CHAPTER II
THE RISE OF ENGLAND
In spite of the summer which drew a circle round Traitor's Hill, the eye, leaving that scene with reluctance, travelled down to the monstrous diagram of London.
The spectacle of London seemed to suggest a certain lesson of its own. In its vastness it appeared to prove that there must have been some master-spell of policy or of power, no trumpery or wily makeshift, to have raised us up. For the gradient of national greatness runs uphill all the way.
It would be well to ascertain the nature of this master-secret of ours. And the next step in thought would be to make clear whether it will prove sufficient for our future. If not, then, lastly, we must consider how to adjust our lives to the new epoch, how to grasp futurity, and how still to lead the world.
In the first place, then, the cause of this country's position is worth a brief examination, in order that it may be set forth and correctly assigned. Several current explanations, each of a reasonable nature, suggest themselves, and stand for review in turn.
Perhaps wealth is the cause of our importance. Hence our ability to sustain arduous conflicts, and to pursue enterprises financially too exhausting for poorer men. Hence, too, that never-ceasing export of our capital to every region under the sun which has put mankind in our debt.
Nevertheless, a short consideration must make plain that this view, though there is something to be said for it, is inadequate. For the exploitation of our resources and the expansion of our industry only began in earnest at the industrial revolution in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Yet at that date England had already run a distinguished career. Besides, our office as a creditor nation was not established on any very large scale till some time after the close of the Napoleonic struggle, when we began to export capital to build the railways of the continent. Accordingly, in whatever degree wealth may have assisted us, it is evident that it has served us as an adjunct rather than as a principal.
Indeed, the argument might be turned round, and it might be contended that, in the main, what we have done has mostly been accomplished, not by the power of wealth, but at the stimulus of poverty. For it is under the goad of inadequate means of livelihood at home that our people have ranged the globe for commercial profit, and that a quarter of the earth's habitable surface has somehow fallen into our lap. So that what wealth we have, is rather a result, than the cause, of our place in the world.
If, then, this first account is unsatisfactory, a second presents itself, of a nature opposite to the first. The reason of England's importance might conceivably be traced to her adhesion to the principles of our religion. Nevertheless, it is open to grave doubt whether this is the precise origin of our national prosperity.
For, to begin with, since the empire of Christianity is declared to be not of this world, there is no essential connection between it and national success. But, apart from this, it is a matter of fact that it was not the impulse of the Christian faith which won us so much. Doubtless, great empires have been raised on a directly religious foundation, but not that of England. For, to start with, the latter has been mainly acquired in conflict with the leading powers of Europe, who are Christian like ourselves, so that no religious issue was involved in the struggle between them and us. Then again, if we consider the history of our most important achievement, the Indian Empire, we have always particularly disclaimed, truly enough, any religious motive for our conquest and tenure of Hindustan. Such an announcement is due to our knowledge that any attempt upon the part of our government to proselytise those populations would lead to an explosion of the most dangerous and incalculable kind. That declaration of our settled intention, though suggested by statesmanship, only represents the reality. In a word, our career of conquest and power has not been inspired, in any direct sense, by Christianity, the principles of which rather point, if anything, another way.
If we look at home, the reason for this absence of religious motive in our national action is apparent. We have been far too much torn within by divergent conceptions of our religion ever to have been animated by the enthusiasm of a national propaganda. With us the Reformers assailed the Canonists, the Sects assailed the Reformers, and the Congregationalists assailed the Sects in turn; then the Deists of the eighteenth century devoured the Sectaries, and finally, Agnosticism devoured the Deists. What a Niagara of warring opinions! What an apocalyptic fall from the Fathers to the philosophers! The sign in which some have conquered became with us rather a sign of intestinal discord and even civil strife.
Thus religion has not created in our case, as in the case of some other peoples, an intense inner union, a fiery coherence, issuing in an unquenchable animosity against others, lighting a fierce blaze in the precincts of other commonwealths, and often finding vent in war. We have erred, no doubt, if this has been due to our coldness and indifference; we have done well, if this has been due to a reluctance to light autos-da-fé for our enemies, or to become the inquisitors of mankind.
Or perhaps, thirdly, the real secret of our dominion is force of arms. It may be that we have submitted ourselves to a more iron discipline, and discharged the claims of the national service more fully than other peoples. Thus we have been able to reap a victory over our enemies, war being the substance of our rulership, and our sceptre the sword.
But this third proposition that genius in arms has founded and maintains our fortune, though it too must have some element of truth in it, is not more satisfactory than the others, and cannot stand the test of a cursory glance. For it must be immediately plain to the most casual student of our history that militarism is not our characteristic. The ruler who did his best to instil the genuine martial spirit into the nation was Cromwell, and his failure was so complete that reaction against his system has left a mark scarcely yet effaced upon our policy and character. Of all the measures which accompanied the Restoration, the disbanding of Cromwell's army was the most popular. The two succeeding Stuart sovereigns endeavoured to imitate his example, but the force of men organised by James II. furnished one of the gravest indictments against him. Hence both parties could vie in rebuking and rooting out militarism. One side execrated the Stuarts, and the other anathematised the Protector, so that the army was the scapegoat for the sins of the whole political world.
Yet the close of the seventeenth century and the early decades of the eighteenth century witnessed the initiation of the modern military system in Europe. War for the first time touched hands with science under the guidance of such men as Parma and Turenne, Condé and Vauban. Nevertheless, when to have a highly trained force seemed vital, our Parliament would hardly pass yearly mutiny acts for the essentials of discipline, refused to supply proper quarters, and cut down the army. Later, there were constant efforts made to reduce the standing military forces, and Burke in 1780 could denounce our modest outlay as a "bleeding artery of profusion." Such, in that epoch, was the prevailing spirit, such the reluctance to organise, the distaste for science in warfare, and the aversion to militarism.
But with the closing years of the eighteenth century the new epoch in militarism opened, which is still in full vigour. Europe began to pay an ever closer attention to the science of war, and to adopt that system of conscription which was inagurated in 1798 by the Corps Législatif of France. To-day, of course, a considerable proportion of the combined budgets of Christendom is devoted to military and naval expenditure, and thus the angel of peace may be said to enjoy a comparatively modest pittance, doled out after Bellona has had enough.
There is no need to dwell upon the varying course of military administration which we on our side of the Channel have pursued during the same period. But bearing it in mind, and contrasting it with the policy of our fellow nations, no one will have the hardihood to contend that, memorable as our achievements have been, military organisation has been our special attribute, that our power is principally due to our concentration on national discipline, and that our heart and genius is in war.
If, then, the eminence of England cannot be justly and acceptably traced to the power of wealth, or to the fervour of religion, or to military organisation, there is, lastly, a fourth possible cause to be considered. Individuals who are neither rich nor spiritual in a marked degree, nor endowed with combative power beyond their fellows, sometimes exercise influence upon their associates, and even upon their epoch, in virtue of a rare disposition. Occasionally this effect of character resides in nations as well as in individuals, and then the sympathy and the goodwill of even alien peoples go out to them, and, bridging the abyss of race or religion or history, make them strong. Aided by the attraction of immemorial prestige or the ties of old association, a nation thus conciliates and captivates mankind.
It is to such a cause as this that Austria, for instance, under the House of Hapsburg, owes so much. That house has for centuries committed political errors, and undergone defeats that would surely have ruined any other state. But Austria has enjoyed a charmed life. She has waxed vigorous under the weight and tonnage of crushing catastrophes, and this buoyancy has been due to no other sufficient cause than the esteem borne to her reigning house by men who, otherwise, would detest her name only a little less than they detest each other.
This assertion is worth a word of proof. It was at the opening of the seventeenth century that the House of Hapsburg at Vienna seemed to have grown really powerful, and prepared itself for the discharge of its historical mission, the union of Germany under itself. Now that so many other peoples had formed themselves into strong organisations, it was high time for Germany to do the same. Yet from that moment the House of Hapsburg committed a series of blunders so enormous as to begin by ruining Germany in the Thirty Years' War, and to end, in 1870, by enabling the once obscure state of Prussia to seize the headship of the whole. In the phrase of Bismarck, "Austria did my work."
Frederick the Great once remarked of the Emperor Joseph II. that he always took the second step before he had taken the first. In order to make that remark true of the politics of the House of Hapsburg, it would perhaps be right to add that the second step was, on capital occasions, usually the wrong one. For example, the Austrian Hapsburgs had displayed toleration towards the creeds produced by the Reformation up to the beginning of the seventeenth century. The main political problem for Europe in the century then opening was how to consolidate and perpetuate that principle by settled institutions under which all Germany might dwell and flourish. Yet this was the moment of all others chosen by the Emperor Ferdinand to attempt to render Catholicism dominant by force of arms. It was far too late, and the result was the Thirty Years' War, from which civil strife Germany scarcely recovered for two centuries.
Again, the external function of the House of Hapsburg was an effective resistance to France, to be maintained on behalf of Germany. This was what Germany asked of Austria as the price of primacy among the multifarious Teutonic states, and this is what, on the most critical of all occasions, the Hapsburgs failed to offer. For when, in 1809, the rising of the nations against Napoleon had just commenced, and the spirit of nationality began to move more strongly on the face of the waters, it was then that Austria, after a struggle by no means inglorious, inaugurated a policy of steady acquiescence in the supremacy of France, and pursued in regard to domestic government those reactionary tendencies which were to prove so disastrous during the nineteenth century. Again, as Bismarck put it, "A history of the House of Hapsburg from Charles V. onwards is a whole series of neglected opportunities."
Thus the House of Hapsburg has been rudely ousted from the primacy of the German race, and its appeal has lain necessarily to aliens, to the Slav and the Magyar, the hereditary enemies of Teutonism. Does any force maintain the uneasy peace among these jarring races more strong than the feeling entertained by its subjects for that lineage, dignified as it has been by its distressful history?
A similar case is furnished by French history. The ascendency exercised by France from the age of Louis XIV. was due neither to her wealth, nor to her religion, nor even mainly to her military strength, formidable as it often was, but rather to the attraction of her civilisation. As Voltaire said in his History of Morals, it was then that Frenchmen began to render themselves generally acceptable by the grace and charm of their culture: "it was the dawn of good taste." At that date the role of Italy and Spain was over; Germany had not come on; and France filled the scene, enjoying for a time the combined authority which Rome exercised over Greece by her power, and which Greece exercised over Rome by her mind.
In this epoch she produced a literature so close to life that life and literature seemed one. Following on Montaigne, on Descartes, and on Malherbe, there arose a band of men who, numbering Corneille, Bossuet, La Fontaine, Boileau, Molière, and Racine among them, made France the school of Europe, and humanised humanity itself.
The magic of these masters seemed to transcend frontiers, to cry halt to the divergence of nations, and to draw all men unto it. The love of self, which in its highest phase is nationality, bowed for a time before the love of beauty, which in its highest phase is art. Lit by the hand of genius, the fire of Apollo outshone, even for us barbarians, the fire of war.
Thus France denationalised Germany. Till 1760 at any rate, and the rise of Lessing, the Teuton owned the dominion of the Latin, and even Lessing avowed himself a cosmopolitan, that is, a Frenchman. The outbreak of the Revolution found a Germany more French than German in its patriotism. Her weightiest minds, Herder and Schilling, Kant and Hegel and Goethe, taught Germans to look with reverence across the Rhine.
To apply, however, these considerations to England, it must be confessed that, substantially, it is not to any such magnetism of personality that she owes her weight and vogue among mankind. And this is true whether we have regard to our monarchy as the embodiment of our national personality, or to the nation itself.
It must be held, indeed, that the most recent occupants of the throne have played their part in softening the antipathies, and even in procuring for us the goodwill, of continental powers. Outside Europe, too, our self-governing dominions, who can look over the head of Parliaments, but not over the head of kings, have felt the spell. Again, many of the oriental or native races respect our monarchy as an institution common and congenial both to east and west. Thus the line of Egbert affiliates antagonistic ages and sundered worlds.
But, though this is the case at present, we must remember that such sentiments are of comparatively recent date. It may fairly be said that from the close of the sixteenth to the close of the nineteenth century none of our monarchs, except Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria, had the spirit calculated thus to attract. For between the reigns of these queens neither the House of Stuart nor the House of Hanover produced princes either capable of such insight or otherwise than indifferent and even hostile to such sympathies.
If we revert, then, from these representatives of the nation to the nation itself, and ask whether our ascendency may be ascribed to the fascination of our national characteristics, such an inquiry can only be made to be put aside. As Lord Salisbury, commenting on the "root of bitterness against England" so implanted in foreign soil, has said, "This country has been cast out with reproach in almost every literature in Europe."
If, not contenting ourselves with so general a verdict, we look more closely at the European view of England as expressed in its literature, it seems that we have been generally adjudged unreliable, proud, selfish, and quarrelsome. As far back as the seventeenth century the first of these characteristics was constantly charged against us. Thus Bossuet, in his sermon on Henrietta Maria, declared us to be more unstable than the sea which encircles us. De Witt, the Dutch statesman, remarked the same. In the succeeding eighteenth century Peter the Great described us as a power torn within itself and variable in its plans. Torcy, the French foreign minister, observed that of all the countries comprised in Europe there is none where the maxims of government vary more than in England; while, later in the century, Vergennes wrote that nothing is so fickle as the policy of the cabinet of St. James.
There was the same complaint in the nineteenth century. Bismarck held that it was impossible to make an alliance of assured permanence with us; and, on the other side of the Rhine, Ollivier, the minister of Napoleon III., has echoed the accusation.
As regards the three other qualities above mentioned, their attribution to us is too common to be emphasised. Michelet called us pride incarnate. Bismarck said that the policy of England has constantly been to sow dissension between the continental powers for her own interests. And from Froissart downwards any number of continental writers have remarked upon the quarrelsome proclivities of the English people. In fact, these charges reveal an old, deep-seated, and widespread sense of irritation against us as a power which will not answer the bell for any one in Europe, and is a most troublous neighbour with whom to sit at meat.
If, overstepping the boundaries of Europe, we inquire whether our predominance over the Asiatic and native peoples is due to any special attraction of personality exercised by us over them, it must equally be answered, no. We present ourselves to oriental eyes in the threefold aspect of soldiers, business men, and civil administrators. The British officer, admirable in discipline and conduct, is exclusive. In habit and pastime he is insular. He obeys orders; he utterly ignores local politics; he maintains discipline. Our men of business are meritorious, upright, and efficient. Our civil officials are models of what such men should be. But to the oriental they are all more or less unpalatable. They range from the inconvenient to the intolerable. For they are all the off-shoots of the stem of Japhet.
Hence it is clear that the greatness of England cannot be ascribed either to the resources of her wealth, or to the impulse of her religion, or to the organisation of her armaments, or to that inborn attraction which shines in some characters.
The true cause has been otherwise. There are two forces, always verging on the tyrannous, and seeking to oppress us all, the one exercised by man over his fellows, and the other exercised by nature over man. To resist the one, England led the way in organising modern freedom; and next, to resist the other, she led the way in organising modern industry. She claimed for the individual such security against his kindred, man, and such power over his parent, Nature, as he had never yet known.