The psychology of jingoism

3

The Psychology of Jingoism

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The

Psychology of Jingoism

•Y

J. A. HOBSON, M.A.

AUTHOR OP 4 JOHN RUSKIN I SOCIAL REFORMER
IE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA,' ETC.

London

Grant Richards
1901

TX

LONDON:

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY — JINGOISM: ITS MEANING A'

ORIGIN - i

PART /

THE DIAGNOSIS

I. CREDULITY 17

II. BRUTALITY 39

III. CHRISTIANITY IN KHAKI 41

VAINGLORY AND SHORTSIGH i 63

IPSE OF HUMOUR - 69

HE INEVITABLE" IN POLITICS 79

ARE EDUCATED JINGOES HONEST? - 97

PART 11

THE MANUFACTURE OF JINGOISM

I. THE ABUSE OF THE PRESS - 107

II. PLATFORM AND PULPIT: A RECORD OF LICENCE

SUPPRESSION - 123

Tin

Psychology of Jingoism

INTRODUCTORY

Jingoism : Its Meaning and Origin

iverted patriotism whj

nation is transformed into
of anpther nation, and the fierce craving to
destroy the indivIHual members of that other
ion, is no new thing. Wars have not
ays, or perhaps commonly, demanded for
i and support the pervasion of such
a frenzy among the body of the people. The
will of a king, of a statesman, or of a small caste
of nobles, soldiers, priests, has often sufficed to
breed and to maintain bloody conflicts between
ihout any full or fierce participation
in the war-spirit by the lay multitude. Only
in recent times, and even now over but a small
part of the world, he great mass of the

1 B

2 The Psychology of Jingoism

individuals of any nation been placed in such
quick touch_with great political events that
thcir/oginjonsj) their gassiofy, and (fheir_ will,
haveglaved an appreciable' part in originating
strife, or in determining by sanction or by criti
cism any important turn in the political conduct
of a war. In a long-continued war, the passion
of a whole people has, even in old times, been
gradually inflamed against another people's,
with whom, for reasons usually known to few,
a state of war existed ; and such martial animus,
once roused, has lasted far beyond the limits of
the strife, sometimes smouldering for decades
or for centuries.

The quick ebullition of national hate termed
Jingoism is a particular form of_jhia-primitive
passion, modified and intensified -by— certain
conditions of modern civilization. One who is
curious of etymological origins will find true
significance in the mode by which the word
Jingo first came into vogue as an expression of
popular pugnacity.

The oft-quoted saying of Fletcher of Sal-
toun, ' Let me make the ballads of a people,
and let who will make the laws/ ever finds
fresh illustration. A gradual debasement of
popular art attending the new industrial era of
congested, ugly, manufacturing towns has raised

: Its Meaning and Origin 3

i^usic-hal|) to be thejmost powerful in-
at oTsuch musical and liter.
lie people are open to e.y

Among large sections of the middle and
labouring classes, the music-hall, and the
creative public-house into which it shades off
by imperceptible degrees, are a more potent
educator than the church, th< < ' 1, th--

\ft*n than t-hft Df^ff I ntO

'lighter self of the city populace the

,tc conveys by song or recitation crude

notions upon morals and politics, appealing

by Coarse humour or exaggerated pathos to

the animal lusts of an audience stimulated by

>hol into appreciative hil ^

In ordinary times politics plays no important

part in these feasts of sensationalism, but the

brute force and an ignorant con-

pt for foreigners are ever-present factors

ch at great political crises make the music-

a very serviceable engine for generating

The art of the music-hall

is the only ^popular' arTof the present day :

its words and^tnelodies' pass by quick magic

from the Empire or lhambra

length and breadth of the land, tg-echoed^in a

isand provincial halls, clubs, and drinking

saloons, until the remotest village is familiar

4 The Psychology of Jingoism

with air and sentiment. By such process of
artistic suggestion ffie fervour of Jingoism has
been widely fed, and it is worthy of note that
the present meaning of the word was fastened
upon it by the popularity of a single verse.

Nicer critics may even be disposed to dilate
upon the context of this early use of the new
political term — the affected modesty of the
opening disclaimer, the rapid transition to a
tone of bullying braggadocio, with its culmi-
nating stress upon the money-bags, and the
unconscious humour of an assumption that it
is our national duty to defend the Turk.

Indeed, without descending to minute
analysis, we may find something instructive in
the crude jumble of sentiment and the artistic
setting which it finds —

' We don't want to fight,

But, by Jingo, if we do,
We've got the men,

We've got the ships,
We've got the money too ' —

crowned by the domineering passion blurted
out in the concluding line —

1 The Russians shall not have Constantinople.'

How many of the audiences who cheered
this sentiment to the echo, and were heated

Jing< Its Meaning and Origin 5

by it almost to enlisting point had, or even
red to have, the notion of the

Eastern Question, or even of the grounds of
our immediate with Russi

ol" national animus, with a vague as
lied u> t at this stage

in tlu: manufacture of Jingo spirit. We s
perceive later what detailed definiteness of
conviction and assertion Jingoism is able to
assume in its more developed forms.

It miijht appear that a sentiment thus born

amid the fumes of the music-hall was unsub-

aml would quickly evaporate. But

rude instrument of public feeling! though

ili

ular passions, does not stand-alone ; its
work of suggestion and information is aided by
•r instruments of instruction more
reputable in appearance, and often more in-
sidious in their appeal.

The object of the diagnosis in these chap-
to point, by a recent and most con-
vincing illustration, the modus operandi of the
)us forces of public opinion, which are
most active in the making and the ma:
,e of Jingoism, and to investigate the un-
d psychology of this powerful popular
passion.

6 The Psychology of Jingoism

In order to realize the nature of present-clay
Jingoism, as distinguished from the national
war-spirit in earlier times, attention must be
given to a complex of new industrial and social
conditions which favour the growth of the
passion. Foremost among these is the rapid
and multifarious intercommunication of ideas

rendered possible by modern methods of

transport. The mechanical facilities for cheap,
quick carriage of persons, goods, and news,
signify that each average man or woman of
to-day is habitually susceptible to the direct
influence of a thousand times as many other
persons as were their ancestors before the
of steam and electricity. That people move
about more freely and quickly, and are brought
into personal intercourse with many more
individuals, and of much more varied sorts,
is perhaps the least important of these changes
from the psychological standpoint. More im-
portant is the internal nature of the large^town
life which absorbs the large majority of the
population of the most advanced industrial
countries of to-day. The physical and mental
conditions of this town-life, for the majority of
its population, are such as to destroy strong
individuality of thought and desire. The
crowdingof large masses of work-people in

Jingoism: Irs M^ id Origin 7

industrial operatjonsjregul a

-• injurious congestion in
trition of a superficial

int< -rvoursi: in work or leisure with great
numbers of persons subject to me en-

nment — these conditions are apt to destroy
or impair independence of char without

substituting any sound, rational sociality such
as iv. m in a city which has come into

being primarily for good life, and not for cheap
work. The bad conditions of town life in our
great industrial centres, lowering the vitalityof
the inhabitants, operate with peculiar ton . :i
their nervous organization. 1 the

cerebral stimulus of town life has its ^ains, and
in certain instances may feed true individuality.
But normally it educates a surface smartness,

alertness of manipulation of ideas within
a narrow area of interest and experience ; and

he environment is largely similar for larger

numbers, a similarity of character and life is

bred in it. . Moreover, the strain of adaptation

to the many complex changes of external en-

mient is, for those absorbed in the constant

^gle for a livelihood, so grave as tc impose
a nervous wear and tear which is quite ap-
parent in the features of a town population,
and which marks them out with tolerable

8 The Psychology of Jingoism

distinctness from country folk. In every nation
which has proceeded far in modernjmlust rial ism
the prevalence of neurotic diseases attests tint
general nervous strain to which the popula-
tion is subjected. This condition of the
national life is fraught with two results. The
resistance of the individual mind or will to sug-
gestions from a neighbouring mind is weaker,
and the common routine of city life to which
all alike are subjected affords a common basis
of appeal from mind to mind. Whatever,
therefore, be the mode by which mind is
conceived as operating upon mind, by argu-
ment, persuasion, or suggestion, every facility
for effective acceptance is provided. The
neurotic temperament^ generated by town
lOejseeks natural relief in stormy sensational
appeals, and the crowded life of the streets, or
other public gatherings, gives the best medium
for communicating them. This is the very
atmosphere of Jingoism. A coarse patriotism,
fed by the wildest rumours and the n
violent appeals to hate and the animal lust of
blood, passes by quick contagion through the
crowded life of cities, and recommends itself
everywhere by the satisfaction it affords to
sensational cnftvings.y It is less the savage
yearning for personal participation in the fray

ism: Its Meaning and Origin 9

the feeding of a neurotic imagination

:oism. The actual rage of the

nd a more lual

r. jingoism is the passion of the spectator,

IRe backer, not of the fighter ; it is

a collective or mob passion which, in as far as

it prevails, makes the individual mind sul>

i control that joins him irresistibly to his

A'Sy

This possession is facilitated by the sort of
education which prevails among such peoples
as our own. A little knowledge is most

^erous when it supplies the material and
the instrument of unreason. A large popula-
tion, singularly destitute of intellectual curiosity,
th a low valuation for things of the
mind, has during the last few decades been

ructed in the art of reading printed words,

lout acquiring any adequate supply of in-
formation or any training of the reasoning
i such as would enable them to give a
proper value to the words they read. A huge
press has come into being for the purpose of
supplying to this uneducated people such
printed matter as they can be induced to buy.
Most of this matter consists of statements,
true or false, designed to give passing satisfac-

i to some simple form of curiosity, some

io The Psychology of Jingoism

low sense of humour, or some lust of animalism.
Some of it, however, is designed to induce a
conviction or to rouse a feeling which may
affect conduct The simplest form is thejrade
advertisement, whereby one, who is known to
be an interested party, recommends his own
goods and, by continually repeated suggestions,
produces a belief which induces the public to
^purchase His wares. If the vendor stood in
the market and recommended his goods viv&
voce, his spoken word would carry far less
weight. The appearance of hard truth im-
parted by the mechanical rigidity of print
possesses a degree of credit which, when the
statement is repeated with sufficient frequency,
becomes well-nigh absolute. No evidence is
essential : the bare dogmatic statement, though
emanating from an admittedly interested source,
produces conviction and moves to action.
How great a power is here placed in the
confirol O^j^qinmefcTal clique or a political
party, or any body of rich, able, and energetic
men desirous to impose a general belief and
a general policy upon the mass of the people !
This power of Suggestion through print acts
mainly upon the individual when it is intended
to convey some simple sort of information as
shall influence private conduct. But where

: It Meaning and Origin i i

appeal is primarily to the passions, and
ments are • pu! in nnl.-r to

iniluence public conduct, the power of the
press attains its /mith. Any slight tendency of
more reasonable folk to question the accuracy
of sensational matter obviously designed to
inila general mind is overborne by the

common pulse of passion which sways them
as members of a crowd. Th . dogmatic,

:ied, and unverifiable cablegram is the
most potent form of this emotional explosive :
it purports to place the mind of the million in
mediate and associated contact with the
nit sensational event in such wise as to
quench all cavil or question ; its meaning,
heightened and expanded through the sound-
ing board of the press, settles down irresistibly
upon the public mind. This is the ideal mode of
suggestion — a short, sharp voice of ious

lority acting simultaneously upon millions of
minds whose interaction of passionate sympathy
gives it speedy vogue in common talk, and
implants it in the small stock of recently
1 impressions. Consideration of this
process explains how a dramatic fiction thus
implanted is able to survive the most complete
exposure, even when the contradiction is
conveyed through the same channel as the

1 2 The Psychology of Jingoism

falsehood. Further analysis of mass-psycho-

logy, disclosing the inhibition of comparison and

pro™rg<Wi Tri11 Tvp1o;" how

the most contrary suggestions of fact or feeling

be held simultaneously l>y the same persons,

who have yielded their individual judgment to

the sway of a common passion thus prompted

and informed.

National hate finding sensational expression
through war is the best emotional material for
the operation of these forces, and the posses-
sion by the passion of Jingoism of the mass-
mind of a people intellectually disposed like
that of Great Britain presents a subject of
incomparable interest for psychological study.

One word in conclusion of these introductory
remarks. I have distinguished the spectatorial
passion of Jingoism from the cruder craving
for personal participation in bloodshed which
seizes most savage peoples when the war-
spirit is in the air. Jingoism is essentially a
product of 'civilized * communities, though
deriving its necessary food from the survival of
nature: it presents therefore a number
of more complex moral and intellectual pro-
blems for consideration. Its force^dependent,
as we have seen, upon the submission of the
individual will and judgment to collective

jingoism: Its Meaning and Origin 13

suggestion, will v.iry with the resistance offered

ied rea 1 firmly rooted indivi

convictions applicable to ues concerned

in the suggestion.

The rapid __and numerous changes in the
external structure of moil ilization have

been accompanied by grrave unsettlement of
the inner life ; a breaking up of time-honoured
dogmas, a collapse of principles in politics.
religion andjnorality have sensibly reduced the
power of resistance to strong passionate sug-
gestions in the individuals of all classes. Hence
the" common paraddX that an age of univt
scepticism may also be an age of multifarious
superstitions. li.Jitly acquired and briefly held,
but dangerous for character and conduct while
they hold their sway. Amon ed peoples,

those of Western Europe and of the United
States are at the present time, perhaps to a
greater extent than ever before, destitute of
fixed and clearly defindd convictions upon root-
issues of ethics and politics. Their education
has, among the better educated classes, been
il largely in producing scepticism
fluctuating dil sm, while among the

masses it has produced a low curiosity and
indiscriminate receptivity. This general un-
settlement of habits and principles implit

14 The Psychology of Jingoism

individuals a collapse of standards of thought
and feeling, a weakening of individual respon-
sibility in the formation of opinions, and a
correspondingly increased susceptibility to
Jingoism and other popular passions in the
several shapes which they from time to time
assume.

PART I
The Diagnosis

CHAPTER I

CREDU1

A RECENT French writer, discoursing on the
nature of 'a crowd/ attributes to it a character
and conduct which is lower, intellectually and
morally, than the character and conduct of its

rage member. Even when the crowd is
little other than a fortuitous concourse, and
not an organized gathering of persons already
assimilated by some common feeling or idea,
a sort of common mind is temporarily set
up, which often seems to dominate, or
even to supersede, the normal mind of the

vidual. A sensational rumour, a sudden
unusual spectacle, the powerful appeal of a mob

or, so agitates the mass of individuals,
hitherto related by mere propinquity, as to
raise, by a largely unconscious interaction of
personalities, a quick ferment of thought and
feeling which impels individuals to take part

17 c

1 8 The Psychology of Jingoism

in a common action that is not their mere
individual choice. (^This passion of the mob,
implying an (^dbciildOnfHeTfFSr^^tPcontrt >1 by
the individual, is a fact too well .ized to

require proof. But its nature and origin are
both obscure and interesting. This war in
South Africa casts a powerful searchlight
upon the nature of the large, and in some
ways highly-organized, crowd which we call
the British nation. The suddenness, the size,
and the manifold sensationalism of the occur-
rence are the precise conditions requisite for
testing the mass-mind of the people. What
the orator does for his audience the press has
done for the nation ; it has injected notions and
feelings which, instead of lying in the separate
minds of their recipients, have bubbled up into
enthusiastic sympathy, and inducedjicommunity
of thought, language, and action wKIcIT~was
hitherto unknown] The conditions of the case
do not ailow~iis~to regard this common conduct
as a mature fruit of the reason of the nation ; it
must evidently be regarded as an instinctive
display of some common factors of national
character which lie outside reason, and belong,
in ordinary times, to the province of the sub-
conscious. Whatever qualities of deliberation
and calculation may have been present in the

Credulity 19

conduct nanciers, and jour-

nalists who were the direct conscious agents in
bringing about the \s ir appr

of, ami asm for, the war were not roused

by any ratiocinative processes. The
nation became a great crowd, and exposed
crowd-mind to the suggestions of the press ;
these suggestions, taking form simultaneously
in a million separate minds, gathered a force of
consentaneous passion by private and public
intrrcourse, and by degrees this crowd, or
mind, was possessed by a body of vague,
but strongly-worded, doctrine about the war,
and a powerful spirit of loyalty and animosity.

Our French psychologist described the mob-
mind as reverting to the type of the savage or
the child in intellect and mor able

to ( y rules of reason, more prone to

sudden, uncontrollable gusts of passion, than
onstitucnt units. Whether it be that the
>yncrasies in a crowd cancel one another,
and so the operative character is composed of
common fundamental or race factors, or whet
the superstructure which centuries of civilization
imposed upon the ordinary mind and con-
duct of the individual gives way before some
len wave of ancient savage nature roused
from its sub-conscious depths, need not cone

2O The Psychology of Jingoism

us here. Nor need we accept the view that the
standard of feeling and reason of the crowd is
always lower than that of its individuals ; there
is some evidence to indicate that it may some-
times be higher — at any rate, so far as feelings
are concerned. Much will probably depend
upon the character and motive of the sugges-
tion, and something on the circumstances of
the recipient crowd.

For purposes of the present study, however,
the hypothesis of reversion to a savage type of
nature is distinctly profitable. The war-spirit,
as displayed in the non-combatant mass-mind,
is composed of just those qualities which differ-
entiate savage from civilized man.

One of the most universal characteristics of

the savage mind is ^re^ulflfv ince credulity,
or willingness to believe upon no evidence or
insufficient' Evidence, belongs to all untrained
minds, it may be thought that the majority of
people, even in a so-called civilized nation,
may or must remain credulous. But there are
degrees of credulity. The average man or
woman in modern England has a mind highly
trained in reasoning, as compared with most
savage peoples, and there is a minority of
educated persons expert in following trains of
thought and weighing evidence.

Credulity

Now, the most astonishing phenomenon of

ie credulity displayed by the

educated class. -s. It is, of course, true that

nary education is so curiously defective in

country that not one in fifty persons c<
have correctly named the capital of the Orange
Free btate at the beginning ot iti^Q. i
education might have been expected to teach
caution in the acceptance and assimilation of

ilood of information which poured through
the press during the last two years. Our
educated classes are usually scornful of the
man who believes everything he reads in the
newspapers, and who pronounces quick dog-

ic judgments upon delicate and intri<
points of politics or economics. Yet the
majority of these cultured persons have sub-
mitted their intelligence to the dominion of
popular prejudice and passion as subserviently

the man in the st: horn they despise.

The canons of reasoning which they habitually
apply in their business or profession, and in

;ments they form of events and characters,
are superseded by the sudden fervour of this
nalgam of race feeling, animal pug-
nac; sporting zest, which t

. by the name of patriotism.
No one would think of accepting in any

22 The Psychology of Jingoism

ordinary private matter of importance the testi-
mony of interested parties, unchecked and
incapable of cross-examination, as sufficient
evidence to warrant the spending of his mom y
and the risking of his life. Yet the testimony
to^ the Outlander grievances and the Dutch
conspiracy given as the justification of this war
is almost entirely of this order. The allegation
that the press of South Africa, which has fur-
nished information to the press and people of
this country, is owned and controlled by a
small, known and named body of mining capi-
talists and speculators who have openly avowed
the gains they hoped to make by this war, is
not seriously disputed. Yet persons fully
aware of this allow their minds to be swayed
by the unanimity of the British testimony from
South Africa, as presented by this press and
by the politicians who have got their informa-
tion from the same factory of falsehood.

These same persons close their minds to th e
remnant of the so-called * pro- Boer * press in
this country, and to the entire continental press,
upon the plea that this press has been bought
by Transvaal money — a plea which has no
other origin than the statement of the above-
named Rhodesian press.

Educated men and women, accustomed to

Credulity 23

wei. -ncc from both sides, accept as final

pro< : il>ricated unanimity of British South

African opinion, refusing all consideration to

South African opinion, which
equally unanimous in the opposite sense. This
iey aflfo yjh&authority

of Sir Alfred Milner. But why should they

or the authority of this man, who had been
tv. > ;. .irs in the country, had never set foot in
the Transvaal, and had be«-n • ': ;ualified by
his official position from tercourse with

the colonist mous auth-

I.K.] nhnur iqmlljf nf
and Uutcii ulooci, men oorn and ured

If the former had dri

home his case of Outlander grievances and
Dutch conspiracy by good and sufficient evi-
dence, we might, indeed, discard the meagre-
ness of his personal authority, and rely upon
the merits of this evidence. But no trained
English lawyer, reading the Edgar incident
and other test grievances in the light of the
admitted bias of the Johannesburg press and
the South African League, the two c1
sources of Sir Alfred Milner's testimony, and

ing regard to the nature of a new mining
settlement, could possibly consider the more
serious charges ig to life and property to

24 The Psychology of Jingoism

be proved. As for the still graver charges
launched againstthe Cape Dutch of conspiring

with the ' Republics to destroy the British
supremacy and to establish a Dutch South
African Republic, belief in them still rests on
the bare word of Sir A. Milner, unsupported
by any valid shred of evidence. It is a very

vc scandal that he. has allowed this language,
uttered nearly two years ago, to operate upon
the mind of the British nation without adducing
any evidence of his charges against ' a certain
section of the press ' in the Colony and ' a
large number of our Dutch fellow-colonists/
That the actual rising of a number of Dutch
Colonists from sympathy with what they
regarded as an unwarranted attack on the
Republics should be taken as proof of the
charges made by the High Commissioner is
but one more signal instance of the corrupted
intelligence of the patriot.

Charges of treason against the Afrikander
Bond, of an avowed policy to ' drive the
British into the sea/ and armed preparations
dating far back into the eighties, have been so
persistently repeated from so many quarters as
to win a half-conscious acceptance among many
who distrusted the sources of the original accu-
sations. It may therefore be well to invite any

Credulity 25

who still desire to have a reasonable faith to
turn thrir best practical i <:nce upon

sort of evidence of the conspiracy furnished 1>\
such a work t which the Times has

humorously The History of the Boer

How unsatisfactory this ice still

may be judged by the ingenuous
admission in the Preface that it is ' largely
cumulative.'

The theory « ngS? con-

in a pretence that fifty pieces^ of bad
evidence proceeding ffolft a common tainted

evjdence. When any one admits that his case

uulative evidence' it may be

understood that he knows its falsity, and trusts

to the corrupted intelligence of his readers for
such acceptance as it may win.

But the most remarkable example of i
corruption is afforded by the adoption of
members of the mine-owning confraternity as
authoritative advisers on the nature of the
and its settlement. Mr. Fitzpatrick, whose
book, 'The Transvaal from Within,' is
cepted as if it were the unbiassed statement of

1 historian who happened to residt
the Tr a member of the-Ecfcs

i (the local branch of Wernher, Beit, and

26 The Psychology of Jingoism

Co.), and was one of the leaders in the Johan-
Surg insurrection of 1895; Mr- Lionel
Philipps, whose recommendations on settle-
ment were fully reported in the Times, is a
partner in the same firm ; Mr. Hoskcn,
another widely-read authority, is an importer
of mining machinery, an ex-director of the
Dynamite Company, and a director of the
Transvaal Leader, a newspaper started in the
spring of 1899 to bring matters to the test of
battle ; while Messrs. Rudd, Hayes, Hammond,
Robinson, Farrar, and other men, whose voices
resound throughthe British press, are directors
and employes of those leading Rand com-
panies, which have calculated the millions they
hope to make from the results of the war. It
asonable that these men should be heard,
but it is not reasonable that their statements
of fact and views of policy should be taken as
authoritative, while the facts and views set
forth, not merely by Dutch Colonists, but by
British travellers like Mr. Bryce and Mr. Selous,
are treated with contempt.

The unanimous support of the Christian
Churches in South Africa is similarly raised
into authority by leaving out of account the
Dutch Christian Churches, which are, of course,
equally unanimous in denouncing the war. It

Credulity 27

iideed, curious that men and women with

any knowledge of history should adduce the

blessing of the Churches as testimony to the

ice of any cause. Where have the priests

failed to bles supported by autho-

and popular passion ? »VLr*< C«v^V**c

The consensus of general opinion among the

in South Africa and in this country, the

authority of British politicians and of interested

cicrs, backed by a special British rendering

of South African history contained in countless

books issued by the British press, could carry

no conviction to the minds of men accustomed

to weigh evidence, unless these men had

previously handed over their judgment to be

ven by mob-passion.

The credulity regarding root-issues, thus in-
duced, carries with i : ulity regarding details

h is even more astonishing in its charac

U r worth while to remind readers

that every British account of Boer atrocities in

f wounded, looting, white flag,ltM

.Ilcled by Uutch

similar disrftflfiflrd of csmom nf pviocnc'
the history of the Franco-German, and indeed
cry other war, has been riddled by similar
stori But while the ' intelligent ' public

28 The Psychology of Jingoism

knows enough of history to be aware th;ii this
is true of all wars in the past, it pretends that
this war is . ption, and so each man feeds

his passion from the common sc\v«-r. draining
the poisonous vapours which degrade his intel-
lect and inflame the latent lusts of animalism,
and repeating idle patter about 'a just and
necessary war for the furtherance of liberty
and the protection of the British empire,' for
which it has precisely the same sort of evidence
as for the belief that Colman's is the best
mustard, or Branson's extract of coffee is
perfection.

CHAPTER II

BRUTALITY

modern newspaper is a Roman arena, a I
Spanish bull-ring, and an English prize-fight

1 into one. The popularization of the
power to read has made the press the chief

ument of brutal For a halfpenny

every man, woman, or child can stimulate and
feed those lusts of blood -.: . ; \ ,:cal cruelty

government to repress, and which, in their
l.y modern spcciaii/.uion to : ::--:-s, butchers,

ss man, t; er, the clerk, the

clergyman, the shop assistant, can no longer

hese savage cravings, either in personal

activity or in direct spectacular display; but

irt of reading print enables them to indulge

ad libitum in ghoulish gloating over scenes of

human suffering, outrage, and destruction.

29

30 The Psychology of Jingoism

Blended with the root-passion of sheer brutality
are certain other feelings, more complex in
origin and composition — admiration of courage
and adroitness, the zest of sport, curiosity, the
I in swift change and the unusual : all
these serve to conceal and decorate the domi-
nant force of brutality, that Yahoo passion
which revels in material disorder and destruc-
tion, with carnage for its centre-piece. That
this passion, like other phases of the war fc
is of social origin, and grows by swift, unseen
contagion and communication, is made evident
by the character and behaviour of its victims.
Mild and aged clergymen ; gently bred, refined
English ladies ; quiet, sober, unimaginative
Business men, long to point a rifle at the JSoers,
and to dabble their fingers in the carnage.
The basic character of the passion is disci*
by the fact that death and destruction by fire-
arms do not satisfy; it is the cold steel and the
twist of the British bayonet in the body of the
now defenceless foe that brings the keenest
thrill of exultation. Many will deny this sub-
jection to sheer animalism — in some cases a
revulsion of pity, or some better human feeling,
hides it ; but, wherever the dissecting-knife is
honestly applied, the essential brutality which
underlies the glow of patriotic triumph in

Brutal 31

:ory ' iible.

i to the voice of your
id when he rolls over his tongue
some tasty morsel of his favourite war C(
spondent, or retai! itest sensation of the

cablegram. Sex, age, nurture, education, re-
irroundings, arc of little avail to resist,
or even modify, the pulsation of the primitive
lust which exults in the downfall and the suffer-
of an enemy; the patriotic publican or
kbroker may show more honesty in ex-
pression of his triumph ; but the same animal
eness, and bloodthirstiness, lurks
in the mildest-mannered patriot, and surpr
him by its occasional outburst Such passion

>i leveller, disclosing human nature in
common character, and teaching an equality
eh is no flattering ideal, but a convincing
testimony to the descent of man. The demo-
cratic saturnalia of Ladysmith and V.

ys are generally admitted to be a revelation

*of hitherto unknown British character ; and

the sociality of brutish revelry upon these

days was but a faint, spluttering expression of

Ktual feelings which boiled over into this

flag-waving, drunkenness, and maniacal shout-

At all times the mob-nature has seized

the coarser and more reckless elements in the

32 The Psychology of Jingoism

community, and impelled them to similar
scenes of riot ; the distinctive feature of
'Mafeking' was the wide prevalence of a
sudden fury which broke down for the nonce
the most sacred distinction of classes, and fused
the most antagonistic elements of London life
for a brief moment into anarchic fraternity.

Under the force of this passion collapse all
those qualities upon which Englishmen, in
their normal life, most plume themselves. The
true John Bull, whether he be farmer, merchant,
shopkeeper, or artisan, is an orderly man, a
respecter of persons and property, a lover of
fair play, a hater of unnecessary pain and
cruelty : such are the solid foundations of his
respectability and success in life.

A florilegium of newspaper cuttings illustra-
tive of the deeds and words to which these
respectable men and women have committed
themselves during the last twelve months
would, by their quantity and their intensity,
suffice to ruin this traditional national character
in history. The few examples which I here
insert are not selected for extremity or for
rarity, for all readers will be able to equal or
surpass them from personal observation ; they
merely serve to mark the nature of the national
hysteria.

itality 33

The craving for blood was first brought
home to me in South Africa by the talk of
certain shopkeepers from Bloemfontcin, upon
whom race lust had gained so strong a hold
they openly expressed their fears lest the
Boers should give in before a sufficient num-
ber of them had been shot This has remained
throughout the prevalent tone of the British
in South Africa ; but of this passion there
seemed some sufficient explanation from rec

>ry and race contact But that English

i and women should of a sudden exhibit a
fanatical desire to pierce and tear and hack the
bodies of men whom they had never seen, and
whose very name they hardly knew a year
ago, is indeed an experience calculated to
stagger any confidence one might have held in

i as a rational and moral being. The

4 comic spirit,' in its most sardonic mood, could

no more curiously suggestive material than

the record of the pranks of British patriotism

under the strain of this experience. Here, for

mce, is an august person, the Lord Lieu-
tenant of a county, addressing a body of moral
and high-minded English gentlemen and
ladies : —

Neither you nor I believe in these perpetual appeals to
i the wrong place and at the wrong time.

D

34 The Psychology of Jingoism

Neither do we believe in these continual quotations ;
Scripture. \Vc do not believe, either you or I or anybody
else here, in the man who holds the Bible in one hand and
the Mauser rifle in the other. (Cheers). And another bit
of advice I should like to give you is this — if you meet
a gentleman, a somewhat aged gentleman, whose name
begins with a K, anywhere down Pretoria way, I ask you
to make him sing Psalms out of the wrong side of his
mouth — (cheers) — and as to his cant, drive it down his
throat with a dose of lyddite — (cheers) — and three inches
of bayonet to keep it there. (Prolonged cheers.)

This has been the common language of
English gentlemen in first-class carriages, in
club smoke-rooms, and in all other haunts of
free conversation ; and English ladies have
done their best to assert the doctrine of sex
equality in sentiment and language.

The maker of headlines has displayed a
masterly knowledge of the temper of the beast
he feeds, and ' Cronje withered in a hell of
fire1 remains in my memory as one of many
graphic phrases.

The experience of this war thoroughly ex-
plodes the old ideal of John Bull as a blunt,
frank man who loves a fair fight with a foeman
whose courage and prowess he is ready to admit.
The black slime of his malice has been hardly
less characteristic of his Jingoism than the
animal brutality with which it is associated ; it

Brutality 35

has joyed him to tear with his tongue the cha-
racter of his enemy as well as to dig steel into

Ixxly. The war-makers in South Africa are
keen-wittrd enough to perceive this, and are
goading the maddened Bull into slaking his
thirst for revenge by a settlement which shall
r business sagacity. To burn farms,
shoot unarmed foes, confiscate stock, disenfran-
aiul imprison tluir political enemies, are
requirements of the political situation, and
these men, aided by their false prophets, would
use the British madness for these ends. History
will find the crucial instances of British brutality
in this policy of vengeance exacted from the
foemen whom we call 'rebels/ The 1
J. 1 > . I ogan, M.L.C., perhaps offers an extr
instance of this feeling, but the publication of

following paragraph has hardly elicited a
word of condemnation in this country : —

MATJESFONTEIN, May 23rd.— (From our Correspon-
dent)— Before the Dukes left here for the front Mr. Logan
armed them with a Maxim, with the following result : ' From
Colonel Spence Douglas to Hon. Logan, Matjesfontcin. —
May a and.— Your Maxim was in action yesterday, and did
excellent work. Much obliged to you for all your kindness
to me and the regiment Hope all well with you.' This
brought the following reply from Mr. Logan : * Exceedingly
glad that gun has been of use.
Pound for every rebel
per cent, for

36 The Psychology of Jingoism

Two years ago most Englishmen would have
asserted confidently that England, though en-
gaged in a war to break down 'a corrupt
oligarchy ' in the Transvaal, had so much
nobility of nature that she could admire the
stubborn resistance of a handful of farmers
fighting for the independence of their country,
and that even in the act of war our sympathies
would have flowed in the direction of a generous
treatment of such a foe. What do we find ?
When the policy of wholesale devastation
carried out by British troops over large
districts, the burning of farms, looting of
»9attle, cutting down of fruit trees, and break-
ing of dams is announced to the nation, it
awakes in the"" mob-mind no other feeling'
than one of ^rim_ satisfaction, expressed by"
the usual comment, ' Serve them right ; they
shouldn't have begun the war ! * No shame
whatever is felt for the wanton and futile
brutality of such a course, for the flagrant
breaches of the very canons of ' civilized war-
fare ' which we as a nation had imposed upon
the Conferences of the Powers — nothing but
a chuckle of savage satisfaction in the common
man, a brief irrelevant, ' Yes, war is brutal ! ' in
the more 'civilized1 Jingo!

How far brutality is capable of carrying the

lity 37

ion is perhaps best illustrated in the open
and frequent proposals to shoot Boer prisoners

'rebels.' The ordinary Jingo is quite
satisfied that we have a 'right' to do so, since
we have annexed the Republics ; and he has
never ceased to advocate the policy, undeterred
by the reflection that reciprocity in such an
outrage would cost us at least as many lives as
we should take. Nor is this merely the loose
talk of the drinking-bar or the club smoke-
room. One of the most respectable organs of
public opinion — the Standard — in its issue
of October i6th, used language which has no
other meaning than as a direct incitation to
the massacre of prisoners.

In every rebellion a point is reached at which the
services of the Provost Marshal become more effective
than those of the strategist The prompt and ruthless
;shment of every insurgent burgher caught in delicto
is required. We cannot keep a troop of horse outside
each Boer farm, but we can show its occupant that he risks
something more than his freedom, or even his property,
when he takes op arms against the Crown.

Military opinion in the Transvaal capital urges that a
Proclamation should be issued, declaring that any Boer
found with arms in his hand, and without uniform, shall b€
treated as a rebel, rather than as a prisoner of war. Perhaps
the time has arrived for even more drastic measures.

In interpreting this infamous suggestion, it

38 The Psychology of Jingoisrr

must be borne in mind that the entire body of
the Boer army is 'without uniform/ with the
exception of such as have taken khaki uniform
from captured British soldiers. The finishing
touch of brutality is therefore set upon our
policy by an order, issued by Lord Roberts
just before his departure from South Africa,
to the effect that all Boer prisoners wearing
khaki were to be shot at once.

If the Standard may be taken to represent
the mob-mind of the well-to-do Conservative
classes, the following passage from the Daily
Telegraph of October i;th may be taken to
set forth the cruder brutality of the commercial
classes of the metropolis : —

It will probably be found that these sullen malcontents
will go on fighting so long as they have a bullet in their
bandoliers, on the off-chance of slaying one of their
conquerors, unless the British authorities make it clear
that all caught with arms in their hands will be shot
without mercy. The Germans had no compunction in
so dealing with the Francs-Tireurs, and their severity
did much to shorten the war. We shall hope to see
the same measures adopted in South Africa unless the
various forces now patrolling the two conquered territories
meet with immediate success. A few such engagements as
that which is reported near Vryheid, in which Bethune's
Mounted Infantry are said to have killed sixty of the
enemy, would speedily dishearten the marauders, and the
proclamation of a specific date after which every armed

39

her should be treated as a rebel and shot would be
productive of nothing but good.

It is not the cruelty or the palpable injustice

of these measures that concern us in our

present analysis, but the complacent and even

ceptance of them by the mob-mind

of the Jingo public here at home. Rightly

understood, these passages from the Standard

and the Daily Telegraph are the most damning

mony to the degradation of British character

that has yet been given.

Those who know the means adopted to
inflame the Imperial sentiment in our colonies
and dependencies will, however, not be sur-
<:d to learn that in definite brutality the
Jingoism even of the Standard and the Tele-
graph is outdone. A recent issue of the Indian
Planters' Gazette contains the following : —

Not only should the Boer be slain, but slain with the
same ruthlessness that they slay a plague-infected rat
Exeter Hall may shriek, but blood there will be and plenty
and the more the better. The Boer resistance will
further this plan, and enable us to find the excuse that
Imperial Great Britain is fiercely anxious for — the excuse to
blot the Boers out as a nation, to turn their land into a
vast shambles, and remove their name from the muster-roll
of South Africa.

It will be vehemently denied that such a

4-O The Psychology of Jingoism

sentiment occupies the British mind. But
this denial will be false. Our press, our
politicians indeed make no such honest avowal.
But the Indian Planters Gazette has dared to
put into print the true craving of Jingoism
which in this country has everywhere pervaded
private conversation in the railway carriage,
the drawing-room, the tap-room, and has
occasionally risen to the publicity of the music
hall. Kipling's 'Good killing at Paardeburg,
the first satisfactory killing of the war/ and
the phrase 'exterminate the vermin* which, in
spite of official disclaimers, did actually voice
the general sentiment of the British of Natal
at the outbreak of hostilities, express honestly
the savage passion of the mob-mind in this
country. The public has throughout the war
been prepared to accept and approve any
measure adopted by the military to crush ' the
rebellion,' the bloodier the better. This is
the naked truth of the matter, and it is best to
face it.

A twelvemonth's debauch in these ancient
and^abandoned stews of savage lust has set
back the dial of civilization more points than
we^care to contemplate. All that the popular
education of half a century has done, and vastly
more, is lost in this single bout of the war-fever.

CHAPTER III

CHRISTIANITY IN KHAKI

RE are some to whom the political support
given to this war by the Christian Churches has
been a sudden revelation and a shock. This
ought not to have been the case. When
a Christian nation ever entered on a war
which has not been regarded by the official

priesthood *>Q ^^>^Hiw^r> In England the

State Church has never permitted the spirit of
the Prince of Peace to interfere when states-
men and soldiers appealed to the passions of
:-lust, conquest, and revenge. Wars, the
most insane in origin, the most barbarous in
execution, the most fruitless in results, have
never failed to get the sanction of the Christian
Churches.* No one now defends the justice or

• Contrast the attitude of the Buddhist Churches in
Burmah which preached the duty of non-resistance, and
denied the sanction of religion to the patriots who sought
to defend their native land against the invasion of British
troops.— C£ Fielding, 'The Soul of a People,1 \

41 V

42 The Psychology of Jingoism

necessity of the Crimean War ; yet the pulpits
resounded with the same military blare, bishops,
priests, and deacons vying in loud approbation,
and prophesying with single consent, ' Go up
to Ramoth-Gilead, for the Lord shall deliver
it into the kind's hands.' The Nonconformist
Churches and their congregations were seriously
divided; the wealthier and more respectable
among them followed the secular authorities,
as is their wont. None of the Churches or
their representatives would now think of de-
fending the Crimean War, but they have learnt
nothing from their error, least of all repentance :
neither the teaching of history nor the spirit of
religion has spoiled the free-hearted enthusiasm
with which they have incited our soldiers to
kill, and burn, and plunder in South Africa.
Imperialist statesmen boast that this con-
federacy in bloodshed has annealed the colonies
to the mother country : in similar fashion we
may find the long-talked-of union of Christian
Churches, not in any common acceptance of
theology or in co-operation for charitable works,
but in the common acceptance of a propaganda
of bloody deeds in the name of civilization.
To those who best understand the social and
financial structure of the Churches and the
capacity of self-deceit which self-interest is

litv in Khaki 4;

able to develo; will seem no wild word

of cynical exaggeration.

I n order to understa; t has occurred, we

member that the ethics of the Hebrew

illy taken root in the

I •: > not mean that

we have always /ailed to live up to our ideal,
but that the r'.hrifljan gthififl fl8 CTlriflBC^ m
the Sermon on the Mount and the New Com-
m.iiulinrnt has never really furnished an ideal
for us. The Hebrew ethics taken over with
the religion of Christianity is not a natural
product of British thought, it does not express
our national attitnflfi inwards J'fe FTTs
more possible to transplant thr ethics of an
Mas tern nation into the tar West than to trans-
plant their most delicate flora ^nd fauna. The
soul of a people is not portable. The moral
hing of Jesus has always languished, as an
exotic, in this country. It matters not whether
we test the matter by reference to the Old or
the New Testament Neither the privative
morality of the former nor the active charitable
ideals of the latter have ever thriven in the
English people. Just as we are not for peace
any price/ so we are not for the Ten
Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount
1 at any price.' We try to represent our lapses

44 The Psychology of Jingoism

as justified by changes in modern conditions
of life, etc., but this is only a shallow sophistry
which fails even to deceive us while we utter
it.

In fact, these teachings have never furnished
us with vital veritable ideals. We have had
a standard of desirable conduct, ideals of our
own, sometimes good and elevated, standards
of good manners, honour, and chivalry, but
they have never been moulded or dominated
by Christianity.

Test the motive by applying the maxim
which is held to be most typical of Christianity,
1 ILnye. your enemies. ' Not merely have
Englishmen never acted on this principle,
but they have never really held it a duty to
do so.

The real standard of good conduct for
English people has always run upon some
such lines as these : ' Love your friends and
hate your enemies ; look after your family^ and
-et for them all you can ; abstain from petty
theft and all unlawful deeds; work for a living
if you cannot lawfully compel some one else^to
work for you ; help a neighbour in distress ; live
a peaceful, orderly life, with only occasionally t-
bursts of animation ; abhor certain sorts of
meanness and cheating ; be prepared at any

Christianity in Khaki 45

to fight for home and country without
inquiring into any " merits of the case.

If we would know the real ideals which
represent the best standard of conduct for the

>n, we must turn not to works of pi
but to the life of the nation as mirrored in its
re and its history.

icss of the notion that the

ideal of the age of chivalry was formed by

Christian ethics is apparent by taking the

icter of that pattern knight, Sir Lancelot,

as it is faithfully rendered on his death by Sir

or, and reported by Malory.

Ah, Lancelot, thou wcrt head of all Christian knights !
And now — there thou liest, that thou were never matched
of earthly knights1 hands; and thou wert the courtliest
knight that ever bare shield; and thou wert the truest
friend to thy lover that ever bestrode horse; and thou
-were the truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved
woman ; and thou were the kindest man that ever strake
with sword ; and thou were the goodliest person ever came
among press of knights ; and thou were the meekest man
and the gentlest that ever ate in hall among ladies ; and
thou were the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever
put spear in the rest.

Let Spenser testify for England's ideals in
4 the spacious days of great Elizabeth,' when
English character was nost openly displayed.
The English 'hero1 wis not then a meek,

46 The Psychology of Jingoism

self-denying, charitable, and forgiving man ; he
was a man of powerful, aggressive, self-willed
personality, with violent passions, generous,
brutal, laborious, and domineering, with an
undisguised contempt for the sixth, seventh,
eighth, and tenth commandments, and no deep
concern for the other six.

The flimsy objection, 'We don't admire their
morals,' may be brushed aside at once. We
have a whole-hearted admiration for these men,
there is no pigeon-holing of one little set of
qualities labelled ' morals ; ' we admire the men,
character and conduct, as set forth in life. Our
true national heroes nearly all belong to this
stamp. We have no regard whatever for the
Christian characters of holy George Herbert,
pious John Wesley, saintly Hannah More, that
we can compare for one moment with the
enthusiasm which encircles the names of
Sidney, Raleigh, Hampden, Warren Hastings,
Charles James Fox, Nelson, and Wellington.
Drive it down to an honest test, and ' morality/
in the narrower senses of the word, hardly
counts, so large is the dispensation in Christian
virtues which we lavish on our great men. We
require of them neither sexual morality, nor
common honesty, nor any regard for the lives
of people who are not their own countrymen.

:unity in Khaki 47

These remarks are needed as a preface to

>le us to understand the attitude of the
so-called Cl Churches towards th

furnish a

fSKWIW

stimulus of f.m.uiciMii in war, by representing
it as a sacred duly to risk life in trying to

and WHOM: land and other pr :i\ ! \ ri.;ht
U-l n^ to us.

It has been often claimed for Christianity

distinctive ethical char :ics are

.ace upon love as the power

which makes for righteousness, alike in its

influence as an external agent of reform, and

in its purifying and ennobling reactions upon

those from whom it issues; secondly, the

expansion given to this play of inner forces

by transcending all limits of caste, race, or

and asserting the doctrine of human

brotherhood in its widest sense.

The tribal God, the special race mission, the
inion of hate and forcible revenge, — these t»J^A

particular notes of the crude religions

.1 Christianity has claimed to supersede.

Yet these are the most distinctive notes of

the Christianity of our leading Churches, the

The Psychology of Jingoism

Christianity d la mode. Those who have
followed the records of the pulpits as repor
in the religious press, and have read the
editorial comments of that press, will be
astonished by the consentaneity of voices.
Amid the clash of creeds, the angry disputa-
tions upon ritual and Church government, the
scornful refusal to join hands in any common
work of human charity, there has resounded
one clear, harmonious, passionate note, repre-
senting the oft-dreamed Union of the Churches
— a note of loud fanatical encouragement to
armed Britain to go forth in Jesus' name to
slay their fellows and to take their land.

From the conception of England as a country
with a special mission to ' civilize ' the world
with blood and iron, to the conception of
* England's God ' as a tribal God of battles
who shall fight with our big battalions and help
us to crush our enemies, is a step taken with
ease and confidence by most of our Churches.

Scotch evangelicism (save the mark !) strikes
the note most loudly. Here is the whole philo-
sophy of the business from Dr. Watson (Ian
Maclaren) : — ' Why should we not recognize
in our England the modern Israel, called of
God, and set apart by God for a special
mission ? ' That ' mission ' is based upon a

Christianity in Khaki 49

'The Lord thy God has chosen
to be a special people unto Himself above
all people that are upon the face of the earth.'
1 Take heed unto yourselves lest ye forget the
covenant of the Lord your God which He made
with you/ 'Speak ye home to the heart of
England, for the covenant stands between God
and England.

How do we know that this covenant exists ?
Dr. Watson assigns a curious reason : —

Are any man's eyes so blind that he cannot see the
;land? ... I do not, when I strike so high
a note, forget England's sins. Does our sin break the
covenant which the Eternal made with oar fathers? No
people ever sinned against God like Israel Between the
sin of Israel and the sin of England there is a similarity
which arises from a sense of being in the same position.

Our ' peculiar ' sins are, then, the ' semeia ' of

our ' covenant ' and our ' mission/ But what

•'.ie nature of this mission? Dr. Watson

ks it out in no uncertain language when he

says, ' We have found out who are our friends

in the world and who are our enemies, and we

not going to forget them.' Presumably

England's God is to be of special service to

in her mission of ' not forgetting ' her

For a fuller revelation of this covenant and
mission we may turn, not inappropriately, to

I

50 The Psychology of Jingoism

the words of a military chaplain, who may be
entitled to rank as a specialist

Here is the utterance of the Rev. Armstrong
Black in a sermon to the Toronto garrison, re-
ported in the British Weekly (Dec. 7, 1899) :—

Wrath was God's. The war was God's lightning flash
and thunder clap among the affairs of men ; the flash of
God's eye was there, and the voice of God's words. It was
God saying, and putting emphasis into the words, ' Sit thou
at My right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool.'
It was the Divine warrant given of old to the unique King-
priest who in every age * in righteousness maketh war,' and
it is meant to put iron into that blood, and grit into the
grip, of the Church in all ages. And there is not another
Psalm more closely fitted and attached to Jesus Christ in
the New Testament than this one is.

^ Here also is the Rev. Armstrong Black's par-
ticular application to ' the business in hand ' :—

And if any nation lays itself right athwart the path of
true human progress, and, using the very means with which
British industry has supplied it, makes itself bristle with arms,
not for defence, but defiance ; and thus not only blocks but
menaces the way of advancing and Christianizing civilization
— be it in South Africa or elsewhere — Britain's sword should
then flash with a Divine commission as swiftly as when
heaven's own lightning leaps from the cloud. Seldem does
God place a quite clear and definite issue before either a
man or a nation.

This recognition of our mission is accom-
panied by a general laudation of the influence

Cl -lity in Khaki 5 i

of war as a school of discipline and an instru-
ment of beneficent rule.

It might occur to some that these doctrines
are too distinctive of Old Testament bel
and manners, and conflict with the New Tes-
tament and its gospel of love.

There is something particularly instructive
in the calm audacity with which any such dis-
tinction is repudiated. Here is Canon Car-
hael, of the Protestant Church of Ireland :—

The Bible hardly seems to see any evil in war at all.
The Lord Jesus never says a word against war. John the
Baptist gives advice to soldiers, but never condemns their
profession. SL Paul revels in military phrases. The
:y of the world is full of wars, thus must war be con-
genial to the mind of God in His evolution of huma
Jf tat dots God care for death J What does God care for pain 1

-rw s v. iTH *>******

Assuredly we must DC, in a peculiar sense,
' His children/ for we do His work with such
good heart!

There is, of course, nothing new in this.
The press during the Crimean War furnishes
:ty of similar convenient doctrine, which
may be summarized in the following passage
from a sermon of Charles Kingsley in support
of that 'ju : —

the Lord Jesus Christ is not only the Print* of

Peace. He is the Prince of War too. He is the Lord of

-, the God of Armies ; and whosoever fights in a just

52 The Psychology of Jingoism

war against tyrants and oppressors, he is fighting on Christ's
side, and Christ is fighting on his side ; Christ is his
Captain and his Leader, and he can be in no better service.
Be sure of it, for the Bible tells you so.

Will Kingsley's confident assumption that the
Crimean was 'a just war against tyrants and
oppressors ' (as indeed all our wars have ever
been !) cause any to reflect upon the similar
confidence which they repose upon those who
have assured them of the justice of this war ?

Canon Newbolt and Dean Farrar have
been foremost among English Churchmen in
their enforcement of the Divine nature of war,
and the acceptance of the doctrine that ' car-
nage is His daughter.1 But the spirit of this
British Christianity is most aptly rendered in
the glowing words of * a most venerable and
excellent prelate,' the Archbishop of Armagh,
with which Dean Farrar concludes his glori-
fication of the hell which is being enacted in
South Africa : —

And, as I note how nobly natures form

Under the war's red rain, I deem it true , fy \ *°

That He who made the earthquake and the storm

Perhaps makes battles too.
.
Thus as the heaven's many coloured flames

At sunset are but dust in rich disguise,
The ascending earthquake-dust of battle frames

God's picture in the skies."

Christianity in Khaki 53

Such meaty doctrine is perhaps too definite
for archiepiscopal expression in this country.
But the heads of the Church of England and
the Roman Catholic Church give their assent
to the peculiar mission of England, and ap-
prove war as a righteous instrument. The
Archbishop of Canterbury expresses ' the con-
viction that this call, which is made to all the
world which has heard the name of Ch;
is yet made specially to us, because, of all
nations on the face of the earth, there is none
that has the same opportunities of teaching
every other land the truth. There is no other
nation that can stand by the side of England
and the Church of England in the demand
that is being made by God upon the exertion
of all our energies in this cause.1

This episcopal announcement of the special

call of England is officially endorsed by the

Prime Minister, who holds that 'the course

of events, which I should prefer to call the

acts of Providence, have called this country to

exercise an influence over the character and

progress of the world such as has never been

exercised in any empire before,' a doctrine

:^h is more explicitly set forth in a recent

ress given by the saintliest of his sons.*

* Hon. H. Cecil (Annual Meeting S.P.C, Church

54 The Psychology of Jingoism

4 It is impossible not to feel that there was a
providential scheme in these things ; and that
the English people were called in quite a
special manner to undertake what was a
universal Christian duty/ An interesting
commentary upon the providential nature of
the scheme and the speciality of manner is
afforded by some ingenious admissions by
which Lord H. Cecil qualifies his commenda-
tion of the new Imperialism. 'A great many
people were most anxious to go with their
whole hearts with what might be called the
Imperial movement of the day, but had, as
it were, a certain uneasiness of conscience
whether, after all, this movement was quite
as unpolluted with earthly considerations as
they would desire it to be.' Is it possible that
Lord H. Cecil has been dipping into the
reports of the Chartered Company or the
Consolidated Goldfields ? But a still more
instructive sentence follows : 'He thought
that by making prominent to our own minds
the importance of missionary work, we should
to some extent sanctify the spirit of Imperial-
ism/

If this means anything, it means that foreign
missions are to float Imperialism. It is inter-
esting to consider the proposal in conjunction

Chri>ti.mitv in Khaki 55

the related proposal to use mission
order to float foreign trade.

The following passages from a recent Report
of the British Consul at Canton states with
admirable lucidity the advantages of this 'com-
.' ' Immense services might be rendered
to our commercial interests, if only the members
of t ;ious missions in China would co-

operate with our Consuls in the exploitation
of the country and the introduction of com-
mercial as well as of purely theological ideas
to the Chinese intelligent Which is to
float which, is clearly indicated in the following
comment : ' To the sceptical Chinese the in-
terest manifested by a missionary in business
affairs would go far towards dispelling the sus-
picions which now attach to the presence in
r midst of men whose motives they are
unable to appreciate, and therefore condemn
as unholy ' — a sentence which, for completeness
of analysis, leaves nothing to be desired. This
scheme of utilizing the ' commercial instinct *
for missionary purposes is quite the most
ingenious scheme for reconciling God and
mammon-worship that has been produced.

From the Christianity of the Archbishops
we are led through the Imperial Christianity
of Lord H. Cecil and the strictly business

56 The Psychology of Jingoism

Christianity of the China Consul, until we have
not many steps to take to reach the Christianity
of the sleek gentleman in Tennyson's Sea
Dreams —

Who, never naming God except for gain,
So never took that useful name in vain ;
Made Him his catspaw, and the Cross his tool,
And Christ the bait to trap his dupe and fool

Remembering that the Boers are also owners
of a tribal God and a particular Providence, to
which they have adhered with more vigour and
consistency than we, it seems only reasonable
to impute some of the fervour which our priests
and politicians are displaying to the competitive
spirit which operates more powerfully just now
when we can make such a good use of God for
our special national ends. To displace the
'pious Boer' in the good books of the Al-
mighty, to outbid him by offers of active mis-
sionary work, to display the superior attractions
of our up-to-date New-Testament Christianity
as compared with the narrow, antiquated, Old-
Testament religion of the Boers, has been the
task of innumerable pulpiteers during the last
eighteen months. The boldest attack in this
effort to dislodge the Boer from the seat of
Divine favour has not been a frontal one : it
has consisted in a charge of hypocrisy against

Cl nitv in Khaki 57

Mr. Kruger and his burghers, who, we ass

Almighty, do not mean the pious words
they say, and whose inconsistent and unholy
conduct we invite Him to reprobate. The
complete self-confidence implied in these im-
putations, our free, careless handling of this
nd recoiling charge, have in them
a depth of sardonic humour which will give
his finest material to the historian of the
Imperial episode.

This claim to a monopoly, by right, of the
Divine favour is reasserted in all our public acts
of worship. We do not appeal to the Almighty
to determine the justice of our cause as a judge,
rather we instruct Him as a counsel, begging
Him to accept an assurance of the justice of
our cause from us, who know the facts. The
gross impudence of this official posture
swallowed up by its humour, which reaches
perhaps its zenith in the pra\ >mmended

by the Archbishops before the General Election,
h endorsed the policy of Mr. Chamberlain
in South Africa, with its pious request that
' all things may be so ordered and settled that
peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion
ami piety may be established among us for all
generations/

The effect of these high pronouncements of

58 The Psychology of Jingoism

the rectitude of British policy and the corre-
sponding wickedness of our enemies upon thr
untutored mind of the lesser clergy of the land
might have been anticipated by those familiar
with the parson in his character of politician.
The stream of ignorant malice which has poured
weekly from the pulpits defies chemical analysis
and may perhaps be indicated best by the
following quotations, whose terse mendacity
requires no comment.

Here is the famous Edgar case, as presented
in writing by the Rev. E. K. Elliott, the Vicar
of Broad water : —

I may mention that a year ago a Mr. Edgar, when
standing at his door, was shot dead by a Boer who hap-
pened to be passing, simply because he recognized him to
be an Englishman.

The same cleric is responsible for the following
story of Cronje : —

To-day a gentleman called upon me who, eight years ago,
was in the Transvaal, and, what is more, a guest of Cronje
during part of his sojourn in that country. Whilst with
Cronje he saw him shoot two old Kaffir women because
(as he said) they were too old for work I

The Rev. John Alsopp, who claims personal
experience in South Africa, is accredited with
the following : —

Christianity in Khaki 59

Paul Kniger had been charged with wedging a young

girl between two pieces of wood and sawing both wood and

hrough the middle because she refused to divulge the

try secrets of her own tribe. That charge had not

been denied.

It is, however, not only by the priests that
Jesus has been hailed as a ' Prince of War.1
Our generals have not been slow to utilize the
religious sentiment for military purposes, and
every soldier going to the front has been fur-
nished with a talisman in the form of a New
Testament decorated on the front with the
Union Jack, accompanied by texts about 'the
blood/ well attuned both to the occasion and
the habitual language of Tommy Atkins.

To this khaki Bible a brief preface by Lord
\\ <>lseley is appended, recommending the book
in the following terms : ' In my opinion, there
could be nothing more suitable for the spiritual
comfort of a soldier on active service than this
Testament.' A caviller might be disposed to
smile at the italics of Lord Wolseley, which
seem to imply that an army on a peace footing
gets its spiritual comfort from some other
source. But the patronage thus extended by
the late Commander-in-Chief to the New Testa-
ment suggests a more serious question. Does
not Lord Wolseley presume too much upon

60 The Psychology of Jingoism

the ethical obtuseness of a Tommy when h<*
invites him to peruse, I will not say the
elevated doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount,
but the maxims of common honesty and truth
contained within the pages of the book ? Does
he not fear that these maxims may conflict
with soldierly duty and corrupt the military
efficiency of the army ? What are the ethics
of the soldier ? The following succinct state-
ment affords a sufficient answer : —

As a nation we are brought up to feel it a disgrace to
succeed by falsehood ; the word ' spy ' conveys in it some-
thing as repulsive as slave. We will keep hammering away
with the conviction that honesty is the best policy, and
that truth always wins in the long run. These pretty little
sentences do well for a child's copy-book, but the man who
acts upon them in war had better sheathe his sword for
ever.

This passage from the ' Soldier's Pocket-
book/ by Sir Garnet Wolseley, I commend to
the notice of the distinguished patron of the
New Testament, and to the bishops and clergy
who are so impressed by the 'cleansing/
' bracing/ ' fortifying' influences of war.

Christianity in Khaki 61

APPENDIX

• following letter, culled from the pages of the Man-
duster Guardian, deserves a more permanent attention as
an example of serviceable satire :—

THK CHURCH AND WAR

'4- Editor of the ' Manchtsttr Guardian:

, — I see that 'the Church's duty in regard to war1 is
to be discussed at the Church Congress. That is right
For a year the heads of our Church have been telling us
what war is and does— that it is a school of character, that
it sobers men, cleans them, strengthens them, knits their
hearts, makes them brave, patient, humble, tender, prone
to self-sacrifice. Watered by ' war's red rain,1 one bishop
tells us, virtue grows; a cannonade, he points out, is an
* oratorio ' — almost a form of worship. True ; and to the
Church men look for help to save their souls from starving
for lack of this good school, this kindly rain, this sacred
music Congresses are apt to lose themselves in wastes of
words. This one must not — surely cannot, so straight is
the way to the goal It has simply to draft and submit a
new Collect, for war in our time, and to call for the reverent
but firm emendation, in the spirit of the best modern thought,
of those passages in Bible and Prayer-book by which even
the truest of Christians and the best of men have at times
been blinded to the duty of seeking war and ensuing it

Still, man's moral nature cannot, I admit, live by war
alone. Nor do I say, with some, that peace is wholly bad.
Even amid the horrors of peace you will find little shoots of
character fed by the gentle and timely rains of plague and
famine, tempest and fire ; simple lessons of patience and
courage conned in the schools of typhus, gout, and stone ;
not oratorios, perhaps, but homely anthems and rude hymns

62 The Psychology of Jingoism

played on knife and gun, in the long winter nights.
from me to 'sin our mercies,' or to call mere twilight dark.
Yet dark it may become. For remember that even these
poor makeshift schools of character, these second-bests,
these halting substitutes for war — remember that the
efficiency of every one of them, be it hunger, accident,
ignorance, sickness, or pain, is menaced by the intolerable
strain of its struggle with secular doctors, plumbers, inven-
tors, schoolmasters, and policemen. Every year thousands
who would once have been braced and steeled by manly
tussles with small-pox or diphtheria are robbed of that
blessing by the great changes made in our drains. Every
year thousands of women and children must go their way
bereft of the rich spiritual experience of the widow and the
orphan. I try not to despond, but when I think of all that
Latimer owed to the fire, Regulus to a spiked barrel, Socrates
to prison, Job to destitution and disease — when I think of
these things and then think how many of my poor fellow-
creatures in our modern world are robbed daily of the
priceless discipline of danger, want, and torture, then I ask
myself — I cannot help asking myself — whether we are not
walking into a very slough of moral and spiritual squalor.

Once more, I am no alarmist. As long as we have wars
to stay our souls upon, the moral evil will not be grave;
and, to do the Ministry justice, I see no risk of their drifting
into any long or serious peace. But weak or vicious men
may come after them, and it is now, in the time of our
strength, of quickened insight and deepened devotion, that
we must take thought for the leaner years when there may
be no killing of multitudes of Englishmen, no breaking up
of English homes, no chastening blows to English trade, no
making, by thousands, of English widows, orphans, and
cripples — when the school may be shut, and the rain a
drought, and the oratorio dumb. — Yours, &c.,

A PATRIOT.

August$o, 1900.

CHAPTER IV

VAINGLORY AND SHORT-K.HI

NGLOR^ i* a Tlianrfmriirtit ^h'ch a Jingo-

with the

len peoplf p*hihits fa common wit
child and the savage. The naive braggadocio
ol the latter, expressed in boastful claims and
(where imagination is strong) in detailed inven-

i of dangers and difficulties overcome
rightly regarded as a note of irrationality
rather th^t> of immnrality. Even Falstaffwith
his -J men in buckram half credits

story as he tells it : sheer self-assertion drives
the mind of the savagejorjdie child to multiply
s and (exaggenufr their size ; the
delusions are genuine, and telling them to
others feeds and strengthens them. Confront
such a child or savage with plain fact or figure,
ancfhe will in-tray a most extraordinary cunnin-
in avoiding it, so as to

which pampers that pride of personality which
is the roftt <*F t*i*fhftQ$ So with a people

64 The Psychology of Jingoism

which falls back on its barbaric nature and
gives it temporary dominion. Its loss of per-
spective, inability to test evidence, reversal" of
normal standards of value, make it a prey to
the crudest dupery and bring- it to a stat
mind which is as humorous as it is pitiful.

Tlu-rc is no plainer evidence of the denation-
alizing power of the war-spirit than the infantile
vanity which it sustains in contradiction of most
certain facts. Let me illustrate. A little before
the outbreak of war, when it was desirable to
show that the Boers were but a small minority
of the population in the Transvaal, they were
commonly set down at some sixty thousand
men, women, and children : the smallncss of
this number served to enhance the enormity
of the tyranny they were held to exercise, while
it stimulated interference by making coercion
seem easy. After the outbreak, whpn thing*
went badly with us, the same mob-mind _which
had swallowed the earlier figures found no
difficulty whatever in believing that these
Boers, with the Free Staters and rebels, had a
force in the field amounting to eighty thousand,
or even a hundred thousand adult males. In
point of fact, history Is likelyto arrive at the
conclusion that we despatched nearly a quarter
of a million men against a foe which never

ml Sliortsight 65

is much as forty thgusand all told.

indeed, no one who took the best available

s of the population of the Republics

of the 'ilMoya! Colony

could reach a higher figure. In view of :

icre not an exquisite humour in l>eal

made by the Dean of Canterbury in a send-off

sed to the East Kent Yeomanry,

rounding off an eloquent period by quoting

caulay's famous lines : —

And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his lathers

And the temples of his gods ?

The psychological puzzle is a most interesting
one. Here is a people, the great majority of
whom know quite well that our forces are
vastly superior in numbers to the Boers (their
indignation at the insolence of the ultimatum
being based chiefly on the smallness of the
people), that our soldiers are mostly profes-
sionals, thrirs amateurs ; that our control of the
material resources which ultimately decide a
war are incomparably greater ; and yet they
are capable of feeling the same sort of mental
elation when the tide of victory turns t«>\\\irJs

US as if \VC hail SlU-Crssful!)

66 The Psychology of Jingoism

or Russia. Instead of being astonished or
ashamed that our armjes_take^ so longl in
executing (most imperfectly as now appears)
a job the small size of which was plainly
recognized at the outset, and of visiting the
blame upon the Government or the generals,
the mind of thepeople is swollen with agenuine
pride~at our achievement, which seems^quite
capable of leading her, upon some slight pro-
vocation, into conflict with some strong Con-
tinental power. This exultation does not arise
from any consideration of the real difficulties
involved in such a campaign, conducted at so
great a distance from the base, but is simply a
savage burst of triumph such as carries men
to all absurdities or enormities in an hour of
victory.

This vainglory is even likely to lose us the
gain which might issue from our disastrous
experience. It is true that its presence does
not prohibit a sense of uneasiness, which
clamours for a radical reform of our military
system and a great increase of our army and
our navy — the logical contradiction involved in
this demand does not cause any difficulty. But
our childish self-esteem is such that the most
instructive criticism of our conduct of the cam-
paign, issuing, as it must, from Continental

V inglnrv ;uul Sliortsight 67

soldiers serving with the enemy, is lik< -ly not so
much to fall unheeded on our ears as to awa
a perverse resentment, which will prevent us
from accepting just those strictures which it
most important that we should accept
Close 1 il with this vainglory is a com-

plete cancelment of all sane, normal grasp of
the laws of moral causation ; as the one rests
on a distortion of vision, the other rests upon
a shortening of vision. The child and the
savage live in and for the present So does
the Jingo. This is the real explanation of his
view of 'settlement* — a short, sharp display
of physical force stamping out ' rebellion/ and
nded by an administration of 'good govern-
ment' under autocratic rule. This 'settle-
ment* is no result of reflection; it ignores all
the moral or ' sentimental ' factors which
practically direct history ; it is simply the hot-
headed resentment of a victorious foe eager to
quit the field of conflict and retire to rest or
revelry. A formal settlement, a superficial
pacification, can be effected by such means;
but to speak of ' finality ' in connection with
a settlement which feeds every root of hostility
in the conquered people, and merely prevents
cling from finding vent in violent conduct,
is simply to turn our back upon the plainest

68 The Psychology of Jingoism

lessons of all history. It is to substitute a
formal settlement adjusted to a five years*
fnrns for a rea) settlement of a permanent
character. Such shortsight, c<> with a

< mviction that a reign of force will bring
peace and contentment, is not really to be
dignified by the name ' policy ; ' it simply
wraps up in empty phrases about ' good
government ' and ' equal rights ' the primi-
tive savage lust of the victor in stamping on
a fallen foe, and dragging him in chains at
the back of his triumphal car. A lingo-ridden
people looks neither before nor

in and for the preg^nt P1n"^i like fither-hniles.

CHAPTER V

THE ECLIPSE OF HUMOUR

WITH the abandonment of a sane, constant,
>nal judgment the jingo loses all true sense
oihumour, and thus exhibits one more dis-
tinctive sign ol savagery] A tool public that

the recently-detected liars of the press, that
will belaud with adulation the very generals
who have been officially discredited, that will
commend the perfection of themilitary com-
missariat and hospitals upon The interested

: 'nrmy *tf frh* w>ry officials whoSC Conduct

is calledin question, while they ignore" the
Jc tailed, unprejudiced evidence of tKeFr own
liaTTstarved and neglected relatives at the
ftuiil, lhat will abuse the courage and the
prmyess of their fog, at the very time they are
lierly ualities of those who
fail to conquer them —a

jo The Psychology of Jingoism

and stands half-indignant, half-incredulous,
when it is exhibited as a laughing-stock to the
civilized peoples of the world, could surely
afford no more convincing proof of its mental
collapse.

When we charge the Boers with the very
illegalities and outrages of which we ourselves
are guilty, Europe flings in our la<& flic-net
unnatural taunt of ' hypocrisy,' and the virtuous
scorn which we exhibit in contemning the
taunt affords convincing proof to our critics.
For all that, ' hypocrisy ' fails to hit the mark ;
' hypocrisy' implies judgment and calculation,
and these are just the qualities which arc
eminently lacking ; ' hypocrisy ' ignores the
true humour of the psychology of Jingoi
An illustration will serve to make clear my
meaning. We are quite genuine in the in-
dignation we display against the Boers for
shooting our soldiers with 'explosive' bullets;
it is, we quite believe, a barbarous practice such
as \ve ourselves would not adopt. Now, even in
the midst of this indignation we are aware that
the so-called * explosive ' bullets qjrc» nor"Ex*
plosive, but expansive, and that there is no
evidence at all of any use of explosive bullets.
Somewhere in the background of our mind we
retain an uneasy recollection that the expansive

The Eclipse of Humour

bullet is a British invention, and that in i

ie Hague, in spite of the remonstrances ol
all the other Powers (except America), we

JnsisUul upon the ri-ht to use it. Most of u>
have failed to forget that, at the beginning of
the war, these expansive bullets were served
out to the troops sent out for active service.
Although the Hague Conference, by a decisive
vote on June 22nd, 1899, faacl condemned the
use of those bullets known k IV., Mr.

G. Wyndham, Under Secretary ol State for
War, in answer to a question in the House of
Commons, July nth, replied: 'Mark IV. has
been the service bullet for the TfiitMi Army
since February, 1898. ami as such h :
issued to our troops in South Africa.' It is
true ocT March 23rd of

1900, Mr. Wyndham said: 'Mark IV. was
the regulation bullet, and the original garrison
in South Africa had it ; but it was recalled, and

.or been issued in this campaign.'

Now, from the evidence of British officers,

we know that these bullets were not actually

recalled from use until January ;th — i.e. three

months after the beginning of the war — and

that General Baden-Powell, having no other

ammunition left, continued to use them after-

\ls in Mafeking. Many British troops were

72 The Psychology of Jingoism

captured during the early weeks of the war, and
much of our ammunition was taken by the
Boers. The latter have asserted that such
ansive bullets as they have used consist of
our captured ammunition, and it is known that
the ordinary Mauser ammunition served out at
the beginning of the war to the commandoes
was neither explosive nor expansive. When
Lord Roberts, on March nth, addressed to
the President of the two Republics his protest
against the use of 'explosive* bullets, con-
demning them as a 'disgrace to any civilized
Power/ he must have known (i) that Mr.
Treves and other eminent surgeons had not
only denied the use of ' explosive ' bullets, but
had reported : ' It is evident from their [i.e.
the Boers'] wounds that the Lee-Metford is
not so merciful as the Mauser;' (2) that Mark
IV. or Dum-dum bullets had been in use by
our troops when their ammunition had been
taken, and (3) that the Webley expansive
revolver-bullet had been in general use at
Elandslaagte and elsewhere until a War Office
order was issued, dated March 28th, prohibit-
ing its use ' until further orders.'

All the available evidence tends to show
that we invented and used expansive bullets
against the Boers, and that such expansive

The Eclipse of Humour 73

bullets as they used were taken from us. In
face of such evidence we charge the enemy
with explosive bullets, and are righteously

indignant at his doing so.

Yet this is not rightly styled hypocrisy ; it is
m< ntal collapse, accompanied by an absence of
common sense of humour which, in normal
minds, aids reason in detecting palpable incon-
sistencies or absurdities.

Were it worth while, we might adduce an
almost infinite variety of inst of this

mental confusion exhibiting itself in grotesque
reasoning. Had our personal feelings been
disengaged, no people would have been quicker
tlun ourselves to recognize the heroic courage
of two such nations standing up in bold
challenge for their rights against the largest
•ire of the world. At the opening of the
however, it was the smallness of the
people that particularly roused our indignation
at the insolence ; it seemed to us that confidence
of bearing and audacity of language were rights
appertaining only to ' Great Power It

might seem reasonable that the success of the
Boers, not merely in resistance, but in attack,
should tend to reduce our sense of their
insolence. Not so, however; we continue to
harp upon the smallness of their numbers as a

74 The Psychology of Jingoism

grievance. Just as so small a people had no
right to issue such an ultimatum, so now armies
so small have no claim to be treated as armies,
but only as bands of marauders, guerillas, etc.
Considering our difficulty in tackling our tiny
adversary, it might appear somewhat mean, as
well as irrelevant, to abuse him for his small-
ness ; but such meanness and irrelevance belong
to the Jingo spirit, and furnish to bystanders its
most exquisite humour. To call it * hypocrisy '
is to spoil. its flavour. It is the genuineness of
our conviction that * rights' go T)y"siz'yi> which
makes the essence^ rtlfl gflfe. « Small people
have small rights,' is to us just now a quite
self-evident proposition. The humour which
other people see in our charges of cowardice
against the Boers because they won't stand on
the sky-line and let us shoot at them, or come
out and mass on the open within range of our
guns ; the various allegations of unfair fighting
we bring against them ; the Times with its
deprecation of our excessive 'leniency1 and
'humanity;' the 'bogus' plots against Lord
Roberts ; the entire detailed procedure of ' a
war undertaken in the cause of justice and
civilization ' — the lambent humour of all this
is unfortunately lost to us in our dull ferocity ;
but it is there, and others see it.

The Eclipse of Humour 75

It is precisely in these detailed follies, and
not in the l.ir^n .vork, that history re-

peats itself. There is a full page of the Bigelow

/>*rs bearing on the Mexican War which
study for its minute exposure of the
sort of humour which our conduct is just now
providing for the gaiety of nations : —

Afore I came away from home I had a strong persuasion
That Mexicans worn't human beans, an ourang-outang

nation,

A sort of folks a chap could kill an' never dream on't arter,
No more'n a fellowM dream o* pigs that he hed bed to

alarter.

I'd an idee that they were built arter the darkee fashion all,
An' kickin' colored folks about, you know, 's a kind o'

nation
But wen I jined I worn't so wise ex that air Queen o'

Shecby,
, come to look at 'em, they ain't much diff'rent from

what we be,

here we air ascrougin' 'em out o' their own dominions,
Ashcltcrin' 'em, as Caleb sez, under our eagle's pinions,

i means to take a feller up jest by the slack o' 's

trowsis,

walk him Spanish clean right out o' all his homes an*

houses;
Wai, it does seem a curus way, but then hooraw fer

Jackson 1

It must be right, fcr Caleb sez it's regular Anglo-Saxon.
The Mexicans don't fight fair, they say, they pU'n all the

water,

da amazin* lots 'o things that isn't wat they oughter ;

7 6 The Psychology of Jingoism

Bein' they haint no led, they make their bullets out of
copper

An' shoot the darned things at us, which Caleb sez ain't
proper;

He sez they'd ougK to start right up an' let us pop 'em fairly

(Guess when he ketches 'em at thet, he'll hev to git up
airly).

Thet our nations bigger 'n theirn art so its rights air bigger^

An' thet if s all to make 'em free that we air pullirt trigger.

Thet Anglo-Saxondom's idee's abreakin' 'em to pieces,

An' thet idee's thet every man does just wat he damn
pleases ;

Ef I don't make his meanin' clear, perhaps in some respex
I can,

I know thet * every man' don't mean a nigger or a Mexi-
can.

Read Dutchman for Mexican, and the senti-
ments of Hosea Bigelow are seen to be identical
with those of our own Yellow Press and of
1 British South Africa/

The bankruptcy of national humour is, how-
ever, best exhibited in two convictions obsti-
nately planted in the Jingo mind. The first
is a general belief in the 'badness' of the
Boer, of such sort that, when an inventive
press produces any new specific but unsup-
ported charge, as of shooting prisoners, poison-
ing wells, firing on ambulances, we know that
it is true, because it is just the sort of thing
' the wicked Boer would do/

The Eclipse of Humour 77

1 Never forget to slander those you have
This self-protective instinct in a
nation which has reached a :\ sta^e in

the evolution of morals is aptly illustrated by
Mr Gilbert Murray in the following fabler-
Consider the fowls of the air. A very pretty small bird,
the great Tit, when hungry, will lift up its beak, split open
its brother's head, and proceed to eat his brains. It might
t>e satisfied, think you ? Not at all ! It has a moral
: c, you must please to remember, which demands to be
satisfied as well as the physical. When it has finished its
brother's brains, it first gets very angry and pecks the dead
body ; then it flies off to a tree and exults. What is it
angry with, and why docs it exult ? It is angry with the
profound wickedness of that brother, in consequence of
which it was obliged to kill him ; it exults in the thought of
its own courage, firmness, justice, moderation, generosity,
and domestic sweetness.0

Depend upon it, the comedy thus provided
is not lost upon our Continental neighbours,
and it helps to swell the humour of another of
our Jingo attitudes — our claim that the achieve-
ments of our arms in South Africa redound to
the military prestige of the Empire. 'See
how all our Colonies rally round us, how brave
and enduring are our soldiers, how skilful our
commissariat, how scientific our generalship,
how firm and successful our career of conquest."
Our neighbours are convinced that we are
* International Journal cf Ethics, October, 1900.

7 8 The Psychology of Jingoism

fully conscious of our real defects, and that we
are assuming this bold, triumphant pose in
order to brave it out ; and, being thus con-
vinced, they miss the full humour of the pro-
ceeding. For we are quite genuine in our
quaint persuasion that we are heaping glory on
ourselves, and are establishing a splendid
prestige in the eyes of the world : the contempt
of European nations is, we feel certain, a mere
affectation bred of jealousy, while their un-
concealed hostility is proof of the real respect
which our prowess has produced.

The psychical root-cause of this collapse of
humour, with the extraordinary misjudgments
to which it lends itself, is the total eclipse of
sympathetic imagination involved in the self-
absorption of the fray. The Jingo spirit is
a blind fury, which disables a nationfrom
fl-ettinft outside itself or recognizing the im-

p«i*ml nprv-fnfr>r [p annf-Vi^r Here IS tHe

quintessence of savagery, a complete absorp-
tion in the present details of a sanguinary
struggle inhibiting the mental faculties of imagi-
nation and forethought which are the only
safeguards of a policy.

CHAPTER VI

THE INEVITABLE IN POLH

THE crude form of religious superstition, the

reversion to belief in ' England's God/ a

>arian tribal deity who fights with and for

our big battalions, has already been sufficiently

described. It remains, however, to direct

ntion to a quasi-philosophic superstition

>ked to aid and abet our aggressive policy.

The doctrine of ' the inevitable ' is not new,

nor is it confined to the larger issues of public

animating its responsibility for success and
fa'Uure, imputing to itself1 as fl persopal m/>n'f
apYthlPtf tt&F turns out well. ejcplt>'"'"pr a

by reference to the

inherent * cussedness ' of external thin-s.
What teacher'is not familiar with thr naive
; action, " I got this sum right, but the other
one would come wrong ' ? The same sense of
marked by an utter repudiation of per-
sonal responsibility, is illustrated by the theory

79

8o The Psychology of Jingoism

of the total depravity of inanimate objects, which
most domestic servants embody in the familiar
phrase, ' It came to pieces in my 'and'

No one can follow up the various forms
assumed by this doctrine, as illustrated in
private life, without perceiving its one-sided
application. The things that we ' cannot
help* are always the things that go wron^T
Now, this 'heads I win, tails you lose1 philo^
sophy is not conclusive to reflecting persons,
even where their private affairs form the
subject-matter. In^ politics jt is noteworthy
that the 'inevitable* is alwavsevoked to
defend a primd facie bad case. The doctrine
is as old, far older, than ' politics ' itself ; early
thinkers gave it concrete support from ' astro-
logy,' imputing * disasters ' of a very human
origin to the malign conjunctions of heavenly
bodies, or locating 'the inevitable1 in the
mischievous will of some offended deity, or in
some fateful power transcending even the
divine. In recent times it comes up with a
new garb, a new pomp of phraseology. New
England Puritanism seems largely responsible
for the language of the latest revival, the stern
lu-ic of Calvinism tending to transmutfijjjoyi-
dcncc into, a harder... sort of destiny. At any
rate, it is significant that the doctrine of

The Inevitable in Politics

^Klanilcst DestinyJ defined not inaptly by
the humourist Josh Billings, asj the science of
going to the devil before you yet there/ first
assumed prominence ^s 3t condgfnnflrioD of one
nf ft* tpost indefeqgible acts of American

lory — the Mexican War.

A pseudo-scientific view of history has been
used to support this new predestinarianism in

politics. In pre-scientific days nations and

m.livifliialQ qmting the lands of other people
— for example, the buccaneers and advei
of the great Tudor age— did not prate of mani-
^lestiny, or seriously plead * the mission of
quite recent times history
showed little else than the lusts and interests
of individuals, classes, nations, working naked
and unashamed in a world of chances; the
1 reign of law ' was little recognized in the
affairs of men. Even nowadays the actual
men who play so important a part in poll;
as diplomatists, administrators, concession-
mongers, are quite aware that the events
which most concern them are anything but
^inevitable ' — that it is a very ' touch and
go ' affair whether they get What they waflt or
not, a matter of carfeftllly balancSTmovesjind
counter-moves, plotting ana contriving ; though
some of these are discreet enough in their

G

82 The Psychology of Jingoism

public utterances to^employ the phraseology of
sham-scientific history, and talk oTThe
of civilization/ imputing to ' movements,1
pendencies/ and ' forces' the events which
arc actually clue to the conscious will of indi-
vidual ir

Much of the vogue of 'the inevitable' is
attributable to the sloppy thinking of popular
historians, who, instead of applying modern
conceptions of causation to enforce hnman
responsibility, as they rightly do, use them to
to exclude both individual and collective wilt
as operative causes from the sphere of politics.
Even writers of the well-earned reputation of
Sir John Seeley and Mr. C. H. Pearson have
sometimes lent their authority to a view of
history which sees it composed of great tidal
movements of economic or racial forces making
for a partition of the earth which shall give
such and such dominion to Russia or to Anglo-
Saxondom, or marking out for China or the
Negroid races certain portions of the globe as
their predestined heritage.

This view of history lends itself to dramatic
treatment and literary men are apt to play
with it. A good illustration is the description
which Victor Hugo gives of the actual working
of events in the French Revolution, in his
book ' Ninety-three ' :—

I IK- IIK \ u.ilik- in Politics 83

.s was a miracle- working wind. To be a member of

'onvention was to be a wave of the ocean. This was
^eatest. The force of impulsion came

on high. .1 in the Convention which

was that of all, and yet not that of any one person. This

was an Idea, an idea indomitable and immeasurable,
which swept from the summit of heaven into the darkness
below. We call this Revolution. \v.. :» that Idea passed,
it beat down one and raised up another ; it scattered this
man into foam, and dashed that one upon the reefs. This
Idea knew whither it was going, and drove the whirlwind
before it. To ascribe the Revolution to men is to ascribe
the tide to the waves. The Revolution is a word of the
unknown. Call it good or bad, according as you yearn

•ds the future or the past, but leave it to the power
which caused it. It seems the joint work of grand events
and grand individualities mingled, but it is in reality the
result of events. Events dispense, men suffer. Events
dispense, men sign— Desmoulins, Danton, Murat, Grcgoire,
and Robespierre are mere scribes. The great and mys-
terious writer of these grand pages has a name — God ; and
a mask Destiny. The Revolution is a form of the eternal
phenomenon which presses upon us from every quarter, and
which we call Necc

This striking and instructive passage dis-
closes the very heart of the fallacy. In the
earlier sentences Hugo comes near to a t

explanation of the ar^nal phf»nnmpnnn-~yiy_ a

rfliirgg frf fVPnfg, which y^ms jp transcc
;jnl'v"llinl conscious direction, suggesting the
t r "•• *»aiic*», *he opgrationjofa general or cdlec-

tjvn will, which he iu [ i:;iv, ;.r!\ , ..!:; > 1

84 The Psychology of Jingoism

But carried away by a dramatic frenzy, and
wishing to emphasize the compulsion of this
sway upon the individual, Tie places the motive
power outside the will alike of individual and
collective man, and so plunges into the
doctrine of the Inevitable.

But surely, it will be said, a sound scientific
view of conduct does legitimize the doctrine
of ' the inevitable ; ' there are * laws ' and
1 forces ' of which philosophic historians must
rightly take account. And this is true. The
mistake consists in regarding the Maws' and
'forces' as powers external to the mind of
man. The only direct efficient forces in history
are human motives. How, then, arises this
inhuman, or suprahuman, conception of 'the
inevitable'? It arises in the following way:
A number of different persons, groups, or
classes — princes, politicians, soldiers, etc. — each
seeking some particular end, form, by co-opera-
tion and interaction, a complicated plan of
policy, the whole of which is not visible or
conscious to any one of the participants. The
historian, seeing the resultant line of action,
and the clear-cut pattern which it takes,
abstracts this design, and, knowing that it does
not proceed from the full conscious agree-
ment of the agents, places it wholly outside

Tin- IiK-vituMe in Politics 85

r wills, and calls it 'inevitable9 or
•destiny.'

The stress of party politics makes this view

a highly serviceable weapon of defence. When

nan asks, in some concrete case of

public conduct, ' Is it right to lie, steal, kill ? '

and wishes to press home some commonly

accepted rule of right or wrong, praise of

doctrine of ' the inevitable ' is cast

in his face ; he is told that it is idle to enter

minutely into the morals of a 'policy* which

.} accordance with the natural evolution of

events, or to scrutinize closely the pain, cm

and individual injustice which are involved in

:e historic workings.

Let us test this doctrine as it has been
applied to the South African War. The par-
ticular merits of the diplomacy of 1899, whether
Ch^berhunT6r"_Kruger was the more dishonest
or, i invalidity of the particular

ices which Uutlanders were said to suffer,
the genuin. :-.-• ; ;!;•• >!• ::: i ! : : :

JJutch

conspiracy — these, it is contend.- !. : :. : •

jgajly vital issues ; they do not furnish a real

expjanation or justification for the waf^ * The

iggle between two opposed ideals, twcTTn"-

riKIe systems, Wa5 MUhd to come soonct

86 The Psychology of Jingoism

or later; the racial and economic antagonisms
between" Boer and Briton were irreconcilable ;
the affair is rightly regarded in the lar
of a conllict of races, in which the race of louver
social efficiency must yield place to the race of
higher social efficiency. Nineteenth-century
civilization was destined to destroy the obso-
lescent civilization of the sixteenth century.'

Such is the jargon which ' sociologists ' offer
as a screen for the naked iniquities of aggressive
war. A condensed statement of this 'philo-
sophy ' is comprised in the following sentences
of the little volume in which M. Demolins dis-
cusses the question, ' Boers or English : Who
are in the Right ? ' —

When one race shows itself superior to another in the
various externals of domestic life, it inevitably, in the long

run, gets the upper hand in public life, and cstablishes~~lts
predominance. Whether this predominance is asserted' by
peaceful means or feats of arms, it is none the less, when the
proper time comes, officially established, and afterwards
universally acknowledged I have said that this law is the
only thing which accounts for the history of the human race
and the revolution of empires, and that, moreover, it
explains and justifies the appropriation by Europeans of
territories in Asia, Africa, and Oceana, and the whole of
our culunial

M. Demolins concludes that 'the present
struggle between the Boers and the English is

The IiK-vitiNc in Politics 87

rely a ir ition of this law ' — a formula

which relieves him of the necessity of even

single page any of the at
concrete issues that have arisen between the
Transvaal and Great Britain. England hap-
pens, through her colony, to be the nearest
neighbour of the Transvaal, and, since neigh-
bourhood of nations implies conflict, England
was bound to measure her strength against the
Tiflflfivaal and to assert her predominance;
being of superior social efficiency, she is abl
conquer, and has the right to do so. It matters
nothing, according to M. Demolins, whether the
particular quarrel which the nation of superior
social efficiency picks with its weaker neighbour
is justifiable or not; the law of competition
among nations rises superior to such details.
Some one objects, and seeks to raise questions
such as, * What is the standard of social effi-

cy according To which you prdnSUTTCe
I1- -I:' :i . iviT: it! >:) :i; «V->r t . " r : >:' Iv •
conditions of life in tin: Transvaal ? What
right has Britain to determine in her own cause
tiie relative social superiority ? Will the socially
superior nation retain this superiority intac
she spreads it over an unlimited area of terri-
tory taken forcibly from other peoples whom
she is bound to rule by force?1 But to M.

88 The Psychology of Jingoism

Demolins and his sort all such questions are as
irrelevant as is the question of the honesty of
the avowed motive for such «i conflict. For
the patinn pf superior social ^Hiciency 'inevi-
tably gets the upper hand.' — from whiclTTie
and his fellow-thinkers argue backwards that
when you see a nation getting the upper hand
of another, 'by peaceful means or feats of
arms ' (a matter of perfect indifference which
method is adopted !), you are aware that that
nation is endowed with superior social efficiency
and is fulfilling an inevitable law, is ' in the
right/ according to the only sense that phrase
can bear.

I give M. Demolins's argument this promi-
nence, not merely because the book is advertised
as * British Colonial Policy scientifically vindi-
cated by a prominent Frenchman/ but because
the argument does really formulate the feeling
by which many Englishmen have been induced
to brush aside the doubts and qualms arising in
connection with the conduct of the Colonial
policy of the British Empire by pushful states-
men. The ' inevitable ' is a complete sedative
of the old conscience, and, when convenient
phrasemongers can identify it with ' the right,'
it may even ' run ' a new conscience of its
own.

The I' !>k- in Politics 89

Let me conclude by a brief statement of
more salient falsehoods which underlie the
argument of M. Demolins in its application to
the South African v, ir. I n the first place, there
no antagonism or fundamental mrojpjatr,
bTTIty of races, ideglg| or gvftfrmQ ^>H>f^>n the
olonies and Boer Republics. I )utch
and British settlers \vm- divided I»y tin: MUM
lines of cttstmctiveTv ^fiongrmc cTeavagfe in
the Republics as in the Colonies — the Dutch,
rural population, cultivating the soil ; the
dwellers in the towns, concerned with
the peaceful competition of snrial iH«yig
:oms, languages, which was rapidly assi mi la-
y^gflift^g£inffln1e<iT^^^(^olonies, had already
made a^defiiiitebegiijiniiigLiiLthef Republics ; the
cesses of silent assimilation were going on
with satisfactory rapidity, until menaces and
open violence interrupted them. The Dutch
and British races have, as might be expected
from their origin, fused easily and advan-
tageously in England, in the United States,
and, until lately, in Cape Colony ; the social
and other divergencies were not those of the
jenth and the nineteenth centuries, but
merely of the mushroom civilization of the
industrial town and the simpler, ruder
conditions of cat tie -farm ing in a land where

go The Psychology of Jingoism

large farms and consequent social isolation
were necessary. The differences of political
and legal system between Colonies and Re-
publics, of which so much has been made,
were very slight in comparison with wh.u
they held in common — the common impress of
Roman Dutch law upon the administration of
justice and its embodiment in similar statutes,
the common system of local government, etc.
Until the friction of the last few years occurred,
the process of fusion was continuous and visible
everywhere, slower in the Transvaal than in
the Free State, in the Free State than in
the Colony, but everywhere proceeding at an
accelerated pace as railway and other com-
munications gave more mobility to the popula-
tion, and brought home a genuine identity of
interests and the need of growing federation
of States, for economic and social, if not for
definitely political, purposes. The alleged
'inevitability* of conflict from rooted anta-
gonism of systems is a mere piece of verbiage,
the falsity of which was brought home to me
most powerfully during my investigation of
the political situation on the spot in the
months preceding the war. The situation, with
its approaching catastrophe, visibly resolved
itself, not into externally compelling forces, but

The Inevitable in Politics 91

into certain moral factors of individuals, and
groups of individuals, chiefly con of

ignorance, greed, and person mosity.

The inevitable was not responsibl the

misconduct Of Shifty

and Kruger, or for

under the Convention, the r« jection by our

•0MM^^toMMMMM^BflV^^^l>IIHTll*T^Vl^*^^'^BHHIIIIIB**|l^n^**H /" 1

statcsp.v n <>i arbitration di ;i means of settle-

t upon crnnnHs ef nanrev
themselves a proper subject for a Court
Arbitration. There was nothing 'inevitable^
in thf> ^t>ricatinn nf defa>"pfl falseb|Q^jfl by
which British and Dutch colonists alike were
incited to hostility, and by whirh tfo^ public
it Rrjfain wsM? manipulated
in the interests of men who were calculating

the 'profits1 they stood to make l,y war.
The warlike preparations made on either side,
the voting of supplies, the sending out of
troops accompanied by Jingo trumpeting—
these specific acts which made for war were
none of them inevitable. The only point
where I was brought into direct experience
of anything which bore the semblance of ' in-
ibility ' was in the tone and demeanour of

92 The Psychology of Jingoism

Sir Alfred Milner, who spoke, wrote, and acted
if he recognized himself the chosen instru-
ment of a plan to force a crisis in South Africa.

The only display of destiny was in the per-
verse will of niSii ; eveiy tiling which, to the idle
sprctal« ••-. ;ned to indicate the 'inevitable,'
resolved itself into human motives.

Aswe were told war was inevitable. JSQ we
are told annexation js inevitable. In the name
of inevitability we are invited to banish justice
and reason, whose protests are silenced by the
false finality implied in the term. The distinc-
tion between true and false laws of causation,
as applied to national conduct, is here made
manifest. Politicians invoke ' the inevitable '
for some brief expediency or some convenient
emergency ; summoned in order to bless the
lust of the moment, it remains to curse. The
true laws of the Inevitable are not seen in
short bursts of passion and the conduct they
impel, but in the long rhythms and compen-
sations of reason and justice. That abuse,
which is nothing less than the impudent
negation of international morality, a quasi-
scientific sanction of collective theft, does not
impair by one jot or one tittle the literal validity
of the true law.

The great masterpieces of literature have

The IiK-vitaMc- in Polit 93

rpreted the real nature of the Inevitable
as it shows in history. This conception

I the Greek dramatists under the form
of Nemesis, the law of life whereby the past
misconduct of a man, or its foot-

steps to its final fall. How powerfully do they,
and with them the father of history, Herodotus,
convey the lesson of the Hybris of Imperialism
in the case of Persia ! The following words of
Sophocles surely deserve the consideration of
Mr. Chamberlain and his big Englanders :
4 Insolent infatuation begets the Tyrant. In-
solence, if it be idly overfed with unseasonable
and excessive food, ascending to a heady pro-
montory, plunges into the sheer abyss of the
Inevitable ( Anagki) where it can find no footing
wherewith to walk/

Such laws of the Inevitable, of which the
Greeks had prophetic glimpses, we can see
governing the lives of all great empires of the
past ; and yet, following the same road, we
hope to escape the same fatal goal. This
hope is itself the fruit of 'infatuation'; the
danger-point of Empire is already reached
when Hybris so swells the head and corrupts
the intelligence as to suggest that we alone of
Empires possess some special skill to dodge
the inevitable.

94- The Psychology of Jingoism

Nowhere is this corruption of intelligence
more plainly seen than in the short-ran-c
finality attributed to annexation as a 'settle-
ment/ Seen rightly, the crime called annex-
ation is an absolute pledge of permanent
unsettlement, by the natural operation of
human motives. If the guilt of this war lay
mainly with the Boer peoples, who, animated
by vain ambitions, had themselves unworthily
sought Empire, and the expulsion of British
rule from South Africa — if they had planned
and plotted for this end, as the financial-poli-
ticians and their journalists still assert (without
adducing a tittle of sound evidence) some con-
sciousness of the justice of their heavy punish-
ment would win its way into their hearts and
sap their indignation : thus annexation might
have become settlement. But this is not the
case; the Boers are conscious of no such guilt,
nor will they in long years of subjugation
*tecognize the justice of their punishment.
Annexation is not for them a Nemesis, the
retribution of a lustful career, the penalty
of an ambition that o'erleapt itself. On the
contrary, the passionate sense of injustice will
preserve and feed the sentiment of nationality ;
and all who know the Boers, as friends or
enemies, are agreed, whatever other qualities

The IiuvitaMc in Politics 95

of good or evil they impute to them, that one

stands out pre-emii
know how to \v

The Nemesis brings out another

of 'the iiu-vitaMe.' Tragedy teaches

how hard a thing it is to kill a man. History

teaches how much harder it is to kill a nation.

There are two lines hi a doygeiei sun^, idling

the story of a famous martyr in the cause of
freedom, the American John Brown, which, by
a single stroke of passionate genius, convey the
powerful truth : —

John Brown's body lies a-mouldcring in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on.

In Shakespeare's tragedy the ghosts of the
ms of oppression, the murdered ones,
appear on the eve of the catastrophe to con-
found, enfeeble, and unnerve the tottering
tyrant.

There are those who think yet that, I
can shoot down enough flfo'w an<* cftftfcejTie
bodies of the others, all will go well ; nationality
will thus be slain, the spirit 01 the Republics

it it is no idle rhetoric, it is the clear spinal
teaching of history, which assures us that the
soul of the nations we are bent on slaying will

96 The Psychology of Jingoism

not die ; that they will dog our footsteps in the
dark and tortuous path of our Imperial career;
that they will come upon us in an hour of
weakness, when, enfeebled by a parasitic life
of Empire, we are entangled in the meshes of
our world-wide ambitions, and will help to
paralyze us by their sudden presence, un-
nerving us in the final struggle, and bringing
home to us the true meaning of the inevitable
in politics.

CHAPTER VII

ARE EDUCATED JINGOES HONEST ?

To many this outbreak of Jingoism has been
peculiarly serviceable in revealing the tru<-
acter of friends and acquaintances. In
some cases the revelation has been peculiarly
painful, because it has raised suspicions as to
the intellectual honesty of men and women
whom they have respected in the past, and to
whom they have been attached by many bonds
of fellowship. Some, it is true, urge them to put
aside such suspicions as ' unworthy/ saying :
" Surely you can admit that persons may differ
from you, even on a vital issue like this, without
imputing dishonourable motives to them. You
havejio more right to regard th?ir convictions
they have to denounce

Now, this advice is generous ; how far is it
just ? The question of intellectual honesty is

97 n

98 The Psychology of Jingoism

a somewhat subtle one, and is not to be deter-
mined in an offhand way. It does not arise in
any real shape in the Jingoism of the ' masses,'
which no one seriously pretends is based upon
any information or understanding of the actual
issues. The ebullition of passion there is
merely temperamental violence, without any
real substratum of intellectual conviction.
' Avenge Majuba.1 stirs^fiercgly the minds
of lm^n ™fr^ haw no fcowledge of the
historic incident. 'Save the British Empire'
provokeT^cweiful.Jjgeling amongTthose who
mi^rl "^*J^5n namp - 011r fflfti?r colonies- and
know nothing of the danger to which that
Empire is or is not exposed. This childish
patriotism, untempered by knowledge, is a
dangerous force in the hands of unscrupulous
politicians, but it contains nothing that can be
calleoT dishonest ; the hypnotic influence of
certain phrases upon the mob-mind can hardly
be dignified by such a term.

But how is it with educated persons who
have abandoned themselves to the same
passions, and who profess to be ' convinced '
of the justice and inevitability of the war?
Are they equally honest in their ' con-
victions ' ? Here one distinction must be
made upon the threshold of the inquiry.

Are Educated Jingoes H^IK r ? 99

Dishonesty, in the sense of professing to
believe what one does not really believe, is
very rare at all times ; in this matter it may
be safely regarded as undeserving of considera-
tion. Those who profess to believe the war to

its.

question. Have they., used
such reasonable care in
of Hie evidence as

.est judgment f The most respectable case,

made out for those persons who
have said : ' I have neither time nor ability to
go into the merits of the matter ; but I know
that we have had in Sir A. Milner a competent,
impartial man upon the spot He has made
a thorough investigation, and I accept his
judgment. This ^^pUnfie of authority is

^erous, but it implies no dishonesty ;

where it is excessive, it is culpable indiscretion.

4 The man who knew Milner at Oxford,' or

others who have been impressed by the general

approval of his career and talents, are clearly

tied to give some weight to his audio:

t weight, however, is diminished if the

admirer has had the time and opportunity to

read the actual despatches which the High

Commissioner has written, for they bear upon

ioo The Psychology of Jingoism

their face signs of bias and of passion so clear

as rightly to evoke suspicion. The e<

man who falls back upon Sir A. Milner is,

however, indisputably in the strongest position
of defence.

But this is not the normal intellectual position
of the educated Jingo. He professes to be con-
vinced from evidence of the corruption of the
Boer oligarchy, the reality of the Outlander
grievances, and of the danger to British power
in South Africa from a Dutch conspiracy, and
of the right these facts gave us to coerce and
annex the Republics. Now, here again we
may discriminate. The minds of many so-
called educated persons arejsojgnsfifriteci tW
a conviction simply means that a certain quantity
of evidence of some sort or other has been put
before them, or merely that a statement has
been reiterated many times. Many persons
are convinced that tin-re was a Boer conspiracy,
and can even tell you what it was and what it
aimed at. in. the same manner as they are con-
vinced that CuhiKiii's is the best mustard, and
Bryant and May's the best matches. The
minds o7 such persons area hopeless prey
_to political financial intriguers, who can control
a sufficient number of newspapers and of other
avenues of public information. These persons

Arc Educated Jingoes Honest? 101

get their convictions honestly, though these
convictions can hardly be termed inul
tual.

The case of others is different. Persons of
more ability, accustomed in their business or
profession to weigh evidence and to discrimi-
nate, have, in many instances, refused to apply
these reasonable tests to the evidence submitted
to them on this issue. How many of us have
had the experience of offering an ir book

or pamphlet to an educated Jingo, and receiving
th£ reply : ' This is pro-Boyr. I wil| not read
it.' JThe editors of Jingo journals have felt
quite safe in continuing to repeat the most
audacious falsehoods long after they have been
exposed, simply because they knew that their
readers, though perfectly aware that journals

:ed which gave another side, would not
look at papers which opposed the war. Now,

attitude of mind has been the rule, and not
the exception, among the classes which boast

r education and intelligence, and it is an
attitude of dishonesty. Many well-informed
Jingoes have been perfectly aware that certain
business interests in South Africa have a
powerful hold upon the press, and upon the
kinds of information which reach the people of
this country, and yet they have not cared to

102 The Psychology of Jingoism

endeavour to correct their judgment by going
to any other source.

All Englishmen capable of the least reflection
must have known that, in the nature of the
case, they were only hearing one side of the
matters at issue, and that some suspension of
judgment was reasonable. Every one of the
educated persons who are sothoroughly con-
vinced o^ the justice of our

that it is likely that the Dutch nation in
Holland, drawing nearly all their information
from Dutch South African sources, are animated
by a bias similar to, though not so strong
ours, have received a mass of evidence directly
contradictory to ours, and that their intellectual
judgment has been formed in a fashion similar
to ours.

"Vyilful disregard of these_f^9nsidprat'nns 'm-
plies dishonesty. That dishonesty is evinced
in, and illustrated by, specific cases of treatment
of evidence. An example is the value attached
to the interview which Mr. Theo Schreiner
alleged that he had with Mr. Reitz, the State
Secretary of the Transvaal, in which the latter
admitted the plan to work for an independent
Dutch republic. Here is a strong partisan,
an agitator by profession, who produces from
memory a long verbatim account of an

Are Edu Jingoes Honest ? 103

•view which took place eighteen years ago,
ami of which no notes were take-
time or afterwards. Now, such evidence would
cany no weight whatever either in an English
court of justice or in any ordinary affair of
private business ; on the contrary, the verbatim
character of the report would rightly discredit
it among reasonable men. Yet this has been
generally received as the best evidence for
Dutch conspiracy. The application thus
implied of a different standard of valuation
of evidence to this issue is sheer intellectual
dishonesty, for a man accustomed to test
evidence cannot apply this different standard
and not know that he is doing so. If it is
argued that he does not know it, then he has
permitted his normal intellect to be disordered
by passion, and the 'dishonesty* removed
from the specific instance is thrown back upon
the process of permitting passion to enter the
domain of intellect so as to usurp its functions.

PART II
The Manufacture of Jingoism

CHAPTER I

THE ABUSE OF THE PRESS

THK most momentous lesson of the war is its

<>n of the inL-ihods_by which a knot of

men, financiers and politicians, can capture the

mind of iuuilun. arouse its passion, and impose

a policy. It is now seen that freedom of

^Bpch»public meeting, and press not merely

affords no adequate protection against "this

danger, but that it, is" Itself menaced and
impaired ; the system of party, which Has

and

genuine scrutiny of every i: ., :!.:.: political
proposal, been a strong safeguard against all
endeavours of a clique or a class to exploit
the commonwealth, nas broken down under
the strain of an attack unprecedented in its
vigour and in the skiH~bf its direction. It
is of the gravest important- t > understand
the methods of this manipulation of the public

107

io8 The Psychology of Jingoism

mind, for the combination ofr" industrial and
-i>olitical forcea which has operated in this
instance will operate a ;ain, and will copy the
methods which have been successful once.

The information from South Africa which
impressed upon the public mind a conviction
of the justice and necessity of war, and which
aroused and sustained the passion of Jingoism,
did not flow freely into the country through
many diverse, unconnected channels, as is
commonly supposed. The extraordinary agree-
ment of the metropolitan and provincial press,
unionist and Liberal, religious and secular, ^in
its presentation of leading facts, in its diagnosis
of the situation and its pressure of a drastic
policy, is doubtless responsible for the un-~
• wavering confidence which the great majority
of the nation placed in the policy of the
Government at the outset of the war. Such
an amount of consentaneity seemed to attest
a case of overwhelming strength. When the
Government press was joined by the two
leading Opposition organs in London, and by
the great majority of important Opposition
papers throughout the country ; when the non-
political press, and, in particular, the most
powerful journals of the Churches, urged the
necessity of war, the doubts of intellect and

The Abuse of the Press 109

1ms of conscience in many minds were
l)Orne by such un.mimity.
When to this union of the press was added
the voices of a thousand pulpits and
ruction of a thousand platforms, where
cllcrs, missionaries, politicians, and philan-
thropists set forth substantially the same body
and drew the, *-uuc murals, th<-

Jbr way nrrmnd un^finiaVl

It is little wonder that people unacquainted

i the structure of the press, and with

hods of educating public opinion, should
have been imposed upon by this concurrence
of testimony. If the papers which they read,
and the speakers to whom they listened, had
drawn their facts and their opinions from a

iety of independent sources, the authority
they exercised would have been legitimate.
But what was the actual case ? Turn first
to the press, by far the most potent instrument
in the modern manufacture of public opinion.
The great majority of provincial newspapers,

1 most of the weeklies, metropolitan or
provincial, religious as well as political, derive
their ^formation regarding foreign and colonial
afikjfj i entirely ffntn the chiet London < dailies/
supplemented, in the case of the more impor-
tant organs, oy 'cables ' from the same soi:

no The Psychology of Jingoism

which supply the London * dailies.' Most
provincial papers take not only their news but
their 'views,' with abject servility, from the
London journal which they most admire.

In a very few instances, important pro-
vincial papers receive first-hand intelligence
from special correspondents of their own
by mail, but for all prompt intelligence they
are absolutely dependent upon the sources
above-mentioned. The otherwise miraculous
agreement of the British press is, thus, first
resolved into the agreement of a few journals,
chiefly in London, and of two or three press
agencies. We have next to ask from what
sources do these latter get their information ?
On this point the case of the South African
war is peculiarly instructive. All the leading
London papers received their South African
intelligence from correspondents who were
members of the staff of newspapers in Cape-
town and Johannesburg, supplemented in two
instances last year by information from special
travelling correspondents, who, in their turn,
derived most of that information from news-
paper officesin South Africa. In particular,
the "two t,ondon newspapers which exercised
most influence upon the mind of the educated
classes in this country, the Times and the

The Abuse- of the Press i i i

Daily News, were instructed, in the former
case, bvthe newlv-appointed editor of^ ;
Johannesburg Star, in the latter case by the

editor of the C//c- Tinu-s. The two cluef cable

companies also drew most of the Capetown

ligence from the Cape Times and the

Argus Company, while one of them was fed

Transvaal intelligence by a prominent

member of the Executive of the South African

League at Johannesburg.

The press unanimity in Great Britain is thus
traced to certain newspaper offices in Capetown
and Johannesburg. Now, if these half dozen
newspapers had been independent and reliable

md the forcible

r^jf?i

.r»:nfttv

,.

policy they im

and tiic i public rniiiht have rcasonablv

carried weight. But _thcy_ were neither inde-
pendent nor reliable ; they are members of a
Bought and kept press. The Cape Argus,
bought some years ago by Messrs. Rhodes,
Barnato, and Eckstein, is now the nucleus of a
Company, owning some half dozen papers in
South Africa, and among them the Star of
Johannesburg, whose editor instructed the
readers of the London Times in the necessity
of war. Since the capture of the Orange
Frc< the Company has strengthened

ii2 The Psychology of Jingoism

resources by obtaining from the British military
authorities the sole right to establish a news-
paper at Bloemfontein. The newspapers at
Kimberley and at Buluwayo are in the same
hands, and the Cape Times is financially con-
trolled by Mr. Rutherford Harris, a collea
of Mr. Rhodes in his several financial ventures.
The principal organs of public opinion at all
the political pivots in South Africa are thus
owned by the little group of men who also
own or control the diamond mines at Kimberley,
the gold-fields of the Rand, and the government
and resources of Rhodesia.

In a country like South Africa newspapers
are not in themselves either a safe or* a re-
muncrative investment ; and it may be safely
asserted that Messrs. Rhodes, Beit, Barnato,
and Rutherford Harris put money into tHesT"
newspapers for the same reason which induced
Messrs. Eckstein to establish last year, at
immense expense, the short-lived Tmiisiwal
Leader — the desire to control the public mind.
The business man in an English manufacturing
town, the country vicar, or the college don,
who has been convinced by the unanimity of
the provincial and the London press in record-
ing and endorsing the statement of Outlander
outrages, the Dutch conspiracy, the cowardice

The Abuse of the Press i i ;

the treachery of the Boers, etc., might
• had less confidence in his final judgn

known that he was reading news which
been fashioned for his reading by the
editors of Mr. Rhodes and of his business
associate, who had, in their capacity of company
directors, assessed the business value df a war

o this control of the press by business
f business purposes lies at the vef
root of 9

iuitc clear. We have traced the in-

n which corrupted the mind of the

ish public to a few South African journals

cd by the men who tried to ' rush ' the

Transvaal by treacherous force five years ago,

i admittedly moved by special business ends,

which they believed could be subserved by a

war conducted at the expense of the British

public. Now, these men do not write, though

they often inspire, the news and the articles of

press they own. The personal instrum<
of their educational policy are the editors of their
papers. It is by no means necessary to assume
these editors are corrupt or dishonest,
receiving pay, either from their employers or
from outside persons, in order to fabricate or
distort news or to write in a sense opposed to

I

H4 T'1C Psychology of Jingoism

their own judgment. That a corrupt and
reptile press exists, not only on the Continent,
but in great Britain and its colonies, in which
false and biassed matter is inserted by means
of proprietary compulsion or outside bribery,
is indisputable. But it is not necessary to urge
any such crude charge against Rhodesian
editors. Take the case of Mr. Garrett, editor
of the Cape Times, who is clearly entitled to
be considered one of the necessary men in
bringing about the war, inasmuch as his inflam-
matory cablegrams to the Daily News visibly
corrupted the policy of that powerful newspaper
and seduced to Jingoism a large section of
Liberals throughout the country, breaking the
party for effective criticism of the Government
policy in parliament and in the country. Mr.
Garrett is indignant when the impartiality and
independence of his position have been called
in question : he has had an absolutely free hand
and this was a condition of his employment.
The same is the case with Mr. Monypenny,
taken from the Times office to direct Mr.
Rhodes' paper in Johannesburg, and to feed
the most important paper in England at a most
critical epoch in our history. What is the real
worth of the protestations of these gentlemen ?
The answer is plain. When these editors \vere

The Abuse of the Press i i 5

appointed, it was ascertained that they fay9ured
the policy of the proprietors, and that they *

v.. 11! ! : - lH,i-!\ :•- work \ : ...n.u ,!y ,il •:. ; ;'.<•

desired lines ; if they departed icoi»4liMrtffies
the

would write what

out to Capetown or Johannesburg will natural! y
get his views and his informatio Ided by ^

• a the

him with 'exclusive infor-
mati< >n which he cannot check, an
him to m5P w^ gpp : TT> jllf* whflt 4 he

ought to kno\Y^ That the l.K.oil, the money,
an J the honour of Great Britain should b<
the mercy of talented young journalists floun-
dering about on the surface of a turbid sea of
politics and finance in a country quite strange
to them, is indeed a terrible reflection.

The control of the London press by the
Rhodesians is thus perfectly intelligible. It
is right to add that for purposes of popular
n they were particularly favoured by
the efforts of the Daily Mail, which enlarged
the bounds of London journalism in the
provinces, spreading its yellow light in regions
hitherto unapproached. Although the pro-
prietors of the Daily MaU haw> hffifl ^

n6 The Psychology of Jingoism

holders in the Chartered Company, and that

. ...

from the same sources as the rest of the great
London newspapers, such influences an
course, not essential to explain the Jingoism
of the cheap sensational press in any country.

In order to get an effective mastery of the
press, itjs only necessary for the operators to
purchase or control a certain number of in-
fluential papers, which shall be used to mark
a path of sensational policy and set tlv p.i <• :
the self-interest of yellow journalism will do
the rest.

It will be objected that too great an influence
is here imputed to the South African press.
* Surely/ it will be said, ' the facts and
opinions thus communicated are corroborated
from countless private sources of information.
These are not the views of a few newspapers
only ; the unanimous testimony of British South
Africa endorses them.' And this is true.

But what is the essential worth of these
feelings of British South Africans and of the
1 facts ' by which they support them ? Race
feeling, since the Raid, has been terribly em-
bittered, the minds of British and Dutch alike
( have been kept in a constant strain of hostile
receptivity, drinking in each idle story which

The Abuse of tin 1 117

ignorance or malice has invented to stimulate
antagonism. The mind of both races has
been little else than avast maw of cn-dulity,
incapable of testing statements or of w<
evidence.

Most of the South Africans whose state-
ments have been accepted here as independent
first-hand evidence have had a very narrow,
purely local, experience in some towns of the
Colony or the Republics ; very few have mixed
with the Boers, still fewer can speak the Taal.
The outlander of Johannesberg, in particular,
whose voice- was heard with so much respect
as proceeding from the spot, had virtually no
vledge of the Boer burgher population ;
and even the grievances of which he prated
so freely, he had learned from his newspapers
and his League. The slightest investigation
of the innumerable statements from South
Africa discloses the fact that nine-tenths of
evidence is the mere reproduction of the
paragraphs of those very newspapers which
I have named. e saloon, the club, the

train, and other common avenues of conv
in thfi york of propaganda :

politics, propagated by short stories and bar
tittle-tattle, contained perhaps one part of truth
to ten of loose embroidery.

1 1 8 The Psychology of Jingoism

The worth of such evidence, selected and
worked up for popular investment by a sensa-
tional press, is very small. The Dutch press
in the Transvaal, equally reckless and nearly
as corrupt, wrought in similar fashion, and an
examination of the popular opinion of Holland
would disclose a mass of anti-British evidence,
derived by methods parallel to those here
described. This fact alone might serve to
abate the overweening confidence which we
have felt in the consensus of 'British South
Africa/

Journalism does not exhaust the influence of
the press. Magazine articles and volumes in
which party politics paracles as History furnish
more solid food to. Jingo passion. Here again
the authority of 'British South Africa' has
been well-nigh absolute. Few magazines have
been willing to print a 'pro-Boer' article; and
'it is ho secret that even the genius of Olive
Schreiner could not get a hearing for what she
most cared to say in any important English
magazine. I speak from personal knowledge
when I say that the retail book trade, !<•<! by
V Messrs. Smith and Son, has done its i

^•VMM«aMMM*H0|V*IPM^a*M

'unpatriotic' literati. Those

familiar with the trade will understand how
injurious such obstructions are to the circulation

The Abusi it Press

of a book. 4 11. y you keep books dealing

with both sides of the South African questio
a lady asked a London bookseller. ' Madam/
was his reply, ' there is only one side for us —
that of our country.' This, the character
note of Mr. Chamberlain, the idem :i of

the war with British loyalty, has been firmly
stamped upon the press, and so upon the mind
of the people.

a free press •'" F"g1antL affording Ml a^i

discussion of the vital issues of

politics.

flow it stands in the Colonies, which have
exhibited so great an enthusiasm in the British
cause, the following statement from a well-
informed correspondent in Melbourne will
indicate: —

It is easy to explain Australian sympathy. The financial
groups have first secured the South African press, have then
secured the English press through its correspondents who
are on the staff of the South African press (and by pur-
chasing outright some London papers); and, fm.illy, have
secured the Australian press, which takes all its cablegrams
the Jingo press of London. The newspapers here all
take the same cablegrams from the same London corre-
spondents, pooling the expenses. The Australian people
herefore — and for many years hare been — ultra-Tory
and ultra-Jingo in their outside politics, although democratic
and progressive in their home politics. This system of

I2O The Psychology of Jingoism

cablegrams brings with it some grave dangers. I cannot
help feeling the force of some words of Lowell, written
many years ago, on this subject :—

* [The telegraph], by making public opinion simultaneous,
is also making it liable to those delusions, panics, and gre-
garious impulses which transform otherwise reasonable men
into a mob.'

The mischief is much accentuated where, as in Australia,
the metropolitan cities are so large in proportion to the
population of each colony, and the metropolitan papers are
so weighty in influence and so widely circulated. I have
just cut to-day, from a daily paper, the enclosed cablegram.
It is just of a kind to inflame the sentiments of Irish
Catholics, who, but for the cablegrams, would be inclined
to suspect the British conduct in forcing the war.

The ' enclosed cablegram ' reads as fol-
lows : —

BOER DESECRATION AND BURNING OF CHURCHES.

The Boers in Northern Natal, before evacuating New-
castle and Dundee, defiled and desecrated the Catholic
churches in those towns, and finally set fire to the buildings.

It only remains to add that the cabled state-
ment is absolutely destitute of truth, the product
of some lie factory in London or Melbourne.

The 'freedom 6T the press* in New Zealand
may be gauged from the case of Mr. G rattan
Grey. This gentleman was appointed leader
of the official reporting staff in the New Zealand
legislature, receiving a lower salary than his

The Abuse of tin Press i 21

predecessor on t ength of a wri:

agreement permitting him to contribute to the
press. Not long ago, , as correspon< !

to an American newspaper, Mr. Grey made
some criticism regarding the origin of the war
and the Jingo feeling of New Zcalaiul. When

paper was brought to the attention of the
Premier, the latter asked Mr. Grey to explain

conduct Mr. Grey pointed out that his
action was justified by the terms of his agree-
ment, but the Government appointed a Com-
mittee of conspicuously 'loyal ' members, which
recommended the dismissal of Mr. Grey. This
recommendation was adopted, and Mr. Grey
has lost his post.

The method of manufacturing loyal support
in our colonies for the war, or for any rash
exploit a British Government might choose to

itute, is particularly simple. The authori-

nformation set before the New Zealand

public, before and during the war — almost the

only information which was allowed to pene-

: their minds — came in the following manner.
The Colonial Office in London cabled to Mr.
Seddon, the New Zealand premier, whatever

s or opinions Mr. Chamberlain wished to
impose upon the colonial mind, and Mr. Seddon
communicated the matter thus obtained to all

122 The Psychology of Jingoism

the leading newspapers. What were the facts
Mr. Chamberlain would communicate, and
what the facts he would withhold, under such
circumstances, may be surmised by any one
familiar with his statements of the South
African issues in this country, where he has
been exposed to contradiction and to competi-
tion. Well may he glory in the 'loyal spirit'
of our colonies — the work of his own hands !

The earliest crop of English lies, the murder
of Mr. Lanham 'kicked to death' by brutal
Boers,* the lurid picture of the Rand refugees,
' men scourged with long rhinoceros whips ;
women struck with rifles, robbed, and reviled
with brutal oaths and jeers ; babes snatched
from their mothers' arms and flung back with
insults,1 f etc., were flourishing in Canada and
Australia this year, carefully nurtured by emis-
saries of the South African League sent over
to feed colonial loyalty.

What these war-makers have done must
be distinctly understood. They have passed,
through their kept South African journals,
upon the press of Great Britain and her
colonies, a continuous stream of falsehood,
partly distortion of facts, partly fabrication of

* Daily Mail, Oct. 9.
t Evening News, Oct. 7.

The Abuse of tlu I

lies, directed to bias the judgment and inflame
the passions of the people. These falsehoods
could not be corrected by those who knew the
truth, because the only avenues of effective
correction were the columns of the very press
which circulated the falsehoods, and they were
closed. Where some slight pretence of ' hear-
ing the other side' was maintained, as, for
mce, by The Daily News, the familiar
methods of editorial footnotes, precluding con-
tradiction, or of always awarding a ' last word '
to the Jingo, who used his opportunity to add
new falsehood, were persistently employed.

What is. ____

thecredit of r^***'' Even among

dieeducated

tendency to believe pnnted

persons arc far more profo

portance of printed than

As lar^c- new masses of the

>f spoken words.
population are brought within the range of
the newspaper or the book, the aggregate
'lectual credit of the press has expanded,
until it represents a vast sum. This intellectual
credit may either be economized and main-
tained by careful and accurate use of the press,
or it may be squandered The war-press,

124 The Psychology of Jingoism

having this immense fund-of popular confidenqg
tn draw upon, has recklessly abused its trust,
pouring misstatements into the public mind.
The credulity which swallows new lies from the
same sources whence issued the old detc
lies, the apparent indifference with which each
fresh detection is received, must not deceive
us. Public confidence buoyed by passion is
slow to fall, but the habit of mistrust once
established will ^rrow, until the credit of the
press sustains a fatal collapse.

Those papers which have lent themselves to
this unscrupulous enterprise are debasincrtbe

* L , *' ^^B^^^m^Jm^*

intellectual currency of print — one of the foulest
injuries which can be inllicted upon a civil
nation.

CHAPTER II

PLATFORM AND PULPIT

A BiASiED, enslaved, and poisoned press has
been the cniei engine for manufacturing Jingo-

. It has, however, been accompanied by a
corresponding abuse of platform and of pulpit
Free speech has been struck off from the roll
of British liberties during this wan fiTsc
scores of English and Scotch towns "publti
meetings, summoned to protest against the
war, were iJrotrn up by rowdyism, winked at

>nty; in a score oi ot

towns the police avowed their inability to
protect the conveners of a public meeting in
the exercise of their legal rights — a virtual
admission of a state of anarchy. In hundreds
of towns and villages all over the country men
and women who were known or believed to
entertain opinions unfavourable to the war

c subjected to personal assaults and insults;
their property was damaged, and the law gave

125

126 The Psychology of Jingoism

them neither protection nor redress. During
this reign of terror the country was flooded
with^ Imperialist ' lecturers, agents of the
South African League or its English branch,
the British South Africa Association, mine-
owners from Johannesburg, missionaries from
Cape Colon}', who toured the country, i>r<>'
in- to lecture on the history of South Al
and to set before the audience in some Literary
Institute, Chamber of Commerce, chapel,
church, or political club, their personal know-
ledge of the facts in South Africa.

The condition of the British mind is best
gauged by its discriminative treatment of Cape
Colonists. A fair-minded England would have
desired to give a free and equal hearing to the
representatives of both parties in our colony.
Instead of doing this, England gave free
speech to one section and repressed it in the
other. There is no more signal evidence of a
damaged intelligence and a corrupted sense of
justice than the brutal denial of a hearing to
Mr. Cronwright Schriener and to the Colonial
Delegates appointed by the People's Congress
in the Colony. No more perilous condition can
be imagined than that of a people, wielding the
power of self-government and determin;
issues of peace and war, which is so infatuated

id Pulpit i 27

as jo refuse a hearing to the representatives of

iu SSSEESni

colonies.

As in the press, so on the platform, full licence
of expression for one side, contumelious re-
pression for the other! In breaking liberty of
speech the press worked closely with the
mob, and encouraged or excused mob-violence.
One example of the coarse brutality employed
will suffice — the paper is an unimportant one,
but may well serve as a type

Mr. Cronwright Schriener, the pro-Boer agitator, appears
to have paid Tunbridge Wells a visit, but of a somewhat
clandestine nature. His coming was not heralded as one
would have expected for such a notability of the hour;
probably his sympathisers in the borough feared that the
reception would be a little too patriotic and sincere, and in
cordiality eclipse previous demonstrations. His mission
was, however, not of a public nature — a drawing-room was
sufficiently large for his audience — and the town did not
learn of his arrival until he had taken his departure. A
man or a cause that relies upon such stealth and secrecy
for progression will not get far, and will only bring to
advocates, heartache, and may be something more. Mr.
Schriener will do well to give Tunbridge Wells a wide
berth.

The organization of the platform has been
conducted by the same body of men as manipu-
lated the press. Paid agents of the South

128 The Psychology of Jingoism

African League have been at work since the
beginning" of last year, both in England an9
the colonies, financed by ttfe group of finan-

Thc Hritish South African Association, com-
posed of South African investors and politicians
committed to a general policy of a ve

imperialism, has faithfully followed the instruc-
tions of the League, and has co-operated with
the South African Vigilance Committee (the
League under another name) for the object of
fanning the war-flame and securing the com-
plete subjugation of the Dutch. These particu-
larist bodies have used the Unionist organization
in this country just as the South African organs
in the press, controlled by the same men, have
worked through the Unionist press, assisted by
the sham- Liberal Daily News. It has been
necessary to set forth these details in order to
show how the fabrication of public opinion
is possible and has been achieved. The
acme of audacity is reached when the very
men, the mine-owners and speculators, who
have assessed the gains of war at several
million pounds per annum, put forward them-
selves and their professional representatives
as the impartial instructors and advisers of
the British public on its policy of war and

tform and Pulpit

' nt Our educated Jingoes have com-
ly taken the trouble to read some books

of war and annexation. Hut who arc the

genllnncn who writ'- t :- v 1 •• - . •!. , .1 . 1 articles,
and who imp >•>'• tln-ir ' !:• :«>ry' ..:i i th< :
opinions upon the Uritibh i>cople ? They art-,
as we have already pointed out, directors,
engineers, and lawyer^ of flfcrs. Wemher,
Beit, the tLonsolidated Gold Fu

JpjcUninipy r^i]n|^p|^ nt rn»

ii .. -, IJMTS ov.-iu-il l.y Mr. Rhodes and his

islness men

who have been political agitators and Reform
prisoners at Johannesburg, such as Mr. Hosken
and Dr. Hillier, with a handful of excited

L^'men and philanthropists, such as Mr.
Theo. Schriener and the Rev. A. Hofnv

>se political judgment and influence is
utterly insignificant in their own country. The
British public receives these men who, through

:r league, their Outlander Council, and their
mendacious press, had engineered the war, as

most reliable advisers regarding the necessity
of war and the mode of settlement

Thesemen deserved a hearing, but so did
the leaders ot the r>»f/»fr flfrfcfrndprs in our

130 The Psychology of Jingoism

colonies, loyal British subjects, as they have
now been proved. To hear the one and to
refuse a hearing tortile oilier la lilt moat
elementary injustice ; to take the advice of

cither as authoritative in the direction of o
policy is the rankest folly. The man on the
spot always knows more, but he is always
biassed, and generally cherishes a private
interest which does not square with, and is often
opposed to, the interest of the commonwealth.
The frantic applause with which these mine-
owners and their press approve of the conduct
of Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Alfred Milner in
the war, the settlement, and the treatment of
rebels, ought to awaken grave suspicion in all
reflecting minds.

But then there is the unanimous testimony of
the Churches in South Africa. The cle:
and the missionaries have been of unique
service in fanning the flames of resentment
against the Boers. Is this also an illegitimate
manipulation of public opinion? TjUJl"ftrme-
owners and politicians should have sue -e v !
in impressing the public mind with the idea of
this conflict as a *sacre<j war/ "1'yyu^rtal£eii~In
the interests of Christianity and civilization, is
their culminating triumph. I do not for one
moment impute dishonesty of purpose to the

Platform ami Pulpit i

s, or any consciousness of being tools ;

tools and screens they are, none the less.
Tht v of South Africa is full of the feuds

between -h missionaries and the Dutch;

and fnun the former a feud, a latent animosity,
has been transmitted to the British ministers
is. Missionary and minister have

uedt often in good earnest, to be the friends
and protectors of the natives, and have favoured
and promoted a policy towards the natives
which is opposed by Africander sentiment and
conviction. Into the merits of the controv*
it is needless to go, though I may remark in
passing that a careful reading of the Jingo

i iture issuing from South Africa clearly
shows that British Africander sentiment upon
the native question favours the Dutch and not
the missionary policy. The business men who
mostly direct modern politics require a screen ;
they find it in the interests of their country,
patriotism. Behind this screen they work,
thi-ir private gain under the name and

:ext of the commonwealth. Sometimes
screen is inadequate, and a second covering is
required. This has been the case in the pre-
sent business : indiscreet directors 'gave a

the hands of financiers were visible
upon the stage of politics moving the figures ;

i 32 The Psychology ot Jingoism

the appeals to vengeance and fear for the
Empire showed danger of collapse ; an appeal
must be made to sentiments of higher grade
and more stability. In the message of the
Churches issuing from South Africa there was
the same amount and the same sort of spon-
taneity as lay behind the Outlanders' petition
and the other measures by which the war-spirit
was stirred and maintained in England. The
conviction of the British clergy and mission^"
aries in South Africa that the war wajTiust and

^

necessary was quite genuine (why should it be
otherwise ?) ; and their conviction of its utility
was enhanced by hopes, the futility of which
will presently appear, that the more liberal
sentiments of the British Isles towards the
natives (dubbed * Exeter Hall* by Dutch and
British colonists alike) would prevail in a
settlement whereby the Imperial power would
be substituted for the power of local parlia-
ments in dealing with the natives. The capi-
talists who had actually announced their intention
of" forcing native labour by hut and labour
tic pass laws, and other coercive
methods, were glad to utilize the blessing of
the Churches ; and their politicians and their

•

press transmitted this clerical approval, and
circulated it throughout the length and breadth

rm and Pulpit

ntry, suppressing as far as possible
equally earnest and unanimous protestations
the Dutch Africander Churches, and ap;
priating to themselves the tide of 'Christian

Although there is no record of the clergy

of any Church having failed to bless a popular

, or to find reasons for representing it as

this approval of the Churches has

ranked as independent and powerful testimony

to the justice of our cause; and thot

elevation of the natives played no part what^

lu-un, it has since 1 c • .\\ nt:'.:/- ! so skilfully

w

rhe press and
the politicians who forced the pace with Out-
lander grievances, suzerainty, or the Dutch
conspiracy, have kept it up wjth a. native
policy, securing thus that firm co-operation of
business and philanthropy which is the
tinctivc note of British Imperialism.
motives are comffloftly fuse4 in some v:
it the necessity of securing to
black races ' th«- ili-nitv o! lateur or of

— ^•••i»f^'**^^^""~

134 The Psychology of Jingoism

recur in the books and speeches of the South
African clergy who have been introduced to
spread light in England, shows how well the
notion has been drilled into their minds.

It is idle wholly to ignore the fact that the
dependence of the Churches upon the alms of
the rich plays a most important part in South
Africa, where the rich are very few and more
closely united in their businesses, than elsewhere.
A very small number of men can make or mar
the success of any religious work in the towns
of South Africa. Mr. Rhodes, in particular,
has been a munificent patron of the Churches,
though he is no churchgoer himself; and
many a good work thrives upon tHe""p?Ofits^>f
De peers aq4 t{ie froldfields, which sets aside
every year a substantial sum out of its profits
for charitable donations. No reproach attaches
to the clergy of these Churches, but it is natural
that their feelings should be touched and their
judgment blinded by these gifts. So, too, when
an English bishop or other Church dignitary
visits South Africa in search of health or on a
holiday, what more natural than that he should
be entertained by Mr. Rhodes at Groote
Schuur ; that he should then visit the D !
people at Kimberley, and afterwards \>
the company of Mr. Eckstein at Johannesburg-,

Platform and Pulpit

and the Chartered magnates in chargt

iiM fa «"s

Rhodesia J WJiyshniiM fa «"spect that he is
not seeing everything, or that his views are

him as hr acs al.«>n th<:

carefully grf»a«»H p*t^ of travel ? He is q

honest, and thos< entertain and inform

him arc quite honest in the expression of their

None the less, the members of the

Hrii tocracy, the big business men, mem-

bers of Parliament^ and eminent divines who

returned from a visit in South Africa to

^hten us upon the racial, political, and

economic problems of that kaleidoscopic

country, have brought with them just that

information and those sentiments which it was

ided they should bring. I do not, of

course, impute to the hospitable British South

icans a fully conscious design of impressing

any special point of view upon visitors :

conscious play was probably very rare, and

even then was blended with the native instinct

of hospitality, so prevalent in these as in other

colonies. It is rather to be regarded as a

necessary incident of the economic situation

the mining capitalists and their financial

friends should have enjoyed these private

individual opportunities of inculc 'ieir

ts and their views upon the minds of

136 The Psychology of Jingoism

influential British visitors. Not all these
visitors sucked in their matter with so much
avidity, and reproduced it with so much crudity
of judgment as Canon Knox Little ; but any
reader who chooses to check the statement of
the Canon by reference to the history of more

and Hi'griwf Trnperiafafc. will

Hing of thp processes^ Jjjfjvhich the
opinions of influential visitors were moulded.

The enumeration of methods of influencing
British opinion would be incomplete were I
to ignore the direct and conscious work of
politicians and their organizations. The South
African League may be said to have come
into existence in order to enforce and enlarge
British power in South Africa ; and when it
was decided early in 1899 to precipitate a
crisis, its emissaries were active both in South
Africa and this country, ably seconding the
efforts of Mr. Rhodes' press. The following
passage in the report of a speech delivered at
Capetown last January by Dr. Darley Hartley,
a former President, deserves as much attention
for its matter as for its English.

All present who carried their minds back over the three
years during which the League had been in existence
would find very little difficulty in tracing the present state
of things in South Africa [which?] was largely due— one might

Platform and Pulpit

almost say entirely due — to the efforts of the League. He
spoke with a full sense of responsibility, but he asked them
to reflect how far the present position would have reached
if it had not been for the persistent efforts of the South
African League in Johannesburg. To illustrate that
detailed the history of the famous Johannesburg Ootlanders'
petition, which emanated from the League, and could not
have been successful unless it had been worked by men
versed in every possible technicality of the work. That
organization in Johannesburg was the outcome of the
organization in Cape Colony, and that showed what their
organization had done.

In Cape Colony the League, under the
presidency and financial support of Mr. Rhodes,
has been the fighting wing of the 'progres-
party ; in the Transvaal it was feeble in
numbers, and destitute of influence until, in
1899, the leading capitalists, failing to come to
terms with the Government, so as to secure
r private ends, decided to work for a catas-
trophe, and to involve the Imperial power of
Gre iin.

Readers of the Blue-books will perceive how
powerfully the League was able to impress the
mind of the High Commissioner, and to secure
his authoritative approval of 'every possible
technicality ' which they employed to influence
the British Government This same body of
men in Capetown and Johannesburg, figuring
now as the South African League, now as the

138 The Psychology of Jingoism

Outlander Council, and again as the South
African Vigilance Committee, have been in
effect the ' British South Africa' Alfred

Milaer's despatches: it was their influence and
evidence that ultimately forced us into war,
and that is forcing upon us a miscalled f*seitle-
ment," fraught with costs and dangers which
the future will disclose.

This conjunction of the forces of the press,
the platform, and the pulpit, has succeeded in
monopolizing the mind of the British public,
and in imposing a policy calculated not to
secure the interests of the British Empire, But
to advance the private, political, and business
interests of a small body of men who ha\
exploited the race feeling in South Africa and
the Imperialist sentiment of England. They
have done this by the simple device of securing
all important avenues of intelligence, and of
using them to inject into the public mind a
continuous stream of false or distorted infor-
mation.

It may well be true that public opinion
in Holland, and even In other Continental
countries, has been similarly poisoned from
Dutch Africander sources. The Hollander-
press of the Transvaal, Mr. Kruger's secret
service, and the influence of the Africander

Platform and Pulpit j 39

Bond may have helped to manufacture the

::imt which prevails

in most Continental countries. But this is

^primarily tfceir cpnccrn. Though we Ally

sulY- are not responsible for it.

are responsible for submitting to the

Dangers incalculably great, must await an

. ::-.; ire who --• i ill. :. >, wh«-n br. >. :.,':[ t > t:i-
lonsulcnition of a policy \vhiih nir.iils vast

' flf iJfp a^ fr^Sir^ ar^ ^HlMCJ^!
a patient ccjual hearing to both bides, but

mind.

fact and opinions " K'7fa thfy kavfi ffo reason
to believe to be impartial and disinterested.
Her great tests of a capacity for

empire. Can a body of interested m^ upon
the spot, burinssfj TT^n nr

their authority upon the Empire so as to utilize

the imperial riM^^y^yc f^r

In the case of South Africa it has been possible.
Will it be possible atiajn ?

THE

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