Views and reviews from the outlook of an anthropologist

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE

SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND

THE GIFT OF

HENRY W. SAGE

1891

Cornell University Library
GN29 .J72

Views and reviews from the outlook of an

olin

3 1924 029 899 188

Cornell University
Library

The original of tliis bool< is in
tine Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029899188

VIEWS AND REVIEWS

VIEWS AND
REVIEWS

FROM THE OUTLOOK OF
AN ANTHROPOLOGIST

BY

SIR HARRY JOHNSTON

G.C.M.G,, K.C.B., D.SC.
AUTHOR OF "the OPENING-UP OF AFRICA";

*'the negro in the new world," etc.

LONDON
WILLIAMS & NORGATE

14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN

\

1912

PREFATORY NOTE

It was suggested to me from various sources that
I should republish in book form articles which I
had contributed at various times to periodical litera-
ture, mainly to the Nineteenth Century and After ;
and also to the Quarterly Review ; the Contemporary
Review ; the Daily Graphic and Graphic ; the Daily
Chronicle ; and the Westminster Gazette. The con-
sent of the proprietors of these reviews and journals
was very graciously accorded ; but on second
thoughts though I retained the subjects and much
of the substance of these essays I rewrote them
completely, bringing them up to a later date in
their statistics and information, revising my im-
pressions in some instances, and adding new matter,
including the substance of lectures delivered before
German Colonial Societies in London and in
Germany.

H. H. JOHNSTON.

Poling, April 191 2.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

1. THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY ... I

2. HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE . . -33

3. THE PEOPLE AND THE LANGUAGE OF IRELAND . 62

4. THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY —

(1) GERMAN INFLUENCE ON EUROPE IN THE

PAST . . . . .90

5. THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY

(2) THE FOREIGN RELATIONS AND COLONIAL

ASPIRATIONS OF MODERN GERMANY . II o

6. THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY —

(3) HOME INTERESTS AND INTERNAL ADMINIS-

TRATION ....

7. EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM

8. RACIAL PROBLEMS ....

9. THE RISE OF THE NATIVE .

10. THE PRESERVATION OF FAUNA AND FLORA

147
160
200

243
284

VIEWS AND REVIEWS

CHAPTER I

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY

Some twenty years back, in the volumes of Mr
Punch may be found a Du Maurier drawing of a
pretty woman interrogating a pompous personage
in evening dress.

He says : " I am — ah — going to the Anthropo-
logical Institute."

"And where do they anthropolodge ? " is the
smiling question which follows this announcement.

They — the Anthropological Institute of Great
Britain and Ireland — at that period still " anthropo-
lodged " in two dark, dirty little rooms in a part
of St Martin's Lane long ago rebuilt. When the
Institute was ejected from its modest tenement
through the street improvements of this quarter,
it took refuge under the wing of the Zoological
Society in Hanover Square, securing just about as
much accommodation on the third floor as was
allotted to the editorial work of the Ibis, a quarterly
journal of British ornithologists. When, however,
the Zoological Society wisely decided to house itself
alongside the birds and beasts in Regent's Park, the

2 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

anthropologists of Great Britain and Ireland obtained
some rather better-looking rooms in a Great Russell
Street house fronting the British Museum.

One can, however, imagine the visit to London
of some man of science of German, French, Italian,
or American nationality, who has by travel or
reading acquired some fair conception of that
stupendous achievement : the British Empire, over
400,000,000 of human beings belonging to nearly
every known sub-species, variety, or race of mankind'.
Having arrived in the capital of this Empire, he asks,
sooner or later, for the headquarters of anthropology.
He might fairly expect to find that branch of
scientific research occupying the whole of the
magnificent buildings of the Imperial Institute,
or endowed with the Crystal Palace, or provided
with a portion of Burlington House, or a wing of
the British Museum, or at any rate housed as well
as are the Royal Geographical or Zoological Societies.
As a matter of fact, he would discover the association
for the study of anthropology squeezed into two
rooms on the second -floor front of a house in
Bloomsbury, having to suit its installation to its very
modest income.

But the intelligent foreigner nowadays is intelligent,
and has received such a thoroughly sound education
that even before he comes to our land to see it with
his own eyes his school and college course have
taught him all about us. Therefore, he not only
knows how enormously important to us is the study
of anthropology, but he equally knows our funny
way of doing business ; how we put on one side
the things that really matter to occupy ourselves

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY 3

with almost immaterial pursuits and achievements —
and yet — " damn it all " (as he will say in some mild
equivalent of Teutonic or Gallic petulance) — get
there all the same. He will not be surprised that
we spend millions sterling on horse - breeding,
largely for the purpose of gambling with the
product ; hundreds of thousands, very wisely, on
the perfecting of sheep and cattle, and, less wisely,
on the creation of fancy dogs ; that our gold is
poured out lavishly to promote factious struggles
in home politics, in religious or educational con-
troversies, or for the betterment of other nations'
helots, for the hitting of balls with a diversity of
implements, on the removal from a private house to
a public gallery of some work of art possessing an
uncertain value ; and yet that from out of the
gigantic wealth in the metropolis of the Empire
we are only able to raise two or three thousand
pounds annually for the scientific study of the
bodies and minds of the 400,000,000 living men
and women whom fate has brought under the
influence and control of the British Empire.

King Edward VII., soon after coming to the throne,
conferred the attribute of Royal as a prefix to the
title of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain
and Ireland. If my readers visit the German capitals
of Stuttgart, Munich, Berlin, Bremen, Cologne, and
Hamburg they will see — I mean the verb to be
taken literally — kings, princes, councillors of state,
great nobles and rich merchants taking an eager
and a scientific interest in anthropological studies,
examining the exhibits in ethnographical museu'ms
which they have endowed, criticising the statements

4 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

on the labels or in the lectures to which they have
listened, doing their utmost, in fact, to make the
accurate study of mankind a popular pursuit. In
the United Kingdom it is very different. There the
work of our one Anthropological Society during
half a century has been carried on almost unrecog-
nised by those in authority, contemptuously regarded
by politicians of all parties — Conservatives, Liberals,
and Labour members alike.

The Colonial Office, stirred up to action by an
unscientific yet zealous anthropologist — Mary
Kingsley — began some years back to favour an-
thropological research in the newer British possessions
in Africa. It supported an ethnologist in Southern
Nigeria and accorded some recognition and approval
to the first-class work accomplished by officials (such
as C. W. Hobley, A. C. Hollis, and most of their
colleagues in British East Africa) in the Crown
Colonies and Protectorates. Furthermore, it advised
young men entering its service to go through a course
of study at the Royal Anthropological Institute,
before taking up responsible work in Africa or
Malaysia. This Institute had already carried out
an immense amount of research in most parts of the
British dominions at its own expense or through
the personal expenditure of time and money on the
part of its associates. Its work had, hitherto, cost
nothing whatever to the nation at large, and had
never been aided by any Government grant. It had
given the gratuitous instruction asked for by the
Colonial Office ; but finding after a time that the
inquiries of such pupils took up its limited space
for study and occupied much of the attention of its

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY 5

two paid officials, it asked either that it might be
put on the same footing as the Royal Geographical
Society, or have its contributory membership in-
creased by the entrance into its ranks of all colonial
officials needing to possess some knowledge of
anthropology : an accession not yet achieved. The
Royal Geographical Society receives a small annual
grant from the Treasury for imparting instruction In
geography and surveying, and, above all, for placing
at the disposal of the Government its immense
store of maps and its expert knowledge. Cramped
as the Anthropological Institute has been in the
way of space, it is able to render similar services
in regard to home, foreign, and colonial questions
within its scope ; while the addition to its funds of
(say) ;^500 a year would enable it to secure premises
much more suited to study and to the ample setting
out of its fine reference library.

These, at least, were the views held some years ago
by a number of persons interested in the encourage-
ment of anthropology, and most of them lecturers on
that science at great Universities. The Government
was approached, and the Prime Minister agreed to
receive a deputation at the House of Commons.
You would have thought, however, from his frown-
ing face and unsympathetic manner that this little
group of Oxford and Cambridge professors, retired
governors and Indian civil servants, great doctors
and celebrated lawyers, world-famed biologists and
erudite exponents of archaeology were a band of
Ill-timed jokers come to try his patience with some
preposterous proposal, and provoke his spleen in all
the stress of party warfare by asking that lotteries

6 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

might be re-established, that votes might be given
to the inmates of Broadmoor or the wards of
Earlwood, that betting on race-courses should be
abolished, or vivisection be practised on criminals.
The deputation was dismissed, one might almost
say, with contumely ; but, reviewing mentally all the
great personalities then ruling parties in the House
of Commons, one was forced to admit that though
B. might have introduced more suavity into his
dissmissal of the subject and the pleaders, and C.
have held out hopes he had no intention of fulfilling,
all would have ranked with A. in ignoring the
importance of Anthropological studies in our national
scheme of education.

The scientific study of Anthropology — the Science
of Man,^ the attempt to understand the bodily and
mental conditions of earth's ruler — may be said to
have begun in this country at the end of the fifties
of the last century, under the direction of Sir
Charles Lyell, Professor T. H. Huxley, Sir E. B.
Tylor, Sir John Evans, Francis Galton, Col. Lane-
Fox-Pitt-Rivers, Sir John Lubbock, Dr John Beddoe,
Sir A. W. Franks, Sir Edward Braybrook, Dr
Charnock, Sir Richard Burton, Moncure D. Conway,
and others. Dr Prichard had written interestingly
but unscientifically on the races of mankind in the
pre-Darwinian days of the middle-nineteenth century,
when a misconception of the Hebrew Scriptures still

1 Anthropology is the accepted general term for the Science of
Man, but it is usually employed in a specific sense to cover the
physiological study of man as a mammal in contra-distinction to
Ethnology (" the Science of the Nations "), which deals with all the
aspects and results of man's mental development.

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY 7

clogged research into the past history and present
classification of mankind.^

Prichard and others (including, I believe, one of
the ablest and most " modern " of these pioneers in
anthropology, the late Edward Norris, Librarian of
the Foreign Office) had founded the Ethnological
Society about 1 843 ; but, as the late Professor D. J.
Cunningham pointed out in his presidential address of
January 1908, the membership, though distinguished,
was and remained very small. " In those days " —
to quote Professor Cunningham — " anthropologists
were looked upon with some suspicion. They were
regarded as men with advanced ideas — ideas which
might possibly prove dangerous to Church and
State. In London, as indeed might be expected,
no opposition was offered to the formation of the
Anthropological Society, but in Paris the first
attempt to found a similar Society in 1846 was
rendered futile by the intervention of the Govern-
ment, and when finally, in 1859, the Anthropological
Society of Paris was formed, Broca, its illustrious
founder, was bound over to keep the discussions
within legitimate and orthodox limits, and a police

' It is scarcely necessary to point out that the Churches soon
became reassured, and many clerics have been enthusiastic
supporters of anthropological research. If the contributions made
by members of the many missionary societies were to be removed
from anthropological journals, there would be left quite a small
literature on the subject. One of the best periodical reviews in
regard to ethnology is Anthropos, conducted in polyglot fashion
from Vienna by the Rev. Dr P. W. Schmidt, and supported by
Roman Catholic missionaries throughout the globe. Nor are the
clergy of the Church of England, or the missionaries of the
Presbyterian, Baptist, or Wesleyan Churches in any way behind the
emissaries of the Church of Rome in their fifty years of sound
participation in the records of this science.

8 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

agent attended its sittings for two years to enforce
the stipulation. The same fear of anthropology, as
a subject endowed with eruptive potentialities, was
exhibited in Madrid, where the Society of Anthro-
pology, after a short and chequered career, was
suppressed. It is indeed marvellous how, in the,
comparatively speaking, short period which has
elapsed, public opinion should have veered round to
such an extent that at the present day there is no
branch of science which* enjoys a greater share of
popular favour than anthropology."

The "popular favour" to which Professor
Cunningham alluded may be accorded [to what
should be the first of sciences] in Germany, France,
Austria, Spain (Spain has made up for lost time
in this respect), Italy, Belgium, and the United
States. But there is little sign of it in Britain or in
the British Dominions beyond the seas. The total
membership of the only Anthropological Institute in
Great Britain and Ireland scarcely reaches to two
thousand.

There are [I believe] no Anthropological Societies
in Scotland or Ireland, or in Canada, South Africa,
or Australia, though there may be efficient bodies
for dealing with archaeology, folklore, and philology.
Yet the importance of the complete study of the
past and present inhabitants of the world, and of
such countries as those mentioned, can hardly be
over-estimated both in regard to our reading of
history and our understanding of modern political
questions.

In 1863 the Anthropological Society was founded
in London apparently to assume a more militant r61e

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY 9

in those eager young days of the new birth of
research than had been taken up by the staider
Ethnological Society, which was less anxious to
offend the clergy of all denominations than the
young men filled with the new wine of the evolution
thesis. The real difi^erence perhaps between the two
was that the ethnologists wished rather to confine
themselves to the collection and statement of bare
— and sometimes very dry — facts, whereas the
anthropologists desired to riot in theories, sometimes
with no more fact to support them than the
ethnology of the theosophists or the history of the
book of Mormon. The anthropologists for eight
exciting years, with a fluctuating membership of five
to seven hundred, discussed among other topics
thorny problems in sociology, religion, church music,
the rights of the Negro, the Adamites and pre-
Adamites ; then the membership began to dwindle,
a movement towards union with the ethnologists
was made, and that great man of science. Professor
Huxley, as President of the Ethnological Society,
proved the bond of union. The two London
societies dealing with the Science of Man were
amalgamated in 1871 as the Anthropological Institute
of Great Britain and Ireland. Since 1871 the
(Royal) Anthropological Institute has always been a
society poorly equipped in funds and spending all
it could affbrd on its publications. Its output of
work has been splendid and most stimulating,
especially since the last ten years. The response to
occasional pressing necessities in past times on the
part of the few among its members who are persons
of means has been generous, and even the rank and

lo VIEWS AND REVIEWS

file consented some little while ago to an increase in
the subscription. Unfortunately, anthropology as a
study has not yet become a fashionable foible to the
same extent as is the case with zoology in general
or with horticulture. Existing professional anthro-
pologists are scarcely ever blessed with large incomes,
and to many the limit of their annual money con-
tributions to scientific research has already been
reached.

I wish some abler, more authoritative pen than
mine could bring home to the mass of the voting
populace (and they in their turn force the know-
ledge on their representatives in Parliament who
can unlock the doors of the Treasury) the immense
economic importance of " pure " science. At the
best, our institutions for the study of biology,
geology, and astronomy are regarded with amused
tolerance by the masses and even the governing
classes, on the " keep-the-people-out-of-the-public-
house " line of thought. Blamelessness is typified
in comedies by a visit to the Zoological Gardens or
the British Museum. An evening spent at the
Linnsean Society would be considered to be decorous
to the point of ostentation, but dull ; yet, at the
Linnaean Society there was read one summer's night
in 1858 a paper by Charles Darwin and Alfred
Russel Wallace on the " Origin of Species by Natural
Means of Selection," which revolutionised the mental
outlook of all educated men and women in their
ideas concerning the genesis of creation and the
evolution of man.

The fact is, the time has come — if we are really
going to be governed intelligently by intelligent

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY ii

people — when scientific research will have to be
heavily endowed, in the same way in which a
church, a religion, a theatre was provided with
properties and tithes for the purpose of placing it
above penury and the risk of a vacillating support
due to public indifFerence. In the course of centuries
the people as a whole felt the value of religion or of
the drama as a social force, an instructor, and rallied
to its assistance of their own free will. Gradually
the popular contributions to the faiths and the stage
enabled endowments to be redistributed or capitalised,
and subsidies to be withdrawn, without the least
detriment to " pure religion and undefiled," or to
the mimic representation of this world's sorrow,
joys, and follies. The time may come when the
mass of the people will show a like interest in the
spelling out of the New Bible, the Book of the
Earth itself, and the profitable lessons to be learnt,
the glorious thrills of the imagination to be felt
from mastering Nature's secrets, from unravelling
Nature's mysteries and solving her enigmas. When
that happy advance has been reached, scientific
research may safely be disendowed, unsubsidised.

Twenty years ago it began to dawn on the
educated classes as a whole — besides the forerunning
prophets, teachers, and philosophers — that anthro-
pology in many of its branches led to practical issues.
It brought one to the consideration of eugenics ; it
suggested the system of finger-print identification ;
it assisted criminal jurisprudence by its theories of
inherent criminality, of arrested cranial development,
and congenital disease ; it pointed the way to the
right appreciation of racial values and requirements

12 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

— how a race that was stunted and diminishing here
might thrive and multiply there ; it supplied reasons
for and against racial intermixture and the sub-
ordination of one race to another. Then also it
opened new chapters of romance to modern thought.
Man's history on this planet was not limited to a
backward range of 6000 years ; 600,000 became a
more probable figure for the age of his genus or
his species. Behind the history recorded in legible
writing and credible legends, there stretched vast
periods of pre-history to be interpreted bit by bit
from a wider range of characters and hieroglyphics :
bones, skulls, teeth, implements, the drawings and
mouldings of primitive man himself, the casts of the
insides of petrified crania, which revealed to us the
convolutions of long decayed brains, almost, as one
might say, the fossilised thoughts of men who had
died one — and even two — hundred years ago ; the
beasts, trees, and plants that were coeval with the
races of long ago ; the indications presented by the
rocks of their sepulture as to the climate ; the land
and sea configuration in the remote days of our most
ancient forefathers. But at the moment in which
Du Maurier (himself, a decade later, to experience
the fascination of anthropology) drew his illustra-
tion round the little flippancy, " Where do they
anthropolodge ? ", Society still looked on the Science
of Man as a boring fad ; respectable, it might
be, and associated with white whiskers, white
waistcoats, and Oxford dons with nice faces ; yet
still a somewhat tedious pastime ranking in import-
ance with stamp-collecting and conchology. (Such
sneerers little realised that many of these collected

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY 13

shells were letters forming words which would prove
to be explanatory glosses in the New Bible.)

Nowadays every tenth man and twentieth woman
you meet in the streets of London has probably
heard of Pithecanthropus erectus — that missing link
which, had it been discovered in the early sixties
instead of in the early nineties, might have been the
death of some Anglican bishop, and the cause of
fulminations from an Irish Cardinal. Nowadays,
not merely the Times, the Spectator, and the Athenaeum
realise the intense interest to their readers which lies
in studying all aspects of the human race, but the
attractions of anthropology have become popularised
in a much wider circle of daily and weekly news-
papers. It has ceased to be a " funny " subject ;
allusions to gorillas (generally represented as tailed)
are no longer waggishly inserted as alternatives to
the Eden legend ; and when from time to time
Nature grudgingly makes one of her sudden revela-
tions of a new chapter, a missing sentence in the
record of human evolution, when the zeal of some
persistent searcher is rewarded by a discovery in a
French cavern, a German river valley, or an English
gravel-pit, the news is given as much prominence in
the front page of an evening or morning paper as the
marriage of a musical comedy actress or the " death
of a London lady on Margate Sands " (usually a
most respectable person from Islington succumbing
to a surfeit of shrimps and strawberries).

Sergi's fantastic and far-fetched — yet stimulating
— theories are discussed at smart dinner-tables by
charming women quite in society and by barristers
of no more than normal education.

14 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

This is all as it should be, and constitutes some
advance, even if many of the facts and theories still
popular in newspapers and as conversational counters
are false and strained or discredited and discarded.
But anthropology is not yet taught authoritatively,
competently, and compulsorily in every school or
college. (I add " compulsorily," because otherwise
ignorant parents might raise objections. I was once
shown by a council school teacher in Marylebone
a letter from the mother of one of her pupils to
whom, in common with the rest of the class, she had
attempted to impart some elementary notions of
physiology : " Madam, ... I beg you will not talk
to my little girl about her intestines. It is a very
rude subject, and Milly has always been carefully
brought up.") The study of Man, body and mind,
is still mishandled in pseudo-scientific works, still
remains, as was formerly the case with zoology and
oriental languages, a domain in which dufFers may
pose as authorities, and — to quote Punch once more
— peacocks pontify to jays. Incorrect statements,
facts which are unfacts, statistics that are out of date,
muddled, or cooked, are still made the basis of wild
theories that are thrust on the attention of statesmen
as grounds for action or inaction.

How weary the more practised anthropologist
becomes — that rare individual, who has made some
study of comparative and human anatomy, who has
mastered the mentality and the speech of a so-called
savage race, or the complex nature of a great nation —
when he hears some bland or rabid utterance by a
philanthropist or a politician on the subject of the
Negro, the Negroid races, the Amerindian, the

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY 15

Bengali, or the French people ; some worn-out
platitude, exaggeration ; some misleading generalisa-
tion based on an apothegm fifty years old ! The
French nation, for example (now at the top, formerly
at the bottom of public affection) : who can rightly
define a general character for this most diverse of
European peoples ? The inhabitants of Artois,
Lorraine, and Brittany not only differ greatly, each
from the other, in manners, character, and physique,
but still more widely from the Gascons, Basques,
and Marseillese. And in our own kingdom, except
in belonging to the Caucasian sub-species and being
subjects of the same crown, what affinity is there
between an East Anglian farm labourer and a semi-
Moorish peasant of the Dingle peninsula of south-
west Ireland ? Can both be squeezed into the same
procrustean bed of social legislation, of religious faith
and dietary ? What does the man in the street
or even the average member of Parliament know
about the Germans and all the varied types of
race included within that empire ? When he con-
demns Portugal because of a glance at the Lisbon
canaille, has he realised the Gothic people of northern
Portugal or the sober, hard-working quasi-Moorish
folk of the Algarve ? Persia is discussed most
heatedly just now. Its claim to be left alone is
upheld by some writer to the press out of gratitude
for the sublime couplets of Omar Khayyam (who
was as much indebted to the interpretation of Fitz-
Gerald as the abrupt, defective, and sometimes
obscure text of the Hebrew scriptures is to the
learned men of Jacobean England for its rendering
into a magnificent English classic). Or Persia is

1 6 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

represented as being throughout a lawless, culture-
less land of Kurd and Turkoman robbers, cringing
Armenians, ugly Laris, and immoral Baluchis. The
Persian problem is a most difficult one, and for
aught I know the British and Russian governments
have gone the right way to work to solve it. But
an accurate opinion on this question can only be
arrived at through the channel of anthropological
studies. In reality there are only about a dozen
persons in Great Britain and the same number in India
— and none of them is on a par with Sven Hedin ^ —
who possess sufficient acquaintance with the physical
features, the mental culture, the religious ideas —
even the number and distribution — of the Persian
people to be capable of understanding the Persian
Question, or, equipped by that understanding, of
framing the right British policy in respect to it.

If statesmen in the United Kingdom and the
daughter nations wish in a conscientious way to form a
correct opinion on the problems connected with the
Negro, they must put themselves to school and
acquire exact information on the anatomy of this
human sub-species, learning how and in what degree
its physiology differs from that of the Nordic
Caucasian or the typical Mongol.^ They should
find out whether in any one of his many stages of
mental development he is above, below, or on a level

1 I am surprised that his book, Overland to India, with its
marvellously accurate pictures of Persian life, has been so little
quoted in the recent controversy.

2 Dr Arthur Keith's lectures delivered at the Royal College of
Surgeons in igio, and reported by the Lancet and the Times, give
the best summary of the peculiarities of Negro anatomy, especially
in regard to skull formation.

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY 17

with the white man of the same stage of civilisation.
We do not know enough yet to pronounce dogmati-
cally on the question of inter-breeding between
whites and negroes, or to confirm the old dictum that
it was harmful to both races, because it created a
midway mulatto type inferior to its parents in
physique, and possessing the seeds of mental and
moral degeneration. Writers of anti-negro bias
continue to repeat axioms on the subject uttered two
generations ago, without taking the trouble to visit
the West Indies, West Africa, South Africa (especi-
ally Cape Colony), or Brazil, and there to estimate
the corporeal and intellectual value of some eleven
millions of mulattoes and octoroons who do not
strike experienced anthropologists as being at all a
degenerate or dying-out race.

What rubbish is not uttered by arm-chair philo-
sophers or enthusiasts ignorant of anthropology in
regard to the exploitation of Africa ! By such we
are begged to leave the Negro alone, to believe that
he originated of himself centuries or millenniums ago
arts and sciences, philosophies and abstruse religious
beliefs, that he is wholly apart from the white man,
and capable of developing his own continent unaided !

What does accurate modern anthropology teach
on the subject .'' That there are very few Negro
tribes, except the pygmies and perhaps the Bushmen,
that can be held to be entirely free from some
ancient intermixture with the Caucasian^ — an inter-

' On the other hand, it might show us that the Negro colonised
the Mediterranean basin (coming from Asia) before he invaded
tropical Africa ; that there is an ancient Negroid element pervad-
ing the highly civilised Mediterranean and Iberian peoples, the
Assyrians, southern Persians, and Jews.

2

1 8 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

mixture which has endowed Africa with an infinitude
of negroid types, including some very handsome
hybrids between the Mediterranean races and the
black man : that the Negro owes a debt he can
scarcely repay to the Caucasian of ten thousand, one
thousand, three hundred, thirty years ago for the
introduction of cultivated plants, domestic animals,
implements, arms, and tools, industries, faiths,
music, and the art of building. It is doubtful even
whether ten thousand years ago is not too recent
a date to suggest for the commencement of the
opening-up of Africa by the white man : it is at any
rate sufficient for the purpose of showing that
throughout all the range of history the Negro has
never been left to himself, that Congo tragedies
and the enslavement of black by white were epi-
sodes of the distant historical past as they are of
the present period. Accurate anthropology would
also dispose, once and for all, of that ridiculous
theory that the white race was evolved in Central
Africa, or even that the marvellous civilisation of
ancient Egypt arose from an African impulse.

We require to learn from anthropological research
that the physiological difference between the Caucasian
in America and the indigenous Amerindian is so
slight that the Neo-American peoples may be en-
couraged to absorb the " Indians " into their midst
with no more shame or lowering of the white man's
ideal of corporal beauty and fitness than has been
occasioned by the absorption of the Gypsy and the
Jew. Are the Amerindians of Canada to remain and
develop apart on different lines as a race by them-
selves ? Is just treatment secured to them and to

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY 19

the Amerindians of British Guiana and Honduras ?
Or are both these last a negligible quantity, to be
allowed without much preventive fuss to drink them-
selves to death with their own or the white man's
alcohol, or to die of the white man's diseases ?

What is to be done with the black Australian and
the Papuan ? Is fusion, extrusion, or education to
be fostered in these cases ? Is their extermination
(assuming such to be contemplated) to proceed much
further without remonstrance from the metropolis ?
If the hybridising of the Australasian negroid with
early migrating types of Caucasian can produce such
good half-breeds as the Polynesian, may not the
latter in its turn be encouraged to enter the white
fold in the building up of a great Australian nation ?
Or, in regard to the black Australian and the almost
negro Papuan, is it preferable to discriminate
between these races of marked nigrescence and the
fairer-skinned Polynesian, and though according
them the most considerate treatment, to discourage
their interbreeding with the white settlers ? What,
in short, are the plans to be adopted for the black
Australian's future, and for the racial development
of Papua, the Solomon Islands, and Fiji ? These
matters may be left in the main for the legislatures
of Australia to decide, but we cannot disinterest the
metropolis of the Empire from their consideration.

Then there are the tremendous questions concern-
ing India, racial problems that daunt the imagination
with their complexity and the degree of happiness or
unhappiness that will result from the wise or unwise
nature of Great Britain's answer. There is always
the social status to be settled of the Eurasian half-

20 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

breeds, who, if loyalty and faithfulness count for
anything, have deserved well from the British rulers
of India. How little is known about them not only
in England but by the (mostly uneducated) " mem
sahibs " who go out to India as the spouses of the
British officials and merchants ! We are almost
unacquainted with their numbers, their physical
fitness or unfitness, their degree of culture, their
hopes, ambitions, and the work they are most quali-
fied to do. Through sheer inexcusable ignorance
we may discourage in this mixed race a valuable
bond between East and West.

Are there to be local parliaments in India .'' Is
there to be a Confederation of the British West
Indies with some large measure of self-government .''
Is the Sudan to be wholly separated from Egypt
in its administration and dependence .'' Are the
Egyptians racially capable of self-government .'' Is
Indian immigration into Malaysia, East Africa,
South Africa, North Australia to be encouraged ?
Ought we to facilitate white settlement on the East
African uplands or in the valleys of Kashmir?
What can we make of Somaliland ? Is the black
monopoly of Basutoland a menace to South Africa .''
Is Trinidad, like Mauritius, to become a land of
Indian kulis ? If we allow and encourage the
millions of Chinese to replace or supplement the
sparse Malay, Hindu, and Negrito populations of
the great Malay peninsula or Borneo, shall we still
be able to govern them in the interests of the British
Empire and the world in general ?

Can we encourage Spain, France, and Italy to
resume and complete the work of Rome in North

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY 21

Africa, or will the failure of our allies to do so
involve us in an awkward position ? What are the
elements of durability in the Turkish Empire ?
How far are Slav sentiments to be taken into
account in the settlement of Balkan affairs by
Germany and Austria ? Is there sufficient homo-
geneity and cohesion among the Albanians for them
to form a semi-independent principality, or are they
to come in future under Montenegrin or Austrian
control ? What is to be the future of Arabia : a
confederation of independent Arab states, a Turkish
dominion, or one or more European protectorates ?

All these are questions in the solving of which the
data and conclusions of modern, accurate Anthro-
pology would be of great value.

Perhaps also our anthropological studies should
begin at home, where a great field lies before us,
most insufficiently worked. We are badly informed
as to the physical condition of all the people of these
two islands : their stature, musculature, good or bad
teeth, fertility, longevity, racial type, local talents,
susceptibility to disease, food requirements, circum-
stances of life, degree of intelligence, and cranial
capacity. Researches along the lines of the articles
published by Dr F. C. Shrubsall (of the Hospital
for Consumption, Brompton Road) would show the
results of town life under present conditions on this
or that racial element in the British population : how,
for example, tall blonds are best suited to a life in
the country, while brunets are better adapted to
resist the bacteria of towns.

A knowledge of the anthropology of the British
Isles might assist in clearing up the Irish problems

22 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

and enable Saxon legislators better to understand
Wales. It would show, for example, that the Irish,
like the Welsh and the Scottish peoples, are com-
posed of much the same racial elements as the
inhabitants of England, only arranged in diiFerent
proportions and not nearly so well fused. It would
enable us to understand the idiosyncrasies of the
diverse elements that form the Irish nation, which
we would see was composed of still distinct strata of
some Proto-Caucasian type (like the Galley Hill
Man of North Kent who lived a matter of 100,000
years ago) ; of Iberians, like Moors and Spaniards ;
of red-haired Kelts and fair-haired Danes ; of
Caledonian Scots and Saxon English. Such re-
searches should further interest us — to the extent
that we were formerly interested in Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew — in the remarkable Kelt-Iberian languages
which are still spoken or remembered in Wales,
Ireland, Scotland, Man, and Cornwall. It is indeed
preposterous that the dominating English people
should for thirteen hundred years have ignored the
two Keltic languages of these islands — the Goidelic
of Ireland, Man, and the Scottish Highlands, and
the Brythonic of Wales, and formerly of all England.
They are as interesting as Latin, Greek, and
Sanskrit, and much more so than Hebrew. In
their structure and vocabulary is locked up much
" pre-historic " history, these languages representing
in varying degrees a combination in vocabulary and
syntax between the Aryan speech of the Kelts'
ancestors in Central Europe and the Iberian tongues
which preceded the Aryan in western and southern
Europe.

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY 23

The existing means for the efficient study of
anthropology in London, Edinburgh, Dublin,
Oxford, and Cambridge are small. Naturally this
science has always been so closely associated with
medicine and surgery that every doctor, surgeon, or
veterinary surgeon is a possible anthropologist,^ and
their teaching institutions and colleges, together with
the wards of hospitals, are schools of anthropology.
So far as comparative anatomy exists as a science in
the United Kingdom, it may be said to have been
founded by the great John Hunter, whose collec-
tions of specimens to illustrate the difference and
the resemblances in the structure of man and other
animals are permanently established in the remark-
able Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in
Lincoln's Inn. This is probably the finest museum
of the kind in the Old World or the New ; and it is
the only museum, so far, existing in the British Isles
which deals adequately with the exposition of human
physiology, and in which it is possible for the student
correctly and easily to compare the details of human
anatomy with the bones, brains, and " soft parts " of
the different mammalian types, or of other verte-
brates. Nearly a century of thanks is due by the
British public to the College of Surgeons of Great
Britain for their gratuitous assistance to the study of
anthropology and comparative anatomy in general,
by the institution and maintenance of this magnificent
museum, the germ of which was the collection made
by John Hunter.

But so far as public exhibits and displayed in-

> And this class in the community might prove to be valuable
allies in the Anthropological Investigation of the British Isles.

24 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

formation are concerned, we are very much in arrears
as to the means of realising the physical aspect and
structure of man — man as a mammal — compared,
that is, with the museums of France, Germany,
Belgium, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. Ethno-
graphically, perhaps, we stand first, with our
magnificent collections in the British Museum ;
though therein is all too little space for the adequate
display of those objects which illustrate the primitive
culture of the existing races of savage men or the
greatly varied archaeology of the Caucasian peoples.

The collections are there ; the skill and zeal in
exhibiting them in an educating way are decidedly
present in a stafF of exceptional ability ; but the
Nation, as represented by the Treasury, still finds itself
unable to meet the cost of further exhibition rooms.

As regards the other aspect of the subject — Man,
above all British man, considered physically, our
institutions are most inadequate. Putting aside the
private help afforded by the College of Surgeons, all
that is shown to the public of Man as a mammal at
the British Museum (Natural History) is in a small
portion of one of the uppermost galleries, to be
reached after ascending four flights of fatiguing
steps. The greater part of this gallery is of necessity
devoted to the exposition of apes, monkeys, lemurs,
and bats. The space that remains is occupied by
cases containing a valuable collection of skulls (im-
perfecdy exhibited), a few skeletons and bones, a
placard refuting palmistry by an appeal to the
gorilla's foot, and a series of photographs illustrating
certain savage tribes. As to the types of the British
Isles, they are conspicuous by their absence. Go to

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY 25

the chief countries on the Continent, and in the
public museums you will find an array of life-sized
models or photographs of the different types of
men and women of the land, giving you some
idea of the race or races to be found therein.
Nothing of the kind exists in the British Isles,
and all published works on anthropology avoid
the subject, and reduce British anthropology to a
few paltry paragraphs, illustrated by one or two
picture-postcard photographs of fishermen or Welsh
cottagers wearing stage costumes, together with
some faked, sickly sweet " types of English beauty "
(in some cases taken from actresses or professional
models whose birthplace was on the Continent of
Europe).

But after attending in an adequate degree to the
illustration of the Anthropology of the United
Kingdom, the Royal Anthropological Institute of
Great Britain and Ireland — if it were only properly
supported and subscribed to by the nation as a whole
— might get into touch with the educational establish-
ments of the Daughter Nations, of the Crown
Colonies or Protectorates, and of India. It would
suggest, where they do not already exist, the establish-
ment of Anthropological Societies or Departments In
all the great centres of population throughout the
British Empire.

It would urge on the completion of the much-
needed Anthropological survey of British West
African Colonies and Protectorates ; of the Falkland
Islands, where a new and interesting type of white
man is gradually developing ; of Cyprus, where
there are several layers of Mediterranean races ; of

26 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

Malta, where there is a wonderful prehistoric past to
be revealed ; but, above all, of South Africa. Seeing
that we have been the ruling power in the South
African sub-continent for over a hundred years, it is
litde less than a national disgrace that we have made
such poor use of our opportunity for enriching the
knowledge of the world in regard to the past and
present Negro peoples of South Africa.^ So far as
Government action is concerned there is scarcely

' Where, in the whole range of British South African literature,
can we find such a work as that of Professor Leonhard Schultz :
Aus Namaland und Kalahari ? It is practically a description of
man and nature — the anthropology, above all — of North-west Cape
Colony, subsidised by the German Government. The ability to write
such a work on Cape Colony, Basutoland, or Zululand is present in
many British students or professors of anthropology, but they have
not the means to illustrate such work efficiently or to pubhsh it at
their own cost, and publishers do not consider scientific anthro-
pology a paying subject.

Crossing the Zambezi northwards, look at the way in which the
German Government has enabled Dr FUUeborn and others to illus-
trate the anthropology of German East Africa and Nyasaland, and
consider what impetus or assistance our own Imperial Government
has given towards dealing with the anthropology, the native codes
of law, the languages, myths, traditions, institutions, of British Central
Africa, British East Africa, or Uganda. Such work as has been
done by British pens has been for the most part carried out by
missionaries or government officials at their own expense, or by
travellers or explorers not always of British nationality. Similarly,
private enterprise, often on the part of people of very small means,
has certainly done something to illustrate and elucidate the manners
and customs of the South African Bantu tribes. We owe much
recent information under this head to the writings of Mr Dudley
Kidd and Miss A. Werner, to a number of missionaries of the
London Missionary Society, the Scottish missionaries of Nyasaland,
the Rev. Father Torrend of the Zambezi, to the Universities' Mission,
to Anglican bishops of South-eastern Africa, and recently to officials
of the British South African Company ; but comparatively with the
importance of Cis-Zambezian and Trans-Zambezian Africa in the
scheme of the British Empire our knowledge of the Anthropology
and Ethnology, and even the languages of its seven or eight millions
of negroes, is pitifully small.

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY 27

anything to record. Fortunately, there was once a
Governor of Cape Colony who had a love for
science, Sir George Grey. Under his instigation
Dr Livingstone and Dr W. I. Bleek collected
much information as to perishing tribes — Bushman,
Hottentot, and Bantu. The Colonial Government
found — and find still — a small fund wherewith to
maintain a librarian and a museum curator at Cape
Town, but in the National Library of Cape Town
are still preserved in manuscript most of the im-
portant anthropological and ethnological studies of
Livingstone, Bleek, and others, which this great
Daughter nation has either been too poor or too un-
interested to publish. There are in pigeon-holes some-
where the very valuable Reports of Mr Palgrave, the
Commissioner sent in the early seventies to examine
Damaraland. (The anthropological photographs
obtained on this expedition — most creditable to Mr
Palgrave, considering the epoch in which he worked
— are in the collection of the Royal Geographical
Society.)

So far, no great Africander has arisen who has
displayed any scientific aptitude for the study of
the Negro races of South Africa. Almost all the
recorded work has been done by outsiders — British,
German, French, Swiss, and Norwegians. Yet
what links in the chain of evidence of the evolu-
tion of humanity as a whole or of branches of
the Negro sub-species in particular are locked
up in this southern prolongation of the Dark
Continent !

The little research stimulated and paid for by the
Cape of Good Hope Government has revealed the

28 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

remains of vanished races in the coast-lands of
South Africa, called by the Dutch name of " Strand-
looper " or shore-runners, from the idea that they
frequented chiefly the seashore, where they lived
on shell-fish, erecting huge kitchen middens out
of the discarded shells. But there seem to have
been two very distinct types of " Strandlooper "
skull, only accidentally associated by the careless
name of "seashore dwellers." One cranium will
show a very prognathous Bushman type — something
between Bushman and Congo pygmy, but more
" simian " than either (for pictures of surviving
examples of this form see the illustrations on p. 20
of my book on The Negro in the New World) —
another, especially associated with the conditions of
a cave-dweller, is entirely different, is almost Caucasian
in shape and brain capacity, and has suggested to
authorities like Dr F. C. Shrubsall and Dr P6ringuey
the startling conclusion that at a relatively remote
period (not easily gauged as to the number of
centuries or millenniums by the evidence at present
available) South Africa was sparsely inhabited by a
Caucasian race not improbably akin to the Hamitic
tribes who have so long inhabited and influenced
east and north-east Africa. But it Is dangerous to
theorise on evidence which is still scanty, and the
subject is only worth a reference to show what
interesting chapters might be added to man's pre-
historic record if the anthropology and archaeology
of all South Africa were most thoroughly investigated.
Such a research would also (if quickly undertaken)
set at rest the problem of the Vaalpens or " Ashy-
bellies " described in the works of the late Professor

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY 29

A. H. Keane.^ This would seem to be a very
primitive race still lingering in the northern Trans-
vaal and perhaps descended from the prognathous
type of " Strandlooper." Keane's stories were based
on the reports of recent travellers examining this
part of the Limpopo watershed, and his descriptions
and tl'ieories have been pooh-poohed by other
explorers who have failed to see in the Vaalpens
anything more than an outcast Bechuana tribe.
But it is curious to find a French traveller —
Delegorgue — referring in 1 847 to a similar dwarfish
people living in the north or north-west Transvaal.
The subject is one which the Union Government
of South Africa should investigate without delay,
for every succeeding year brings the outcast and
unsuccessful tribes of Africa nearer to extinction.

This consideration — the rapid disappearance of
evidence as to the origin and development of the
human species — is the factor in the case which
excuses the peevish outcry of this chapter. It is
as though we were from time to time offered the
Sibylline books, chapters of the New Bible, which
will reveal to us one of the great secrets of the
universe — the creation of man. Each time we
refuse to pay the price ; and each time the Sibyl
returns, the precious manuscript is more and more
defective. Are we then so incurious, so hypnotised by
religion falsely so-called, that only about ten thousand
out of the world's population of 1,610,000,000
care to know anything of the origin, the long

1 Popular Anthropology — I mean, Anthropology popidarised —
owes much to the labours and researches of the late Professor
A. H. Keane.

30 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

martyrdom of growth, the divergencies, degenera-
tions, expansions, seventh-wave advances, recoils,
and successes of the human species : this god in the
chrysalis stage ?

It has become the fashion to sneer at the American-
inspired attempts on the part of the press and of
speculative publishers to invigorate knowledge and
put money in their own coffers by cajoling and
urging the public to purchase encyclopaedias, histories,
dictionaries, self-educators, works on zoology or
scenery. But in my humble opinion these ventures
have done much to increase the education of the
classes and the masses during the last decade. They
are bought — perhaps shamefacedly — and they are
read because they have been bought. Perhaps their
vogue may in time prepare those who publish and
those who buy, for the issue of an Encyclopaedia of
Man, a work on Anthropology and Ethnology in
twenty-four volumes, with an index and an atlas ;
something a little like Ratzel's History of Mankind
which appeared first in Germany about twenty years
ago, only far more complete in knowledge and filled
with the latest facts. Ratzel's book almost ignores
the races of Europe, and gives but scanty informa-
tion regarding comparative anatomy. It is in this
last direction that — without vying with surgical
treatises or pathological text-books — information of
a kind suitable for the mass of the public should be
collected and published.^ There exists in no language
as yet a really complete manual of human comparative
anatomy, wherein the physical features — the bones,

1 The model one would like to see followed in this respect is
the Morphology and Anthropology by W. L. H. Duckworth.

THE EMPIRE AND ANTHROPOLOGY 31

muscles, viscera, nerves, brain, glands, hair, teeth —
are set forth in accordance with our latest knowledge,
not only in comparison with the structure and organs
of other mammalian types and with the apes, but as
between one human sub-species or race and another.
In a limited manner this has been done with regard
to the skull — shape, length, breadth, capacity, and
facial angle ; and in a lesser degree by giving the pro-
portions of the bones of the skeleton, the poise and
curve of the spine. Comparisons in these details
have been chiefly made between such extreme types
as the Caucasian and the Negro, but very little with
regard to intermediate or scarcer races, such as the
Arab, Tartar, Chinaman, Eskimo, Asiatic, Negrito,
Papuan, Hindu, Ainu, Malay, Australoid, Amerindian,
Veddah, and Polynesian. We know so little about
the structure of all the living races of mankind (as
compared one with the other, and again with the
forms nearest allied to humanity amongst the apes)
that we are not able to decide whether all the
living races of mankind are merely local varieties of
a single species, or if they should be elevated to the
rank of sub-species, or whether the three types most
divergent from the ancestral form should be con-
sidered the separate species of a single genus — the
isolated genus Homo.

No person of great riches, in subsidising such a
comprehensive work on anthropology and ethnology,
could better lay out his money in the cause of
peace, sweet reasonableness, and the breaking down
of racial prejudices ; for if any salient facts are
brought out forcibly by anthropological study, they
are that all men are brothers under their skins, that

32 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

no existing race has sunk so low that it cannot
enter into some degree of civilisation, and no race
has risen so high that it can afford to neglect the
care of its body, the cultivation of its mind, and
the safeguards of a public morality. Anthropology
is, therefore, the best corrective of intolerance,
cruelty, sentimentality, and racial arrogance.

CHAPTER II

HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE

Although green is a dominating tint in Irish
landscapes and may as well as any other hue be
taken as the national colour, yet Ireland is a land not
only green but purple and red-gold, a land of much
variety and intensity of colour, even where deficient
in grandeur or elaboration of outline. Her land-
scapes are purple with many square miles of heather-
covered moor and mountain — a purple darkened
into indigo by cloud shadows, and repeated often
in the sky when the rain-clouds are piled in serried
masses. There is purple also in the abundant
thistles, in the knapweed, the loosestrife, and the
dyes of the countrywomen's skirts. Green — emerald-
green, bottle-green, sage-green, blue-green — meets
the eye in the velvet mosses of the bogs, in meadows,
turfy banks, and fern-choked glens, in the many
fields of cabbage, the large-leaved drooping ash trees,
the tree-like gorse ; In the clear sea-water off the
rock-bound coasts ; and in the sea-green marble of
Connemara. Red-gold and russet are present in
most of the landscapes and in the hair of the Keltic
people. In the shallow estuaries the oily water is
unable to break into billows owing to the floating

33 3

34 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

wreaths of red-gold seaweed. The tussocks of the
bogs and the banks of the rivers are yellow and
red with sedgy grasses and stunted rushes. The
russet sorrel grows in great abundance ; the bracken
in the autumn, winter, and spring ranges from the
colour of ripe maize through red-gold to red-brown,
and gives these tints to vast spaces of undulating
tableland or whole ranges of hills. Through the
black bogs flow streams of clear chestnut-brown
water margined with creamy foam, as though the
country ran with beer.

Red-gold, green, and purple are the dominating
colours of Ireland ; but there is also the grey of
her limestone rocks, granite boulders, cliffs, and
mountains, the unvarying grey of the stone walls
which in most parts do not so much replace the
hedges of England as reinforce them against the
wind ; grey in the thick-haired donkeys, the hooded
crows, and the flocks of geese which are never absent
from the villages and the surrounding meadows and
moors. There are also geese of the purest white,
and creamy-white is the prevailing tint among the
sheep that dot the hillsides and of the exquisite
mantle thrown over hedges and thickets when the
hawthorn is in bloom. Everywhere the cottages
and the habitations of the poor in town or country
are white as whitewash can make them. In autumn,
winter, and spring white gulls are to be seen on
every loch and inlet of the sea, on fields which
have been manured, on the foul rivers that flow
through towns, and among the ships in the harbours,
great and small. There is the white sea-foam all
round the coast ; a creamy or a bluish-white appears

HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE 35

in the chalk clifFs of Antrim, marked as with giant
writing by parallel rows of black flints. Then there
is pale gold in summer and autumn in the fields of
oats and rye, and at all times in the thatch that roofs
the white cottages ; in the abundant honeysuckle of
the hedgerows ; in the hair and beards of the Danish
population on the coasts and islands. There is in
one season or another the yellow of the daffodil, of
the iris, the water-lily, the corn-marigold, the blazing
ragwort, and the blossoms of the gorse — that gorse
which in the south and west grows into a tree.

There is pink in the omnipresent white-haired
pig, and a rose colour for four months in the year
in the flowers of the pink campion which fringe
every lane side and meadow path. There is pink
in June and July in the dog roses. Dull pink is the
colour of the sandstone rocks in southern Ireland.
The clubbed seed-stalks of the arums are coral-red
in summer and autumn. In autumn and early
winter the rowan trees blaze with crimson-scarlet
berries. The fruitage of the hawthorn and the dog
rose is duU crimson and bright scarlet. Crimson-
scarlet greets one in the long beak and legs of the
Irish chough ; crimson-purple blossoms for four
months in the hedgerows and on the edges of the
bog drains where grow the finest foxgloves in the
world. Crimson is strewn with a lavish hand over
the fuchsia bushes which now grow wild about all
the villages and are in blossom from May to October.
The ground beneath them is dark crimson with the
fallen flowers. Then, to complete the colour-scheme,
there is the sobering note of black : the blue-black
of the basalt, of that cooling down of the volcanic

36 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

outburst that has capped the cliffs of Antrim, the
crystalline rocks of Donegal, and the peaks of the
Mourne and Wicklow mountains ; the russet black of
the squares of peat piled in rectangular stacks by
many a lonely roadside on the edge of quaking bogs.
These, too, in between their tussocks of turf and
heather exhibit smooth black, slimy surfaces, like
ink thickened by evaporation. There is black in
the rooks of the East, the crows of the North, and
the ravens of the West, in the glossy Kerry cattle,
and in the hair of those Kerry people, who, if they
were dressed up in burnus and ha'ik, might be Berbers
from North Africa.

If Ireland is reached by the stranger from Wales
or Scotland, the scenery which greets him up and
down the east coast is not very dissimilar to that
which he has left. He sees mountains nearly as
high as those he has quitted in Wales, and higher
than the hills of south-west Scotland. But, like all
the Irish mountains, they give you full value for the
trouble of coming to see them, for the reason that
they usually rise up with great abruptness from a
sea coast, a loch, or a green valley at sea level.
They may be steep, smooth pyramids, or crags
crowned with rocks like fantastic ruins. They
curve huge shoulders of purple heather among the
low- lying, fast- flying clouds. Though they fall
short by a thousand feet or so of the greatest height
attained in Scotland, and scarcely reach the altitude
of Snowdon, it may be said with fairness that for
their size they are more imposing in appearance than
the notable summits among our Scotch and English
ranges, perhaps on account of the more detached

HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE 37

nature of each mountain. Examples of imposing
mass, beautiful or fantastic outline may be cited in
such mountains as Slieve Donard, which looks down
on the Irish Channel in Newcastle Bay ; or Croagh
Patrick in the far west, whose peaks, like the cusps of a
molar tooth, are among the many wonderful details in
a view which for grandeur and beauty — as Thackeray
remarked — makes Clew Bay in Mayo a picture worth
travelling five hxindred miles to see. Errigal Moun-
tain in north-west Donegal is another peak which
in its grandest aspect is a perfect cone. The Wicklow
mountains and Portuguese-like scenery of the Killarney
ranges (which last claim the highest altitude of Ireland
— 3414 feet) have not been over-praised.

And with the grandeur or the rugged savagery of
the mountains goes hand in hand the loveliness of
the lakes and the fiord-like inlets of the sea. The
fresh- water lakes of Ireland are uncountable. Loch
Neagh (pronounced Nei), near Belfast, is the largest
sheet of fresh water in the British Islands, but offers
no landscapes comparable in beauty with those lakes
along the Shannon's course (studded with islets), or
the lochs of Mayo, Fermanagh, and Kerry. Some of
the most exquisite aspects of Irish scenery occur
where a loch lies at the base of an abrupt mountain.
The still surface on a windless day becomes a perfect
mirror, doubling the precipitous two thousand feet
of rock that towers up above the reedy shores, and
repeating, scarcely dimmed or blurred, this mass of
pinkish sandstone or pale grey gleaming granite,
scarped and quarried by torrents, yet brightly painted
in green, gold, and purple wherever vegetation can
cling to its sides.

38 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

So much may be written in praise of Irish land-
scapes. Much about them is grand and beautiful
enough to justify greater discomforts than are in-
curred at the present time in crossing St George's
Channel. But quite half the surface of Ireland is
ugly, monotonous, or dull. Imagine that you are
starting from London to visit the Atlantic cliffs or
the beautiful mountains of Mayo — not forgetting
Achill Island, which is perhaps the climax of strange
beauty in Irish scenery. You will probably arrive
in Dublin too late in the evening or too early in
the morning to notice the scenery of Dublin Bay.
You are rapidly transferred from the steamer to the
train, and for quite a hundred and fifty miles you
travel across the central plain of Ireland, through
scenery which may have intimate, detailed charms
of its own, apparent to a resident, but is generally
to be described as ugly or uninteresting. Weedy
crops, ragged hedges, criss-cross lines of stunted ash
trees, white-washed, oblong cottages, muddy roads,
dirty peasants, ill-kempt horses, uninteresting towns
of sad grey houses — block-like buildings without
relief — churches of recent construction ; above all,
miles and miles and miles of bog, the surface of the
bog being mainly covered by dull yellow vegetation ;
here and there a hummocky hillock of undistin-
guished outline ; sheets of water bordered by marsh
and reflecting nothing but the sky ; sluggish rivers
and canals ignobly bridged. Perhaps over all this
there is a sky of dull grey clouds and a drizzle of
rain. Here you have the average aspect of Central
Ireland, and seeing this you scarcely wonder that a
certain sadness broods over the land.

HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE 39

Compared with Wales and England, and even
Scotland, Ireland is singularly destitute of forests,
and after the stranger has quitted the eastern sea-
board he is more and more struck by the absence
of naturally growing trees, especially on the moun-
tains of the West and North. The bogs undoubtedly
represent the sites of ancient forests which were again
succeeded by other growths of trees, the last of the
series being mainly oaks. No one who has visited
an Irish bog has failed to see the remarkable whitened
stumps of the oak trees, all of them cut off at about
the same height above the ground. Many of the
stumps protrude a foot or so above the surface of
the bog, but as a rule they are only revealed when
excavations are made for peat fuel. The causes
which led to the destruction of all these forests,
and their replacement by bogland, are not clearly
explained. There is apparently no reason why trees
should not grow and flourish all over Ireland, except
where unprotected from Atlantic gales ; and a great
deal might be done in addition to what has been
already accomplished in the replanting of forests.
Along the eastern seaboard of Ireland, the woodlands
are often as luxuriant and beautiful as in England,
while in that lovely county of Kerry dense forests
are the characteristic feature, and vastly interest the
botanist by the Portuguese relationships of their
trees and shrubs. In parts of the West and North-
West there are peasants who have never seen a tree,
and who only know of the existence of trees by
pictures in books.

According to statistics, the tree which most pre-
dominates in Ireland is still the oak, and next to

40 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

that the Scotch pine ; but the tree which most
meets the traveller's eye is the ash. The ash is
certainly the dominant type of tree in Ireland, in
towns and villages, along the sides of roads, and in
the fields and hedgerows. In full summer the green
of the ash's foliage is slightly sombre ; in autumn
its fading yellow is unpleasing.

To sum up, the leading features in the scenery
of Ireland are the heather-bracken-and-gorse-covered
mountains, with their gleaming streaks and scaurs
of bare rock and lace-like waterfalls ; the black bogs
covering the whitened skeletons of trees, and them-
selves partially covered by tussocks of yellow sedges,
patches of emerald moss, and bunches of rose-pink
heather — bogs on which grey and white geese are
always grazing ; villages of one-storied, yellow-
thatched, white-washed houses, above which the
Gothic steeple of the new Roman Catholic church
towers a hundred, two hundred feet skywards, dis-
proportionate in bulk and architecture to the needs
of its peasant surroundings ; blue lochs and blue
ribbons of rivers ; mud-coloured and dark green
canals ; innumerable gaunt, ruined mills ; two
beautiful cities- — Dublin and Cork — one with a
look of Venice, and the other with a touch of
Naples ; many grey towns with muddy streets and
well-furnished shops ; much mud, indeed, every-
where in town and country, and but few really
good roads ; the hawthorn more prominent than
the shamrock ; the gull and the lapwing every-
where ; and the handsomest, pleasantest, healthiest
people in the British Islands.

There are only three cities — some would say

HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE 41

only two, Dublin and Cork — that have nobility of
appearance, the impressiveness of time-worn archi-
tecture, and the romance of history about them —
that romance which is wholly lacking from all
towns in Wales but Bangor and Carnarvon, all in
Scotland save Edinburgh, St Andrews, and Ayr,
but which is present in nearly every English village,
town, county capital south of Northumberland and
Liverpool. The prosperous towns of Eastern Ireland
have the cosy, respectable, suburban look of similar
places in England which owe their main existence
to nineteenth-century developments. In fact, the
well-to-do parts of Ireland are singularly nineteenth
century, and look as if they had had no existence
before that era. There are points in Londonderry
and Drogheda that are worth an artist's attention,
and also in Newry and Wexford, more as seaports,
however, than as historic towns. The glories of
Dublin mostly date from Ireland's golden age, the
eighteenth century, when even a bad and unrepre-
sentative Parliament gave a greater stimulus to
national genius than the best of English Govern-
ments, though it must be admitted that some of
the most beautiful and original architectural work
in Trinity College, Dublin — notably that unique
Byzantine HaU, built of Irish marbles, and used as
a geological museum — was executed in the very
middle of the nineteenth century, when English
ascendency was at its height. I suspect a good
deal of the beauty of Cork dates back to the
nineteenth century only. It is partly to be attri-
buted (in the churches, for example) to the exquisite
tints of the south Irish sandstone, which assunies

42 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

an old rose colour, a greyish-crimson in time, and
sympathetically attracts lichens of green and grey,
which vary its colour surface and tone down the too
gorgeous red of the new stone. This sandstone
contrasts strikingly with the white and grey lime-
stones from Eastern and Central Ireland, the green
serpentine marble from Connemara, and the black
marble from Kilkenny.

Cork rises up from the waterside, like Naples, in
a series of terraces. The broad River Lee is very
clear above the locks, and on a sunshiny day its
surface is golden-green with the reflected foliage,
through the shimmer of which, however, can be
seen the clear sandy bottom. Along its northern
bank grow fine elms, their trunks covered with ivy.
Above the tops of these rise grey-pink garden walls
crested with rose-coloured valerian or purple snap-
dragon through the summer and autumn, and en-
closing sheltered gardens nearly hidden by the dark
evergreen bushes of myrtles, box, Irish yew, arbutus,
veronica, and justicia. The houses to which these
sloping gardens belong are distempered in bright
or light colours — blue, pink, cream, mauve, grey,
white — like those in Spanish towns, and their roofs
are of green or violet-grey slates. Beyond the
houses are green hills looped with red roads, and
between the hills glimpses of river bends. The
bridges over the Lee are mainly of white limestone,
all except one, a hideous green ironwork bridge,
dedicated to Parnell. How the city fathers of Cork
allowed such a marring note to break the harmonious
beauty of their town I cannot think ; for in all
other respects Cork, in spite of its gay, foreign-

HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE 43

looking villas, is a place in which the display of
fine building stone is a feature of permanent beauty.
The jail, for example, one would never take for a
prison : it looks like a Doric palace with its grey
columns and its stately, flanking walls.

Galway in the far West has a sombre picturesque-
ness in the taller among its old houses with the
Spanish hatchments — the residences of the Spanish
merchants engaged in the wine trade of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centurids. But the
rest of the town, like Limerick, is mean and dreary.
Limerick, beyond the famous Thomond bridge and
the castle attributed to King John, has little of
interest to arrest the eye of a lover of form and
colour, but a painter might render with the poetry
of a Whistler the melancholy mystery of its gaunt
warehouses and quays, overhanging the mud of a
yeUow Shannon at low tide, and seeming to be
peering from their small windows towards the west,
looking for the commerce which has receded from
that noble waterway.

Belfast, of course, is the third in the group of
great Irish cities of notable appearance ; and yet
an honest critic must admit that it lacks the inten-
tional beauty of Dublin and Cork, the older parts
of which (excluding the inevitable new suburbs)
make a definite and individual impression as a whole,
as though in some way or at some time their position,
their landscape surroundings had been considered
and their general appearance been planned to produce
a noble effect. This element is lacking in Belfast,
which can show here and there magnificent build-
ings, some barely finished and few that are older

44 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

than i860, but which has no one street, square,
or continuous area of fine architecture free from
brick or stucco, painted iron, or tawdry accessories.
In Sheffield, an artist of original genius might
produce some very wonderful and impressive
pictures out of the Styx-like canals, the in-
numerable organ-pipe chimneys, the flames and
the red glow, the yellow thick smoke, the blue
semi-transparent or iridescent smoke from the hidden
furnaces ; but the effect of his work would move
the soul to pity, for that such scenes (not without
their grandeur and even a dreadful beauty) were
the abodes of women and children and the sleeping-
places as well as the workshops of men. So it
might be in some quarters of Belfast ; yet Belfast
is cheerier than are most Lancashire, StaflFordshire,
or Yorkshire manufacturing towns. But from
the artists' point of view it is not " born." It is a
vague, vast, scattered, formless town, a thing of
shreds and patches, wholly lacking the melancholy
dignity of Dublin or the Neapolitan charm of Cork
(I might equally well have written Portuguese
instead of Italian : Cork reminding one very much
of Oporto or even Lisbon, on account of the
luxuriant vegetation, the multitude of churches
and convents, and — picturesque beggars !).

I have not seen Belfast for some years, and, when
there, was badly impressed by the poor lighting of
the mean side streets (mean because of the low
Bermondsey-like houses). But I was taken to task
by the leading paper of the North of Ireland and
told that I had greatly libelled this city, that her
municipality prided itself with justice on the lavish

HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE 45

lighting of the whole town. Perhaps the glare of
the arc lamps on the main thoroughfares half-
blinded me, so that I thought the side streets
and alleys gloomy ; in any case I have reason to
believe now that Belfast has made such strides in
the amenities of life, since I was there, that the
diatribes of nine and ten years ago no longer
apply. Even then I realised the breadth and
straightness of the streets, and the vista at the
end of every long road of a background of green
mountain and down, rising above the smoke and
mist of the noisy city and breathing hope to those
who loathe a great concourse of people and crave
the relief of lonely spaces. To the very base of
these green heights, which have also the dignity
of exposed geological strata — black volcanic basalt
capping ancient chalk — and whose sides are pitted
with the caverns hollowed by water and once
inhabited by men of the Stone Age, extend the
electric tramway lines. The workers of Belfast
in all grades of life can be quickly face to face with
Nature and ancient history — can take the air amid
the scenes (marked by ruined forts and limbs of
castles) wherein Picts fought against Gaels, Irish
against Scottish invaders, and both alike against the
Normans, Welsh, and English.

There is a great deal of red in Belfast city. In
the outskirts a red clay is found which is particularly
suitable for brick-making, and the bricks manu-
factured from this earth are a bright rosy red.
Almost unintentionally — as I imagine — the huge
red-brick bulks which tower into the sky with
massive chimneys have a decided beauty in im-

46 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

pressiveness, derived from their size and the
expanse of rose-red surface. The smoke from the
furnace fires is blown hither and thither by the
sea breeze from Belfast Loch, or is mixed in
rainbow effects with the occasional showers sweep-
ing over the great town from the encircling
mountains ; and these atmospheric veils and
curtains of thinnest gauze temper the over-redness
of the brick columns, cubes, sky-scrapers, and
cupolas, so that this huge collection of giant
industries looks like a fantastic city of the Jinns
imagined in a Persian story.

Stand on a bridge over the River Lagan and
you will see several impressive pictures. The tide
may be low and the nearer bank be a vast expanse
of mud, with a surface in colour like tarnished
silver, yet still liquid enough to be permeated with
dim reflections of buildings and stranded ships.
The mud is dotted with white gulls. The sluggish
tide of the Lagan, imprisoned and slackened by
docks, is a reeling mirror of sky and masts and
giant chimneys. The brightly painted funnels of
the many steamers, the masts and slackened canvas
of sailing ships, the domes and turrets in slate
or grey stone that cap the more pretentious
buildings : above all, the great red towers of the
factories (perhaps designed for other purposes
than chimneys, large and corpulent below and
tapering upwards, some like minarets, others in
the conventional shape of the Irish Round Tower)
lend further variety to a scene which smacks of
enterprise, energy, wealth, and even sordid gain,
of beauty which is quite unconscious and un-

HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE 47

intended, of squalor as represented by needless
mud and drunken loafers, and of hope, so far
as a future of beauty is concerned, in the blue
background of mountain wall, with its varied
outline, its patches of forest, and its appeal to
city men as a ready refuge from noise and ugliness.

Belfast as a town has a long history, going back
to the seventh century ; and in " pre-history," and
as a focus of human habitation, to ten thousand
years or so ago. In the Middle Ages it was little
more than a large fishing village. The real founder
of the modern city that exists to-day was Sir Arthur
Chichester, who at the close of the sixteenth century,
after the complete conquest of the Irish chieftains
of Ulster, was granted the forfeited lands of the
O'Neils. He was a Devonshire man and imported
a large number of Devonians from his estates in that
county to settle in the town he was building, and
although the population as it grew inevitably mixed
with the Irish women of the neighbourhood (who,
like the Poles, have again and again enslaved the
settlers of another race), it was constantly reinforced
from Saxondom during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries by immigrants from Scotland
and Lancashire. From the beginning of the
eighteenth century, Belfast became the most
" English " town in Ireland. Perhaps one should
say " cosmopolitan," for numerous French Huguenots
settled here two hundred years ago and greatly
stimulated the new industries of the place, especially
the linen manufactures. But the main development
and vast importance of modern Belfast — an import-
ance which should not be overlooked in politics —

48 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

really dates from the application of steam engines to
navigation. Early in the thirties and forties of the
nineteenth century experiments were made in the
construction of steamboats at Belfast. A native of
that town, Mr Harland — why is there no statue put
up to him .'' — founded the celebrated firm of Harland
and WolfF and started the shipbuilding industry on
the River Lagan, near where it expands into the
great sea inlet or loch of Belfast, on land which
was little more than mud, and which is still called
" Queen's Island," because it was created by
Harland's energy soon after Queen Victoria's
accession. The speciality of the work of the firm
was the construction of iron ships fitted with steam
engines. They recruited their workmen in the
fifties of the last century from the sturdy Protestant
population of County Down, the sons of small
farmers and peasants who were descended mostly
from English and Scottish settlers, and whose
Protestantism was of a perfervid character and
narrow-minded intolerance.

Although Belfast was practically an English town
in its foundation and replenishment, the glamour of
the Irish race lay over it. The Irish language was
still spoken in the glens of Antrim and the mountains
of Down a hundred years ago, and had already given
the Irish brogue to the descendants of Englishmen,
Welshmen, French Huguenots, and Lowland Scots,
who have it as strongly to-day as any other natives
of Ireland. But, above all, Roman Catholic Chris-
tianity reconquered generation after generation of
these sons of Puritans, Presbyterians, Calvinists, and
Methodists. The Catholics, therefore, have become

HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE 49

strong in the central part of Belfast, and once their
form of religion was freed from all disabilities in the
early part of the nineteenth century their complete
freedom of worship led not unnaturally to exultant
arrogance. The Presbyterians and Anglicans of old
Belfast had grown up alongside the descendants of
the persecuted Catholics, and were perhaps seventy
years ago lazily tolerant. But into sharp conflict
with the now aggressive Catholics came the thousands
of bigoted Protestants imported from the farms
of County Down to the steel and iron works of
Queen's Island. They served as a rallying point
for the militant Presbyterianism of the fifties, and
street quarrels began to occur between the Protestants
and Catholics among the working classes of Belfast
as early as 1856. It was, however, in 1864 that
the first serious outbreak took place. A rumour
suddenly arose that certain of the Roman Catholic
navvies, more or less tipsy (the god really worshipped
by Catholics and Protestants alike was then the
whisky bottle), had invaded a Presbyterian school-
house, had beaten the children and turned them
into the street. When this story — largely false and
grossly exaggerated — reached the Protestant riveters
on Queen's Island, they threw down all their tools
except hammers and " bits " and rushed in a great
body, perhaps ten thousand strong, into the poor
Catholic quarter. Catholic schools and churches
were half destroyed, and large bodies of Roman
Catholic workmen were driven down into the mud
of the River Lagan, in which at least two hundred
were drowned or suffocated [and all in the name of
the religion of Christ !]. The real loss of life on

4

50 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

both sides was so considerable that the actual
numbers of killed were unpublished, and the matter
was hushed up as much as possible by the horrified
municipal authorities of the day.^

Nevertheless, "lest we forget," and as a reminder
to the generation now growing up, and to the
" Orange " men in politics, the Protestants of Belfast
should erect a great expiatory group of statuary in
atonement for this massacre of fellow-Christians :
the Catholics might make their amends by a similar
Denkmal on the blood-stained sites of Wexford and
ScuUabogue : and the Belfast monument (by an
Irish sculptor) should stand at the summit of Shan
Kill for all the world to see. Shan Kill (an Irish
name meaning the old church or monastic cell) is
a fine broad avenue with somewhat mean houses on
either side which runs westward from the busiest
part of Belfast towards the encircling hills. After
this first faction fight of which it was the rallying
point, in 1864, the Shan Kill Road has continued
to be the battle-ground between the Orangemen
and the Catholics in Belfast. Strong police barracks
are built, however, in this district, and many measures
arranged by which cords and chains can be drawn
across the road to check the impetus of crowds.
The eastern half of this road runs through the
Catholic quarter ; the western through a large
suburban district mainly inhabited by the thousands
of Protestant workmen in the great shipbuilding
yards, who, when 1 revisited these scenes a few
years ago, still derived the satisfaction of a semi-
savage from writing up in white chalk on the
> Similar religious riots took place in 1880 and 1886.

HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE 51

corners of Catholic side streets, "To Hell with
the Pope."

It is pleasanter to turn from these scenes of
needless strife and clamour about non-essentials to
some of Belfast's great industries. Truly this gallant
city has merited well of Ireland and done much to
atone for the crimes of English administration in
that unhappy island. When the woollen trade was
deliberately ruined at the close of the seventeenth
century because of its competition with that of
England, the linen trade (fostered by William III.,
and stimulated by those great benefactors of the
world, the expelled Huguenots of France) became one
of the notable industries of Belfast, employing many
of the sisters and daughters of the fifteen thousand
workmen in the shipyards ; though, in consequence
of the decline in Irish agriculture (onlyjust arrested),
the flax for the Belfast manufactories has now to
come from Belgium. I will not dwell on the
distilleries : it is sad to think how many there are, and
that they pour out about fifty thousand gallons of
whisky a week into an already too alcoholic world.
Perhaps in the advance of chemistry these distilleries
may cease to produce spirits for human consumption
and give us instead that alcoholic essence which might
be such an invaluable agent as a motive power in
locomotion, as a vehicle for dyes, perfumes, dis-
infectants, and in the hundred-and-one applications
of modern inventions. Curiously enough, in this
centre of the alcohol industry was first invented and
manufactured a temperance drink — ginger ale —
which has attained the greatest vogue among the
many substitutes for that rarest of all beverages —

52 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

pure, sparkling cold water. Ginger ale and other
aerated drinks are exported from Belfast in such
quantities now that they are becoming, together with
excellent biscuits, rivalling those of Reading, one of
the leading products of the place.

For two hundred years Belfast has been a notable
centre of the rope- and canvas-making, and the
modern " rope walks " are well worth seeing. A
great amount of high-class printing, colour-printing,
and lithography is done in this city. The pleasant
feature about all these industries — in some of which,
like the lace-making, the finer linen embroidery, or
the printing, a very remarkable degree of taste is
being developed — is the exceedingly healthy look
of all employed therein. Belfast is to be congratu-
lated on the looks of her people, the beauty
of her surrounding scenery, the possession of
great educational institutes, and the finest fernery
to be seen in any Botanical Gardens outside the
tropics.

Dublin is in the main a grey city, flanked on the
south by beautiful green mountains and with a
splendid outpost on the north in the Hill of Howth.
It is a commonplace to say that it is among the
beautiful cities of the world, worthy in every way to
be the capital of a State. Its streets are broader
and straighter than those of London, and the first
impression made on the eye of the visitor is the
number of fine buildings in the architecture of
Greece and Italy — classic and cinque-cento — built
for the most part of Irish limestone, which has
weathered beautifully to tints of dark and light grey
— that grey which on misty days and in shadowed

HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE 53

recesses has a bluish tinge. The general impression
of colour in Dublin is grey, in spite of the many-
houses and public buildings of red brick — a grey
perhaps touched with rose colour here and there,
where the pale sunshine brings the rosy brick into
relief. Yet even the red brick houses, banks, clubs,
and the gigantic new dwellings for the poor (on which
a splendid style of architecture has been lavished) are
edged with stone, have stone copings, balconies, or
slate roofs, while much of the brick, by smoke and
rain, dust and lichen, has faded to a greyish-brown.

The straight artery of the Liffey might be a canal
in Venice, and the innumerable beautiful bridges of
white, weathered limestone which cross it could very
well be of marble. They recall in their designs the
bridges over Venetian canals. There are two ex-
ceptions to the almost uniform beauty of these
bridges — exceptions which, like the Parnell bridge
at Cork, are a disgrace to the city authorities. One
is the railway bridge, the ugliest ever known, which
crosses the LiiFey just above the Customs House,
and thereby mars deliberately one of the noblest
views in any European town. The other is a
horrible erection, like old Vauxhall bridge in minia-
ture, which is the main artery of traffic across the
LifFey between north and south. The ironwork of
this abomination is — or was up to the time of my
last visit — hung with gigantic letters advertising pills
and whisky. In these two bridges stands the proof
that no matter what revival may have taken place in
letters though the growth of the national spirit, little
heed has been given so far to the creation or preserva-
tion of beauty in the towns (or, for the matter of

54 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

that, in the landscapes). But the existence of Charing
Cross railway bridge makes it difficult for a Londoner
to criticise this marring of the LifFey in Dublin.

The most splendid monument of eighteenth-
century Dublin is the Customs House, one of the
celebrated buildings of the world, cited in all treatises
on architecture. Here is the grey of Dublin wrought
into an exquisite embodiment. The sculpture is
charming in its graceful emblems, and especially
taking to the eye are the great urns which mask
some of the chimneys. Seen from a projecting
corner of the quay, mirrored by zigzag reflections
in the brown waters of the Liffey, or more dimly
reproduced at low tide on the gleaming surface of
the umber-coloured mud, this Customs House is
quite worthy of Venice. It was designed by James
Gandon, whose art may be seen in other eighteenth-
century buildings of Dublin, notably in portions of
the Parliament House (temporarily occupied by the
Bank of Ireland). Gandon was an Englishman, and
deserves to be commemorated in Dublin, together
with an Irish peer, the Duke of Leinster, under
whose viceroyalty so much that has proved lasting,
useful, and stately was founded in Dublin. The
" Customs House " as a name is no longer applicable
to James Gandon's building ; it is really the head-
quarters of the Local Government Board of Ireland
and of other administrative departments of that
kingdom. It is therefore the more surprising that
the Castle Government has made no conspicuous
effort to abolish or modify the railway bridge on
the west of the Customs House, or to induce the
Municipality to clean up the dirty streets in its rear.

HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE S5

The docks which lie to the eastward of the
Customs House are picturesque, but slightly sad to
look at ; for they represent a vanished commerce.
The tall, stately warehouses which surround each
dock on three sides are — or were when I last saw
them — mostly unused, and reminded me of some
dead city by the Zuyder Zee. Here and there
perhaps a sailing vessel of antique rig had been
good-naturedly moored to the deserted quay, possibly
to gratify the eye with a picture. Indeed, it occurred
to me that if no better use could be found for them,
these deserted docks might be kept up by the Science
and Art Department in Dublin as a beauty spot, an
interesting link with the past, furnished with brightly
painted hulls and tall spars to illustrate the types of
sailing ship that plied to and fro to Dublin before
the days of steam.

A mile or more up the LiiFey, just within sight of
the Customs House, is its sister beauty, the " Four
Courts " building. This again would not be out
of place in Venice or Florence. Like the Customs
House, it is grey, with a tinge of blue about the
roofing of the dome. Grey — I must repeat — is the
colour of Dublin : the whitish -grey columns,
porticoes, colonnades of the Bank of Ireland (the
old — and perhaps the new — Parliament buildings),
the blue-grey of the Four Courts, the grey of a
gull's back which is the tint of the Customs House,
the greyish-white of the Liffey bridges, the grey
cathedrals of Christ Church and St Patrick's, the
grey Post Office, the yellowish-grey buildings of
Trinity College, the umber-grey of the LiiFey waters
and of the canals, docks, and tributary streams

56 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

connected with it, the dirty grey of the stone-paved
thoroughfares and pavements, the grey sky, and the
grey-and-white seagulls that flip-flap, flip-flap above
the bridges and the quays, that swim on the ponds
in Stephen's Green, and give the city a maritime air
by their flight and their sad cries.

The grey is as a whole pearly, and infinitely charm-
ing to the eye in almost all phases of weather ; but a
greyness has also got into the mental atmosphere of
the city. Except for the hideous rattle of wheeled
vehicles over the pitiless paving stones — a pavement
which again reminds one of an Italian city — Dublin
strikes the stranger as quiet and morne. There is none
of the cheerful clamour of Belfast. People do not
shout at one another in the street ; even the gigantic
policemen direct the traffic or answer questions in
low-cadenced voices. No music ever seems to be
played, away from the precincts of the hidden Castle
or the headquarters of the Royal Irish Constabulary,
and the far-distant bandstands of Phoenix Park.
The city is noble of aspect, if sad — the sadness of a
discrowned queen uncertain of her restoration to
power. But it is orderly and clean, and less smelly
than London, owing to the universal stone paving,
on which at most a thin black mud collects after
rain. Though this pavement gives off^ a great
rumble of traffic, the increasing use of rubber tyres
and motor vehicles is diminishing the noise of the
broad streets, which are very seldom taken up for
repairs, and consequently know little of those blocks
to traffic which make London thoroughfares so
trying to the patience.

But for the mass of the people Dublin is dull,

HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE 57

sad, and quiet. The spasmodic gaieties and hidden
pomp of that Casde, which is so concealed in a
labyrinth of mean streets and blank walls that you
would not know it existed if you read no guide-
book, only reach a select circle of English and
Irish officials. As far as nine-tenths of the citizens
are concerned, the Viceregal Court is non-existent.
The people have the most beautiful park to walk
in which is possessed by any city, if they choose
to make a journey from the heart of the town
equivalent to the distance of Hampstead Heath
from Charing Cross. They also have their St
James's and Green Parks in Stephen's Green, with
its water-fowl, its flower-beds, and velvet lawns.
(This they owe, like the restoration of St Patrick's
Cathedral, the great and comely blocks of dwellings
for the poor, which have taken the place of many a
vanished slum, to the generosity of the patron saints
of Dublin, the Guinness family.) In Phoenix Park
— the name is a silly English corruption of Fion
isca, " beautiful water " — there are the gardens and
menageries of the far-famed Royal Irish Zoological
Society, an institution of which Ireland may well be
proud, as it has taught many things in the way of
keeping and breeding wild animals to the other
zoological gardens of the world. At Glasnevin —
about as far from Dublin as Kew is from London —
there are Botanical Gardens of a beauty and complete-
ness quite exceptional. Dublin has also a National
Gallery of pictures, a Museum worthy of a first-class
German town, and a Public Library which might be
in Washington, U.S.A., so admirably adapted is it to
all classes of students, so free from the restrictions.

58 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

the capricious closings, the veiled, fretful tyranny of
the British Museum library in London. Dublin,
in short, is splendidly equipped for study ; but its
amenities are almost exclusively of the daytime. It
is not well provided with theatres or concerts. The
cinematographic shows are beginning (I am told), as
in all civilised towns, to amuse the people by moving
pictures and silent dramas played in dumb show.
But the necessities of our complex lives which seem
to me to be missing most in Dublin are music and
good food. Its hotels are comfortable and of late
have attended to the reproach formerly levelled
against them — the reproach of all Ireland outside
Ulster — of not being scrupulously clean. There is
little cause for complaint on this score now in
Dublin, and in the chief tourist resorts in west and
south Ireland ; but in Dublin and nearly every-
where, except in Belfast, the cooking and the food
aire seldom completely good. Dublin may be better
now than when I knew it well, a few years ago.
Then one had to complain that it was very poorly
supplied with restaurants, serving their customers
with food of first-rate quality, cleanly and appetisingly
cooked. I am thinking of quite simple food, not of
elaborate French menus. Take one's breakfast in
the morning at the best hotels of Dublin : the plain
boiled egg would be a shop egg of musty flavour
and unknown age ; the bacon tasted queer ; the
sausages were suspects ; the haddock probably tinned
haddock ; and the milk not pure milk, so far as taste
and look could define it.

But of course in such matters the passing tourist
fares badly. I have known Dublin under delightful

HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE 59

auspices, staying with friends in the handsome
Georgian houses of the dignified squares, and enjoy-
ing to the full the play of conversation between the
great professors, the many intellectual lights, the
witty and the learned who make Dublin their
residence or the headquarters of their teaching ;
but when I was there only as a tourist I dreaded
those dull, dark evenings, for Dublin was formerly
very ill-lit — no doubt it is better now — and there
seemed to be little else to do after dinner but to go
to bed.

Perhaps this lack of gaiety — so strange in a town
with the Italian look of having been built as a
background to pageantry, carnivals, processions,
music, colour, gallantry, and laughter — is part of the
mourning in which the capital of Ireland has sat
since her parliament was taken away and she
possessed that sweet-bitter freedom of managing her
own affairs, instead of having them managed mostly
by personages imported from England and headed
up by an often absent Viceroy. The Viceroy tends to
be an absentee because he is nearly always an English
or a Scottish peer with his home across the sea. The
Secretary to the Viceregal government is never an
Irishman, but almost invariably a native of England,
to whom the prevailing faith of Ireland is antipathetic,
her native language unknown, her past history, fauna,
flora, soil, climate, requirements, such a complex
puzzle that after a few months spent in feverish
attempts to think out a Home Rule bill, he generally
retires to a staid London existence in — let us say —
Lexham Gardens (where wild nature is at most
represented by an area cat pursuing smoky sparrows),

6o VIEWS AND REVIEWS

and on account of his duties in the Westminster
Parliament and the Downing Street Cabinet Council
can give up to Ireland little more than a summer
month or a Whitsuntide recess spent in the Secre-
tary's lodge in Phoenix Park.

St George's Channel and its rough seas are the
chief difficulty in the way of an English adminis-
tration of Ireland, and one of the surest salves of Irish
discontent, and quickest ways of promoting fusion
of ideas and ideals between English and Irish, would
be — as I wrote ten years ago — to make a channel
tunnel between the south-west coast of Scotland and
the north-east coast of Ireland ; and run through
trains from Euston to Dublin, Belfast, Cork, and
that land of faerie, Achill Island : Achill Island, which
ought to be the national park, the big game
paradise of the British Islands. The great obstacle
to a complete understanding and commercial and
agricultural development of Ireland is that infernally
uncomfortable sea-passage between the Welsh and
the Irish coasts. The passage from Stranraer to
Larne is shorter, but the steamers have to be small,
and the crossing is often very rough, while there is
the break of a night's rest at embarkation and again
at disembarkation. I am told there are two over-
whelming difficulties in the way of this tunnel :
Grim's Dyke — a trough 600 feet deep in the narrow
sea between Galloway and Carrickfergus ^ — and the
fact that the gauge of the Irish railways is different

1 The length of such a tunnel would be about 20 miles. The length
of a tunnel between Bardsey Island in West Wales and Arklow in
Ireland would be about 38 miles : the depth of the sea-bottom here
does not exceed 240 feet. This Bardsey-Arklow tunnel would con-
nect Dublin and London by an almost straight route.

HOW IRELAND TAKES THE EYE 6i

from the English gauge. Neither of these facts seems
to me a sufficient stopper to this tunnel when we
remember that we have in Ireland a fertile, healthy-
island, with a good climate, romantically beautiful
scenery, and an area of 32,531 square miles, which
might, with proper investments of capital and labour,
support a population of 1 5,000,000.

A tunnel under St George's Channel seems to me
the only logical alternative to the granting to Ireland
of a Prince of the Blood as perpetual Viceroy, and
such degree of responsible home government as
would be consistent with the interests of England
and Scotland : at any rate a government of Ireland
by resident Irish officials, and not by Englishmen
hating the discomforts of the sea-passage, yet
obliged to spend the greater part of the year in
London. I am making no personal references in
these remarks, which apply generally to all the
viceroys and secretaries appointed to the government
of Ireland for the last fifty years, since steam naviga-
tion took the place of sailing vessels, and Dublin
was brought within a day's journey of London, yet
retained in this transit sixty miles of possible sea-
sickness, of cold, wet, and repellent discomfort.

CHAPTER III

THE PEOPLE AND THE LANGUAGE OF IRELAND

The people who live in this island of bare mountains,
bog, lake, moor, and meadow, came for the most
part from the neighbouring island of Great Britain
at one time or another ; and all belong to stocks
which have contributed similarly to the existing
population of England, Scotland, and Wales. It is
true that ethnologists have suggested in addition a
direct migration in Neolithic times or in the early
age of metal from the shores of Spain to Ireland.
It is not very easy to believe that the stormy seas of
the Bay of Biscay could be crossed by the coracles
or dug-out canoes which were probably all the means
of navigation possessed by the Palaeolithic or Early
Neolithic peoples. It is more likely that until the
Mediterranean races invented ships of a size and
shape permitting them to afFront the rough sea
waves without imminent danger of capsizing — ships,
too, which could undertake long voyages because
they were propelled by many oarsmen and by lateen
sails — the invasion of Ireland from Spain did not
occur on any considerable scale. Such an event
may have been as late in human history as about a
thousand years before the present era, long after

62

PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE OF IRELAND 63

Ireland had received a Neolithic civilisation from
the direction of southern Scotland.

The actual peopling of Ireland by man goes back
far beyond that to a period of indefinite remoteness,
possibly to the days — a hundred thousand years ago
— when the Emerald Isle was a huge peninsula of
Britain connected with Scotland by one isthmus and
Wales by another : a large lake and a river flowing
southward into the Atlantic partially separating the
two countries. When the Atlantic waves ate their
way through the slowly sinking lowlands which filled
up so much of what is now the Irish Channel, the
nearness of Ireland to Scotland between Galloway and
Antrim was such that even men in a very barbarous
Palaeolithic stage could cross over into Ireland by
means of rude rafts such as the black Australians
still use. The great attraction of the sister island
in those days lay in its having become a hunter's
paradise. It was populated by immense numbers
of the huge Megaceros deer (wrongly termed the
Irish Elk, really an enormous fallow deer), by red
deer, mammoths, reindeer, horses, hippopotami, and
the fat and easily captured Great Auk. The first
men who came to hunt and fish may, if the Sligo
calvarium now in the British Museum is a fair
indication, have been not unlike the Neanderthaloid
Australian of the present day : dark-skinned, with
low, projecting brows, hairy, prognathous-faced, long-
armed and short-legged : in fact, like the earliest
Palaeolithic types of man in England.

I have one or two photographs in my collection
from outlying parts of the west of Ireland which
show this type not very greatly changed after a

64 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

hundred thousand years or so since it inhabited
southern England.

But there are also vestiges of another ancient race
in the west and north-west of Ireland, besides here
and there in Scotland. This has sometimes been
called " Eskimo," because it has dark, deep-set eyes,
high cheek-bones, and straight, thin nose ; but it
might more correctly be styled " Euramerican," and
indicate a human race intermediate between the
Mongol and the Caucasian, at one time ranging
through the whole northern world, from Ireland
across northern Britain and all northern Europe and
Asia to the Atlantic coast of America, becoming, in
fact, with other blendings, the Amerindian of the
New World. The resemblance between old Irish
women and men of the peasant class in the islands
and peninsulas of the northern half of Ireland on
the one hand, and the Amerindians of western North
America, and even the Eskimo, is most striking.
Crossings between this ancient Mongoloid type and
the still older Australoid of early Palaeolithic days
gives the ugly, forbidding, semi-savage strain certainly
to be met with in out-of-the-way districts (mainly in
the west and north-west), but in reality rare. Some-
how this wild-looking peasant was early singled out
by the English invaders as being quite of another
class to themselves, and became, no doubt, the
original of the ferocious caricatures of Irishmen in
the illustrated newspapers of the middle nineteenth
century.

As a matter of fact, the Irish people in the mass
are taller, better-looking than the English and
Welsh, and handsomer than the Scots. But it is

PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE OF IRELAND 65

not to be denied that Ireland is a very precious
museum of human types, ancient and modern, far
less perfectly blended than the folk in the larger
island to the east. The principal strains which go
to form the bulk of the Irish at the present day may
be catalogued as (i) the Iberian, (2) the red-haired
Kelt, (3) the fair-haired Scandinavian, and (4) the
Anglo-Saxon (the English and Lowland Scotch).
There are also the remains of fair-haired British or
Belgian colonies dating from ancient times — say
two thousand years ago — the descendants of whom
are very like the flaxen-haired, dark-grey-eyed people
of Holland and Flemish Belgium.

The Iberian Irish have dark or black hair
associated in the south and west of Ireland with
brown eyes, but more often with eyes of beautiful
grey or even blue, no doubt through intermixture
with other races. They are the descendants probably
of the Neolithic people coming from Spain or France
thousands of years ago, who introduced into Ireland,
as into Britain, a certain mastery over stone both as
a building material and a substance from which
perfected tools and weapons could be made ; probably
also pottery, boat-building, agriculture, and more
systematic methods of domesticating animals, rearing
and training them for many uses. The Iberians
probably conquered nearly all Ireland and absorbed
or killed a proportion of the preceding savage races.

Then, seven hundred years or so before the
Christian era, came the Aryan Kelts, the vanguard
of those Aryan conquerors of Europe, who with a
knowledge of iron turned aside the bronze or copper
weapons of the Mediterranean races and made them-

66 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

selves masters of all Europe except northern Finland,
northern Russia, and Spain beyond the Ebro. Some
authorities have thought that these Kelts of the
Goidelic branch,^ who may perhaps be identified with
the tall, red-haired, raw-boned, freckled people in
Ireland and Scotland and parts of England, invaded
Ireland from northern Spain, afterwards crossing
over from Ireland into Wales, Man, and Scotland,
to which last country they bequeathed the name of
one of their tribes, called by the Roman geographers,
the Scoti. Others that the Goidels first invaded
Britain coming from Belgium and France, and from
Britain crossed over into Ireland, leaving, however,
linguistic traces of their presence in English monu-
ments, in Wales, and in Scotland. Of course, we
know historically that the Scots of Ulster invaded
Caledonian, Brythonic, Pictish Scotland in the fifth
and sixth centuries, united later with the Norsemen
and Anglo-Saxons, and made the regions north of
the Tweed into a kingdom independent of Anglo-
Saxon and Norman England, giving to the highland
and western parts of that kingdom their Irish
language, which in the form of Gaelic survives to
this day. But the question of Gaelic being entirely
due to the historical colonisation of Scotland by
an Irish invasion (and similarly the Goidelic dialects
which were spoken in Wales down to the seventh
century a.c.) has been much disputed by ethnologists.
There are indeed good grounds for believing that

' It is scarcely necessary to explain that the Keltic-speaking
people are divided into two branches : the /-Kelts (that use the
consonant p in certain words), and the ^- Kelts (those that put ^ or
k2e/, k,g, c, instead of/). The Goidelic or Gaelic Kelts are of the q
branch ; the Brythonic or British belong to the/ group.

PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE OF IRELAND 67

all the British Islands may have spoken Goidelic
dialects (except where the non-Aryan languages
lingered among the Irish and British Picts) at one
time — say four hundred years before Christ ; and
until the arrival from the continent of the Brythonic
Kelts, whose conquest of Britain when the Romans
came on the scene did not extend far into " Caledonia "
or cover the south of Wales. The Goidels seem to
have reached a certain degree of civilisation and
wealth in Ireland (if indeed the Iberians had not
done so before them) by the working of gold, in
which Ireland was then very rich ; and a trade in
gold was carried on with Spain across the sea,
possibly in Spanish, Phoenician, or Greek vessels.
But so far as the dim pre-history of Ireland can be
spelt out, it seems more likely that its first Goidelic
invasions took place from north-west Scotland rather
than from Wales, for there is no indication of the
original Goidelic Kelts having possessed sailing
boats, or means of crossing the sea much superior to
canoes and coracles. At a later date, before Caesar
landed in south-east Britain to punish the Belgian
tribes there for making common cause with the Gauls
of Picardy, these Belgian British were settling here
and there on the coast of Ireland and adding to the
Aryan element in that distressful island, wherein
racial struggles still continue.

Though the Romans never reached Ireland, they
influenced its culture development most considerably,
though indirectly ; and amongst the Roman ideas
which crossed St George's Channel in the trading
ships passing to and fro between Wales, Cumberland,
and Ireland was the new Christian faith, carried no

68 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

doubt by British slaves, who, with dogs, cattle, glass
beads and vessels, linen and weapons, were the trade
products of the period. Christianity was known
in Ireland before it was preached there by Succat
Patricius (St Patrick), a native of British Dumbarton-
shire, who, sold as a slave to the Picts of North
Ireland, escaped, returned to Carlisle (where his
father had settled), entered the British Church,
and eventually became the Apostle of Ireland.
Ireland then once again became more civilised than
Britain, especially as the Roman culture of the larger
island was drenched in blood by the invading Saxons.
Irish missionaries converted Scotland and northern
England to Christianity, and thence brought much
of Germany within the fold of the Church, while
Ireland itself became known as the Isle of Saints.

Then came fresh barbarian invasion, which ulti-
mately brought Ireland to utter ruin and led to the
English conquest. The Scandinavians — blond Norse-
men and darker-haired Danes — came with their ships
and overthrew the Romano-Keltic civilisation. From
the eighth century onwards they occupied all the
ports of the Irish coast, and even followed the Irish
monk-navigators to Iceland, and perhaps to the
Azores. The Scandinavians have left a profound
impression on the Irish population. Anyone who
travels round the coasts and islands of Ireland, from
Waterford in the south northwards to Mayo in the
west, and who enters certain inland counties, such as
Monaghan, Fermanagh, and Leitrim, must be struck
with the Scandinavian appearance of the tall, blue-
eyed, golden-haired people (actually called " Danes,"
I am told, by their darker-haired neighbours). These

PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE OF IRELAND 69

types can be matched easily in Denmark, Norway,
and southern Sweden.

In the course of time these four principal
elements in the Irish population — Palaeolithic, Iberian,
red-haired Kelt, and blond Scandinavian — have
crossed and recrossed with one another, despite
bitter racial hatreds ; this mingling resulting in
much the same mixed types as in England and
Wales. Thus you have -in Ireland, besides the
remnants of the parent stocks, red-haired people
with the projecting cheek-bones of the Mongol and
the brown eyes of the Iberian ; others with the dark
hair of the Mediterranean race combined with the
tall stature of the Aryan Kelt. Some there are
retaining the broad faces and low stature of the
Eskimo, or the long arms, short legs, and negroid
profile of the GaUey Hill Man, yet possessing the
yellow hair and blue eyes of superior races who
came much later into the land ; or there may be
seen individuals reproducing the red hair of the
Goidelic Kelts together with the Moorish oval face
and thick arched eyebrows of the Iberians. English
administrators and soldiers have not lived in a land
of beautiful women for eight hundred years without
results. The Englishman had the same tendency
to marry the fascinating Irishwoman and to adopt
the wrongs and rights and accent of her race as
have the Germans to marry Poles and become
anti- Prussian in policy, or Americans from the
Northern States to espouse both the persons and
the prejudices of the Southern Creoles of French
or Spanish blood.

Ancient intermixture along the eastern seaboard

70 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

of Ireland has produced certain types of face
particularly characteristic of the English Pale. One
is a stout, rubicund, blunt-featured person, with a
thick, fleshy nose and long upper lip, together with
a great tendency in the male to bushy whiskers —
in short (except for the nose, which is too coarse and
formless), a John Bull. Another very frequently
seen visage in English-Ireland — Cork, Dublin,
Waterford, Meath, and Kildare — is the " weepy "
type, so-called from the watery blue eye, which
seems always tinged with emotion, and is often
red-rimmed, as though with tear-shedding. With
the moist, prominent, pale-blue or green eyes and
light eyelashes goes a large Wellingtonian nose, with
a prominent red bump marking the end of the nasal
bone. The lips are loose and slightly pendulous.
The firm chin becomes in old age somewhat
" punchy." The hands have prominent blue veins
and long, bony, large-jointed fingers. The personal
habit of the body tends to thinness (as contrasted
with the coarse fleshiness of the John Bull type), and
in the mental outlook these excellent " weepy "
persons incline to sentimentality, especially if they
are women. Of such are the martyrs in many of
Ireland's causes, or in the great struggles of the
British world against disease, religious persecution,
and the tyranny of custom. The lachrymose-looking
Anglo-Irish are a type much more associated with
Protestantism than with the Roman faith. They
are inclined to severe teetotalism rather than stout
(which is the beverage of the " John Bull " Irishman),
or whisky (which is the bane of the Scandinavian
and the Scot). Despite its often gaunt and uncomely

PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE OF IRELAND 71

exterior, this weepy hybrid between English and
Irish of the south-east of Ireland has furnished
some of the greatest men in the nineteenth century
to the professions, the churches, the literary world,
and the State. It has crossed to America and come
back to us in an ambassadorial capacity from the
United States ; it has presided over Australian
councils, and steadily, sweetly, persuasively fought
the cause of woman in the long, thankless struggle
which has been going on for sixty years to obtain
for the female half of the community the same rights
of citizenship as are granted to the male.

In North-east Ireland there is the Scotch type
of face, derived of course from Scotland, and in
Scotland formed — it may be — from a pre-historic
Germanic or Scandinavian invasion (the Caledonians)
that interbred with the Keltic and Pictish, and the later-
arriving Norwegian and Saxon elements. It scarcely
needs to be pointed out that a large proportion of
the Ulster population is descended from the Scottish
settlers planted in Ireland during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. The physical characteristics
of these Irishmen of Down, Antrim, and Londonderry
are a tall stature, an ungainly figure, a rough-hewn
face with keen eyes, bushy eyebrows, and thin lips :
a type which at once inspires respect by its moral
worth, its taciturnity, steadfastness, and old-fashioned
courtesy ; at the same time a race that takes its
pleasures sadly and has little appreciation of beauty
or tolerance of a different outlook in religion. Yet
it is this stock which, more than any other, has made
the prosperity of the United States.

Through poverty, a certain inherent laziness, a

72 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

mild climate, and a long deadened sense of the beauty
of tidiness, it is not to be denied that the Irish are
inclined to be slatternly in the way they dress and the
lack of care they bestow on their appearance. The
men among the peasantry in the agricultural districts
wear any form of coat and trousers they can get hold
of, second-hand ; they are as a rule most shabbily
dressed, yet are often of such fine physique and have
such agreeable faces that their rags pass muster as
picturesque. Untidiness, indeed, is the worst of Irish
vices, and dirt comes next. In the coast districts of
the West the men's costume is more pleasing to the
eye. It consists generally of a fisherman's jersey or
jumper and loose trousers. The traditional costume
of preposterous tall hat, dress coat with long tails,
and knee breeches is not quite extinct yet. I have
recently received from a correspondent a photograph
of a very Neanderthaloid type thus clad, a type so
wild that it should in all appropriateness have been
clothed in untanned skins. In the country districts
(and the smaller towns or villages) the women of the
poorer or peasant classes wear no headgear but a
kerchief or shawl. As a rule they are bareheaded,
their often lovely but dirty faces framed by abundant,
ill-kempt manes of hair. In the extreme West,
however, the women are most picturesquely and
neatly clad in tight-fitting bodices and ample but
short skirts dyed crimson or purple. The old
women of the Western peasantry, if they belong to
the " Eskimo " type, are amusingly hideous, but
frequently retain quite late in life beautiful and
abundant hair. Though the men (and, sad to say,
the women) in many parts of Ireland are over-much

PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE OF IRELAND 73

given to alcohol, this abuse does not make itself
apparent in their faces by grotesque red noses ; it is
exhibited in a more refined way by excessive pallor.
At the same time the healthy, open-air life in a mild
climate dissipates some of the ill effects of too much
whisky, though it does not help them against the
dyspepsia caused by their other principal poison
— over-brewed tea. Of course 1 judge greatly as
to the abuse of alcohol by the frequency — the
disgusting frequency — of drunken people in Irish
country towns on market days, in the streets and
slums of Belfast and Dublin, at village festivals
and wakes. I daresay they are not worse in this
respect than the folk of Wales and South-west
Scotland.

[For drunkenness it is hard to beat the Welsh
borderland — Brecon and Hay, for instance — on
market days or occasions connected somehow with
sheep, for in the principal hotels there one smells
not only whisky, rum, and gin, but tallow and the
disagreeable odour of huddled sheep.]

But, except as regards parts of Donegal where
the Irish race seems to be badly smitten with phthisis
and nervous diseases, I am always compelled, after
each succeeding visit, to sum up my impressions of
the Irish as being an essentially healthy people, and
I know that this impression on the eye is confirmed
by official statistics. It is also evident that their
present general well-being, their increased sturdiness
is due to the effects of the Land Settlement Acts, and
above all the work of the Congested Districts Board,
and the never-to-be-sufficiently-praised efforts of
the Department of Agriculture and Technical In-

74 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

struction, which has gone far towards making a New
Ireland.

In the west of Donegal, in County Mayo
(especially Achill Island), and in Connaught there are
computed to be twenty thousand persons who only
speak the Irish language and understand no English.
In Achill Island I have had fair-haired Scandinavian-
looking guides who could only convey their ideas in
the Gaelic speech, and as my knowledge of that was
just what I could read out from phrase books, and
the spoken tongue differs more widely in pro-
nunciation from the written version than does any
other language in the world, I enjoyed the delightful
sensation of feeling utterly a foreigner in a land
governed from London. Indeed, in Achill Island
generally, although only twenty hours from Euston,
one feels transported back to the end of the Stone
Age, and the hearing Irish spoken only enhanced the
impression of the reversal of time ; for it is a
language of Neolithic days, conceived when the
westernmost Aryans, armed with iron weapons, first
conquered, then inter-married with a dark-haired
Iberian people, who in their turn had imposed a
Mediterranean speech on the still earlier Mongoloids,
Australoids, and Basques of Palaeolithic Ireland.

In all Ireland there are now, out of a total
population of 4,300,000, about 650,000 persons who
can speak Irish, and of these all but 20,000
speak English as well or better. In Scotland the
closely allied Gaelic dialect is still used by about
203,000 Highlanders and Islanders, 28,000 of whom
know no other language. But Manx, which in some

PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE OF IRELAND

75

respects is the most archaic and interesting of the
Goidelic tongues, is verging on the status of a dead
language. It is only now understood or spoken
by about 4000 persons in the western parts of
Man, and in actual use is much mixed with the
Lancashire English.

The Irish language would ere now have been
declining steadily towards the same fate as Manx,
had it not been for the zealous propaganda of the
Gaelic League. This organisation was started in 1893
under the patronage of the Roman Catholic clergy,
the Nationalist party, and a few Irishmen independ-
ent of either political or religious associations, but
interested in Keltic studies. Unhappily, their zeal
seems to have been very little tempered by philological
knowledge, and they approached the study of Irish
from the same point of view as fifty years ago some
worthy but ignorant missionary grappled with the
realisation on paper of an African language, hampered
in his rendering of its sounds and syntax by having
no previous knowledge of any speech but English.
I do not mean to say that the majority of the Gaelic
Leaguers, being priests, did not know Latin, but they
seem to have been unconscious of Comparative
Aryan philology, and ignorant — for the most part —
of the epoch-making studies on the Goidelic tongues
by the German writers, Zeuss {Grammatica Celtica),
Windisch, Zimmer, K. Meyer, and L. C. Stern,
besides the Irishman, Whitley Stokes. Their aims
were to revive the use of the Irish language, to
encourage Irish poetry, and to create an Irish drama.

In the first of these they have had some measure
of success. Those who compile Irish statistics

76 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

tell us that since the Gaelic League got to work,
about 50,000 more persons can speak Irish to-day
than were able to do so, say, in 1890. A good
deal of so-called Irish poetry has been written
in English since 1893 by members of the Gaelic
League, who, with a characteristic Irish perversity —
for it is, with all its grand qualities, the most perverse
people under the sun — live in London and pretend
to believe in fairies and banshees. They would also,
in the years of their first enthusiasm, the dying
nineteenth-century days of " pose," have liked you
to infer that when they visited Ireland they lived in
caves clothed only with their hair, using bone needles
and chipped flints, and in every way being very
archaic — and this as a protest against the excessive
modernism of the London that bought their poems
and quoted their poetry. The priestly members of
the League in their hatred of modernism held up the
seventh century and Monkish Ireland as the ideal
time and the ideal life, and were perhaps a little more
sensible than the archaic ones (who pretended to
believe in fairies and were not even correct in their
archaisms and ethnology), for the Leaguers who
were Catholic clergymen have done much of late to
set forth with accurate historical research the most
wonderful period in the history of Ireland, when a
kind of new birth of Christianity took place in that
remote island, together with a renaissance of classical
learning. But in the ten years which have elapsed
since I first ventured to write on the subject of the
Gaelic League, notable work has been accomplished
by clerical and lay members alike, and if only more
attention were given to the researches of modern

PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE OF IRELAND 77

anthropology and philology in the books issued
under the auspices of this League, one would feel it
was rendering national services as great as those of
the Board of Agriculture and Technical Instruction,
or of Mr W. G. Wood-Martin, who wrote the
Ancient Faiths of Ireland.

Soon after getting to work, the Gaelic League
persuaded the municipalities of Dublin, Limerick,
Ennis, Galway, and no doubt other Irish towns to
have the names of streets put up in the Irish
language and characters. Generally the English
version was given underneath ; but, if not, the
stranger, not knowing how to read, and still more
how to pronounce Irish,^ was in a quandary about find-
ing his way. Now, personally, I much sympathise
with this attempt to revive a language which goes
back to the Neolithic period, and in any case am very
fond of language studies and welcome the chance of
learning any fresh form of human speech which is
pressed on my notice. But there is one thing about
the present state of the Irish language and the
singularly perverse way in which it is being revived
which I cannot stand (Welsh is similarly nonsensical).
The spelling of English is illogical in the divorce
between the written symbols and their present pro-
nunciation ; but it is trifling in its inconsistencies,
its redundant letters, and its tax on the memory
compared with the spelling of Irish and Welsh.
And in the case of Irish there is the superadded
difficulty that a crabbed alphabet, a monkish corrup-
tion from the Roman letters in the seventh century,
is employed to render sounds which could be far

1 For example, Limerick is written in Irish, Limnaig.

78 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

more easily expressed by the modern Italian char-
acters in universal use among all civilised peoples
except a dying- out section of the Germans, the
Russians, and a few of the other more backward
Slavs. This " cussed " Irish script, which is still
protected by the Gaelic League in that policy of
holy obscurantism lingering about the Leaguers (as
though, half in rage against the horrid unsympathetic
Saxon, they said, "We don't want to make our
language easy to you or modern in any sense "), has
no claim to be sacrosanct by any far-stretching
history behind it. One could sympathise with a
very patriotic Copt who tried to revive the use of
hieroglyphics, or a Gaelic Leaguer who wrote his
Irish in the Ogam characters which really were of
Keltic — British — origin ^ ; but the national alphabet
adopted for the writing and printing of Irish is, as
I have said before, only a crabbed way of transcribing
the Roman letters (with perhaps a suggestion from
the Greek and a symbol or two taken from the
Anglo-Saxon or German), introduced by the monks
in about the seventh or eighth century of the present
era. There is no more reason for retaining it than
there is for reviving the black letter in which English
was printed in the reign of Henry VIII. It is ugly,
clumsy, and indistinct. It cannot lend itself to all
the effective variations of Italian type : " Roman,"
"Italic," "Ruby," and "Pearl." Its letters re-
semble one another so closely in some cases that it
is a severe tax on the eyesight to distinguish them :
for instance, the f (p), p (p), r (r*), and s (-p) ; the
b (t)) and d ("O) are so much ahke that even practised
' Probably derived from the Teutonic Runes in ultimate origin.

PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE OF IRELAND 79

readers have to peer very closely at the page to be
sure of their letter. Then, again, many consonants
are completely altered by being "aspirated" (not
that they are aspirated in the real meaning of the
word), and this falsely styled " aspiration " is only
marked by a dot above the letter, which is often
blurred in printing. Yet t) (Bh), t (x), and aspir-
ated D, F, G, M, S, and T are entirely different in
pronunciation to the awaspirated B, C, D, F, G, etc.
Fh is a mere extravagance : it is never pronounced
at all. Bh and Mh = English v or w ; Ch is the
Greek x or Scotch Ch. Sh and Th are simply pro-
nounced H ; Gh is pronounced in various ways or
remains silent, but in no case has it any resemblance
to a G, aspirated or unaspirated. Dh, however, is
my special loathing. It has nothing whatever to do
with D, and has no pronunciation of its own, merely
a subtle power of corrupting all vowels anywhere
near it.

Then, again, the vowels and consonants are so
unstable : for a nothing the S changes to sh or is
silent. S, in fact, as a letter, is always ashamed of
itself in Irish, and leaves the sentence for any one of
three hundred reasons. D is mortally afraid of N,
yet lords it over T. B is perpetually languishing as
V, followed closely in this respect by M. If M can get
hold of B, B is extinguished. F is a nincompoop,
always wanting to be taken for H. G is the bully
of the alphabet ; it upsets everything it touches,
and the student shudders at its approach. Any
vowel may be pronounced like any other vowel than
itself ; no unaccented diphthong is sounded like a
diphthong ; you take the trouble to write a triph-

8o VIEWS AND REVIEWS

thong, to find it hardly worth pronouncing. What
the Gaelic Leaguer loves is to write a triphthong,
then put in a dh or a gh, then inscribe another
triphthong, and finally to pronounce the whole seven
letters as the simple i sound in "ravine." That is
thought to be very classical.

Of course the justification put forward for the use
of this medieval alphabet is that its monstrous mis-
spelling of the Irish tongue, though now as divorced
from the form and pronunciation of the words as is
Anglo-Saxon from nineteenth-century English, was
once a faithful transcription of the language as
it was spoken in the seventh century. I doubt
this. I think the whole trouble arose from the
cranky intelligences of the monkish scribes, who were
resolved to give up the Ogam writing because of
its Runic associations with sorcery, and yet had not
the wit to make as good a use of the Latin alphabet
for the translation of their sounds as the Anglo-
Saxon had done. For instance, there were in Irish,
as in many other Aryan tongues, short and obscure
vowel sounds as well as long and broad. The
monks adopted the plan (somewhat as the Greeks
and some Italic peoples had done earlier) of
rendering these by diphthongs, using, for example,
an i after an a or an e to dilute (as it were) the
long sound of the simple vowel. Nevertheless, the
Monkish alphabet does in many cases represent an
extended form of word which in the course of twelve
hundred years has got worn down from three syllables
to two or even one. And half unconsciously the
Gaelic Leaguers and other Irish patrons of the
Irish language are ashamed to have their mother-

PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE OF IRELAND 8i

country's native speech shown in its miserably
abbreviated, corrupted, modern form ; so they cling
to the ancient spelling, yet enforce meticulously
the modern pronunciation. Moreover, in their
text-books there is not one Irish dialect but three,
those of Ulster, Connaught, and Munster ; and so
quarrelsome are they on the subject, that no one
can succeed in having one or other of these selected
as the standard. If they would only do this, and
then, having fixed the standard pronunciation, have
the entire language (and Gaelic and Manx likewise,
mutatis mutandis) respelt to conform with it — re-
written by a rational phonetic system like that of
Lepsius's Standard alphabet — there might be some
chance for a revival of Irish on practical lines.
But the present orthography is as unreasonable as
that of such modern Greeks as would like to
return to the spelling of classical times and yet
continue the much altered pronunciation of Modern
Greek in vogue at the present day. Or, to use a
more effective parallel, the Gaelic Leaguers are
acting as illogically as the French would do if they
were to spell their language as it was written in the
tenth century and yet apply to it the modern
pronunciation of Paris.

In case my diatribe should be thought exaggerated
in tone, I will give here some examples of the
divergence which exists between spelling and
pronunciation in modern Irish. Let us begin with
a passage from a back number of the Gaelic League's
Journal, An Claidheamh Soluis (a title pronounced
An Khv Salwis). Here it is first in the crabbed

Irish characters : —

6

82 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

An CAtAin riA gnArhnAiS.

Hi x>eACA\\< A rheAf 5ut\ ctvuAiii Af fiotv-^AenieAt An c-Ainm
fin tuAf -00 tuAt) nA "oo 61,oifinc gAn co6c 'nA fgofnAC -|
5An xte6in "00 fiteA*.

I next give the spelling rendered into Roman
characters and the actual pronunciation of each word
underneath ^ : —

An tathair na Gramhnaigh. Ni deacair a mheas gur
'N tahir 6 grauni Nyi dyakir a vass gurr

cruaidh ar fhior-Ghaedheal an t'ainm sin thuas do
krui er ior yeol 'n ttaenyim shin huas ddo

luadh nk do chloisint gan tocht 'na sgdrnach agus gan
lua no ddo x'sshnt gSn toxt na skornax ogos gSn

deor do shi'leadh.
d&r ddo hilyu.

Here are some instances of the lack of corre-
spondence between spelling and pronunciation : —

1 Naturally in this and all other phonetic transcriptions I use a
form of the Lepsius Standard alphabet with which most educated
people are now acquainted, and which has long been in use by
British Government departments (like the India Office), by mis-
sionary and scientific societies in Britain, Germany, and elsewhere.
In this, the broad vowels have their Italian value ; the German
6 stands for the vowel sound of u in " hurt," S. is the short sound
of u in "but," 6 is the sound of o in "store" (vulgarly transcribed
as aw), 6 represents the o in " bone," se is a in " fat." x is the Greek
guttural sounded like the Scotch ch ; gh is the modern Greek g, the
Arabic ^^az«, or the r grassfyd of the French ; d = the th in " this,"
and t = the th in "think." In this last particular I follow the great
writer on the Keltic peoples of Britain and Ireland, Sir John Rhys,
who employs d to represent the dh in Wales. It is necessary
to reserve dh and th to represent the aspirated dentals in many
languages.

PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE OF IRELAND 83

Maolmhuire pronounced Mwilre (the proper name, Miles).

Foghmhar „ fowar (autumn).

Bliabhain „ blian (corn).

Fearabhail „ farul (manly).

Droichead-atha „ Droida (Drogheda, the bridge of

a ford).
A Mhaire ! „ A Worre ! (O Mary !).

A Mhuire ! „ A Wirra ! (O Blessed Mary ! the

familiar " Wirra Wirra ! ").
Mamhuirnin „ Mawurnin (O my darling ! —

Mavourneen).
A Mathair „ A woher (O mother).

Lamh „ Lov (the hand).

Leabhar „ Luar (a book).

Taidhbhse „ Taivshe (a ghost).

Oidhche „ Ihye (night).

Ban, a woman, is pronounced like the English
word, van ; Mnd, of a woman, is pronounced MrO
(0 = in store) ; Mnaoi, to a woman, is pronounced
Mri.

Gaelic (the Irish language) is written gaedhilg,
and pronounced " Gwelig " or " GwOlg." An Irish-
man is " Gaedheal," pronounced " Gwel."

Then there are the difficulties over grammar,
mainly manufactured by monkish scribes and modern
grammarians. At the least there are five declensions,
but you might count eight if you based them on
the wholly unnecessary vagaries of the genitive.
There are nineteen ways of forming the plural
nominative. The genitive has literally uncounted
juggleries ; I believe some thirty-four ways of form-
ing it have been set forth by Irish grammarians.

The article (an plur. na, but often pronounced '»

84 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

or o) knows something to the disadvantage of .many-
initial letters of nouns, which change colour and
form at its approach. Prepositions have the same
dread power over pronouns, and every preposition
insists on shaping each one of the seven luckless
pronouns to its own liking. If you leave out one
preposition from your calculations it comes in like
the overlooked bad fairy and spoils everything.
Just imagine, if in English the pronoun " us "
became " bus, cuss, fuss, dussy, jus, hus, prus," and
so forth, according to each preposition that liked to
interfere ! The brain reels before the Irish verb.
I will not attempt an analysis : but anyone desirous
of wrestling with intellectual puzzles should try the
" consuetudinal present " and the " consuetudinal
past."

Irish must be learnt by ear, and with complete
disregard of grammatical artificialities. It is a musical-
sounding language, of no practical use ; a language
of the latest Stone Age, supremely interesting to
the philologist, because it enshrines in its structure
remains of pre-Aryan tongues, mainly Iberian.
In many points of its grammar, in fact, it offers
remarkable resemblances to the Berber tongues
of North Africa, in its phonology and a few
of its roots to the Iberian language of Spain
(possibly the Basque), which preceded the Latin
dialects. It should be studied most carefully by
scientific men, and there should be Chairs of the
Keltic tongues at every University in Great Britain
and Ireland ; but to revive it as., a spoken and a
practicable language is as wise as though the
members of the Gaelic League insisted on their

PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE OF IRELAND 85

wives reverting to bone needles while they them-
selves used razors and table knives of chipped
flint.

Yet — as I have already written — it is a matter
for shame and regret that the dominating English
people, since the revival of learning in the fifteenth
century, should have ignored the two Keltic
languages^ remaining in these islands (Goidelic and
Brythonic) represented by the Irish, Gaelic, and
Manx dialects ; by Welsh and Cornish. They are
as interesting as Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, and
more so than Hebrew. In their syntax and vocabu-
lary is locked up much " pre-history," a faintly
sketched outline of the social conditions of Britain
and Ireland from the end of the Stone Age to
the coming of the Romans. By reason of this
neglect Welsh has remained as transcribed uncouthly
in Roman letters by medieval scholars, and its spelling
— unlike that of English, which is constantly under-
going revision — is practically unaltered since the days
when the Anglo-Saxons were still ruling England
and speaking an absolutely German language un-
influenced by Norman French and the schoolmen's
Latin. Those who re-wrote the old British tongue
after the Roman civilisation had completely vanished,
employed the medieval Roman characters then in
vogue in northern Europe, but used them in some-
what of an Anglo-Saxon sense. This is how the
w came into Welsh in place of the Latin u, and how

1 Queen Elizabeth was an honourable exception. Her order to
translate the Bible into Welsh saved the old British language from
passing out of the people's speech.

86 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

the y stood in old Welsh for a sound like the
French or classical Greek u — a sound scarcely heard
now in modern Wales. The /was and is pronounced
as a V, and when a true / was wanted later on for
foreign words, it was represented by ^ a symbol
which of late has become extraordinarily fashionable
among silly people who, to show their Welsh origin,
insist on spelling their names with an initial^ and see
to it that they appear in fashionable announcements as
Mr or Mrs fFrench, fFoulkes, iFrangcon, fForest, etc.
The gutturalised / (j(l) was rendered by //, and the dh
(d — English th in " the ") by dd. In course of time,
especially after the Frenchification of the English
language between 1066 and 1485, the spelling of
Welsh came in our eyes to have a very frightful
and deterrent aspect, with its y's, w's, U's, dd's, fFs ;
and to this day it keeps many inquirers at arm's
length and is an unfailing source of merriment in
Punch and in Parliament. As a matter of fact,
Welsh is not very difficult to pronounce and would
soon be learnt by any intelligent person if it were
spelt in a clear and logical manner by the Lepsius
Standard alphabet, or, if you prefer it, by the
orthography adopted by the India Office. But it
reaUy seems to me as though the Welsh wished to
remain isolated from the Saxon and purposely kept
up this frightful spelling, much as timid savages
or the old-style Chinese soldiers donned ugly
masks and alarming helmets. I have said that
Welsh is not very difficult to pronounce : I should
say "was not," for of late years Welshmen seem
to have been trying in how many catchy ways they
could utter the a and the j (as in the word /jy, house).

PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE OF IRELAND 87

One phase — at any rate in Anglesea — is almost
unrenderable by any known letter and resembles
the most difficult of the Russian vowels, that
which has been compared to "the low bellow of
a bull." I see nothing to be proud of in such
achievements, any more than there is merit in
employing esoteric alphabets. The various normal
sounds of the Welsih u and y can be transcribed
with sufficient exactness by the letters i, a, S, and
perhaps il.

1 would strongly urge the importance of appoint-
ing a Royal Commission of linguistic experts to
decide (i) what shall be the standard pronunciation
of Welsh — whether the dialect of Gwinnedh, Powis,
or DinevOr should prevail — and (2) the correct,
modern, phonetic spelling of standard Welsh (which
indeed ought no longer to be termed Welsh — a cant
name of the Teuton for all strange people — but
British ^). The findings of the Royal Commission
should then be put in force in all Welsh schools
and in all institutions outside Wales wherein the
Imperial government had any control. And in the
case of Welsh the best authority to control this
investigation would be Sir John Rhys. Similar steps
might be taken in regard to Gaelic and Irish. It
would be an immense relief to all of us who love
Scotland to be able to tell at a glance how to
pronounce the four thousand or more Gaelic
geographical names on the maps. Some form of
Gaelic has been spoken in these islands continuously

> The local name for the language is, of course, Cymry, pro-
nounced Kamri. But the term Brythoneg (Brathoneg, or Britoneg)
is also known.

88 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

for something like two thousand six hundred years,
and British for a period of time only four hundred
years less, dating from about 200 b.c. A dialect
of British is still spoken in the north-west corner
of France, introduced there by refugees from Devon
and Cornwall. With that exception the British Isles
have the monopoly at the present day of the Keltic
languages, which are amongst the most ancient forms
of living Aryan speech. We should be proud of
having in our midst a link with the past which goes
back perhaps as far as the Swiss lake villages and
the Iron civilisation of Hallstatt ; and interested to
know that the preachers and farmers of Wales
speak, in a not-greatly-altered form, the language
in which Brennus flung his taunts at Infant Rome.
A million people in Wales still use the language of
our British ancestors as their mother-speech ; and
for the study of this strangely interesting tongue
classes should be formed at all our larger English
colleges and schools, for it enshrines eight hundred
years of early British history in its syntax and its
words. An examination of Irish and British phon-
ology, for example, throws much light on the origin
of the pronunciation of Anglo-Saxon, English,
French, and Spanish, especially so as regards Anglo-
Saxon and early English. The Saxons, Angles, Jutes
and Danes who invaded Britain borrowed very few
' words from the Kelts, but in course of time and by
much intermarriage with the preceding peoples
insensibly they acquired a Keltic pronunciation.
They adopted from Keltic influence the d and t
(dh and th), the change of a into (aw), and the
peculiar sound of u in "but," the weakening of the

PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE OF IRELAND 89

broad a into se (most characteristic of Anglo-Saxon ^
and of English down to the middle of the eighteenth
century, when the broad Scandinavian a of the north
came in again — contrast the father of the modern
child with the father of a hundred years ago, the
Londoner's kasl^ and the Irishman's kassl for
" castle "). In Welsh We see early in its develop-
ment that peculiar diphthonging of the Latin l into oi
(or «;/), so marked a feature in modern French ; and
French was manufactured by Belgic Britons out of
soldiers' Latin. Again, the changes of sounds which
occurred when Latin was transmuted into Spanish
are singularly reminiscent in some cases of Irish,
notably the development of mn into mr (Irish, Mna
is pronounced mrO ; the Spaniards turned the
Latin accusative hominem — homne — into homre,
hombre). Nay, more, the phonology of Goidelic
Irish not only recalls traits in the Iberian pronuncia-
tion of Spain, but of the Berbers in North Africa.
There, also, exists the tendency for a to displace the
broad a. Modern North African Arabic has been
quite infected by this change, which is very marked
in Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco, and is apparently
due to Berber influence — an influence which in the
Neolithic Age seems to have reached even to Ireland
and West Britain.

' In Anglo-Saxon it was very prominent, and represented in
ancient spelling by ea, and in modern by ce, and pronounced like a
in " fat," " cat," " batter." This sound was retained by the English
of the United States of Ireland much more than in the Scottish and
English modem speech. Thus an American still says " faest " for
"fast," "maest" for "mast," and "chaence" for "chance" : as do
the Irish.

CHAPTER IV

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY

I

GERMAN INFLUENCE ON EUROPE IN THE PAST

An ethnologist passing in review the salient features
of ancient and modern history is apt to ask himself
whether the German-Gothic peoples have not been
ever and again the regenerators of the civilised
world. And a corollary to this question is another
wider inquiry : is not the Teutonic type in its
physical features and mentality closely akin to that
original Aryan race with long heads, fair or red
hair, and blue eyes which was evolved early in the
Neolithic Age in eastern Europe or western Asia ?
These Aryans spread out over Europe and Asia at
the beginning of the Age of Metal and laid the
foundations of nearly all existing European languages
and of the dominant forms of speech in Armenia,
Persia, and Hindostan, bringing also to these regions
religions, myths, political, social, and scientific ideas,
and — it may be — some of our domestic animals and
cultivated trees. By " Teutonic " type is not meant
the round-headed or Alpine, the broad-cheek-boned
or Mongoloid people often seen in eastern and

90

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 91

central Germany and northern Scandinavia, but the
long-headed, blond Saxon, Frisian, Dane, Swede,
Pomeranian, Swabian, and Bavarian.

A convenient term for the pure Aryan type of
Europe, in respect of its physical distinctness from
other races, is Nordic ; since its birth and subsequent
history seem to be so much connected with regions
of Europe lying to the north of the domain occupied
by another great branch of the White sub-species —
the Iberian or Mediterranean man.

The " Alpine " race, associated at one time with
the speaking of non-German languages, would almost
seem to be the outcome of early intermingling
between the dark-haired Iberian and the fair-haired
Aryan, modified by residence on the mountains, and
perhaps not without a further infusion of Mongolian
blood derived from the numerous prehistoric in-
vasions of Europe by the round-headed, lank-haired,
high-cheek-boned nomads of the Asiatic steppes.

The pure Nordic race occupied about five thousand
years ago a broad belt of territory (with perhaps
some interruptions) stretching from south - west
Russia to middle Sweden and southern Norway, and
extending southwards to the Carpathians, the Elbe,
the lower Rhine, and the Maas.

The actual birthplace of the Aryans was probably
in Russia, whence one great migration went west-
ward through north-central Europe, and another —
perhaps ten thousand years ago or even earlier —
eastward to Turkestan. The Asiatic invasion was
continued for centuries, until the antecedent popula-
tions of the Caucasus, Persia, and northern India had
been considerably "Aryanised" in regard to their

92 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

languages, myths, religious beliefs, social economy,
and even physical appearance ; though in this last
respect it is very hard to find at the present day any
examples of the pure Aryan type in Asia.

The early conquests and colonisations of the
Nordic Aryans in central and western Europe
produced the Keltic group of languages, of which it
has been said that they combined an Aryan vocabulary
with a Berber grammar. The speakers of these
Keltic tongues were sometimes purely Nordic in
appearance, so that the Romans were unable to
distinguish physically between Keltic Gauls and
Teutonic Germans ; indeed, the very term " German "
is said to be the name of Keltic tribes living on
the north side of the Rhine.-^ But other peoples,
associated anciently with a Keltic speech in the
upper Rhine valley, Bohemia, modern Austria, and
Hungary, were of the Alpine composite type, with
shorter stature, dark brown hair, and grey eyes. On
the other hand, Kelts — Galatians — who migrated
about two thousand years ago to Asia Minor were
quite blond, and so were the Brythonic and perhaps
the Goidelic Kelts that invaded Britain and Ireland.

Other interminglings with the northern fringe of
the Mediterranean and Armenian races produced the
Slavs, a people of most mixed physical elements,
some of them, like the earlier Kelts, being thoroughly
Nordic in appearance (fair-haired, blue-eyed), others
presenting in their facial features obvious traces of a
Mongolian intermixture, and even of their being the

1 And even to have still older and more widespread connections
as an Aryan tribal name, being connected with Krim (Crimea) Cara-
mania, Kerman (in Persia), and other variants of K-r-m-n.

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 93

residuum of peoples far more ancient than the Aryan
development and difficult to classify by any other
term than Neanderthaloid.^ The fact that not a few
Germans of the north and east, like a good many
Scottish and Irish folk, offer a very marked re-
semblance in their physiognomy to North American
Indians, probably arises from this cause : that before
the development of the Aryan peoples — the per-
fected type of White man — there was a mingling in
Northern Europe and Northern Asia between the
ancient, unspecialised Caucasian stock and that of
the early Mongols (represented to-day in a modified
form by the Eskimo). The amalgam produced was

^ This term implies resemblance if not affinity to the extinct
species of Man {Homo primigenius) typified by the calvarium
of Neanderthal. A number of discoveries of human remains during
the last hundred years in southern Germany and northern Austria-
Hungary, as well as in Belgium, France, and Spain, have shown
that there existed in Central and Western Europe, down to a period
perhaps not more distant than thirty thousand years ago, a very
remarkable form of human being, with a cranial capacity not
only equal to the cerebral development in savage races to-day,
but even on a par with the brains of some civilised peoples. Yet
the form of the face and of the limb-bones indicates an affinity with
anthropoid apes much more decided than anything which can be
traced in any existing human race to-day, except amongst the
Australoids of Australia. Although Homo primigenius (I put on
one side as foolish the unnecessary multiplication of specific names
— heidelbergensis, krapinensis, mousteriensis, etc.) was supplanted
by a superior type of generalised Caucasian — a type which was in
existence in Great Britain alone more than a hundred thousand
years ago — it is improbable that the lowlier Neanderthaloid race
was completely exterminated, but much more likely that its women
were spared to become the wives of their conquerors. In a modified
form Neanderthaloid Man survives in Australia and Ceylon ; and
has left traces of his intermingling in the peoples of India, Northern
Japan, and North Africa ; and even of Russia, Germany, Denmark,
and France. The Neanderthaloid features of modern skulls in
Denmark and Germany were pointed out many years ago by
Huxley and others.

94 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

evidendy for its time a very potent race, and it
seems to have ranged all round the northern regions
of the habitable globe from Ireland eastwards across
Bering's Straits to Newfoundland.

To return, however, to the consideration of the
Nordic Aryans, who in later Neolithic times occupied
so much of southern Scandinavia, western, northern
and eastern Germany, Poland and western Russia.
They were emphatically the Men of Iron — of
"blood and iron," as one of the principal creators
of modern Germany said in characterising his policy.
They were amongst the tallest of human races, and
they evolved (or they received from Asiatic experi-
menters) the industry of iron-smelting and forging.^

1 This association of iron with the advent of the Nordic or Aryan
tribes is in contradiction with theories held in some quarters and
recently expounded, but I adhere to it nevertheless (following in
the wake of English and German ethnologists) and believe it
will ultimately prove to be correct. Iron appears in the remains of
ancient Egypt about 2000 B.C., but this metal was never in great
use till after the relations with Assyria in the seventh century B.C.
So far as we can trace the history of the use of iron — and the
indications prior to 1500 B.C. are very faint — it would seem to have
been invented by the (extinct) Aryans of Turkestan and to have
penetrated thence to the shores of the Black Sea, to Persia and
Northern India, perhaps from 3000 B.c. onwards. The use of this
metal was rapidly developed by the European Aryans, who introduced
it into the Mediterranean world. It has been argued recently that
iron was first worked in Negro Africa, whence the knowledge and
use of it spread to Egypt. The process was (I believe) reversed.
From the little we know of the archaeology of Negro Africa, that
continent south of the Sahara was living in an age of stone and
copper down to the beginning of the Christian era, when from
Roman North Africa and Roman Egypt and Nubia the practice of
smelting and manufacturing iron spread over Negro Africa, some
parts of which, however, remained in an age of stone and wood
until the nineteenth century. Curiously enough, just as iron seems
to be associated with the expansion of the Aryan peoples and
languages in Eurasia, so in Negro Africa it is closely connected

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 95

Armed with iron or steel swords, spears and arrow-
heads, they descended on the Alpine, Iberian,
Lydian, and -Slgean peoples of Southern Europe
with irresistible strength. It was iron against
bronze, copper, and stone ; and iron won the day.
Probably the Aryan conquest of Europe, Asia,
and North Africa (for it is possible that prehistoric
Aryans overran Spain, setded in the Adas Moun-
tains ; and passed from Sicily over into Tunisia)
would have been far more complete, the Aryan type
of man would have survived in a much purer form,
had it not been for the effects of climate and the
transmission of germ-diseases. The theory suggested
within the last few years that the Greek and Roman
Empires crumbled because of the dying out of the
races which had founded them, and that this decima-
tion of a superior people was caused by the spread
of malarial fever (derived from the veins of the
pre-existing negroid and Iberian stocks), is not
wholly fantastic. The Nordic peoples are splendid
colonisers, farmers, herdsmen, gardeners, soldiers,
sailors, but they are not persistent as townsmen, at
least not for generation after generation in large
centres of population. They want great spaces, pure
air, plenty of elbow room. The evidence collected
by Dr F. C. Shrubsall and others goes to show that
the tall, blond, blue-eyed men and women die out

with the similar migrations and linguistic conquests of the Bantu,
Songhai, Hausa, and Mandingo negroes.

From the reasearches made in the prehistoric burial ground at
Hallstatt, in Upper Austria, by Baron von Sacken and others, it is
concluded by Professor W. Ridgeway that the iron culture of
German and Keltic Europe "must have originated long before
1350 B.C,," probably two thousand years before the Christian era.

96 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

by degrees in the bigger English towns and give
place to citizens not quite so tall, and with a marked
nigrescence in eyes, hair, and even skin -colour.
The tall, fair-haired type is far more susceptible to
tuberculosis and other germ - diseases than are the
shorter, darker races. When the Nordic peoples
spread over the warmer parts of Europe and Asia,
they were only able to preserve their physical
superiority if they avoided too much interbreeding
with the darker races, and if they could obtain in the
regions of the south a mountain climate that not
only reproduced the bracing cold of the north, but
was unfavourable to the existence of germ-carrying
insects. Thus we find Nordic types surviving in
Afghanistan, in Northern Persia, in the Caucasus,
and in the Atlas. These are the blond Berbers,
the red or brown-haired, grey-eyed Afghans and
Khorassanis, the "fair" Jews and Druses, for
example.

Prehistoric invasions of the Balkan Peninsula
brought in the fair-haired, blue-eyed Greeks, the
semi-barbarian conquerors of the Mukenaian and
Min6an kingdoms. Tribes nearly allied to the
Ancient Greeks diverged from them in lUyria,
invaded the Italian Peninsula, and became the
ancestors of the Sabines, Oscans, Latins, etc.

The parent ancestral speech of the German tribes
about four to five thousand years ago was probably
closely approximated in syntax, and in the form and
pronunciation of words, to the other progenitors of
European Aryan languages, especially the Lithuanian,
Slav, Greek, and Italic dialects. Keltic speech was
perhaps a little more diiFerent owing to its absorption

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 97

of non- Aryan elements ; but if we can judge of
prehistoric German from what its eastern sister,
the Gothic language, was like as late as the fifth
century a.c., we can, without too much straining
of facts, say that the prehistoric Greeks, when they
passed across Hungary into the mountainous regions
of the Balkans, and equally the early Italic invaders
of Italy, were simply another branch of the Teutonic
peoples later in separation than the Kelts, with whom,
however, both the Italic and the Hellenic tribes were
much interwoven.

The dark-haired, sallow Iberian, Ligurian, and
Lydian-Etruscan peoples have left an ineiFaceable
impression on the physical type prevailing in Italy
and Sicily, though they lost the use of their own non-
Aryan languages and adopted various Italic dialects,
of which Latin, Italian, and Sicilian are the only
survivors. But even as late as the foundation of
the Roman Empire the dominant physical type in
Italy — the natural nobility, so to speak, of the
country — was Nordic in body as well as in speech.
Julius Caesar has the facial lineaments of a Nordic
Aryan, though he is said to have had " black " {i.e.
brown) eyes. Very English or German in physiog-
nomy were also most of the notabilities in the palmy
days of Greece, to judge by their portrait-busts and
the types of male and female beauty most in favour
— as far south as Cyprus — in the periods when
Greek art had become realistic and was released
from the influence of an vEgean standard of beauty.
And inasmuch as the Nordic type to-ciay is still
the dominant one in Great Britain and Ireland, in
Southern Scandinavia, Holland, and much of Ger-

7

98 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

many, we understand why the " Greek " type
appears so frequently amongst these peoples, as
well as in Norman and Frankish France, German
Switzerland, and North Italy. Pass through that
superb gallery in the British Museum with the
busts and statues of Roman emperors, empresses,
and statesmen on either side, and, with a few
exceptions (patently due to the fact that the in-
dividual represented was a Spaniard, a Syrian, or
an African), you will seem to see the sculptured
representations of well-known English and Irish
personalities of the present day.^

The gradual dying out of the superior Aryan
type in Greece and Italy coincidently with (but not
caused by) the introduction and spread of Chris-
tianity, led to the slow decline of these regions as
lands of dominant culture and administrative power.
In came the barbarians (who were mostly only
semi-barbarians, and three-fourths of them of Nordic
race). After they had settled down in their new
homes, the renaissance of Gaul, Italy, and the
Byzantine Empire began, to be frustrated in the
last-named area by the fatal invasions of Mongol
and Turkish hordes. The north of Italy was
largely repopulated by Germanic peoples, who, with
the Scandinavian Normans, at a later date, were

' Good examples of a fine modern type of Aryan face to be
met with in England and America, as well as in Ireland and
Germany, may be seen on pp. 4 and 6 of my book on the Negro in
the New World. I am not arguing that perfect beauty, from an
sesthetic point of view, is the prerogative of the pure Aryan ; on the
contrary, it is probably in the cross between Aryan and Iberian
that such a result is achieved, as may be seen in modern Greece,
Italy, Albania, the Berbers of central Tunis, and the people of
northern Spain.

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 99

the real originators of the rebirth of Greek and
Latin culture and of the arts and sciences.

The ideal type of human being painted by the
great North Italian artists during the twelfth,
thirteenth, and two succeeding centuries, especially
in women, was a Teutonic type of golden or flaxen
hair and blue eyes. The saints and angels began
to be once more of the ideal Aryan type reproduced
in the art of classical Greece and Rome, and far
more beautiful than the sallow, black-avised, much
bedizened, oriental virgins, martyrs and seraphs
of late Roman and Byzantine art. Many of the
great names in the literature and art of the early
Italian Renaissance were obviously German in
origin. Dante was certainly of German descent
on his father's side ; his great-great-grandmother
was an Aldighieri, a patronymic derived from the
Teutonic Aldiger, and afterwards corrupted into
Alighieri. One has only to pass in review the
Christian and clan names of North Italy (more
especially) during the period between 700 and
1500 A.c. to resolve most of them back into
German elements ; and where the hero has sprung
from the humbler classes the German type of
name may persist to our own day, as in the case
of Garibaldi (Gerbald). After the revival of classical
learning, however, from the close of the fifteenth
century onwards, many Italians really of German
descent disguised that fact by assuming Greek or
Roman names.

The real vigour of France began with the invasion
of the Franks, who gave their own German name —
Francia, in its Latinised form — to the Romano-Keltic

loo VIEWS AND REVIEWS

provinces of north-eastern Gaul. The Germanisa-
tion of the Lyonnese, Narbonnese, and Aquitaine,
of Brittany and Normandy was earlier and later
carried out by Goths, Burgundians, and Norsemen.
Goths and Germans turned the Roman-Keltic-Iberian
Spain into a Teutonic empire, and contributed a
large quota to the population of northern Spain and
Portugal. Though they lost to the first Moorish
invasion of 711 a.c. what they had won from the
decaying Roman power in the fifth century, they
were not, as rulers, entirely extirpated, and from
the mountains of northern Spain in the course of
centuries the Gothic kings — at first fair-haired and
blue-eyed and with Teutonic names — slowly won
back from Arabs and Berbers the whole of the
Spanish peninsula, till Ferdinand of Castile (whose
name meant in the old Teutonic speech "life-risk-
ing ") saw the last of the Moorish kings depart from
Granada to Morocco — that Morocco wherein his
far -off successor, with another Teutonic name —
Alfonso (Hildefonso) — is striving to establish Spanish
rule.

Meantime, a French - Burgundian nobleman,
Henric ^ de Besan9on, descended from the Frankish
Dukes of Burgundy, had married an illegitimate
daughter of the King of Castile and Leon, and
had been invested by his father-in-law with the
Countship of Portugal, a fief which, under his

' This was probably the form of the name (derived from the old
German Haimric, and meaning "home ruler") which this great-
grandson of a Capetian King of France introduced into the Spanish
peninsula. It is interesting to note that his son, the first king of
Portugal, was styled "AfTonso Henriques," as who should say in
Teutonic style " Alfonso of Henry."

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY loi

son, AfFonso,^ became the Kingdom of Portugal.
This kingdom, from 1855 to 19 10, was again
ruled over by a dynasty (the Coburg-Braganza)
emanating from a Teutonic prince.

But in some respects the earliest and the most
complete German colony was England ; and the
settlement of England and eastern Scotland by
Saxons, Jutes, and Angles, beginning in 449, ended
in the seventeenth century by imposing on Great
Britain and Ireland a population predominantly
German in origin, character, and language. It has
even been thought by some ethnologists — deriving
the idea from Tacitus and from other suggestions in
Roman descriptions of Scotland — that the Caledonians
were of German or Scandinavian origin, and that the
Teutonic invasion of Great Britain had begun before
the Romans came there. Apart from the historical
Norse and Danish settlements in Scotland, Ireland,
Man, and England — settlements which have con-
tributed a most important and valuable element to
the Irish population — the Germanisation of all these
countries — and additionally of Wales — was continued
and intensified during the reigns of the Plantagenet
kings by the importation of " Flemings " (really
Hollanders and Frisians, for the most part), who
were planted in East Anglia, on the Frith of Forth,
in south Wales and in eastern Ireland, mainly for
the purpose of introducing useful arts and manu-
factures. The Frisians of course spoke a kind of
continental Anglo-Saxon, which survives as a living
language in Dutch and German Friesland to the
present day ; whilst the Hollanders (one people with
the Flemings farther south) were none other than

I02 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

modern Franks, descendants of those Franks who
retained their Low German speech instead of adopt-
ing the romance dialects of Gaul. When the term
" Fleming " went out of use in England in the
sixteenth century, it was succeeded by the word
" Dutch " (Duitsch, Deutsch), which was at first
applied to all the German peoples, High and Low,
without distinction, but in the next century became
restricted to the natives of the United Provinces of
Holland, Friesland, and Zeeland.

The Dutch were helped to gain their independence
from the Spanish Empire by German princes of
Nassau. A descendant of these, virtually the
president of the Dutch republic, became King of
England and Scotland, and conquered Ireland mainly
with the aid of Dutch, German, and Danish troops.
The Dutch persons of his household became im-
portant members of the British nobility, and under
the reign of William III. the English language
adopted many Dutch words ; the English navy,
English industries, commerce, architecture, and
horticulture borrowed many excellent ideas from
the painstaking Hollanders. The English King's
Stadhoudership of the United Provinces involved
him in continental wars, with the German Holy
Roman Empire as his ally. German troops were
taken into British pay and rendered right good
service in our foreign expeditions. For example,
Gibraltar was captured by a German force under
Prince George of Hessen-Darmstadt, with the
support and co-operation of the British Navy.

The accession to the Throne of the House of
Hanover renewed the Germanisation of England and

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 103

of the British Empire generally. Under George I.
the only standing army in England was a German
force. Whenever Britain found herself henceforth
engaged in foreign and colonial wars, German
soldiers were recruited or subsidised to reinforce the
very slender British Army, the bulk of which had to
be kept at home till the middle of the eighteenth
century to repress Jacobinism. There is scarcely
one of our possessions beyond the seas acquired
during the eighteenth century which has not at one
time or another witnessed the landing of German
troops in British pay. The part played by the
brave German soldiers in the war which followed
the rebellion of the United States is well known,
and practically led to that German colonisation of
the United States which has had such huge results
— a quota of 13,000,000 in the United States
population of to-day speaking German and being of
German descent.

So it was likewise in the Napoleonic wars, the
Germanising of the British Army being facilitated
by the union under one monarch of Hanover and
Britain. There were German contingents in nearly
every foreign war of importance down to the
Crimean War, the last over-sea fight in which
German troops took part as a portion of the British
Army. Moreover, few of these contingents, when
these wars were over, returned to Germany. Some of
them settled down in England, their names by some
slight change soon assuming an English sound ; others
went out as colonists to Australia, New Zealand,
South Africa, Canada, and the West Indies.

The marriage of Queen Victoria gave a fresh

I04 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

impetus to the Germanisation of Britain. Notable
Germans were more or less directly brought to
this country's service by those far-seeing helpers
of England, Leopold and Albert of Saxe-Coburg.
They explored unknown lands for the British
Empire, founded colleges of music and chemistry,
schools and museums of art, studies in philology,
ancient and modern ; improved both theatre and
drama, extended horticulture, and assisted to make
Kew Gardens and Herbarium what they are and have
been to an empire in which economic botany is a
matter of necessity, not a pretty luxury, as some of
our home-bred statesmen have imagined. Glance
through the eminent names which have become
famous during the nineteenth century in British
Colonial and Imperial history, in "British exploration,
biology, metallurgy, painting, music, journalism,
banking, law-making and expounding, soldiering
and seamanship, and note how many are of recent
or immediate German extraction. For example : the
Barings (including Lord Cromer), the Rothschilds,
the Schusters, the Goschens, the Goldsmids (not
forgetting that excellent engineer officer, and public
servant in India and Persia, General Sir Frederic
Goldsmid) ; Sir Julius Wernher, Alfred Beit, Sir
Ernest Cassel, Sir Edgar Speyer, Baron von Schroder,
Sir Felix Schwann ; Sir William Herschel (the astro-
nomer) ; Lord Herschell (the Chancellor) ; Heinrich
Barth, Adolf Overweg, Eduard Vogel (explorers of
what is now Northern Nigeria) ; Ludwig Krapf (the
discoverer of Mount Kenia), Johann Rebmann (the
first to sight Kilimanjaro), Karl Mauch (the dis-
coverer of Zimbabwe, and principal pioneer of

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 105

Rhodesia), Dr F. W. L. Leichardt of Australia — all
great explorers, and all chiefly concerned in exploring
regions which were or which became part of the
British Empire ; W. GifFord Palgrave (the orientalist
and diplomatist) ; Sigismund Koelle (Polyglotta
Africana), W. I. Bleek (the Bantu languages),
C. A. L. Reichardt (Fula language), J. F. SchQn
(Hausa), Friedrich von Max MuUer (Aryan
languages), all of them great philologists ; Sir
William Siemens (the electrician), A. von Hofmann
(the celebrated chemist in the middle nineteenth cen-
tury), Frederick Seebohm (the ornithologist), H. F.
Gadow and R. F. ScharflF of Cambridge and Dublin
(well-known zoologists), Gustav Mann and Dr Otto
Stapf (government botanists), Dr Albert Gunther
(once Keeper of the British Museum Galleries of
Natural History and a great authority on the classi-
fication of fish). Sir William Schlich (Indian forestry),
Baron Sir Ferdinand von MttUer (the explorer-
botanist of Australia, who introduced to the notice
of the world the therapeutic properties of the
Eucalyptus globulus), George MuUer (the orphanage-
philanthropist of Bristol), Sir Julius Vogel (New
Zealand statesman). Sir Hubert von Herkomer
(painter), and Sir Edgar Boehm (sculptor).
Sir H. Beerbohm Tree (actor), Prince Louis of
Battenberg (admiral). Sir Henry Drummond
WolfF, Sir Ernest Satow, Sir Maurice de
Bunsen (ambassadors), and Sir Everard Im Thurn
(the Americanist and Colonial Governor). The
foregoing indeed are only a selection from a very
long list. They are all persons of German origin
(most of them born in Germany) who served

io6 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

Great Britain or her colonies in one way or another,
either as members of her Government, employes of
the Church Missionary Society, notabilities in the
finance of London and Manchester, leading men in
British science and scholarship, persons of distinc-
tion in the diplomatic or colonial services, and in
those arts and industries which have played a great
part in the recent development of British wealth and
influence.

Of course, to such a list might be added a
catalogue of the benefits conferred on Great
Britain by the immigration of notable Frenchmen,
especially the Huguenots and their descendants
of the eighteenth century : and not a few Italians
in England and Ireland, Greeks, Asiatic Jews, and
even Armenians, have become noteworthy citizens
of the United Kingdom. Part of the world-wide
power and influence of these two islands in the
Northern Atlantic arises from their inherent cosmo-
politanism, their faculty for utilising alien talent.
Nevertheless, I have little doubt that if the whole
subject could be reduced to a mathematical formula,
it would be found that Germans have done more
than any other nationality on the Continent of
Europe to assist their English brothers to found
and maintain what is at present the foremost Empire
in the whole world for population and wealth.

Similarly, long after the Gothic, Prankish, and
Burgundian invasions which turned Gaul into
France, people of Teutonic race have continued
to make France powerful at home and abroad,
to infuse energy, uprightness, and industry into
her peoples. The original Kingdom of France

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 107

became the ruler of Provence and Gascony
largely through its Norman, Picard, and Lorrain
soldiers. After the annexation to France in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of all Alsace
and Lorraine, we find German names becoming
more and more prominent amongst the notabilities
of France, especially in the army, the legislature,
and finance. Some of the best of Napoleon's
marshals bore German names, and in the war of
1 870-1 the frequency of German names amongst
the officers and men of the French Army was a
source of great confusion to those who followed the
progress of the war in newspapers. Subsequently
even though France has lost these two provinces,
she has retained many subjects with German
names and speaking the German language, who
preferred French citizenship to a home within the
German Empire. Several thousand of these have
established themselves in Algeria, where they have
been amongst the best elements in the European
settlement of that region, and where many of them
still retain the use of the German tongue amongst
themselves. Some of the most noteworthy feats
in recent colonial achievements and African wars
under the French flag have been carried out by
men of Germian names.

Equally remarkable is the Germanisation of
Russia, which has been going on with occasional
interruptions since the beginning of the eighteenth
century, though, of course, a considerable substratum
of the Russian people is of Teutonic type and is
descended from ancient Gothic and German settle-
ments. German colonies, now populous, have been

io8 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

planted by Russian emperors or empresses in the
south-east of Russia. Prominent personages in the
Russian diplomatic service, in the army and the
navy, bear German names ; the Russian dynasty, like
the royal families of Sweden, Norway, Denmark,
Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, the British Empire,^
Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Greece, and Rumania, is mainly
of Germanic origin. There is scarcely a member
of these ruling houses which cannot speak German
with complete fluency, and cannot call each other
cousin in the strictest sense of the word. If the
Duke of Orleans were to become King of France,
or Prince Victor Napoleon be placed at the head
of a French Empire, either of these personages
would be found to be almost wholly Germanic in
composition, so far as a preponderance of ancestors
went. Of course, I include under the term Germanic
the German family of the Habsburgs.

Germany, in fact, has sent out her sons and
daughters for many centuries to rule and settle
the world, either as princes, or soldiers, mechanics,
peasants, or men of science. She has been a most
fruitful breeding-ground of peoples who in the
course of history have quitted her shores or her
frontiers in hundreds and thousands at a time to
become English in Kelt-Iberian Britain, French
and Burgundian in France, Lombards in Italy,
Transylvanians in Hungary, and natives of the
Baltic, Polish, Ekaterinoslav, Taurida, and Don

1 The sovereigns of the dynasty which has ruled over Great
Britain and Ireland for nearly two hundred years have derived
their origin from the royal or princely houses of the Rhenish
Palatinate, of Brunswick, Hanover, Ansbach, Mecklenburg, Saxony,
Schleswig-Holstein, and Wurttemberg.

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 109

Cossacks Provinces in Russia. Through the
Habsburg union with Spain we find German
sea-captains, artillerymen, mechanics, doctors, sur-
veyors, and colonists proceeding again and again
to the West Indies, the Philippines, the Spanish
Main, and South America, from the sixteenth to
the eighteenth centuries ; and before and after
these regions became republics there arrived many
Germans to explore them for science,^ or settle in
them as patient cultivators struggling — and finally
with success — against all the seven devils of
tropical nature — insects, floods, droughts, blights,
lightning, hurricane, and germ-diseases.

' The names of Alexander von Humboldt, J. B. von Spix,
Carl von Martius, and Prince Max zu Neuwied will at once
occur to the memory of an Americanist.

CHAPTER V

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY

II

THE FOREIGN RELATIONS AND COLONIAL ASPIRATIONS
OF MODERN GERMANY

One result of this schwHrmerei, this continual boiling
over of the German pot in constant outpouring of
German people, has been, since the third and fourth
centuries of the present era, to leave great gaps in
Germany itself, which have been filled up by Slavs,
Mongols and Tatars, and by the immigration and
multiplication of Jews since the ninth century a.c. ;
so that at the present day in Central and Eastern
Germany there is a considerable sprinkling, or there
are solid blocks of non-Germanic peoples. In Posen,
for example, the German-speaking population is in a
minority, and this province is more discontented with
its German nationality even than Frenchified Alsace-
Lorraine. Yet the people of Posen are, without
knowing it, largely Teutonic in blood. But more
than a million of them speak a Slav language, and
the sympathies of these Prussian Poles are with the
Slavs and Lithuanians. Bohemia, once Keltic and
German, is now Slav and German ; and so self-

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY in

assertive is the Slavic element, that foreigners who
do not know Bohemia are apt to think of it as a
country with a uniform Chekh population of Slavic
speech ; whereas more than one-third of the popula-
tion of Bohemia is German in descent and language.
Attention has been drawn recently to the Polish
immigration into the industrial regions of Rhenish
Prussia and Westphalia, but this is no menace to
German unity, for physically many of these Poles
are indistinguishable from the Nordic type of
Teuton, and their children, born so far away from
German or Russian Poland, nearly always grow up
speaking German. Still, the German Empire cannot
be regarded as absolutely homogeneous so long as
it contains such considerable Slavonic elements,
which for a long time to come will be a source
of weakness and divided counsels, until the day
when, under the Austrian as well as the German
monarchies, Slavs agree to unite with the pre-
ponderating German element in a common foreign
policy, provided that in home matters they possess
a reasonable measure of self-rule.

There are something like 590,000 avowed Jews
at the present day in the German Empire ; but the
actual Jewish element in the population (chiefly
in the towns) is, as in Holland and Belgium,
far greater. During the nineteenth century quite
50 per cent, of the German, Austro-Hungarian,
and Belgian Jews (as also in France and Italy)
quietly abandoned Judaism and became Christians,
usually Roman Catholics. This change of religion,
often eiFected by the children being brought up as
Christians, opened to the still-disliked Israelite all

112 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

careers ; and, if there were money to back their
aspirations, all alliances and social circles. Conse-
quently in the town populations, on the stage, in
the concert room, in the learned professions and
the universities, the laboratories, the banks and
shops, there recur, ever and again, that undying
Aramaean profile, that melting Assyrian eye (or its
less common alternative, the blue eye with the large
pink cornea), those hirsute cheeks and full lips
which reveal the fact that German towns [like
London, Chatham, Rochester, Portsmouth, Bristol,
Manchester, Liverpool, and Hull, like Amster-
dam, Marseilles, and Lisbon, Salonika, Venice,
Warsaw, and Odessa] are permeated through
and through by that marvellous race, that com-
pound of Mediterranean man, Armenian, Dravidian,
Medic Aryan, and Elamite negroid, which was
generated chiefly in Mesopotamia and western
Persia ; and which, though for some undiscovered
reason it inspires dislike among the Arabs and
Berbers, and most of all among the Nordic Aryans,
has brought into the European world and Neo-
America music, an appreciation of beauty, a dexterity
in manufacture, a suppleness of intellect, a skill of
hand and eye, an eloquence of tongue, a genius for
mathematics and finance which are all present in
Germany in a high degree. Germany, like the
British Empire and the United States, owes her
great position in the modern world to the Jews in
her midst, quite as much as to the fighting quality
of her soldiers and sailors, and the steady industry
of her artisans. Spain, on the other hand, has never
yet recovered from her expulsion of the Jews :

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 113

Russia is fettered in finance and thwarted in her
alliances by her hatred of the Israelite.

The very exhaustion which overmuch emigration
into surrounding countries — north, east, south, and
west — had produced, made Germany an inarticulate
power without national force for centuries. Such
nationality as there was massed itself for a time
under the Holy Roman Empire, which directed its
efforts persistently towards the Germanising of Italy,
Hungary, and Croatia. In consequence of the states
of Austria becoming the Emperor's appanage and
the deflecting of Austrian interest away from Germany
proper, the power of Brandenburg-Prussia arose in
the north and brought about a great cleavage in
German nationality. In imitation of Brandenburg,
all the other electoral divisions of the Holy Roman
Empire aspired to become kingdoms, or at any rate
independent grand duchies and principalities. This
condition really lasted down to 1866, when Austria
ceased — somewhat unnaturally — to be a part of the
German Confederation (in 1806 the Holy Roman
Empire had changed its name to " Austrian " ), and
Prussia, after two victorious wars, definitely assumed
that leadership in Germany which grew into the
German Empire of 1870. It is almost amusing, in
glancing through volumes of treaties and diplomatic
negotiations prior to 1866, to see the number of
independent sovereign states into which Germany
was divided in her foreign as well as in her home
affairs. If the Kingdom of Hanover or some
minute Saxon or Thuringian duchy wished to make
maps of its territory, it was most careful in its
surveys to ignore completely the intervening or

8

114 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

intrusive lands belonging to some other German
Power. In the conclusion of any European conven-
tion or bargain which required the adhesion of other
States besides the six great Powers, there would be
the signatures of the plenipotentiaries of some
twenty-five different German States, each appending
his signature by the authorisation " of his august
master."

So long as this condition of affairs prevailed, any
idea of German colonies or possessions beyond the
seas under a comprehensively German flag was out
of the question. Austria had attempted fitfully to
create an East India Company in the eighteenth
century, but with a complete lack of sea-power had
found the project impossible. Brandenburg, before it
became Prussia, had tried to obtain a foothold on the
west coast of Africa, and Frederick the Great founded
a Prussian company (the Bengalische Handelsgesell-
schaft), trading from Emden (Ost Friesland) to the
East Indies, but for the same reason had found such
projects unsustainable. In the middle of the fifties
of the nineteenth century the idea began to arise in
the minds of a few Prussian explorers or persons
interested in over-sea trade, that Prussia might
become a colonising nation. But these aspirations
were not expressed with any coherency or backed by
any intention until the following decade, when
Baron von der Decken, a Hanoverian explorer, had
at his own expense conducted an important scientific
expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro, the loftiest of the
African Snow Mountains, which had been discovered
in 1854 by the two Wtlrttemberg missionaries, Krapf
and Rebmann, Von der Decken was greatly struck

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 115

with the possibility of founding a Prussian East
African Empire in the Zanzibar territories, and there
is no doubt that he originated a notion which has
since borne fruit. The Prussian Government in
1869 seems to have had some vague intention of
African enterprise when it despatched Dr Nachtigal
to the Sheikh of Bornu in the Central Sudan with
presents and a letter of thanks for the kindness
shown to German travellers attached to the British
expeditions of the fifties.

But for some reason, after the definite founding
of the German Empire in 1 870-1, when at last a
single flag* covered all the foreign relations of
Germany, no immediate attempts were made in the
direction of colonial enterprise ; even, in fact, the
projects of traders and journalists in that direction
were somewhat snubbed. Yet all the time between
1 87 1 and 1883 German commercial interests were
being rapidly developed in the Pacific Ocean, on the
west coast of Africa, at Zanzibar, in South Africa,
and in the West Indies. Between 1882 and 1884
a number of adventurers were visiting little known
coasts or islands of the tropical world, or passing
beyond coast barriers into unknown Africa, and
feeling their way towards the creation of German
colonies by treaties with native chiefs.

At this period it had been tacitly assumed by the
British Government that all parts of the world which
did not belong to recognised European and Asiatic
Powers were possible future possessions of the
British Empire. At the same time, the expense of

' It was in 1868 that the black, white, and red flag was adopted
for the shipping of the North German Confederation.

ii6 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

seizing or acquiring, and afterwards administering
and defending savage lands, was fully realised, and
in the desire to avoid outlay in this direction, which
perhaps would not be permitted by the British
Treasury or Parliament, it was thought preferable
that there should be no hoisting of the British flag
over all the islands or coasts in proximity to a
British colony. The emptiness or the native inde-
pendence of such quite suited our purpose, so long
as it was not interfered with by other European or
Asiatic Powers. Thus, though we were actually
invited by the native chiefs to take over Damara-
land and add it to British South Africa, we declined.
Similarly, we cancelled the Queensland annexation
of New Guinea and made no attempts to unite our
scattered colonies in West Africa, or to give a more
definite shape to the consular control which we
exercised over the Lower Niger. We really ruled
through our agent at Zanzibar all the east coast of
Africa which was not Portuguese, and we regarded
all the Pacific Islands not taken by the French in
the spasm of colony-making which distinguished
the reign of Louis Philippe as potentially British,
and quite sufficiently governed by the visits of men-
of-war and the establishment of missionaries.

Therefore, when this placid contentment of the
early eighties was rudely broken by the hoisting of
the German flag at the Cameroons, on the South-
west African coast, in the hinterland of Zanzibar,
on the north-east coast of New Guinea, and In
Micronesia, we were thrown into a frenzy of jealous
anger. The rivalry of France in colonial matters
we had been accustomed to for centuries, and the

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 117

sea-power gained during the Napoleonic wars had
enabled us to take from France and Holland all the
more covetable amongst their over-sea possessions.
We feared the advance of Russia in Asia and shaped
our foreign policy to meet it, but that it could ever
be Germany which might not only contest with us
the supremacy of the seas, but aspire to rank with
us as an African and an Asiatic power, was scarcely
conceived by any politician at home, and was only
thought of by one or two British diplomatists abroad.
This colonial expansion of the new German
Empire was followed by an immense development
of the German mercantile marine, so that whereas
prior to 1870 the steamers bound for foreign parts
under German flags (chiefly from Hamburg and
Bremen) had probably a gross tonnage of only
85,000, in 1 9 10 this had risen to a total of
2,200,000 tons, and the German mercantile marine
had become the third in the world, only the British
Empire and the United States being ahead — and
still very much ahead. Then, although Germany in
her new colonies upheld the principle of free trade
and low customs duties, in Germany itself the policy
of protection came into force in 1879. Whatever
may have been the ultimate results of such a policy,
the immediate effects were to create and sustain
German industries to an extent which not only
enabled Germany to manufacture many things that
she had hitherto bought from Britain, but to flood
Great Britain, British Crown Colonies and Protec-
torates and India with goods which competed closely
with our home manufactures, because they were
cheaper and yet not always inferior in quality. For

ii8 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

a time it was thought this influx might be stemmed
by stigmatising the goods with a mark "made in
Germany," but this soon ceased to be a disadvantage.
No one is deterred now from purchasing things
proclaimed as of German origin by the thought that
they will be inferior in quality or make, as compared
with the home-made article. Tawdry, shoddy,
adulterated, and ill-finished some of these German
manufactured goods may have been in the early
days when Germany was trying her 'prentice
hand, but they soon came up to the sound British
standard : nay, in some ways surpassed our occa-
sionally old-fashiorted wares. Herein came into play
another factor : the splendid, practical education
which Germany, like Scotland, had been imparting
for three-quarters of a century to her industrious
people ; all the time that in England and Ireland
the clergy of all denominations, the squirearchy, the
ladies-bountiful, the municipalities, the Sabbatarians
were striving to stifle, thwart, block, and misdirect
the education of the masses — ah, and of the classes too.
Protection and a fine technical education at home
enabled Germany to rival us with her industrial
products in our home markets and abroad. As we
are the exporters or the transmitters of enormous
quantities of raw products, and as we still manu-
facture some things better than the Germans are
able to do — for climatic reasons, amongst others,
as in the case of cotton goods — British export trade
to Germany has still held its own, and at present
stands at about an annual value of ;/^3 7,000,000,^

1 This is for the United Kingdom only : the total value of goods
from the British Empire imported into Germany in 1910 was about

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 119

while we have not scorned to learn from German
methods and processes, and by waking up in regard
to technical education can now beat Germany some-
times in her own field or actually drive her out
of foreign markets where, from one fair cause or
another, we possess some local advantage. Never-
theless the trade rivalry which began to make itself
felt after 1880 added spleen to the vexation caused
by rivalry in steamship lines, in colony building and
protectorate founding. For a long while our people
writhed under the inability to fight Germany with
her own weapons, to put import duties on German
goods equivalent to the protective duties which the
German tariff imposed since 1879 on British goods.
Many politicians and writers forgot the different
geographical and economic conditions of the two
countries. We must import food and raw materials
cheaply, and cannot grow such things in suflficient
quantities on our limited home soil. Germany
is a large country and to a certain extent is
able to grow a good many things at home which we
must import. Moreover, she had industries to
create, and we had them already created when this
rivalry began.

Yet all these factors combined to arouse an
inimical feeling on the part of the British people
towards Germany from 1884 onwards — chiefly over
colonial expansion — a feeling which was appeased by
the East African pact of 1890, yet quickened again

^47,000,000. The value of our United Kingdom imports from
Germany during 1910 was ;£62,ooo,ooo, in round figures, making a
total trade of ;£99,ooo,ooo. Our total trade with British India
during the same period was ;£89,ooo,ooo.

I20 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

by the Jameson raid and the Emperor's telegram of
1895-6. Since then a British dislike of Germany,
has been matched by a growing anger in Germany
against Great Britain. The conclusion of the South
African war, if not commensurate with the desires
of the Jingo party in Britain, at any rate founded
a united South African nation and left no room or
possibility for a great colony dependent on Germany :
in fact, German South-west Africa became henceforth
as much a menaced possession as Spanish Florida
was after the foundation of the United States. The
Anglo- Japanese alliance, the success of the Japanese,
the need for Russia to come to terms with Britain In
Asia, the consequent drawing together of France and
the United Kingdom, and finally the parcelling out
of the weak, disorderly, barbarous parts of the world
into spheres of Russian, Japanese, French, British,
Belgian, Italian, United States' influence somehow
left the German Empire and its Austrian ally a little
side-tracked. Watchers in these countries saw the
world narrowing into a few great empires and con-
federations which might in their tariffs differentiate
against Austro-German commerce,^ or at any rate
deprive it of great opportunities presented by the
development of new lands.

Yet more than ever Germany was in need of an
outlet for her enormously developed industries.
She wanted — as also Austria — lands in which vast
quantities of raw products could be found or grown

' For some time past Germany has felt it to be a growing
grievance that when France takes possession of a country (Mada-
gascar, Tunis, Algeria, Indo-China, etc.), she at once tries to shut
out foreign commerce by a tariff or other conditions specially
favouring French goods.

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 121

— especially cotton, iron, and coal — and to which
manufactures could be sent. And, further, there was
that vaguely defined desire which comes to all
successful peoples — the wish to extend the home
empire over other kingdoms, to subjugate, control,
educate other peoples. Where could Germany look
to found such an empire if she did not strike soon .''
All North Africa would soon be Spanish, French,
Italian, and British ; Northern Asia was Russia's ;
Southern Asia was .the appanage of Britain, France,
and Holland ; the Americas were forbidden to
Germany by the United States ; the best parts of
Tropical Africa belonged to someone else. And in
all this it seemed to Germany that more than any
other obstacle the veto of England lay across her
path (her vision was distorted, but her guess was
mainly right) : England who at conferences and by
treaties and understandings was willing to agree to
Belgium, the United States, Spain, France, Russia,
Portugal, Greece, Bulgaria getting, annexing,
occupying something, but never Germany or Austria,
except with a tremendous outcry and veiled threats
of war.

At one time it seemed that the only sphere of
operations left open to Austria and Germany was the
Nearer East, the Turkish Empire. The first feint
made in this direction was the Baghdad Railway,
but this enterprise was crippled in 1904 by the
refusal of France and England to agree to those
modifications of the Turkish customs' tariff which
would enable money to be raised for the subsidising
of such an expensive work ; and later in 1910-1 1 by
British opposition to German-Turkish control of the

122 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

Persian Gulf outlet of this line — in other words, to
the eventual extension of German influence to the
western end of the Persian Gulf. Germany is still
very poor in capital. She cannot, like Britain,
France, or the United States, finance great operations
outside her own country with her people's own funds.
There are various ways in which France, and in a
lesser degree Britain, might facilitate the obtaining
of money by Germany for developing the Turkish
Empire, and some of these ways lie in Turkey itself,
over the home finance of which Britain and France
are able to exercise enormous influence through their
connection with the Turkish debt and the Imperial
Ottoman Bank. They will not let Germany into
these concerns ; France because she is very jealous
of maintaining French influence in the Levant
(Smyrna and Syria), and still more wants to make
things as difficult as possible for Germany so long as
Germany withholds from her some satisfaction in
regard to Alsace-Lorraine ; Britain because she has
very large commercial interests in the Turkish
Empire (or thinks she has) which she is loath to
give up. In fact, to the almost morbid imagination
of Germany it would seem as if Britain and France
contrived to gird her and Austria about with a ring
of Scandinavian, Latin, and Slav nations, and by
putting her in a financial strait-waistcoat, to prevent
her expansion in any direction not pleasing to them.
It is sometimes hinted that in this policy the two
great Western Powers not only have all the support
that Russia can give them, but have even engaged
the sympathies of Hungary. Indeed, I have been
told in Germany that the Hungarian obstacle — from

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 123

the Adriatic to the frontiers of Rumania — in the way
of an overland Drang nach Osten was such a serious
one that Germany must approach Asia Minor by a
sea route. This, again, could only be by favour of
the Western Powers, so long as the Germans were
not supreme on the sea and had no foothold on the
coast of Morocco which might force the Straits of
Gibraltar, or — to follow quite another line of
advance — no possession of Trieste and Corfu by
arrangement with Austria and Greece.

Some German visionaries have thought that the
dream of the Near East should be abandoned, and
that the best outlet for German energy lay in North
Africa. German explorers had figured very pro-
minently in the exploration of Tripoli, southern
Tunis, and, above all, Morocco. It was known
that the Turkish hold over the Tripolitaine was
very slight, and might be made use of at any time
either by the substitution of an Austro-German
concessionaire company or by some more direct
form of German control. The French position
in Algeria was not without its flaws and weak-
nesses. If only Germany could get a foothold in
Morocco — such a share as had been proposed to
her by Mr Chamberlain in 1899 — from such a base
as this she might shoulder France out of North
Africa and lay the foundations of the German over-
seas empire in Mauretania, with an eventual
extension over Senegambia and French Nigeria.
Stranger things had happened than that in the
coups de foudre and coups daudace which had built up
the British dominions across the seas.

But in thus marking out for herself an Atlantic

124 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

future in preference to a Levantine Empire, Germany
was coming into a sharper antagonism with Britain
than ever before : a German establishment on the
Atlantic coast of Morocco in conjunction with the
German hold over the North Sea coasts might crush
the British naval power in home waters between
two fulcra ; the German establishment on the
Mediterranean coast of North Africa might threaten
the Mediterranean route to India and the Far East
and undermine the British control over Egypt.

It is, of course, often denied that Germany had
any intention whatever of seeking a territorial foot-
hold in North Africa, and that the Emperor's visit
to Tangiers in 1905 and the despatch of the gun-
boat to Agadir in 1 9 1 1 were only protests against
the threatened absorption of a new trading area
into the protectionist circle of French possessions
without any compensation or any negotiation with
Germany. Also, that the Agadir demonstration
was made more with the view of forcing France
into an arrangement regarding the French, and
possibly the Belgian Congo, which would give
Germany some chance of finding in the creation
of a vast central African empire consolation for
her many disappointments and frustrations else-
where. Personally, I think German diplomacy did
believe there was a chance of getting a port —
Mogador — in Southern Morocco, and that before
a resolute attitude France, in order to have nearly
all the rest of Morocco and to avoid a war with
Germany, would give way. The absolute determina-
tion of the French, in what for them was a life-and-
death issue, not to tolerate the presence of any

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 125

other European Power in Morocco (besides the
inevitable participation of Spain), and the equal
determination of Great Britain to stand by France
in such a contingency as a war forced on her by
Germany, upset the calculations of the German
Foreign Office,^ and a revirement of policy took
place. The Congo question was taken up instead,
and Germany, though she got very little in actual
cession of territory, ear-marked the Congo, as it
were, for future operations.

Amongst German thinkers of geographical
knowledge it has always been a grievance that
Germany, whose noteworthy explorers — Pogge,
Btlchner, Boehm, Reichard, von Wissmann,
WolfF — revealed in a series of wonderful journeys
so much of the southern half of the Congo basin,
should have come out of the Berlin Conference
of 1884 with not a particle of Congo territory.
Neither did we, although Stanley was a British
subject, together with Livingstone, Grenfell,
Cameron, Thomson, Grandy, and Tuckey. But
Great Britain, though she lost to that astute fox,
Leopold of Belgium, the richest domain of all
tropical Africa, emerged from the Conference with

' The atmosphere of the Imperial Foreign Office in Berlin
is too Prussian, too much out of touch with maritime affairs
and the world beyond Germany. You could still find in Berlin a
German preferring to evolve a camel out of his inner consciousness
in preference to obtaining a report on camels and their ways from
an expert like Carl Hagenbeck. You do not, however, to-day
find this class of mind in Hamburg, Lubeck, Bremen, Cologne,
Stuttgart, and Munich. The best foreign and colonial minister
whom modem Germany has possessed has been the Emperor
William II. himself. Otherwise the regrettable blunders and
mistakes of the Imperial Foreign Office have been due to the
almost exclusively Prussian nationality of its officials.

126 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

the protectorate of the eastern Niger. Germany
now caresses the idea, if not of supplanting Belgium,
at any rate of replacing in northern and western
Congoland both France and Portugal by purchasing
the Portuguese possessions north of Ambriz and
obtaining from France the cession of the Gaboon,
French Congo, and access to the IMubangi river of
Northern Congoland. It is known to be probable
that France might be willing to surrender these
far-away appanages of her great Sudanese empire in
return for some rectification of her eastern frontier,
to which I shall allude later. As to the Belgian
Congo, it is now considered in German commercial
circles that if the old Leopoldian concessionaire and
privileged regime is completely done away with and
the whole Congo basin is as much open to German
enterprise and commerce as it is to the subjects of
any power, including Belgium herself, there would
be no reason to impinge on Belgian political rights
in that direction ; but if there were any weakening
of the Belgian hold over these regions, then
Germany would be a most eager claimant for the
reversion of nearly all the former Congo Independent
State, only taking into consideration British claims
to the districts alluded to by Sir Edward Grey
as being in contiguity with existing British
possessions.

In 1898 the British and German Governments
are credibly reported to have concluded an arrange-
ment for the devolution of the Portuguese colonies
in Africa and Asia in case Portugal found herself
obliged to part with them. And in such case it
has been said that Germany would claim Angola

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 127

down to the present German frontier of the
Kunene-Zambezi rivers, and the province of
Mo9ambique proper, from the Ruvuma River
and Lake Nyasa to Quelimane and the Zambezi
Delta. But since those days of 1898 the relations
between Britain and Portugal have changed, and
assurances have been given to the smaller Power
that no policy of enforced liquidation of the
Portuguese Empire beyond the seas would
receive encouragement from Great Britain. On
the strength of such assurances a good deal of
British capital has been invested in railway projects
in Angola, more especially that of connecting the
mining regions of southern Congoland with the
Atlantic at Lobito Bay near Benguela. Portugal,
moreover, since she has become a republic, has
announced most firmly her intention not to part
with a square mile of her dominions in Africa or
Asia. Such pride, however, may be of the false
species. Without any derogation of national honour
or efficiency, Portugal might find it convenient to
sell to France, Germany, and the British Empire
portions of her colonial domain — such as
Portuguese Guinea, Congo, Zambezia, the coast-
lands south of the Zambezi, and the northern-
most province of Mozambique (Ibo) — and still
remain with 500,000 square miles in Africa, Asia,
and Australasia. If she adopted such a course as
this the creation of a compact empire over the
western and north-western Congo and the enlarge-
ment of German East Africa might become possible
and German territorial ambitions be allayed in
Africa.

128 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

In regard to Oceania, Germany would have liked
to increase her holding of Pacific islands (in view
of the opening of the Panama Canal) by acquiring
any that France was willing to part with. But
here she has been rebuffed. As to the Dutch
East Indies, she has no more intention of inter-
fering with them than with Holland herself so
long as they maintain Free Trade and are ruled
by the Dutch. German capital is yearly penetrating
more and more the Dutch Indies : so also, it must
be observed, is British capital. There is no reason
why this pleasant state of affairs should be spoilt
by aggression from either Berlin or London, any
more than that Germany should interfere with
the independence of the Netherlands, provided she
is assured that Great Britain has no intention of
making use of Holland as a base from which to
attack Germany. No considerations but those of
national safety could excuse the German Empire
for incorporating the Dutch kingdom, but this
attitude of respect would at once disappear if
there were any danger of the Netherlands joining
Belgium, and thus coming within the powerful
attraction of the Anglo-French Entente — for
towards that grouping Belgium and Luxemburg
are both tending by the very force of circumstances.
At the present day the sympathies of Holland
are divided. The court and the present ministry
(together with many other politicians) are Germano-
phil ; the merchants, professional classes, and sea-
faring folk are increasingly " English " in sympathies.
In no European country outside Britain is English
so widely known as in Holland, our language

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 129

having made great strides in popular use and
favour during the last twenty years. Complete
amity between the German and the British Empires
may lead to the Netherlands becoming a sort of
neutral ground for the two peoples to meet in, a
trait d' union rather than a bulwark or an outpost.

Here, then, we have sketched out, as definitely
as such vague aspirations can be put into words
at the present time, the ambitions of the German
people in regard to " colonial " expansion : (i)
a free hand for Austria in the Balkans and for
Germany in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia ; (2)
a slice of Morocco, and perhaps the Cyrenaica —
in other words, a share of North Africa — projects
more or less annulled by the recent agreement with
France and the forcible annexation by Italy of the
Tripolitaine ; (3) a great African Empire, consisting
in its smallest scope of French and Portuguese
Congo, and an extended East African dominion
in the direction of Lake Nyasa and Mo9ambique ;
and, in its largest conception, of north Angola and
much of the Belgian Congo as well.

What will Europe say — what has she said — to
these projects } The establishment of Germany
in any shape or form on the southern shores of
the Mediterranean or (which is tantamount to the
same thing) in Morocco would have arrayed against
her a league of Britain, France, Spain, and Italy,
obliged to defend the Atlantic - Mediterranean -
Red Sea route from any danger of German inter-
ference or control. Germany in Morocco or the
Cyrenaica must have meant before long the expul-
sion of the French from North Africa and the

I30 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

vassalage of Spain and Italy. We may well doubt
whether such a scheme ever came within the
practical politics of the Imperial Foreign Office.
But the mere hint of it precipitated Italy into an
unprovoked aggression on Turkey and drew France
and Britain closely together.

The third ambition — that which foreshadows a
great Central African Empire — is only realisable in
part by an agreement with France and Britain.
No compulsion could be put by either of these
Powers on Belgium or on Portugal to sell their
West African possessions if they did not want to
do so, but diplomatic pressure might be continuously
exercised on both to make the trade conditions such
that there was no discrimination against foreign or
general commerce. If that were so, if, for example,
In Angola and Portuguese Congo there was not a
high tariff at the Customs and (in the first-named
colony) a marked difference in favour of Portuguese
imports ; and in Belgian Congo the Concessionaire
and Domaine de la Couronne reserves and exclusive
trading rights were abolished, a vast field might be
opened for German (as for British and French)
commerce. Perhaps with such results any change
of flag might be unnecessary.

But if through unforeseen circumstances the
German Empire in Central Africa took an immense
growth and included French Congo up to the Logon
and the Mubangi, Portuguese and Belgian Congo as
well (besides the northern province of Mozambique),
then Great Britain might expect Germany to allow
the Damaraland-Namakwaland districts to join the
South African Union, and the Cape to Cairo route

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 131

to be assured by allotting to Great Britain Katanga
and a strip between the north end of Tanganyika
and Uganda. France, however, would never hear
of giving up French Congo and the districts west of
the Shari and Mubangi for any less price than a final
settlement of her eastern frontier at home, a final
exorcism of the German spectre in her home policy.
She would ask — I am told — for the retrocession of
French-speaking Lorraine (the Metz district) and
the detachment of Luxemburg altogether from the
German Customs' Union and German system ; and
substantial guarantees from Germany as to the com-
plete neutrality and independence of Belgium.

As to the first of the projects in my category
— which in spite of fluctuations remains the great
national ambition of Germany — the free hand for
Austria in the Balkans and the recognition of a
German sphere of influence over Asia Minor and
Mesopotamia down to the Persian Gulf : this
is strongly opposed by France — on the principle of
blocking Germany wherever she can till she gets
satisfaction over the Alsace-Lorraine question — and
much disliked by Russia ; though it is doubtful
whether, without the support of France and Britain,
Russia would go to war to prevent the accomplish-
ment of Austrian and German plans in the Near
East. Germany, however, by her recognition of
special Russian interests in Persia, and no doubt
some further understanding as to the free passage
of the Dardanelles, has secured from Russia a sanction
for the Baghdad railway and all it entails in regard
to the advent of German interests in the western end
of the Persian Gulf. Russia would be very pleased

132 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

to see any other power prevent the Austro-German
control over the Near East, but is precluded
herself from taking up arms. France has her
commercial interests to defend at Smyrna, and
reasons, practical and sentimental, for concerning
herself with the fate of Syria. The French language,
for example, is the principal means of intercourse
for the educated classes in southern Asia Minor,
Syria, and Palestine. It might be better in regard
to Syria that this small country (south of the Aleppo
district), which possesses such an important history,
and which contains such a diversity of races and
religions, should be formed into a separate neutral
state under French protection.

But, so far as Great Britain is concerned, I have
never, since I first studied and wrote on the subject
in 1904, been able to see why we should espouse
Russian, French, or Slav interests in the Near East
and oppose a Germanising of the Balkan Peninsula,
Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia. This does not
necessarily mean the abolition of the Turkish
Sultanate, interference with the internal indepen-
dence of Bulgaria, Albania, Servia, or Montenegro,
but that Austria-Germany would alone be responsible
for the foreign relations of all this region and for
the maintenance of order and liberty within its
boundaries. Greece and Crete would, of course,
remain outside this Balkanic-Turkish confederation :
Egypt, Cyprus, Syria, and Arabia likewise.

As regards Arabia, about a fourth of that
peninsula, from Perim Island on the south-west to
the Bahrein Islands on the north-east, is — with the
exception of the Imamate of Oman — under British

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 133

protection or British political influence, and must
remain so because of its close connection with India.
Though Russia may require to build a railway
across Persia to a Russian port at the north-west
angle of the Persian Gulf, and Germany control the
delta of the Euphrates, Great Britain and Persia
might be entrusted with the policing of the Gulf
waters and alone have the right to maintain ships
of war thereon. By consent of France (with whom
we have a treaty regarding Maskat) the Imamate of
Oman would come within the British sphere in
Arabia, so that the trade of gun-running which
is intermittently carried on between Maskat and
Baluchistan (for Afghanistan and the Indian north-
west frontier) might be efficiently stopped. The
rest of Arabia, outside the southern British sphere
which extends from Aden to Oman, could then be
divided up into three independent Arab States :
Nejd-al-Hasa ; the Hijaz ; and Yaman : the Hijaz
especially being placed under a joint European
international guarantee, since no one of the com-
peting powers of Europe ruling over large numbers
of Muhammadan subjects would in the present state
of human enlightenment like to see the sacred places
of Islamic pilgrimage in the keeping of or under the
influence of any one European power.

The affairs of Persia are necessarily interwoven
with those of Turkey and the Nearer East, and the
settlement of them cannot be concluded without
some connection with the general agreement which
is projected between Britain and Germany. Let
us therefore consider them dispassionately. Persia
has an area of 628,000 square miles, a large proportion

134 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

of which in the centre and east is desert. But even
discounting the desert regions, there still remains
an area of about 400,000 square miles of cultivable
country which could support a much larger popula-
tion than the ^en millions of the present day if there
were some security for life and property, and if
railways traversed the country. The Persian language
is widely spread over this region between Turkey
on the west and Baluchistan on the east, though
Arabic has a very strong hold over the southern
provinces. But the whole population is not Persian
in the strict sense of the word. The west is peopled
by Armenians, Kurds, Luris, and Arabs ; the south
by Arabs and a negroid blend, the descendants of
the old Elamites. The south-east — the British
sphere of influence — is mainly Baluchi (i.e. Dravidian)
in population, and the north-east mainly Tatar or
Turkish. It is these Turkish invaders who have
brought Persia to ruin. They supplanted the only
national dynasty — the Sufis — which since the fatal
Moslem conquest in the seventh century has wrought
any good in Persia. The Kajar dynasty of Shahs
has ruled since 1794, and has proved a curse to the
land. It would be a political crime if the Russians
were to restore the ex-Shah to the throne of a country
which he and his ancestors have so plundered and
degraded. These Kajars were never of the Aryan
type which provided the famous dynasties of
Persia's glorious days, or of the Arab breed which
produced the Sufi Shahs, but derived from a mongrel
Turkish race of Khorassan.

Russia's claim to a special interest in the Persian
Empire lies in the fact that the breadth of Persia

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 135

stands between the Russian Empire in Caucasia and
the warm waters of the Persian Gulf. British
political interests in Persia are chiefly based on the
necessity of seeing that the Baluchi provinces
(including Seistan) of the south-east shall not be
used for the contraband traffic in arms between
Arabia and Afghanistan, a traffic which, if not checked,
might arm the Muhammadan fanatics of the Indian
frontier lands against the British rvde over India.
Further, Great Britain, in safeguarding India, cannot
see the north or the south shores of the Straits
of Hormuz (the eastern outlet of the Persian Gulf)
in the hands of any European power. Consequently
the sphere of necessary and exclusive British interests
(political, not commercial) was wisely and moderately
drawn by the negotiators of the recent agreement
with Russia. But the Russian sphere, on the other
hand, was — partly to suit the mistaken British-Indian
view of the matter — most stupidly delineated.
Russia should have asked for and taken a narrow
strip (inhabited chiefly by Armenians, Kurds, and
Arabs) between the Caucasus and the north-west
corner of the Persian Gulf, including the town of
Tabriz. Over all the rest of Persia — real Persia —
neither Britain nor Russia need have stretched out
a hand. The Persian Government should have
been allowed to engage whatever financial advisers
it liked — American or European — and, provided it
repudiated no loan and broke no treaty, it might
have been permitted under its own chosen con-
stitutional government to have worked out its
own salvation. British interests of a vital kind
were safeguarded by the British sphere, and Russia

136 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

would have had control of the strip of territory
necessary for her railway communication both with
the Persian Gulf and with the future Baghdad-
India line. " Real " Persia would have been left
to herself ; and, provided she did not obstruct the
laying down and working of a railway to India
across her territory, nothing dissonant with her
independence would have been asked of her. This
plan, which has answered so well in Siam, may yet
be adopted as the solution of the Persian difficulty.

Whenever the question of the Baghdad railway is
raised, or whenever Austria displays any intention to
take the lead in composing the difficulties of Turkey
in Europe, the factious opponents of an Anglo-
German understanding immediately begin to cry
out about the trade interests of the British Empire
in the Turkish dominions. It may be well just to
consider what these interests amount to. In 19 10
the total value of the year's trade between the
United Kingdom and the Turkish Empire in
Europe and Asia was ;£i 3, 168,026. The whole
trade of the British Empire with Turkey was only
;£i 3,8 54,942. This included the commerce between
India and Mesopotamia that we sometimes hear so
much about as a reason for keeping Germany ofF
the Euphrates-Tigris — a trade worth a few hundred
thousand pounds. On the other hand, the value of the
United Kingdom's trade with the German Empire
for the same period (19 10) was ;^9 9,000,000, and
between India and Germany an additional
;^ 1 4,705,3 50. When we add the value of the
trade between the United Kingdom and Austria-
Hungary (;£ 1 1,512,000) as a further item to be con-

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY

137

sidered in the balance-sheet of the " pro's and con's "
of an Anglo-German understanding, we shall hardly,
with this total of ;£i 10,512,000 against ;^I3, 854,942
(British and Indian total trade with Turkish Empire
for 1 9 10), fail to realise which of the two interests
is the greater — an understanding with Austria-
Germany, or the danger of a European war if we
strive to bolster up the Turkish Empire (to please
France or Russia, or out of mistaken self-interest)
against some degree of Austro-German penetration
and control.^

Germany as she is at present situated must break
out somewhere. In which direction is it to be ? Is
she to be headed ofF from the Nearer East as well as
the Atlantic coast ? Then (German writers threaten)
she will pick a quarrel with France, occupy Belgium,

1 The following notes on the comparative aspect of British and
German trade relations may be of service to the ill-informed persons
who continue to write pompous nonsense about Germany in
monthly reviews. The figures are mainly derived from the
Statesman's Year Book, but are checked by other information.
During the year 1910, the total trade of the British Empire with
the German Empire (including German colonies) was j£ 142, 500,000
in value (quoting round figures). Between the United Kingdom
and Germany (leaving out colonies on both sides) the trade value
was ,£99,000,000. Germany, moreover, for that and some earlier
years was our best customer in purchasing British goods. We
sold more to her than to any other nation. Our total trade with
Germany was greater in value than that with any other foreign
country except the United States, and Germany buys more British
goods than the United States. Our home trade with France was
equivalent in 1910 to ^66,800,000, and our Imperial trade with
France and the French Empire for 1910 was valued at ;£96,ooo,ooo,
our trade with the Russian Empire at ;£57,ooo,ooo. More British
books are translated into German than into any other language,
and more are sold (untranslated) in Germany than in any other
non-British country except the United States. Surely we should
remember the services to English literature rendered by Tauchnitz
and by Brockhaus of Leipzig ?

138 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

and mediatise Holland, and confront us from the
coast of Picardy. Or she will break through the
Swiss barrier and march down to the French Riviera,
or come through the Tirol to the Adriatic. She
is always wanting to get to the warm lands of the
Mediterranean, and her present ferment is but a
renewal of the migration movements of the early
centuries of the Christian era.

She may not begin to move at once, but the
ferment will be there, poisoning all European
politics with a hidden abscess. It should be from
every point of view the desire of France and Britain
to encourage this German Drang nach Osten. And
it is also Germany's line of least resistance ; for the
fight against all the conjoined strength of France
and Britain to obtain an Atlantic future, to absorb
the Low Countries or obtain possession of Provence
would ruin Germany for a time, even if it drove
the two Western countries into bankruptcy. I
doubt myself that Germany could possibly win, or
that the fruits of victory would be worth the
struggle. Yet she would prefer this to confinement
within her present limits.

And is it to the advantage of France and Britain
to treat Germany badly .'' She is one of our best
customers in commerce on this side of the Atlantic.
With France she does a trade of an annual value of
;^46,500,ooo. She is a nation — fast increasing — of
65,000,000, with whom are allied nearly 52,000,000
of Austro-Hungarians.^ The two Empires together

1 Including the 2,000,000 of Bosnians, etc. The Austro-German
Empires, therefore, mass together in one united foreign policy a
people of 1 1 7,000,000.

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY

139

are in the forefront of civilisation, on a level with
France, Britain, and the United States. Their
government, like our own, is based on the will of
the people. Like the nations to the west of them,
they have both had the honour to belong in part to
the Roman Empire, and have been united with us
by the common use of Latin as a learned language.
Their history is indissolubly linked with ours, as I
have shown in the preceding chapter. Germany
especially is the great bulwark against a Slavic in-
vasion of that Roman Empire which cannot die,
which exists always under the disguise of national
and tribal names, but which is the germ of a future
confederation of the white man.

The more the Englishman travels in the Germany
of to-day, the more ardently he desires a complete
understanding between that empire and his own land ;
for with Germany and Britain united on a firm basis
of policy there could be no world-wide war, scarcely
even a conflict between any civilised nations. It
would be far easier also to influence and to control
the 800,000,000 of backward peoples who share the
planet with us, and whom we of the white race have
been trying to raise to our own intellectual level for
thirty thousand years or more. And with no
thought of war and mutual extermination between
us we might unite in that really justifiable battle,
the fight to a finish with recalcitrant nature — the
real Devil which has unceasingly striven to prevent
the conquest of the Earth by Man, the Devil which
shows himself in microscopic germ, bacteria or
flagellate, parasitic worm, disease-conveying insect
or arachnid, uncontrolled natural forces — plutonic,

I40 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

meteoric, electric, and psychic. But do not let us
imagine, with all our appreciation of German excel-
lence in the arts and sciences, in physical develop-
ment and love of knowledge, that it is only with
narrow-minded publicists and incompetent politicians
on this side that the fault of an Anglo-German
misunderstanding lies. There are miscalculations,
disproportionate ambitions, strange ignorances of
British values on the other side of the North Sea,
especially in Prussian Germany, and even in such
a wide-awake town as Cologne. (Why Cologne
should still be so anti-British it is difficult to under-
stand : the feeling first grew up in the days when
Cologne was more or less a French town, under
the Napoleonic regime — it still retains a good many
French words in its popular dialect — and was further
stimulated by the intense Roman Catholicism of its
inhabitants in the first half of the nineteenth century,
leading them to regard England as the bulwark of the
Protestant faiths. These causes seem fantastic, but
they can be traced in the literature of the period.)
The British anxiety to underrate and depreciate the
efficiency of the United Kingdom, in the dread of
living in a fool's paradise of content with things as
they are, misleads the German press often into
making too low an estimate of our fighting strength,
our generalship, our stubborn racial pride — the very
qualities which come to us from our being so largely
of German stock.

And if we are underrated, so are the French. 1
admit that the Belgian Flemings (though not the
three millions of Walloons) are or have become very
German in their sympathies, and might not resist

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 141

very strongly the invasion of their country by a
German army. But the wild ideas which have been
discussed by Pan-Germanists as to another victorious
war with France, leaving Germany in permanent
possession of Picardy and Provence, are incompatible
in probability with the teachings of history.
Germany has had quite a sufficiently hard task of it
retaining the conquered provinces of Alsace-Lorraine
within her empire (namely, they are still kept
against the wish of two-thirds of their inhabitants),
and this though the Alsatians and most of the
Lorrains are of German descent, speak German still,
and were only severed from the older German
Empire between 1 70 and 300 years ago. France
is by no means in decadence, though she has social
difficulties still to quell by the readjustment of
taxation and the shaping of wiser laws. The mis-
takes in the next war — postponed sine die, we will
hope — might be made by German generals and not
by French ; size and strength of men is not such
a potent factor in modern warfare as it was in the
ancient days when Germany overran all Europe.
Germany could no doubt inflict enormous damage
on France and incidentally on Great Britain, but
she would only be ruining her bankers, her best
customers, and her natural allies.

Similarly, the British or French politicians who
imagine — or imagined — that Germany, with her
steadily growing vigorous population, could be
enclosed within a ring fence of alliances and pacts,
that Turkey might be sustained against an Austro-
Hungarian intervention — that Austria -Hungary
which is going to supply the cement for the

142 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

pavement of a Balkan confederation — are equally
foolish. It is dangerous to compress a force like
Germany. It may waste itself when it explodes,
but it does terrible damage to its neighbours in its
violent escape. Some, I know, count on the grow-
ing force of Socialism in Germany ; but I believe
this Socialism (which would be called a mild
Radicalism in Great Britain) is not incompatible
with a hearty German patriotism. It has a quarrel
with the present system of internal government
within the Empire, and perhaps no great desire to
attack France ; but it shares to the full the opinion
of the aristocratic party and of the theoretical
Liberals that the 65,000,000 of German people
have been treated unfairly by England in diplomacy
and have been headed off whenever a policy of
colonial expansion was attempted. The admirably
ordered German Museums of Ethnography, Zoology,
and Colonial products have not been without their
effect on the Socialist mind. They have created a
pride in the scientific research of their country
beyond the seas and a desire to have more strange
countries to explore. Then, while it has taken us —
what is it .'' — four years ? — merely to commence the
organisation of a popular institute for the teaching
of African and Oriental tongues, such institutes
have come quickly into existence in Germany at
Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig, Cologne, and other great
centres of population. The reading public is taking
a vivid interest in the non-Caucasian peoples of
Asia and Africa, and through this interest is en-
gendered a desire to administer their affairs, to train
them in German ways of thought, and link them up

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 143

with the German policy. I much doubt whether,
as some of our statesmen have believed in the past,
we shall find the Socialist party in Germany dissuad-
ing their fellow countrymen from colonial ambitions
and inviting them to step aside whilst England, Hke
the Carpenter (and his friend the Walrus) sorts out
those of the largest size among the territorial oysters,
and swallows them with tears and protests at the
strain which is being imposed on the British
digestion.

It is our national hypocrisy, say even socialistic
Germans, which revolts them rather than our irre-
pressible instinct for taking the weak and waste
places of the world under our wing. In defiance of
the spirit of treaty after treaty which was to bolster
up the inviolability of the Turkish Empire, we have,
since the Crimean war, quietly nobbled Cyprus,
Egypt, the Egyptian Sudan, the Sinaitic peninsula,
and quite recently have pushed Turkey back a good
distance from Aden, have latterly demarcated a line
inland, and have made treaties with Turkey and along
the southern coast of Arabia and the south shore of
the Persian Gulf, which have thrown the British aegis
over at least a quarter of Arabia. Yet when, in the
same year (1909), Austria announces what all the
world wondered she had not announced years ago,
the definite incorporation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and
oiFers Turkey a handsome sum in compensation for
a changed formula of words, from no country more
than from Great Britain came the shocked outcry of
protest or a more earnest invocation of the god of
treaties. Germany winces yet from the sermons in
the British press whenever she has hungered after a

144 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

naval station at Trieste, a port on the Euphrates
Delta, or a Pacific island. And even while such
sermons are being written the Anglo-Saxon mouth
opens and englobes the Malay provinces of the
Kingdom of Siam.

But though the Germans writhe from time to
time, they cannot help laughing good-naturedly at
our slimness, at the yearly spectacle of a British
Foreign or Colonial Minister rising to assure the
world that our appetite for gold-fields, for new lands,
new protectorates is not only slaked but annulled ;
rather, that we would gladly yield up such and such a
morsel, did not honour impose the burden of digesting
it. And then soon afterwards comes the newspaper
paragraph or the unwilling admission in Parliament
of another annexation here and a further extension
of frontier there.

I join with my German friends in deprecating the
constant repetition of these outworn and hypocritical
assumptions of reluctance, but I am as ardent an
Imperialist as I ever was in the first flush of our
Colonial Renaissance in 1884 ; I believe as firmly as
ever that the best fate which can befall an Egypt, a
Persia, an Uganda — even a Somaliland — is to come
under the British flag ; and that the extension of
British sovereignty is a benefit under the Free Trade
regime to the world at large. This is also the
opinion of the leading European and American
nations, and is the reason why a people which, until
recently, was scarcely more than forty millions in
numbers has been allowed with little protest to
accumulate a larger empire than the world has ever
known. But if any event so unhappy occurred as

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 145

the advent to power of a Ministry which imposed
differential duties in the customs' houses of India,
the Crown Colonies and Protectorates, we should
soon see the attitude of Germany, the United States,
Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Japan change towards
us. It is one of the most important commercial
interests of Germany that the British Empire over
India should continue. The trade of Germany with
that vast region of southern Asia has risen to an
annual value of ;^ 15,000,000. Germany knows full
well that if any native rebellion or foreign war
expelled the British from India, no other European
nation could take their place. I could well imagine,
if Britain were really in serious difficulties over
India, the German Empire coming specially to
its assistance. Much the same applies to Egypt.
Theodore Roosevelt appreciated this fact. When
he was in London in 1910, he uttered the following
phrase in a speech made to the Royal Geographical
Society : " The best guarantee for Great Britain on
the Nile would be Germany on the Euphrates " ;
and to " Nile " might be added " Indus and
Ganges." So far from Germany's advent on the
Persian Gulf (or Russia's, for the matter of that)
being a menace to the British dominion over
southern Asia, it would be a bulwark — so long as we
gave a fair field and no favour to the commerce
of all nations throughout the British possessions
governed from London : that is, made no difference
in the levying of import duties between one
nationality and another. In our Daughter nations
it is different. Germany and the rest of the
world are aware that these former colonies now

10

146 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

enjoy complete freedom from the metropolis, In
fiscal questions as in others. We can neither
compel them to discriminate in our favour at their
customs' houses, nor refuse to accept this not
very substantial boon ; if they do lower the
tariff in our favour it is frequently the only return
made for our maintaining at the sole expense of
the British taxpayer the general Imperial services.
Personally, many of us would prefer to see this
rebate on British goods abolished in favour of
a direct annual subsidy towards the upkeep of the
Imperial diplomatic and consular corps. Imperial
cables, and the Imperial Navy. Despite this dis-
advantage in the tariffs of Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and South Africa, the trade between
Germany and the British Empire (less the United
Kingdom, but including India) for the year 19 10
was not far short of ^4^,000,000 in value. Her
total trade with France for the same period (1910)
was under ^£42, 000,000.

CHAPTER VI

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY

III
HOME INTERESTS AND INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION

Germany has a population to-day of over 65,000,000
of people who are confronted with problems at home
as well as abroad. They are, as I have pointed out
in the previous chapter, the best clients of the United
Kingdom ; they also do a very large trade with France
(buying more from her than they sell), and an enor-
mous trade — an average of ;^90,ooo,ooo annually —
with Russia. Therefore, if the governments of the
powers who form the triple understanding are com-
posed of business men, they will desire that Germany
may solve not only her foreign difficulties, but her
anomalies in home administration, as well as the
social and fiscal questions in dispute, so that her
toiling millions may increase in numbers and in
wealth, and require larger and larger supplies of
foreign products for their manufactures and their
bodily consumption.

So far as I can judge, as an eye-witness, after
visiting most parts of Germany in 19 10 and 191 1,
the most serious home problem in Germany at the

147

148 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

present day is the cost of living. This has been
brought about by the system of protective duties
in force since 1879, which in the attempt to en-
courage home agriculture and live-stock-rearing, and
the exploitation of German mines, forests, and manu-
factures, has, in conjunction with the rapid increase of
population, greatly raised the price of food, of most
of the other necessaries of life, and of house-rent.

At one time, with the exception of certain parts of
France and Switzerland, there was no country in the
world where civilised existence could be led at such
a low cost as in Germany. This fact had its ad-
vantages, since it attracted to German capitals and
university towns considerable numbers of foreign
residents and tourists. The allurements and the
solid advantages in education which Germany offers
to persons of cultivated tastes are greater than ever,
but, alas ! the cost of living for the resident and the
tourist grows higher every year, and will soon rival
that of the United States. Actual education ;
books ; the delights of the best music and of
an admirably developed theatre ; railway travel ;
carriage hire ; public amusements ; and public
means of locomotion in cities still remain cheap :
but everything to do with food and lodging, firing,
clothes, washing and chemistry is dear. The policy
of protective duties has done much to create the
industries that now make Germany such an im-
portant nation, and the scientific agriculture and
horticulture which are turning her many waste
places into fruitful fields, rich pastures, and pro-
ductive gardens (Germany even exports roses now,
fruit trees, and bulbs, and this from soil which a

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 149

few years ago was regarded as worthless moorland).
But these results having now been achieved, the
manufactures and industries of Germany could not
be affected unfavourably if the tariff was consider-
ably reduced on articles of food (except alcohol),
and on the foreign raw materials which are required
by German factories and trades. A high tariff
might still be maintained on luxuries, on certain
classes of manufactured goods, and on foreign
alcohol. But it has become a matter of urgent
necessity that the necessaries of life should be
cheapened in Germany and Austria. The dearness
of living is the chief grievance which creates or
rather accentuates Socialism ; and in Germany it is
mainly the overwhelming predominance of Prussia
which is the obstacle to a lowering of the Protection
wall. The Prussian government is very much under
the influence of the landowners of that large kingdom,
whose views regarding the protection of agriculture
and the breeding of animals for food are those of
the English squirearchy. As regards Austria, it
is the predominant policy of Hungary in fixing
the customs' tariff of the two states which makes
food so dear in the Austrian states and in Southern
Germany. In order to protect the graziers and
farmers of the Hungarian plains, the Magyar
government compels Austria to maintain restrictive
conditions and a high tariff on the importation
of live beasts and frozen meat, on grain and fruit
at Trieste, a port through which such things might
find their way to Bavaria, as well as to German-
speaking Austria ; and of course at all other Adriatic
ports besides Trieste.

I50 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

In spite of Sir William Harcourt's vividly true
saying in 1894 that "we are all Socialists now" —
from force of circumstances, whether we like the
main theory of Socialism or not, a theory which
first found its clear exposition in the sayings of
Jesus Christ — one sees from the newspapers, and
from printed appeals for help sent out to the
nobility and gentry of the United Kingdom, that
it is still possible to raise a shudder amongst
fossilised, unreflecting, unobservant minds by the
use of the word Socialist ; though in its essence
it merely means " good fellowship," that is to say,
elemental Christianity. So when one refers to the
increase of Socialism, or the Socialist vote in Ger-
many, most of one's readers imagine this policy
or party in the German Empire to be analogous
with the insane anarchism of Russia or Italy. In
actuality the German Socialists are equivalent to
a blend of the Radical and Labour parties in
England, only differing from these manifestations
of public opinion in being rather better educated
on general topics than are some of our Labour
representatives in the House of Commons [this
last, thanks to the excellence of the national educa-
tion in Germany, as compared with that given to
the poor and rich in England, Wales, and Ireland^].
The Socialist party in Germany contains many
politicians of the new type : men of the merchant

' Scottish education for the masses and classes equals that of
Germany in efficiency and common sense. And what is the result?
Scottish Radicals or Labour leaders are seldom or never revolution-
ary in their policy, but truly liberal, besides being conservative of
what is good. And this is one reason why the United Kingdom is
so often and so well governed by Scotchmen.

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 151

and industrial classes who are winning their way
to power and influence by their very cosmopolitan
training and education, which have enabled them
— probably after some apprenticeship in England
or the United States — to import foreign notions
into German commerce, industry, and daily life,
that have redounded to the improvement and
happiness of modern Germany.

Nothing struck me more forcibly, after an absence
of twenty years, than the Americanisation of Ger-
many. In their means of locomotion, the struc-
ture of their houses, the sanitation and excessive
cleanliness of their well-organised towns (I admit
the Americans are less perfect in practice often than
in theory), the Germans have copied much from the
United States, to which country so many emigrate,
and from which so many return with a competence.
But they return as conscious or unconscious re-
cruits of the Socialist party, yet preserving — or
even having acquired in the States — an affectionate
reverence for, and interest in the picturesque aspects
of the fatherland, in its history, its scenery, and
even in its pomp of government. But they have
lost all patience with the policy which still bestows
exclusive favours on the aristocracy and the pro-
fession of arms, and which still maintains a really
Aryan, Brahmanical theory as to caste : the division
of society into those who are well-born and high-
weU-born, and those who are not born at all — so
to speak. [In fact, here one finds an additional
proof that the Germans are very near the original
Aryans (I imagine the Slavs were Sudras !) in their
passionate clinging to these theories of caste laid

152 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

down according to birth.] This impatience with
old-time social ideas and prejudices, with the ex-
aggerated respect for the fighting-man and the
citizen whose forefathers have been nobles for
many generations after their nobility had been
earned by real service to the State, is also shared
by many German Liberals and men of high stand-
ing, who would be indignant if called Socialists.
Such, like the Socialists, are disposed to look at
Germany from a twentieth-century standpoint, and
ask themselves and each other whether she should
be any longer trammelled by ridiculous vestiges
of the Middle Ages, and of that revulsion to the
Middle Ages which occurred at the Congress of
Vienna. Under the present system of Imperial
Government, though the whole Empire returns
representatives elected on the popular vote to the
Assembly of the People or Reichstag (the members
of the Imperial Upper House or Bundesrat are
appointed by each of the component states of the
Empire in proportion to population), these can
have no voice in the selection or tenure of ap-
pointment of the Imperial Ministers. Such are
appointed by the Emperor, and hold office during
his pleasure and without reference to the popular
will. And the Emperor, being also King of
Prussia, selects Prussian subjects for his Imperial
Ministers, so that the other sovereign states of
Germany have an insufficient say, an inefFect've
control over the foreign, colonial, army, navy,
railway, postal, and fiscal policies of Germany.
The Imperial Ministers or heads of departments
are not responsible to the Reichstag, to the people

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 153

who pay the taxes — but to the Emperor. Their
tenure of office need not bear any direct reference
to the policy which the Reichstag has been elected
to carry out. Of course, the three Emperors of
the House of Hohenzollern having been wise and
great-minded men, and much in touch with popular
opinion, this theoretically most imperfect constitu-
tion has worked so far tolerably well. Yet the
Socialists feel — are Socialists because they feel —
that lines of policy are shaped and carried out
by Prussian bureaucrats on which the people have
never been consulted, projects which may be pro-
ductive of enormous harm, yet as to which the
Empire is committed blindly, consequently feeling
the humiliation when an impasse is reached, or a
withdrawal has to be made.

Yet there is not much disposition to criticise the
foreign policy of the Emperor. Where the new
line of action has been due to him personally it has
generally been proved to be right from a German
point of view — as, for example, the taking possession
of the Kiao-Chau territory in China, an action which
has enormously strengthened the German com-
mercial and political position in the Far East. But
some mistakes have been made at the German
Foreign OfBce which are attributable to the class
of official or minister selected by the Emperor —
Prussians of correct birth and social status, but
narrow-minded pedants unacquainted with either
England or the United States, acquiring their chief
knowledge of the outer world in Austria, Rumania,
or Rome, and believing that the adoption of a
monocle is a sufficient concession to Anglo-Saxon

154 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

modernity. Such men as these held the opinions
that Germany might found a " colony" in Morocco,
that the British army would be unable to subdue
the Boers, that the Spanish fleet would beat the
American, Japan succumb in her attack on Russia,
and the Abd-al-Hamid rigime get the better of
Young Turkish aspirations. Yet even amongst the
majority of the Socialists, and of course among all
German Liberals, there is too deep a feeling of
historical gratitude to the HohenzoUern dynasty for
them to contemplate for one moment an empire
without an emperor, or the emperor proceeding
from any other house but that of HohenzoUern.

But they chafe at the present way in which their
home Empire is divided up into a medley of local
governments with many diverse characteristics.
They are people of sufficient education to appreciate
and desire to preserve what is harmlessly picturesque
and fruitfully original. But they would like to
achieve two results by a bold policy of adjustment :
to make Germany as much as possible one homo-
geneous Nation, and yet to give due regard to the
necessities of local administration and to the
diversities of racial and physical type, of mental
character and religious beliefs which range between
the mouth and the source of the Elbe, the Danish
frontier, and the Lake of Constance. They are
quite willing to maintain Berlin as the Imperial
capital of Germany, but they consider there is " too
much Prussia" in the general government of
Germany, and too little satisfaction given to the
semi-national divisions of the German people. It is,
for example, ridiculous in their opinion that the

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 155

government of Prussia should continue to administer
the affairs of the little territory of Hohenzollern,
which is really peopled by Swabians, and should
properly form part of the Kingdom of Wtlrttemberg.
Likewise, it is incongruous that the Frisian Olden-
burgers should rule in Birkenfeld, a principality
close to Alsace ; that Bavaria should send her
officials across Wtlrttemberg and Baden to administer
the Rhenish Palatinate ; that the uniformity of
Westphalian interests should be broken by the little
ducal or princely governments of Lippe, Western
Brunswick, and Waldeck-Pyrmont ; that Thuringia
should be split up into some five or six States
mutually independent one of the other, and the
Hessian people be governed by Prussia as well as
by a grand duchy which is cut into two separate
pieces.

Discussing such questions with these advanced
thinkers, or following the drift of their articles in
reviews, it would seem as though the ideal redistri-
bution of local government throughout the German
Empire might be arranged as follows : —

The Kingdom of Prussia (which is partly Polish
in origin) would retain all her ancestral provinces
in the north and east, and would in addition take
over the government of the eastern half of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin and of all the small States
in Central Germany (except the westernmost part of
Brunswick) which lie to the north of Saxe- Weimar,
that is to say, Brunswick-Harzburg-Quedlinburg
and Anhalt-Dessau. The western portion of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Lauenburg would be
added to Mecklenburg-Schwerin ; Schleswig-Holstein

156 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

would become a self-governing grand duchy ; a
portion of East Friesland would be added to
Oldenburg in return for the surrender of Birkenfeld
to Rhenish Prussia ; and the republics or free cities
of Bremen, Hamburg, and Labeck would have their
territories enlarged as some reward for their truly
meritorious services to the German Empire. The
Hanoverian and Wastphalian provinces, together
with the little States of Lippe, West Brunswick, and
Waldeck-Pyrmont, might be erected into a kingdom
of Westphalia under a Prussian prince — possibly
one of the Kaiser's sons — while Rhenish Prussia
under a similar monarchy would become the King-
dom of Niederrhein and extend southwards so as
to include not only Birkenfeld but a good deal
of Lorraine. The two halves of Hesse should be
united by adding to the lands of the Hessian Grand
Duchy the districts of Wiesbaden, Homburg, and
Frankfort. Alsace, Baden (less the Constance and
Mosbach provinces), together with the Bavarian
Palatinate, would form the Kingdom of the
Oberrhein under the sovereignty of the present
grand ducal House of Baden. Wurttemberg,
enlarged by HohenzoUern and Constance, would
become the Kingdom of Swabia, while Bavaria would
be compensated for losing the Palatinate by receiv-
ing the Mosbach province of Baden, and perhaps
the Karlsbad corner of German-speaking Bohemia —
if Austria, for enlargements in other directions,
could be induced to make the transference. The
Kingdom of Saxony would be allowed to absorb the
Saxon duchies of Altenburg, the south-east portion
of Saxe- Weimar, and the little Reuss States (Gera,

THE PROBLEMS OF GERMANY 157

Schleiz, and Greiz). The rest of the Thuringian
duchies (with the exception of the northern half of
Schwarzburg-Sondershausen-Rudolstadt, which would
be annexed by Prussia) might be united to form a
grand duchy of Thuringia under a Prince of the
Saxe-Weimar or Meiningen or Coburg Houses.
The ruling dynasties of all the absorbed States
would of course be compensated monetarily, while
in any reshaping of Eastern Europe or in the
allotment of new functional posts within the German
Empire their princes might be borne in mind by the
Emperor.

If ever such a redistribution of German adminis-
tration took place, it might well be taken into
consideration whether Germany should not offer to
retrocede to France that small portion of French-
speaking Lorraine which lies to the west of the
Mosel and its tributary the Seille, and which
includes the fortress of Metz and the town of
Diedenhofen, such cession of course to be made in
return for some transfer to Germany of French
territories in Western Africa. If, at the same time,
by some friendly arrangement with Austria regard-
ing the Balkans, Germany could acquire for Bavaria
the Karlsbad corner of Bohemia, the territory of the
German Empire in Europe would be undiminished
in extent ; French-speaking people would be re-
stored to France, and German-speaking people in
Bohemia would be detached from the rule of the
Chekh.

From a German point of view the continued
association of Alsace with Lorraine, and the incorpora-
tion of the two provinces conquered from France

158 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

into a self-governing state, with distinctly republican
sympathies, is a source of future danger. It is
difficult to adopt the French point of view, that
France has any racial claim to rule in the Rhine
Valley, or should govern provinces the established
language of which is German. On the other hand,
it is difficult to withhold one's sympathy from
France in her desire that the French-speaking
districts of Lorraine (Metz-Diedenhofen), which,
indeed, have formed part of France for a much
longer period than Alsace, should be withheld from
reincorporation with the French Republic. The
trade relations of German Lorraine all now lie in
the direction of Coblentz and Cologne. On the
other hand, those of Alsace are intimately allied
with Baden and the Palatinate. Baden, however,
would be a ridiculous name to perpetuate for the
government of this portion of Southern Germany :
a much more appropriate title would be that
suggested by one or more German writers, " The
Kingdom of the Upper Rhine."

Some such redistribution of the component parts
of the German Empire as I have sketched out
(following certain German theorists) would substi-
tute for the existing twenty-six sovereign states,
which are of most unequal size — ranging from
Prussia with 134,616 square miles to Ltlbeck with
99 — sixteen kingdoms, duchies, or republics of less
disproportionate area, each with a considerable
measure of self-government, much like the states
of the American Union, yet combining to secure a
greater unification in matters of general policy than
at present obtains in Germany. Bavaria might be

THE PROBLEMS OF GERIvIANY 159

expected to adopt what now all the other states have
submitted to except herself, the Imperial postal
service (at present the Bavarian Post Office is quite
distinct). The ridiculous farce would be dropped
of Bavaria, Prussia, Wtlrttemberg, Saxony main-
taining independent diplomatic and consular repre-
sentatives at the principal German courts and ports.
Yet by the creation or revival of local nationalism in
Schleswig-Holstein, Westphalia, the Lower Rhine-
lands, the Upper Rhinelands, Hesse, and Thuringia
local patriotism would be stimulated and local
interests strengthened. The King of Prussia, by
lending himself to what might be called the provincial
reorganisation of the German Empire, and from the
princes of his House giving dynasties to Schleswig-
Holstein, Westphalia, and the Lower Rhine, would
make himself more truly the Emperor of Germany
than he is at present, when he is merely styled " the
German Emperor."

CHAPTER VII

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM

A GREAT disaster befell the Roman world in the

seventh century after Christ. This was the uprise

of Muhammad and the launching of hordes of

ignorant Arabs on the settled and civilised provinces

of the Roman world which bordered the eastern

and southern shores of the Mediterranean. It was

perhaps Nature's revenge for the besotted silliness

which had grown about Christianity, turning what

should have been the freest and most enlightened of

religions into an exaltation of ugliness and dirt, a

mortification of the body, and a contempt for the

researches of science. Yet it was only Greek

and Syriac Christianity which wholly merited this

characterisation ; Latin Christianity was striving to

civilise the Goths, Franks, and Lombards and recover

the lore of classical Rome ; nor was science by any

means extinguished at Constantinople.

The Greek spirit and Persian art together struggled

to the surface after the Islamic flood had begun

to settle, and during the eighth, ninth, and tenth

centuries the lamp of science was relit in Saracenic

lands, though always in danger of being blown out

by fresh gusts of religious frenzy from the Arab

1 60

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 1 6 1

mind : a cerebral storm similar to that of the Hebrew
prophet, of the hysterical nun, or of the Welsh
miner who has got religion : a frenzy coupled with
neurasthenia which owes all its impulse to the
promptings of an uncultured, unbalanced brain, and
nothing to reasonable deductions from well-sifted
evidence.

Spain attracted the Graeco-Syrian, disguised as a
Saracen, and undoubtedly profited at first from the
Islamite invasion ; but the Roman development of
North Africa, which had done much to push back the
Desert, to increase the habitability of Mauretania,
received a check from which it has not yet recovered ;
and although there were resumptions of the Roman
work on a lesser scale by Berber dynasties which had
freed themselves from the yoke of Arab Egypt, the
Turk came on the scene at the beginning of the
sixteenth century and completed the alienation and
ruin of all North Africa from Tlemcen to Suez,
while the fanatical negroid Arabs of the Western
Sahara and the Nigerian Berbers simultaneously
swamped the learning and art of Morocco.

Anyone who has visited North Africa must be
aware that the coast of Algeria and its eastern,
Constantine province, the Regency of Tunis, and the
littoral of Tripoli, were at one time as " Roman " a
land as Italy ; in fact, it is doubtful whether Italy
can supply as many ruins of magnificent Roman
buildings as may be still seen in this part of Northern
Africa. Such a town as Tebessa, for example, which
is situated near the Tunisian frontier in eastern
Algeria, and is a railway terminus, is little else than
a Roman town (although dating mainly from the

II

1 62 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

Byzantine Empire), almost unaltered in its architec-
ture, with the Roman houses roofed and repaired,
and just sufficiently modernised to permit of habita-
tion by Europeans. Many of the towns in the south
of Tunis and south-east of Algeria are of the same
character, but of earlier construction. Roman ruins
may be found as far south as Ghadames and Fezzan.
It would seem as though there had been a consider-
able immigration of Romans, Italians, and Greeks
into Tunisia, Tripoli, and eastern Algeria during the
seven centuries that these countries formed part of
the Roman Empire. The Vandals brought a small
contingent of Nordic Europeans and a host of
Spanish camp-followers. It was no doubt largely
this European garrison, between lOO B.C. and 650
A.D., that built and peopled the splendid Roman
cities of Roman Africa, while the Berbers fell partly
into a condition of serfage, becoming the agricul-
tural peasants ; or else resumed a nomad life and
remained in more or less permanent hostility to
Roman civilisation.

The main cause that led to the overthrow of
Roman rule in Africa by the Vandal invasion
in the fifth century ; that brought about the
revival of Roman rule under the Constantinople
Emperor ; and, again, the rapid overthrow of that
Byzantine government after the Arab invasions of
647 and 673 : was the perpetual dissatisfaction of the
Berber people of North Africa with the government
of the European. I think it may be stated without
much inaccuracy that between 146 b.c. and 429 a.d.,
during the whole period of Roman rule in North
Africa — at any rate in the modern Algeria and Tunis

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 163

— no period longer than seventy years elapsed with-
out a more or less serious Berber revolt. Seeing
that the dominating Berber element in the population
of North Africa belonged to much the same human
stock as the peoples of Southern Italy, Greece, Spain,
and even Southern France, and that before the
invasion of Islam there was no national difference in
religious views, it is curious that the North African
should have fought so resolutely against the Empire
which had its metropolis across the Mediterranean.^
The struggle was almost Iberian against Aryan,
Iberian languages and culture against the forms of
speech and the civilisation developed by the Aryan.
Nevertheless, if Arabia had not in the seventh and the
eleventh centuries poured her two or three hundred
thousand reckless fanatics into North Africa, I
imagine that the Berber would have fallen into line

1 The dislike felt by the North African indigenes to Rome was,
however, intensified by the introduction of Christianity. Many of
the Berbers favoured a Monotheistic religion, and had been greatly
attracted by the Jewish propaganda carried on when large numbers
of Jews settled in North Africa at the beginning of the Christian
Era, following the siege of Jerusalem, if not before. Just as the
Irish became obstinately attached to the Roman form of Christianity
from the time that England passed over to Protestantism, and
cultivated this passionate attachment quite as much from a hatred
of everything that was English as from any desire for theological
consistency, so the North African Berbers grew to detest the
Christianity of St Augustine. Under the Vandal rule they became
eager Unitarians, and assisted the Vandals to attack and martyrise
those who professed Roman and Trinitarian Christianity. They
were therefore as ready for the reception of Islam as gunpowder is
for the fulminating spark. In scarcely more than seventy years
Roman (Byzantine) rule and the use of the Latin language were
effaced in North Africa from Pelusium to Tangier, though
Christianity and Latin survived at Carthage and Bona till about the
tenth century, and a good deal of Egypt and Nubia adhered to the
Greek Church.

1 64 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

with his European brothers ; and although Byzantium
might not have retained a permanent hold over the
States of Leptis, Carthage, Cirta, Cassarea, and Tingis,
Gothic Spain and Norman Sicily would together
have governed North Africa and have continued the
work begun by Rome.

The Muse of History, pondering over the
fortunes of this world, must have been asking
herself during the last thirteen centuries when the
devastating hand of Islam would be stayed, and
when would the Roman Empire recover its position
in North Africa, and resume its contest with refractory
Nature. The watching Muse would have seen
the stately Roman architecture succeeded by the
picturesque but tawdry Saracenic — (that strange
offspring sprung from the union of Byzantine
architecture with the Arabian symbols of Phallic
worship). She would have noted that buildings of
stone were replaced by fanciful erections of stucco,
lath and plaster, brick and whitewash, into which
marble columns robbed from Roman temples were
incongruously welded. She would have seen the
Roman bath system maintained (so far as methods
of cleansing the body were concerned), but the
buildings and water supply of the baths going
unchecked to gradual ruin and the drainage of
towns by sewers completely forgotten. In many
ways she would have observed the gradual dying
of civilisation and culture ; Roman highways
becoming overgrown with weeds, while no better
road took their place than the track worn by the
passage of pedestrians and horses' hoofs ; irrigation
works falling into abandonment, wells taking the

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 1 65

place of the magnificent water supply of the mighty
aqueducts ; dams bursting and never being restored ;
the sand of the desert creeping further and further
north, and engulfing orchard after orchard ; the lion
and the leopard once more increasing in numbers and
ravishing flocks and herds ; the rainfall diminishing
owing to the reckless destruction of forests, these
being destroyed by unchecked bush fires, by constant
cutting for firewood, and by the goats of the nomad
tribes devouring the saplings. Every seven years or
so the locusts from the Sahara would extend their
ravages further and further north. North African
man had accepted Muhammadan fatalism ; he had
entered upon a life of polygamy and lethargy which
made it almost a duty not to come into conflict
with Nature, and was slowly reducing this magni-
ficent country to the condition of an uninhabitable
wilderness. Once, it is true, in the sixteenth century,
the man arrived who seemed about to change the
fate of North Africa and re-unite it again to
Christianity and the Roman Empire : this was the
Emperor Charles V. But, though the man had
arrived. Fate had not yet struck the hour.
Charles V. interfered in vain to prevent the
Turkish conquest of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algeria ;
while Portugal subsequently lost the results of her
conquest of Morocco in the fatal battle of Kasr-
al-Kabir (1578). Rome again baffled in these
abortive attempts, the malign hand of the Turk
stretched over all this region except Morocco, and
galvanised the Muhammadan power into resistance
against European civilisation for another three
centuries.

1 66 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

French ambitions in regard to African dominion
date from the end of the Crusades, from the landing
of Louis IX. at Carthage. This best of French kings
might have succeeded with his project of conquering
Tunis, as an additional bulwark of the Angevin
Kingdom of Sicily and Naples, had it not been for
the outbreak of the plague, from which he died,
amid the ruins still standing of the Roman capital
of Roman Africa. Under the reign of Francis I.
the bold plan was adopted (copied by Queen
Elizabeth in the latter part of the same sixteenth
century) of an alliance with the Turk and the
Moslem, in consequence of which French fishermen
and merchants acquired a better footing in the com-
merce of Algeria, Tunis, and Egypt.i Louis XIV.
developed distinct designs on Egypt and Abyssinia
owing to the reports which he received from French
consuls and travellers as to the weakness of the
Mamluk government of the Nile Valley. Although
his projects came to nought, they did not die away
completely, but gave birth in the second half of
the eighteenth century to the exploring journey of
Sonnini, a young Alsatian traveller patronised by
BufFon. French designs on Egypt finally bore
fruit in the great expedition of Napoleon Bonaparte,
who by landing at Alexandria with 40,000 men in
1798 really began the modern European scramble
for African dominion.

The vital importance of Egypt to British schemes
of empire over Southern Asia (together with the

1 In this period — about 1535 — was founded the fishing and trading
station of the French at La Calle in Eastern Algeria, their first
foothold on the North African coast.

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 1 67

possession on the part of Great Britain of the
requisite sea -power to enforce her purposes)
brought about the French withdrawal from Egypt.
But the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt achieved
immense good, and was followed by no years of
Egyptological research. It also resulted in the
tracing of the Nile to its source and the eventual
redemption of Egypt and the Egyptian Sudan from
the appalling devastation caused by the anarchical
rule of Moslem Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Circassians,
Greeks and Nubians.

Disappointed as to Egypt, and fearing to arouse
a sharp conflict with England if Tunis or Morocco
were touched, France, if she were to have an over-sea
empire, must turn to Algeria. Her movement was
precipitated by the fatuous behaviour of the Dey of
Algiers ; but the French fishing interests on the
eastern Algerian coast would sooner or later have
led to intervention, since the power of the Turkish
pirate-pashas was decaying and being replaced by
Berber chieftains. By the close of 1830 the French
expedition, which had captured the great stronghold
of Algiers after a few days' bombardment, had taken
possession of all the leading seaports of Algeria
between the frontiers of Tunis and Morocco.

The liberal government of Louis Philippe being
viewed sympathetically in England, British opposi-
tion to a French North African Empire relaxed,
and by 1834 the French Government had deliberately
assumed the responsibility for conquering and ad-
ministering Algeria from the Mediterranean to the
Sahara. In 1 844 the power of Morocco received a
short, sharp, and wholesome lesson, and never again

1 68 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

seriously attempted any Interference in Algeria.
Thenceforth and until 1904, only the opposition
of Great Britain and of Spain stood between France
and a conquest of Morocco. Great Britain also
extended some kind of protection over Tunis
until the Berlin Congress of 1878.

The British occupation of Cyprus, Egypt, and
the Egyptian Sudan, together with the establishment
of a protectorate over the eastern half of Nigeria,
led inevitably to a relaxation of British jealousy
in regard to Tunisia and Morocco, and to various
agreements by which Great Britain withdrew her
opposition to the extension of French interests in
those countries and agreed with France in ignoring
the claims of Turkey to exercise any political rule
beyond the southern frontiers of Tripoli, Fezzan,
and Barka. Consequently, in 1904, by that agree-
ment with Great Britain which recognised the
privileged position of the United Kingdom in
Egypt and the Egyptian Sudan, France believed
herself to have (with the mental reservation of
Italian aspirations in Tripoli and Spanish claims
to the Riff coast of Morocco) a very free hand
over North and North Central Africa ; from Wadai
and Bagirmi on the south-east, to the Atlantic coast
in the west, and the Mediterranean on the north.
The intervention of Germany in the affairs of North
Africa was not thought likely in 1904. It was
believed then that Germany viewed with approval
the creation of this huge empire in Africa as a
pledge of peace, and an indication that France
had tacitly turned her back on Alsace-Lorraine and
would devote all her energies, wealth, and military

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 1 69

strength to the creation of a vast French dominion
over the northern half of Africa.

But there was a rude awakening for both France
and Britain when the German Imperial Government
insisted on the retirement of M. Delcasse, and gave,
by the special visit of the Emperor in the spring
of 1905, an almost aggressive German recognition
to the independence of Morocco.

The Conference of Algeciras in 1 906 patched up
an arrangement which saved the face of Germany,
admitted to some extent the claims of France and
Spain to interfere in the affairs of Morocco, and yet
tied the hands of France very effectually in regard
to the absorption within her own dominion of this
most unruly Berber State. The Balkan crisis of
1909, provoked by another advance of Austro-
Germany in the inevitable march to the ^gean Sea,
led to a relaxation of stringency in regard to French
operations in Morocco : indeed, in most organs of
the French Press it was believed in 1909 that
Germany had handed over Morocco to France in
return for a free hand in the Nearer East. But this
apparently was not the case : neither Power had
committed itself very far in either direction.

Already, however, after 1909, the French frontier
had for all practical purposes been advanced to the
Muluya river on the north and the outskirts of the
High Atlas range on the south-east. Spain, unable
any longer to refrain from establishing her claim to
Northern Morocco, had fought many battles round
Melilla. The tribes rose against the Sultan, Mulai
Abd-al-Hafid, who had already become a pensionary
of France, and the French had to occupy Fez or

I70 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

see Morocco go to pieces. Then came the sudden
coup d'klat, the despatch of the German gunboat
to Agadir, resulting finally in a German recogni-
tion (accompanied by stipulations regarding Free
Trade and equal opportunities for the commerce of
all nations) of a French Protectorate over Morocco.
It remains only for France and Spain to come to
terms as to the delimitation of the Spanish sphere in
Northern Morocco, which will probably be restricted
to the RifF country and the coast of the Tangiers
district, in addition, of course, to the relatively large
Spanish protectorate (now styled colony) of the Rio
de Oro to the south-west of Morocco.

By this arrangement, four-fifths of Morocco
comes under the control of France, a result which,
to those unprejudiced Englishmen who know North
Africa, is greatly to be desired in the interests of the
natives ; because France, after eighty-two years' ex-
perience, is less likely than Spain to make mistakes in
a problem which demands a deeply founded know-
ledge of the Berber and the Arab ; a sympathy with
these peoples, who have many fine qualities, physical
and mental ; and a scrupulous regard for their rights.
There are many waste places in North Africa open
legitimately to European colonisation, but not on
the lines of displacing the settled agricultural natives
of the country. From the litde I saw of the
Spaniards on my visit to Morocco in 1 9 1 1 , and still
more from what I have heard, they are embarking
ignorantly on a very thorny task in North Morocco.
The sphere which Spain aspires to control contains
at least 2,000,000 people, nearly half the population
of Morocco. They are for the most part Berbers,

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 1 7 1

not Arabs — a warlike, proud, a well-nigh indomitable
people, singularly like the best types of Spaniard
in southern and eastern Spain. Yet, at present,
hardly any of the Spanish officers can speak Arabic.
Of the Berber language (now assiduously studied
by the French) they scarcely realise the existence,
though Spain has held Ceuta, Melilla, and Alhu-
cemas — outposts of the RiflF country — for centuries.
Any Spanish oppression of the people in her North
Morocco protectorate will raise a hornet's nest
about her ears. She may be able to do much
legitimate exploitation of the mineral wealth of this
region, to the benefit of the inhabitants as well as
of Spanish commerce, but she will have received a
portion of North Africa in which there is very little
room for colonisation. Spain is colonising North
Africa, but it is under the French flag, in the Oran
province of Algeria, where from one cause and
another there are empty spaces to be filled in town
and country.

Far and away the best thing for Morocco and the
people of Morocco at the present day will be the
distinct and clear establishment of a French pro-
tectorate over four-fifths of that country and the
reduction of the Sultan to the same position as that
now honourably occupied by the Bey of Tunis.
Then, indeed, Morocco will go ahead. Its native
population will increase by leaps and bounds, its
incalculable natural riches be thrown open to
commerce, while science should gain prodigiously
by the examination of wonderful monuments of the
past stretching back into far distant ages of pre-
history. There will be revelations of a palaeonto-

172 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

logical fauna almost rivalling that of the Himalayan
foothills ; fresh discoveries ought to be made in botany,
in living zoology, and the evolution of human races
exceeding in interest anything yet made known in
Algeria and Tunis. The good days of Morocco are
just beginning.

" Why," one is sometimes asked, and by English-
men of all people, whose own Empire acts magnetically
on all adjacent countries of weak government —
" why could not France have contented herself with
Algeria and Tunis, and left Morocco alone .'' What
will she profit from this barren protectorate over a
land which Europe is determined shall be no close
borough, but a Free Trade region .'' " The explana-
tion is that a control over Morocco is an essential
factor to the government which administers Algeria
and Tunis. It is from Morocco that has come, or
it is Morocco which has nourished all the serious
insurrections against French rule ; it is Morocco
where Nature is unchecked, that ever and again
renews the locust plagues or the epidemics of horse
or cattle disease ; while the steady disforesting of
eastern Morocco is beginning to impoverish the
rainfall of Western Algeria.

To realise better the claims which France has on
European consideration and gratitude for her work
in North Africa, let us pass in review a brief summary
of what she has accomplished since 1830.

At the beginning of that year Turkish Deys,
Beys,'' and Pashas ruled most of the great coast

1 "Dey" was a cant soldier's term in Turkish for "uncle," and
was applied by the janissaries to the leader or representative whom

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 173

towns from Oran to the borders of Egypt, and held
with their Turkish soldiery a few cities in the
interior, such as Tlemcen and Constantine.

Elsewhere the Berber and Arab tribes were more
or less independent, and those of nomadic habits
were constantly raiding the settled agriculturists,
hindering all progress, incidentally aiding the
advance of the sandy desert, keeping down popula-
tion, and allowing their flocks and herds to destroy
the forests and thereby lessen the rainfall and
humidity. The condition of Algeria and Tunis in
1830 was lamentable, and offered the most striking
contrast to the times of the Roman or even
Byzantine Empire, when North Africa far down
into the Sahara Desert, and especially along the
Mediterranean coasts, was almost crowded with
stone-built towns and possessed quite a number of
magnificent cities, the public buildings of which — as
may be seen by their surviving ruins — vied in archi-
tecture and beauty with those of Italy. The water
supply was then carefully preserved in reservoirs,
and was utilised for the maintenance of a prosperous
agriculture and horticulture. Roads traversed
Algeria, Tunisia, and parts of Morocco in all
directions. Wild elephants still existed and were
frequently tamed and exported to Europe, whilst
their ivory was an article of commerce. Much of
Morocco, it is true, remained a savage country ; yet
it does not seem to have been as markedly hostile
to European penetration as at the present day, and

they elected (at first an elderly man) to represent their interests in
the government of these pirate States. "Bey" meant military
commander.

174 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

the forests of the Atlas furnished a good deal of
timber to the Roman world. In Algeria and Tunis
there were fewer swamps and arid tracts than there
are now, and consequently the country was far more
densely populated and seems to have had little or
no malaria.

In Algeria France has drained innumerable
swamps and planted millions of hectares of tree-
less plains and bare hillsides. The climate here
and there has become more humid and therefore has
made agriculture or stock rearing more possible or
profitable ; and in a general way it is far more
healthy for Europeans and natives than it was
seventy years ago. There are many districts at
the present day regarded as sanatoria which, in
the remembrance of the writer of this article,
were seriously unhealthy in 1880. Far down in
the Sahara Desert artesian wells have tapped the
underground water supply which percolates through
so much of that seemingly hopeless area. This
has led to the great increase in barley cultivation and
in the growth of date palms, and consequently of the
indigenous population of Berbers, Arabs, and Negroids.
The extinction of the lion, finally achieved about 1888
— regrettable though it may be from a naturalist's
point of view — and the considerable diminution in
numbers of the large panthers, the chitas, and hyenas,
have also operated favourably on the keeping of live
stock. The French have battled with the locusts
on a heroic scale, and in many parts of Algeria this
once constant plague has become nothing more than
a tradition, a remembrance of the bad old times in
the minds of the middle-aged or old. Districts

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 175

which I saw as blank, hopeless, sandy desert in 1880
were flourishing gardens or orchards when I revisited
them in 1897-8 or in 191 1 — growing oranges, figs,
dates, pomegranates, lentils, barley, lucerne, and
caroubs. Good carriageable roads where not one
carriageable road existed in 1830 have been made
throughout Algeria to the extent of about 1900
miles and extending as far south as Wargla in the
Sahara Desert. In Tunisia in 1880 there were
about 150 miles of carriageable roads. At the
present date this French protectorate has about
1800 miles of well-made roads over which horse-
carriages, motors and bicycles can pass with ease and
comfort. In the wilder regions of the Regency
excellent rest-houses for natives and for Europeans
— clean, comfortable, and safe, and with simple
wholesome food for men and forage for beasts — are
maintained by the Tunisian Government. In [880
I was unable to travel anywhere in Tunis at any
distance from the principal towns without an escort,
special permission and special facilities. At the
present day Tunisia is as safe and as open to tourists
as France itself, while, of course, the same thing can
be said not only of Algeria, but of all those frontier
regions in the east and south of Morocco which are
in French occupation. The beautiful and picturesque
oasis of Figig in south-eastern Morocco, the reaching
of which some twenty years ago would have been
a feat almost deserving a minor reward of a geo-
graphical society, and which would have occupied
some three weeks from London or Paris, is now a
steamer and railway journey from either of those
capitals of no more than five or four days, and

176 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

requires no special permission or any more foresight
than the writing a day or two beforehand to the
H6tel du Sahara to secure rooms. 670 miles of
railways have been constructed in Tunisia, and over
2000 miles in Algeria, and on the whole these rail-
ways, if not as speedy, are actually more comfortable
in accommodation than the railways of Sussex and
Kent. No town of Algeria or Tunis is without its
one or more hotels, and the food, accommodation,
and moderate prices of these establishments are
deserving of well-merited praise in the tourist world.
In fact, if Marseilles were a better-organised port
than it is, and the direct steamship lines between
Marseilles, Algeria and Tunis provided swifter and
larger boats, with better accommodation and better
food, Algeria and Tunis should absorb a large
proportion of those European tourists who between
October and April travel in search of sunshine and
flowers.

A glance at commercial statistics will show how
the trade of Europe and the United States has
increased with French North Africa during the
last thirty years. No Congo policy has been
followed here. The land has not been taken away
from the indigenes, who continue to possess their
due proportion of it and who have long since come
to feel a marked confidence in the justice of the
French courts, or, as in Tunis, in their native
tribunals, reformed and controlled as these are by
French oversight. The position of the Jews has
entirely changed since the arrival of the French.
They are now on the same footing as Europeans,
and consequently of late years have shown a marked

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 177

improvement in morale, in education, and in
physique. Under the direct encouragement of
France, something like 295,000 colonists of French
descent exist in Algeria and are at last beginning
to prosper.^ About 35,000 French men and women
are now established in Tunis, in which country
also Italian immigration instead of diminishing has
increased since the establishment of the French
protectorate and can now show a total of something
like 84,000 colonists. There are also 11,000
Maltese living happily and safely in the same
region. In Algeria there are 40,000 Italians and
10,000 Maltese, more especially in the eastern
part, besides another 30,000 or so Italians and
Maltese that have become French citizens and a
part of the French-speaking community. In the
western parts of Algeria there are 1 60,000 Spaniards,
and another 40,000 colonists of Spanish descent
who are naturalised French citizens. An increasing
proportion of the Spaniards in Algiers are becoming
French subjects, and their children, I have noticed,
are bi-lingual, speaking French with as much fluency
as Spanish. No matter what gibes may be cast
by French and English at the somewhat barbarous
manners of the Spaniards of Oran or the Italians
of Bona, it is clear to the present writer that the
descendants of these other Latin colonists are rapidly
assimilating in character with those of French

1 In 1861, there were 112,229 French settlers in Algeria, and
80,517 Italians, Spaniards, Maltese, Germans, and Swiss — 192,746
European colonists as against about 650,000 in 1910. It is a typical
British mistake to suppose that the French are not good colonisers,
or to underrate the material value of the 340,000 French settlers
now established in North Africa.

12

178 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

descent, and before more than one or two genera-
tions are past will, together not only with the Jews,
but even a proportion of the Berber population,
become fused into a homogeneous French-speaking
population of North Africa.

The French of late have done much not only
to realise the importance of the Berber element in
North Africa and the great difFerence of character
and value between the Berber and the Arab, but to
bring home these differences to the Berbers them-
selves and induce them, as far as their unhappy
attachment to Islam permits, to throw in their lot
with that of the European world in the future. In
Tunis and in Western Algeria the principle of
monogamy is spreading amongst the Berbers, always
well inclined to it in principle ; for amongst the
unspoilt Berber peoples woman holds a far higher
position than among the Arabs or Turks.

There is, of course, this qualification of the benefits
which the civilised world has derived from the French
work in Algeria and Tunis : that it has so far been
purely selfish, the commerce of other countries than
France being placed in as disadvantageous a position
as possible where it comes into competition with
the products and industries of France, except where
protected by special treaty provisions. But this is
a drawback which afFects all trade with the French
Empire and all trade with Germany and Austria-
Hungary. However, as Germany is situated she
was quite right to make a stand for Free Trade
conditions in Morocco (only she must be as firm
with Spain as with France in this respect).

In regard to Algeria and Tunis, Germany has

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 179

nothing to say, since the present arrangements were
recognised or not disputed by her many years ago : but
she is loath to give up what claims she may possess
to equality of treatment in Morocco without either
marked compensation in other parts of the world or
some clear understanding with France that if the
French flag is to wave over Morocco the whole of
that country is nevertheless to enjoy a free trade
regime quite different to what prevails in Algeria and
Tunis. " Then," say the Germans, " under the pro-
tection of the French flag we can perhaps become the
strongest commercial Power in Morocco. We believe
in that country and in its resources, and Germans prove
to be very successful there as commercial agents."

On the other hand, those forces which are behind
the French Government in the commercial world of
France still dislike very strongly the abandonment
of protection for French interests. They ask why
France should go to the great expense in men and
money of conquering and administering Morocco and
maintaining law and order in Algeria and Tunis mainly
for the benefit of the commerce of other nations.
They declare that if the present restrictions in Algeria
and Tunis were not in force (and as regards Tunis
they would like these restrictions strengthened and
amplified when existing commercial treaties come to an
end) the bulk of the commerce would not be French,
but would be British and Maltese, Italian or German.^

' At present France and the French Empire do an annual
trade with Algeria and Tunis of a combined approximate value of
^31,000,000 (taking the figures of 1909 as a sample) : the German
trade with French North Africa for the same annual period is only
about ^673,000 ; that of Italy about ;£i, 400,000.

The approximate value of the trade between the British Empire

i8o VIEWS AND REVIEWS

As regards British commerce with Algeria and
Tunis, it has increased very considerably since the
full establishment of French control ; and it might
have multiplied with these countries at an even
greater rate under a free trade regime ; still, we may
be grateful for and sensible of the fact that it does
so well under existing conditions. We are entitled
to surmise that it will not fare badly when the French
similarly rule Morocco. Much the same may be
said in regard to the trade of Italy with French
North Africa. As regards concessions : it strikes
me from actual observation that there are not a
few British concessionaire companies in Algeria and
Tunis engaged in boring for oil, in digging
phosphates, in lead, zinc, and iron mining operations
and in varied manufactures.

But more important than any foreign protest
against French monopolies and privileges in North
Africa is the provincial feeling arising in both
Algeria and Tunis which is resenting with ever-
increasing strength the holding in tutelage of those
countries to French merchants and capitalists. This
feeling is the more noteworthy since it is voiced

and Algeria and Tunis for igog was ^2,300,000, nearly twice as
much as in 1880 ; British trade with Morocco for the year 1907
was about ^1,714,000 in value ; French trade with Morocco for the
same period was ;£i,635,ooo; German trade with Morocco for 1907
was ^652,000. The total value of the trade of Morocco with the
outside world in the year 1908 was approximately ;^5,6oo,ooo in
value. Yet Morocco has an area of about 219,000 square miles and
a population of at least 5,000,000. The area of settled Northern
Algeria (distinct in administration from Southern or Saharan
Algeria) is 184,500 square miles, and its population is about
4,800,000 ; but after eighty years of French rule there, less than
five millions of Algerians do a trade with the outside world of an
annual value of about ^31,500,000.

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 1 8 1

chiefly by Frenchmen or colonists of French descent
who are asking that Algeria and Tunis may have
free trade and unfettered steam transport with all
the world. Angry protests are being uttered as to
the mauvais outillage of Marseilles as a port and the
poor speed, poor accommodation, and other defects
in the lines of French steamers which connect the
Algerian and Tunisian coasts with the South of
France ; and when I was in North Africa in the early
part of 1 9 1 1 I noted with some surprise the
exaggerated enthusiasm with which the French
colonists of Tunis and Algeria welcomed in their
Press the establishment or extension of German
lines connecting North Africa with Genoa. I
believe myself that what remains of protection and
privilege for French commerce and French capital in
Algeria and Tunis is on the road to extinction, and
that these countries will prosper so greatly under a
complete regime of free trade that not only will their
loyalty to the French nation increase, but their very
prosperity will indirectly enrich France in many
ways, while it will greatly add to her power in
Europe.

Just as France is obliged to tolerate Spain on her
left flank in Morocco, so for the last ten years she
has been accustoming herself to the eventuality of
an Italian occupation of Tripoli. Not long after the
unity of the Kingdom of Italy was effected, the
Italian Government began to take a great interest in
the aiFairs of Tunis, towards which in 1871 and
afterwards there had set in a marked emigration of
Sicilians and Italians. Italy, however, lost all hope
of bringing the Roman province of Africa (or, at any

1 82 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

rate, its western portion) under her flag when the
French protectorate was declared in 1 8 8 1 . Fearing
to lose the Tripolitaine likewise after Germany had
in the summer of 1 9 1 1 shown her desire for a foot-
hold in North Africa, and certain Germans and
Austrians had discussed the question of concessions
in Tripoli to an Austro-German syndicate, Italy in
September 1 9 1 1 declared war suddenly on Turkey,
and landed by degrees an army of 80,000 on the
Tripolitan coast, afterwards annexing the Turkish
provinces of Tripoli and Barka from the frontiers of
Egypt to those of Tunis. The Ottoman Empire in
reality had never properly asserted its ownership
over Tripoli and Barka till 1835, in which year the
dynasty of Karamanli pashas was dethroned ; and
these North African provinces (otherwise threatened
by Muhammad Ali of Egypt) were definitely
incorporated in the Turkish Dominions in 1845,
after ten years of guerilla warfare. So that what
Turkey took by force she is losing by the arbitrament
of force, and as she proved herself a bad steward
when in possession,^ and chiefly valued Tripoli and

' The sole and only use which Turkey has made of the Tripolitaine
has been as a recruiting-ground for negro slaves. From this
region caravan after caravan has found its way with arms and
ammunition supplied from Turkey to devastate or assist inlievastat-
ing the regions of the Central Sudan in order that convoys of slaves
might be sent across the desert for distribution over the Turkish
Empire. Not a single one of the still discernible magnificent public
works of the Roman Empire has been restored to utility, no fresh
well has been dug along the desert route, and many an old water
place has been allowed to crumble and disappear under the desert
sands. Tripoli, as a town, contains a few very beautiful mosques, but
these date back to the more or less Berber rule and civilisation of
the Karamanli pashas ; the public buildings actually constructed
by the Turks themselves being ugly or paltry. Morally speaking,
Turkey has no claim whatever to the Tripolitaine.

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 183

Barka for their access to the slave markets of the
Sudan, she merits very little pity now that Cyrenaica
and Leptis are once more to be ruled from Rome.
For the honour of Europe and Christianity it is to
be hoped that the Italy of the twentieth century will
show herself a fit daughter of Rome, and produce
soldiers and administrators, engineers, chemists, and
agriculturists who will do for Tripoli and Cyrenaica,
the Saharan hinterland and the Tibesti Mountains
what France has already achieved in Algeria and
Tunis, and British officials in Egypt and Nubia. At
any rate, Italy, whether or no she has made a false
step, must now go on with the task to the bitter end
at no matter what cost in men and money, for if
she were to confess failure and withdraw, the results
would be catastrophic throughout Africa and the
Orient. The victorious expulsion of the Italians
from North Africa by the Turks, Arabs, and Berbers
would quite probably be followed by a native rising
against British control in Egypt, by revolts against
the French in Tunis and in Morocco, by an
aggressive attitude towards Christians in Syria and
Asia Minor, which would compel the intervention
of the great Powers, and by similar movements in
Nigeria, the Sudan, Arabia, Afghanistan, and India,
such as would tax severely the resources of the
British and French Empires. Nor would either
Austria or Germany profit eventually by such a
renaissance of Muhammadan independence in Asia
Minor and Constantinople or in Mesopotamia ; and
Russia would feel the effects in Central and Western
Asia and in Northern Persia.

It is very hard to have to write in this style

1 84 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

against the 230,000,000 of people — many of them
of Caucasian race^ — who profess the Muhammadan
faith. Sixty millions of these people, physically
speaking, are quite as well worthy of regard as the
handsomest and most vigorous peoples of Europe.
Some of them are of the same racial stocks as the
Christian Europeans with whom they are in conflict
at the present day : they are Goths, Italians, Greeks,
Albanians, Circassians, and Slavs, whose forefathers
have had Islam forced upon them as a compulsory
religion, but who, though retaining in an improved
form the physical beauty or superiority of the
European, have the warped mentality of the Asiatic
and the African. In India it may be said nearly
without exception that the best-looking, strongest,
most warlike, and in some directions most enter-
prising element in the native population, and
that which is the least fettered by foolish customs,
is the Muhammadan. With the exception of
2,300,000 of Sikhs and 100,000 of Parsis, the
really go-ahead, advancing tribes and peoples of
that marvellous empire belong to the Muhammadan
faith. Sixty -four millions of Muhammadans in
India occupy a position of wholly disproportionate
importance to the 210,000,000 of Hindus, though
if a truthful aspect of the Indian problem is
to be presented, it must also be mentioned that
2,300,000 Sikhs count in our purview of the future

' It may be roughly computed that there are 230,000,000 Moslems
at the present day, of whom about 80,000,000 in Europe, North
Africa, Egypt, Arabia, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, and
North- West India belong, more or less, to the Caucasian sub-
species, 44,000,000 to the Dravidian mixed race, while 70,000,000
are Mongols, and 36,000,000 are negroes and negroids.

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 1 85

of India for more than, let us say, 20,000,000 of
Muhammadans.

Nevertheless the loyalty, the friendship, the co-
operation of the whole mass of the Muhammadan
citizens of the Indian Empire — some 64,000,000 in
number — is a most important asset and may well
count for much in the cogitations of British statesmen
when they weigh the advantages or disadvantages
of siding with Turkey or against Turkey, or by
an impeccable neutrality gaining no friend in either
direction. Yet it would indeed be a pity to purchase
the assured loyalty of the Muhammadan Indians by
restoring anywhere the uncontrollable political pre-
eminence of the Muhammadan religion, or by taking
any step which should diminish the power for
common action of Christianity against the non-
Christian world. The only hope of ultimate re-
conciliation between Christianity and Islam and
between the raising of the peoples now Muhammadan
to absolute equality, intellectual and social, with the
leading Christian peoples, lies in " the defecation of
Islam to a pure transparency " through which may
penetrate the only real value yet discovered in
religious development : the actual teaching of Christ
and of some amongst His immediate disciples. The
greatest foe of Islam is undenominational secular
education, and at present this is impossible of attain-
ment in any professedly Muhammadan school,
college, or university. All human knowledge,
especially the most marvellous developments of the
human mind in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, have to be subjected to the intolerable
sieve of the narrow mentality of Muhammad, an

1 86 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

illiterate, uneducated, bandit-mystic of the seventh
century a.c.^

The mind, the outlook and the enunciated
principles of Muhammad and of those immediately
around him during his lifetime and after his death
are illustrated by the Koran. The Koran has been
translated into English several times since the first
version published by Sale in the eighteenth century,"
so that any one of my readers not content to accept
my appraisement can read through the Bible of the
Muhammadans for himself and judge of its merits
as a sacred book. In the original Arabic it is written
in a kind of doggerel verse scarcely superior in
music, in clarity of utterance or beauty of thought
to the crude translations by Burton in his Arabian
Nights of the Arab poems woven into that
miscellany (which is not to say that the Koran is
without some passages of real poetic beauty). But
the desire of Muhammad and of all other Arab poets
of his period to end up each sentence with a rhym-
ing syllable governs to a great extent the direction
of the thought and the quality of the utterance.
The Koran traditionally represents the words of
Muhammad as heard and taken down by various

' Objection may be taken to tHe author's definition of Muhammad
as a " bandit-mystic." Yet let any impartial student read the latest,
most accurate, and not unsympathetic summary of the life of
Muhammad in the nth edition of the Encyclopcedia Britannica
(besides the standard biographies of this religious reformer) and
then ask himself if the term bandit -mystic is unfair.

2 Sale's translation, first published in 1734, is rather a paraphrase
and abridgement than a scrupulously faithful translation, such as
that by E. M. Wherry in four volumes, finished in 1886. E. H.
Palmer's translation, in two volumes, published at Oxford in 1882,
is a useful rendering.

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 1 87

scribes, prominent among them a Christian Abyssinian
slave. Muhammad was an entirely uneducated man
so far as first-hand knowledge of the then existing
literatures of the world was concerned, or any
experience of the world outside the limits of Western
Arabia. He derived his knowledge of the Hebrew
Bible from oral information imparted by Arabian
Jews, and his conceptions of Christian tenets from
Ethiopian slaves. He was a man, if you will, of an
original genius, and not without great thoughts and
great ideas, even though he was probably unable to
read and could barely write his name. But he was a
dreamer and a self-deceived mystic, who, while on
the one hand wanting to make a position for himself
in Arabia, and, later on, to transform the successes
of a bandit into the foundation of a kingdom, never-
theless really desired to promulgate a new gospel to
his Arab kinsmen and their slaves. Like many of
his fellow-countrymen at that period, he was repelled
by the puerilities of Greek and Egyptian Christianity,
and was in no mind to adopt the negation of the
flesh so strongly characteristic of the odious trans-
formations of Christ's Gospel which took place in
North Africa and Syria under the influence of Greek,
Persian and Syrian casuists. On the other hand,
though greatly inclined towards Judaism, which at
that date was receiving into its fold those North
Africans and Arabians who were turning against
Greek and Latin Christianity, he disliked the personal
character of the Jew — that character which has so
frequently in the history of the last two thousand
years marred the spread of Jewish influence, often of
a very noble and purifying nature, in sociology and

1 88 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

religion. So Muhammad promulgated a religion
which was neither Jewish nor Christian, but apper-
tained mostly to the faith and teaching of the Jews.
The Koran, like the book of Mormon, was an un-
conscious parody of the Old Testament, combined
with the first public utterance of Arab and Babylonian
variants of the Jewish myths and genuine historical
records.

If the question could be submitted to the arbitra-
tion of an international court composed of impartial
agnostics (many of them nominal Christians, nominal
Muhammadans, or religionless Japanese), I do not
hesitate to say that the verdict would be that there
were very few sentences in the Koran which deserved
quotation or which shone with that striking, con-
vincing beauty of truth and practical application
which characterises — whether we wish to admit it
or no — so much of the wording of the gospels and
epistles on which the Christian faith is founded, or
the Psalms and the prophetical and poetical utter-
ances gathered together in the Hebrew Bible. If
there is any gem of undoubted lustre in the Koran
it is borrowed more or less from the sacred books of
the Jews or the Christians, or, much more rarely,
from the Magian religion of Persia.

At its very best Muhammad's teaching only
inculcated a modified form of personal cleanliness,
almsgiving to the poor, abstinence from wine, and
honesty in trade. Incidentally, it led to some
improvement in the treatment of children, as its
influence abolished cruel customs of abandoning
unwanted female children ; but its view of the
position of woman was lower than that taken by the

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 189

Hebrew teachers, and far inferior to that expressed
by Christianity. In Islam lustful man was to find
for thirteen centuries a warrant for polygamy and
an excuse for uncontrolled sexuality. The greatest
disadvantage which attaches at the present day to
Islam as a world force is the inferior position to
which woman is relegated ; and as the woman is the
mother of the man, so this unequal position of the
sexes in religion and society inevitably influences the
mentality of the man to whom the woman gives
birth. The Jewish religion still assigns to woman
an indefinite and scarcely honourable place, since
women are excluded from the public functions of
religion. But Muhammadanism is far worse in that
respect, and it is very doubtful whether Muhammad
believed or taught that women had souls equally
with men. In a general sense they are excluded
from the public manifestations of religion, except
when they come forward to be married to a man or
to be divorced from their husbands.

It goes almost without saying that the whole story
of the Koran and the bulk of its teaching are
incompatible with the pronouncements of modern
science. So also — a Muhammadan reader of these
sentences may observe — are the earlier books (or the
books which are assumed to be earliest in com-
position) in the Hebrew Scriptures ; so likewise are
most of the dogmas of Christianity, which, though
finding little or no place or justification in the New
Testament, nevertheless now form an integral part
of almost all manifestations of the Christian faith.
I admit these impeachments at once. But somehow
or other Jews and Christians have found a way of

I90 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

evading the trammels of their religious beliefs where
these, in process of time, grew to be inconvenient
or out of harmony with the enlargement of man's
outlook and the firmly based revelations of science.
The Roman Catholic Church has persecuted here
and there, intermittently, the too daring speculators
of the Middle Ages, and even of the later centuries
down to the twentieth ; and yet this religion
encouraged learning of a sound order, was not
incompatible with the founding of astronomical
observatories, anatomical schools, geographical,
botanical, linguistic, and zoological research. The
Popes of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries did
much to encourage the exploration of Asia, America
and Africa and to secure the publication of travellers'
reports. I should not like to argue that the Roman
Church has always acted throughout its history with
a twentieth-century outlook, or that it has not often
checked the advance and freedom of scientific
investigation, has not occasionally punished with
imprisonment, torture, death, or social ostracism
thinkers that were too advanced for the age or the
area in which they lived. But similar cruelties and
stupidities can be laid at the door of the Protestant
branches of Christianity — Calvinists, Lutherans, and
Presbyterians — who made a fetish out of the Hebrew
Bible, who were just as much opposed — perhaps
even more than the Latin Christians — to sanitary
and social reform, while they attempted from time
to time to strangle the arts, to introduce and to
maintain a tyranny in the limitation of man's
pleasures which was nearly as bad as the intentions
and accomplishments of the Wahhabi sect of the

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 1 9 1

Muhammadans. Yet the Roman Church from the
sixteenth century onwards steadily set itself to dis-
courage and to alleviate slavery ; it gave an enormous
impetus to painting, sculpture, architecture, and
music ; and it founded hospitals, encouraged the
study of languages, created museums, and laid the
foundations of the modern drama. From out of the
Protestant Churches came such splendid achieve-
ments in philanthropy as the work of the Moravian
missionaries, of the Quakers, and of the Baptists —
work which has really been the foundation of all
modern reforms in social and international philan-
thropic legislation. The Greek Church, indeed, has
had a poor record beside the civilising work of
Western Christianity. It wages no war against
alcoholism, and it stimulates the persecution of the
Jews. Yet Christian Russia, with all its drunken-
ness, its political faults and shortcomings, stands on
a much higher level of civilisation and well-being
than Muhammadan Turkey.

In short, judged by the test of output in the way
of science and art, literature, material well-being,
control of diseascj sexual morality, public works,
subdual of recalcitrant nature, can any comparison
be sustained between the countries professing the
Christian religion or governed by Christian nations
and the lands which still remain more or less
independent under the sway of Muhammadan rulers ?
On these lines is there any sustainable plea of
equality between Hungary and European Turkey,
Spain and Morocco, Greece and Asia Minor, Italy
and Tripoli, Afghanistan and British India, modern
Persia and modern Caucasia ? The language of the

192 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

Christian Magyars and that of the Muhammadan
Turks are nearly related in origin, and the Magyars
and Turks came from the same ethnic stock ; but
in the course of history one became Christian and
the other Muhammadan. Can any impartial critic
maintain that the two peoples at the present day are
on the same level of civilisation, or place alongside
Hungarian achievements in art, music, architecture,
literature, biological science, engineering and political
government similar achievements on the part of
Turkey ?

I do not overlook the fact that when Greek,
Syrian, and Egyptian Christianity was stifling science
and killing all the arts but architecture, the Arabs,
Persians and Berbers under the flag of Islam saved
some branches of Greek and Roman culture from
perdition, revived and extended Greek researches
into medicine, chemistry, and mathematics, preserved
some Roman notions of engineering and hydraulics,
and developed from out of Byzantine architecture
exquisite designs in building and in mural decora-
tion. But it must be remembered that most of the
great names in the golden age of Islam between the
eighth and the thirteenth centuries were not those
of people of Arab or Turkish descent, but of Jews,
Persians, Berbers, Copts, Greeks and Italians, whose
conformity with the Muhammadan religion was that
of more or less unwilling converts, if indeed they
did not by special favour retain the profession of
Judaism or Christianity.

The Arabs and Turks by degrees killed all that
was noteworthy in Islamic culture. The Arabs
have remained to this day as ignorant, arrogant,

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 193

and semi-barbarous as they were in the days of
Muhammad. It is true that in contrast with naked
and absolutely savage negroes they have appeared to
be a civilising element in Tropical Africa, to which
they have conveyed several useful domestic animals
and a variety of cultivated plants, besides elementary
notions of decency and comfort. But in matters of
architecture, for example, the Arabs have done little
or nothing to help Africa. The beautiful Saracenic
architecture of the north was almost entirely de-
veloped and spread by Copts, Berbers and Persians ;
and it is only since the seventeenth century that this
architecture has penetrated at all into the Sudan, the
remarkable " Fula " (Songhai) style of building
which prevails throughout Nigeria from Senegal
to Lake Chad being of pre-Islamic and possibly
Egyptian origin. When the rule of the Arab in
North Africa had come to an end (a change which
really began to take place in the eighth century) the
Islamised Berbers, with many checks and interrup-
tions caused by Arab invasions in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, revived the arts — especially archi-
tecture — and civilised amenities of life till they had
raised the North African kingdoms between Tunis
and Morocco to a state of well-being and efficiency
nearly equal to that of contemporary Spain and Italy ;
just as Persia had a remarkable revival under the
Sufi dynasty of Shia Muhammadans. But in both
cases the Turks — more especially the Ottomans —
came on the scene and spoilt everything. Greek,
Latin and Slavic culture throughout the Balkan
Peninsula, the Greek promontories and islands, was
drowned in blood by the Turks during the fifteenth

13

194 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

and sixteenth centuries. In the same period the
revived civihsation and art of Asia Minor, Syria,
Egypt and Mesopotamia (developed by the Persians,
Armenians, Seljuks, Circassians, the European
crusaders, and the Genoese and Venetian traders)
were laid in ruins by the same bloody hand. The
history of Egypt from the Turkish assumption of
sovereignty in 1518 to the invasion of Napoleon
Bonaparte in 1798 is practically a blank so far as
human achievements go, a miserable period, during
which public works fell into ruin, population de-
creased by millions, and the desert gained steadily
on the cultivated land. Equally dreary is the
history of Greece under Turkish rule, from the
time when the Venetians were driven out of the
Greek islands and the Morea to the proclamation
of independence in 1821. The same can be written
of Servia under the Turks, of Bulgaria and Mace-
donia, of Syria (until Napoleon rudely called the
attention of Europe to that historic land), of Rhodes,
Cyprus, Crete, and Asia Minor. What happened to
Algeria, Tunis and Tripoli after they were conquered
by Turkish pirates and became dependencies of the
Turkish Empire ? Complete alienation from contem-
porary advance in Mediterranean civilisation (except
as regards shipbuilding), a relapse into semi-savagery
of life, a further decay of irrigation works, a steady
increase in the destruction of forests, a diminution in
horticulture, and a serious advance of the desert sands.
It is true that Morocco fared little better under
the Sharifian dynasty of negroid sultans, but Morocco
has been a semi-savage country from prehistoric
times onwards, large portions of it never having

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 195

been conquered or assimilated by the Romans,
Arabs, or Islamised Berbers. Yet in some respects
independent Morocco prior to the French conquest
of Algiers in 1 830 remained more in touch with
European civilisation than the adjoining parts of
North Africa ruled by Turkish pashas, colonels,
and soldiers. Tripoli, like Tunis, had in the early
eighteenth century detached itself almost completely
from Turkish domination under dynasties which,
though of Turkish origin, had in course of time and
intermarriage become practically native to the soil.
Under the Karamanli princes Tripoli in the early part
of the nineteenth century entered into very friendly
relations with Britain, and through this friendliness
British expeditions were enabled to penetrate easily
across the Sahara into Bornu and Nigeria.

Islamic fanaticism still attains its culmination in
the western and eastern extremes of the Muham-
madan world ; in Morocco and in Afghanistan. In
Tunis, perhaps owing to the deep-seated influence
of Rome in this most Roman part of Africa, there
has never been quite the same hatred of Christian
Europe and Christian civilisation as elsewhere in
North Africa ; and since 1 8 8 1 the peaceful pene-
tration of France and her wise and well-planned
measures for the administration of the country and
its restoration to prosperity, have been little, if at
all, opposed or interfered with by Muhammadan
fanaticism. But in Algeria the struggle has been
long and obstinate and is still not at an end, though
there has been a perceptible amelioration since the
beginning of the twentieth century. Mons. Edmond
Doutt6 in his interesting work on Morocco,

196 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

published in 1905,^ points out that, in spite of
optimism based on consciousness of well-doing,
Frenchmen would be rash in concluding that their
presence in Algeria or Morocco was really desired
by the Muhammadan natives of those countries,
still less that there was any widespread wish on the
part of the Moroccans for a French protectorate.
He points out, for example, how unpopular for a
long time was the law of compulsory vaccination in
Algeria, though its steady maintenance has almost
extirpated smallpox from that region. The
Algerians believed it to be a crafty plan for sterilis-
ing them sexually and thus arresting their increase !
Though if they had glanced at statistics they would
have seen that under French rule the native popula-
tion increased from 2,340,000 in 1861 to 4,418,000
in 1907. The laws for the establishment of per-
sonal property, for the registration of births, deaths,
marriages, and testamentary dispositions, for taking
a census of the population, for establishing insur-
ance and mutual-benefit societies — in fact, every
measure to increase the welfare of the masses — were
viewed at first and for long with the profoundest
suspicion. Even now, in such of the Muhammadan
schools of Algeria as are not under the control of
the French Government, the pupils are taught
systematically that the Christian is trying to warp
their social life into a denial of Islam and conse-
quently is bringing them within danger of Hell-fire in
the next world. Yet Mons. Doutt6 has written his
definite conviction " that a slow but sure movement
is growing which draws us and our Moslem fellow-
* Merrakech, published by the Comit6 du Maroc, Paris.

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 197

citizens in Algeria together into a community of
feeling, and that this movement is undoubtedly
strengthened by the good administrative measures
of recent years. It is a movement which cannot be
hastened by impatient advances on our part, nor can
it be seriously delayed by the existing fanaticism of
middle-aged Muhammadans, but it is as irresistible
as the progress of a glacier. . . . Actually our entry
into Algeria, by the suspicion and terror of the
foreigner which it aroused, hastened or accentuated
the Islamising of not a few Berber peoples and tribes
who had hitherto almost remained in a pagan state,
while it sharpened the fanaticism of the Muham-
madans in the great towns of Algeria and Morocco."
My own impression is that Muhammadan fanati-
cism is distinctly lessening both in Tunis and Algeria,
while the Christian propaganda is becoming more
urbane and less insistent. The mass of the people
in the towns of northern Tunis and Algeria are
drifting towards an easy-going agnosticism which is
entirely robbed of hostility towards the Christian
faith, and which leaves out of Muhammadanism
all that is fanatical, irksome, or foolish in precept
or custom. Unfortunately in Algeria the de-
Muhammadanised natives are taking not merely
to the drinking of wine — the local wine does no
one any harm — but of a bad French brandy which,
despite protests from the local authorities, is being
almost thrust on them by the action of the French
Government — a government which is too much
under viticultural influence. But Muhammadan
food tabus are likewise disappearing. Pork finds
its way into the Algerian dietary disguised as

198 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

" wild boar," the Berbers having always refused to
believe that the meat of the wild boar could have
been seriously condemned by Muhammad. Costume
is also being Europeanised. The Turkish breeches
are being displaced by the tight blue cotton trousers
of Southern Europe. In fact, many Algerians now
dress just like the peasants of southern France, with
the difference that they wear a tarbush or fez, or wind
a white cloth sparsely round their heads. In some
districts a distinct fusion of races is taking place, and
this also has begun in the Regency of Tunis.

The fact is that undistinguished by a special
national costume there is not very much to
diflFerentiate a Berber man or woman in physique,
appearance, and colour from the inhabitants of
southern France : both alike are largely of Iberian
stock. Dress a Kabail woman of Tunis or Algeria in
French clothes, and you would consider her a comely
Frenchwoman, coming from Provence or Languedoc.

No civilised man or woman wishes to revive any
idea of religious persecution or disability, except it
may be in regard to such religions or religious tenets
as by international opinion are voted to be inde-
fensibly cruel and harmful to human development.
There is some good in Islam and there is a great
deal of nonsense and rubbish attached to Christianity.
No European Power that has achieved predominance
over a country essentially Muhammadan has, since
the eighteenth century, persecuted Muhammadans
by forbidding polygamy or compelling them to
abandon any of their rites or ceremonies. Muham-
madans are free to travel all over Christendom.

EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND ISLAM 199

They may without danger, even without insult,
enter any Christian place of worship. Can the same
be said for the holy places of Islam whither at the
present day no Christian may go except in great
personal danger and disguised as a Muhammadan ?
What about the attitude of the Muhammadan
Egyptians towards the Copts of Egypt, the Turkish
treatment of Christian Armenians, Christian Syrians
and Macedonians ? We can never hope to make
Muhammadans Christians by employing force in
any form, even by the application of conditions
of social disability. Perhaps, indeed, Islam may
never precisely range itself under the banner of
Christ, just as the Jews will go on for a century or
so longer pretending to ignore the greatest Jew in
history. Similarly, during the same period much that
is excrescent, outworn, pagan, and open to doubt,
will drop off from European Christianity. At the
rate at which the world is now advancing all civilised
peoples in the Old and New Worlds may be agreed
fifty years hence on a common basis of religion, the
Service of Man ; but in the meantime it behoves
Muhammadans throughout the world to look closely
into the tenets and practice of their faith, and ask
themselves whether Islam has conduced to the ad-
vancement of their forefathers and to their own
present political and social well-being, and whether
— however superior it may be to the moonshine of
Buddhism and the nightmare nonsense of Brahman-
ism, the ancestor-worship of China, or the fetish
idolatry of Africa — it is a religion which can maintain
a people at the same high level of civilisation as that
which exists throughout Christendom.

CHAPTER VIII

RACIAL PROBLEMS

Compared to other mammals, Man has been the
greatest of colonisers for something like half a
million years, possibly longer. Each fresh revela-
tion of the New Bible — the Book of the Earth —
which is being painfully construed from the reading
of geological, palaeontological, archaeological evidence,
puts back in time the period at which the perfect
man was evolved from an ape-like progenitor, till we
are now forced to think that the human genus must
be a million years old, and the human species to
which all existing races belong — Homo sapiens — have
been in existence since the end of the Pliocene
period, perhaps five hundred thousand years ago,
possibly more. All the faint indices we can discern
still point to Asia, Syria, or possibly India, as the
region in which the genus Homo was born from out
of some anthropoid type like the Pithecanthropus or
Ape-man of Java ; but the most recent researches
would suggest that Homo primigenius, the Man of
Neanderthal, of the Pleistocene Rhine valley,
France, Belgium, and Austria, or at any rate his
ancestor, the Man of Gibraltar, first colonised
Europe and North Africa from his birthplace in

300

RACIAL PROBLEMS 201

South-west Asia, Meanwhile, incomplete, arrested
Pithecanthropus straggled eastward and got as far as
Java, where seemingly he was afterwards followed
up by Homo sapiens and exterminated.^

The Man of Neanderthal has not so far been traced
to Britain, or to Italy, nor have his remains been
found as yet anywhere but in Central Europe ; yet in
the famous Gibraltar skull we seem to have the outline
of a creature which may have been near the ancestral
form both of Homo primigenius and Homo sapiens, with
a very big nose, however (quite un-negrolike in that
feature), and a brain lower in capacity and perhaps
in structure than that of the Neanderthaloids, and
inferior to the average brain of any existing human
race at the present day, though the Veddahs of
Ceylon and certain Australoids come near it in
smallness of size, and in some individuals occupy
a more lowly cranial development. Apparently
Neanderthaloid Man became a specialised form
which coexisted in Central Europe with the " Galley
Hill" or generalised type of Homo sapiens (who must
have resembled strongly the extinct Tasmanians, and
have had Australoid and Negro features in his skull).
The Neanderthaloids developed large brains, but
they must have been hideous-looking savages, with
a bowed, shambling gait, short-necked, pulled-back

* The evidence collected by the expedition of Frau Selenka in
1907-8 makes it seem possible that true Man, probably of an
Australoid type, coexisted for a time in Java with Pithecanthropus,
who no doubt outstayed his welcome at the hands of Nalure, as the
existing anthropoid types have done. For notes on this question see
^ Dr Arthur Keith's Ancient Types of Man, 191 1. Keith considers
Pithecanthropus to belong to the genus Homo. A. W. D. Robertson
(jProc. Roy. Soc. of Edinburgh, vol. xxxi.) thinks Pithecanthropus
" decidedly nearer the anthropoid apes."

202 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

heads, eyes glowing under projecting, bristling brows,
long arms, and no doubt hairy bodies. Probably it
was war to the death between the two species, though
it is not impossible that the women of Primigenius
were sometimes captured and taken to wife by Sapiens,
and that mixed races arose through the mingling of
the two species ; but this must remain a moot point
till we can decide mathematically what constitutes
" specific " difference, and whether any two valid
species of mammals produce hybrids which in their
turn are fertile. Personally, I think there is little
doubt on this point. Take the case of the oxen, for
example : what could constitute more clearly a
specific difFerence than the gap between buffaloes,
bibovine, bisontine, and taurine oxen .? Yet all
these forms readily interbreed, and their offspring
again are fertile (as has been proved repeatedly in
the London Zoological Gardens) : so much so that
the bison of America have been revivified by the
introduction of taurine blood. Again, jackals and
wolves will breed with dogs, and their offspring
again prove capable of carrying on a mixed race as
an independent type, or of fusing once more into
either of the parent stems. The same thing occurs
between the quite distinct small cats of Asia and
Europe and the cats of Africa (Felts catus and its
allies and Felis maniculata), and from such inter-
mixture have arisen the many breeds of domestic
cat. So also, I think, has it been with various
species of sheep — mostly extinct — so is it indeed
to-day with allied species of wild sheep and wild
goats. And this intermingling of species — a fact
which is too much overlooked by biologists — has,

RACIAL PROBLEMS 203

to my thinking, not only accounted for bringing
into existence several clearly defined, and now quite
separate species of goose, duck, pheasant, antelope,
wild dog, and monkey, but may have permitted the
two divergent branches of the human stem — Homo
primigenius and Homo sapiens — to mingle their blood
and produce persistent types which have been great
colonisers.

Either such a hybrid, or a very early form of
Homo sapiens like the Galley Hill man, overran
Europe and the Mediterranean basin (surviving in
an attenuated form in the Mogods of north-west
Tunisia ; also in Sardinia, here and there in Alsace
and Germany, in Ireland, in Russia), and pushed
on through Asia till it outran Pithecanthropus and
reached the Australasian region, where it survives
to-day more or less mixed with the Negro, in the
Australoid and Melanesian. From the basal type of
Homo sapiens must also have arisen the very specialised
Negro, whose place of origin, like that of the human
genus, seems to have been southern or south-western
Asia. Negroids had penetrated to France at least
thirty thousand years ago, and thence apparently to
western Britain and southern Ireland. From the
early skulls of Algeria, it would seem also that North
Africa, and, it may be, southern Spain, became in time
a domain of the Negro, who probably absorbed or
displaced any antecedent Neanderthaloids. Similarly,
Arabia — possibly also Egypt — had a Negro popula-
tion at one time, somewhat of the Bushman type ;
and, generalised, Asiatic negroes (historically known
as Elamites — the modern Laris) undoubtedly popu-
lated southern Persia. From India spread out the

ao4 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

Negritos over Burma and Malaysia to the Philippines
and New Guinea, the Burmese negroes finding a
last refuge in the Andaman archipelago, anciently a
peninsula stretching out from Lower Burma. (There
is, however, much negrito blood in the modern
Burmese and Annamese.)

The White man — it is perhaps better to call him
Caucasian, since he may only have won his way to
whiteness of skin within the last fifty thousand years
— almost certainly originated in Europe : quite
possibly in Russia, which country Dr Arthur Keith
regards as a great breeding ground of racial types.
Indeed, when in these chapters I venture to refer to
the " Russian " variety of white man, I mean that
prevailing and usually handsome type of central and
western Russia which seems to occupy in physical
features a median position between the blond Nordic
man, the long-nosed Armenian, and the oval-faced
Iberian. Prior to his evolution, Europe seems to
have been inhabited by races that were " Proto-
Caucasian " — of Tasmanian or Melanesian affinities,
like the Galley Hill and Brtlnn ^ men, or, much later,
of Mongoloid and Amerindian relationships like the
tall Cro-Magnon race. The Cro-Magnon people of
central and southern France, who no doubt succeeded
the Negroids of the Grimaldi type, were in many
aspects like the Caucasian, and yet in the shape of the
skull and face bones recall the taller Mongolians
of north central Asia and the Amerindians (Red
Indians) of North America. Traces of such tall
Mongoloid tribes linger to-day in the populations of
the British Isles, Scandinavia, Germany, and the
' Briinn in Moravia, Austria.

RACIAL PROBLEMS 205

Indian borderland. They differ from the Nordic
(Aryan) and Iberian (Mediterranean) peoples in
being far less hairy about the face and body. The
sometimes remarkable hairiness of both the blond
and dark-haired Europeans, Berbers, Syrians, and
northern Arabs is not improbably a legacy from the
Galley Hill or Tasmanianesque ancestor of 100,000
years ago, who himself derived it from the progenitor
of Homo sapiens. The tall Cro-Magnon people may
also have penetrated Asia Minor and Mesopotamia,
and thence permeated the Hamitic populations of
ancient Arabia (the ancestors of the dynastic Egyp-
tians) and East Africa, imparting to them at once the
element of tall stature and smooth, hairless bodies.

The Caucasus region seems, like Germany and
Russia, to have been another fertile breeding ground
of racial types. Here were perhaps engendered
the ancestors of the dark-haired, yellow-skinned
Mukenaians, of the Lydians and Etruscans ; and
also of those Dravidian invaders of India and Persia,
whose languages to-day evince faint, far-off sugges-
tions of affinity with the isolated, class-governed ^
Lesgian group of the south-west Caucasus. From
this district likewise may have come the early civilisers
of North Africa, the ancestors on one side (the other
being negroid) of the Fula and similar pristine white
invaders of Mauretania, Egypt, and the Sahara, who
introduced into West and Central Africa the class and
concord families of African speech — Temne, Wolof,

' Namely, having the nouns divided into classes or categories with
appropriate pronouns and concord : categories which are quite
unconnected with sex distinctions. These "class" languages of
the Caucasus, India and Africa do not possess sewal gender in
their pronouns and syntax.

2o6 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

Fula, Bantu, Kordofan, Nilotic, Hottentot, Masai,
etc.

Certain French students of African philology
think that the long- established Libyan - Hamite
family of languages were preceded in North Africa
and perhaps Egypt by a " white man's " language
of the class and concord type akin to Fula. The
evidence they adduce is very slight, but the idea is not
an improbable one. From the same direction — the
Caucasus — seem to have come the ancestors of the
Iberians, the Libyan-Hamites, and of the allied Semites.
Syria (it is thought) was at one time occupied by a
people of Libyan speech and affinities — the Amorites
— who passed into northern Egypt, and so westward
to Mauretania, Spain, and the Sahara. In Arabia the
Libyan family probably differentiated into Libyans
(Berbers) and Hamites (ancestors of the dynastic
Egyptians, Galas, Bisharin, Hadendowa, etc.). Libyans
and Hamites were closely followed up by the allied
Semites, who took possession of Mesopotamia and
Arabia, who turned the Libyans eventually out of
Palestine and Midian, and who frequently invaded
Egypt, in prehistoric as well as in historic times. All
these peoples were emphatically white men, except
after they — the Hamites and Semites — had mingled in
Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Egypt with Mongoloids,
Negroids, and Dravidians. The dynastic Egyptians,
who seem to have come from south-west Arabia and
to have entered Egypt from northern Galaland, were
a particularly fine race of noble appearance, even if
their skin colour had been darkened by the absorp-
tion of some small element of the Negro in very
ancient times. Egyptian and Hamitic influence

RACIAL PROBLEMS 207

spread from about ten thousand years ago widely-
over Eastern Africa, and reached by degrees the very
heart of the continent, perhaps even extending along
the eastern coast down into Mashonaland as far as the
river Sabi. Even after the Christian era had begun
and Egypt proper had long lain supine and unenter-
prising under the spell of Graeco-Roman culture, the
influence of old Egypt was penetrating across the
Sudan from the White Nile to Bornu and Lake
Chad, to the Shari and Benue, to the Niger and
even to Senegambia. The effects of these trading
caravans from Egypt and Nubia, and the adven-
turous journeys of run-away soldiers, criminals,
slave-traders from about 300 b.c. onwards, reacted
profoundly on African affairs, introducing oxen,
goats, sheep, fowls, and Egyptian food crops, and the
working of iron to the knowledge of the Sudanese
negroes, and bringing about tribal movements which
convulsed the southern third of Africa and the basin
of the Niger, and which led amongst other things to
the great Bantu invasions of Central and Southern
Africa.

The Libyans similarly spread themselves over North
Africa and the Sahara, driving southward the preced-
ing Caucasian peoples (such as the Fula), but also
absorbing both Fula and Negroids to some extent ;
for the ancient " nigrification " of North Africa must
never be overlooked as a factor in its race formations.

Libyan-Hamites and Semites have between them
the bond of a common language family ; for although
the difference in syntax and even in word-roots
between the two groups is very profound, they
possess sufficient features in common to make it

2o8 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

certain that ten or more thousand years ago they
might be traced back to a common parentage perhaps
in some part of Asia Minor. One such feature
characteristic of both Semitic and Hamitic speech is
the dividing of nouns into two classes, masculine
and feminine, and of associating the consonant " t "
with the feminine gender (the concord, the pronouns,
are all indicated by a syllable formed with "t" and
a vowel, or by "t" alone).'^ In the recognition of
sexual gender — that is to say, the dividing of noun-
concepts into two or three classes — those that were
male, those that were female, and those that were
neuter (though there is practically no conception of
a neuter class in the Semitico-Hamitic tongues) — they
resembled the Aryan group of white men's languages.
But it is a mistake to attribute exclusively to these
two important speech families this feature of sexual
gender. It is also known to the Nilotic-Negro
family, especially the Masai group, and again
appears in an unclassified Sudanese language, the
Bongo, to say nothing of the Hausa and
Musgu, which have probably borrowed the concept
from the Hamitic or Libyan languages ; or the far-
away Hottentot of South- West Africa ; ^ and there
are dim reflections of this sexual discrimination in the
Bantu. Only in the Nilotic and Bantu tongues the
feminine particle is never associated with t, but is na
(and in Bantu, also, ka). It is further noteworthy
that there is a sexual gender-discrimination in some

• In course of time the i has sometimes changed to A or z.

^ The phonology of Hottentot is Bushman, as are certain word-
roots. The numerals are related to unclassified East African
tongues ; but the syntax, concord, genders, and suffixes recall the
Hamitic languages of North-East Africa.

RACIAL PROBLEMS 209

Papuan tongues of South-East New Guinea, and per-
haps other Papuan or Melanesian languages, and that
the feminine is usually indicated by the syllable na.

Whilst the repeated invasions and general per-
meation of Africa by Caucasian or semi-Caucasian
peoples were taking place between — let us say —
fifteen thousand to one thousand years ago, similar
mouldings of Asia were also being effected by the
Caucasian races. As regards Northern and Central
Asia, the movement eastwards of the European may
have begun earlier than the penetration of Africa.
A Proto-Caucasian type (the Ainu) has been left
behind in Sakhalin, Northern Japan, the Kurile
islands, and has left traces of its former presence in
Korea and Northern China. There is little doubt in
my own mind that these primitive Caucasians did not
stop at Kamshatka, but crossed over by the Aleutian
chain of islands into Southern Alaska and expanded
over British Columbia, till at last they had again
added a Caucasian element to that most ancient
hybrid between Mongoloid and Caucasian which is
represented in varying degrees by the Amerindian
peoples of the New World.

Proto-Caucasians mingled early with Negroids
and Australoids, and laid the foundations of the
principal races of India before these were further
Caucasianised by the arrival of the Aryans three or
four thousand years b.c. They also pushed south-
wards through China, down into the great Malay
island of Sumatra, and here or hereabouts en-
gendered that remarkable Polynesian race which not
only spread itself over many of the Malay islands,
and by a mingling with the Negro formed the

14

2IO VIEWS AND REVIEWS

Papuan, but colonised all the Polynesian islands,
including New Zealand, and may quite possibly
have reached Central or Southern America in its
adventurous voyages, thereby bringing to the New
World some of that Neolithic civilisation invented
by the white man.

In short, in our dim readings of the past history
of man, the Caucasian sub-species — a very ancient
but not an unmixed type, composed mainly of an
Australoid stock mixed with Mongol, Negroid, and
Amerindian strains — seems over and over again to
have been the world's redeemer, regenerator, in-
ventor, conqueror, prophet, and teacher ; to have
walked with God before any other human race cared
about religion ; to have realised and wrestled with
the devil of recalcitrant Nature, instead of succumb-
ing to her cruelties of frost and drought, her snares
of gluttony and lust, her trials of hunger, her Circe-
like temptations to forsake the heights and revert
to the placid animalism of the tropical lowlands.
Caucasian man in his restless wanderings over the
world has been unable to leave alone the other sub-
species of Homo sapiens, but has thrust himself into
their homes and hordes, sired their children, mingled
his blood with theirs, till at the present day there
are very few negro tribes absolutely pure of
Caucasian intermixture, and not many Mongolian
races without some element of the European man
in their composition.

This Caucasianising of the world has had its
fluctuations, its failures and retreats, and its repeated
periods of renewed emigrations. One such period
has been in progress since the fifteenth century,

RACIAL PROBLEMS 211

entirely changing the fate of Asia, Australasia, Africa,
and America. We can also see that there were great
racial movements throughout the world between
200 and 800 A.c, and again about 400-200 b.c,
2000 B.C., 7000—6000 B.C., and perhaps 10,000 b.c
This last suggested date might be coincident with
Neolithic civilisation leaving its original home in
Eastern Europe or Western Asia, and extending its
cult of the Stone, its arts and industries, domestic
animals and cultivated plants from Ireland to Japan
and Easter Island, from Sweden to the Sahara.

From out of all these movements have arisen the
Racial problems of the twentieth century.

I. First in the list comes the question of Racial
Superiority. Is there a " superior " race of man
dominating the earth at the present day .'' In the
opinion of most anthropologists there is ; and this
superior race is the White Man of Europe and of
recent European Colonies in the other Continents.

We may take it that there are to-day four im-
portant sub-specific divisions of the one species.
Homo sapiens. The White, or Caucasian ; the
Yellow, or Mongolian (to which last may be re-
ferred the Amerindians and Malays, though the
Amerindians display undoubted signs of ancient
hybridism with the White stock) ; the Brown mixed
races — Hamites, Dravidians of India and Ceylon,
Malagasy, Melanesians and Polynesians ; and the
Negro, or Black sub-species. To these divisions
might be added some two hundred thousand Austra-
loids of Ceylon, Australia, and some of the
Melanesian islands, who represent very nearly the
basal form of Homo sapiens and the Eolithic men of

212 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

Europe in the early Pleistocene. But these surviving
Australoids, precious as they are to the scientific
anthropologist for their affinities with primeval
man, count for too little in the world's future
history to be worth discussing from the political
standpoint. They will either die out, or they will
fuse into the Brown or Black groups.

The Mongol-Amerindian division of Yellow-
skinned men leads in numbers, for it may be roughly
calculated at 612,000,000 (586,000,000 Mongoloids
in Asia, 16,000,000 Amerindians, and about
10,000,000 European Mongoloids). The Whites,
or Caucasians, of Europe, Africa, Asia, Australasia,
and the Americas follow next, and amount to about
570,000,000. There are some 300,000,000 hybrid
Brown types, such as the Southern Moors, Tuaregs,
Teda, Egyptians, Abyssinians, Somalis, the bulk of
the Dravidian inhabitants of India and Ceylon, the
Polynesians, and the peoples of Madagascar ; and
lastly, there are approximately 135,000,000 Negroes
and Negroids (109,000,000 in Africa, 24,500,000
in the Aniericas, and 1,500,000 in Southern Asia
and Oceania).^ The Negro does not make a bad
fourth in these divisions, for his 135,000,000 are by
no means a negligible quantity as a world-force, and
count for more at present in world-politics than the
433,000,000 of. Chinese.

The Amerindian tribes, or aborigines of America
(excepting the Eskimo, a primitive Mongolian race),
partake almost of the nature of hybrids, being
certainly the result of an ancient fusing between the

' These figures are, of course, only careful guesses based on
such statistical ii^formation as is available.

RACIAL PROBLEMS 213

Proto-Caucasian and the Proto-Mongol, with a pre-
ponderance of Mongolian characteristics and an
evident, though as yet unexplainedj relationship with
the Polynesians, Malays, Dayaks, and other similar
Mongolians or Caucasian hybrids of the Malay
Archipelago. (It is interesting, by the by, from
both an anthropological and political standpoint, to
note the readiness with which the Chinese and
Japanese immigrants into North-west, Central,
and South America fuse maritally with the Amer-
indian aborigines, as though both stocks felt in-
stinctively their underlying affinities. In Yucatan,
Guatemala, British Honduras, the Chinese are in-
fusing new vigour, physically and mentally, into
those Maya Indians, whose ruthless treatment under
the closing years of Porfirio Diaz' rule was a blot on
that great Mexican's administration.)

The White, or Caucasian, division is at present
divided into two main camps, almost completely
severed by religious prejudices ; namely, those who
are, or profess to be. Christians, and those who are
Muhammadans, Buddhists, or Hindus. There are
so few Buddhists or Hindus belonging emphatically
to the White race, that for all practical purposes we
may consider the Caucasian opponents in thought
and practice of the Christian white men to be of the
Muhammadan religion. Since the beginning of the
nineteenth century the Jews all over the world have
made common cause with the Christians. In
countries of high culture, such as most parts of
Europe, North America, Algeria, and South Africa,
the Jews have become insensibly little else than
Unitarian Christians, who are rapidly fusing into the

214 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

national community of the countries they inhabit,
becoming very English in England, very American
in the United States, typically French in France,
indistinguishably Italian in Italy, Teuton in Germany,
and Hungarian in Hungary.

Opposed — I fear, doggedly and bitterly — to the
thought and action and the ways of life of some
510,000,000 of white Christians, are about
64,000,000 white Muhammadans in Turkey-in-
Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor, Arabia, Syria,
Circassia, Russia, Persia, Tartary, Afghanistan, and
Northern India. The natural leaders of these
64,000,000 recalcitrants are 12,000,000 of Turks
in Eastern Europe and Western Asia. These
Turks, once mainly of the Mongol race, have long
since (like their kindred in language, the Magyars
and Finns) become white " Europeans," and consist
very largely of Iranian, Armenian, Gothic, Circassian,
Greek, Slav, and Italian elements, with very little of
the Tatar left in their ethnic composition. With
the exception of about 4,000,000 of blond
" Nordic " Turks in Europe and Western Asia
Minor (the descendants mostly of Thracian, Gothic,
and Slav tribes who became Islamised), and a few
blond Berbers of Morocco, it will be noted that all
other white Muhammadans belong to various sec-
tions of the Mediterranean, or dark-haired, brown-
eyed group of the Caucasian sub-species, and that
this religion has found very few supporters among
the Nordic, or Alpine peoples ; the fact being that
the shaping and the success of the faith of Islam
were due to an unconscious revolt by the Southern
Mediterranean folk against the overbearing attitude

RACIAL PROBLEMS 215

and oppressively orderly civilisation of the European.
Although the marked scission between the two great
sections of the White Race did not begin till the
success of the Muhammadan movement in the
seventh century, a.c, the germs of this dissidence
were there long before, and were probably created
largely by the breach of the Bosporus and Hellespont
and the Straits of Gibraltar, which separated to some
extent the White men of Europe from those of Africa
and Asia. This severance in sympathies was further
manifested in the wars between Greeks and Persians,
Carthaginians and Romans, Romans and Numidians
and Mauri, Romans and Jews, Romans and Parthians.

At the present day these 64,000,000 of Muham-
madan White men almost require, for ethical and
political reasons, to be ranked apart as a separate
division of the Caucasian sub-species, so diametrically
opposed are they (with the exception, perhaps, of
some Syrians and of the Indian Muhammadans) to
the social customs, religious ideas, marriage laws,
dietary, and dress of the Christian Whites.

These non-Christian white peoples — Berbers,
Libyans, Arabs, Syrians, Turks, Kurds, Circassians,
Persians, and Afghans — melt almost insensibly into
the heterogeneous Brown races of Northern Africa
and India ; and may, to some extent, in the future
strive to induce the latter to make common cause
with them against the never-ceasing advance of
Europe. These Brown races come nearest to the
White man in physical beauty, strength, enterprise,
and mentality ; and are, of course, hybrid types per-
meated anciently by the white element in varying
degrees.

ai6 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

A dogmatic statement that the White, or Caucasian,
sub-species is superior to the other variants of Homo
sapiens requires some definition and justification
before it can be allowed to pass. Superior in what,
and in how many degrees ?

(i) In Brain development. The average (relative)
size and weight of the White man's brain is a little
greater than it is among the Japanese, Chinese, and
Eskimo, who represent the " brainiest " among the
Yellow peoples ; much greater than among Negroes
and Australoids, and many of the Brown races, except
the civilised peoples of India, who in brain develop-
ment are almost on a par with Europeans and white
Americans. Apart, however, from material tests of
brain bulk, there is the indirect proof of the mental
superiority enjoyed by the White man in his
literature and science, his inventions and discoveries.

(2) In Physical development. The White man,
especially of the Nordic variety, is, when averages
are taken, taller and stonger than any other division
of the human species. As regards stature he is vied
with here and there by the tallest negro tribes, by
Polynesians, and North and South American Indians.
It may be even that no White community or clan of
a hundred thousand individuals can match in average
height of men and women the Turkana of Lake
Rudolf (East Africa), the Madi people of the Lado
province, or the Ba-ila of the Shukulumbwe district
in Northern Rhodesia. But against these exception-
ally tall negroes (in some tribes of whom there is
evidence of ancient Caucasian intermixture, through
the Hamite) must be set many millions of short-
statured black men, just as tall Amerindians of

RACIAL PROBLEMS 217

Central North America or of Patagonia and Chile are
far exceeded in number by the short Amerindians of
Central and South America. The tall Polynesians
are partially of ancient White descent, as are the
splendid-looking Sikh and Panjabi soldiers of the
Indian Army, coming from North- West India.

The weight-raising strength and muscular develop-
ment of the White race throughout the world
probably attain a higher average than those of the
other divisions of the human species. The stature,
physical development, and weight and size of brain
in their womankind is markedly superior likewise :
and I believe it will be found, on a careful examina-
tion of such statistics as exist, that the disproportion
in size and brain-power between men and women in
the White race is less than in the other sub-species
or varieties, while as regards physical beauty, it is
reaUy only amongst the White people of the world
that the women are more comely than the men.
Amongst the savage races the women are almost
invariably ugly and ill-formed.

This statement brings us to a phase of superiority
in the White race which is perhaps the most evident,
and yet the most difficult and delicate to assert : its
supremacy in regard to physical and, most of all,
facial beauty, as judged by aesthetic canons which are
really common to all races of mankind, in spite of
stories to the contrary. The man or woman in any
Yellow, Brown, or Black race who is locally regarded
as good-looking or handsome nearly always strikes
the European observer likewise as being at any rate
relatively handsome as compared with his or her
fellows ; while any specially good-looking White

2i8 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

man or woman will as much appeal to the fancy and
admiration of savages, or people of non-European
races, as to his or her fellow-countrymen. All
over the world, in some cases openly, in others un-
consciously or grudgingly, white people are admired
and envied by the coloured races, not only for their
white skin, but for the shape of their features. It is
true that the Chinese may affect to jeer at them, and
very rightly to caricature whiskers, green eyes, red
noses, and long upper lips ; and yet the physical
types that are most admired amongst Manchus or
Chinese are those which to our eyes appear most like
Europeans, and which are, in fact, derived from the
ancient permeation of Mongolia and Northern China
by White or Caucasian immigrants who have left
their traces in the Ainu of Japan, and even in the
North American Indians. The whole history of
Indian marriage laws, caste regulations and religious
rites connected with marriage indicates the inherent
desire amongst the Dravidian mass, or the Mongol
or negroid savage tribes of that peninsula, for the
permeation of white blood and the obtaining of
children of partly white parentage. The same
passion has existed in Africa and amongst the Negro
races of America. In fact, the ethnologist, looking
back over the recent past of Man's history, cannot
but detect and realise the constant tendency at
work for the non- White races to get themselves
impregnated with " white " blood.

So far as we can read Pre-history and History, the
European of Caucasian race seems to stand revealed
as the originator of Palaeolithic, Neolithic, and early
Metal-Age civilisation. Putting aside for the

RACIAL PROBLEMS 219

moment the perhaps separately evolved culture of
the Americas, we can trace to the White man's
home - in Europe, North Africa, or Western Asia
the oldest indications of new and uplifting ideas
in manufactures, art, building, religion, speech-con-
struction,^ letters, agriculture, and the taming of
the wild. Improved stone implements occur earlier
in the geological horizons of Europe and western
Asia, and have spread thence north and south and
around the globe. The principal domestic animals of
the modern world are mainly of Eurasiatic or North-
East African origin, and were first tamed from the
wild stock by the White man. This seems even to
have been the case in India and Malaysia, as it was
subsequently in America ; and although China and
Japan might appear to offer an exception to this
theory, it must be remembered that these empires
have been permeated from ancient times with "white"
blood, and that most of their domestic beasts and birds
are not of local origin, but in common with much
of their civilisation came from the West or South-
West. At first seeming the two American stocks —
the Eskimo and the Amerindian — rose to degrees

' The principal languages of the world, in its past history and
now, are derived from the two leading speech-families of the
Caucasian Race : Aryan and Semitico-Hamitic. These are (or
have been) Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, Italian, French,
English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Russian ; Egyptian,
Hebrew, Arabic, and Libyan. It is doubtful whether the clumsily
constructed, excessively difficult Chinese and Japanese, the barbaric
Turkish, or tedious Magyar and Finnish will be able long to persist
in a civilised world in rivalry with the Aryan and Semitic languages.
The only negro languages in Africa which exhibit vitality and stay-
ing power are precisely those — Fula, Hausa, and Bantu — which are
accused of being " non-negro," and more or less directly connected
in origin with the White man's ancient invasions of tropical Africa.

220 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

of culture above that of the Eolithic and early
Palaeolithic savages by their own local genius. But
is that so ? The Eskimo came to America via
Siberia, bringing with them many notions invented
by the Proto-Caucasian in semi-glacial Europe and
Asia. Much later they certainly borrowed their
stone-kettles or cauldrons from the Norse invaders
of Greenland and Labrador. The Amerindians
would seem to have had a considerable element
of Proto-Caucasian in their blood and brains. This
is not surprising when we realise that a characteristic
" Proto-Caucasian " type, the Ainu, still extends his
range to the Aleutian Islands, and formerly inhabited
Kamshatka and all Sakhalin, and traditionally knew
" better days " of higher culture and greater enter-
prise than are experienced now by his degenerate
descendants in northern Japan. It may, indeed, be
due to the element of Proto-Caucasian in their blood
that the Japanese — many of whom are really white
in complexion — have felt impelled during the last
fifty years gradually to separate in sympathy from
the Mongol community, and to range themselves
alongside the civilised nations of Europe and
America.

II. Can the White Race colonise the Tropics ?

I have attempted to indicate the points in which
the White race may be taken to be superior to the
other divisions of humanity. Does this superiority
extend likewise to the resistance of disease, mastery
over environment, race fertility, and staying power ?
The answer to this cannot be quite so conclusive.
It would seem as though Europe and Western Asia
had been a great cauldron of White humanity, per-

\ RACIAL PROBLEMS 221

petually boiling over and sending streams of "white"
blood to fertilise the rest of the human world. It
was in Europe and Western Asia* that Man first
attained undoubted mastery over Nature, as a result
of which he was able to take up a similar lordly
attitude in Egypt and North Africa. From this
Eurasiatic centre the White race has penetrated in
prehistoric and historical times to the heart of
Africa, to all parts of Asia, to North America,
and thence to Central and South America, to the
Malay Islands and those of Polynesia. But though
the penetration has left its traces in the creation
of mixed types (betraying a more or less distant
relationship to the White man), in forms of
language and in arts, customs and religious ideas,
the White race has failed to remain pure and
distinct as an ethnic type outside the limits of
its original home and of the great colonies founded
in America, Africa, and Australasia since the be-
ginning of the sixteenth century. The mass of
Africa (south of Mauretania), nine-tenths of the
Asiatic population, and all America in pre-Columbian
days, remained outside the White domain, peopled
by the Yellow, Brown, and Black divisions of

' There can be little doubt but that Western, and even Central,
Asia played almost as considerable a part as a home and focus of
development for the White race as can be historically attributed to
South-west Asia and to Europe. At some period not at all remote
so far as human history is concerned — i.e., about 2000 to 3000 years
ago — a great diminution in rainfall and increase of aridity dispersed
this Central Asian White people, who were almost certainly the
speakers of Aryan languages. Note the remarkable discoveries of
an ancient, 10,000 years old. Neolithic civilisation in Turkestan :
obviously the Aryan nidus of development, and chief place of origin
of the domestic animals.

222 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

humanity. Yet in North-eastern Asia, in islands
off Sumatra, in parts of India and Ceylon, in islets
ofF New Guinea, and elsewhere in Polynesia ; in
the Fula people of Nigeria, the Bahima and other
aristocracies of Central Africa, in certain tribes of
North-west America, there are still to be found
evidences of a former White colonisation. In some
cases these stranded types are quite light in skin-
colour and of strikingly Caucasian physiognomy,
with hair of the White man's quality, and even
with grey , or green eyes ; but in other instances
there is evidence of much intermixture with the
surrounding coloured peoples. Where the type
has remained relatively pure in the case of one or
two islets of the Bismarck Archipelago (German
New Guinea), contact brought about with Black
races through the intervention of the European has
led to a rapid extinction of the White type from
germ diseases introduced by a mosquito agency
from the blood of coloured men. In short, it
would seem as though Nature has established a rule
which may long persist, that the White race may not
colonise the tropical regions of the globe, and remain
long in possession of its physical attributes or of its
stamina and vigour.

It is as well, of course, not to bind oneself to any
hard-and-fast theory. The Spanish people, where
its colonists have for generations kept free from any
intermixture with the Negro or the Amerindian, has,
it is true, retained physical beauty and bodily vigour
in a few Cuban towns, and, I am told, in some parts
of tropical South America. We hear and see a
good deal of Brazilians, of Portuguese or French

RACIAL PROBLEMS 223

descent, who are emphatically White men — might,
indeed, pass muster in a London or a Paris assembly
as scarcely differing from English or French people,
while many Brazilians who settle in Portugal after
making money, cannot be distinguished at a glance
from native Portuguese. But 1 have generally found,
when I have been able to trace the past history of
such types, that they came from the southern and
more mountainous regions of Brazil, and not from
the valley of the Amazon, or the regions lying to
the north of Rio de Janeiro. The Boers of South
Africa have been reared in a country which lies for
the most part beyond the Tropics, and which, owing
to its great elevation, has a more or less severe
winter. Egypt and India have been invaded over
and over again in human history by White races,
or comparatively White races. Yet the mass of the
population of these regions at the present day is
brown in complexion, even though it may retain to
a large extent the physiognomy of the Caucasian ;
brown in complexion, and with hair that is essentially
un-European, black, and often coarse in texture,
round in section like that of the Mongol, or flattened
and wiry like that of the Negro. The Berbers, or
Libyans, only remain white-skinned and European
in aspect along the coast fringe of North Africa, or
on the slopes of the High Atlas. Even living under
the extraordinary artificial conditions which the
United States has arranged at Panama, White men,
women, and children cannot be said to support easily
the exhaustion of an equatorial climate, while the
instant they leave their mosquito-proof houses, or
attempt to perform hard physical labour under a

224 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

tropical sun, they go down with disease. Yet the
germ -diseases and climate of this region do not
prevent other non-White types of humanity from
flourishing — hybrids between Spaniards and Amer-
indians, pure-blood Amerindians, Negroes and
Negroids.

The coloured indigenes of pure or mixed race in
Tropical Asia, Australasia, Africa, and America, have
become quite inured to climatic conditions, and can
support them in any case better than the incoming
Europeans or the descendants of European colonists
of pure blood. They are perhaps also, in some cases,
more immune from germ-diseases, such as yellow
fever and malarial fever. But even these indigenes
are liable to be swept ofF as rapidly, or more rapidly,
than the White man by new or revived germ-diseases
which spread through the Tropics ever and anon,
slaying hundreds, thousands, or millions in their
path, and which, unhappily, have wrought far more
harm throughout the tropical world during the last
century than before. This is the fault of the White
man, by his instinctive attempt not only to penetrate
everywhere himself, but to bring into close associa-
tion all the other human types. He transports
Indians or Chinese to Africa, and thus conveys to
the Negro deadly germ-diseases hitherto only known
in Asia ; he does the same by the West Indies and
Tropical America. He has carried yellow fever in
the blood of negroes from Africa to Tropical
America. He has conveyed blackwater fever from
Africa to Madagascar, India, and Panama. Malta
fever was probably unknown in Malta until infected
goats were introduced from North Africa. It is

RACIAL PROBLEMS 225

quite possible that malarial fever was unknown in
Europe until the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Mace-
donians, and Romans brought North Africa, Egypt,
and Tropical Asia into direct communication with
the peoples of Southern and Western Europe.
There is good ground for supposing that the
Romans introduced ague and similar malarial fevers
into England, various forms of gnat being there
present to act as transmitting agencies. At the
time of writing a great horror is slowly developing
under the gaze of those whose attention is concen-
trated on Tropical Africa, namely, the spread
of a peculiarly deadly form of sleeping-sickness by
means of a transmitting agency, not merely of tse-
tse flies confined in their distribution to Tropical
Africa, but perhaps of other flies that probe the skin
with their probosces and pass, infected with Trypano-
somes, from one human subject to another.

The science of the White man will, nevertheless,
enable him (I believe) to cope far more effectually
with these germ-diseases than the — at present — less
civilised peoples of coloured skin. The elimination
of transmitting agencies — mosquitoes, midges, flies,
fleas, ticks, bugs, etc. — is quite possible to his
resources. But will his science enable him likewise
to resist climatic influences and still to remain a
pure-bred, vigorous White man .'' This seems to
me much more problematical, and it may be there-
fore that he must resign himself to a colonisation
of the sub-tropical and temperate regions of the
globe.

What about staying power and race fertility even
in these cool climates f At present, if we could

15

226 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

obtain the necessary statistics, we should probably
find that the rate of increase amongst the White
peoples of the world was fully equal, if not superior,
to that of the other divisions of humanity ; not,
perhaps, in an accurately registered birth-rate, but
resulting from the much less mortality amongst the
children. The Negro, as a race, is very fertile,
possibly most fertile when he is living under
nominally monogamic conditions,^ as in the United
States, British West Indies, etc. But, owing to
carelessness and lack of knowledge on the parents'
part, his children die at a greater rate than those of
the average European family. The same is the
case, above all, in India, where also the great rate of
increase is checked by periodical famines, by mis-
taken religious ideas, or stupid customs. The
mortality amongst the children of Amerindians, even
living under relatively happy conditions, is remark-
able, especially in Brazil, in which country also the
ratio of still-born children is high to a noteworthy
degree. So that at the present time we may regard
the slight diminution in the number of children born
to each married couple in Europe, White America,
White Australasia, and White Africa, as fuUy com-
pensated by the greater proportional number of
children who live to reach maturity. But when a
civilisation and knowledge equal to those of the
White race exist throughout the coloured world,
and infant mortality is checked, may there not arise
a greater proportional increase in these coloured

» ,

1 Polygamic conditions of life in Africa do not conduce always to
the bearing of many children, for reasons given in my book George
Grenfell and the Congo.

RACIAL PROBLEMS 227

races which will turn the tables on Europe and
North America ? That is a contingency so far
removed from our generation that it need not
trouble us much at the present day. Very likely
when the infant mortality has been diminished in
the tropical world there will come about an elevation
in the status of woman, a universal adoption of
monogamy, and a lessening in the racial increase.

in. What about intermixture of races ? Ever since
the existing human species diverged into its four or
five existing varieties or sub-species, there has been
a constant opposite movement at work to unify the
type. Whites have returned southwards and mingled
with Australoids and Negroids, and have produced
Melanesians and Papuans, and these, again, have
mixed with Proto-Caucasians or with Mongols to
form the Polynesian. The earliest types of White
man have mingled with the primitive Mongol, or
directly with the primitive Negro. There is an
ancient Negroid strain underlying the populations
of southern and western France, Italy, Sicily,
Corsica, Sardinia, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Wales,
and Scotland. Evidences of the former existence of
these Negroid people are not only to be found in the
features of their mixed descendants at the present
day, but the fact is attested by skulls, skeletons, and
works of art of more or less great antiquity in
France, Italy, etc., dating back to a time which may
be as remote as 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. There
is something of the Red Indian in the peoples of
Scotland and Ireland, of Germany, Northern Russia,
Tatary, and Siberia, due to the continued existence
in these regions of a very ancient intermixture

228 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

between the Proto-Caucasian and the Mongol/
which assisted to people not only Northern Europe
and Asia, but also North America. There are very-
few Negro peoples at the present day — perhaps only
the Bushmen, the Congo Pygmies, and a few tribes
of forest Negroes — which can be said to be without
more or less trace of ancient White intermixture.

Emphatically, there is but one species of man
living on the earth at the present day, and the
utmost rank which can be given to his divergent
types is that of the difference of one sub-species or
variety from another. This statement is proved by
the complete fertility between all known types of
existing Man, and the continued fertility, again, of
their mixed descendants. There are no human
mules.

Nature may be laughing at our prejudices about
interbreeding, prejudices loudly vaunted often by
White men who have married and abandoned native
wives, or who keep native mistresses in the tropical
countries in which their work lies. There is a far
greater tendency to intermixture in this direction than
there is between coloured men and white women.
We white men are, or affect to be, shocked at the
latter, whilst we shrug our shoulders at the former,
and with some justice ; for the coloured woman by her
union with the white man is raised more or less to his
standard of living, which is a superior one, whereas the
white woman marrying the coloured man is in her
new surroundings sometimes brought to a lower level
of life. But if the white man is to continue to form
temporary or permanent unions with the women of
' Query ? the Cro-Magnon type.

RACIAL PROBLEMS 229

other races, he cannot be surprised if, as education
increases, his womenkind should see no harm in
marrying coloured men, or coloured men aspire to
possess white wives. It may, of course, be more
advantageous to the world at large that there should
always remain a stock of White people to represent
the highest development as yet known, physically
and mentally, of humanity. At the same time we
should bear in mind that nowhere in the world
exists a pure White race, in whose ancient ancestry
there has been no intermixture whatever with the
Mongol, the Negro, or the Dravidian, and that
perhaps a White race which receives no rill of blood
from the other human types from time to time may
die of physical degeneration. For myself, I seem
to see the prospect of great racial developments in
Asia by a mixture of blood. Russian Siberia is
going to play a great part in the future development
of Asia. The White type which is being developed
in that region is of fine physique and of no mean
mentality, and is mingling already with the indi-
genous Mongols, is intermarrying with Japanese,
and even Chinese, and producing oiFspring of good
appearance, physical vigour, and mental alertness.

Related to these questions is the problem of how
far Dravidian India shall be allowed to colonise
South Africa or Northern Australia. For good or
for ill, the weary Titan which typifies at times the
overworked Metropolitan country of the British
Empire, has handed over to the young communities
of White men (fortunately, in Australia and New
Zealand, to white men and women) the settling of
these questions. And these White governments

230 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

seem determined that in South Africa there shall be
no third racial element, and in Australia no element
at all but that of the White race. Seeing the
obvious inability of White men to colonise the
tropics efFectually, it may be said that this is a wise
precaution in ear-marking for White development
the more or less temperate regions of the Southern
Hemisphere.'' Personally, I should feel that a fair
compromise had been arrived at if it were laid down
clearly that north of the Zambezi the natives of India
had as much right to colonise Africa under the
British flag as any other British subjects. In any
case, Germany is placing no hindrance to the settle-
ment of Indians in the sparsely populated territories
of German East Africa, and is treating them very
well. I should never be surprised to see a tide of
Indian immigration setting in to occupy the northern
parts of British East Africa and the waste regions of
Somaliland and Galaland, and I should have very
little sympathy with the obstreperous, idle, noisy
Somalis who might complain of being dispossessed
thereby.

IV. The right appreciation of racial values. A good
deal of old-fashioned ethnology has been revived
lately in certain English and American periodicals
and books. In this an attempt is made — based on
no first-hand research, but on quotations from
nineteenth-century writers (or writers who quote
from nineteenth-century evidence) — to show that
the Negro is, and always will be, of inferior mental

' Though much of Australia is within the tropics, its climatic
conditions, except in the extreme north, are quite favourable to the
existence of a vigorous White race.

RACIAL PROBLEMS 231

calibre to the White man . . . that once left to
himself as a free agent he reverts to savagery . , ,
that he has originated nothing . . . that hybrids
between the Negro and the White man are of poor
physique and wicked instincts, etc., etc. We are, or
used to be, also told that the Amerindians in North
America were dying out, that they were unim-
provable ; that the Hindus would not do this, the
Chinese would never consent to do that ; and many
other things tending to lead us back to the stand-
point of earlier times — especially of the 'eighties of
the last century — this standpoint being the unalter-
able superiority of the White man and the eternal
position of subservience which the coloured races
were to occupy under his world sway.

On the other hand, the education spread abroad
by White missionaries and White governments has
recently rendered articulate, vocal and literary,
many a person of a formerly inferior or subject
race of yellow, brown, or black skin ; or has pierced
through the ignorance of world-afFairs on the part
of the educated Muhammadan, Buddhist, or Hindu,
and brought them into the European or the
American arena to defend the present or past con-
dition of their fellow coloured men or co-religionists.
From such we learn that the civilisation and culture
of Ancient Egypt were of African and Negro origin ;
that Hindu navigation and colonisation was anciently
far more extensive than the conquest of Java ; that
the Zulu conquerors of South Africa were not
really bloody-minded men, their raids being largely
the invention of white historians ; that polygamy is
actually a beneficent institution calculated to raise the

232 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

standard of womanly purity and happiness ; that
caste prejudices have been a benefit to India ; that
cruel and devastating sacrifices to Indian, African,
Amerindian, Polynesian gods never took place, while
Hindu widows enjoyed committing satti,^ and the
wives of a Congo or West African chieftain actually
desired to be strangled after their husband's death
and buried in his grave ; that the Chinese worship
of the dead was not a futile waste of time and sub-
stance, and Muhammadans were really tolerant of
other religions ; also that the natives of Africa were
happy, contented, free from disease, and in possession
of the soil of their native land before Europeans
came among them.

I, personally, am made angry by the repetition
of these worn-out theories based on stories that were
untrue, or on factors which have ceased to operate.
We should indeed be living in a fool's paradise if
we continued to assume that a Negro could never
attain to the high mentality of a White man, or equal
him as an inventor, an artist, a strategist, a writer.
I have read books by pure-blood Negro authors,
recently written and published in Haiti, which gave
one the keen delight of the best French literature.
I mean, for example, the works of Mons. Fernan
Hibbert.^ I have seen paintings and black-and-white
drawings by Negro artists in Paris, in the British
West Indies, or produced in Brazil, which any honest
connoisseur would have singled out as being
genuinely good, original, and clever. The Negro

' Being burnt to death on the funeral pyres of their husbands ; a
/ practice only put a stop to by European intervention.

" " S^na" or Seines de la Vie Haitienne, and other studies.

RACIAL PROBLEMS 233

gift for music and genius for acting do not need
any expatiation on my part to affirm their existence.
There are Negro composers,^ musicians, actors, and
vocalists of no mean order to-day in Brazil, the
United States, and the West Indies, and will be,
before long, in South Africa and West Africa. I
could also cite many a skilled Negro surgeon,
physician, and even dentist whom I have encountered
in America or West Africa. There have been great
Negro Generals in the history of Haiti, of Venezuela,
of Colombia, and of India and North Africa. Indeed,
successful Negro soldiers actually created sovereign
States in Western India, one or two of which have
lasted to this day. I should not be surprised, within
the remainder of my lifetime, to see emerging from
the Negro ranks in America, West or South Africa
(Islam stunts the mental growth in the Egyptian or
French Sudan) a " first-class " botanist, philologist,
electrician, engineer, statesman, or novelist.

The North American Indian — Amerindian, as I
prefer to call him — is going to be heard of before
long in several of these great careers and professions.
So is the Brazilian " Mameluco " — half Amerindian,
half Portuguese. So is the Hindu, if he can slough
the silly and the foul accretions of his once pure and
transcendental religion ; and so are Syrians, Berbers,
Arabs, and Turks, if they can detach themselves
from the profitless doggerel dictated by Muhammad
of Mekka to Jewish and Arab scribes and Abyssinian

' Such as Samuel Coleridge- Taylor, a mulatto of Sierra Leone
origin — half English, half Negro ; and Will Marion Cook, an
American Negro, whose works, such as In Dahomd, display marked
originality in their melodies and harmonies.

234 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

slaves. The men and women of China may yet
astonish the civilised world even more than Japan
has done if they can clear their minds of cant, and
exchange that slavish worship of a semi-mythical
past for a vivid realisation of the present ; in short,
if they will put themselves to school with the West,
and apply the best and most modern of our teaching
to the ordering of their own immense domain. At
present a rational essay on geology, palaeontology,
dynamics, germ-diseases, photography, or chemistry
from a Chinese pen in the Chinese language, is
almost unthinkable. But the same thing, barely
twenty years ago, might have been said about
Japan, still more in regard to Amerindians or
Filipinos, or West African Negroes ; yet these
people are entering — have entered — the pale of the
abstrusest science of the White man, and are feeling
quite at home there.

The arrogant, imperfectly educated, unobservant
White man of England, the United States, Belgium,
or South Africa, who would continue to assert that
the coloured races have made no progress towards
the White standard and point of view during the
last fifty years, that they can never vie in any
direction with the White race, that it is justifiable
or necessary to treat them with injustice and
contumely, is a serious enemy to the peace of the
world. His words — far more than he imagines —
are read by many a yellow, black, or brown man,
who has been given perhaps a better education than
his traducer, and who resents most bitterly these
ex cathedrd pronouncements as to his perpetually
inferior position in the world, and conceives such

RACIAL PROBLEMS 235

a hatred of the overbearing White race that in his
turn he is unjust, and prone to forget that the very-
education he has received, opening to him the
knowledge of good and evil, and an understanding
of the White man's speech and philosophy, is itself
a gift from the White man, of whom some repre-
sentatives are the constant friends, if others are the
cruellest enemies of the coloured races.

On the other hand, just as pernicious is the
conceited recruit from the backward or one-time
helot nations, who decries the White man's power
and past achievements, who fails to realise that he
cannot as yet develop his own neglected country
without an appeal to the White man's capital ; and
that such capital is dearly lent where there is not
complete security for life and property. Such —
only released a few years ago by the White man's
valour, money, or science from some intolerable
thraldom, some violent and bloody oppression of
their fellow coloured men, or barely rid of the
ravage of diseases stayed by the White man's
heroic devotion^ — would now ask him to leave
them alone to go their own ways, even if these are
ways that will lead once more to ruin and depopu-
lation. Yet the longer the White man stays among
the coloured people, the higher rises their standard
of comfort and well-being. Look at Senegambia
as it now is, in the reports of French and English
travellers, and compare this condition with what

* Such as has occurred with the United States doctors in Tropical
America, the Philippines, and China ; the British in nearly all Africa,
China, India, and the West Indies ; the French in Africa and Mada-
gascar ; the Germans in Africa and Asia,

236 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

Mungo Park described at the end of the eighteenth
century ; contrast the Dahom6 of to-day with the
Dahom6 of the 'sixties, the Benin of 1890 and the
Benin of 19 10, the Burma of the sixteenth century
and the Burma of the twentieth. Can any honest
man who is not perverse or a fool assert that
Algeria has not doubled her population under eighty
years of French rule, and that her three millions of
Berbers and one million of Arabs are not far happier,
freer, richer, and better educated than their ancestors
living under the anarchical rule of Turkish Deys
or successful Berber freebooters ? Much of Natal
when it was taken over by the British was a
depopulated, blood-stained wilderness, white with
the bones of the thousands of men and women
slain by Dingiswayo, Chaka, Dingane, and their
captains, and with a negro population reduced to
little more than 20,000. It can now show a negro
population numbering 700,000,^ of whom quite a
considerable number are well educated, and a few
have passed the examinations for the English bar.
The same extraordinary improvement can be seen
in the native negro tribes of eastern Cape Colony,
Basutoland, Bechuanaland, Nyasaland, and parts of
Rhodesia ; improvement in numbers, wealth,
physique, and education. Enormous is the debt
which Egypt and the Egyptian Sudan owe to
the British, French, Austrian, American, Swiss, and
German soldiers, administrators, engineers, ex-
cavators, explorers, and doctors of medicine,
missionaries, financiers, and consuls — most of all
to the British. The Egyptian population is not
* Not including the 26o,cx)o in Zululand,

RACIAL PROBLEMS 237

lessened by this intervention of the White man.
In 1877 it stood at 6,250,000, approximately; in
1 9 1 1 it is calculated to be 11 ,000,000 (excluding
Europeans). And 11,000,000 of free men, not
mainly of serfs, as heretofore. Uganda is often
quoted at the present time as a region which has
shown opposite results from the White man's inter-
vention, the population having (it is said) decreased
from 4,000,000 in 1884 to 1,000,000 in 1904 :
mainly through the introduction of sleeping sick-
ness and syphilis. This is an example of the bosh
which is based on hasty conclusions and incorrect
data. The "4,000,000" of 1884 is pure guess-
work. No census was taken then. The 1,000,000
of 1904 was an underestimate. Sleeping sickness
was accidentally introduced through the White man,
but would probably have come there a little later
by natural causes. Syphilis — now being rapidly
eradicated by the new therapeutic methods — was
introduced by Zanzibar Arabs in the middle of the
nineteenth century. The official estimate of the
population of the Uganda protectorate for 1 9 1 1 (of
which the kingdom of Buganda is the most populous
portion) was 3,520,000.

V. A common inter-racial religion.

In all our speculations and our framing of
policies, we must eschew sentimentality and
remember the parable of the Ten Talents. I
write "must" because we are, after all, governed
by natural forces, which we can only vaguely
understand, but the character of which we can
at least realise by observing that the storm, the
flood, the tidal wave, the earthquake, the germ-

238 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

disease, the blight, the drought that follows on
the destruction of forests, are not sentimental, but
severely practical. Yet this common-sense out-
look does not exclude Christianity. On the
contrary, as we grow older and wiser, and under-
stand better the whole history of the development
of the human family, genus, species, and existing
types, we realise that the principles of Christianity
have been necessary to call Man into existence
and to maintain him in that existence as the ruler
and developer of this world. It is only by ceasing
to war against one another, by helping one another
in the home, the nation, and the community of
nations, that we can enable mankind to advance
and not retrogress. We require to concentrate
the whole of our efforts, not on fighting each other,
but on fighting recalcitrant Nature : what would
have been called the devil in old-fashioned
theology, the devil of hostile, ill-regulated natural
forces and tendencies.

If only in this battle we could agree upon a
common Inter-racial Religion, and that the most
simple, undogmatic form of Christianity —
Christianity without the creeds that were unknown
to Christ ! The Christian principles that were laid
down in the authentic Gospels and Epistles still
remain unsurpassed as a rule of conduct, as a
basis of practical ethics. They are unconnected
with totemism. Sabbaths, fetish-worship, mysticism,
vexatious observances, litanies, and the disputable
adjuncts of a religion. If we could agree to define
and adopt such a basis and make it the State
religion of every country, with leave to each person

RACIAL PROBLEMS 239

and community to add, on their own account, the
elaborations of ritual necessary to some individualities,
we should have gone far to establish a brotherhood of
man, a brotherhood which need not mean necessarily
a mingling of blood, but a common sympathy and
interest in the development of humanity. Applying
Christian principles, the White man would treat the
other races of mankind with kindness and justice,
without scorn or harsh impatience ; and they, on their
part, would co-operate with him in the tremendous
struggle with the blind and heartless forces of
Nature which ever and again seem to threaten
man's very existence.

What animosities and conflicts would cease if all
the world were nominally and basally Christian !
Of all the other faiths and rules of conduct that
have ever been placed before the world, from
Greek philosophy and Egyptian theology to the
Babism or Bahaism and Prometheanism of to-day,
it may be said that what there is that is true and of
practical good is to be found in the simplest exposi-
tion of Christ's teaching, and what is foreign to that
is not worth listening to or preserving. Thus
would Ethics be provided for — in the inculcation
of Christian principles. But that is not all. To
be kind, just, and pure-minded in our dealings
with one another is not enough. We have still
to fight the devil of reactionary Nature if our
species is to be preserved and if we are to carry
out our faith in a Divine purpose, such purpose
being the conquest of this planet and perhaps more
beyond by this marvellous creature, Man : who
is, for aught we know to the contrary, God, made

240 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

man. For this, the only faith worth living and
dying for, this Divine purpose of our evolution
and existence, we want all the help that Science
can give us. Away with time-wasting mysticism,
empirical guesses, anatomically impossible angels,
Mumbo-jumboism, and Freemasonry ! Let us
arrive at our beliefs step by step along the paths
of Science. Ever and again it shall be lawful for
some bright intelligence among us to guess at
what lies round the corner, and proclaim his theory
— perchance, being taller than his fellows, he may
catch a glimpse before the rest of the Land of
Beulah or the peaks that girdle Paradise. But
let such far-sighted ones have no claim to persecute,
crucify, pinch, or burn those others of us who are
keeping our faces to the ground to be sure we
are on the right track.

The religionist of the future, if he wishes to be
listened to, must tell us something that is new and
true, and of advantage to humanity. He must be
an experienced bacteriologist, a profound anthro-
pologist, an analytical chemist, and able to justify his
advice on dietetics, on the observance of a weekly
rest-day, on the care of children, the kindly treatment
of the aged, the extirpation of poverty, the practice
of chastity, by the logical proof — which is there all
the time — that it pays the individual, community, and
nation to be good. Such teaching would make the
creation of another Leopoldian regime on the Congo
impossible ; it would lead throughout the world to
the enfranchisement of women, to the fair treatment
of negroes in South Africa, and of Amerindians in
Yucatan ; to the abatement of the colour -prejudice

RACIAL PROBLEMS 241

in the United States,^ to more sympathy being shown
to the reasonable development of self-government in
Egypt and India, to the making of war impossible,
first between the White nations and next between
them and the coloured peoples, and between the
coloured peoples themselves. But an acquisition of
all these branches of knowledge by the Negro, the
Chinaman, the Hindu, the Malay, and the Amerindian
will enable them to understand that during the long
martyrdom of humanity the White man has been
nearer right than they have been, and that the debt
which they owe to his intelligence, perseverance,
bold originality, and deathless hope in the future,
far outweighs any accidental cruelties or acts of
injustice which he may have committed in his march
over the world.

If some such Inter-racial Congress as that which
met in London in 191 1 could define a religious
basis, such as the simple rules of conduct taught
by Jesus Christ, on which all nations and civilised
races could agree (as they may agree on a Universal
Language, weights and measures, currency, quarantine
regulations, scientific nomenclature, an international
code of law), and on this basis regulate their inter-
racial, international dealings ; then in their own
homes and local temples they could still continue
to carry on other forms of worship of Divine,
human, animal, vegetable, or meteoric attributes

' Or in New South Africa. In the contingents of Imperial troops
which came recently to salute the Coronation was a detachment of
White South Africans who refused to sit at table with their fellow-
subjects, the Maori soldiers of New Zealand ; though the latter are
an ethnic type of which any empire might be proud. Here we see
the real "Little England" spirit !

16

242 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

(one word, "Divine," covers all these phases of
life and energy), such as were not inconsistent with
the principles of the basic religion. There could
still survive the stately ritual of the Latin Church,
the restful service of the Anglican Cathedral, even
the more reasonable practices of Jain Buddhism and
the prayers to Allah as seen through the mental
vista of pure-minded Muhammadans.

Japan would take a tremendous step forward in
the comity of nations if to-morrow she declared her
State religion to be undogmatic Christianity. The
only hope for the continued survival of the Turkish
dynasty and Empire is for it to have no State religion
at present, so that Christianity and Judaism may be
placed on at least an equal footing with Islam, so
that Mass may once more be sung at St Sophia's,
and Jerusalem be restored to the Jews as a religious
centre, while Christians would be allowed to visit
Mekka as freely as Muhammadans are permitted to
enter St Peter's, St Paul's, St Mungo's of Glasgow,
or St Sofia's Church at Kiev.

CHAPTER IX

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE

The Native problem probably began to present
itself to the mind of the then predominant human
type as far back as (?) twenty thousand years ago,
or whatever was the approximate date at which
Neolithic man, forced to emigrate from his original
home of development in Europe or Asia, impinged
on the territories occupied by the Palaeolithic savage,
or even, it may be, districts in which still lurked a
few lingering examples of Homo primigenius, the
Neanderthaloid type of the Rhine valley, of France,
Spain, and Belgium.^ Neolithic man, with his
greatly improved stone weapons and his superior
intellect, soon conquered the Palaeolithic savages,
and probably had no scruple in taking from them
their feeding grounds, their game preserves, or their
more commodious caverns ; but, being human, he
had sometimes to ask himself if he should always
slaughter the inferior race when it was in his power
to do so, or if he should spare any of them to be
wives or slaves.

' The dim, racial remembrance of such gorilla-like monsters,
with cunning brains, shambling gait, hairy bodies, strong teeth,
and possibly cannibalistic tendencies, may be the germ of the ogre
in folklore.

243

244 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

Neolithic negroes, without much stretching of the
analogy so far as stage of culture goes, may be
said still to live in tropical Africa and to prey on the
more barbarous tribes, which are in a condition more
or less analogous to that of Palseolithic man in
Europe twenty or thirty thousand years ago. What
do they do in such cases ? If, as in the basin of
the Congo and the hinterland of the Cameroons, or
the recesses of the West African forests, the clever
and warlike Neolithic negroes are cannibals, they
eat their male prisoners of war and the less comely
women and children. But the young women are
almost invariably spared to become the wives of the
invaders, while the boys are trained as household
slaves, or as recruits for the army. Thus in modern
Africa, as in ancient Europe and Asia, the invasion of
the territory of the inferior race by the superior leads
inevitably to a great mixture of blood, a levelling
up and a levelling down, a compromise as regards
languages, laws, and religion. At the same time
the conquering race shows but little pity for the
conquered, and no scruple whatever in depriving
it of all the property movable and immovable that
the conqueror is able to clutch and defend.

The first doubtings as to the ethics of this
question — the right of the invader and conqueror
to deal as he pleased with the possessions of the
person or the race that hid its talent in a napkin —
probably arose in the mind of some Aryan of
temperate Europe or Asia, some thinker emanating
from the most godlike development of the white
man — godlike or demi-godlike in the consciousness
not only of its own tribe or clan, but in the humble

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 245

or the unwilling acquiescence of the black-haired
and dark-complexioned races.

Aryans of this Nordic race, descending on India
from a possible home in Tatary or Russia, ruled as
demigods over a Negroid, Australoid India, but had
little pity for the " rights of the native." Still, the
idea of justice and clemency towards those of inferior
endowments went on fermenting in Aryan brains
till it found its first known expression through the
teaching of Buddha, of that Indian prince — possibly
of very pure Aryan origin — who was a kind of fore-
shadowing of Christ, and whose teaching is a singular,
though imperfect, parallel, to the ethics of Christianity.

But until the Christian religion came into being,
there was probably no organised expression of this
deliberate revolt against a pitiless law of nature —
the survival of the strongest, the unquestioned right
of the race or tribe superior in physical and mental
endowment to take full advantage of its conquests ;
only to save the conquered and inferior race from
utter extinction in so far as sorne of its members
might be useful as slaves or pleasing as concubines.
The ethics of Christianity, when they are based as
nearly as possible on the teaching of Christ, and
have not been corrupted by cruel crusaders or
specious ecclesiastics, have formed a gospel of pity,
have meant a tendering of the hand to the feeble in
mind or body, the curing of the sick, the sparing
of the deformed, the education of the backward, the
enunciation of equal rights on the part of all races
of man whether they were black-haired or yellow-
haired, pink-cheeked or bronze-skinned, naked and
barbarous, or clothed and civilised.

246 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

Christianity has been a "flying in the face of
Providence." It is rapidly becoming a cosmic force
of great importance ; and it is difficult for the un-
biassed philosopher to say whether it is tending
towards the general improvement of humanity or is
acting as a drag on progress. What but the spirit
of Christianity keeps a decent European or American
nation of white people from dealing pitilessly with
an Inferior race whose existence is a bar to the
acquisition of wealth or colonisable territory ? If
they were beasts of the field — bison, buffalo, rhino-
ceroses, elephants, lions, or tigers — they would be
forthwith destroyed by shooting parties or strychnine ;
although from the bosom of Christianity — " sweet
St Francis of Assisi ! " — a spirit of compassion and
indulgence for beasts and birds is arising, and is
likely to shape man's future policy towards the other
vertebrates. As it is, we shrink from such actions
with very real horror, or at any rate that aflFectation
of horror which is In itself a concession to the
Christian spirit.

We now realise that there are few parts of the
world where the white man cannot exist as well
as, or better than, any other race. There is many a
fair land occupied by Amerindians, by negroes, or
by Asiatics, which would serve admirably as the
future home of millions of white people. What
restrains any one of the great white nationalities
from sending expeditions to such a land to take it
over and to oust or to slay Its present inhabitants,
who could not in the long run resist against the
white man's weapons, discipline, and science ? It
is " common decency," the feeling that it would be

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 247

a horrible crime, in the opinion of some people a
crime that God would punish, in the vernacular of
others, " a beastly shame " ; in any case, an offence
against the code of all civilised men and women,
including many who are not Christians, either
ostensible or real. One nation, perhaps, without
a colony or a field of exploitation, might wish
to do so, but would be restrained by a respect for
international public opinion. As regards ourselves,
we might feel that we possessed the means and
the careless permission of Europe to take away
the land of some small people and confer it on
offshoots of our own race, but (apart from other
considerations) we should have too anxious a care
for our good name in the records of the Christian
world to make any such use of our power and
privileges. In short, an international conscience has
come into being, based to a very great extent on the
teaching of Christ and the ethics of Christianity, and
has, since the very beginning of the sixteenth
century, operated to redress the balance between
the overwhelmingly powerful white peoples of
Europe and the almost defenceless backward races
of the rest of the world.

Had it not been for the Spanish bishops —
Las Casas and others — and for the strivings of
the Jesuits and the Dominicans, the destruction
of the Amerindian peoples in Central and South
America, and in the West Indies, would have been
almost complete ; for the Spaniards and Portuguese
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were as
recklessly cruel and rapacious throughout America
as were the first Dutch settlers in South Africa

248 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

towards the Bantu, Bushmen, and Hottentots ; the
British in Tasmania, eastern North America, and
much of Australia ; and the Belgians in Congoland.
Thanks mainly to the Jesuits, an Amerindian popu-
lation of some sixteen millions exists at the present
day ; while the greater mass of the two million non-
negro inhabitants of Cuba, Hispaniola, and Porto
Rico, instead of being of pure white race, is olive-
hued and half Amerindian in blood. Thanks to the
British and French Protestant missions in South and
Central Africa, there is a Basutoland containing
350,000 negroes and only 900 whites ;^ Bechuana-
land is a protected negro territory and not a Dutch
State or a province of the Chartered Company of
South Africa ; Buganda is a protected native king-
dom, and not a region belonging to white conces-
sionaires wherein the natives are worked to death or
despair in helping the white capitalist to get rich
quickly.

The rise of the native and the creation of this re-
naissance through the action, mainly, of Christian
missionaries, is assuming important proportions in
the vast basin of the Congo. So heated has become
the controversy as to the effect of Belgian enterprise
in this direction that it is difficult to do impartial
justice on the one hand to the work of many
Belgian pioneers, laymen as well as missionaries,
and still more to the movement created by Mr

1 Based on the census of 1904. In 1836 the population of
Basutoland can scarcely have reached 10,000 ; in 1891 it was
218,324. In 187s the negro population was 127,707. The increase
is momentous, and is eloquent of the natives' fertility under good
government.

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 249

E. D. Morel. In this place the case need only be
summed up briefly. The late King Leopold II.
obtained in 1885 the mandate of Europe to under-
take the control and development of the Congo
basin on the understanding that over these vast
territories, of which he was becoming sovereign,*
native rights would be fully protected and con-
sidered ; the area, defined by a geographical speci-
fication, would be subjected to a regime of Free Trade,
be closed absolutely to the liquor traffic, yet be com-
pletely open to the efforts of missionaries of all
denominations, and exempted from anything in the
form of slavery.

Between 1880 and 1894 King Leopold engaged
many Europeans (chiefly Belgians) to create the
Congo Independent State. He spent vast sums of
money, and, in order to recoup himself to some
extent, instituted a monopoly in ivory, which might
certainly have been considered contrary to the
principles of the Berlin Act. But this did not go
far to repay him his outlay ; and even earlier than
the year 1894 he seems to have cast about for some
method of raising money which should at any rate
balance expenditure.

Then, after 1890, came the invention of the safety
bicycle and the pneumatic tyre, and all at once
rubber became a product enormously in demand and
very insufficiently supplied by the forests of South
America or Further India. The writer of this book,

1 So far as treaties with the native chiefs or tribes were con-
cerned, the sovereign rights conferred on him by the Congo
peoples only covered the banks of the Congo between the cataracts
at Matadi and the Equator station on the Bangala, about a fiftieth
part of the Congo State.

2 so VIEWS AND REVIEWS

together with Sir Alfred Moloney, had drawn atten-
tion to the wild rubbers of West Africa in 1887,
and simultaneously the rubber forests of Lagos were
developed to an extent and with a rapidity which
raised the value of the exports of Lagos by millions
of pounds sterling. The Congo basin was soon
found to be richer in rubber than any other part of
Africa, except perhaps the densely forested regions
of the West Coast. King Leopold (one may argue
from the facts at one's disposal) soon desired, not
only to make both ends meet in the development
of the Congo State, but, as a reward for his
speculation — which was rapidly degenerating from
philanthropy to sheer commercialism — to place
several millions sterling to his private account. The
population of the Congo was fairly dense, but it was
very wild, and, like all unreclaimed negro peoples,
hated continuous and steady labour.^

The missionaries had got hold of many of these
tribes contemporaneously with the work of Stanley
and other Congo pioneers. Slowly (as it seemed to
the impatient mind of Europe) they were weaning
the young men and maidens from their half-animal
lives of sensuality and purposelessness, to an ordered
existence of steady and intelligent work. They
might have been ready, had they been asked, to
teach some of them to obtain rubber deftly and
scientifically, as well as to learn how to make bricks,
to build good houses, to fell and square and saw

' At least the men disliked a continually industrious life. All
over negro-land, on both sides of the Atlantic, the negro woman is
invariably a hard and steady worker. It is her mate who likes to
vary spells of often tremendous labour by episodes of gallantry,
hunting, gambling, feasting, or complete repose.

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 251

up timber, to drive the engines of steamers, keep
accounts, work a printing press, write shorthand,
make boots and clothes and furniture, and at the
same time not neglect, but rather develop, such few
profitable native industries as already existed — such
as pottery, cloth-weaving, mat-making, and so forth.

But Europe was in a hurry. English, American,
Belgian, and German speculators got into communi-
cation with King Leopold, and so, great concession-
aire companies were organised to which (in common
with King Leopold himself) was by degrees allotted
almost the whole of the Congo basin within the
prescribed limits of the Congo State. Except on
the narrow band of the Lower Congo, there was
practically no room left for Free Trade and the
commerce either of the natives or of foreigners not
associated with these few great concessionaires.
When called upon for a justification, the King
pointed to the way in which France had, in a similar
fashion, pushed aside the Berlin Act and had divided
up French Congo amongst monopolists. These had
made haste to exclude, almost unrebuked by the
British Government, old-established English firms
which, for nearly a hundred years, had been develop-
ing a legitimate commerce in the coast regions of
the French Congo. His Majesty also waved a hand
towards the monopoly of the Royal Niger Company,
and the monopolies acquired and worked by the
British South Africa Chartered Company.

The British Government made haste to put itself
in a correct position as regards the Niger Company,
whose charter it had repurchased at the cost of
;^900,ooo ; but the best argument with which to

252 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

answer the apologists of the Congo State was the
prescriptions of the Berlin Act, which had not been
transgressed, so far as they applied, either by the
Niger or South Africa Company. That they had
been transgressed by France is as obvious as it was
in the case of the Congo Free State over which
King Leopold was sovereign ; and the failure of
the British Government to constrain France to
abide by the obligations of the Berlin Act made
its remonstrances with Belgium seem a little like
bullying.

King Leopold, therefore, forgetting his original
position of a philanthropist, wholly disinterested in
a desire to elevate the negroes of Central Africa,
instead of waiting patiently until, through the
teaching of lay and ecclesiastical emissaries, the
natives of the Congo basin developed local in-
dustries to an extent which gave their country a
sound commerce and enabled it to raise a revenue
equivalent to its expenditure, misused the native
armies he had created to bring pressure to bear on
several million naked savages to work constantly
and almost unremittingly at the production of
rubber and such other produce of the forests and
plains as was profitable to the great concessionaires
of whom King Leopold himself was the foremost.
Many of the Congo people objected to this forced
labour ; and from that sprang frightful atrocities
only to be paralleled in the history of negro slavery
in America, atrocities which, as often as not, were
committed by irresponsible agents of commercial
associations.

That the entry of Belgium into the Congo basin.

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 253

can show other results besides injustice, cruelty, and
human suffering, must be apparent to all who study
the question even superficially. Many Belgian
officers (civilian or military) conceived a great
sympathy and affection for the savages or semi-
savages amongst whom they came to live. They
built up prosperous native communities, supported
with their influence chiefs who were humane, and
deposed chiefs who were cruel ; they introduced
many of the elements of civilisation, and it is
admitted by British and American missionaries that
many of the native soldiers trained by these Belgians
have turned out, in the long-run, admirable members
of the community, and even active helpers of the
missionaries themselves. Science has reaped a rich
harvest from Belgian work on the Congo, and the
commerce of Belgium has been enormously enriched.
This last, however, was no source of gratification
to such Congo people as remained poor or even
became destitute. Outside the districts rich in
rubber, many tribes and natives of the Congo basin
have gained very greatly in welfare and happiness
from the incoming of the European ; but much
of the present well-being (say in the Western Congo,
on the northern Mubangi, on the Lualaba) of the
Congo peoples is due, not to anything King Leopold
or his officers have done, but to the efforts of British,
Belgian, French, American, and Swedish missionaries,
who have carried on their really splendid work (I
write as an eye-witness, at any rate of the beginnings)
not always with the sympathy of, but occasionally in
opposition to, the officials who directed the affairs
of the Congo State.

254 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

But Mr Morel's arguments applied quite as much
to British policy in Africa as they did to that of
France, Belgium, and other nations ; which is why,
perhaps, his propaga.nda was more disliked in
England than in Belgium itself. He and others
who have championed the native cause in Africa,
especially in regard to possession of the land, have
achieved a great victory over popular tendencies in
the European mind, though it would be easy to push
their theories to a ridiculous extreme and deprecate
the opening up of Africa, lest this process, necessary
to the advancement of all human affairs, should be
displeasing to parties of /cannibalistic or animalistic
savages here and there, I'eading nomadic or restless
lives, and unable to make use of thousands of square
miles of virgin soil.

It must be admitted that Leopold of Belgium in
his change of policy after 1894 made a great and
grievous mistake, so grievous that it has not only
balanced but almost extinguished the record of his
really philanthropic work in Africa in earlier days —
work such as that which, through a gallant Belgian,
Captain Storms, practically brought to a conclusion the
slave-raiding and trading of the Arabs on the shores
of Lake Tanganyika. But those who are watching
the rise of the native — a rise we may dislike for
selfish reasons but cannot ignore — must feel that every
thwack which resounds from the Morelian battery of
Belgian methods — methods we have reason to hope
are now being completely changed — leaves us a little
sore in anticipation, since we have not been completely
void of fault ourselves in our treatment of native
rights in certain parts of South and Central Africa.

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 255

Fortunately for our own record it must be fully
and freely admitted that, in regard to the recognition
and defence of native rights, both Foreign and
Colonial Offices have been wisely inspired during the
last fifteen years. In confirmation of which I may
point to the happy condition at the present day of
the Gambia and Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Lagos,
Southern and Northern Nigeria (especially the four
first-named, old-established colonies). This is owing
to the full recognition given for some time past to
the native rights over the land and the produce of
that land. It is possible to show, merely from a
commercial point of view, that such has turned out
a paying policy, judged by the striking commercial
development during recent years of Sierra Leone,
the Gold Coast, and Lagos.

Everywhere throughout the world the spirit of
Christianity (with some terrible interludes of fanati-
cism or betrayal) has operated against what might
seem from the Europeans' outlook to be the survival
of the fittest. The Fuegians were a wretched folk
when first visited by Darwin in the Beagle, or by
the few explorers who preceded him. They are a
different people to-day after fifty years of the South
American Mission. They are saved for survival.
But their land, though possessing some disadvan-
tages, is quite as habitable and colonisable as Sweden
or Sakhalin. " Why bother about the Fuegians,"
might say the spirit of anti-Christian science, " why
protect them any more than you do their Antarctic
wolf, maned sea-lion, or guanaco .? They are
failures. Sweep them away without pity, and let
their places be taken by Welsh settlers, by Chilian

256 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

immigrants, or even Araucanians. Whilst you are
wasting much time and money trying to civilise the
Fuegians you might be building up a prosperous
and powerful white state able to play a notable part
in the Southern Hemisphere."

Or take the much larger question of South
Africa; the same spirit might sayj "Oust the
coloured man from every part of South Africa
which is fit to sustain a white population, and the
result will be in the future a great world power
rivalling, even surpassing, the United States of
North America."

If Christianity interposes a veto still sufficiently
powerful to enlist the sympathies of Christian
kings, to restrain even the most " Imperialist " of
British politicians, it should be quite equal to the
holding back of God-fearing Boers, British, and
Germans who are resident in South Africa and in a
position to dictate that country's working policy. I
write advisedly " God-fearing," not in the sancti-
monious spirit of older days, but as expressing a type
of mind very common amongst all races of mankind
even at the present day, and most of all, I think, in
the peoples of Europe and North America : a feeling
that somehow or other cruelty and injustice even to
a beast, and most of all to anything entitled to call
itself a man, is out of harmony with the intentions
of the Power which is Nature — or more likely
behind Nature (for Nature, one begins to surmise, is
the very Devil !). In other words, that abominable
cruelties towards anything with a mind to suffer and
needless bloodshed do not pay in the long-run, but
react on those who commit such deeds, as witness the

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 257

history of Spain in the New World or of Portugal
in the Indies.^

If the casuistry were worth the waste of time, we
might argue plausibly that Christianity — at any rate
of a catholic, world-wide nature — is a mistaken
impulse ; that if its principles are logically applied,
their result some day will be the existence of a
biscuit-coloured, black-haired, high-cheekboned type
of man all the world over, a kind of rastaquou^re,
with the South American's perpetual restlessness in
politics, the negro's love of vain display and useless
noise, the futile slyness of the Chinaman, and the
average white man's dislike of manual labour. The
opposite ideal of some Anglo-Saxons would be that
the white race should reign as demigods over the
rest of the world, keeping its blood absolutely pure
from intermixture with that of any other human
variety, aiming at golden hair, blue eyes, pink
cheeks, an American chin, and a Grecian profile ;
laying down the law for the black and the coloured
men, treating them, in short, as we treat our horses,
dogs, and cattle ; enforcing sanitation, cleanliness,
and a sufficient restraint in morality, but allowing
these chattel races no say in the administration of
their own affairs. In short, reconstituting the type
of slavery that was idealised by the white men of the
Southern States before they met in the clash of
battle with the Northern forces.

' Spain as an Imperial Government has failed ; but the Spaniards
and Portuguese showed themselves true colonists, grand Nature-
quellers in Tropical America. See what Spaniards and Portuguese
fresh from the Peninsula or the Islands are doing in Louisiana,
Cuba, Santo Domingo, the Windward Islands, Panama, Guiana,
and Brazil, under the American, British, Cuban, and Brazilian flags.

17

258 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

But this ideal comes, in any case, too late.
Christianity has been there beforehand and has done
the mischief ; it has sown the dragon's teeth of
education. Had there been no Christian impulse
in the world, commencing with the discovery of
America, or perhaps, even preceding that in the
embassies sent by various popes to Tatary and
China, it might be easier to solve the native problem
in that way. In the 'eighties of the last century,
when the Imperial spirit in the United Kingdom
received another renascence, the prospect seemed a
most attractive one. The black and yellow world
was to be governed with a genial despotism that
smacked the naked negro on the back in half-con-
temptuous admiration of his big muscles, and satis-
faction that they were going to be employed in the
white man's work ; that accepted with a shrug the
rose and jasmine garlands flung round our necks
by the self-abasing Hindu. Here and there we
observed some relic of the Exeter Hall period ; such
as the granting on equal terms a franchise to white
and coloured in Cape Colony, the doctrinaire
recognition of Creole rights in Mauritius, the trying
of white men by black juries at Sierra Leone, the
renewal to Jamaica of a limited popular representa-
tion. But the idea that there would be ever any
serious demand on the part of the coloured peoples
for a voice in their own taxation and government
scarcely disturbed the forecast of any average
Imperialist. We were conferring, or about to confer,
great boons on the uncivilised peoples of the world.
The negro was to be rescued from the Arab and
saved from the ravages of the slave trade. Russia

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 259

was to be kept out of India, and France out of Siam.
Every now and then there was a rare Court function
at which magnificent Sikh soldiers, Muhammadan
princes, Hindu rajahs, or Kafir chiefs (with crude
but flattering metaphors in their translated speech)
made an appearance and were understood to express
complete acquiescence in the will of the British
sovereign.

Nor was their acquiescence feigned. The British
Empire had brought them cessation of bloodshed,
security of property (above all to those who had
property), improvement of communications and of
food supply, restraint of native tyrannies and of
unreasonable religious beliefs.

But unfortunately for the ideals of the Imperialist
Briton of twenty years ago, education was permeat-
ing the British Empire in all directions. This
education of a European type originated in the
missionary eflforts of Christianity ; and apart from
the adoption by the British Government of a policy
of widespread education on these Western lines,
the many missionary societies — British, American,
German, French, Austrian, Norwegian, and Swedish
— ^were everywhere founding schools, colleges, and
universities ; attempting to make black, brown, and
yellow people think and act like white Christians:
Moreover, the missionaries were impressing on them
over and over again that once they were Christian
and civilised (or even civilised without being actually
Christian), educated, temperate, and industrious,
they were the equal of any man, no matter of what
colour or race. About twelve years ago began a
later phase in which many old pupils of mission

26o VIEWS AND REVIEWS

schools or Christian universities sought increased
knowledge from independent sources, became
citizens of the world, and, above all, asked them-
selves in what, mentally or even physically, they
were the inferior of the white man ; and if they were
not, why they should not assist in governing their
own countries.

The issue of the Russo-Japanese war further em-
bittered the relations between the white Government
and the coloured masses. The Japanese were an
Asiatic people of partly Mongolian race ; at any rate,
not white men according to the fastidious ideal of
London, New York, and San Francisco. Yet, not
being too proud to learn the white man's science,
and being in addition exceedingly brave, and
undivided in national loyalty, they had conquered
most completely the second greatest empire of the
world, the empire of a people as to whose " white-
ness " there could be no question. The news of
the Japanese success was discussed in the stlks of
Morocco, the mosques of Egypt, and the coffee-
houses of Turkey, in Indian bazaars and African
mud-houses. It was the first set-back of the
Caucasian since the Neolithic period ; of the
Christian since the Relief of Vienna.

Of course, many who argued in this spirit over-
looked the fact that Japan is very largely a white
nation ; that some of the more northern Japanese in
skin colour are as fair as Europeans, and that they
are, in the main, a composite people with a consider-
able underlying stratum of the Proto-Caucasian
represented by the still existing Ainus of Northern
Japan. Japan is aiming at being a white nation ;

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 261

and when she thinks of the Korean or the Hindu,
the Malay, the Filipino, or even the Chinaman,
consciously or unconsciously ranges herself in line
with the white peoples of Europe and North
America.

Yet her victory, first over herself and secondly
over Russia, has given an electric shock to the
coloured peoples of the world which makes the task
of Europe and white North America additionally
hard in what they believe to be their civilising
mission. The problem presents itself, amongst other
aspects, in the relations between black and white in
North America. The millions in money which the
North has spent on negro education in the South
have produced already a marked effect. Thousands
of negro or mulatto doctors, bankers, architects,
engineers, lawyers, clergymen, dentists, musicians,
botanists, actors, authors, poets, and painters of
distinction, leading lives of twentieth -century
civilisation in houses or apartments and with appur-
tenances which would not be out of place in an
English town or fashionable suburb, are beginning,
in the Southern States, to ask the tribunal of the
world's public opinion why they should be treated
with many undeserved and mean indignities ; why a
dirty, opium-dazed Chinaman or a tipsy Amerindian
may travel in any car or public carriage with the
white people, may, if he chooses, enter a white
man's church, theatre, hotel, or lecture hall, while a
clean, well-conducted, well-educated negro, mulatto,
octoroon, or near-white is denied legally the like
privilege. An answer cannot long be delayed to
this patiently repeated question, coming from several

262 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

millions of law-abiding, tax- paying, native-born
American citizens.

By 1884 this question had been finally solved in
the British, French, and Dutch possessions of the
West Indies and tropical America. Politically, and
to a certain extent socially, there are here no colour
distinctions ; the negroid and the negro are not by
reason of their skin-colour placed in a position of
racial inferiority. Education, good manners, the
possession of property, are the conditions which
govern the admittance of all men to the council
board or the garden party. That the mulatto, and
still more the negro, is still rare in these manifesta-
tions of tropical American culture is due not to any
bar of the written or unwritten law, but to the great
leeway the African race in these regions has to make
up in education and money-making capacity. But
he starts now with almost the same advantages and
opportunities as the white child, and his future lies
in his own hands, and to be shaped by his own
strong arms and precocious brain.

Haiti is less black than she has been painted, and
much more civilised than many negro states in
Africa ; but here the liberated African has made
himself a laughing-stock by his slavish attachment
to Napoleonic ideals. In Brazil there are five and
a half millions of negroes (and negroids), quite
half a million of whom play a considerable part in
the political, social, religious, industrial, professional,
and commercial circles of this vast confederation.^

Here also in Brazil,* as in the United States,
Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina, it is
' See the articles on Brazil by Dr Max Schmidt, of Berlin.

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 263

interesting to note the uprise of the Amerindian.
As valuable members of a civilised community, the
two or three hundred thousand Redmen of the
United States are taking up a place quite dispropor-
tionate in its importance and popular favour to their
still reduced numbers. A good deal of this is
owing to the educational work of the Hampton
Institute (started in 1867 by the late General
Samuel Armstrong, U.S.A.), and to the war against
alcohol which has been carried on in the States
for fifty years by of ten-j eered-at men and women.
This crusade has at last secured popularity and the
adhesion of the masses. Total abstinence has put
new life, new vigour, new thoughts, new wealth
into the white South, and it has saved the North
American Indian from frowsy extinction. Yet he
may not survive much longer as an independent
stock. By his nature and origin half a white man,
he will gradually be absorbed by marriage into the
white community. The white people of Anglo-Saxon
and Spanish-speaking America, who are getting more
and more fastidious about mixing their blood with
that of the negro, are becoming less and less averse
to inter-marriage with the Amerindian. Nor from
the aesthetic point of view can they be blamed ; the
Canadian half-bloods, the cross between the white
American and the Iroquois, between the Spaniard
and the Arawak or Carib or Chibcha, Araucanian
or Pampas Indian, are a gain to the bodily vigour,
manly or womanly beauty of the Caucasian stock.
The fine-looking police of Argentina is now mainly
pure Amerindian in blood, or of the handsome
Gaucho half-breed. A former President of Brazil

264 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

was, like so many Brazilians of note, half Amer-
indian in descent. It was the Paulista half-breeds
— Portuguese and Amerindian — the " Mamelucos,"
who, radiating from the Jesuit college of Sao Paulo,
made Brazil, when they joined hands with the
similarly constituted hybrids of Bahia and Para.
The new man of South and Central America, of
Santo Domingo, Porto Rico, and Cuba will be
nearly half Amerindian in blood unless Europe
hurries up and exports millions of white settlers to
these fertile summer lands. One way and another,
as in the Pacific archipelagoes, the straight-haired,
dark-eyed, bufF-skinned peoples, compacted of Proto-
Caucasian and primitive Mongol, will be absorbed
into the white man's community, except where,
from incurable degeneracy, they die out.

Will the world of the twenty-second century be
divided into two camps : a cream-coloured Medi-
terranean type of white man, and a brown-skinned
negroid, with hair in which the kink is loosening
into the curl, and a facial outline that is assuming
the comely features of the Ethiopian and the Fula ?
And will these two types — perhaps then of equal
political standing — proceed to any further approxi-
mation ? give up the pink and white, golden-haired
and blue-eyed ideal, care only for physical vigour
and brain power .'' The godlike heads of our
descendants may be shaved all over or electrically
depilated ; and with hair completely out of fashion
we may have ceased to care about its colour or its
undulations. Eyes may be screened with lenses for
the telescopic or microscopic development of sight ;
body and limbs be so perpetually protected from

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 265

heat and cold, germs and bruises, by some closely
fitting, antiseptic garment that only the beauty of
its shape be visible and nothing of its skin-colour.
In 2100 A.D. there may be no physical or mental
reason why Negroid and Caucasian should not
become one flesh.

But in the present year of grace the tendency
among the Nordic races lies in the opposite direction.
Political equality with the negro and negroid is
grudgingly admitted and granted here and there
where these dark races are in a considerable
numerical majority, or where the white man so
exceeds them in numbers that the concession in-
spires him with no fear. But physical union, with
the inevitable result of creating a secondary yellow
race, is more and more scouted as an act of l^se-
majest6 against the Caucasian ideal. Nor is it only
a matter of skin-colour. The Amerindian is refusing
to mate with the negro in many parts of America
where formerly he was willing or eager to do so.
The black Caribs of the Honduras coast prefer to
marry Amerindian women rather than renew their
negro blood (which has made them a very vigorous
people) by espousing negresses from Jamaica or
British Honduras. Unions between pure-blood
Amerindians and negroes in the Guianas and Brazil
are increasingly rare. East Indian kuli settlers in
the West Indies and Guianas and Brazil now
practically never mate with negroes, though the
Chinese will do so freely : the natives of India who
come to East Africa and Natal as merchants, traders,
artisans, or soldiers keep, away from the " Habshi "
women (no blacker than themselves). Soon the

266 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

only gate of intercourse by which the negro may
enter the racial domain of the Caucasian will be
(as in the distant past) North Africa and Egypt.
But even here, amongst the Berbers and the desert
Tuareg — as is well shown in Mr Charles Furlong's
book on Tripoli, The Gateway to the Sahara —
racial pride is rising and the nigritic intermixture is
eschewed. This perhaps is to be regretted, because
the one really satisfactory hybrid (from the mental
and physical standpoint) which the negro makes —
besides his cross with the Polynesian and the Amer-
indian — is with the Berber, Hamite, and Arab.

Yet in the rise of the native few points are so
needful of notice as the seven-league strides by
which the negro in South Africa, Central and West
Africa (and before long in the Anglo-Egyptian
Sudan), is advancing to embrace the white man's
civilisation, generally along the path cleared for
him by the Christian, and even by the Muham-
madan, missionary. For the moment the question
of the franchise and the negro member of parliament
are shelved in South Africa ; but if, with the oppor-
tunities now open to them, the Bantu negroes of
that region continue their intellectual advance, they
cannot be for ever excluded from full civic rights,
which are based on tests of literacy and property.

So, again, from the point of view of the continued
primacy of the Christian white man, the rejuvenation
of Turkey under the Constitution is a process which
will be watched with critical interest, especially by
those European nations who are primarily concerned
with the maintenance of law and order in south-east
Europe and south-west Asia. It is too soon yet to

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 267

decide definitely whether, through its new political
Constitution, Turkey has gained in homogeneity
and national power.^ Any revival of Muham-
madanism of a dogmatic or fanatical character would
be fatal to such a process. The only hope in a
future for the Turkish Empire would be for it
to forget that it owes its present shape and name
to the devastating invasions of Mongol, Tatar,
and Turkish hordes between the twelfth and
fifteenth centuries. If the so-called Turks could
have themselves analysed by an expert anthro-
pologist, they might understand that they are not
far diflFerent in racial types from the va:rious peoples
ruled by the Byzantine emperors ; and if Islam
could be disestablished as the State religion — in
other words, if Turkey would once more call
herself Byzantium, and announce that there was
no State religion, she might include Greece amongst
her provinces or vassal kingdoms and play a mighty
part in the Mediterranean world of the twentieth
century. But she will not (as far as one can foresee) ;
and therefore the Arab, Egyptian, and Berber
peoples of Syria, Egypt, Tripoli, Tunis, Algeria,
and Morocco must be constrained to re-enter and
remain in the domain of that revivified Roman
Empire of the West which is foreshadowed by the

^ The revival of a " Great Turkey " hinged a good deal on the
recovery by the Turks of a hold over Crete. Crete having been
semi-detached from the Turkish Empire, the loss of Tripoli
and Barka was inevitable : if Italy had not taken them, Germany
or Austria would have done so. With the English control over
Egypt and the Italian occupation of Tripoli and the Cyrenaica,
the hope of a connection between the Turkish power and the
Moslems of Inner Africa has — I hope — departed.

268 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

ever more closely growing understanding between
Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ger-
many, and Austria-Hungary.

Spain has been much abused in the British press
for attempting to subdue the RifF country and play
a more active part in the organisation of Morocco.
It seems to me that any real friend of the Moors
who has seen what the French have achieved in
Algeria and Tunis can only wish that France and
Spain united may push on their work of controlling
and educating Morocco. What if there be a plan
for working Morocco mines by Spanish capitalists ?
Why is such an idea more heinous than the develop-
ment of the gold-mines in West and South Africa by
British companies .-' Look at the prosperity which
has been brought to Algeria and Tunis by the
working of mines there through English, Scottish,
French, Italian, and Maltese capitalists.^ Of what
use to the people of the RifF at the present day are
unworked mines, locked-up wealth which cannot be
put in circulation ? With all our sentiment and
the sincere desire that we may have to carry out
the logical, the inevitable, results of a belief in the
ethics of Christianity, we must realise, firstly, that
the condition of barbarous peoples in Barbary,
in the wastes of Central Africa, the Malay
Peninsula, or South America, is little better than
the existence of an animal, has scarcely more
effect on its environment than the movements
and wrangles of baboons. To develop the nomad

1 An excellent description of present-day problems in Tunisia
is given in Tke Veil: a Romance of Tunisia, by E. S. Stevens
(Mills and Boon, 1909).

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 269

or the savage into a civilised man, money must
be spent ; vocal appeal and example are of them-
selves insufficient. If we are to fertilise Africa,
South America, Eastern Asia, with money, we
must apply to our brother white man ; and the
white man objects to putting his money into these
enterprises unless he has some reasonable security
that it will come back to him with, at any rate,
some percentage of profit. Hence these concessions,
monopolies, and privileges. It must be the task
of the philanthropist and the statesman, combined,
so to adjust the conditions of capital and labour, of
native rights, and of the foreigner's concessions,
that both civilised and uncivilised peoples alike
shall profit from the interchange.

The native problems of the British Empire in
Africa are not limited to those regions south of
the Zambezi where there is a large indigenous white
population. In negro and negroid Africa the
coloured peoples are raising eyes to meet our
gaze. The brown millions of Egypt are asking
for independence from our control, or rather a
few voices of very white Egyptians of Armenian,
Turkish, and Circassian origin, are assuming the
right to protest against the British occupation in
the name of the ten million silent fellahin. Somalis
and Wa-swahili, Baganda and Masai, Hausa and
Fula, Nupe and Efik, Yoruba and Egba, Ashanti
and Fanti, Mandingo and Temne, are requesting,
for the most part politely, that they may be consulted
and even allowed to participate in the management
of their own affairs in their own countries, which
we are governing more and more in a disinterested

270 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

fiduciary way, only being repaid for our trouble
by the increase in our unprivileged commerce.

As we are listening to their aspirations — they
who were, some of them, cannibals, and nearly
all of them unlettered barbatrians yesterday — we can
scarcely close our ears to the hum of discontent
which comes from nine or ten millions of Indians
whose ancestors were on the one side akin to our
own progenitors four or five thousand years ago,
though on the other they derive from Australoid
and negro.

Under a hundred years of more or less direct
British rule, the rise of the native races of India to
a consciousness of their rights as human beings has
been marked. Finding we were not the inhuman
monsters to which as rulers they had been only
too much accustomed since the first Afghan invasion
of looo A.D., they have been speaking out with
ever-increasing boldness as to their needs and aspira-
tions ; and we, having spread education broadcast,
should neither be surprised nor dismayed. Whatever
mistakes may be committed by individuals among
the British in India — usually persons of minor social
importance — it must be obvious to any impartial
student of recent Indian history that the undeviating
desire of the great personages in India and Britain,
connected with the Imperial Government, has been
to rule India mainly for the benefit of the 300,000,000
of diverse peoples living in the vast region between
Central Persia and Siam, Tibet and Ceylon. Through-
out all this stretch of southern tropical Asia there is
a certain homogeneity of fauna, flora, trade-products,
and culture. And we have supplied this Empire

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 271

with a lingua franca — Hindustani — ^which is an almost
unfailing medium of intercommunication, for all but
savages, within the limits cited.

There is, however, no uniformity of race through-
out the Indian Empire, nor is there likely to be fdr
several centuries. The fundamental races of India
are the Australoid ; the Negro ; and the Proto-
Mongolian with long, lank head-hair, hairless body,
yellow skin, flat face, and small nose. The first
Caucasian invasion mingling with all three of these
primitive stocks has produced the Dravidian type,
which prevails over so much of India — Bengal,
central, eastern, western, and southern Peninsular
India. In the forests of southern and south-central
India aboriginal negroids still linger, the photographs
of whom, if placed among a series of African types,
might almost be attributed to Africa ; the lowly
Australoids still lead a savage, naked existence also
in southern India and in Ceylon ; the Mongols of
ancient and modern origin permeate most markedly
northern and north-eastern India, and, fused in
varying degrees with a negroid element, supply
almost the whole population of Burma. In Persia
and Afghanistan we have, almost pure, the Medi-
terranean, Armenian, and Russian types of white
man, with traces here and there of an ancient Nordic
strain, giving grey eyes and brown or even yellow
hair. The mixture of this white race, ancient and
modern, with the pre-existing negroids, Australoids,
and Mongols, of north-western and northern India,
gives us the " handsome " Indians of to-day — the
Brahui, Baluchi, Kachi, Sindhi, and Panjabi ; the
Jat, the Rajput, and the Muhammadan Bengali.

272 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

Along the Malabar coast there has (as also in Sindh)
been much Arab immigration and intermixture.

Some of the direct difficulties of maintaining
an Imperial sway (resulting in peace, unchecked
commerce, law, justice, and the amenities of life)
over such diverse racial stocks and mutually
antagonistic peoples, have been avoided by retaining
or restoring native rulers, belonging more or less to
indigenous or dark-skinned dynasties. In this way
some 870,000 square miles (including the British
sphere of influence in South-Eastern Persia) out of
the total 1,946,000 square miles of the Indian
Empire are disposed of comfortably. Herein the
rise of the native is only a testimony to the wisdom
of our Imperial supervision and occasions us no
heart-searching or anxiety. No doubt if we could
have foreseen the problems which would be created
by our improvements in India we should have been
far more eager in the past to maintain and educate
native dynasties, and much more of India would
have been feudatory rather than subject.

As it is, King George V. is the direct ruler and
sovereign lord over 1,097,901 square miles of the
Indian Empire. And in several of the provinces
under his sway his Indian subjects are asking for
some degree of representation — one might almost
write some further degree of representation, since in
the Provincial Legislative Councils there were a few
members elected by communities of Indians — in the
framing of laws and the raising and spending of
revenue. This demand has not been uninfluenced in
its later phases by the establishment of constitutional
government in the Turkish Empire and in Persia.

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 273

The growing discontent of educated India at the
nearly complete lack of native representation in the
government of that empire reached such a height
in 1907 that the Liberal Government of the day
in Great Britain could not ignore it, nor was the
Viceroy appointed under the preceding Conservative
administration backward in advising wise concessions
to the new feeling in British India. The result was
the institution of Imperial and Provincial Legislative
Councils which came into existence in 19 10. These
Councils, of course, remain advisory — they are
necessary halting places on a cautious advance
towards more responsible self-government. The
fullest discussion of measures proposed by the
Executive is permitted ; councillors may ask for
and are supplied with information ; they may initiate
and suggest definite resolutions, and are enabled to
take a real and active part in shaping financial
proposals. British India thus secures on its Imperial
and Provincial Legislative Councils the advantage
of much expert native advice ; and, although the
Viceroy's Cabinet (the Executive) is not bound to
accept that advice, yet if all the elected (and perhaps
some nominated) native councillors were opposed to
a measure initiated by the Viceroy's Government,
it is improbable that it would be persisted in, unless
the Viceroy was possessed of information or Imperial
instructions of such tremendous importance that
native opinion or scope of view must be overpassed.
As an electorate, the 240,000,000 living immediately
under British administration are indirectly represented
by great communities of nobles, landholders, priests,
men of commerce, manufacturers, lawyers, and

18

274 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

bankers. This very limited direct electorate re-
presents at present all that there is in the way of
education and world-knowledge in British India, in
that approximate half of the Indian Empire in which
there are only about 700,000 native Indians able to
read, write, and speak English, and not much more
than 9,000,000 (out of a population of, say,
240,000,000)^ who are able to read and write in
their own vernacular.

The Muhammadans, possibly the Sikhs, and
certainly the Parsis, seem on the whole to be
contented with this measure of administrative
reform and this much improved degree of native
representation in the law-making of India. But the
Muhammadans are scarcely more than 55,000,000
at the present day (in strictly British India), whereas
in the same area of the Indian Empire, there are
about 162,000,000 of Hindus, at least 10,000,000
of Buddhists, over 2,000,000 Christians, 1,700,000
Sikhs, and 500,000 Jains.^

The Hindu section of the community, which so
largely predominates in numbers, complains with
some bitterness of its proportionately inferior re-
presentation in the Imperial and Provincial Legisla-
tures of India. Let us see how far its complaints
are justified. We have stated their numbers to be
approximately 162,000,000 in the India aiFected by

1 The figures for 1910 for all India (British and Native States)
are 15,686,421 literates (able to read and write in the vernacular)
out of a population of nearly 300,000,000.

^ The Jains are a merchant class living chiefly in West and
Central India, whose religion is of the Buddhist type, though
perhaps derived from earlier teaching than Buddha's : they are a
most praiseworthy community.

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 275

these new Councils. In the proposed constitution
of the Imperial Legislative Council for all British
India, assuming that the Viceroy in Council does
not nominate any Hindu to represent special interests,
there will, in all probability, be 14 Hindus, out of
the 28 elected members of Council, sent up by the
Provincial Legislatures, landholders, chambers of
commerce, etc. Thus the Hindus, who represent
approximately 68 per cent, of the present population
of British India, instead of having 68 per cent, of
representation on the Imperial Council, may have to
be content with 50 per cent., while the Muhammadans,
who only represent about 23 per cent, of the total,
may have something like 45 per cent, of the
representation.

But although the Blue-book from which much of
this information is quoted does not say so, we have
reason to believe that, as regards education in the
vernacular — that is to say, ability to read, write, and
keep accounts — the proportion is very much higher
amongst the Muhammadan community in India
than it is amongst the Hindus. Amongst the adult
males of the 55,000,000 Muhammadans, something
like 75 per cent, can read and write in Hindustani
or kindred languages, and probably 10 per cent,
are acquainted with English. On the other hand,
education amongst the 162,000,000 Hindus is not
nearly so far advanced ; perhaps only 20 per cent,
of the adult males can read and write in the ver-
nacular, and 3 per cent, are acquainted with English.

Also — if one is to speak out without fear of
oiFence, and to tell the naked truth from the British
point of view — the 1 62,000,000 Hindu men,

276 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

women, and children follow for the most part wholly
unreasonable forms of religion, quite incompatible
with modern ideas of physical development, social
progress, sanitation, avoidance of cruelty, and un-
restricted intercourse with one's fellow men. Hindu
students of advanced education reproach us fre-
quently, and very often justly, with our lack of
politeness and tact, want of sympathy for any
different race, exclusiveness, etc. But how much
greater are the social sins in this respect of the
Brahman and the whole Hindu system of caste !
The Englishman at his worst recognises the Hindu
as a fellow man, and, among the lower orders, does
not disdain to unite in some sort of marriage with a
Hindu woman. He would, if need be, share food
and drink with Hindus or any other natives of India.
At his best, the Englishman makes himself pro-
foundly well acquainted with Hindu languages,
the intricacies of Hindu religion, poetry, folk-lore,
customs, and prejudices. The Brahman scarcely
acknowledges the common humanity of the low
caste and the pariahs, sponges on them, plunders
them, tricks them, violates their women, abuses
them in every possible way, and has done so for an
unknown number of centuries. Instead of placing
his great social influence — for he is regarded by the
ignorant masses as a demigod — at the disposal of a
civilised Government for the suppression of disease,
the increased production of food, the provision of
a reasonable degree of meat diet for the toiling
millions, and the general betterment of the country,
he pursues a reverse policy. The one desire of nine
Brahmans out of ten is to oppose any measures for

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 277

improved sanitation and extirpation of disease, and
to maintain their position as long as they can by
feeding the superstitions and inflaming the prejudices
against innovation of the 100,000,000 or so of their
illiterate fellow religionists. If all forms of the
Hindu religion — Brahmanism — could be submitted
to an impartial world-congress of non-Hindus, the
members of which were selected from all parts of
non-Hindu Asia, from America, Europe, and Africa,
the Hindu religion would be universally condemned
as a mixture of nightmare-nonsense and time-
wasting rubbish fulfilling no useful end whatever,
only adding to the general burden borne by humanity
in its struggle for existence. And, of course, so
long as 200,000,000 Indians remain attached to
these preposterous faiths, with their absurd and
useless ceremonials and food tabus, so long (if for
that reason alone) will the British be justified in
ruling the Indian Empire with some degree of
absolutism.

From this same point of view the Muhammadans
of India, and Muhammadanism generally, are also
open to criticism. Much that was very foolish in
the various Syrian faiths which came into existence
between 5000 b.c. and 600 a.d. was gathered up by
the inspired Arab camel-driver and implanted on the
minds of one of the world's noble races — the Arabs ;
who combined this nonsense with some practices
that were pure and good. But in general the
Islamic faith of western Asia and the northern half
of Africa, of Central Asia, India, and Malaysia, has
become a coarser Judaism, tinged with Manichaean
and Gnostic beliefs combined with Egyptian and

278 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

Syrian accretions of Christianity, the whole inter-
woven with strands of ancient Babylonian faiths.
Because of the common origin of many of these
beliefs, Muhammadanism is closely affiliated to
Judaism and, in a lesser degree, to Christianity.
These affinities in a way are precious, as they should
constitute a triune bond of sympathy between the
Jew, the Christian, and the Muhammadan, between,
as the Arabs say, the " people of the Book " ; and
perhaps, when the faiths of all three have been
purified from external nonsense, they may find them-
selves scarcely divided as to first principles and
general practices.

But where in India Muhammadanism stands in
the way of progress is in its treatment of woman, its
condonation of polygamy and the harim, and its
dietary restrictions, which are not as absurd as those
of the Hindus, but are still unreasonable as articles
of religion, for, if one eats flesh at all, it is no wickeder
to eat well-fed, well-cured pig than beef, mutton,
goat, antelope, or venison ; while the European
method of killing in a scientific way is perhaps more
sanitary and less cruel than cutting the throat of
some struggling animal in the name of God. Any-
one who thinks these diatribes undeserved has only
to ask how far modern Muhammadanism fetters
social liberty and the range of man's thought and
experiments in Constantinople at the present day
(even under the New Turk regime), and to re-
member that even greater difficulties emanate from
the fanatical Muhammadan millions in India. Still,
all said and done, the Muhammadans of India are
our brothers in thought and sentiment when we

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 279

contemplate the enormous gulf that separates the
common-sensible, educated Briton from the Brahman.
If all India were either Sikh or Jain it would deserve,
and it would be able to appreciate and rightly to
exercise, the largest powers of self-government.

But in dealing with the Muhammadan and the
Hindu in India we must remember the position and
the aspect of Afghanistan. If the 55,000,000 Indian
Muhammadans are worthy of their great proportion
of representation on these Indian Councils — and in
future of even greater consideration — they must
bring the weight of their influence to bear on the
two or three millions of Afghans who are for ever
and perpetually stirring up expensive trouble for the
British Empire in the frontier districts, who are the
predominant excuse (if one be needed) for the per-
manent British occupation of India, since it has been
almost invariably from Afghanistan that India has
been raided and ravaged, blood-stained and de-
flowered from 1000 A.D. to the present day. And
these Afghan raids have been far worse in their
consequences since, to a natural desire for plunder
and new homes, the Afghans added the most odious
development known of Muhammadan religious
fanaticism. While their armies in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries may have stopped short at
North-Central India, their adventurers permeated
India as successful robbers and founders of dynasties ;
and it was largely to protect themselves against the
raids and exactions of the Afghan tribes or indi-
viduals that the many millions of Hindus so eagerly
and placidly accepted British domination. So far as
the great Mutiny of 1857-8 is concerned, Hindu

28o VIEWS AND REVIEWS

disloyalty then was a mere accident. This Mutiny
derived its seriousness from being a real attempt on
the part of the Muhammadans of India, backed up
by the Afghans and the Persians, to found once
again a Muhammadan Empire at the expense of the
Englishman and the Hindu.

Active Hindu dislike to British rule, and conse-
quent disloyalty, really only came into being about
the commencement of the 'eighties of the last century.
It was due partly to the new European education
spreading amongst the students of Bengal, and to a
certain tactlessness among the lesser British admini-
strators in Bengal ; perhaps, too, somewhat and some-
times to the manners of the British mem-sahib and of
her eye-glassed husband. It is in the main only
justified by seemingly slight and removable causes.
The Hindus of Bengal and other Indian provinces
have now shown themselves just sufficiently educated
(as men of the world) to deserve that amount of re-
presentation which is being accorded to them in the
government of India at the present day. If they are
to demand in justice and to deserve a greater and
greater amount of representation, a wider and wider
franchise, they must abolish the nonsense of caste
and desert nearly all the lesser precepts of their
fantastical religions ; they must spread widely a
suitable education amongst their people and co-
operate willingly and gladly with the demands of
science, being able to judge of the value of these
demands by participating much more seriously in
the study of practical science and modern engineer-
ing in their own schools and in their college courses
in England or Germany, and not devoting quite so

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 281

much time and attention to the fourieries of British
and Indian law.

A writer in a recent number of the Review of
Reviews draws attention to a further widening of
the rift between the English and the educated
natives of India ; these last complain (he says) of the
impolite and unsympathetic way in which they are
treated by the English people, and contrast this with
the courteous behaviour of the French and Germans.
In consequence of this difference of treatment Indian
students are proceeding now to the United States, to
France, and to Germany for their higher education ;
to countries where they will not be shouted after by
the street boys, as in London, Cambridge, Oxford,
Birmingham or Manchester : where the landladies
of their apartments will be more obliging, and their
white fellow-students less insolent.

There would seem to be some truth at the bottom
of these bitter criticisms of English (not Scottish or
Irish) manners. I could not myself, on a recent
journey, fail to notice the number of Indian students
at the educational institutions of the United States,
or the reasons they gave for their preference ; while
the partiality for Germany or France over England
(Edinburgh is stiU in favour) among not only Indian
students, but also Brazilians, Haitians, Egyptians,
and Syrians, makes one question whether we behave
quite as Imperially towards the coloured races of the
world as the more self-satisfied among us assert.
Unfortunately one of the few public men who had
taken this matter to heart, and had sought to give
social help and countenance to the Indian student,
was himself shot by a crazy Indian.

282 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

As a philosopher surveys the difFerent sections of
the British Empire with his eyes and ears, or, by the
help of the books of shrewd observers, British and
foreign, he might conceivably arrive at these con-
clusions. That no white race known to history has
dealt so well or so wisely with savages and with
toiling millions of peasants as Britain ; nor has any
Imperial Power ever so completely won and retained
the confidence of its feudatories, of the nobles, the
warriors, the wealthy, among its subject peoples.
With both extremes we do well, and have no change
to make in our manners. Where at present we
break down is in our treatment of the new middle
class — the educated, uneasy, touchy, suspicious
people whom our rule has called into existence, yet
whose political rights are ill-defined or non-existent.
They are not usually very good-looking, nor have
they the enthralling interest of the unreclaimed
savage. No Court could give a better or more
ennobling reception to its Indian princes, kings,
nobles, or wealthy philanthropists than that of St
James's ; in no other country would an African chief,
an Egyptian pasha, or a Chinese mandarin meet with
such sympathetic and gracious hospitality. But we
are not at home with the middle class, the educated,
European-clothed students, lawyers, clerks, doctors,
and engineers, growing up fast in the West and
East Indies, in West and South Africa, in the
Levant, and the Far East— growing up and asking
for political recognition. Frankly we don't like
them. We rescued their forefathers from slavery or
serfdom, from the home or foreign money-lender,
the bloody-minded oppressor or false prophet ;

THE RISE OF THE NATIVE 283

chid some of them (half-amused) for cannibalism,
and others for polygamy ; appreciated their naked
fidelity ; or were ready sans mauvaise gr&ce or patron-
age to shoot big game with their rulers and aristo-
crats. But we now look askance at the — if civilly
entreated, effusive ; if scornfully ignored, abusive —
middle product of our intermeddling ; at the
mission-educated son of the slave, the journalist
sprung from the loins of a Parsi grocer, or the
minor celebrity whose parent was a popular donkey-
boy, a dragoman, or a fetish doctor. Yet it is men
of this class who have made the Turkish Revolution,
and led the Nationalist movement in Persia to, at
any rate, a temporary success ; these alone are the
people who agitate for representative government in
India and South Africa.

It must be our business now to meet halfway this
middle class of our own creation ; to sympathise
with their difficulties and aspirations, on the border-
land between the old and the new ; to trust them
gradually with sobering responsibilities. It is due
to us from them, however, that they gain our
confidence by abandoning noisy declamation and
useless violence. There are two ways of gaining
the whole-hearted esteem of the Englishman. One
isto contend valiantly with him in battle. But that
accomplishment still leaves you poor in knowledge
and in worldly goods. The other plan, and the
surest, is to work hard (as he generally does) and
make lots of money. The possession of money is a
guarantee of good behaviour and almost invariably
leads to the enlargement of political abilities, and to
prudence in the use of the franchise.

CHAPTER X

THE PRESERVATION OF FAUNA AND FLORA

No anthropologist can dissociate himself from the
slowly growing protest against the reckless and
stupid destruction of native fauna and flora which is
now robbing so much of the world of an interest and
beauty to which since the renaissance of the nine-
teenth century the eyes of many have been opened.
The policy which is denuding the United States
of its forests, which is depriving Alabama of its
chief glory and interest — the magnolia woods —
which is deflowering the downs of Sussex and the
copses of Surrey for the enrichment of the flower-
seller in Covent Garden Market, is the same which
has lost us the most precious of human documents
since the Pleistocene, the Tasmanian aboriginal : who
was wiped out of existence with no more protest
from the Colonial Office of that day than the destruc-
tion of the white rhinoceros, the sea-elephant, the
tapir of Guiana, or the priceless pheasants of
Malaysia and Borneo evokes in the present year of
grace.

Owing to the class of education given in the state
schools to the poor, and in the long-established
public schools to the rich, neither the masses nor the

284

PRESERVING FAUNA AND FLORA 285

classes (which last still govern us, whether the label
of the party in power be Conservative or Liberal) of
Great Britain have much appreciation of natural
beauty. Otherwise the holiday-makers of eastern
London would have left some primroses to bloom
in Epping Forest, have given up " hurrooshing " the
fallow deer ; while the country gentlemen, great
landowners, and rich stockbrokers would have sub-
ordinated their passion for pheasant shooting to the
preservation in their woods of the old forest fauna of
Britain — jays, kites, hawks, owls, badgers, martens,
and pole-cats. They would not allow the lanes to
be strewn with paper, nor would they present
reading rooms in corrugated iron to their seventeenth-
century villages ; while the villagers, if they had the
middle-class, the artist's, poet's eye to beauty and
appropriateness, would not cast down such paper, nor
receive such oblong hideosities in corrugated iron if
they were presented. Reading rooms are a most
desirable addition to village life ; but if we cared for
the beauty of England as I believe all her people
did down to the eighteenth century, either the squire
or the lady bountiful would make the necessary
sacrifice to the end that their additions to the village
should harmonise with its buildings of thatched or
tiled roofs, brick, timber, or flint walls ; or very
properly the villagers would give of their spare time,
labour, and substance to supplement the squire's
resources.

An opening of the understanding as to the beauty
and wonder of natural life in its natural surroundings,
the importance of scenery as a background to human
life, the value of the history which has been woven

286 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

into the ancient work of man's hands, would send
our young men and women out into the wide world
less as the destroyers they now are — the women as
eager to plunder the Persian tomb, to shoulder the
rifle and kill the deer as any man — than as con-
servators of the tattered chapters of the New Bible.

Admiration and regard for the beast, bird, and
flower of the field and forest appear not only in the
books of the Old as well as of the New Testament,
but in earlier or contemporary records of man's
thought in Egypt, Greece, Syria, Persia, and India.
Even in palaeolithic Europe, an aesthetic appreciation
of the remarkable or beautiful forms of wild animals
swayed the minds of many a man and woman. The
plumage of birds ; the tails, horns, teeth, and pelts
of mammals ; the lovely forms and colours of sea-
shells and land-shells ; the wing-cases of beetles,
were eagerly sought for to adorn the outlines of the
human form. At a later stage, brightly-coloured
flowers and leaves were plucked for juxtaposition in
the hair or in the waistbelt. Then, in time, animals
were domesticated, and the admiration for their beauty
or their usefulness grew into a religion ; flowers were
encouraged to grow near the human dwelling ; and
great trees were loved and venerated not only for
their shade and shelter but for their stately beauty.

But the love of beast and bird, for such beauty
as they may possess, as well as for their scientific
interest, was not until recently thought inconsistent
with their wholesale destruction. The spirit under-
lying most savage games and sports — the gladiatorial
exhibitions of old Rome, the prize-fights of eighteenth-
century England, the bull-fights of nineteenth-century

PRESERVING FAUNA AND FLORA 287

Spain — reappears in too many " sportsmen " of to-day.
Still more potent, though less bloodthirsty, is the
primitive instinct for the chase — derived from those
early ages when men hunted for a living — which
finds its vent, in civilised countries, in the pursuit of
fox, otter, or stag, and in wilder regions of the earth
in hunting of a more hazardous nature. Finally,
there is the instinct for collecting strange objects —
the same instinct that prompts the bower-bird to
decorate its courting-place with shells, flowers, and
bones, the magpie to steal spoons, and the monkey
to snatch and hide any portable object of attractive
colour or curious shape.

An aesthetic liking for horns, skins, plumes, and
tusks is so much more humane and excusable than
the mere zest in inflicting pain and death, that we
might still hope to gratify it within reason without
relaxing our attempts to save the world's fauna from
extinction ; just as love and admiration for living
forms need not prevent persons of normal good
sense from eating the eggs of birds, or the flesh
of beasts, birds, and fishes that have been killed
mercifully. But, meanwhile, until the world's fauna
throughout the world can be placed under the pro-
tection of civilised nations, this ardour for the
trophies of the chase or the triumphs of the milliner
must be jealously watched and restrained, lest, before
we can put in force regulations to save from de-
struction the rarer, the more wonderful and beautiful
of living forms on the earth's surface, they may be
swept away for ever to gratify the whim or the taste
of the uneducated many.

It is only quite recently that the aesthetic value, in

288 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

the mass, of beasts, birds, even reptiles and fishes,
as part of the landscape, has been understood. For
thousands of years we have petted individuals in
and about our own homes, but have recognised no
personal joy or responsibility, no common property,
in the flocks of wild swans and geese, the herds of
bison, bufFalo, and antelopes, the colonies of flamin-
goes and gannets, the vast assemblages of cranes, the
deer trooping in herds through the wooded land-
scapes of northern Europe and North America, the
flocks of rosy-white cockatoos making suddenly
lovely the dreary Australian bush, or the parrot fish,
which tourists who visit the British West Indies
may gaze at in comfort in the magnificent natural
aquariums afforded by the limestone and coral basins
of those coasts. Until recently, the Great Barrier Reef
of eastern Australia was only valued as a hunting-
ground for the luscious Holothurian or Beche de
Mer ; now, made known to us years ago by the
sumptuous work of the late Mr Saville-Kent,^ it is
about to become one of the great tourist attractions
of Australia, on account of its almost indescribably
beautiful corals, anemones, fish, crustaceans, and
molluscs.

So again, whereas until a few years ago most of us
only cared for flowers in gardens or in greenhouses,
the intellectual few now love them still more when
they grow as Nature planted them, in masses, so as

1 The Great Barrier Reef of Australia, by W. Saville-Kent,
F.Z.S. (London: W. H. Allen & Son, 1893). Saville-Kent died a
year or two ago, and, I believe, felt keenly the lack of appreciation
shown in England of his life-work, its illustration in photographs
of super-excellence, in paintings, and in verbal description of the
reefs and coasts of the Coral Sea between Australia and New Guinea,

PRESERVING FAUNA AND FLORA 289

to form part of the landscape. An English wood in
April adorned by primroses, in May by bluebells, a
common ablaze with golden gorse, a moor flushed
for miles with crimson purple heather, is a more
inspiring sight, giving perhaps a greater amount of
religious ecstasy, than the loveliest rose-garden or
the most superb herbaceous border. But, while we
have adored flowers in the abstract, we have perse-
cuted them mercilessly in the great spaces outside
the limits of our gardens. Not only in England,
Switzerland, Germany, and Austria are wild flowers
being rapidly exterminated by thoughtless trippers
and tourists, by costers for sale and collectors for
museums, and by farmers under the impression that
they are weeds, but the cedar is becoming extinct
on Lebanon, the wild cypress in Asia Minor ; a
hundred glorious conifers are disappearing from the
North American flora ; tree-ferns are being uprooted
in the West Indies ; and many a rarity is departing
from the peculiar flora of Cape Colony. And this
wanton destruction is due either to the unreflecting
greed of the commercial exploiter (who cares nothing
for forest preservation ^), or the unchecked zeal of
the collector who wishes to transfer all wild things

' The forest fires— annual occurrences in the United States and
Canada — are becoming a matter of international gravity and con-
cern ; and well may a Roosevelt or his henchman Pinchot feel
almost murderous in his heart against a certain type of American
statesman who opposes rational federal measures of forest preserva-
tion. These, if carried out efficiently, might obviate the forest
fires now actually threatening the future welfare of the United
States, to say nothing of the amenities of American scenery. Some
of these autumn fires burn down five feet into the soil, and nothing
will grow thereafter for a thousand years on the site of one of these
conflagrations. The majority of forest fires in the States and in
Canada are caused by sparks from the locomotives of passing trains,

19

290 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

to gardens, or the sheer stupidity of the local agri-
culturist, to whom a patch of rye or maize, a clump
of bananas, a yam-field, or a few potatoes, are of
greater value than some pine or palm, some silver-
leaf, some fern or foliage plant, ground-orchid, tree-
lily, grass, rush or heath, before which any reverent
landscape-painter, any botanist, any man, woman or
child with an appreciation of colour or form, would
reverently bow the knee.

This growing sense of the aesthetic value of wide-
spread beauty in our surroundings and of detailed
beauty of colour or form in the myriad shapes of life
may perhaps be a mistaken impulse ; the gratification
of the sense of sight may be of no value as compared
with the importance of directing all our energies to
the production of food in plant or animal form, and
of materials for clothing our bodies, building our
houses, and providing paper for our books and
journals. Yet who will set up so inhuman a con-
tention ? No man who believes in human progress
can fail to rejoice in the increasing tendency of the
human mind to appreciate the beauty of Nature, the
beauty, not of our own making, to be seen in our
fellow animals and in plants. We are drawn to
believe that such beauty is not there for nothing, but
that it has a purpose and a meaning, both of which
may lie at the very core of old and new conceptions
of religion growing up in all parts of the world.

the remainder by the carelessness or actual malice of the lumbermen.
" Lumbermen are constitutionally destructive," writes Mr A. E.
Crawley, in a series of interesting articles on the protection of
Nature (reviewing publications on this subject from Germany,
Canada, the United States, etc.), in Nature for November 11, 1909,
and for November 24, 1910.

PRESERVING FAUNA AND FLORA 291

If, then, the elected of nations, the few who direct
the policy, prospects, and actions of the many, are
for the most part convinced that the love of Nature
is a right and proper element ip human civilisation,
they should without any further loss of time join
counsel all over the world and take immediate steps
with a view to the reasonable preservation of the
world's fauna and flora, so far as these animals and
plants conduce to the enjoyment, the inspiration, and
the physical necessities of man. On the other hand,
such a Confederation of Man should wage war on
reactionary Nature, on the organisms which attack,
check, and destroy the development of what is
beautiful, wonderful, highly organised, and benign.
While we should preserve the elephant in modera-
tion in Asia and Africa as an adjunct to the land-
scape (besides being a producer of ivory), we should
decide to exterminate the black rat and the brown
rat, or any other type of rodent that might stand
forth pre-eminently as the enemy of man and of the
plants and animals in which he is interested. All
harmful insects, all kinds of blood-sucking ticks, and
the vast host of intestinal and parasitic worms, must
be, so far as science can reach, eliminated. Almost
the only bird which can be placed legitimately on
the index expurgatorius is the sparrow, a few specimens
of which might be allowed to linger in London.
Poisonous snakes must be expunged everywhere,
except within natural zoological gardens and reserva-
tions. Great care, however, should be taken with
regard to the limitation of the lion and tiger, the
leopard, chita, hyena, all the bears, and even the
wolf : these carnivores are fair and above-board in

292 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

their rivalry with man, and have a very distinct
aesthetic value. So also have the carnivorous birds —
the eagles, buzzards, kites and vultures, the condor,
the stork, the albatross and the raven.

From as early a date as possible every species of
Paradise-bird in British, German, and Dutch New
Guinea should be placed under rigid protection ;
and such regulations as may be framed should be
impressed firmly, though kindly, on the indigenes
of that vast island and its dependencies. Not a
single other specimen of the square-lipped or white
rhinoceros, where it lingers still in the Anglo-
Egyptian Sudan, should be allowed to be killed,
until it is once more abundant. On the contrary,
that animal must be encouraged to increase abund-
antly in its own habitat ; then small numbers should
be drafted to other game reservations in Africa, and
finally to zoological breeding-grounds in Europe,
America, and civilised Asia. When its numbers
permitted, Mr Carl Hagenbeck (or his heirs and
successors) might be invited to take it in hand.
From it he might in time breed a placid and docile
monster, useful in agriculture and of great delight to
little children.

No sensible person, however, would wish to push
this aesthetic principle of the preservation of what
is wonderful and beautiful to a ridiculous extreme.
We may still continue to eat the delicious flesh of
snipe and woodcock, mallard, partridge, grouse and
pheasant, chamois, roebuck, red deer and bushbuck,
without exterminating these creatures. In a general
way, there would seem to be plenty of room on this
planet for the co-existence of man with most birds

PRESERVING FAUNA AND FLORA 293

and beasts, with the more interesting or beautiful
reptiles and insects, and with a varied flora, which
should not only include the trees and plants furnish-
ing edible or industrial substances, and flowers for
parterres, festivities, and funerals, but a vast variety
of other types beautiful in detail or in the mass.

The first person who took up seriously, in a
practical way, the preservation of the British fauna
was Sir John Lubbock, now Lord Avebury, urged
in this direction, however, by those who founded
Selborne Society and the British Ornithological
Union. The first in like manner, who moved
effectively towards the preservation of the fauna of
the Empire was Mr Edward North Buxton, who
has been styled a " converted burglar," because he
first attracted attention as a good game shot, and as
one who by his sportsmanship and his skill with the
rifle obtained many a rare beast in the countries
bordering the Mediterranean. Before his founda-
tion of the League for the Preservation of the
Fauna of the British Empire, not a few travellers
and naturalists had protested vehemently against the
wanton slaughter of beasts in Africa, even from the
time of the fifties, when some writers inveighed
against the exploits of Roualeyn Gordon Gumming,
down to those who have criticised the pioneers in
East Africa and Rhodesia. But their protests were
generally taken to be the envious mutterings of
weaklings who, because they were bad- shots or
unable to stand fatigue, were jealous of the exploits
of worthier men. No such pretext could be
sustained in the case of Mr E. N. Buxton, whose

294 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

position was that of a Hercules preaching chastity.
No one could deny that he was a good, all-round
sportsman ; and consequently the tale of his con-
versions to the new sport — namely, the preservation
of wild beasts and birds in order to take joy in their
appearance in the landscape and their wonderful
lives and habits, the stalking of them for observation
and not for slaughter — is numerous and far-reaching.

Similarly, Mr Theodore Roosevelt has given a
great impetus to the preservation of the fauna and
flora of the United States, though before him and
with him have worked writers like Ernest Thompson
Seton, and practical zoologists such as Madison
Grant, William Dutcher, Albert Willcox (who
bequeathed the whole of his fortune for bird-protec-
tion work), William Alanson Bryan, and many other
enthusiastic ex -sportsmen and biologists. Mr
Roosevelt has been much rated in a few English
and American papers for the killing of big game in
Africa on a large scale, just as ten years ago he was
criticised for his attacks on the American bears.
Whether he should have killed as many bears as he
did is a moot question ; but this is of little import-
ance beside the twenty-nine large bird-reservations
which were founded under his orders or by his
inspiration in various parts of the United States,
and the measures which he took during his long
tenure of the presidential office for the preservation
of forests and the multiplication of the more interest-
ing types of wild beast still remaining within the
limits of the United States.

The French though keen sportsmen in France
itself, where the Government is far too oblivious

PRESERVING FAUNA AND FLORA 295

of the charms of the national fauna and flora to
attempt to preserve them, have been good friends as
a rule to the Indigenous beasts of the lands they rule
beyond the seas. They are usually good shots, and
not afraid of fatigue, so that it cannot be from
unmanliness that they are so loath to kill the wild
creatures of Senegambia, Nigeria, French Congo, and
Indo-China. Unfortunately, they are also very good-
natured ; and, since the efFective establishment of
the Entente Cordiale, their territories are beset — as
splendid game-reserves — by the Britisher eager to
slay, to slay, and to slay again, in order to boast of a
bigger bag of antelopes, tigers, buffalo, and elephants
than anyone else. In the matter of birds, however,
the French have shown themselves pitiless ; not
from the love of killing, but from the national concern
with millinery. The plumassiers or plumage-hunters
enjoy everywhere the protection of the French
Government. The Belgians in Congoland have
made attempts to domesticate the elephant, but they
do little or nothing to check the destruction by
Europeans of the beasts and birds of the Congo
region. The case of the birds is the more lament-
able, since many species and genera of guinea-fowls,
herons, and passerine birds live mainly on flies and
grubs, ;and markedly on the blood-sucking flies of
the genus Glossina. The late George Grenfell
recorded in his journals how the white herons of the
Congo, even when lying wounded in a canoe,
snapped eagerly at tsetse flies setding on the naked
skin of his canoe-men. Mr E. D. Morel has
recently been publishing in the African Mail infor-
mation on the increase of noxious insects in West

296 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

Africa which has resulted from the destruction of
guinea-fowl by Europeans. Indeed it would seem as
if the great increase in the spread of insect-conveyed
germ diseases in Africa and India is due to the
destruction of bird life in those regions which is
carried out or stimulated by Europeans.

No attempts of any moment have as yet been
made by the Japanese Government to preserve the
remains of the Japanese fauna, which of late years
has been undergoing a most striking diminution
owing to the spread of European ideas in Japan, the
increased use of the rifle, and the growing market
for natural history specimens. The same thing may
be said of the whole Chinese Empire. In Brazil,
Venezuela, Colombia, Paraguay, and Northern
Argentina, the destruction of beasts and birds within
the last ten years has been, for those interested in
natural history, appalling. The handsome Jabiru
stork, with its silky, ivory-coloured feathers, has
been literally wiped out on most South American
rivers for the gratification of silly women in the
" civilised " societies of Europe and America. White
heron (egret) feathers, valued at ;^3o,ooo, were
exported from Venezuela in 1907. The same bird
is being pursued everywhere by the plumage-hunters
in Cuba and Jamaica, and even in Florida ; though
here, through Mr Roosevelt's action, a stoppage has
been put on this war of extermination. In one year
(1908) 1,538,000 heron-plumes were exported from
Venezuela, which of course, meant the death of an
equivalent number of herons ; and (as was observed
in a recent number of the 'Daily Chronicle) this
destruction meant also about double the number of

PRESERVING FAUNA AND FLORA 297

helpless young herons, starved in their nests owing
to the slaughter of the parent-birds. Certain species
of heron in China have been extirpated within the
last few years, by the murderous eiForts of the
plumage trade. Mr C. W. Beebe of the New York
Zoological Society has recently shown us that the
amazingly beautiful pheasants and peafowl of South-
east Asia are being exterminated by the reckless
disforesting which seems necessary to the planting
of rubber trees.

Great as is the r61e played by the art of Japan in
bringing home to us the aesthetic beauty of animals
and plants, the recent work of soulless Japanese
commercial men in destroying the beasts and birds
of the Pacific coast-lands and islands has been
abominable. Mr James Buckland, in his recent
effective writings on behalf of the protection of
birds, tells us ^ that a bird-reservation of the United
States on Lisiansky Island, in the mid-Pacific, was
raided in 1904 by a Japanese firm of feather-
merchants, who despatched a ship to collect plumage
for the millinery markets. This ship contained 87
killers and skinners of birds, and collected the skins
and feathers of 300,000 sea-birds resorting to that
island for breeding purposes. In 1908 the skins of
50,000 terns from the islands of the North Pacific
were sold by auction in Mincing Lane.

In addition to the shocking waste of beautiful life
for the fantastic decoration of brainless women, it
has been pointed out that the economic loss entailed

1 ne Selborne Magazine, August igio. Mr Buckland deserves
the warmest thanks of all who love birds in the world's landscapes
for his untiring advocacy of their cause.

298 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

by these ravages is inestimable. These sea-birds of
the Pacific islands and coasts are the producers of
guano, the most valuable fertilising agent in the
world. The Incas of Peru, before the Spaniards
came, appreciated the value of guano as a manure,
and gave orders that birds producing it should be
uninjured, and that their nests and eggs should be
respected. But the guano deposits of the North
Pacific have been ruined by Japanese, Siberian-
Russian, Alaskan-American, and British-Canadian
pirates, who dodge the cruisers of the United States
and of Great Britain, and destroy the birds, as well
as the seals and sea-lions, of the Pacific Ocean.

Nor have we, as a nation, the right to > throw
stones at the Japanese. Only recently, Mr Walter
Rothschild called attention in Parliament to the fact
that the Government of the Falkland Islands, a
British colony, had permitted a German ship em-
ployed by merchants of British nationality to proceed
to South Georgia, one of the island dependencies
of the Falklands, there to destroy wholesale the
marvellous sea-elephants which resort to the coasts
of that large island for breeding purposes. The
expedition was made for the purpose of pecuniary
gain, to procure a few thousand pounds' worth of
oil. Baron Hulot also describes (Revue des Deux
Mondes, Jan. i, 191 1) the reckless destruction of
sea-elephants in Kergu61en Island by a Norwegian
oil company. In one year 1 600 were killed ; but
the French Government, which owns Kergu61en,
raised no objection. The British Government has
only recently begun through its agents to protect
the birds of Jamaica. Owing to the steady destruc-

PRESERVING FAUNA AND FLORA 299

tion of bird-life by plumage-hunters, tourists, and
ignorant peasants, ticks and noxious insects had
increased to such an extent, that it had become
impossible to keep any but specially inured cattle,
while food-crops were often destroyed.

It would be insensate to pretend that British East
Africa or German East Africa, or any other part of
Africa, is to exist only as a living museum of
curiosities and a series of game-parks and bird-
reserves. But a reasonable balance should be
struck. Whilst the greater part of the land must
be thrown open to settlement and cultivation by
men of the black, white, and brown races, appropriate
areas should be preserved as national parks and
game-reserves ; and within the limits of these
regions — each of which should be supervised by a
trained scientific man, and not by even the most
repentant of ex-sportsmen — absolutely no permission
to shoot should be given to the most influential or
the most tided of applicants. The noise and clamour
of such an expedition would do even more harm to
the assemblage of wild creatures than the slaughter
it would occasion ; and it would set a bad example
to the natives, who are quite sufficiently difficult
to restrain as hunters. Everything should be done
throughout the world to assist the researches of
science. The superintendents of these game-reserves
should be allowed to exercise discretion in maintain-
ing the balance of Nature within due limits ; and
from time to time permission should be given (when
asked for by men of science in high positions) to
obtain — chiefly by trapping — living or dead specimens

300 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

of remarkable forms for scientific examination or for
public exhibition ; but in every country throughout
the world there should be, so far as is compatible
with space and with other requirements of the
population, paradises large and small, in which the
native fauna and flora may remain and flourish.

Even the alligator has its place in Nature. It is
practically harmless so far as human beings are
concerned, and in certain aspects is very picturesque.
Nevertheless, it is being destroyed with senseless
haste throughout the south-eastern United States.
And with what results ? The slipping down and
melting away of many of the great levees and
embankments along the Mississippi and other adjoin-
ing rivers, whereby neighbouring lands have been
flooded and thousands of pounds' worth of damage
caused. It is interesting to note the links between
the destruction of the alligator and these floods
bursting through rotten embankments. The alligator
preys on the musk-rats which burrow into these
embankments and so weaken them by causing the
percolation of water. The slaughter of the alligator
has caused a marked increase in the number of the
musk-rats, and consequently in the expenditure and
loss upon the levees and embankments.

Similarly, the destruction of the Scarlet Tanager,
and of various singing and plumage birds in North
America (as was shown in a speech by Mr Frank
Chapman, made recently at the National Conservation
Congress at St Paul, Minnesota), has caused the
Forestry Department and the innumerable agricul-
turists and fruit-growers of the United States a
heavy loss. It is computed that trees, vegetables,

PRESERVING FAUNA AND FLORA 301

and fruits to the value of ;^2 0,000,000 are destroyed
every year by insects and molluscs within the area
of the United States. A large proportion of these
insects, snails, and slugs is, in the balance of Nature,
destroyed by birds. A Scarlet Tanager is credited
with killing moth-caterpillars at the rate of 2100
an hour. A Maryland Yellow-throat warbler was
responsible for the disappearance of 3500 plant-lice
in forty minutes. Mr Chapman stated in the same
speech that 500,000 plumage birds were killed
annually in the United States for the decoration of
women's hats and garments.

Now it should surely be possible for all the
civilised Governments of the world to unite in
taking general and effective measures by means of
tariffs and taxation, and in other ways, to make it
either illegal or too expensive for men or women to
obtain and to wear the plumage of any birds that
are not in a domestic state or permissibly killed for
food. Nothing of its kind is more beautiful than a
well-dressed ostrich plume ; and ostrich farms are
springing up all over the world for the supply of
these plumes without hurt to the ostriches. Fowls,
geese, ducks, pigeons, guinea-fowl, partridges,
pheasants, grouse, peacocks, turkeys, are all more or
less in a domestic state ; and, since their bodies are
eaten for food, and they are called into existence for
that purpose, there can be no harm in their feathers
being worn to any extent. But the wearing of a
Bird of Paradise plume should be made penal,
without any mitigation. I shall believe in modern
civilisation when I see a millionairess, a successful
actress, or a demi-mondaine, sent to prison for three

302 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

months, with hard labour, for purchasing or wearing
the skin of a Bird of Paradise, far more wonderful
and beautiful than she is herself.

In all countries the elementary education of the
young should include such lessons in natural history
as are necessary to bring home to them at an early
stage in life the senseless wickedness of taking birds'
eggs, of pulling up wild flowers and ferns by the
roots, and of destroying creatures that are really the
allies of man in his war against noxious germs and
insects. For instance, children and adults should be
taught to protect all forms of insect-eating bat except
the depraved Vampire-bats of South America ; for
bats destroy an enormous number of mosquitoes and
flies. Spiders also should receive a reasonable measure
of protection for the same reason. Gulls, wagtails, and
starlings are peculiarly valuable as insect destroyers.

Efficient measures have now been taken in Germany,
Switzerland, and Austria, for the preservation of the
national flora. In this direction, the United States,
Canada, and England are still much in arrears.-^ In
England there are county council by-laws in some

^ In connection with this paragraph should be read the First
Annual Report of the Commission of Conservation, Canada (Ottawa,
1910). The points of this report are ably summed up and a great
deal of similar information is given about Nature preservation in
Germany, by Mr A. E. Crawley in Nature for November 24,
1910. Mr Crawley reminds us that Professor Schaefer-Cassel has
pilloried for us, in Ueber Ziel und Methode der Naturdenkmalp-
fiege, a monster of iniquity who dug up and carried off in a few
years 900 specimens of the Lady's Slipper orchis (Cypripedium
calceolus) from a locality in Germany where this rare form still
lingered. He notes, however, that the English " collectors " have
been more successful than their German fellow- criminals, in that
they have completely extirpated the Lady's Slipper from the list
of indigenous British orchids.

PRESERVING FAUNA AND FLORA 303

counties penalising the uprooting or destroying of
ferns and plants in any road, lane, common, or
public place ; but ordinarily the wording of these
by-laws is so beset with exceptions and provisos as
to make their application very difficult. Year by
year, those who dwell in the English country,
especially if they are within easy train or bicycle
journey of a big city, see the indigenous English
flora being brought nearer and nearer to disappear-
ance. From all the outskirts of London, from
Brighton, from Bristol, from Bournemouth, from
Birmingham, come armies of costers to dig up
primroses, bluebells, foxgloves, daffodils, orchids
and ferns, to sell them to people in towns and
suburbs. Here, it is true, they go to the planting
of gardens ; but a very large proportion do not
survive the process, or, if they do, are lost to the
landscape. Much damage is also done by persons
who ravage the flora, not for monetary profit, but
from the desire to plant therewith their own gardens
and wildernesses. Finally, there are the members
of natural history clubs and botanical societies, who,
with a mistaken love of botany, would urge the
transference of the rare species from the country
to the herbarium and the museum. And meanwhile
the public looks on unconcerned. Landed pro-
prietors who venture from time to time to prosecute
those who ravage their woods and parks receive
little sympathy, though they are acting consciously
or unconsciously on behalf of public interests.

Our present craze for exaggerated sport, due to
that snobbishness which forces us to follow a hundred

304 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

difFerent practices because someone else has set the
fashion, is answerable for much diminution of the
fauna native to Great Britain and Ireland. In order
to be able to shoot pheasants at a particular time
and in a particular way, we destroy the lovely jays,
useful owls, magpies, stoats, weasels, sparrow-hawks,
kestrels, and crows of an English wood ; and then
wring our hands over the multiplication of field-
voles, caterpillars, and other pests whose natural
enemies we have destroyed. The fox is all very
well in his way, and a most interesting member of
the British fauna ; but foxes are so preserved in and
around the New Forest that it is impossible to keep
swans on the pools and lakes. So, again, poultry-
farming throughout the greater part of Sussex is
made difficult or unprofitable to the cottagers and
farmers by the preservation of the fox to an insensate
degree ; and this mainly that a few persons, anxious
to display their powers of riding and their red coats,
may carry on their worship of one of the hundred
national fetishes. Everything in reason should be
done to encourage riding, especially amongst men
and boys ; but riding for health and for military
purposes need not necessarily be steeplechasing, nor
need it always and everywhere be associated with
the pursuit of a fox or a deer. The . promotion of
scouting amongst boys and girls, and of military
training and hospital training amongst young men
and women, should do much to divert the attention
of all classes from cruel sports and useless games.

Education in natural science given in the village
schools, the public schools and the Universities, will
likewise do much to foster a love of natural beauty

PRESERVING FAUNA AND FLORA 305

and an interest in the preservation, to a reasonable
degree, of the fauna and flora of Great Britain and
the British Empire. If the well-to-do people of the
east of Ireland were better educated, they would
not make gull-shooting, as they do now, one of the
principal features of their summer picnics.

In Africa this evil tendency seems to reach its
climax. The one idea of the British settler or
pioneer is to kill, kill, and kiU again, till there is
nothing left to kill. One of the excuses he or she
puts forward (for women are now as keen in this
sport as men) is that the existence of this or that
antelope, buffalo, or zebra, encourages or supports
in some vague way the tsetse fly. The phrase
" tsetse fly," suggesting sleeping-sickness as well as
the " nagana " cattle-disease, is, of course, a potent
argument with which to influence the ignorant.
Those who know something about Africa — and they
are very few in number — are well aware that the
existence of big game has no direct bearing on the
abundance of the different forms of tsetse fly. Some
of the most tsetse-infected regions with which I am
personally acquainted have been almost devoid of
big game or of much animal life. Such, for example,
is the arid region in the district of Tete between
the basins of the Shir6 and the Zambezi. Here, as
is attested in the writings of Sir Alfred Sharpe,
Mr R. C. F. Maugham, and other qualified ob-
servers, the tsetse fly swarmed to such an extent
that human settlement was almost impossible,
because it was difiicult to maintain alive even goats
and dogs. Yet the explorer might journey for days
together through this country and see nothing

20

3o6 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

whatever in the way of big game. Mr Lewis
Harcourt stated in Parliament in the spring of 1 9 1 2
that the Glossina palpalis (the tsetse fly which carries
the sleeping-sickness) infested the little island of
Principe (Gulf of Guinea), where there was no big
game to support it.

Similarly, in many parts of the Congo basin, and
in the forest regions of West Africa, there may be
little or no big game, and yet Glossina palpalis is met
with in myriads ; so that, apart from the danger of
trypanosomiac inoculation, its mere punctures make
life in the wilderness intolerable in the daytime.
On the other hand, those regions of the Egyptian
Sudan, of the northern part of British East Africa,
of Somaliland, and of Senegambia, which at one
time were the big-game paradises of the world, were
so far free from the tsetse fly that the natives could
concurrently keep cattle and horses to any extent.
The terrible African cattle-plague which arose in the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, and did so
much to exterminate big game as well as domestic
cattle, had nothing to do with the tsetse fly. Its
germs were carried by the agency of a tick, and
perhaps of some insect or mollusc as yet unidentified.

The measures early taken in the administration of
British East Africa and Uganda for the forming
of game-reserves have created undoubtedly a con-
siderable commercial asset in these regions, attract-
ing annually hundreds, almost thousands, of tourists
who spend a good deal of money in seeing the
wilderness in one of its most fascinating aspects ;
while the game regulations in force not only add to
the revenue of these protectorates, but probably

PRESERVING FAUNA AND FLORA 307

keep down within a reasonable limit the desire for
slaughter on the part of the uneducated multitude,
not yet sufficiently alive to the new order of things
to have adopted the camera instead of the rifle.

It is not so certain that the Government of the
Egyptian Sudan thoroughly realises its responsibilities
in regard to the big game of that vast region. One
of the most beautiful features of the well-watered
regions of the Sudan and of all the rest of Tropical
Africa is the presence of the Crowned Crane. This
large bird, with its abundant aigrette of golden
filaments, its long, silky plumage of blue-grey,
immense wings of snowy-white, of fretted gold,
chocolate-red, and blue-black, is a very notable
feature of the landscape because of the numbers in
which it assembles and its tameness in regard to man.
It feeds mainly on locusts, grasshoppers, and other
harmful insects. Its flesh, though eatable, is not
attractive. Its services as a destroyer of pests are
sufficiently notable to make it universally liked and
respected by the negroes ; and long ago it was
accorded virtual protection by the otherwise all-
killing Boers of South Africa. Yet a year or two
ago it occurred to a great prince of a small state in
Central Europe that he would like, on one of his
expeditions to the Sudan, to shoot a large number
of Crowned Cranes, simply to have their heads
mounted on little brackets all round his billiard-
room. Without a word of remonstrance from the
Sudan Government, this prince, through his native
followers and with his own gun, killed, for this
purpose, some 500-600 Crowned Cranes along the
banks of the Nile.

3o8 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

It is reported that, since the Anglo - Egyptian
Sudanese Administration took over the Lado Enclave
from the Belgian Congo, an attempt has been made
to protect the few remaining square-mouthed
(" white ") rhinoceroses in that region. But hundreds
of these exceptionally interesting creatures were
previously slain by the Negro, Arab, and European
ivory-hunters to whom the Belgian Administration
of the Congo allowed unrestricted licence to shoot
within the Lado Enclave. These hundreds of white
rhinoceroses were killed merely to feed the porters,
trackers, and hunters bent on the extermination of
the elephant for the sake of his tusks. It is also
incumbent on the Sudan Government to extend
equal protection to the Giant Eland, one of the
most marvellous of existing mammalian develop-
ments, but so scarce that its immense size and great
beauty are only known to about a dozen individuals
at the present day.

Abyssinia deserves a very black mark in history
for her extermination of African wild animals. The
Abyssinians are good shots ; they have unlimited
access to rifles and ammunition ; they are uneducated,
utterly pitiless, and so doggedly opposed to the
influence of Europeans that a request to spare the
wild animals has merely the effect of urging for
their Government and nation to a policy of ex-
termination. If they contented themselves with
depriving the dominions of Abyssinia of a fauna at
one time unique in Africa for interest and beauty,
that would be bad enough ; but large parties of
undisciplined Abyssinians, with hordes of negro
followers, continue to devastate the adjoining regions

PRESERVING FAUNA AND FLORA 309

of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and of British East
Africa, reckless in their defiance of protests, because
they believe that no European Power dares to oiFend
Abyssinia. Unfortunately, Christianity in Abyssinia
is so debased that it has become inferior to some
non-Christian religions. It knows no inculcation
of pity and of that true worship of God which is
based on admiration for the varied forms of life.

At the time of writing, I have before me the
pretty illustrated booklets of a certain tourist and
trading company in the Sudan, in which the British
traveller is invited to come to that country, mainly
for the shooting of big game ; he is specially incited
to kiU examples of that rare antelope, the Addax.
This form of Oryx, so wonderfully adapted for life
in the desert, is approaching extinction. I can
remember when it was an undoubted feature of the
Tunisian fauna ; and at one time it was commonly
met with in southern Tripoli, in Senegal, and to the
west of the Nile. But the diiRasion of rifles amongst
the Arabs and Berbers of North Africa, and the
impetus given by the British to big-game shooting
in the Egyptian Sudan, are jointly wiping this
creature out of existence at such a rapid rate that
before long the Addax may be on the list of extinct
mammals, like its far-off cousin, the Blaubok of
Cape Colony.

The British South Africa Company issues similar
booklets, inviting sportsmen to destroy the wonderful
fauna still lingering in Rhodesia. Our appetites are
whetted by the photographs which this company
publishes of dead and dying animals, fallen to the
skill of the man or woman behind the rifle. The

3IO VIEWS AND REVIEWS

late Cecil Rhodes was passionately interested in the
fauna of South Africa ; and it is amazing that no
trace of his influence should have induced the
management of the Company he created to reserve
at any rate some proportion of the wild fauna of
Rhodesia, and to create here and there inviolable
national parks wherein antelopes, buflfalo, elephants,
rhinoceroses, and giraiFes might continue to exist.

Attention should also be directed to the unchecked
destruction of the fauna of British Guiana which is
going on under the indiflFerent eyes of the Colonial
Government.

The Germans have instituted game regulations
much resembling those of the English, but I have
not as yet heard of the creation of any great game-
reserve in any part of German Africa, though
Germany is constituted the warden of some of the
most interesting parts of the continent, such as, for
example, Kamerun, Togoland, Damaraland, and the
wonderful volcanic region between Uganda and
Tanganyika. On the other hand, by her contribu-
tions to knowledge about Africa, Germany has done
much to justify her position as an African power.
Not only has she contributed more largely than any
other African power to the elucidation of native
race problems, anthropology, languages, folk-lore,
etc., but she has also made immense additions to
zoological science by the collection of specimens
from her African protectorates and colonies, and
above all by the life-study of wild creatures by
trained observers.^

' For example, the books of Prof. C. G. Schillings, translated
into English and published by Messrs Hutchinson & Co.

PRESERVING FAUNA AND FLORA 311

In India the fauna is rapidly diminishing, not, as
in Africa, through the attacks of the natives, who
have religious scruples in that respect, but through
the action of persons of British and Eurasian origin
— sportsmen, plumage-collectors, and well-meaning
but stupid officials. Such persons do not realise
the claim of the tiger and other great cats to exist
on account of their beauty, the exceptional interest
attaching to the one-horned Indian rhinoceros, and,
above all, the extreme importance of preserving all
birds, such as herons and insect-eating passerines,
that live much on flies and other insects. The tiger
might be allowed a breathing spell, and rat-hunts
might be organised instead, since the rat is the
chief host of plague- carrying fleas. It must be
remembered that many of the lesser carnivores live
largely on rats and other destructive rodents ; and it
is better that the peasant or the landed proprietor
should lose a few fowls than die of the plague. But
it is understood that the Indian Government has the
whole question under consideration, and that regula-
tions will shortly be issued which will cover the
whole ground of fauna preservation. It is to be
hoped that the flora will not be forgotten.

From the imperial as well as the local point of
view, the whole question of fauna and flora preser-
vation in every country under the British Crown
requires the immediate attention of the imperial
authorities ; and some permanent Board should be
established in connection with the Colonial Office or
the Imperial Institute which could take this question
in hand. A series of commissions might even be
despatched at no very great expense to all parts of

312 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

the Empire to study, in conjunction with the local
authorities, the native fauna and flora ; and the
Home Government should, in collaboration with the
local authorities, if they are sufficiently well educated,
draw up regulations which, so far as possible, might
be put into force throughout the Empire. Natur-
ally, in regard to the self-governing daughter-nations,
we could only tender expert advice and get them at
any rate to consider the British point of view, which
we may assume to be the point of view of educated
Europe or America. The squatter in Australia may
see no reason why he should not exterminate all the
beasts and birds that are within range of his rifle
or gun ; but the Government of the Australian
Commonwealth might be reminded of their responsi-
bility towards future generations for permitting the
extermination of the Lyre-bird to become a blot on
the Australian escutcheon.

In like manner, the Imperial mother might call the
attention of New Zealand to the fact that the people
and Government of that Dominion have now reduced
to a few hundreds that curious reptile Sphenodon — it
is not strictly speaking a lizard — which is the most
remarkable feature of the New Zealand fauna. The
Sphenodon family, even genus, was actually in
existence at the end of Primary times and the
beginning of the Secondary epoch. It is perhaps
the oldest type of land vertebrate actually visible to
us — old, that is to say, in its affinities and unaltered
form. At one time, reptiles of this order existed in
England and Scotland, and in parts of Germany and
India, as well, no doubt, as elsewhere in the Old
world ; but they only survive at the present day in

PRESERVING FAUNA AND FLORA 313

New Zealand. At the time of the British discovery
they were fairly abundant over both islands ; but
they are now relegated to one or two minute islets
in the Bay of Plenty ofF the North Island ; and
even here they are mercilessly destroyed by the
New Zealanders whenever they can get a chance.
Sphenodon punctatus — usually known locally as the
Tuatera — is quite harmless ; and this attempt to ex-
terminate it appears insensate, if the New Zealanders
have any national pride. On account of its age and
extraordinary structural interest, they should long
ago have adopted the Tuatera as their national
emblem.

The Canadian Government is now taking seriously
to heart the preservation of the national fauna, but
it still has against it the trend of local opinion, whose
pioneer thirst of destruction is quite unslaked. It
was just in time to save the American bison from
extinction. Slowly but surely the few hundreds of
bisons snatched at the last moment from destruction
are increasing to a few thousands ; and in time they
may be sufficiently restored in numbers to populate
the great national parks of North America. Un-
happily, no such measures are being taken in British
Honduras, or in Yucatan, to preserve from extinction
one of the most rare and beautiful birds in existence,
the Ocellated Turkey. Perhaps this fact may reach
the eye of someone in the Colonial Office who
may be sufficiently interested in natural history to
approach the Government of the flourishing colony
of British Honduras, and point out that the Ocellated
Turkey should be immediately placed under the
strictest protection. It is not difficult to breed this

314 VIEWS AND REVIEWS

beautiful bird in confinement ; but it has now
become so extremely rare in Mexico and Honduras
that it is not easy even to obtain the eggs.

To conclude : in one way and another, the pre-
servation of all that remains of the world's fauna and
flora, which is not actually provocative of disease in
man and in the vertebrates that he cherishes, should
be an article of primal importance in our parish, our
county, our national, imperial, and international
councils, in the interests of true religion, of in-
tellectual stimulus and development, and of that
growing sense of beauty and desire for knowledge
which are really a seeking after God.

PRINTED BY NEILL AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH.

WILLIAMS & NORGATE'S

NEW AND IMPORTANT PUBLICATIONS

CAPTAIN CARTWRIGHT AND HIS
LABRADOR JOURNAL

Edited by CHARLES WENDELL TOWNSEND, M.B.
With an Introduction by Dr. WILFRED T. GRENFELL

Illustrations from Old Engravings, Photographs, and a Map.
One Volume. Crown 8vo, 5s. net.
" The chief charm of his * Journal ' lies in his faithful description of the wild life
around him. He was aa accurate observer of the birds and beasts which be trapped
and shot ; and his notes on the habits of the beaver are worthy of Gilbert White at his
best. The work of the editor has been admirably done. He has supplied a few
useful notes and a valuable glossary. There are some good illustrations — principally
modern photographs of the localities described." — A ihenteum,

PROBLEMS OF THE PACIFIC

By frank fox

AUTHOR OF "ramparts OF EMPIRE," ETC.

Medium 8vo. \In active Preparation.

AN EXAMINATION OF PROFESSOR
BERGSON'S PHILOSOPHY

By DAVID BALSILLIE, M.A.

Crown Svo, cloth, SSi net.

HEREDITY IN RELATION TO
EUGENICS

By CHARLES BENEDICT DAVENPORT

CARNEGIE INSTITUTE OP WASHINGTON,

DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF EXPERIMENTAL EVOLUTION, COLD SPRING HARBOR,

LONG ISLAND, N.V.,

SECRETARY OF THE EUGENICS SECTION AMERICAN BREEDERS* ASSOCIATION.

With 175 Illustrations and Diagrams, and complete Bibliography and Index.
Demy Svo, cloth, 8s. 6cl. net.

PHARISAISM : its aims and its methods

By Rev. R. TRAVERS HERFORD

AUTHOR OF "CHRISTIANITY AND THE MIDRASH," ETC.

Forming Volume XXXV. in the ' ' Crown Theological Library."
Crown Svo, cloth, Ss. net.

T pv-vrp)/~)-Vr . 14. HENRIETTA STREET,
JjWXN \J\JLS . covENT GARDEN, W.C.

From WILLIAMS & NORGATE'S

NEW AND IMPORTANT PUBLICATIONS

ipubKsbeO bg ipermtggton

THE KING TO HIS PEOPLE

BEING THE SPEECHES AND MESSAGES OF HIS
MAJESTY GEORGE V. AS PRINCE y SOVEREIGN

The publication of this collection of his public utterances, for which His
Majesty has been graciously pleased to give permission, will, of course,
constitute one of the central events of the Autumn season. But the volume
will also have permanent importance as a revelation of the King s character
and his own conception of his mission.

Bound in Art Canvas, with portrait in photogravure, 5s. net ;

postage, 4d. extra.

SOME PAGES OF MY LIFE

By Rt. Rev. W. BOYD CARPENTER,

CANON OF WESTMINSTER AND LATE BISHOP OF RIPON

The history of a great life, and the literary style which accompanies
his pen will mark the volume as one of the most important lives of
recent years. With portrait of the author as frontispiece, and other
interesting portraits. Medium 8vo, cloth, gilt top, 15s. net.

Second Impression,

THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
OF ST. PAUL

By Professor PERCY GARDNER, D.Litt., F.B.A.

Forming Volume XXXIV. in the " Crown Theological Library."
Crown 8vo, cloth, Ss. net.

THE DATE OF THE ACTS
AND OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

By Dr. ADOLF HARNACK
Translated by Rev. J. R. WILKINSON, M.A.

Forming Volume IV. in Dr. Harnack's " New Testament Studies,"

and Volume XXXIII. in the "Crown Theological Library."

Crown 8vo, cloth, 5a. net.

14 HENRIETTA ST., Covent Garden, LONDON, W.C.

Rome Untuersltp CIDrarp

OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE

Every volume of the Library is absolutely new and specially written.

Every subject Is of living and permanent interest; and the books are written
for the general reader as well as the student.

Each volume is complete and independent ! but the series has been planned
as a whole to form a comprehensive library of modern knowledge.

Every volume Is written by a recognised authority on Its subject; and
the Library is published under the direction of Prof. Gilbert Murray and Mr
H. A. L. Fisher, of Oxford, Prof. J. Arthur Thomson, of Aberdeen, and Prof.
W. T. Brewster, of Columbia University, New York.

FIFTH TEN VOLUMES JUST ISSUED

II. CONSERVATISM

By Lord Hugh Cecil, M. A., M. P. This
eagerly anticipated volume proves to be
a political pronouncement of real import-
ance, as well as a brilliant apologia of
one of the most remarkable personalities
in our public life.

s6. AGRICULTURE
By Prof. W. Somerville, M.A., D.Sc.
The Sibthorpian Professor at Oxford
explains ' ' the fundamental principles
underlying the practice of agriculture.
It is, in the main, an introduction to
crops and cropping."

43. ENGLISH LITERATURE :

MEDIEVAL
By Professor W. P. Ker, M.A. A study
of English letters in the Anglo-Saxon
and Middle- English periods, to a.d.
1500, with special reference to the
romances, songs and ballads, comic
poetry, allegory, sermons, and histories.

44. THE PRINCIPLES OF PHY-

SIOLOGY

By Prof. J. G. M'Kendrick, F.R.S.
A compact statement by the Emeritus
Professor at Glasgow, for uninstructed
readers, of the principles and essential
facts of human physiology. The work
closes with some philosophical reflec-
tions ; and there are added a biblio-
graphy, a glossary, and a chronological
list of great physiologists.

45. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

By L. Pearsall Smith, M.A. _ The
growth of words is a romantic subject of
study not only in itself, but for the light
it throws on social changes and the devel-
opment of popular thought.

46. MATTER AND ENERGY

By F. SoDDY, M.A., F.R.S. Western
civilisation depends at present upon coal.

When that is exhausted, what form or
forms of natural energy shall we find to
take its place? The question indicates
the interest for the general reader of this
review of the fundamentals of physical
science by Mr Soddy.

47. BUDDHISM : A STUDY OF

THE BUDDHIST NORM

By Mrs Rhys Davids, M.A. A review
of that religion and body of culture which
is to a large part of the human race,
chiefly situated in Southern Asia, what
Christianity is to us of the West.

48. THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
By F. L- Paxson, Professor of American
History, Wisconsin University. (With
Maps.) The four years' conflict over
Union and Slavery, which cost a million
lives and two thousand million pounds in
money, is here regarded as "a struggle
between twocivilisations, each the logical
result of its environment," the result of
which has decisively affected subsequent
American development.

49. PSYCHOLOGY, THE STUDY

OF BEHAVIOUR

ByWiLLiAMM'DooGALL,M.B. "What
is psychology ? What are the questions
it seeks to answer ? What are its methods ?
What progress has it made? Is it ascience
in an advanced state of development? Or
is it one merely beginning to find its
feet ? ' ' Such are the questions Professor
M'Dougall seeks to answer.

50. NONCONFORMITY : ITS

ORIGIN AND PROGRESS

By W. B. Selbie, M.A., D.D. The
story of the rise and growth of the Free
Churches could not have been placed in
more competent hands than those of the
learned Principal of Manchester College,
Oxford.

LONDON: WILLIAMS AND NORGATE

HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

OF MODERN ICNOWLEDGE

First batch of ten volumes
{April 1911).

, PARLIAMENT. Its History,
Constitution, and Practice. By Sir
COURTENAY P. ILBERT, K.C.B.,
K.C.S.I., Clerk of the House of Com-
mons.

.SHAKESPEARE. By John
MaSEFIELD, Author of "Pompey, a
Tragedy," " Nan," etc. Summarises the
known facts of Shakespeare's life, and
analyses each play.

. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

By HlLAiRE BELLOC, M.A. Sketches
the great characters of the Revolution,
and discusses its theoretic hasis, military
developments, relations to the Church,
etc. (With Maps.)

.BISTORT OF WAR AND

PEACE. By G. H. FERRIS, Author
of "Russia in Revolution," etc.

. THE STOCK EXCHANGE. By

F. W. Hirst, Editor of "The Econo-
mist."

. IRISH NATIONALITY. By Mrs.
J. R. Green, a brilliant account, by
the distinguished Historian, of the
national genius and mission of the Irish
people, from early times to the present
day.

. MODERN OEOORAPHT. By Dr.
Marion NewbiGin. {Surface - Relief
and Erosion ; Climate and Weather ;
Distribution of Plant, Animal, and
Human Life ; Localisation of Industries
and Towns, etc.) Illustrated.

. POLAR EXPLORATION. By Dr.

W. S. Bruce, F.R.S.E., Leader of
the "Scotia" Expedition. The physical
and biological conditions of the Arctic
Seas illustrated from personal experience.
(With Maps.)

. THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS.

By Dr. D. H. ScOTT, M.A., F.R.S.,
late Hon. Keeper of the Jodrell Labora-
tory, Kew. The story of the develop-
ment of flowering plants, from tne
earliest geological times. (Fully illus-
trated.)

THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT.

By T Ramsay MacDonald, m.p.,
Cnaurinan of the Labour Party. Traces
the development of Socialist theory and
Practice, and party organisation, espe-
cially in Great Britain.

Second batch of ten vofumea
(June 1911).

12, THE OPENING-UP OF AFRICA.

By Sir H. H. JOHNSTON. G.C M.G.,
K.C.B., D.Sc, F.Z.S. (With Maps.)

13. MEDIEVAL EUROPE. By H.

W. C. Davis, M.A., Author of "Charle-
magne," "England under the Normans
andAngevins," etc. (With Maps.)

15. MOHAMMEDANISM. By Prof.

D. S. MarcOLIGUTH. M.A., D.Litt.,
Author of "Mohammed and the Rise
of Islam," etc. Describes the faith and
social life of many millions of British
subjects.

16. THE SCIENCE OF WEALTH.

By J. A. HOBSON, M.A., Author of
"Problems of Poverty," "The Industrial
System," etc. A study of the structure
and working of the modem business
world,

17. HEALTH AND DISEASE. By

W. LESLIE MACKENZIE. M.D., Local
Government Board, Edinburgh.

18. INTRODUCTION TO MATHE-

MATICS. By A. N. WHITEHEAD,
Sc D., F.R.S., Fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge; Author of "Universal Al-
gebra." (With Diagrams.)

19. THE ANIMAL WORLD. By

Professor F. W. GAMBLE, D.Sc, F.R.S.,
Author of "Animal Life." etc. With
Introduction b>; Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S.
(Many Illustrations.)

20. EVOLUTION. By Professor J.

Arthur Thomson, M.A., and Pro-
fessor Patrick Geddes, Authors of
"The Evolution of Sex," etc.

21. LIBERALISM. By L. T. Hob-

house, M.A., Professor of Sociology in
the University of London ; Author of
"Democracy and Reaction." This vol-
ume has been hailed in many leading
articles and reviews as the best philo-
sophical survey of the subject now ob-
tainable,

22. GRIME AND INSANITY. By Dr.

C. A. Mercier, F.R.C.P., F.R.C.S.
Author of " Text-Book of Insanity," etc.

Cloth
1/- net

On Sale at all good bookshops and bookstalls
Descriptive pamphlet past free upon application

Leather
2/6 net

WILLIAMS & NORGATE, 14 Henrietta St., London, W.C

HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE

Third batch of ten volumes

{October 1911).

II. THE PAPACT AND MODERN

TIMES. By the Rev. Dr. WILLIAM
Barry.

■ ' The author has told the story of a long-
and complicated development with curious
felicity of lansua^e, with abundance of
picturesque detsii and arresting com-
ments, above all with an unfailing vivacity
which carries the reader breathlessly
forward." — Manchester Guardian.

23. BISTORT OFOURTIME,18S5-1911.

By G. P. GOOCH, M.A.

" Mr. Gooch contrives to breathe vitality
into his story, and to give us the flesh as
well as the bones of recent happenings." —
Observer.

21. THE EVOLUTION OFINDUSTRT.

By D. H. MaCGREGOR. M.A., Professor
of Political Economy in the University of
Leeds.

"A volume so dispassionate in terms
may be read with profit by all interested
in the present state of unrest." — Aberdeen
journal-

23. THE CIVILISATION OF CHINA.

By Professor H. A. GILES, LL.D., Pro-
fessor of Chinese in the University, of
Cambridge ; Author of " Historic China,"
" Chmese Biographical Dictionary,"
" History of Chinese Literature," etc.

27. ENGLISH LITERATURE:
MODERN. By G. H. Mair, M.A.

2B. PSTCHIGAL RESEARCH. By

SirW. F. Barrett, F.R.S., Professor
of Physics, Royal College of Science,
Dublin, 1873-1910.

•' As a former President of the Psychical
Research Society, he is familiar with all
the developments of this most fascinating
branch of science, and thus what he has to
say on thought-reading, hypnotism, tele-
pathy, ci^stal-vision, spiritualism, divin-
m^, and so on, will be read with
avidity " — Dundee Courier.

29. THE DAWN OP HISTORY. By

J. L. MYRES. M.A., F.S.A., Wykeham
Professor of Ancient History, Oxford ;
Author of " A History of Rome," etc.

*' There is not a page in it that is not
suggestive." — Manchester Guardian.

30. ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH LAW.

By W. M. Geldart, M.A.. B.C.L.,
Vmerian Professor of English Law at
Oxford.
"It is an excellent work." — Law Times,

81. ASTRONOMY. By A. R. Hinks,
M.A., Chief Assistant, Cambridge Ob-
servatory.

32. INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE.

By ). ARTHUR THOMSON. M.A.,
Regius Professor of Natural History,
Aberdeen University.

Fourth batch of ten volumes

{January 1912).

33. THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

A Study in Political Evolution. With a
Chronological Table. By A. F. POL-
LARD, M.A. .Professor of English History
in London University. A brilliant at-
tempt to interpret the character and trace
the development of British civilisation.

3S. CANADA. By A. G. Bradley.
The author sketches its history from the
Conquest, through the period of Federa-
tion, to its more recent extension and de-
velopment. The story is brought down
to the morrow of the Elections of 1911.

35. LANDMARKS IN FRENCH LIT-

ERATURE. With a Chronological List
of Authors and their Principal Works.
By G. L. STRACHEY. With a Style
and spirit worthy of his subject, Mr.
Strachey characterises the masterpieces
and tendencies of a national literature
equalled in wealth of genius only by that
of England.

36. CLIMATE AND WEATHER. By

H. N. Dickson, M.A., D.Sc. President
of the Royal Meteorological Society ;
Professor of Geography in University
College, Reading. With Charts and
Diagrams.

37. PEOPLES AND PROBLEMS OF

INDIA. By Sir T. W. HOLDERNESS.
K. C.S.I. An authoritative account of the

feography. history, racial and social
ivisions, religions, economic life, and
government of the greatest British de-
pendency .

38. THE SCHOOL: An Introduction

to the Study of Education.

By J. J. FINDLAY, M. A., Ph.D., Professor
of Education in Manchester University.

30. ARCHITECTURE. By Prof. W.

R. LETHABY. With over 4oilIustrations.
The history of the art of building, from
the earliest times to the present day of
river-dams and sky-scrapers.

40. THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOS-
OPHY, By the Hon. BERTRAND
RUSSKLL, M.A.. F.R.S. "I have con-
fined oiyself in the main," says the author,
" to those problems of philosophy in re-
gard to which it seemed to me possible to
say something positive and constructive,"

Jl. ANTHROPOLOGY, By R. R.

MARETT, M.A., Reader in Social An-
thropology at Oxford, Man in evolution
presented in his chief relationships and
mstitutions — race, environment, language,
society, law, religion, and morality. A
witty and provocative, as well as a
learned, boolc.
32. ROME. By W. Warde Fowler,
M.A., Author of " Life of Julius Caesar,"

WILLIAMS & NORGATE, 14 Henrietta St., London, W.C.

NEW PUBLICATIONS

THE " FLOWER OF GLOSTER "

By E. temple THURSTON

AUTHOR OF "city OF BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE," " SALLY BISHOP," ETC.

WiiA Six Illustrations faithfully reproduced in colours, and other
Illustrations in black-ami-white, from drawings by W. R. Dakin.

"The 'Flower of Gloster'" is a chronicle of Mr. E. Temple
Thurston's journey in a barge around the less- frequented canals of
England. The characters he meets, the scenery through which he
passes, the gentle digressions in philosophy make the subject of this
interesting record, and the illustrations by Mr. W. R. Dakin, all drawn
upon the spot, complete the picture of canal life which the book con-
tains. Eynsham Harry, the bargee who accompanies the author
throughout his journey, is one of those "hedgerow philosophers," as
Mr, Thurston calls him, whose personality one cannot possibly forget.
Most attrcutively produced in small /^o, nearly 300 pages.
Cloth, extra gilt top, "Js. 6d. net.

THE PRINCESS. A Medley

By ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

With Six Illustrations beautifully reproduced in colours, and a number
in black-and-white, from original drawings by Evbrard Hopkins.

This Medley is one of the most interesting productions of the late
Laureate, and every care has been taken to place on the market an
edition which is worthy of the late poet. It is a fine specimen of the
best typography, each page being printed in two colours, green and
black, while the coloured illustrations are tipped on to specially
suitable delicate mounts.

Bound in best cloth, with gilt top. Small efo, "js. bd. net.

THE LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME

By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

With Eight Illustrations faithfully reproduced in colours, and a number
in black-and-white, from original drawings by NORMAN AULT.

A sumptuous edition of this outstanding classic by the famous
historian and essayist will be welcome wherever Macaulay's name is
familiar.

The illustrations are exceptionally well produced, and will rank as
some of the finest specimens of modern process work.

In small ^io, bound in best cloth, with gilt top and special design
on the cover, bs, net ; postage inland, ^d.

WILLIAMS & NORGATE, 14 Henrietta St., London, W.C.

' 1, -".J^t.y JHf^i?!^