THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN! NEED IT BE SO HEAVY?
IT is a delightful stroll on a sunny summer morning from the Hague to theHuis ten Bosch, the little “house in the wood,” built for PrincessAmalia, widow of Stadtholter Frederick Henry, under whom Holland escapedfinally from the bondage of her foes and entered into the promised landof Liberty. Leaving the quiet streets, the tree-bordered canals, withtheir creeping barges, you pass through a pleasant park, where thesoft-eyed deer press round you, hurt and indignant if you have broughtnothing in your pocket—not even a piece of sugar—to offer them. It isnot that they are grasping—it is the want of attention that wounds them.
“I thought he was a gentleman,” they seem to be saying to one another, ifyou glance back, “he looked like a gentleman.”
Their mild eyes haunt you; on the next occasion you do not forget. ThePark merges into the forest; you go by winding ways till you reach thetrim Dutch garden, moat-encircled, in the centre of which stands the primold-fashioned villa, which, to the simple Dutchman, appears a palace.The _concierge_, an old soldier, bows low to you and introduces you tohis wife—a stately, white-haired dame, who talks most languages a little,so far as relates to all things within and appertaining to this tinypalace of the wood. To things without, beyond the wood, her powers ofconversation do not extend: apparently such matters do not interest her.
She conducts you to the Chinese Room; the sun streams through thewindows, illuminating the wondrous golden dragons standing out in boldrelief from the burnished lacquer work, decorating still further withlight and shade the delicate silk embroideries thin taper hands havewoven with infinite pains. The walls are hung with rice paper, depictingthe conventional scenes of the conventional Chinese life.
You find your thoughts wandering. These grotesque figures, thesecaricatures of humanity! A comical creature, surely, this Chinaman, thepantaloon of civilization. How useful he has been to us for our farces,our comic operas! This yellow baby, in his ample pinafore, who livedthousands of years ago, who has now passed into this strange secondchildhood.
But is he dying—or does the life of a nation wake again, as after sleep?Is he this droll, harmless thing he here depicts himself? And if not?Suppose fresh sap be stirring through his three hundred millions? Wethought he was so very dead; we thought the time had come to cut him upand divide him, the only danger being lest we should quarrel over hiscarcase among ourselves.
Suppose it turns out as the fable of the woodcutter and the bear? Thewoodcutter found the bear lying in the forest. At first he was muchfrightened, but the bear lay remarkably still. So the woodman creptnearer, ventured to kick the bear—very gently, ready to run if need be.Surely the bear was dead! And parts of a bear are good to eat, andbearskin to poor woodfolk on cold winter nights is grateful. So thewoodman drew his knife and commenced the necessary preliminaries. Butthe bear was not dead.
If the Chinaman be not dead? If the cutting-up process has only servedto waken him? In a little time from now we shall know.
From the Chinese Room the white-haired dame leads us to the JapaneseRoom. Had gentle-looking Princess Amalia some vague foreshadowing of thefuture in her mind when she planned these two rooms leading into oneanother? The Japanese decorations are more grotesque, the designs lesscheerfully comical than those of cousin Chinaman. These monstrous,mis-shapen wrestlers, these patient-looking gods, with their inscrutableeyes! Was it always there, or is it only by the light of present eventsthat one reads into the fantastic fancies of the artist working long agoin the doorway of his paper house, a meaning that has hitherto escapedus?
But the chief attraction of the Huis ten Bosch is the gorgeous OrangeSaloon, lighted by a cupola, fifty feet above the floor, the walls oneblaze of pictures, chiefly of the gorgeous Jordaen school—“The Defeat ofthe Vices,” “Time Vanquishing Slander”—mostly allegorical, in praise ofall the virtues, in praise of enlightenment and progress. Aptly enoughin a room so decorated, here was held the famous Peace Congress thatclosed the last century. One can hardly avoid smiling as one thinks ofthe solemn conclave of grandees assembled to proclaim the popularity ofPeace.
It was in the autumn of the same year that Europe decided upon thedividing-up of China, that soldiers were instructed by Christian monarchsto massacre men, women and children, the idea being to impress upon theHeathen Chinee the superior civilization of the white man. The Boer warfollowed almost immediately. Since when the white man has been prettybusy all over the world with his “expeditions” and his “missions.” Theworld is undoubtedly growing more refined. We do not care for uglywords. Even the burglar refers airily to the “little job” he has onhand. You would think he had found work in the country. I should not besurprised to learn that he says a prayer before starting, telegraphs hometo his anxious wife the next morning that his task has been crowned withblessing.
Until the far-off date of Universal Brotherhood war will continue.Matters considered unimportant by both parties will—with a mightyflourish of trumpets—be referred to arbitration. I was talking of afamous financier a while ago with a man who had been his secretary.Amongst other anecdotes, he told me of a certain agreement about whichdispute had arisen. The famous financier took the paper into his ownhands and made a few swift calculations.
“Let it go,” he concluded, “it is only a thousand pounds at the outside.May as well be honest.”
Concerning a dead fisherman or two, concerning boundaries throughunproductive mountain ranges we shall arbitrate and feel virtuous. Forgold mines and good pasture lands, mixed up with a little honour to giverespectability to the business, we shall fight it out, as previously.War being thus inevitable, the humane man will rejoice that by one ofthose brilliant discoveries, so simple when they are explained, war inthe future is going to be rendered equally satisfactory to victor and tovanquished.
In by-elections, as a witty writer has pointed out, there are nodefeats—only victories and moral victories. The idea seems to havecaught on. War in the future is evidently going to be conducted on thesame understanding. Once upon a time, from a far-off land, a certaingeneral telegraphed home congratulating his Government that the enemy hadshown no inclination whatever to prevent his running away. The wholecountry rejoiced.
“Why, they never even tried to stop him,” citizens, meeting othercitizens in the street, told each other. “Ah, they’ve had enough of him.I bet they are only too glad to get rid of him. Why, they say he ran formiles without seeing a trace of the foe.”
The enemy’s general, on the other hand, also wrote home congratulatinghis Government. In this way the same battle can be mafficked over byboth parties. Contentment is the great secret of happiness. Everythinghappens for the best, if only you look at it the right way. That isgoing to be the argument. The general of the future will telegraph toheadquarters that he is pleased to be able to inform His Majesty that theenemy, having broken down all opposition, has succeeded in crossing thefrontier and is now well on his way to His Majesty’s capital.
“I am luring him on,” he will add, “as fast as I can. At our presentrate of progress, I am in hopes of bringing him home by the tenth.”
Lest foolish civilian sort of people should wonder whereabouts lies thecause for rejoicing, the military man will condescend to explain. Theenemy is being enticed farther and farther from his base. The defeatedgeneral—who is not really defeated, who is only artful, and who appearsto be running away, is not really running away at all. On the contrary,he is running home—bringing, as he explains, the enemy with him.
If I remember rightly—it is long since I played it—there is a parlourgame entitled “Puss in the Corner.” You beckon another player to youwith your finger. “Puss, puss!” you cry. Thereupon he has to leave hischair—his “base,” as the military man would term it—and try to get to youwithout anything happening to him.
War in the future is going to be Puss in the Corner on a bigger scale.You lure your enemy away from his base. If all goe
s well—if he does notsee the trap that is being laid for him—why, then, almost before he knowsit, he finds himself in your capital. That finishes the game. You findout what it is he really wants. Provided it is something within reason,and you happen to have it handy, you give it to him. He goes homecrowing, and you, on your side, laugh when you think how cleverly yousucceeded in luring him away from his base.
There is a bright side to all things. The gentleman charged with thedefence of a fortress will meet the other gentleman who has captured itand shake hands with him mid the ruins.
“So here you are at last!” he will explain. “Why didn’t you come before?We have been waiting for you.”
And he will send off dispatches felicitating his chief on having got thatfortress off their hands, together with all the worry and expense it hasbeen to them. When prisoners are taken you will console yourself withthe reflection that the cost of feeding them for the future will have tobe borne by the enemy. Captured cannon you will watch being trailed awaywith a sigh of relief.
“Confounded heavy things!” you will say to yourself. “Thank goodnessI’ve got rid of them. Let him have the fun of dragging them about theseghastly roads. See how he likes the job!”
War is a ridiculous method of settling disputes. Anything that can tendto make its ridiculous aspect more apparent is to be welcomed. The newschool of military dispatch-writers may succeed in turning even thelaughter of the mob against it.
The present trouble in the East would never have occurred but for thewhite man’s enthusiasm for bearing other people’s burdens. What we callthe yellow danger is the fear that the yellow man may before long requestus, so far as he is concerned, to put his particular burden down. It mayoccur to him that, seeing it is his property, he would just as soon carryit himself. A London policeman told me a story the other day that struckhim as an example of Cockney humour under trying circumstances. But itmay also serve as a fable. From a lonely street in the neighbourhood ofCovent Garden, early one morning, the constable heard cries of “Stopthief!” shouted in a childish treble. He arrived on the scene just intime to collar a young hooligan, who, having snatched a basket of fruitfrom a small lad—a greengrocer’s errand boy, as it turned out—was, withit, making tracks. The greengrocer’s boy, between panting and tears,delivered his accusation. The hooligan regarded him with an expressionof amazed indignation.
“What d’yer mean, stealing it?” exclaimed Mr. Hooligan. “Why, I wascarrying it for yer!”
The white man has got into the way of “carrying” other people’s burdens,and now it looks as if the yellow man were going to object to ourcarrying his any further. Maybe he is going to get nasty, and insist oncarrying it himself. We call this “the yellow danger.”
A friend of mine—he is a man who in the street walks into lamp-posts, andapologises—sees rising from the East the dawn of a new day in the world’shistory. The yellow danger is to him a golden hope. He sees a race longstagnant, stretching its giant limbs with the first vague movements ofreturning life. He is a poor sort of patriot; he calls himself, Isuppose, a white man, yet he shamelessly confesses he would rather seeAsia’s millions rise from the ruins of their ancient civilization to taketheir part in the future of humanity, than that half the population ofthe globe should remain bound in savagery for the pleasure and the profitof his own particular species.
He even goes so far as to think that the white man may have something tolearn. The world has belonged to him now for some thousands of years.Has he done all with it that could have been done? Are his ideals thelast word?
Not what the yellow man has absorbed from Europe, but what he is going togive Europe it is that interests my friend. He is watching the birth ofa new force—an influence as yet unknown. He clings to the fond beliefthat new ideas, new formulæ, to replace the old worn shibboleths, may,during these thousands of years, have been developing in those keenbrains that behind the impressive yellow mask have been working so longin silence and in mystery.
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