Part 3 (1/2)
It is a fortunate fact that supposing a revival of militancy in China, a revival which is possible but not probable, the first brunt of the trouble would probably fall upon j.a.pan. At the present moment j.a.pan is the most serious offender against China's national pride. As the conqueror of Corea and the occupier of Manchuria, she trespa.s.ses most of all foreign Powers on the territories and the rights of China. After j.a.pan, Russia would have to expect a demand for a reckoning; Great Britain would come third and might come into collision with an aggressive China, either because of the existence of such settlements as Hong Kong or because of the Thibetan boundary. A China in search of enemies, however, would find no lack of good pretexts for quarrelling.
There are, for instance, the offensive and humiliating restrictions on Chinese immigration of the United States, of Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
I find it necessary, however, to conclude that so far as the near future is concerned, China will not take a great warrior part in the determining of Pacific issues. She may be able to enforce a more wholesome respect for her territorial integrity: she may push away some intruders: she may even insist on a less injurious and contemptuous att.i.tude towards her nationals abroad. But she will not, I think, seek greatness by a policy of aggression. There is no a.n.a.logy between her conditions and those of j.a.pan at the time of the j.a.panese acceptance of European arts and crafts. j.a.pan at the time was a bitterly quarrelsome country: she turned from civil to foreign war. China has been essentially pacific for some centuries. j.a.pan was faced at the outset of her national career with the fact that she had to expand her territory or else she could not hope to exist as a great Power. China has within her own borders all that is necessary for national greatness.
If at a later date the Chinese, either from a too-thorough study of the lore of European civilisation, or from the pressure of a population deprived of all Malthusian checks and thus finding an outlet absolutely necessary, should decide to put armies and navies to work for the obtaining of new territory, the peril will be great to the White Man.
Such a Chinese movement could secure Asia for the Asiatics, and might not stop at that point. But that danger is not of this decade, though it may have to be faced later by the White Power which wins the supremacy of the Pacific.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] A very clear statement as to the position in China was that given in London during January of 1912 by Mr Kwei Chih, a secretary of the Chinese Legation.
”None of the dynasties in China,” he said, ”has ever maintained a tyrannical _regime_ for any length of time, least of all the Manchu dynasty, the policy of which has consisted rather of a mixture of paternalism and obscurantism than of hard repression of the people....
The present unanimous desire of the Chinese to remove the Manchu dynasty arises solely from the fact that the Chinese have fully awakened to the realisation that only a policy of thoroughgoing Westernisation can save China from disruption and part.i.tion. The removal of the Manchu dynasty is of no greater national moment to China than would be the fall of a Cabinet to any European country. Personal animus enters, indeed, so little into the determination of the new Chinese _regime_ that the question of setting apart lands for the deposed dynasty, and even of granting it ex-territorial privileges, may eventually be accepted in the way of a solution. In regard to the adoption of Republican ideas, it may be said that the Chinese statesman does not understand the meaning of the Republican principle, and if a new _regime_ should declare itself Republican, its Republicanism will be of a much more strongly democratic type than any known to Europe. It will even be more popular in its const.i.tution than the American, and will far more fully seek the development of the common weal than most bureaucratic systems bearing the name. The suggested application of Christian principles to the new _regime_ may be regarded as wholly impossible. Confucianism, by which China stands or falls, is a secular philosophy, the only semblance of a spiritual or religious tenet in which is the principle of ancestor-wors.h.i.+p, and though a theocratic idea is admitted in the creation of the universe, the question of a life hereafter is wholly excluded from its teachings.”
CHAPTER V
THE UNITED STATES--AN IMPERIAL POWER
Following the map of the North-Western Pacific littoral, the eye encounters, on leaving the coast of China, the Philippine Islands, proof of the ambition of the United States to hold a place in the Pacific.
It is a common fallacy to ascribe to the United States a Quakerish temperament in foreign affairs. Certain catch-words of American local politics have been given a fict.i.tious value, both at home and abroad.
”Republican Simplicity,” ”The Rights of Man,” ”European Tyranny,”
”Imperial Aggression,” ”The Vortex of Militarism”--from these and similar texts some United State publicists are wont to preach of the tyranny of European kings and emperors; of their greed to swallow up weak neighbours; and of the evils of the military and naval systems maintained to gratify such greed. By much grandiose a.s.sertion, or by that quiet implication which is more complete proof of a convinced mind than the most grandiose of a.s.sertion, the American nation has been pictured in happy contrast to others, pursuing a simple and peaceful life; with no desire for more territory; no wish to interfere with the affairs of others; in the world, but not of the world.
Astonishment that such professions should carry any weight at all in the face of the great ma.s.s of facts showing that the American national temper is exactly the reverse of Quakerish, is modified in the political student by the fact that it is the rule for nations as well as individuals to be judged in the popular estimation by phrases rather than by facts. Ignoring the phrases of politicians and considering only the facts, it will be found that the American people have Imperial ambitions worthy of their ancestry and inseparable from the responsibility towards civilisation which their national greatness involves.
It was in the middle of the eighteenth century that the United States began national housekeeping within a small territory on the seaboard of the Atlantic. By the nineteenth century that area had extended over a section of the continent of America as large almost as Europe. By the twentieth century this Power, still represented as incurably ”peaceful and stay-at-home” by its leaders, was established in the Caribbean Sea, on the Isthmus of Panama, in the North and South Pacific, along the coast of Asia, and had set up firmly the principle that whatever affair of the world demanded international attention, from a loan to China, to the fate of an Atlantic port of Morocco, the United States had ”interests” which must be considered, and advice which must be regarded. The only circ.u.mstance that genuinely suggests a Quaker spirit in United States foreign diplomacy is her quaint directness of language.
More effete peoples may wrap every stage of a negotiation up to an ultimatum in honeyed phrases of respect. America ”tutoyers” all courts and is mercilessly blunt in claim and warning.
It would be very strange if the United States were otherwise than Imperial in spirit. Nations, like individuals, are affected by biological laws; a young, strong nation is as naturally aggressive and ambitious as a young, strong boy. Contentment with things as they are, a disposition to make anxious sacrifices to the G.o.ds who grant peace, are the signs of old age. If a boy is quite good his parents have a reasonable right to suspect some const.i.tutional weakness. A new nation which really resembled what a great many of the American people think the United States to be, would show as a morbid anomaly. No; the course of the world's future history will never be correctly forecasted except on the a.s.sumption that the United States is an aggressively Imperial nation, having an influence at least equal to that of any European Power in the settlement of international issues; and determined to use that influence and to extend its scope year by year. In the Problem of the Pacific particularly, the United States must be counted, not merely as a great factor but the greatest factor.
If the American citizen of to-day is considered as though he were a British citizen of some generations back, with a healthy young appet.i.te for conquest still uncloyed, some idea near to the truth will have been reached. But since the deference exacted by public opinion nowadays compels some degree of pretence and does not permit us to parade our souls naked, it is improbable that the United States citizen of this century will adopt the frank freebooting att.i.tude of the Elizabethan Englishman when he was laying the foundations of his Empire by methods inspired somewhat by piracy as well as by patriotism. The American will have to make some concession to the times and seek always a moral sanction for the extension of his boundaries. Such a search, however, is rarely made in vain when it is backed by a resolved purpose. It was sufficient for Francis Drake to know that a settlement was Spanish and rich. The attack followed. The United States needs to know that a possession is foreign, is desirable, and is grossly ill-governed before she will move to a remonstrance in the sacred name of Liberty. Since good government is an ideal which seldom comes at all close to realisation, and the reputation of no form of administration can survive the ordeal of resolute foreign criticism, the practical difference is slight. The American Empire will grow with the benediction always of a high moral purpose; but it will grow.
It is interesting to recall the fact that at its very birth the United States was invested by a writer of prophetic insight with the purple of Empire. Said the _London Gazette_ of 1765:--”Little doubt can be entertained that America will in time be the greatest and most prosperous Empire that perhaps the world has ever seen.” But the early founders of the new nation, then as now, deceived themselves and others with the view that a pacific little Republic, not a mighty Empire, was their aim. The Imperial instinct showed, however, in the fact that the baby nation had in its youngest days set up a formidable navy. It was ostensibly ”for the local defence of its sh.o.r.es,” but naval power and overseas Empire are inseparably linked.
The austere Republic began to grow in territory and influence at a rate putting to shame the early feats of the Roman power. By 1893 the United States had made it clear that she would not allow her independence to be fettered in the slightest degree by any claims of grat.i.tude from France: and her Declaration of Neutrality in the European War then raging was a clear statement of claim to be considered as a Power. The war with the Barbary States in 1802 to suppress piracy was a claim to police rights on the high seas, police rights which custom gives only to a paramount sea Power. By the next year Spain and France had been more or less politely relieved of all responsibilities in North America, and the United States stretched from ocean to ocean, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.
It is upon the early eloquence of her founders as to the duty of the United States to confine her attention strictly to America, that the common misconception of America's place in foreign policy has been built up. That talk, however, was in the first instance dictated largely by prudence. Alexander Hamilton, who controlled the foreign policy of the infant Republic at the outset, was particularly anxious that she should find her feet before attempting any deeds of enterprise. In particular, he was anxious that the United States should not, through considerations of sentiment, be drawn into the position of a mere appanage of France.
He set the foundations of what was known afterwards as the ”Monroe doctrine,” with the one thought that, at the time, a policy of non-interference with European affairs was a necessary condition of free growth for the young nation. The same idea governed Was.h.i.+ngton's farewell address in 1796 with its warning against ”foreign entanglements.”
Afterwards the ”Monroe doctrine”--deriving its name from a message by President Monroe in 1823--was given the meaning that the United States would not tolerate any interference with the affairs of the American continent by Europe. Finally the ”Monroe doctrine,” which had begun with an affirmation of America's non-partic.i.p.ation in European affairs, and had developed into a declaration against European interference with American affairs, took its present form, which is, in effect, that over all America the United States has a paramount interest which must not be questioned, and that as regards the rest of the world she claims an equal voice with other Powers. Yet, though that is the actual position, there is still an idea in some minds that the Monroe doctrine is an instrument of humbleness by which the United States claims the immunity of America from foreign interference and guarantees foreign countries from American interference.
It will be of value to recall, in ill.u.s.tration of the rapid growth of an aggressive national pride in the United States, the circ.u.mstances which led up to Mr. President Monroe's formal message in 1823. The dawn of the nineteenth century found the young American nation, after about a quarter of a century's existence, fairly on her feet; able to vindicate her rights abroad by a war against the Barbary pirates: given by the cession of Louisiana from France, a magnificent accession of territory.
The Empire of Spain was crumbling to pieces, and between 1803 and 1825 the Latin-American Republics in South and Central America were being established on the ruins of that Empire. Spain, her attention engaged in European wars, was able to do little or nothing to a.s.sert herself against the rebellious colonies. But in 1815, Napoleon having been vanquished, the Holy Alliance in Europe attempted to rea.s.sert the old power of the European monarchies. The terror of Napoleon's army had forced the kings of the earth into a union which forgot national differences and was anxious only to preserve the Divine Right of Kings.
The formation of this Holy Alliance was viewed with suspicion and dislike in the United States, and when in 1823 the Alliance raised the question of joint action by European monarchies to restore Spanish rule in South America, the United States responded with Monroe's famous message forbidding any European interference on the continent of America. Such European colonies as already existed would be tolerated, and that was all. The message stated: