously defined by the term liberes[474] The hardships of the labourers on the State railways were such that the British Government refused to allow them to be recruited from Sierra Leone or other British possessions.

[Footnote 474: A. Boshart, Zehn Jahre Afrikanischen Lebens (1898), quoted by Fox Bourne, op. cit. p. 77. For further details see the article by Mr. Glave, once an official of the Congo Free State, in the Century Magazine, vol. liii.; also his work, Six Years in the Congo (1892).]

However, now that a British Cabinet has allowed a great colony to make use of indentured yellow labour in its mines, Great Britain cannot, without glaring inconsistency, lodge any protest against the infringement, in Congoland, of the Act of the Berlin Conference in the matter of the treatment of hired labourers. If the lot of the Congolese apprentices is to be bettered, the initiative must be taken at some capital other than London.

Another subject which nearly concerns the welfare of the Congo State is the recruiting and use of native troops. These are often raised from the most barbarous tribes of the far interior; their pay is very small; and too often the main inducement to serve under the blue banner with the golden star, is the facility for feasting and plunder at the expense of other natives who have not satisfied the authorities. As one of them naively said to Mr. Casement, he preferred to be with the hunters rather than with the hunted.

It seems that grave abuses first crept in during the course of the campaign for the extirpation of slavery and slave-raiding in the Stanley Falls region. The Arab slave-raiders were rich, not only in slaves, but in ivory—prizes which tempted the cupidity of the native troops, and even, it is said, of their European officers. In any case, it is certain that the liberating forces, hastily raised and imperfectly controlled, perpetrated shocking outrages on the tribes for whose sake they were waging war. The late Mr. Glave, in the article in the Century Magazine above referred to, found reason for doubting whether the crusade did not work almost as much harm as the evils it was sent to cure. His words were these: "The black soldiers are bent on fighting and raiding; they want no peaceful settlement. They have good rifles and ammunition, realise their superiority over the natives with their bows and arrows, and they want to shoot and kill and rob. Black delights to kill black, whether the victim be man, woman, or child, and no matter how defenceless." This deep-seated habit of mind is hard to eradicate; and among certain of the less reputable of the Belgian officers it has occasionally been used, in order to terrorise into obedience tribes that kicked against the decrees of the Congo State.

Undoubtedly there is great difficulty in avoiding friction with native tribes. All Governments have at certain times and places behaved more or less culpably towards them. British annals have been fouled by many a misdeed on the part of harsh officials and grasping pioneers, while recent revelations as to the treatment of natives in Western Australia show the need of close supervision of officials even in a popularly governed colony. The record of German East Africa and the French Congo is also very far from clean. Still, in the opinion of all who have watched over the welfare of the aborigines—among whom we may name Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Fox Bourne—the treatment of the natives in a large part of the Congo Free State has been worse than in the districts named above[475]. There is also the further damning fact that the very State which claimed to be a great philanthropic agency has, until very recently, refused to institute any full inquiry into the alleged defects of its administration.

[Footnote 475: Sir Charles Dilke stated this very forcibly in a speech delivered at the Holborn Town Hall on June 7, 1905.]

Some of these defects may be traced to the bad system of payment of officials. Not only are they underpaid, but they have no pension, such as is given by the British, French, and Dutch Governments to their employees. The result is that the Congolese officer looks on his term of service in that unhealthy climate as a time when he must enrich himself for life. Students of Roman History know that, when this feeling becomes a tradition, it is apt to lead to grave abuses, the recital of which adds an undying interest to the speech of Cicero against Verres. In the case of the Congolese administrators the State provided (doubtless unwittingly) an incentive to harshness. It frequently supplemented its inadequate stipends by "gratifications," which are thus described and criticised by M. Cattier: "The custom was introduced of paying to officials prizes proportioned to the amount of produce of the 'private domain' of the State, and of the taxes paid by the natives. That amounted to the inciting, by the spur of personal interest, of officials to severity and to rigour in the application of laws and regulations." Truly, a more pernicious application of the plan of "payment by results" cannot be conceived; and M. Cattier affirms that, though nominally abolished, it existed in reality down to the year 1898.

Added to this are defects arising from the uncertainty of employment. An official may be discharged at once by the Governor-General on the ground of unfitness for service in Africa; and the man, when discharged, has no means of gaining redress. The natural result is the growth of a habit of almost slavish obedience to the authorities, not only in regard to the written law, but also to private and semi-official intimations[476].

[Footnote 476: Cattier, Droit et Administration . . . du Congo, pp. 243-245.]

Another blot on the record of the Congo Free State is the exclusive character of the trading corporation to which it has granted concessions. Despite the promises made to private firms that early sought to open up business in its land, the Government itself has become a great trading corporation, with monopolist rights which close great regions to private traders and subject the natives to vexatious burdens. This system took definite form in September 1891, when the Government claimed exclusive rights in trade in the extreme north and north-east. At the close of that year Captain Baert, the administrator of these districts, also enjoined the collection of rubber and other products by the natives for the benefit of the State.

The next step was to forbid to private traders in that quarter the right of buying these products from natives. In May 1892 the State monopoly in rubber, etc., was extended to the "Equator" district, natives not being allowed to sell them to any one but a State official. Many of the merchants protested, but in vain. The chief result of their protest was the establishment of privileged companies, the "Societe Anversoise" and the "Anglo-Belgian," and the reservation to the State of large areas under the title of Domaines prives (Oct. 1892)[477]. The apologetic skill of the partisans of the Congo State is very great; but it will hardly be equal to the task of proving that this new departure is not a direct violation of Article V. of the General Act of the Berlin Conference of 1885, quoted above.

[Footnote 477: For a map of the domains now appropriated by these and other privileged "Trusts," see Morel, op. cit. p. 466.]

A strange commentary on the latter part of that article, according full protection to all foreigners, was furnished by the execution of the ex-missionary, Stokes, at the hands of Belgian officials in 1895—a matter for which the Congo Government finally made grudging and incomplete reparation[478]. Another case was as bad. In 1901 an Austrian trader, Rabinek, was arrested and imprisoned for "illegal" trading in rubber in the "Katanga Trust" country. Treated unfeelingly during his removal down the country, he succumbed to fever. His effects were seized and have not been restored to his heirs[479].

[Footnote 478: See the evidence in Parl. Papers, Africa. No. 8 (1896).]

[Footnote 479: Morel, op. cit. chaps. xxiii.-xxv.]

When such treatment is meted out to white men who pursued their trade in reliance on the original constitution of the State, the natives may be expected to fare badly. Their misfortunes thickened when the Government, on the plea that natives must contribute towards the expenses of the State, began to require them to collect and hand in a certain amount of rubber. The evidence of Mr. Casement clearly shows that the natives could not understand why this should suddenly be imposed on them; that the amount claimed was often excessive; and that the punishment meted out for failure to comply with the official demands led to many barbarous actions on the part of officials and their native troops. Thus, at Bolobo, he found large numbers of industrious workers in iron who had fled from the "Domaine de la Couronne" (King Leopold's private domain) because "they had endured such ill-treatment at the hands of the Government officials and Government soldiers in their own country that life had become intolerable, that nothing had remained for them at home but to be killed for failure to bring in a certain amount of rubber, or to die of starvation or exposure in their attempts to satisfy the demands made upon them[480]."

[Footnote 480: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. I (1904), pp. 29, 60. A missionary, Rev. J. White-head, wrote in July 1903: "During the past seven years this 'domaine prive' of King Leopold has been a veritable 'hell on earth.'" (Ibid. p. 64).]

On the north side of Lake Mantumba Mr. Casement found that the population had diminished by 60 or 70 per cent since the imposition of the rubber tax in 1893—a fact, however, which may be partly assigned to the sleeping sickness. The tax led to constant fighting, until at last the officials gave up the effort and imposed a requisition of food or gum-copal; the change seems to have been satisfactory there and in other parts where it has been tried. In the former time the native soldiers punished delinquents with mutilation: proofs on this subject here and in several other places were indisputable. On the River Lulongo, Mr. Casement found that the amount of rubber collected from the natives generally proved to be in proportion to the number of guns used by the collecting force[481]. In some few cases natives were shot, even by white officers, on account of their failure to bring in the due amount of rubber[482]. A comparatively venial form of punishment was the capture and detention of wives until their husbands made up the tale. Is it surprising that thousands of the natives of the north have fled into French Congoland, itself by no means free from the grip of monopolist companies, but not terrorised as are most of the tribes of the "Free State"?

[Footnote 481: Ibid. pp. 34, 43, 44, 49, 76, etc.]

[Footnote 482: Ibid. p. 70. The effort made by the Chevalier De Cuvelier to rebut Mr. Casement's charges consists mainly of an ineffective tu quoque. To compare the rubber-tax of the Congo State with the hut-tax of Sierra Leone begs the whole question. Mr. Casement proves (p. 27) that the natives do not object to reasonable taxation which comes regularly. They do object to demands for rubber which are excessive and often involve great privations. Above all, the punishments utterly cow them and cause them to flee to the forests.

The efforts of Mr. Macdonnell in King Leopold II. (London, 1905) to refute Mr. Casement also seem to me weak and inconclusive. The reply of the Congo Free State is printed by Mr. H.W. Wack in the Appendix of his Story of the Congo Free State (New York, 1905). It convicts Mr. Casement of inaccuracy on a few details. Despite all that has been written by various apologists, it may be affirmed that the Congo Free State has yet made no adequate defence. Possibly it will appear in the report which, it is hoped, will be published in full by the official commission of inquiry now sitting.]

Livingstone, in his day, regarded ivory as the chief cause of the slave-trade in Central and Eastern Africa; but it is questionable whether even ivory (now a vanishing product) brought more woe to millions of negroes than the viscous fluid which enables the pleasure-seekers of Paris, London, and New York to rush luxuriously through space. The swift Juggernaut of the present age is accountable for as much misery as ever sugar or ivory was in the old slave days. But it seems that, so long as the motor-car industry prospers, the dumb woes of the millions of Africa will count for little in the Courts of Europe. During the session of 1904 Lord Lansdowne made praiseworthy efforts to call their attention to the misgovernment of the Congo State; but he met with no response except from the United States, Italy, and Turkey(!) A more signal proof of the weakness and cynical selfishness now prevalent in high quarters has never been given than in this abandonment of a plain and bounden duty.

A slight amount of public spirit on the part of the signatories of the Berlin Act would have sufficed to prevent Congolese affairs drifting into the present highly anomalous situation. That land is not Belgian, and it is not international—except in a strictly legal sense. It is difficult to say what it is if it be not the private domain of King Leopold and of several monopolist-controlling trusts. Probably the only way out of the present slough of despond is the definite assumption of sole responsibility by the Belgian people; for it should be remembered that a very large number of patriotic Belgians urgently long to redress evils for which they feel themselves to be indirectly, and to a limited extent, chargeable. At present, those who carefully study the evidence relating to the Berlin Conference of 1885, and the facts, so far as they are ascertainable to-day, must pronounce the Congo experiment to be a terrible failure.



CHAPTER XX

RUSSIA IN THE FAR EAST

"This war, waged . . . for the command of the waters of the Pacific Ocean, so urgently necessary for the peaceful prosperity, not only of our own, but of other nations."—The Czar's Proclamation of March 3, 1905.

Of all the collisions of racial interests that have made recent history, none has turned the thoughts of the world to regions so remote, and events so dramatic in their intensity and momentous in their results, as that which has come about in Manchuria. The Far Eastern Question is the outcome of the expansion of two vigorous races, that of Russia and Japan, at the expense of the almost torpid polity of China. The struggle has taken place in the debatable lands north and west of Korea, where Tartars and Chinese formerly warred for supremacy, and where geographical and commercial considerations enhance the value of the most northerly of the ice-free ports of the Continent of Asia.

In order to understand the significance of this great struggle, we must look back to the earlier stages of the extension of Russian influence. Up to a very recent period the eastern growth of Russia affords an instance of swift and natural expansion. Picture on the one side a young and vigorous community, dowered with patriotic pride by the long and eventually triumphant conflict with the Tartar hordes, and dwelling in dreary plains where Nature now and again drives men forth on the quest for a sufficiency of food. On the other hand, behold a vast territory, well-watered, with no natural barrier between the Urals and the Pacific, sparsely inhabited by tribes of nomads having little in common. The one active community will absorb the ill-organised units as inevitably as the rising tide overflows the neighbouring mud-flats when once the intervening barrier is overtopped. In the case of Russia and Siberia the only barrier is that of the Ural Mountains; and their gradual slopes form a slighter barrier than is anywhere else figured on the map of the world in so conspicuous a chain. The Urals once crossed, the slopes and waterways invite the traveller eastwards.

The French revolutionists of 1793 used to say, "With bread and iron one can get to China." Russian pioneers had made good that boast nearly two centuries before it was uttered in Paris. The impelling force which set in motion the Muscovite tide originated with a man whose name is rarely heard outside Russia. Yet, if the fame of men were proportionate to the effect of their exploits, few names would be more widely known than that of Jermak. This man had been a hauler of boats up the banks of the Volga, until his strength, hardihood, and love of adventure impelled him to a freebooting life, wherein his powers of command and the fierce thoroughness of his methods speedily earned him the name of Jermak, "the millstone." In the year 1580, the wealthy family of the Stroganoffs, tempted by stories of the wealth to be gained from the fur-bearing animals of Siberia, turned their thoughts to Jermak and his robber band as the readiest tools for the conquest of those plains. The enterprise appealed to Jermak and the hardy Cossacks with whom he had to do. He and his men were no less skilled in river craft than in fighting; and the roving Cossack spirit kindled at the thought of new lands to harry. Proceeding by boat from Perm, they worked their way into the spurs of the Urals, and then by no very long portage crossed one of its lower passes and found themselves on one of the tributaries of the Obi.

Thenceforth their course was easy. Jermak and his small band of picked fighters were more than a match for the wretchedly armed and craven-spirited Tartars, who fled at the sound of firearms. In 1581 the settlement, called Sibir, fell to the invaders; and, though they soon abandoned this rude encampment for a new foundation, the town of Tobolsk, yet the name Siberia recalls their pride at the conquest of the enemy's capital. The traditional skill of the Cossacks in the handling of boats greatly aided their advance, and despite the death of Jermak in battle, his men pressed on and conquered nearly the half of Siberia within a decade. What Drake and the sea-dogs of Devon were then doing for England on the western main, was being accomplished for Russia by the ex-pirate and his band from the Volga. The two expansive movements were destined finally to meet on the shores of the Pacific in the northern creeks of what is now British Columbia.

The later stages in Russian expansion need not detain us here. The excellence of the Cossack methods in foraying, pioneer-work, and the forming of military settlements, consolidated the Muscovite conquests. The Tartars were fain to submit to the Czar, or to flee to the nomad tribes of Central Asia or Northern China. The invaders reached the River Lena in the year 1630; and some of their adventurers voyaged down the Amur, and breasted the waves of the Pacific in 1636. Cossack bands conquered Kamchatka in 1699-1700[483].

[Footnote 483: Vladimir, Russia en the Pacific.]

Meanwhile the first collision between the white and the yellow races took place on the River Amur, which the Chinese claimed as their own. At first the Russians easily prevailed; but in the year 1689 they suffered a check. New vigour was then manifested in the councils of Pekin, and the young Czar, Peter the Great, in his longing for triumphs over Swedes and Turks, thought lightly of gains at the expense of the "celestials." He therefore gave to Russian energies that trend westwards and southwards, which after him marked the reigns of Catharine II., Alexander I., and, in part, of Nicholas I. The surrender of the Amur valley to China in 1689 ended all efforts of Russia in that direction for a century and a half. Many Russians believe that the earlier impulse was sounder and more fruitful in results for Russia than her meddling in the wars of the French Revolution and Empire.

Not till 1846 did Russia resume her march down the valley of the Amur; and then the new movement was partly due to British action. At that time the hostility of Russia and Britain was becoming acute on Asiatic and Turkish questions. Further, the first Anglo-Chinese War (1840-42) led to the cession of Hong-Kong to the distant islanders, who also had five Chinese ports opened to their trade. This enabled Russia to pose as the protector of China, and to claim points of vantage whence her covering wings might be extended over that Empire. The statesmen of Pekin had little belief in the genuineness of these offers, especially in view of the thorough exploration of the Amur region and the Gulf of Okhotsk which speedily ensued.

The Czar, in fact, now inaugurated a forward Asiatic policy, and confided it to an able governor, Muravieff (1847). The new departure was marked by the issue of an imperial ukase (1851) ordering the Russian settlers beyond Lake Baikal to conform to the Cossack system; that is, to become liable to military duties in return for the holding of land in the more exposed positions. Three years later Muravieff ordered 6000 Cossacks to migrate from these trans-Baikal settlements to the land newly acquired from China on the borders of Manchuria[484]. In the same year the Russians established a station at the mouth of the Amur, and in 1853 gained control over part of the Island of Saghalien.

[Footnote 484: Popowski, The Rival Powers in Central Asia, p. 13.]

For the present, then, everything seemed to favour Russia's forward policy. The tribes on the Amur were passive; an attack of an Anglo-French squadron on Petropaulovsk, a port in Kamchatka, failed (Aug. 1854); and the Russians hoped to be able to harry British commerce from this and other naval bases in the Pacific. Finally, the rupture with England and France, and the beginning of the Taeping rebellion in China, induced the Court of Pekin to agree to Russia's demands for the Amur boundary, and for a subsequent arrangement respecting the ownership of the districts between the mouth of that river and the bay on which now stands the port of Vladivostok (May 15, 1858). The latter concession left the door open for Muravieff to push on Russia's claims to this important wedge of territory. His action was characteristic. He settled Cossacks along the River Ussuri, a southern tributary of the Amur, and, by pressing ceaselessly on the celestials (then distracted by a war with England and France), he finally brought them to agree to the cession of the district around the new settlement, which was soon to receive the name of Vladivostok ("Lord of the East"). He also acquired for the Czar the Manchurian coast down to the bounds of Korea (November 2, 1860). Russia thus threw her arms around the great province which had provided China with her dynasty and her warrior caste, and was still one of the wealthiest and most cherished lands of that Empire. Having secured these points of vantage in Northern China, the Muscovites could await with confidence further developments in the decay of that once formidable organism.

Such, in brief, is the story of Russian expansion from the Urals to the Sea of Japan. Probably no conquest of such magnitude was ever made with so little expenditure of blood and money. In one sense this is its justification, that is, if we view the course of events, not by the limelight of abstract right, but by the ordinary daylight of expediency. Conquests which strain the resources of the victors and leave the vanquished longing for revenge, carry their own condemnation. On the other hand, the triumph of Russia over the ill-organised tribes of Siberia and northern Manchuria reminds one of the easy and unalterable methods of Nature, which compels a lower type of life to yield up its puny force for the benefit of a higher. It resembles the victory of man over quadrupeds, of order over disorder, of well-regulated strength over weakness and stupidity.

Muravieff deserves to rank among the makers of modern Russia. He waited his time, used his Cossack pawns as an effective screen to each new opening of the game, and pushed his foes hardest when they were at their weakest. Moreover, like Bismarck, he knew when to stop. He saw the limit that separated the practicable from the impracticable. He brought the Russian coast near to the latitudes where harbours are free from ice; but he forbore to encroach on Korea—a step which would have brought Japan on to the field of action. The Muscovite race, it was clear, had swallowed enough to busy its digestive powers for many a year; and it was partly on his advice that Russian North America was sold to the United States.

Still, Russia's advance southwards towards ice-free ports was only checked, not stopped. In 1861 a Russian man-of-war took possession of the Tshushima Isles between Korea and Japan, but withdrew on the protest of the British admiral. Six years later the Muscovites strengthened their grip on Saghalien, and thereafter exercised with Japan joint sovereignty over that island. The natural result followed. In 1875 Russia found means to eject her partner, the Japanese receiving as compensation undisputed claim to the barren Kuriles, which they already possessed[485].

[Footnote 485: The Russo-Japanese Conflict, by K. Asakawa (1904), p. 67; Europe and the Far East, by Sir R.K. Douglas (1904), p. 191.]

Even before this further proof of Russia's expansiveness, Japan had seen the need of adapting herself to the new conditions consequent on the advent of the Great Powers in the Far East. This is not the place for a description of the remarkable Revolution of the years 1867-71. Suffice it to say that the events recounted above undoubtedly helped on the centralising of the powers in the hands of the Mikado, and the Europeanising of the institutions and armed forces of Japan. In face of aggressions by Russia and quarrels with the maritime Powers, a vigorous seafaring people felt the need of systems of organisation and self-defence other than those provided by the rule of feudal lords, and levies drilled with bows and arrows. The subsequent history of the Far East may be summed up in the statement that Japan faced the new situation with the brisk adaptability of a maritime people, while China plodded along on her old tracks with a patience and stubbornness eminently bovine.

The events which finally brought Russia and Japan into collision arose out of the obvious need for the construction of a railway from St. Petersburg to the Pacific having its terminus on an ice-free port. Only so could Russia develop the resources of Siberia and the Amur Province. In the sixties and seventies trans-continental railways were being planned and successfully laid in North America. But there is this difference: in the New World the iron horse has been the friend of peace; in the Far East of Asia it has hurried on the advent of war; and for this reason, that Russia, having no ice-free harbour at the end of her great Siberian line, was tempted to grasp at one which the yellow races looked on as altogether theirs.

The miscalculation was natural. The rapid extension of trade in the Pacific Ocean seemed to invite Russia to claim her full share in a development that had already enriched England, the United States, and, later, Germany and France; and events placed within the Muscovite grasp positions which fulfilled all the conditions requisite for commercial prosperity and military and naval domination.

For many years past vague projects of a trans-Siberian railway had been in the air. In 1857 an English engineer offered to construct a horse tramway from Perm, across the Urals, and to the Pacific. An American also proposed to make a railway for locomotives from Irkutsk to the head waters of the Amur. In 1875 the Russian Government decided to construct a line from Perm as far as a western affluent of the River Obi; but owing to want of funds the line was carried no farther than Tiumen on the River Tobol (1880).

The financial difficulty was finally overcome by the generosity of the French, who, as we have already seen (Chapter XII.), late in the eighties began to subscribe to all the Russian loans placed on the Paris Bourse. The scheme now became practicable, and in March 1891 an imperial ukase appeared sanctioning the mighty undertaking. It was made known at Vladivostok by the Czarevitch (now Nicholas II.) in the course of a lengthy tour in the Far East; and he is known then to have gained that deep interest in those regions which has moulded Russian policy throughout his reign. Quiet, unostentatious, and even apathetic on most subjects, he then, as we may judge from subsequent events, determined to give to Russian energies a decided trend towards the Pacific. As Czar, he has placed that aim in the forefront of his policy. With him the Near East has always been second to the Far East; and in the critical years 1896-97, when the sufferings of Christians in Turkey became acute, he turned a deaf ear to the cries of myriads who had rarely sent their prayers northwards in vain. The most reasonable explanation of this callousness is that Nicholas II. at that time had no ears save for the call of the Pacific Ocean. This was certainly the policy of his Ministers, Prince Lobanoff, Count Muravieff, and Count Lamsdorff. It was oceanic.

The necessary prelude to Russia's new policy was the completion of the trans-Siberian railway, certainly one of the greatest engineering feats ever attempted by man. While a large part of the route offers no more difficulty than the conquest of limitless levels, there are portions that have taxed to the utmost the skill and patience of the engineer. The deep trough of Lake Baikal has now (June 1905) been circumvented by the construction of a railway (here laid with double tracks) which follows the rocky southern shore. This part of the line, 244 versts (162 miles) long, has involved enormous expense. In fifty-six miles there are thirty-nine tunnels, and thirteen galleries for protection against rock-slides. This short section is said to have cost L1,170,000. The energy with which the Government pushed on this stupendous work during the Russo-Japanese war yields one more proof of their determination to secure at all costs the aims which they set in view in and after the year 1891[486].

[Footnote 486: See an article by Mr. J.M. Price in The Fortnightly Review for May 1905.]

Other parts of the track have also presented great difficulties. East of Lake Baikal the line gradually winds its way up to a plateau some 3000 feet higher than the lake, and then descends to treacherous marsh lands. The district of the Amur bristles with obstacles, not the least being the terrible floods that now and again (as in 1897) turn the whole valley into a trough of swirling waters[487].

[Footnote 487: Russia on the Pacific, by "Vladimir"; The Awakening of the East, by P. Leroy-Beaulieu, chaps, ix. x.]

All these difficulties have been overcome in course of time; but there remained the question of the terminus. Up to the year 1894 the objective had been Vladivostok; but the outbreak of the Chino-Japanese War at that time opened up vast possibilities. Russia could either side with the islanders and share with them the spoils of Northern China, or, posing as the patron of the celestials, claim some profitable douceurs as her reward.

She chose the latter alternative, and, in the opinion of some of her own writers, wrongly. The war proved the daring, the patriotism, and the organising skill of the Japanese to be as signal as the sloth and corruptibility of their foes. Then, for the first time, the world saw the utter weakness of China—a fact which several observers (including Lord Curzon) had vainly striven to make clear. Even so, when Chinese generals and armies took to their heels at the slightest provocation; when their battleships were worsted by Japanese armoured cruisers; when their great stronghold, Port Arthur, was stormed with a loss of about 400 killed, the moral of it all was hidden from the wise men of the West. Patronising things were said of the Japanese as conquerors—of the Chinese; but few persons realised that a new Power had arisen. It seemed the easiest of undertakings to despoil the "venomous dwarfs" of the fruits of their triumph over China[488].

[Footnote 488: See the evidence adduced by V. Chirol, The Far Eastern Question, chap, xi., as to the ultimately aggressive designs of China on Japan.]

The chief conditions of the Chino-Japanese Treaty of Shimonoseki (April 17, 1895) were the handing over to Japan the island of Formosa and the Liaotung Peninsula. The latter was very valuable, inasmuch as it contained good ice-free harbours which dominated the Yellow Sea and the Gulf of Pechili; and herein must be sought the reason for the action of Russia at this crisis. Li Hung Chang, the Chinese negotiator, had already been bought over by Russia in an important matter[489], and he early disclosed the secret of the terms of peace with Japan. Russia was thus forewarned; and, before the treaty was ratified at Pekin, her Government, acting in concert with those of France and Germany, intervened with a menacing declaration that the cession of the Liaotung Peninsula would give to Japan a dangerous predominance in the affairs of China and disturb the whole balance of power in the Far East. The Russian Note addressed to Japan further stated that such a step would "be a perpetual obstacle to the permanent peace of the Far East." Had Russia alone been concerned, possibly the Japanese would have referred matters to the sword; but, when face to face with a combination of three Powers, they decided on May 4 to give way, and to restore the Liaotung Peninsula to China[490].

[Footnote 489: Manchu and Muscovite, by B.L. Putnam Weale, p. 60.]

[Footnote 490: Asakawa, op. cit. p, 76.]

The reasons for the conduct of France and Germany in this matter are not fully known. We may safely conjecture that the Republic acted conjointly with the Czar in order to clinch the new Franco-Russian alliance, not from any special regard for China, a Power with which she had frequently come into collision respecting Tonquin. As for Germany, she was then entering on new colonial undertakings; and she doubtless saw in the joint intervention of 1895 a means of sterilising the Franco-Russian alliance, so far as she herself was concerned, and possibly of gaining Russia's assent to the future German expansion in the Far East.

Here, of course, we are reduced to conjecture, but the conjecture is consonant with later developments. In any case, the new Triple Alliance was a temporary and artificial union, which prompt and united action on the part of Great Britain and the United States would have speedily dissolved. Unfortunately these Powers were engrossed in other concerns, and took no action to redress the balance which the self-constituted champions of political stability were upsetting to their own advantage.

The effects of their action were diverse, and for the most part unforeseen. In the first place, Japan, far from being discouraged by this rebuff, set to work to perfect her army and navy, and with a thoroughness which Roon and Moltke would have envied. Organisation, weapons, drill, marksmanship (the last a weak point in the war with China) were improved; heavy ironclads were ordered, chiefly in British yards, and, when procured, were handled with wonderful efficiency. Few, if any, of those "disasters" which are so common in the British navy in time of peace, occurred in the new Japanese navy—a fact which redounds equally to the credit of the British instructors and to the pupils themselves.

The surprising developments of the Far Eastern Question were soon to bring the new armaments to a terrible test. Japan and the whole world believed that the Liaotung Peninsula was made over to China in perpetuity. It soon appeared that the Czar and his Ministers had other views, and that, having used France and Germany for the purpose of warning off Japan, they were preparing schemes for the subjection of Manchuria to Russian influence. Or rather, it is probable that Li Hung Chang had already arranged the following terms with Russia as the price of her intervention on behalf of China. The needs of the Court of Pekin and the itching palms of its officials proved to be singularly helpful in the carrying out of the bargain. China being unequal to the task of paying the Japanese war indemnity, Russia undertook to raise a four per cent loan of 400,000,000 francs—of course mainly at Paris—in order to cover the half of that debt. In return for this favour, the Muscovites required the establishment of a Russo-Chinese Bank having widespread powers, comprising the receipt of taxes, the management of local finances, and the construction of such railway and telegraph lines as might be conceded by the Chinese authorities.

This in itself was excellent "brokerage" on the French money, of which China was assumed to stand in need. At one stroke Russia ended the commercial supremacy of England in China, the result of a generation of commercial enterprise conducted on the ordinary lines, and substituted her own control, with powers almost equal to those of a Viceroy. They enabled her to displace Englishmen from various posts in Northern China and to clog the efforts of their merchants at every turn. The British Government, we may add, showed a singular equanimity in face of this procedure.

But this was not all. At the close of March 1896, it appeared that the gratitude felt by the Chinese Andromeda to the Russian Perseus had ripened into a definite union. The two Powers framed a secret treaty of alliance which accorded to the northern State the right to make use of any harbour in China, and to levy Chinese troops in case of a conflict with an Asiatic State. In particular, the Court of Pekin granted to its ally the free use of Port Arthur in time of peace, or, if the other Powers should object, of Kiao-chau. Manchuria was thrown open to Russian officers for purposes of survey, etc., and it was agreed that on the completion of the trans-Siberian railway, a line should be constructed southwards to Talienwan or some other place, under the joint control of the two Powers[491].

[Footnote 491: Asakawa, pp. 85-87.]

The Treaty marks the end of the first stage in the Russification of Manchuria. Another stage was soon covered, and, as it seems, by the adroitness of Count Cassini, Russian Minister at Pekin. The details, and even the existence, of the Cassini Convention of September 30, 1896, have been disputed; but there are good grounds for accepting the following account as correct. Russia received permission to construct her line to Vladivostok across Manchuria, thereby saving the northern detour down the difficult valley of the Amur; also to build her own line to Mukden, if China found herself unable to do so; and the line southwards to Talienwan and Port Arthur was to be made on Russian plans. Further, all these new lines built by Russia might be guarded by her troops, presumably to protect them from natives who objected to the inventions of the "foreign devils." As regards naval affairs, the Czar's Government gained the right to "lease" from China the harbour of Kiao-chau for fifteen years; and, in case of war, to make use of Port Arthur. The last clauses granted to Russian subjects the right to acquire mining rights in Manchuria, and to the Czar's officers to drill the levies of that province in the European style, should China desire to reorganise them.[492]

[Footnote 492: Asakawa, chap. ii.]

But the protector had not reaped the full reward of his timely intervention in the spring of 1895. He had not yet gained complete control of an ice-free harbour. In fact, the prize of Kiao-chau, nearly within reach, now seemed to be snatched from his grasp by Kaiser Wilhelm. The details are well known. Two German subjects who were Roman Catholic missionaries in the Shan-tung province were barbarously murdered by Chinese ruffians on November 1, 1897. The outrage was of a flagrant kind, but in ordinary times would have been condoned by the punishment of the offenders and a fine payable by the district. But the occasion was far from ordinary. A German squadron therefore steamed into Kiao-chau and occupied that important harbour.

There is reason to think that Germany had long been desirous of gaining a foothold in that rich province. The present writer has been assured by a geological expert, Professor Skertchley, who made the first map of the district for the Chinese authorities, that that map was urgently demanded by the German envoy at Pekin about this time. In any case, the mineral wealth of the district undoubtedly influenced the course of events. In accordance with a revised version of the old Christian saying: "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of—the Empire," the Emperor William despatched his brother Prince Henry—the "mailed fist" of Germany—with a squadron to strengthen the Imperial grip on Kiao-chau. The Prince did so without opposition either from China or Russia. Finally, on March 5, 1898, the Court of Pekin confirmed to Germany the lease of that port and of the neighbouring parts of the province of Shan-tung.

The whole affair caused a great stir, because it seemed to prelude a partition of China, and that, too, in spite of the well-meaning declarations of the Salisbury Cabinet in favour, first, of the integrity of that Empire, and, when that was untenable, of the policy of the "open door" for traders of all nations. Most significant of all was the conduct of Russia. As far as is known, she made no protest against the action of Germany in a district to which she herself had laid claim. It is reasonable, on more grounds than one, to suppose that the two Powers had come to some understanding, Russia conceding Kiao-chau to the Kaiser, provided that she herself gained Port Arthur and its peninsula. Obviously she could not have faced the ill-will of Japan, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States—all more or less concerned at her rapid strides southward; and it is at least highly probable that she bought off Germany by waiving her own claims to Kiao-chau, provided that she gained an ideal terminus for her Siberian line, and a great naval and military stronghold. It is also worth noting that the first German troops were landed at Kiao-chau on November 17, 1897, while three Russian warships steamed into Port Arthur on December 18; and that the German "lease" was signed at Pekin on March 5, 1898; while that accorded to Russia bears date March 27[493].

[Footnote 493: Asakawa, p. 110, note.]

If we accept the naive suggestion of the Russian author, "Vladimir," the occupation of Kiao-chau by Germany "forced" Russia "to claim some equivalent compensation." Or possibly the cession of Port Arthur was another of the items in Li Hung Chang's bargain with Russia. In any case, the Russian warships entered Port Arthur, at first as if for a temporary stay; when two British warships repaired thither the Czar's Government requested them to leave—a request with which the Salisbury Cabinet complied in an inexplicably craven manner (January 1898). Rather more pressure was needed on the somnolent mandarins of Pekin; but, under the threat of war with Russia if the lease of the Liao-tung Peninsula were not granted by March 27, it was signed on that day. She thereby gained control of that peninsula for twenty-five years, a period which might be extended "by mutual agreement." The control of all the land forces was vested in a Russian official; and China undertook not to quarter troops to the north without the consent of the Czar. Port Arthur was reserved to the use of Russian and Chinese ships of war; and Russia gained the right to erect fortifications.

The British Government, which had hitherto sought to uphold the integrity of China, thereupon sought to "save its face" by leasing Wei-hai-wei (July 1). An excuse for the weakness of the Cabinet in Chinese affairs has been put forward, namely, that the issue of the Sudan campaign was still in doubt, and that the efforts of French and Russians to reach the Upper Nile from the French Congo and Southern Abyssinia compelled Ministers to concentrate their attention on that great enterprise. But this excuse will not bear examination. Strength at any one point of an Empire is not increased by discreditable surrenders at other points. No great statesman would have proceeded on such an assumption.

Obviously the balance of gain in these shabby transactions in the north of China was enormously in favour of Russia. She now pushed on her railway southwards with all possible energy. It soon appeared that Port Arthur could not remain an open port, and it was closed to merchant ships. Then Talienwan was named in place of it, but under restrictions which made the place of little value to foreign merchants. Thereafter the new port of Dalny was set apart for purposes of commerce, but the efficacy of the arrangements there has never been tested. In the intentions of the Czar, Port Arthur was to become the Gibraltar of the Far East, while Dalny, as the commercial terminus of the trans-Siberian line, figured as the Cadiz of the new age of exploration and commerce opening out to the gaze of Russia.

That motives of genuine philanthropy played their part in the Far Eastern policy of the Czar may readily be granted; but the enthusiasts who acclaimed him as the world's peacemaker at the Hague Congress (May 1899) were somewhat troubled by the thought that he had compelled China to cede to his enormous Empire the very peninsula, the acquisition of which by little Japan had been declared to be an unwarrantable disturbance of the balance of power in the Far East.

These events caused a considerable sensation in Great Britain, even in a generation which had become inured to "graceful concessions." In truth, the part played by her in the Far East has been a sorry one; and if there be eager partisans who still maintain that British Imperialism is an unscrupulously aggressive force, ever on the search for new enemies to fight and new lands to annex, a course of study in the Blue Books dealing with Chinese affairs in 1897-99 may with some confidence be prescribed as a sedative and lowering diet. It seems probable that the weakness of British diplomacy induced the belief at St. Petersburg that no opposition of any account would be forthcoming. With France acting as the complaisant treasurer, and Germany acquiescent, the Czar and his advisers might well believe that they had reached the goal of their efforts, "the domination of the Pacific."

With the Boxer movement of the years 1899-1900 we have here no concern. Considered pathologically, it was only the spasmodic protest of a body which the dissectors believed to be ready for operation. To assign it solely to dislike of European missionaries argues sheer inability to grasp the laws of evidence. Missionaries had been working in China for several decades, and were no more disliked than other "foreign devils." The rising was clearly due to indignation at the rapacity of the European Powers. We may note that it gave the Russian governor of the town of Blagovestchensk an opportunity of cowing the Chinese of northern Manchuria by slaying and drowning some 4500 persons at that place (July 1900). Thereafter Russia invaded Manchuria and claimed the unlimited rights due to actual conquest. On April 8, 1902, she promised to withdraw; but her persistent neglect to fulfil that promise (cemented by treaty with China) led to the outbreak of hostilities with Japan[494].

[Footnote 494: Asakawa, chap. vii.; and for the Korean Question, chaps. xvi, xvii]

We can now see that Russia, since the accession of Nicholas II., has committed two great faults in the Far East. She has overreached herself; and she has overlooked one very important factor in the problem—Japan. The subjects of the Mikado quivered with rage at the insult implied by the seizure of Port Arthur; but, with the instinct of a people at once proud and practical, they thrust down the flames of resentment and turned them into a mighty motive force. Their preparations for war, steady and methodical before, now gained redoubled energy; and the whole nation thrilled secretly but irresistibly to one cherished aim, the recovery of Port Arthur. How great is the power of chivalry and patriotism the world has now seen; but it is apt to forget that love of life and fear of death are feelings alike primal and inalienable among the Japanese as among other peoples. The inspiring force which nerved some 40,000 men gladly to lay down their lives on the hills around Port Arthur was the feeling that they were helping to hurl back in the face of Russia the gauntlet which she had there so insolently flung down as to an inferior race.



CHAPTER XXI

THE NEW GROUPING OF THE GREAT POWERS[495]

(1900-1907)

When I penned the words at the end of Chapter XX. it seemed probable that the mad race in armaments must lead either to war or to revolution. In these three supplementary chapters I seek to trace very briefly the causes that have led to war, in other words, to the ascendancy (perhaps temporary) of the national principle over the social, and international tendencies of the age.

[Footnote 495: Written in May-July 1915.]

The collapse of the international and pacifist movement may be ascribed to various causes. The Franco-German and Russo-Turkish Wars left behind rankling hatreds which rendered it very difficult for nations to disarm; and, after the decline of those resentments, there arose others as the outcome of the Greco-Turkish War and the Boer War. Further, the conflict between Japan and Russia so far weakened the latter as to leave Germany and Austria almost supreme in Europe; and, while in France and the United Kingdom the social movement has made considerable progress, Germany and Austria have remained in what may be termed the national stage of development, which offers many advantages over the international for purposes of war. Then again in the Central Empires parliamentary institutions have not been successful, tending on the whole to accentuate the disputes between the dominant and the subject races. The same is partially true of Russia, and far more so of the Balkan States. Consequently, in Central and Eastern Europe the national idea has become militant and aggressive; while Great Britain, the Netherlands, and to some extent France, have sought as far as possible to concentrate their efforts upon social legislation, arming only in self-defence. In this contrast lay one of the dangers of the situation.

Nationality caused the movements and wars of 1848-77. Thereafter, that principle seemed to wane. But it revived in redoubled force among the Balkan peoples owing partly to the brutal oppressions of the Sublime Porte; and the cognate idea, aiming, however, not at liberty but conquest, became increasingly popular with the German people after the accession of Kaiser William II. The sequel is only too well known. Civilisation has been overwhelmed by a recrudescence of nationalism, and the wealthiest age which the world has seen is a victim to the perfection and potency of its machinery. A recovery of the old belief in the solidarity of mankind and a conviction of the futility of all efforts for domination by any one people, are the first requisites towards the recovery of conditions that make for peace and good-will.

Meanwhile, recent history has had to concern itself largely with groupings or alliances, which have in the main resulted from ambition, distrust, or fear. As has already been shown, the Partition of Africa was arranged without a resort to arms; but after that appropriation of the lands of the dark races, the white peoples in the south came into collision late in 1899.

Much has been written as to the causes of the Boer War; but the secret encouragements which those brave farmers received from Germany are still only partly known. Even in 1894 Mr. Merriman warned Sir Edward Grey of the danger arising from "the steady way in which Krueger was Teutonising the Transvaal." Germany undoubtedly stiffened the neck of Krueger and the reactionary Boers in resisting the much-needed reforms. It is significant that the Kaiser's telegram to Krueger after the defeat of Jameson's raiders was sent only a few days before his declaration, January 18, 1896, that Germany must now pursue a World-Policy, as she did by browbeating Japan in the Far East. These developments had been rendered possible by the opening of the Kiel-North Sea Canal in 1895, an achievement which doubled the naval power of Germany. Thenceforth she pushed on construction, especially by the Navy Bill of 1898. Reliance on her largely accounts for the obstinate resistance of the Boers to the just demands of England and the Outlanders in 1899. A German historian, Count Reventlow, has said that "a British South Africa could not but thwart all German interests"; and the anti-British fury prevalent in Germany in and after 1899 augured ill for the preservation of peace in the twentieth century so soon as her new fleet was ready[496].

[Footnote 496: E, Lewin, The Germans and Africa, p. xvii. and chaps. v.-xiii.; J.H. Rose, The Origins of the War, Lectures I.-III.; Reventlow, Deutschlands auswaertige Politik, p. 71.]

The results of the Boer War were as follows. For the time Great Britain lost very seriously in prestige and in material resources. Amidst the successes gained by the Boers, the intervention of one or more European States in their favour seemed highly probable; and it is almost certain that Krueger relied on such an event. He paid visits to some of the chief European capitals, and was received by the French President (November 1900), but not by Kaiser William. The personality and aims of the Kaiser will concern us later; but we may notice here that in that year he had special reasons for avoiding a rupture with the United Kingdom. The Franco-Russian Alliance gave him pause, especially since June 1898, when a resolute man, Delcasse, became Foreign Minister at Paris and showed less complaisance to Germany than had of late been the case[497]. Besides, in 1898, the Kaiser had concluded with Great Britain a secret arrangement on African affairs, and early in 1900 acquired sole control of Samoa instead of the joint Anglo-American-German protectorate, which had produced friction. Finally, in the summer of 1900, the Boxer Rising in China opened up grave problems which demanded the co-operation of Germany and the United Kingdom.

[Footnote 497: Delcasse was Foreign Minister in five Administrations until 1905.]

It has often been stated that the Kaiser desired to form a Coalition against Great Britain during the Boer War; and it is fairly certain that he sounded Russia and France with a view to joint diplomatic efforts to stop the war on the plea of humanity, and that, after the failure of this device, he secretly informed the British Government of the danger which he claimed to have averted[498]. His actions reflected the impulsiveness and impetuosity which have often puzzled his subjects and alarmed his neighbours; but it seems likely that his aims were limited either to squeezing the British at the time of their difficulties, or to finding means of breaking up the Franco-Russian alliance. His energetic fishing in troubled waters caused much alarm; but it is improbable that he desired war with Great Britain until his new navy was ready for sea. The German Chancellor, Prince von Buelow, has since written as follows: "We gave England no cause to thwart us in the building of our fleet: . . . we never came into actual conflict with the Dual Alliance, which would have hindered us in the gradual acquisition of a navy[499]." This, doubtless, was the governing motive in German policy, to refrain from any action that would involve war, to seize every opportunity for pushing forward German claims, and, above all, to utilise the prevalent irritation at the helplessness of Germany at sea as a means of overcoming the still formidable opposition of German Liberals to the ever-increasing naval expenditure.

[Footnote 498: Sir V. Chirol, Quarterly Review, Oct. 1914.]

[Footnote 499: Buelow, Imperial Germany, pp. 98-9 (Eng. transl.); Rachfahl, Kaiser und Reich (p. 163), states that, as in 1900-1, the German fleet, even along with those of France and Russia, was no match for the British fleet, Germany necessarily remained neutral. See, too, Hurd and Castle, German Sea Power, chap. v.]

In order to discourage the futile anti-British diatribes in the German Press, Buelow declared in the Reichstag that in no quarter was there an intention to intervene against England. There are grounds for questioning the sincerity of this utterance; for the Russian statesman, Muraviev, certainly desired to intervene, as did influential groups at Petrograd, Berlin, and Paris. In any case, the danger to Great Britain was acute enough to evoke help from all parts of the Empire, and implant the conviction of the need of closer union and of maintaining naval supremacy. The risks of the years 1899-1902 also revealed the very grave danger of what had been termed "splendid isolation," and aroused a desire for a friendly understanding with one or more Powers as occasion might offer.

The war produced similar impressions on the German people. Dislike of England, always acute in Prussia, especially in reactionary circles, now spread to all parts and all classes of the nation; and the Kaiser, as we have seen, made skilful use of it to further his naval policy. His speech at Hamburg on October 18, 1899, on the need of a great navy, marked the beginning of a new era, destined to end in war with Great Britain. Admiral von Tirpitz, in introducing the Amending Bill of February 1900, demanded the doubling of the navy in a scheme working automatically until 1920. The Socialist leader, Bebel, opposed it as certain to strain relations with England, a war with whom would be the greatest possible misfortune for the German people. On the other hand, the Chancellor, Prince Hohenlohe, voiced the opinions of the governing class and the German Navy League when he declared that the demand for a great navy originated in the ambition of the German nation to become a World-Power[500]. The Bill passed; and thenceforth the United Kingdom and Germany became declared rivals at sea. Fortunately for the islanders, the new German Navy could not be ready for action before the year 1904; otherwise, a very dangerous situation would have arisen. Even as it was, British statesmen were induced to secure an ally and to end the Boer War as quickly as possible.

[Footnote 500: Prince Hohenlohe, Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 480.]

During that conflict the tension between England and the Dual Alliance (France and Russia) was at times so acute as to render it doubtful whether we should not gravitate towards the rival Triple Alliance. The problem was the most important that had confronted British statesmen during a century. Kinship and tradition seemed to beckon us towards Germany and Austria. On the other hand, democracy and social intercourse told in favour of the French connection. Further, now that Russia was retiring more and more from her Balkan and Central Asian projects in order to concentrate on the Far East, she ceased to threaten India and the Levant. Moreover, the personality of the Tsar, Nicholas II., was reassuring, while that of Kaiser Wilhelm II. aroused distrust and alarm.

In truth, the inordinate vanity, restless energy, and flamboyant Chauvinism of the Kaiser placed great difficulties in the way of an Anglo-German Entente. An article believed to have been inspired by Bismarck contained the following reference to the Kaiser's megalomania: "It causes the deepest anxiety in Germany, because it is feared that it may lead to some irreparable piece of want of tact, and thence to war. For it is argued that, vanity being at the bottom of it all, and the Emperor finding he is unable to gain the premature immortality he thirsts for by peaceful prodigies, his restless nervous irritability may degenerate into recklessness, and then his megalomania may blind him to the dangers he and, above all, poor blood-soaken Germany may encounter on the war-path[501]." Kaiser William possesses more power of self-restraint than this passage indicates; for, though he has spread a warlike enthusiasm through his people, he has also restrained it until there arrived a fit opportunity for its exercise. It arrived when Germany and her Allies were far better prepared, both by land and sea, than the Powers whom she expected to meet in arms.

[Footnote 501: Contemporary Review, April 1892.]

His attitude towards Great Britain has varied surprisingly. During several years he figured as her friend. But it is difficult to believe that a man of his keen intellect did not discern ahead the collision which his policy must involve. His many claims to acquire maritime supremacy and a World-Empire were either mere bluff or a portentous challenge. Only the good-natured, easy-going British race could so long have clung to the former explanation, thereby leaving the most diffuse, vulnerable, and ill-armed Empire that has ever existed face to face with an Empire that is compact, well-fortified, and armed to the teeth. In this contrast lies one of the main causes of the present war.

Moreover, the internal difficulties of France and the preoccupation of Russia in the Far East gave to Kaiser William a disquietingly easy victory in the affairs of the Near East. His visit to Constantinople and Palestine in 1898 inaugurated a Levantine policy destined to have momentous results. On the Bosphorus he scrupled not to clasp the hand of Sultan Abdul Hamid II., still reeking with the blood of the Christians of Armenia and Macedonia. At Jerusalem he figured as the Christian knight-errant, but at Damascus as the champion of the Moslem creed. After laying a wreath on the tomb of Saladin, he made a speech which revealed his plan of utilising the fighting power of Islam. He said: "The three hundred million Mohammedans who live scattered over the globe may be assured of this, that the German Emperor will be their friend at all times." Taken in conjunction with his pro-Turkish policy, this implied that the Triple Alliance was to be buttressed by the most terrible fighting force in the East[502].

[Footnote 502: See Hurgronje, The Holy War; made in Germany, pp. 27-39, 68-78; also G.E. Holt, Morocco the Piquant (1914), who says (chap, xiv.): "Islam is waiting for war in Europe. . . . A war between any two European Powers, in my opinion, would mean the uprising of Islam."]

During the tour he did profitable business with the Sublime Porte by gaining a promise for the construction of a railway to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf, under German auspices. The scheme took practical form in 1902-3, when the Sultan granted a firman for the construction of that line together with very extensive proprietary rights along its course. Russian opposition had been bought off in 1900 by the adoption of a more southerly course than was originally designed; and the Kaiser now sought to get the financial support of England to the enterprise. British public opinion, however, was invincibly sceptical, and with justice, for the scheme would have ruined our valuable trade on the River Tigris and the Persian Gulf; while the proposed prolongation of the line to Koweit on the gulf would enable Germany, Austria, and Turkey to threaten India.

By the year 1903 Austria was so far mistress of the Balkans as to render it possible for her and Germany in the near future to send troops through Constantinople and Asia Minor by the railways which they controlled. Accordingly, affairs in the Near East became increasingly strained; and, when Russia was involved in the Japanese War, no Great Power could effectively oppose Austro-German policy in that quarter. The influence of France and Britain, formerly paramount both politically and commercially in the Turkish Empire, declined, while that of Germany became supreme. Every consideration of prudence therefore prompted the Governments of London and Paris to come to a close understanding, in order to make headway against the aggressive designs of the two Kaisers in the Balkans and Asia Minor. Looking forward, we may note that the military collapse of Russia in 1904-5 enabled the Central Powers to push on in the Levant. Germany fastened her grip on the Turkish Government, exploited the resources of Asia Minor, and posed as the champion of the Moslem creed. Early in the twentieth century that creed became aggressive, mainly under the impulse of Sultan Abdul Hamid II., who varied his propagandism by massacre with appeals to the faithful to look to him as their one hope in this world. Constantinople and Cairo were the centres of this Pan-Islamic movement, which, aiming at the closer union of all Moslems in Asia, Europe, and Africa around the Sultan, threatened to embarrass Great Britain, France, and Russia. The Kaiser, seeing in this revival of Islam an effective force, took steps to encourage the "true believers" and strengthen the Sultan by the construction of a branch line of the Bagdad system running southwards through Aleppo and the district east of the Dead Sea towards Mecca. Purporting to be a means for lessening the hardships of pilgrims, it really enabled the Sultan to threaten the Suez Canal and Egypt.

The aggressive character of these schemes explains why France, Great Britain, and Russia began to draw together for mutual support. The three Powers felt the threat implied in an organisation of the Moslem world under the aegis of the Kaiser. He, a diligent student of Napoleon's career, was evidently seeking to dominate the Near East, and to enrol on his side the force of Moslem enthusiasm which the Corsican had forfeited by his attack on Egypt in 1798. The construction of German railways in the Levant and the domination of the Balkan Peninsula by Austria would place in the hands of the Germanic Powers the keys of the Orient, which have always been the keys to World-Empire.

Closely connected with these far-reaching schemes was the swift growth of the Pan-German movement. It sought to group the Germanic and cognate peoples in some form of political union—a programme which threatened to absorb Holland, Belgium, the greater part of Switzerland, the Baltic Provinces of Russia, the Western portions of the Hapsburg dominions, and, possibly, the Scandinavian peoples. The resulting State or Federation of States would thus extend from Ostend to Reval, from Amsterdam (or Bergen) to Trieste.

Even those Germans who did not espouse these ambitious schemes became deeply imbued with the expansively patriotic ideas championed by the Kaiser. So far back as 1890 he ordered their enforcement in the universities and schools[503]. Thenceforth professors and teachers vied in their eagerness to extol the greatness of Germany and the civilising mission of the Hohenzollerns, whose exploits in the future were to eclipse all the achievements of Frederick the Great and William I. Moreover, the new German Navy was acclaimed as a necessary means to the triumph of German Kultur throughout the world. Other nations were depicted as slothful, selfish, decadent; and the decline in the prestige of Great Britain, France, and Russia to some extent justified these pretensions. The Tsar, by turning away from the Balkans towards Korea, deadened Slav aspirations. For the time Pan-Slavism seemed moribund. Pan-Germanism became a far more threatening force.

[Footnote 503: Latterly, the catchword, England ist der Feind ("England is the enemy"), has been taught in very many schools.]

Summing up, and including one topic that will soon be dealt with, we may conclude as follows: Germany showed that she did not want England's friendship, save in so far as it would help her to oppose the Monroe Doctrine or supply her with money to finish the Bagdad Railway. For reasons that have been explained, she and Austria were likely to undermine British interests in the Near East; while, on the other hand, the diversion of Russia's activities from Central Asia and the Balkans to the Far East, lessened the Muscovite menace which had so long determined the trend of British policy. Moreover, Russia's ally, France, showed a conciliatory spirit. Forgetting the rebuff at Fashoda (see ante, pp. 501-6), she aimed at expansion in Morocco. Now, Korea and Morocco did not vitally concern us. The Bagdad Railway and the Kaiser's court to Pan-Islamism were definite threats to our existence as an Empire. Finally, the development of the German Navy and the growth of a furiously anti-British propaganda threatened the long and vulnerable East Coast of Great Britain.

A temporary understanding with Germany could have been attained if we had acquiesced in her claim for maritime equality and in the oriental and colonial enterprises which formed its sequel. But that course, by yielding to her undisputed ascendancy in all parts of the world, would have led to a policy of partition. Now, since 1688, British statesmen have consistently opposed, often by force of arms, a policy of partition at the expense of civilised nations. Their aim has been to support the weaker European States against the stronger and more aggressive, thus assuring a Balance of Power which in general has proved to be the chief safeguard of peace. In seeking an Entente with France, and subsequently with Russia, British policy has followed the course consistent with the counsels of moderation and the teachings of experience. We may note here that the German historian, Count Reventlow, has pointed out that the Berlin Government could not frame any lasting agreement with the British; for, sooner or later, they would certainly demand the limitation of Germany's colonial aims and of her naval development, to neither of which could she consent. The explanation is highly significant[504].

[Footnote 504: Reventlow, Deutschlands auswaertige Politik, pp. 178-9; Mr. Chamberlain's Speeches, vol. ii. p. 68.]

Nevertheless, at first Great Britain sought to come to a friendly understanding with Germany in the Far East, probably with a view to preventing the schemes of partition of China which in 1900 assumed a menacing guise. At that time Russia seemed likely to take the lead in those designs. But opposite to the Russian stronghold of Port Arthur was the German province of Kiao Chau, in which the Kaiser took a deep interest. His resolve to play a leading part in Chinese affairs appeared in his speech to the German troops sent out in 1900 to assist in quelling the Boxer Rising. He ordered them to adopt methods of terrorism like those of Attila's Huns, so that "no Chinaman will ever again dare to look askance at a German." The orders were ruthlessly obeyed. After the capture of Pekin by the Allies (September 1900) there ensued a time of wary balancing. Russia and Germany were both suspected of designs to cut up China; but they were opposed by Great Britain and Japan. This obscure situation was somewhat cleared by the statesmen of London and Berlin agreeing to maintain the territorial integrity of China and freedom of trade (October 1900). But in March 1901 the German Chancellor, Prince von Buelow, nullified the agreement by officially announcing that it did not apply to, or limit, the expansion of Russia in Manchuria. What caused this volte face is not known; but it implied a renunciation of the British policy of the status quo in the Far East and an official encouragement to Russia to push forward to the Pacific Ocean, where she was certain to come into conflict with Japan. Such a collision would enfeeble those two Powers; while Germany, as tertius gaudens would be free to work her will both in Europe and Asia[505].

[Footnote 505: In September 1895 the Tsar thanked Prince Hohenlohe for supporting his Far East policy, and said he was weary of Armenia and distrustful of England; so, too, in September 1896, when Russo-German relations were also excellent (Hohenlohe Mems., Eng. edit., ii. 463, 470).]

On the other hand, Eckardstein, the German ambassador in London, is said to have made proposals of an Anglo-German-Japanese Alliance in March-April 1901. If we may trust the work entitled Secret Memoirs of Count Hayashi (Japanese ambassador in London) these proposals were dangled for some weeks, why, he could never understand. Probably Germany was playing a double game; for Hayashi believed that she had a secret understanding with Russia on these questions. He found that the Salisbury Cabinet welcomed her adhesion to the principles of maintaining the territorial integrity of China and of freedom of commerce in the Far East[506].

[Footnote 506: Secret Memoirs of Count Hayashi (London, 1915), pp. 97-131. There are suspicious features about this book. I refer to it with all reserve. Reventlow (Deutschlands auswaertige Politik, p. 178) thinks Eckardstein may have been playing his own game—an improbable suggestion.]

In October 1901 Germany proposed to the United Kingdom that each Power should guarantee the possessions of the other in every Continent except Asia. Why Asia was excepted is not clear, unless Germany wished to give Russia a free hand in that Continent. The Berlin Government laid stress on the need of our support in North and South America, where its aim of undermining the Monroe Doctrine was notorious. The proposed guarantee would also have compelled us to assist Germany in any dispute that might arise between her and France about Alsace-Lorraine or colonial questions. The aim was obvious, to gain the support of the British fleet either against the United States or France. A British diplomatist of high repute, who visited Berlin, has declared that the German Foreign Office made use of garbled and misleading documents to win him over to these views[507]. It was in vain. The British Government was not to be hoodwinked; and, as soon as it declined these compromising proposals, a storm of abuse swept through the German Press at the barbarities of British troops in South Africa. That incident ended all chance of an understanding, either between the two Governments or the two peoples.

[Footnote 507: Quarterly Review, Oct. 1914, pp. 426-9.]

The inclusion of Germany in the Anglo-Japanese compact proving to be impossible, the two Island Powers signed a treaty of alliance at London on January 30, 1902. It guaranteed the maintenance of the status quo in the Far East, and offered armed assistance by either signatory in the event of its ally being attacked by more than one Power[508]. The alliance ended the isolation of the British race, and marked the entry of Japan into the circle of the World-Powers. The chief objections to the new departure were its novelty, and the likelihood of its embroiling us finally with Russia and France or Russia and Germany. These fears were groundless; for France and even Russia(!) expressed their satisfaction at the treaty. Lord Lansdowne's diplomatic coup not only ended the isolation of two Island States, which had been severally threatened by powerful rivals; it also safeguarded China; and finally, by raising the prestige of Great Britain, it helped to hasten the end of the Boer War. During the discussion of their future policy by the Boer delegates at Vereeniging on May 30, General Botha admitted that he no longer had any hope of intervention from the Continent of Europe; for their deputation thither had failed. All the leaders except De Wet agreed, and they came to terms with Lords Kitchener and Milner at Pretoria on May 31. That the Anglo-Japanese compact ended the last hopes of the Boers for intervention can scarcely be doubted.

[Footnote 508: E.g., if the Russians alone attacked Japan we were not bound to help her: but if the French also attacked Japan we must help her. The aim clearly was to prevent Japan being overborne as in 1895 (see p. 577). The treaty was signed for five years, but was renewed on August 12, 1905, and in July 1911.]

Still more significant was the new alliance as a warning to Russia not to push too far her enterprises in the Far East. On April 12, 1902, she agreed with China to evacuate Manchuria; but (as has appeared in Chapter XX.) she finally pressed on, not only in Manchuria, but also in Korea, in which the Anglo-Japanese treaty recognised that Japan had predominant interests. For this forward policy Russia had the general support of the Kaiser, whose aims in the Near East were obviously served by the transference thence of Russia's activities to the Far East. It is, indeed, probable that he and his agents desired to embroil Russia and Japan. Certain it is that the Russian people regarded the Russo-Japanese War, which began in February 1904, as "The War of the Grand Dukes." The Russian troops fought an uphill fight loyally and doggedly, but with none of the enthusiasm so conspicuous in the present truly national struggle. In Manchuria the mistakes and incapacity of their leaders led to an almost unbroken series of defeats, ending with the protracted and gigantic contests around Mukden (March 1-10, 1905). The almost complete destruction of the Russian Baltic fleet by Admiral Togo at the Battle of Tsushima (May 27-28) ended the last hopes of the Tsar and his ministers; and, fearful of the rising discontent in Russia, they accepted the friendly offers of the United States for mediation. By the Treaty of Portsmouth (Sept. 5, 1905) they ceded to Japan the southern half of Saghalien and the Peninsula on which stands Port Arthur: they also agreed to evacuate South Manchuria and to recognise Korea as within Japan's sphere of influence. No war indemnity was paid. Indeed it could not be exacted, as Japan occupied no Russian territory which she did not intend to annex. To Russia the material results of the war were the loss of some 350,000 men, killed, wounded, and prisoners; of two fleets; and of the valuable provinces and ice-free harbours for the acquisition of which she had constructed the Trans-Siberian Railway. So heavy a blow had not been dealt to a Great Power since the fall of Napoleon III.; and worse, perhaps, than the material loss was that of prestige in accepting defeat at the hands of an Island State, whose people fifty years before fought with bows and arrows.

Japan emerged from the war triumphant, but financially exhausted. Accordingly, she was not loath to conclude with Russia, on July 30, 1907, a convention which adjusted outstanding questions in a friendly manner[509]. The truth about this Russo-Japanese rapprochement is, of course, not known; but it may reasonably be ascribed in part to the good services of England (then about to frame an entente with Russia); and in part to the suspicion of the statesmen of Petrograd and Tokio that German influences had secretly incited Russia to the policy of reckless exploitation in Korea which led to war and disaster.

[Footnote 509: Hayashi, op. cit. ch. viii. and App. D. On June 10, 1907, Japan concluded with France an agreement, for which see Hayashi, ch. vi. and App. C.]

The chief results of the Russo-Japanese War were to paralyse Russia, thereby emasculating the Dual Alliance and leaving France as much exposed to German threats as she was before its conclusion; also to exalt the Triple Alliance and enable its members (Germany, Austria, and Italy) successively to adopt the forward policy which marked the years 1905, 1908, 1911, and 1914. The Russo-Japanese War therefore inaugurated a new era in European History. Up to that time the Triple Alliance had been a defensive league, except when the exuberant impulses of Kaiser William forced it into provocative courses; and then the provocations generally stopped at telegrams and orations. But in and after 1905 the Triple Alliance forsook the watchwords of Bismarck, Andrassy and Crispi. Expansion at the cost of rivals became the dominant aim.

We must now return to affairs in France which predisposed her to come to friendly terms, first with Italy, then with Great Britain. Her internal history in the years 1895-1906 turns largely on the Dreyfus affair. In 1895, he, a Jewish officer in the French army, was accused and convicted of selling military secrets to Germany. But suspicions were aroused that he was the victim of anti-Semites or the scapegoat of the real offenders; and finally, thanks to the championship of Zola, his condemnation was proved to have been due to a forgery (July 1906). Meanwhile society had been rent in twain, and confidence in the army and in the administration of justice was seriously impaired. A furious anti-militarist agitation began, which had important consequences. Already in May 1900, the Premier, Waldeck-Rousseau, appointed as Minister of War General Andre, who sympathised with these views and dangerously relaxed discipline. The Combes Ministry, which succeeded in June 1902, embittered the strife between the clerical and anti-clerical sections by measures such as the separation of Church and State and the expulsion of the Religious Orders. In consequence France was almost helpless in the first years of the century, a fact which explains her readiness to clasp the hand of England in 1904 and, in 1905, after the military collapse of Russia in the Far East, to give way before the threats of Germany[510].

[Footnote 510: Even in 1908 reckless strikes occurred, and there were no fewer than 11,223 cases of insubordination in the army. Professor Gustave Herve left the University in order to direct a paper, La Guerre sociale, which advocated a war of classes.]