[ A TWENTIETH-CENTURY OUTLOOK. ]
May, 1897.
Finality, the close of a life, of a relationship, of an era, even though this be a purely artificial creation of human arrangement, in all cases appeals powerfully to the imagination, and especially to that of a generation self-conscious as ours, a generation which has coined for itself the phrase fin de siècle to express its belief, however superficial and mistaken, that it knows its own exponents and its own tendencies; that, amid the din of its own progress sounding in its ears, it knows not only whence it comes but whither it goes. The nineteenth century is about to die, only to rise again in the twentieth. Whence did it come? How far has it gone? Whither is it going?
A full reply to such queries would presume an abridged universal history of the expiring century such as a magazine article, or series of articles, could not contemplate for a moment. The scope proposed to himself by the present writer, itself almost unmanageable within the necessary limits, looks not to the internal conditions of states, to those economical and social tendencies which occupy so large a part of contemporary attention, seeming to many the sole subjects that deserve attention, and that from the most purely material and fleshly point of view. Important as these things are, it may be affirmed at least that they are not everything; and that, great as has been the material progress of the century, the changes in international relations and relative importance, not merely in states of the European family, but among the peoples of the world at large, have been no less striking. It is from this direction that the writer wishes to approach his subject, which, if applied to any particular country, might be said to be that of its external relations; but which, in the broader view that it will be sought to attain, regards rather the general future of the world as indicated by movements already begun and in progress, as well as by tendencies now dimly discernible, which, if not counteracted, are pregnant of further momentous shifting of the political balances, profoundly affecting the welfare of mankind.
It appears a convenient, though doubtless very rough, way of prefacing this subject to say that the huge colonizing movements of the eighteenth century were brought to a pause by the American Revolution, which deprived Great Britain of her richest colonies, succeeded, as that almost immediately was, by the French Revolution and the devastating wars of the republic and of Napoleon, which forced the attention of Europe to withdraw from external allurements and to concentrate upon its own internal affairs. The purchase of Louisiana by the United States at the opening of the current century emphasized this conclusion; for it practically eliminated the continent of North America from the catalogue of wild territories available for foreign settlement. Within a decade this was succeeded by the revolt of the Spanish colonies, followed later by the pronouncements of President Monroe and of Mr. Canning, which assured their independence by preventing European interference. The firmness with which the position of the former statesman has been maintained ever since by the great body of the people of the United States, and the developments his doctrine afterwards received, have removed the Spanish-American countries equally from all probable chance of further European colonization, in the political sense of the word.
Thus the century opened. Men's energies still sought scope beyond the sea, doubtless; not, however, in the main, for the founding of new colonies, but for utilizing ground already in political occupation. Even this, however, was subsidiary. The great work of the nineteenth century, from nearly its beginning to nearly its close, has been in the recognition and study of the forces of nature, and the application of them to the purposes of mechanical and economical advance. The means thus placed in men's hands, so startling when first invented, so familiar for the most part to us now, were devoted necessarily, first, to the development of the resources of each country. Everywhere there was a fresh field; for hitherto it had been nowhere possible to man fully to utilize the gifts of nature. Energies everywhere turned inward, for there, in every region, was more than enough to do. Naturally, therefore, such a period has been in the main one of peace. There have been great wars, certainly; but, nevertheless, external peace has been the general characteristic of that period of development, during which men have been occupied in revolutionizing the face of their own countries by means of the new powers at their disposal.
All such phases pass, however, as does every human thing. Increase of production—the idol of the economist—sought fresh markets, as might have been predicted. The increase of home consumption, through increased ease of living, increased wealth, increased population, did not keep up with the increase of forth-putting and the facility of distribution afforded by steam. In the middle of the century China and Japan were forced out of the seclusion of ages, and were compelled, for commercial purposes at least, to enter into relations with the European communities, to buy and to sell with them. Serious attempts, on any extensive scale, to acquire new political possessions abroad largely ceased. Commerce only sought new footholds, sure that, given the inch, she in the end would have the ell. Moreover, the growth of the United States in population and resources, and the development of the British Australian colonies, contributed to meet the demand, of which the opening of China and Japan was only a single indication. That opening, therefore, was rather an incident of the general industrial development which followed upon the improvement of mechanical processes and the multiplication of communications.
Thus the century passed its meridian, and began to decline towards its close. There were wars and there were rumors of wars in the countries of European civilization. Dynasties rose and fell, and nations shifted their places in the scale of political importance, as old-time boys in school went up and down; but, withal, the main characteristic abode, and has become more and more the dominant prepossession of the statesmen who reached their prime at or soon after the times when the century itself culminated. The maintenance of a status quo , for purely utilitarian reasons of an economical character, has gradually become an ideal—the quieta non movere of Sir Robert Walpole. The ideal is respectable, certainly; in view of the concert of the powers, in the interest of their own repose, to coerce Greece and the Cretans, we may perhaps refrain from calling it noble. The question remains, how long can it continue respectable in the sense of being practicable of realization,—a rational possibility, not an idle dream? Many are now found to say—and among them some of the most bitter of the advocates of universal peace, who are among the bitterest of modern disputants—that when the Czar Nicholas proposed to move the quiet things, half a century ago, and to reconstruct the political map of southeastern Europe in the interest of well-founded quiet, it was he that showed the idealism of rational statesmanship,—the only truly practical statesmanship,—while the defenders of the status quo evinced the crude instincts of the mere time-serving politician. That the latter did not insure quiet, even the quiet of desolation, in those unhappy regions, we have yearly evidence. How far is it now a practicable object, among the nations of the European family, to continue indefinitely the present realization of peace and plenty,—in themselves good things, but which are advocated largely on the ground that man lives by bread alone,—in view of the changed conditions of the world which the departing nineteenth century leaves with us as its bequest? Is the outlook such that our present civilization, with its benefits, is most likely to be insured by universal disarmament, the clamor for which rises ominously—the word is used advisedly—among our latter-day cries? None shares more heartily than the writer the aspiration for the day when nations shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; but is European civilization, including America, so situated that it can afford to relax into an artificial peace, resting not upon the working of national consciences, as questions arise, but upon a Permanent Tribunal,—an external, if self-imposed authority,—the realization in modern policy of the ideal of the mediæval Papacy?
The outlook—the signs of the times, what are they? It is not given to human vision, peering into the future, to see more than as through a glass, darkly; men as trees walking, one cannot say certainly whither. Yet signs may be noted even if they cannot be fully or precisely interpreted; and among them I should certainly say is to be observed the general outward impulse of all the civilized nations of the first order of greatness—except our own. Bound and swathed in the traditions of our own eighteenth century, when we were as truly external to the European world as we are now a part of it, we, under the specious plea of peace and plenty—fulness of bread—hug an ideal of isolation, and refuse to recognize the solidarity of interest with which the world of European civilization must not only look forward to, but go out to meet, the future that, whether near or remote, seems to await it. I say we do so; I should more surely express my thought by saying that the outward impulse already is in the majority of the nation, as shown when particular occasions arouse their attention, but that it is as yet retarded, and may be retarded perilously long, by those whose views of national policy are governed by maxims framed in the infancy of the Republic.
This outward impulse of the European nations, resumed on a large scale after nearly a century of intermission, is not a mere sudden appearance, sporadic, and unrelated to the past. The signs of its coming, though unnoted, were visible soon after the century reached its half-way stage, as was also its great correlative, equally unappreciated then, though obvious enough now, the stirring of the nations of Oriental civilization. It is a curious reminiscence of my own that when in Yokohama, Japan, in 1868, I was asked to translate a Spanish letter from Honolulu, relative to a ship-load of Japanese coolies to be imported into Hawaii. I knew the person engaged to go as physician to the ship, and, unless my memory greatly deceives me, he sailed in this employment while I was still in the port. Similarly, when my service on the station was ended, I went from Yokohama to Hong-kong, prior to returning home by way of Suez. Among my fellow-passengers was an ex-Confederate naval officer, whose business was to negotiate for an immigration of Chinese into, I think, the Southern States—in momentary despair, perhaps, of black labor—but certainly into the United States. We all know what has come in our own country of undertakings which then had attracted little attention.