Part 10

There is a new peril in the world which is already becoming a bogey in the imagination of men. It is the “Rising Tide of Colour.” I do not believe in a world conspiracy of the coloured races to overthrow white rule. I do not believe in a new challenge of the Mohammedan peoples to Christendom. But I do believe that the massacre of the world war and some of its lessons and watchwords have aroused passions and ambitions among the dark-skinned races which will lead to many new problems and perils. The British Empire is face to face with these in India, Egypt and Asia. France, Italy and Spain will have to face them in Northern Africa. America will have to face them in her own southern states and on the Pacific coast. That ringing phrase, “the self-determination of peoples,” was translated into many tongues East as well as West. “A War for Liberty” was an ideal which was carried across the deserts and into the very jungles of the world. Young Indian students at Oxford or Cambridge or London University saw the war fever in Europe, read its rhetoric, thrilled to the words of President Wilson, saw the weakening of European power, the overthrow of dynasties, the setting up of new nations, the proclamation of independence for Poland, Ireland, Czecho-Slovakia, all sorts of states and races, the triumph of Turkey in Asia Minor. They asked themselves a whispered question: “How about India?” The young Egyptians said “How about Egypt?” The Arab race said: “Independence is good for us as well as for others.” The overthrow of “tyrannies” is very catching, even though one form of tyranny is substituted for another. The spirit of revolt travels far and is infectious, especially when it is carried by home-going soldiers who have fought in other people’s wars, as Indian troops in Palestine, Mesopotamia, and, for a time, against their will, in France.

INDIA, EGYPT, AFRICA

The British people are already confronted with grave troubles in India and Egypt and the Soudan. History has placed responsibilities on their shoulders which they cannot shrug off with a careless gesture of indifference or a splendid gesture of renunciation. That welter of races and religions in India cannot be abandoned by people who have ruled it, given it law, justice, internal peace, and protection from old cruelties, tyrannies, famine and disease. If the British lost their hold on India there would be a world of anarchy among all those races and creeds between which there is no tolerance, so that they cannot eat together, or mingle in a crowd, or touch without defilement. If the British lost India other powers would fight to take it and the world would be aflame again.

England will lose India if she grant self-government too quickly, or too generously, to native rulers who cannot hold the scales of justice, even as England has held them; who cannot control the native princes by any such allegiance as they have given to a white emperor; who could not keep Hindus and Moslems and other religious fanatics from each other’s throats, nor administer justice with commonsense and impartial judgment, as young magistrates from English public schools in remote districts, where they were law-makers, judges, administrators, in the midst of native populations obedient to their verdict and with faith in their honesty. But the agitators in India, the “holy men” like Ghandi, the students with Western education, are in revolt against this benevolent despotism. They believe that India is able to govern itself. They are refusing to buy British made goods. They use “Liberty” as their watchword, and those who believe in national liberty, as I do, can only answer their arguments by saying that India is not a nation but a collection of races, and that Western ideas of parliamentary government, “no taxation without representation” cannot be translated into an Oriental country before centuries of education and preparation, nor—failing that—without an anarchy in which a thousand horrors would happen. To the fanatical Indian student from King’s College, London, that answer is taken as an insult and as hypocrisy. And yet it is true.

So also in Egypt and the Soudan. The Egyptians ignore the benefits that have come to them from British rule, British engineering, British science, which dammed the Nile and fertilised their fields, gave a better chance of life to the peasants, brought peace from the passions, barbarities, slave-driving of the African races. They have a new sense of power because they know England’s need of peace. They are prepared to blot out all British benefits for the sake of that cry, “Egypt for the Egyptians!” shouted from Cairo across the deserts. They demand the Soudan as their province, although it was subdued by British troops, and its barbarism was tamed by British rule after a history of human cruelty in this black region hellish in its torture and diabolism, to which, beyond any doubt, it will return if by weakness of man power, hatred of war, or economic poverty, the British government releases its control.

England is the leader of world peace. Poverty is creeping closer to her. Her old Imperial spirit is deadened by war weariness and by new ideals of liberal policy from which military force is eliminated. Yet by their Imperial heritage the British people have responsibilities towards the coloured races which cannot be supported without force of arms, as military police for the order of the human race. If Great Britain, for reasons of economy or lack of strength, retires from these regions, as the Romans did from their own wide Empire, chaos and upheavals in Africa, India and Asia will let loose a world of human passion and revolt. Other powers will claim the succession, and another world war, on a more terrible scale, will begin.

THE FRENCH IN MOROCCO

France is storing up trouble for herself in North Africa by raising her Colonial Army from the dark-skinned races. She is training Arabs and negroes to handle machine-guns with great efficiency, to throw the latest type of bombs, to be familiar with field guns and heavy artillery, to shoot straight with the rifle and stab straight with the bayonet.

The French military leaders are justly proud of their work in Morocco. Marshal Lyautey understands the Arab mind as no other man. The French colonial officers have a wonderful skill and sympathy with the legions under their command. But can France be sure that this army they have created will be loyal to French interests, and will fight eagerly, even gladly, against German shell-fire and poison-gas if ever France is again attacked by the same enemy? In the last war the coloured troops were sacrificed in many battles. They were led like sheep to the shambles, or rather like tigers to the pits of death. They did not like it. Those who escaped the slaughter and went home told frightful tales. Already there is a spirit of revolt stirring in Morocco below the surface of loyalty to France. Some of the Arab tribes in French Morocco are joining hands with those fighting against Spain. “Our time is coming,” said an Arab guide to a recent traveller. “We shall sweep the _Feringhi_ into the sea—like that!” He made an arrogant gesture and smiled, with ferocity in his eyes. France will have trouble with her Colonial troops, and it will be a dirty business in future history.

Those are some of the danger zones of our present state; and I have said nothing about Japan or China, in which there is no standing still in the Oriental quietude of ancient history. Japan has learnt to use modern weapons on sea and land. She has great ambitions. The white races have got to be careful lest they are weakened and exhausted by wars of their own, and let their own causes of quarrel blind them and make them mad.

THE ECONOMIC STRUGGLE

Meanwhile the economic struggle between the white nations is threatening to develop with a severity of competition which is alarming to all students of international affairs. Great Britain and the United States of America are bound to be competitors in the world market against nations able to produce manufactured articles at far less cost owing to cheap labour. The United States will undoubtedly make a serious effort to overcome this difficulty by cutting into the international trade with surplus products on a small margin of profit, but whether they succeed or not does not matter very much to the life and prosperity of their people, who are self-supporting and self-contained. For Great Britain it is literally a matter of life and death as a great power. To feed their population England, Scotland and Wales have to import more than nine months’ food supplies, which can only be paid for by the export of raw material and manufactured goods. In the same way they must pay for the essential services of the nation, including the Army, Navy, and Civil Service. At the present time Great Britain has succeeded in regaining her export trade to over seventy per cent. of its pre-war standard of money values; but that is not nearly enough now that her population, ten years after, has increased by nearly two millions, and now that the cost of life and production is very much higher than in 1913 owing to the burden of taxation, the higher rate of wages, and the lower purchasing power of English money.

There is no certainty that Great Britain will be able to maintain her present standard of export trade, apart altogether from increasing it. In various classes of goods, in which for half a century the British people had something like a monopoly in foreign markets, there is no longer that advantage. India is boycotting cotton fabrics made in Lancashire and has her own mills hard at work. Italy is producing cotton goods at much lower prices than she could formerly buy them in England, owing to the development of water power which relieves her of the price of British coal—a severe loss to the Welsh coalfields—and cheap labour. In steel and iron England is losing her supremacy. Germany and France separately have eaten into this big industry. Together, by a working arrangement between the Ruhr and Lorraine, they will put up a combination of power which may deal a knock-out blow to British steel works. Already, owing to the cheapness of German contracts, many British blast furnaces are closing down and the ugly notice is going up: “No hands wanted.” It is discouraging to read the statistics of British trade each month recording “stagnation” or “quietude” or “a gloomy outlook” in many great industries. It is alarming to an Englishman to have a vision of future years when conditions may be worse than this owing to the conditions of labour in competing nations.

THE PRICE OF LABOUR

The price of labour is at the root of the problem. Even before the war the rate of wages in England, as calculated in purchasing power, were far higher than in Germany, Belgium, Italy, France, and most other continental nations, though very much less than in the United States. During the war Labour, seeing its chance, demanded fantastic rates of pay and received them. During the last two years there has been a readjustment to the cost of living so that wages have been reduced, but they still stand in nearly all trades, except that of agriculture, at a higher level than in 1913.

But the men are not satisfied. During the war they learnt their power and their value. Since the war they have become intensely class-conscious and demand better wages, shorter hours, decent conditions of housing, security in sickness and unemployment, old-age pensions from sixty years on, more money to be spent on their education, and a bigger margin beyond the bare needs of life for leisure and amusement. I am not one of those who blame them. I am all—or nearly all—on their side. The conditions of the slums in England and Scotland are still a disgrace to civilisation. The housing accommodation of working men in villages as well as in cities is often abominable. I do not believe in a great Empire or a luxurious civilisation built on the wreckage of men’s lives, on slave labour, on the killing of souls, as the British Empire was built during the industrial period after the Napoleonic Wars, when the manufacturers of Great Britain grew rich out of sweated labour in factories and homes before the Trades Unions, the Factory Acts, and democratic reform blotted out the black shame of 1830 to 1850. I think it good and right that men who help to save their country should be given the reward of good wages for good work and some chance of joy in life. The point of trouble is not the justice of that but its possibility. Is it possible for these labouring classes in England, Scotland, and Wales to get high wages and work for shorter hours when their export trade is diminishing, when the competition of cheap labour will become more and more severe during the next few years, and when the taxation of the wealthy classes is already extinguishing their wealth?

Labour in the mass, especially the political extremists who accuse Ramsay MacDonald of being a “bourgeois” and Philip Snowden a “reactionary,” believe that it is possible. They believe that there is still a vast source of untapped wealth in England which should be redistributed in their favour. They believe that they would get far higher wages and work much less if they owned and controlled the machinery and material of labour by some system of nationalisation or communism. They believe that it is only the selfishness of the “upper classes” and the greed of the great employers and Trusts which prevent them from receiving far greater rewards in return for their toil. They have not yet realised, or refuse to believe, that England is not in possession of inexhaustible wealth, that the rich people in the country—with only few exceptions—are already taxed beyond their power to pay without crippling industry itself and slowing down the adventure of trade, and that if a nation loses its markets for the only goods it can produce no amount of social legislation or social revolution will benefit the individual.

The awful failure of the Russian Communism, its abandonment by its own leaders, is either unknown or ignored by many British working men. Some of them would like to try the experiment in Great Britain. They do not understand the extreme delicacy of that machinery of international trade and credit by which the industrial life of Great Britain has been maintained. Russia lost its international trade, but its life was secure from the soil, apart from drought. All factories might close down in Petrograd, as they did, but the workers returned to the land and scraped along. In Great Britain if the factories close for lack of markets or credit or capital, the population will surely die unless America comes to the rescue with the A.R.A.

I don’t think it will be as bad as that. Before such things could happen madness would have to overtake the British people and they are, as a nation, remarkably sane. Communism is not a spreading disease in the heart of England, though it lurks in cities where trade is worst. But even with full sanity, the moderation of such a Labour Government as that led by Ramsay MacDonald, and a gradual redistribution of wealth already taking place, there is bound to be trouble ahead. In my judgment England must steel herself to endure lean years, heavier burdens, fiercer competition, less luxury all round, harder work for less pay.

GERMAN COMPETITION

It is uncertain yet whether the London Agreement embodying the Dawes Report will actually be fulfilled by Germany. In my belief it will not be fulfilled. It is impossible for me to believe that Germany is capable of paying a hundred and twenty-five million pounds sterling and more in a rising scale for an indefinite number of years. England could not do so, and England is richer than Germany. The American debt, which is being paid off at the rate of £35,000,000 a year, is a burden which makes Great Britain breathe hard. That is hardly more than one quarter of what the German people are expected to pay, and I do not think they can do so for more than a few years. They can only do so, as I have pointed out, in one way: by creating a trade balance in their favour which would enable them to transfer that sum to their creditors after paying for the essential services of their own nation. If they are able to get such a trade balance it will mean that they are overwhelming the world markets with German goods. Who is going to let them do so? The United States would surely put up barriers against their manufactured articles. Great Britain will not admit them in such an overpowering quantity, whatever her theoretical allegiance to Free Trade. In other markets these cheap German goods will oust British and American competitors. The factories of Great Britain will be producing articles at a price which other nations will refuse to pay when Germany is canvassing for contracts. Germany will default again, I am certain, unless by a miracle of industry her people, on slave wages, capture the world’s trade, which would be worse than default to British manufacturers and in a less degree to those in America.

Whatever happens it is a serious outlook, because default would mean a new political crisis in Europe—all the old wounds open again—and success would ruin those who have imposed the Agreement. The horns of that dilemma were seen years ago by M. Loucheur, the greatest expert of economics in France. Speaking before the Senate he said: “Germany cannot pay these indemnities. If she were able to pay it would make her master of the world’s trade. Let us therefore insist on security rather than on reparations.”

The revival of Germany, limited by these enormous reparations, will undoubtedly increase the general prosperity of all European nations. The restoration of German purchasing power by a loan of £40,000,000 from Great Britain and the United States, stabilising her monetary system, will help world trade everywhere to the extent that Germany buys raw material for her industries and additional luxuries and comforts in foreign countries. Australia and Canada will benefit by purchases of wool and meat. They will buy more from the Mother Country in consequence. Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Italy and France will exchange more products. The wheel of world trade will turn more rapidly. Great Britain and the United States will find Germany a better customer. But Great Britain will also find Germany a stronger competitor, and the advantages which may come to the British people by the recovery of prosperity in Europe may be outweighed by that competition owing to the difference between dear labour and cheap labour. Already, ten years after the beginning of the war, Germany is able to offer steel to Middlesbrough at thirty shillings a ton less than it costs to manufacture steel in Middlesbrough itself! I have the greatest sympathy with organised labour in England which is endeavouring to maintain its standard of life and wages and even to improve them. But the Socialists who are legislating for shorter hours, more pay, larger doles for unemployed, national subsidies in the building trade, and national money for providing work, are up against the industry of German labour which is working nine and ten hours a day, instead of the eight hours in England, at less than half the rate of pay. In great industrial cities like Sheffield something like a third of the working population is living on charity or the official dole. It is impossible for a nation to maintain its economic life on such a tragic basis. It must be put upon sounder foundations or come down with a crash.

ILLUSIONS OF THE SOCIALISTS

The peril in England at the present time is the illusion of political leaders in the Socialist Party that the prosperity of the working classes may be increased without any regard to the economic conditions in other countries. The painful truth is that these conditions of cheap labour and long hours, better organisation and greater mechanical skill, will come smashing into the dreams of the social idealists with heavy blows of abominable reality.

I do not believe that in our time Great Britain will regain the old standards of her world trade. It is my firm belief that the next period of history will see a slowing down in the international exchange of manufactured goods, and that most countries will have to restrict their imports because their exports are not wanted on the same scale. That is to say the nations will become more self-contained, relying more than ever upon their own supplies of food and the internal exchange of their own industries. The English people must get back to agriculture, instead of relying almost exclusively on manufactures and buying most of their food abroad, and large numbers of their overcrowded populations in the great cities must get back to the fields at home, or in the Dominions, where there is room for all. Otherwise they will surely perish in pauperdom.

Before that happens there is bound to be political strife and social unrest on a serious and perilous scale. Not only in Great Britain but all over the world, the intensity of this new competition, the gravity of this readjustment to new and restricted conditions of economic life, will provide an excuse for agitators and revolutionaries who desire to overthrow the whole structure of our present system of Capital and Labour in the hope of obtaining greater prosperity for the labouring folk and a broader control of the sources of wealth. Communism, defeated in Russia, will seek victories in other countries more highly organised, and the Fascisti, who are in all countries under different names, will seek to protect their property, privileges and principles by violent action against this challenge. The bitterness and the need of nations threatened with economic poverty, unable to support their industrial populations, thwarted in their attempt to enlarge their boundaries, will lead to new international jealousies which will tempt their militarists and their hot-heads to risk again the adventure of war. The spectre of revolution has not been exorcised from Europe, and all these pressures of populations, passions, trade interests, industrial rivalries, and social ambitions, are full of explosive forces which may lead to another world conflict, unless there is a new vision at work in the heart of humanity. It is all very difficult!

IV.—THE HOPE AHEAD

It seems like pessimism to deal so much with the difficulties and dangers of our present state. But one would be guilty of cowardice if one’s mind shirked these unpleasant facts, and of extreme folly if one pretended to oneself that peace and prosperity are bound to come. They will only come if the evil forces that are active beneath our present uncertain peace and in the minds of men in many groups are checked, if not killed, by increasing knowledge, by counsels of international goodwill, by a spiritual revolt against the dark powers among masses of the common folk, and by wise and noble leadership.

In spite of all that I have put down on the black side of the picture, I am optimistic enough to believe, or at least to hope, that good may possibly prevail over ill will, that knowledge and wisdom are beginning to tell, just a little, against ignorance and insanity, and that after the frightful lessons of the last ten years a majority of people in many countries are eager to find some settlement of old causes of quarrels, old hatreds, new hostilities and future conflict, by friendly compromise and good statesmanship. That, after all, is a very great hope indeed. If we have moved as far as that, and I think we have, we are some way along the road to a better kind of world.