Part 23

About five-and-twenty years ago, I happened to be engaged in the service of my country in a distant part of the world. The duties which devolved upon me threw me into a daily contact with a Russian officer similarly employed. Notwithstanding the conflicting interests which we severally represented, and the somewhat delicate and often strained relations resulting therefrom, we had not been long in each other’s society without becoming sensible of a personal sympathy too powerful to be resisted, and which soon ripened into an intimacy which lasted for many years; indeed we were thrown so exclusively upon our own resources, deprived as we were of all other society, that we must probably soon either have become bitter enemies or fast friends. A certain similarity of taste, I had almost said of aspiration, forced upon us the latter alternative; and it was probably due to this that we were enabled to bring the special duties upon which we were engaged to a successful conclusion, whereby we earned the approval of our respective Governments,—represented in his case by a decoration, and in mine by a curt complimentary despatch; for in those days C.B.’s and C.M.G.’s were not flung about with the lavish profusion which has since so largely depreciated their value. It was a relief, when the labors of the day were over—which had taxed all our powers of ingenuity and forbearance, and we had fatigued our brains by inventing compromises and devising solutions which should satisfy the susceptibilities of our respective Governments—to jump on our horses and take a sharp dash across country, just by way of clearing our brains of diplomatic cobwebs. Generally we played at follow-my-leader, and we took it in turns to be leader; for we were both young, and had, in fact, been weighted with responsibilities beyond our years, which made us rush into a reaction that consisted in an active endeavor to break our necks every afternoon with all the keener zest,—to the intense astonishment of the natives of the uncivilised region to which we had been temporarily banished. Then, as we jogged slowly home, we would fall into those discussions, on social, religious, psychological, and moral problems, by which our souls were vexed, which lasted through dinner, and often far into the night. I found in my companion an earnestness, depth, and originality of sentiment which were most remarkable in one so young, the more especially as I had not supposed that his training and early associations had been of a character to develop that side of his nature; possibly the very restraints to which he had been subjected had stimulated his instincts for independent thought and speculation. Knowing English, French, and German almost as well as his mother-tongue, he had read extensively and greedily in all three languages; and, owing to certain family circumstances, he had spent the most part of his life away from his native land, applying himself, with an acuteness and a faculty of observation extraordinary in one so young, to a study of the political institutions, social conditions, and national characteristics of the different European countries in which he had lived. So precocious did his intelligence appear to me in this respect, that I soon came to consider myself in some degree a sort of disciple; and I have always been conscious that his influence during the nine months that we were together affected my own subsequent views of life, and indeed to some extent moulded my future. In the course of these discussions he unburdened himself to me on all subjects as fully as he would have done to a brother—indeed, considering who his brother was, far more freely; and did not shrink from commenting upon the social and political condition of his own country, and from giving vent to opinions which would probably have consigned him to the mines of Siberia for life had he been known to entertain them. The confidence which he thus displayed towards me only served to bind us more closely together, though I was ever haunted by the fear that the day might come when he might misplace it, with consequences which might be fatal to himself. As he was absolutely devoid of all personal ambition, this would be of little moment, if it only resulted in the abrupt termination of his career, which, from his natural independence of character, I anticipated could not long be postponed. It occurred even sooner than I expected. Within six months of my parting from him, I received a letter in which he told me he had fallen into disgrace, and was going to live in Italy. The exigencies of my own service had taken me to a very different part of the world; but we kept up, nevertheless, an active correspondence for some years, during which he occasionally sent me notes of a book he was writing, in letters which continued to exhibit more and more the results of his extensive reading and profound faculty of observation, philosophic speculation and generalisation. Suddenly, about fifteen years ago, and without a word of warning, these ceased. All my letters remained unanswered; and when, some time afterwards, I found myself in Rome, and inquired at the address to which I had sent them, it was only to learn that the present proprietors of the house were comparatively new people, and had never heard of him. Meantime I had myself retired from the service, and being of a wandering and unsettled disposition, had only returned to my own country for a few months at a time. I had lived too long in summer climes, and under less conventional restraints, to be happy in it; but one of my constant regrets was that I had never thought of providing my Russian friend with a permanent address, so that in case of his ever being able or willing to communicate with me again, he might know where to find me. Meanwhile I could only account for his silence by the painful supposition that he had in some manner incurred the severe displeasure of his Government, and was languishing in that distant semi-arctic region which is hermetically sealed to all communication with the outside world.

My delight may easily be imagined, therefore, when scarce two months ago, chancing to be a passenger on board a steamer in the Mediterranean, I found myself seated the first day at dinner next to a man, the tones of whose voice I thought I recognised, though I was for a moment puzzled by the alteration in his general appearance, and who turned out to be my long-lost friend, upon whom, as I looked at the furrows on his countenance, I saw that something more than time—though it had extended over twenty-five years—had worked a change. This same interval had, doubtless, done something for me; so we both looked at each other for a moment in hesitation before permitting the joy of mutual recognition to burst forth. We soon found, on comparing notes, that we had been longing to find each other, and that nothing now prevented our pitching our tent together on the sunny Mediterranean shore, in the hope and belief that we should find that the companionship which had suited us so well twenty-five years previously, would only be rendered more full of interest and profit by the experiences which we had undergone since that period; nor had we conversed an hour before we became convinced that, however much we might have changed in outward appearance, our affection for each other, and our human sympathies generally, had undergone no alteration. It is therefore in a villa surrounded by orange-groves, with terraces overlooking the sea, built curiously into the fissures of impending rock, that I am writing this; or, to be more strictly accurate, I should say it is in a summer-house attached to the villa, fifty feet beneath which the sea is rippling in ceaseless murmur, while my friend, stretched on a Persian rug in the shade formed by the angle of the wall with the overhanging rock, here covered with a creeping jasmine, heavy with blossom, is watching the smoke of his cigarette, and listening while I read to him passages here and there of the notes which I had taken of our last night’s conversation. It had been suggested by the arrival of letters and newspapers from England, and it occurred to me that the remarks of my friend as a calm and unprejudiced observer upon the present political, social, and moral condition of my own country, possessed a value which justified me in asking his permission to be allowed to publish them, the more so as he had just returned from spending some months in London; and he was of far too liberal and philosophical a temperament and cosmopolitan training and sympathy to be influenced by national prejudice; while, had he ever been once biassed by it, the treatment he had undergone at the hands of his own Government would have long since effectually removed it.

“I will introduce you to the public by telling the story of our previous acquaintance, just as it occurred,” I observed. This the reader will remark that I have already done; but I did not read my introduction to my friend, as I knew he would have raised strong objections to the complimentary passages. “Now tell me what I am to call you?”

“Ivan is safe, simple, and not far from the truth, unless you prefer a pair of initials like my well-known countrywoman O. K. It has amused me to observe,” he added, with a smile, “as I have watched the performances, social, literary, and political, how much more easy it is for a woman to understand the genius of a man than the genius of a nation.”

“Perhaps that is because the nation is composed of women as well as of men,”I replied.

“After all, it comes to pretty much the same thing,” said Ivan; “for the genius that he understood well enough to beguile, seems to apprehend equally well the genius of the nation he governs, or he could not have beguiled it in the sense she desired. The whole incident serves to illustrate the mystery of woman’s true sphere of influence, so little understood by the women themselves who agitate for their rights.”

“I am not disposed to admit,”I answered, “that the incident in question proves your case; for I know none of your own countrymen, to say nothing of the women, who understand the genius of the English people, for to do so implies an apprehension of the genius of their institutions, and it is the incapacity of foreigners generally to appreciate these which causes them to regard our domestic policy in the light of an unfathomable mystery which it is hopeless to attempt to penetrate, and our foreign policy as a delusion and a snare.”

“When your Government gets into difficulties,”said Ivan, “it certainly goes to work to get out of them in a way exactly the opposite to that which other European Governments, and especially we in Russia, are in the habit of pursuing. Foreign policy is with us the great safety-valve by which the bubbling passions of the country find a vent, and our central authority takes refuge from its troubles in foreign wars and schemes of territorial aggrandisement; your Government pursues a diametrically opposite system, and considers, apparently, that its best chance of safety lies in stirring up domestic broils, and exciting the people to fever-heat of political passion among themselves. In other words, while our statesmen believe that they can best secure their own positions and avert the perils arising from mis-government by distracting public attention from internal affairs and rushing into dangers abroad, yours hope to escape the consequences of their blunders abroad by promoting revolutionary tendencies at home. It would be curious to analyse the causes which have resulted in such opposite political methods, the more especially as both, in their different ways, are equally prejudicial to the highest national interests, and, from a philosophical point of view, would furnish a most interesting political and sociological study. As it is, my own country produces upon me the effect of a dashing young woman, still intoxicated with her youthful conquests and greedy for more, while she refuses to admit that a gnawing disease is preying upon her vitals, still less to apply any remedies to it; in yours, on the other hand, I seem to see an old woman in her dotage, who makes blatant and canting profession of that virtue which her age and feebleness have imposed upon her as a necessity, while she paints, and rouges, and pampers herself with luxury, and fritters away the little strength and energy she still possesses in absorbing herself with domestic details and the quarrels of her servants, and leaves her vast estates to take care of themselves. Considering the dangers with which both countries are menaced, the great difference which I observed between the Governments of the two countries is, that in one, government takes the form of active insanity—in the other, of drivelling imbecility. After all, there is always more hope for a young lunatic than an old idiot. We may pull through all right yet, but we shall have a very rough time to pass through first.”

“And you think that we are too far gone ever to do so,”I remarked, rather discouraged by the gloomy view he took of the present condition and future prospects of my native country.”

“I don’t altogether say that. It is not with countries as with individuals; the latter always pass from their second childhood into their graves. But for nations, who can say that there is not reserved a second youth? though history does not record an instance of any nation having ever attained to it. The process is probably a slow one; but in these days of rapid development, to say nothing of evolution, we cannot be sure even of that.”

“Still,”I pursued, a little nettled at the severity of his judgment in regard to my own country,—I did not care what he said about Russia, of which I was in no position to judge,—“I should like to know upon what grounds you base your opinion that England is an old idiot. The expression, I think, is scarcely parliamentary.”

“In using the term to which you object,” said Ivan,—“which, after reading the language recently used in debate in your House of Commons, I maintain is strictly parliamentary,—I was not so much alluding to England as to its Government; and I will endeavor to explain to you the reasons which lead me to think that the expression is not misapplied. There are at the present day, including the population of the United States, between eighty and ninety millions of people who owe their origin to the British Isles; who speak the English language as their mother-tongue; who possess in a more or less degree the national characteristics of the race from which they have sprung; who exercise an influence over a greater area of the surface of the earth than that of any other race upon it; who directly control over 250 millions of people not of their own race, and indirectly control many millions more; whose commercial relations are more extensive than those of all the other nations of the world put together; whose wealth is unrivalled; whose political institutions have hitherto served as a model, as they have been the envy of less favored peoples; and who may be said, without fear of contradiction, to lead the van of the world’s civilisation. It is difficult, when we spread a map out before us, to realise that so small a dot as Great Britain appears upon it, should have given birth to these stupendous forces; and one is led to examine into the processes by which so marvellous a position has been achieved in the world’s history as that which these small islands must occupy, even though that position seems now about to be destroyed by what appears to an outsider to be a combination of national decrepitude and administrative impotence,—for it is only when a nation has itself lost its vigor, that it tolerates imbecility on the part of its rulers. The greatness of England has been built up, not on the conquests of its neighbors, or of nations equally civilised with itself, as we have seen occur in the cases of other great empires, but in the comparatively easy subjugation of barbarous peoples; in the occupation and colonisation of countries sparingly inhabited by savage races; in the material development of vast tracts of the earth’s surface; in the creation of new markets, of new sources alike of supply and of demand; and in the energetic and profitable employment of capital in all the regions of the earth. This was possible, and possible only because her adventurous sons who went forth into wild and distant regions to occupy, to develop, and to create, always felt that they had behind them a motherland whose proud boast it was that she ruled the waves, and a nation and Government so thoroughly animated by their own daring and adventurous spirit, that they knew that none were too humble or insignificant to be watched over and protected; nay, more, they were encouraged in hardy enterprises, and often assisted to carry them out.

“During the last two or three years, the circumstances of my life, into which it is not necessary for me now to enter, have forced me not merely to circumnavigate the globe, but especially to visit those British possessions, and those seaboards of lands still relative if barbarous, upon which your countrymen are so thickly dotted as merchants or settlers, and where British subjects of foreign race abound, who carry on their avocations under that British protection which used to be a reality, but is now only a name. Familiar as I have been with Englishmen from my youth, I found a spirit of bitter discontent rife, which, even among your grumbling race, was altogether a new feature in their conversation, especially with a foreigner. Many were making arrangements to close up their business and abandon the commerce in which they were engaged; some, and this was especially the case among the British subjects of foreign race, were taking steps to change their nationality. In some of the colonies the language held sounded to my Russian ears little short of high treason; while I often heard Englishmen in the society of foreigners say that they were ashamed to call themselves Englishmen—a sentiment which I do not remember ever having heard one of your countrymen give vent to in my youth.

“I only mention these as illustrations of the fact which was forcibly impressed upon me during my travels, that the influence of England was waning, not in Europe, where it _has_ waned, but where it might be recovered by a vigorous stroke of policy,—but in Asia, Africa, and America—in those continents from which she derives her position and her wealth. The waning of British influence in Europe means, comparatively, nothing, so far as British commerce is concerned. The waning of that influence in the three other continents means national decay. It has not been by her great wars, her European campaigns, that England has achieved greatness, but by her little ones in those distant countries which your Government seems ready to retire from, bag and baggage, at the first word of a new-comer; and yet one would suppose that nothing could be clearer to a people not in its dotage than this, that if they do not protect their merchants, the latter will not be able to compete with those who are protected. If you desire proof of this, look at the increasing substitution of German for English houses of commerce all over the world; and if commerce languishes, food becomes dearer for those very classes who cry out against those little wars which, when wisely turned to account have proved your best national investments, and have been the indirect means of giving food and employment to your starving millions. I see that there is some talk of a committee being appointed to inquire into the causes of the depression of trade. Those causes are not very far to seek; or rather, in another sense, they are very far to seek. You must travel from China to Peru to find them, and they will stare you in the face. I have been watching, while you are squabbling over your Franchise and your Redistribution Bills, how your trade is slipping from you. So you go on fiddling on the two strings of your electoral fiddle, while Rome is burning. One would have supposed that England was old enough by this time to have discovered that it would not improve her voters to give them another shuffle; that she had experience enough to know that electors were like playing cards, the more you shuffle them the dirtier they get. With the interests of the empire at stake, certainly in two if not in three continents, you play the ostrich, and bury your heads in parish politics—parish politics of the most pestilent and useless description.