Part 8
I do not wish to say whether, in my opinion, Professor Oman’s views of history are generally sound or if they are not. He would not be where he is, I suppose, were he not credible and generally accurate. But what I do know, and what I have a right to say, is that his prose is turgid, clumsy and without flexibility. He can only tell us that something has happened, he cannot make that happening live and pulse within the brain. He is without the first quality of the true historian, the knowledge and mastery of the medium in which he expresses his thoughts, and lacking all kinetic power he does not even know of what wood to make a crutch.
Mr. Oman and all his school are the legitimate descendants of their Master, Stubbs--the Great Cham of the Historicides. It is a mournful fact that the incredibly vicious style of William Stubbs has had a most malign influence over that of lesser men.
The samples of it that I give here will amaze those people who have not read the learned Bishop, and who have been in the habit of regarding him as a literary man as well as a historian.
“The steam plough,” Stubbs writes at p. 636, vol. iii. of _The Constitutional History of England_, “and the sewing machine are less picturesque, and call for a less educated eye than that of the plough-man and the seamstress, but they produce more work with less waste of energy; they give more leisure and greater comfort; they call out, in the production and improvement of their mechanism, a higher and more widespread culture. And all these things are growing instead of decaying.” With what is the historian comparing the steam plough and sewing machine? And does a sewing machine “call out” a higher _culture_? and do the things that are “growing instead of decaying” include a steam plough?
We are also told on page 634, that religion ... “has sunk on the one hand into a dogma fenced about with walls which its defenders cannot pass either inward or outward, on the other hand into a mere war-cry.... Between the two lies a narrow borderland.” Religion, therefore, “sinks into a war-cry.” Between the war-cry and the dogma is a narrow borderland. The dogma is “fenced about with walls.”
The recurring word is a constant phenomenon. In paragraph 498, for instance, we find the sequence “evil,” “debased,” “noble,” “beautiful,” “good,” “noble,” “beautiful,” “evil,” “debased,” “evil,” “good,” “good,” “great,” “great,” “greatness,” “greatness,” “noble,” “greatness,” “great,” “greatness,” “greatness,” “greatness,” “evil,” “good,” “evil,” “good,” “evil,” “evil,” “good,” “good,” “evil,” “good,” “good.”
It is true that the devoted and determined fellowship of Oxford men who are destroying the last position of the Historicides have long known that Bishop Stubbs was nothing more than a writer of slovenly text-books. But the general public has not known, and, occupied with wider interests, has been forced to take the statements of the pedants on trust.
Yet, if Oxford is to continue to be the chief University of the world, it will only be by permission of the public. This is a truth which the pedants will only realize when it is too late. If every father who has a son whom he hopes will proceed to the University reads what I have set down here--reads it, and trusting nothing to the assertions of one man’s pen, makes further and more exhaustive inquiries--we shall very soon see the frantic capitulation of the Old Guard. I believe the dons and pedants of whom I have been writing to be honest men enough. They are sincere in their attitude, no doubt. It is comfortable to think that everything is for the best in the best of all possible Universities, but the obstinacy of a dozen mules in a mountain pass impedes the progress of an army, and because his stupidity is not the hybrid’s fault is no argument against his removal.
A certain number of Oxford dons are convinced that the Oxford system is without flaw.
The Historicides are the worst offenders, though some of their brethren who control the study of Pagan Theology and Philosophy are not far behind them. Both classes alike are convinced of their infallibility.
Yet let the educated public realize that--
_No one who wishes to become a B.A. and M.A. of Oxford is forced to study_
(_a_) English Composition or Literature;
(_b_) The History of the British Empire;
(_c_) The geography of the globe we inhabit;
(_d_) The scientific discoveries and inventions which have profoundly altered the conditions of modern life;
(_e_) Any of the Fine Arts;
(_f_) Any of the Laws of England;
(_g_) The rules which guide the Law Courts in estimating the value of human testimony;
(_h_) The Art of Government and Economics;
(_i_) The Art of War;
(_j_) French, German or any Modern Language.
* * * * *
In my discredited trade of a novelist--that is to say, the trade of people who create out of their own brains new things--we have a technique of phrase. Unimportant to the pedant, as are the methods by which we are sometimes able to secure a great, and even grateful public, we still have our little catchwords and there is a certain freemasonry of craft.
One finishes up, it is generally understood, with “a canter down the straight.” Bursting away from the restrictions of the Essay, glad to have finished with an academic convention which says one must write this way and so, let me attempt to crystallize just what this paper means, from my own, and doubtless limited, point of view. It means this.
Upon the sturdy oak, generations old, in which the University may be typified in allegory, a dusty parasite of ivy has been clinging. This parasite, which has clogged the newer shoots from the old tree, is a parasite of the classical and especially of the history don and pedant. Law, Science and Mathematics have entered Oxford as a bright light comes into the dark. Here, all is well. And in regard to the older arts, I think, and many other people who are in the centre of the ferment of change think with me, all is about to be reconstituted in a freer air. It remains as a wonder that past and present undergraduates, the guests of the hotel, remain so individually and cumulatively distinct from the obstructionist section of its managers and landlords.
In the darkest days it is astonishing to see how many men reading history have been able to educate themselves brilliantly in spite of all opposition. And if Oxford can send out into the world such men as she is giving to the community now, in spite of the influences which have checked and hampered them, what may she not do in the days which are at hand, when the parasite shall be cut down from the old tree and growth shall be unhampered by the incompetent?
Those days, I am convinced, are at hand, and, curiously enough, it is the influence of James Anthony Froude which is precipitating the revolution. What the great historian could not do in his life, the immortality of his writings is accomplishing. Under Froude’s banner a devoted and influential band is enlisted. The work of change is proceeding with wonderful vigour and rapidity.
Let us gird up our loins to push and elbow out the discredited and effete, and if necessary pay hirelings, and employ executioners to end the unfortunate history of the immediate past, to destroy the Obstructionists, the Historicides, and those whom only annihilation will convince of error.
In conclusion I submit that I have neither been conjecturing what I cannot find, nor insinuating what I dare not assert; and if a sincere conviction and a prolonged scrutiny give one title to a part in the growing condemnation of the Historicides I shall be proud to think that I have taken a very humble place in the coming renaissance.
THE BROWN AND YELLOW PERIL
IV
THE BROWN AND YELLOW PERIL
A FEW FACTS
This essay, which is a logical conclusion of the last, requires neither rhetoric nor adornment, were I able to decorate it with them. It is a statement of plain fact, and I make no apology for writing it as simply as possible.
The paper is to be regarded in the light of an appendix to the article on the Oxford Historicides rather than a separate excursus in line with the others in the volume.
The facts are accurate, and if I could turn them into an easily-understood diagram and post it up on every hoarding in the kingdom, I believe that I should be doing a public service.
In 1885--the year when we failed to rescue Gordon--Mr. W. S. Gilbert produced his “Mikado.”
Which nation or government were, in 1885, the more fitting themes for satire--the English or the Japanese? The scandals of the Crimean and Boer Wars; the uniform successes by sea and land of the Japanese in their struggles with China and Russia, supply us with no uncertain answer. The Itos, Togos, Oyamas and Kurokis, whom our librettist represented to us as Ko-Ko, and so on, have taught us--and even the disciples of Moltke--that the supreme artists of war are at Tokyo and Osaka, not in London, Washington, Berlin, Moscow or Vienna. The thirty millions of Japanese who, in the sixties of the last century, were at the mercy of the white powers, are to-day engaged--politely enough--in ushering out of China the trades of Europe and North America.
During the last half century a yellow race, a non-Christian people, has caught up the white races and, so far as the _ultima ratio regum populorumque_ is concerned--in the bloody tournament of war--has even surpassed them. Like every one else, I have been alarmed at the sudden transformation scene. The Mikado who stage-managed the Chino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, is very unlike that Mikado who danced for us on the boards of the Savoy Theatre.
“_My object all sublime I shall achieve in time: To make the punishment fit the crime The punishment fit the crime._”...
sang Mr. Gilbert’s Mikado.
The punishments which Mutsuhito, the real Mikado, has fitted to the Czar’s crimes of seizing Port Arthur and Manchuria have been--
(1) The sinking or capture of every Russian man-of-war east of Suez.
(2) The siege and capture of Port Arthur.
(3) The defeats of The Yalu, Nan-shan, Telissu, Laio-Yang, The Sha-ho and Mukden.
(4) The expulsion of the Russians from Manchuria and Korea.
(5) The cession of half of the island of Sakhalin and indirectly
(6) Civil War and bankruptcy in Russia.
One little point of comparison between ourselves and the Japanese will make my meaning clear.
We all remember the shameful tale (told, not by Mr. Burdett-Coutts alone, but by eminent doctors, including Sir Frederick Treves, whose words were published in Blue-books) of the utter disorganization and incompetence of the medical and surgical departments attached to the British army in South Africa.
Sir Frederick Treves has inspected the Japanese hospitals for the wounded, and pronounced them to be perfect.
The Japanese, your wiseacre retorts, are a race of clever imitators. We invent; they borrow. They can copy but they cannot produce masterpieces in the arts and sciences. It is good rhetoric but bad reasoning. The Japanese have borrowed from us neither their art, nor their ethics. Never conquered in the past, they have developed a civilization peculiarly their own. The first Mikado was reigning six centuries before Julius Cæsar landed his legions at a point not five miles from the spot where I am writing. The Japanese are an ancient race with points of view diametrically opposed to our own; and like the Jews they have lived long and learned wisdom.
“If I say anything about Shakespeare,” writes Baron Suyematsu, “I fear I should at once be considered to be overstepping propriety; but I must say that even Shakespeare’s plays, some of which I have read or seen performed, have never given me such impressions as do the plays of Japan. Whenever we go to the Western stages we appreciate the decorations, we admire the splendid movements and good figures of the actors and actresses, and, so far as we can understand it, the striking elegance and powerful delivery of their dialogue, and we enjoy ourselves as much as could be hoped; but on coming home we find nothing left on our minds which might serve as an incentive in our future career. No inspiration, no emulation! Such, then, seems to be the difference between our dramatic works and those of Western nations.”
Observe that the argument of “art for art’s sake,” is treated by the talented Japanese diplomatist with the very sanest scorn.
“In Japan,” says the Baron, “the idea of the ‘encouragement of what is good, and the chastisement of what is bad,’ has always been kept in view in writing works of fiction, or in preparing dramatic books and plays. I know very well that there is some opposition to this idea. They say that the writing of fiction should be viewed as an art. Hence, so long as the real nature and character are depicted, there is an end of the function of these works. I do not pretend in any way to challenge this argument, but I simply state that it was not so regarded in Japan. Consequently, with us, some kind of reward or chastisement is generally meted out to the fictitious characters introduced in the scene, and these representations, either in books or on the stage, are carried out to such a pitch as to leave some sort of profound impression on the minds of the readers or of the audience. Whatever the other remaining parts may be, these features always remain uppermost in the minds of the reader or of the theatre-goer. The prominent point thus produced is generally a transcendent loyalty, such as a loyal servant would feel for his master; the great fortitude and perseverance which one exhibits in the cause of justice and righteousness; severe suffering for the sake of a dear friend; the devotion of parents and their self-sacrifice, great suffering, or even self-sacrifice of a wife for her husband, or of a mother for her son, to enable the fulfilment of duty to the lord and master. I can myself remember many times shedding tears when reading works of fiction, or when listening to the singing of dramatic songs, or while witnessing dramatic performances. This peculiarity seems to be wanting on the Western stage. I remember once in London, years ago, my eyes becoming moist when I saw a character on the stage, who was being taken away as a prisoner, shaking hands with the man who had been his dear friend, but who ought to have been suspected as the cause of his being taken prisoner, and told him, as he went, that he would never suspect or ever forsake him, giving the audience a strong impression of chivalric moral strength. But that was only a solitary experience.”
As these lines come before my eyes, as I remember the siege of Port Arthur, I wonder at the subtle irony lurking beneath Baron Suyematsu’s remark--“Japan is now in alliance with Great Britain; she may not _perhaps_ be worthy of that alliance, but one may be assured she is doing, and will always do, her best to deserve it.” The italics are mine.
The heroism displayed by the Japanese in the late war was almost unparalleled. I believe only one spy in Japan was discovered. He was kicked to death. No pro-Russian party existed in Japan.
The Japanese are accused of being dishonest traders. But Japanese contractors disdained to rob their fellow-countrymen who were risking life and limb before Port Arthur. Read and re-read _The Garter Mission to Japan_. Lord Redesdale could detect no signs of arrogance on the faces of the men who drove back Kuropatkin’s regiments into Siberia or sank the Baltic fleet.
Some superficial thinkers say that the Japanese are merely mediæval knights fighting with quick-firing guns instead of lances. This is the veriest nonsense. They are _practising_ what was _vainly preached_ by troubadours and romancers to the Brian de Bois Guilberts of the Middle Ages....
When engaged in the composition of my novel _The Serf_, I studied in detail the lives of the paladins to whom were chanted the _Chanson de Roland_, and the stories of _The Round Table_. My conclusions can be studied in that novel which is now in a sixpenny edition. I found very few “Ivanhoes” and plenty of “Front-de-Boeufs” at the Court of Richard “Yea-and-Nay,” who, loyal and filial soul that he was, joined with the King of France in making war on Henry II., his own father.
There is great force in Professor Inazo Nitobe’s implied criticism of European chivalry.
“Did a monarch behave badly, _Bushido_ did not lay before the suffering people the panacea of a good government by regicide. In all the forty-five centuries during which Japan has passed through many vicissitudes of national existence, no blot of the death of a Charles I., or a Louis XVI. ever stained the pages of her history.”
Whether that be true I do not pretend to say. But what I do know is that the throne of England, from the conquest of the country by the first William in 1066, to the accession of the third William in 1688, has been held on a very precarious tenure.
The Conqueror himself warred with his son Robert. The latter, and his brothers, gave examples of a _fraternum odium_ worthy of the pen of Tacitus; Stephen was virtually deposed; Henry II. was attacked by his own children; a party of the barons supported John against Richard I., and French invaders against John; Henry III.’s reign was a long record of civil war; Edward II., Richard II., Henry VI. and Edward V. were deposed and murdered; Richard III. was dethroned and slain in battle; Charles I. was executed by his own subjects; James II. betrayed by the founder of the Churchill family. Of a truth the virtue of loyalty has not been the predominant feature of the Anglo-Saxon races. Our greatest novelist, Thackeray, mocks at it. Ever since the Renaissance most of the political philosophers of the West have preached the doctrine “Render _not_ unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s.”
“The love that we bear to our Emperor,” continues Professor Inazo Nitobe, “naturally brings with it a love for the country over which he reigns. Hence our sentiment of patriotism--I will not call it a duty, for, as Dr. Samuel Johnson rightly suggests, patriotism is a sentiment and is more than a duty--I say our patriotism is fed by two streams of sentiment, namely, that of personal love to the monarch, and of our common love for the soil which gave us birth and provides us with hearth and home. Nay, there is another source from which our patriotism is fed: it is that the land guards in its bosom the bones of our fathers; and here I may dwell awhile upon our Filial Piety.
“Parental love man possesses in common with the beasts, but filial love is little found among animals after they are weaned. Was it the last of the virtues to develop in the order of ethical evolution? Whatever its origin, Mr. Herbert Spencer evidently thinks it is a waning trait in an evolving humanity; and I am aware that everywhere there are signs of its giving way to individualism and egotism; especially does this seem to be the case in Christendom.
“Christianity, by which I do not mean what Jesus of Nazareth taught, but a mongrel moral system, a concoction of a little of obsolete Judaism, of Egyptian asceticism, of Greek sublimity, of Roman arrogance, of Teutonic superstition, and, in fact, of anything and everything that tends to make sublunary existence easy by sanctioning the wholesale slaughter of weaker races, or now and then the lopping of crowned heads,--Christianity, I say, teaches that the nucleus of a well-ordered society lay in conjugal relations between the first parents, and further that therefore a man must leave father and mother and cleave to his wife. A teaching this, in itself not easy of comprehension, as Paul himself admits, and very dubious in application, meaning, as it so often does, that a silly youth, when he is infatuated with a giddy girl, may spurn his parents!
“Christ certainly never meant it, nor did the decalogue command, ‘Thou shalt love thy wife more than thou shouldst honour thy father and mother.’”
The dark, unfathomable eyes of our inscrutable Oriental friends are surveying us. Is it likely that they fail to perceive such patent facts as the dwindling of the birth-rate, the ever increasing thirst for material pleasures which is the characteristic of our urban population, the growth of Socialism, which is its complement, the ignorance of the rulers, and the obsolete education of the ruled?
We boast of our genius for colonization. Boasts are not facts.
For a century Australia and New Zealand have been English colonies. The population of Australia is smaller than the population of London: that of New Zealand is less than a million. Japan is nearer to Australia and New Zealand than they to England. The Japanese are a nation in arms; the English rely for their defence on professional armies. Whilst there is a German fleet at Kiel and a French fleet at Cherbourg, the bulk of our ships must remain in the vicinity of the Channel and the German Ocean. We are the allies of the Japanese, and the Japanese are threatening the Americans, who are rebuilding San Francisco with funds paid to them by the insurance offices of England.
Now I am no alarmist, _but_ the Japanese have invented for themselves a high explosive, the shimose powder. I am no alarmist, _but_ the Japanese have just launched the _Satsuma_, possibly the most powerful of all men-of-war. I am no alarmist, _but_ the Japanese are turning school-masters and drill sergeants to four hundred millions of Chinamen, and the Chinese have been pronounced by General Gordon and Lord Wolseley to be excellent soldiers. Sir Robert Hart, the Englishman most likely to prove an accurate prophet, has warned us against the renaissance of China. The guns of Togo’s fleet have served Europe with notice to quit the further East, and what the Japanese have taught themselves, they may teach the Chinamen undisturbed.
The pre-eminence of Japan in the Far East to-day is due to her admirable system of education.
From _Japan by the Japanese_, a work edited by Mr. Alfred Stead, and published by Mr. Heinemann, I propose to select certain information which may startle even retrograde educationalists. _Japan by the Japanese_ is a collection of studies on Japan written by no globe-trotters, but by Japanese thinkers and statesmen of the highest eminence. In the list of contributors I notice the Marquis Ito, Field Marshals Yamagata and Oyama, Count Okuma and Baron Suyematsu. The essays on education are from the pens of Count Okuma, Baron Suyematsu, and other specialists. My humble opinion is that the authorities who direct the teaching of Modern History at Oxford would do well to substitute _Japan by the Japanese_ for Aristotle’s _Politics_, Hobbes’ _Leviathan_, and Maine’s _Ancient Law_, which are the only text-books in Political Science prescribed by the University Examination Statutes. I may be peculiar, but I prefer the views of Ito, Oyama and Okuma to those of Aristotle, Hobbes and Maine.