by John Buchan
“And therefore I say that Imperialism, sanely considered, is the best guardian of peace. Its aim is not conquest but consolidation and development, and its task within its own borders is so great that it has little inducement to meddle with its neighbours. I am no believer in cosmopolitanism. I have always thought that a man must cleave to his own people, and that the purpose of God is best attained by the strife of race with race and ideal with ideal. War will remain as the last resort when two race ideals, passionately held, meet in conflict. But the war which comes from a vague lust of possession I abhor, and the remedy for it is a preoccupation with nobler tasks. England has completed her great era of expansion. Her work for ages was to find new outlets for the vigour of her sons, and to occupy the waste or derelict places of the earth. Now, the land being won, it is her task to develop the wilds, to unite the scattered settlements, and to bring the whole within the influence of her tradition and faith. This labour we call empire-building, and above all things it is a labour of peace.”
“I thought that you were going to talk metaphysics,” said Mr Wakefield in an aggrieved voice. “Instead, you have talked ordinary common-sense, with which I can pick no quarrel. I object to having my patent infringed.”
Lord Appin had got himself a cigar and was smoking steadily.
“In the last resort,” he said blandly, “the two things are not distinguishable. I feared I had I been a little too high-coloured in my argument to earn your approval, for Mrs Deloraine has affected us all with a tendency to emotion. Still, I think, the main position is sound.”
“Sound!” cried Mr Wakefield. “There is no answer to it. But I am glad that I am not obliged to make the defence too often, for I am not an adept at this kind of discussion. In the colonies we go on simpler lines. One opponent says that he wants a republic, another declares that England is played out, while a third idiot — and he is the commonest — is too anxious to get his township started to care what happens to the Empire. His only question is, ‘And what am I to get out of it?’ I meet these reprobates with business arguments — figures, you know, and a little sentiment. In the colonies, happily, they do not get down to fundamentals.”
“Nor in England,” said Hugh. “The people who go back to first principles, as a rule make the journey only to find some defence for a prejudice which nothing will induce them to forego. There are no conversions in that rarefied air.”
“Well, let us leave it at that,” Lord Appin said cheerfully. “We, too, have recourse to fundamentals merely to justify to ourselves the faith which comes to us from other sources. I have a great belief in common-sense, which, after all, is the method proper to the sphere of the Understanding. Only, as some of us have inquisitive minds, it is as well now and then to go a little farther for the sake of a more reasonable satisfaction. Heaven forbid that I should ever try to transfer for good the case for Imperialism to the cloudy plateau of philosophy. Philosophy is not a necessary of life, it is not even a special pleasure; but, remember, if it once lays hold of the mind, it is the only thing which can solve the doubts it creates.... There, Wakefield, I hope I have climbed off my perch with sufficient humility to please you. And now, having blasphemed my idols, I shall restore my self-respect by beating you at billiards.”
CHAPTER XIII.
“We shall get back,” said the Duchess next night at dinner, “just in time for the autumn session. I am told I must give a political party, and I want you all to come. Bob always does, and our people stare at him as if he were a strange new beast. It does them good to find out that he has not a cloven hoof, and I am sure it is the best thing in the world for him to be civil to people who annoy him. Will you come, Sir Edward?”
That gentleman had been unaccountably glum during the meal, so that Mrs Yorke had given up in despair the effort of making conversation.
“I’m afraid I can’t,” he said moodily. “I shan’t be in England till after Christmas, for I promised Carey to go up to Kashmir and have a look at his place there. But it would be worth while going back if I thought I would meet that fellow Bronson, and tell him what I thought of him with a dog-whip. Of all the damned scoundrels! — I beg your pardon, Duchess, but it’s a fact. Have you seen the home papers? You know there’s a row in West Africa, a very ticklish affair for us, for we hold a big country with a handful of troops and no base within hundreds of miles. Well, because we have killed a score or two of natives in the way of duty, the fellow has been spitting venom about our men, calling them murderers, and accusing them of every unmentionable atrocity. I don’t mind his slinging accusations into the air; it’s the favourite game of these vermin, and eases them without doing anybody much harm. But when it comes to calling old Mitchinson a blackguard, who, as everybody knows, is the straightest and kindest fellow on earth, then, I think, it’s about time for somebody to interfere. If half a dozen Englishmen in lonely stations are massacred and have their eyes gouged out, in the language of that rabble it’s the effort of a brave people rightly struggling to be free. But if in self-defence we teach some of the sportsmen the ways of the Maxim, then it’s a cold-blooded brutal murder. I would give all I possess to show some of these gentry the pretty habits of the full-blooded savage.”
“My dear Teddy,” said Lord Appin, “your language is a little unparliamentary. No, I forgot. You would consider that a compliment, so I shall say unnecessarily abusive. I don’t object to Mr Bronson, who is merely an honest well-meaning ass. He feels in his way as deeply about the affair as you do, and means as well by his country. As Bismarck said, ‘Every nation must have its national fools.’ The sentimentalist is a much worse fellow, for he has no earnestness to justify his folly. Let me quote from my favourite newspaper a few remarks about that fight in Northern Nigeria you were talking about.
“‘On Sunday — the day of rest and gladness throughout the Christian world — three hundred brave, black British citizens were murdered in West Africa. Their offence was that they had taken up arms for their native land. Remember that these men were not a foreign foe, but subjects of our King, sharers with ourselves in the benefits which are assumed to follow our flag. What account have we to render of our stewardship towards them? Before we came into their country they were living their simple lives happily and innocently — in darkness, it may be, but yet in peace. We come among them, outrage their traditions, violate their sanctities, coerce them in an unfamiliar bondage. Can we wonder that a high-spirited people rebels? And we meet their revolt with the savage measures which weakness and panic dictate. West Africa is, indeed, a signal and ominous lesson in imperial futility and crime, but it is a lesson, we hope and believe, which is now scarcely needed. Already the grandiose dreams of empire are foundering in the bud.’”
“There!” said Sir Edward triumphantly. “There you have the stuff I mean. Launceston, you defended the Nonconformist conscience when we were crossing the Lake. Have you anything to say in defence of that?”
“I make the same distinction as Lord Appin.” Lord Launceston, who had scarcely smiled during the reading of the extract, spoke with a grave deliberation which hushed the talk. “Two men may differ profoundly and yet be equally entitled to the name of patriot. Take the case of conscription. I may desire to see every citizen trained to arms, and my neighbour may hold all war immoral and military training no better than a preparation for crime. I desire the thing because I wish my country well, and he opposes me because he also wishes it well. We differ because we are patriots: if he, with his convictions, were less of a patriot, he might agree with me. There are many people who must be troubled by the incidents of a native war — quite honestly and reasonably troubled. They believe that their country is degrading herself, and, because they love their country, they are bound to protest. We differ intellectually, but morally we are at one with them. I do not object to the killing of men in a right cause, just as I do not object to capital punishment, because I have no extreme respect for human life. Nor do I object to flogging when it may be expedient, because I d
o not believe in the dignity of the human person. But I recognise that many good men do not share my scepticism, and that for them to condone these things would be a betrayal of their moral standards. I want to see every genuine fanatic fought tooth and nail if need be, but respected as a foe who by a turn of fortune’s wheel may become an ally. Fanaticism means steel and fire, and we are nothing without them. Every true Imperialist, it seems to me, must be at heart a kind of fanatic. We can do something with the cranks, but we can do nothing with the flâneur. They differ from us only in opinion, not in purpose, and any day a new light or a wider experience may range them on our side.”
Sir Edward grunted. “Then if we are to respect them so much, how are we to fight them? You can’t fight without a little animosity, and it looks as if that excellent quality were to be swamped with unwilling admiration.”
“We fight them because we believe them to be utterly and mischievously wrong. We are in as deadly earnest as they are, and we are as certain of our faith. When fanaticism comes in our way we must convert it or destroy it.
But when that is done we can build its tomb and give it a friendly epitaph.”
“Do you mean to say that the fellows who are screaming about Mitchinson are only mistaken patriots?”
“Some are undoubtedly,” said Lord Launceston. “But not over many, because the true fanatic is rarely a fool, and this attack is so curiously foolish. No, I fear it springs in the main from a quality for which I have no defence to make — a shallow and calculating sentimentality.”
Lady Flora protested. “Please, Lord Launceston, don’t join in the conventional abuse of sentiment. I like it, for it means that people are simple-minded and cheerful.”
“I don’t mean your kind of sentiment, my dear child. We shall all pray for its continuance. The sentiment I mean is the decadence of everything simple and cheerful. It comes from a mind and heart whose powers have gone rotten.”
Lady Warcliff nodded her agreement. “I like that distinction I used before between the hard-hearted kind people and the soft-hearted cruel people. The sentimentalist is the egotist who cloaks his selfishness by claiming a monopoly of the purer emotions. There is no province of life which he does not pollute. In love he is the philanderer, in politics the Jingo or the humanitarian, in art the purveyor of all that is weak and fatuous and second-rate. He is incapable of greatness: he is incapable of even common truth. He goes through life without ever seeing the world in its reality, for between him and it hangs the veil of the second-hand emotionalism. He is the kind of being who calls physical cowardice moral courage, who will shed tears over the poor and bully his own servants, whose mouth is full of noble words and his heart of little fears and vanities. There is nothing to lay hold of in him, only rottenness, like a decaying tree. He has so debauched his soul that he is incapable of any clean strong passion, and therefore I say, God pity the man or woman who trusts in him. For, like all weak unwholesome things, he is capable of the last extreme of cruelty.”
“Poor sentimentalist!” sighed the Duchess. “Really, Margaret, you are too unkind, for we have all a bit of him in our nature, and your censure is horribly personal. Let us walk round the terrace while the men smoke, and then we may be in a better frame of mind for Lord Launceston.”
Half an hour later in the inner hall the company reassembled. Lady Flora had begged for lights. “I feel so eerie in the dark,” she said, “and besides, I like to watch people’s faces. Mr Wakefield, will you sit beside me and translate the fragments of the dead languages which no one seems able to do without?”
Lord Launceston began with a great air of diffidence.
“I have been given an appalling task by our host — nothing less than to sum up the kind of conclusions we have been hovering round since we came here. It was no use my protesting and quoting Fichte’s reply to Madame de Staël, ‘Ces choses ne ses laissent pas dire succinctement.’ He replied that if we had any clear ideas at all, there were always words to fit them. I suppose he is right, and though our body of results is not very great, yet there are one or two points established. Like all living faiths, Imperialism must grow insensibly into men’s hearts. Almost the last thing it finds is its principles, but long before that it has revealed itself in a new way of looking at the world, a new hope, vague, indeterminate, and yet so priceless that those who catch the gleam are ready to leave everything and follow it.
“Our first conclusion, therefore, was that Imperialism was not Liberalism or Conservatism or any other traditional creed. It was a new attitude of mind which admitted certain new conditions into the problem of statesmanship. On the interpretation of these conditions there will be a great difference of opinion. We shall have liberals and conservatives, socialists and individualists, free-traders and protectionists, but all these differences will exist within Imperialism. The sign-manual of our creed is the belief that our problems must be settled on the basis of the Empire, that it is our business to look at all the facts instead of at only a few of them.
“This is, of course, the merest formal statement, and gets us very little farther. On these terms we could enlist, I believe, ninety-nine out of every hundred Englishmen in a lip-service to the creed. What we desire to create is the Imperialist with the intelligence to estimate his data correctly, and the will to act upon his conclusions. That is to say, we ask for a more highly-developed type of citizen. Lord Appin has already explained to you the practical standpoint of such a citizen, and the philosophical justification for it. We do not need theorists or sentimentalists or anarchists: we want the practical intelligence which is acute in foresight and sober in ideal, and which is joined to an unhesitating instinct for deeds. He has also explained the kind of philosophical preconception which is involved in any examination of our new data, and which must be taken as the sine qua non of Imperialism. He defined it roughly, if I remember, as the recognition of the value of material greatness for spiritual development, the belief that since ideals can only be realised under conditions of space and time, it is right and proper to attend to these conditions. So our Imperialist — liberal, conservative, individualist, socialist — we may take to be the man who accepts the Empire as the basis of all our problems, who believes that spacial expansion is not inconsistent with civic well-being but may be a valuable ally, and who carries to his task a mind which understands the limitations of political activity, and at the same time is quick to apprehend and resolute to act. Many Imperialists, no doubt, will fall short of this high standard, but we define a party by its ideal.
“In the early part of our discussions much was said about the relations of Imperialism to current politics at home. We do not seek to create any new party, but to have all parties accept our doctrine as the ultimate basis of their activity. But at the same time there are certain types of mind which are of more value to us than others, and certain types which are almost wholly useless. I have something to say on this subject which I can best introduce by a quotation from Lady Flora. I overheard her the other day arguing with Astbury about that hoary question — the proper definition of Whig and Tory. And this was her conclusion. A Whig is a man who is prepared to go to the stake for his beliefs, but who will not send his opponents there. A Tory is one who will not only burn himself, but is quite prepared in the last resort to burn those who differ from him. I take that as a parable, and I am prepared to defend the Tory attitude as the one which in the future must triumph. We are many hundred years removed from burning, but the point of view remains the same. One man is very much in earnest about his creed, but he will not coerce his fellows into agreement. He must justify himself to his own conscience, but he will not take it upon himself to compel other consciences to follow suit. Laissez-faire is his motto and individualism his religion. A second man has the same private depth of conviction, but his conscience has a communal tinge in it. He cannot conceive that that which deeply concerns himself does not also concern the State. I do not mean that he is the crude propagandist. That is a type that is common
enough and worthless enough to-day. Every human being itches to make converts, whether it be to theosophy or to dry-fly fishing. I mean the serious conviction that no man lives to himself alone, and that we must settle our problems not only for ourselves but for the State. A political creed cannot be a private possession. If it is true it is true for the whole race, and the type of mind which I speak of is prepared to coerce the world into accepting it. One man says, ‘I think this or that, and I hope to find enough like-minded people to give the view the support of a majority.’ Another says, ‘This is my opinion, and since it is God’s truth, the world shall accept it.” And it is the latter who must conquer. The earth is not yet the heritage of the meek, and the Kingdom of Heaven will yield only to violence. That is what I mean when I say that the natural ally of the Imperialist is the fanatic. We demand first of all wisdom, but we believe that wisdom is a voice in the desert, unless there is a power of conviction behind her to compel the market-place to acknowledge her godhead.
“We have spoken of English conditions from the party point of view, and we have found that we can disregard conventional party distinctions. I would rather consider them under a more organic division. We have still the great threefold classification — the lower classes, the middle, and the upper, or, as I should prefer to put it, the classes which have wants, the classes which are satisfied, and the classes which have ambitions. Some men are so near the margin of life that their horizon is bounded by material wants — food, housing, security. Others live on a plane where their desires are either less self-regarding, or if self-regarding are less material, and such desires I call ambitions. Between these extremes lie the great contented classes, the bourgeois in mind. They may have no positive satisfaction in life, but they desire in their dumb way the maintenance of things as they are. They may clamour for this or that reform, but they are not reformers at heart, for their minds are asleep. I need scarcely say that this distinction of classes does not correspond with the conventional one. Some of our own class are in my lower, and a vast number in my middle class, while many of the lower class as usually defined, and not a few of the middle, would belong to what on my definition is the aristocracy of ambition.”
