What a wonderful old globe this is, with its jewelled constellations of humanity! Alfred Russel Wallace, in his Travels on the Amazon (1853, ch. xvii), says: "I do not remember a single circumstance in my travels so striking and so new, or that so well fulfilled all previous expectation, as my first view of the real uncivilized inhabitants of the river Uaupés…. I felt that I was as much in the midst of something new and startling, as if I had been instantaneously transported to a distant and unknown country." He then speaks of the "quiet, good-natured, inoffensive" character of these copper-coloured natives, and of their quickness of hand and skill, and continues: "Their figures are generally superb; and I have never felt so much pleasure in gazing at the finest statue as at these living illustrations of the beauty of the human form." Elsewhere he says[31]: "Their whole aspect and manner were different [from the semi-civilized Indians]; they walked with the free step of the independent forest-dweller … original and self-sustaining as the wild animals of the forest … living their own lives in their own way, as they had done for countless generations before America was discovered. The true denizen of the Amazonian forests, like the forest itself, is unique and not to be forgotten."
Not long ago I was talking to a shrewd, vigorous old English lady who had spent some forty years of her life among the Kafirs in South Africa and knew them intimately. She said (not knowing anything about my feelings): "Ah! you British think a great deal about yourselves. You think you are the finest race on earth; but I tell you the Kafirs are finer. They are splendid. Whether for their physical attributes, or their mental, or for their qualities of soul, I sometimes think they are the finest people in the world." Whether the old lady was right (and one has heard others say much the same), or whether she was carried away by her enthusiasm, the fact remains that here is a people capable of exciting such enthusiasm, and certainly capable of exciting much admiration among all who know them well.
Read the accounts of the Polynesian peoples at an early period—before commerce and the missionaries had come among them—as given in the pages of Captain Cook, of Herman Melville, or even as adumbrated in their past life in the writings of R.L. Stevenson—what a picture of health and gaiety and beauty! Surely never was there a more charming and happy folk—even if long-pig did occasionally in their feasts alternate with wild-pig.
And yet how strange that the white man, with all his science and all his so-called Christianity, has only come among these three peoples mentioned (and how many more?) to destroy and defile them—to flog the mild and innocent native of the Amazons to death for greed of his rubber; to rob the Kafir of his free wild lands and blast his life with drink and slavery in the diamond mines; to degrade and exterminate the Pacific islanders with all the vices and diseases of "civilization"!
Think of the Chinese—that extraordinary people coming down from the remotest ages of history, with their habits and institutions apparently but little changed—so kindly, so "all there," so bent on making the best of this world. "At the first sight of these ugly, cheery, vigorous people I loved them. Their gaiety, as of children, their friendliness, their profound humanity, struck me from the first and remained with me to the last."[32] And the verdict of all who know the people well—in the interior of the country of course—is the same. Think of the Japanese with their slight and simple, but exceedingly artistic and exceedingly heroic type of civilization.
Or, again, of the East Indian peoples, so unfitted as a rule for making the best of this world, so passive, dreamy, subtle, unpractical, and yet with their marvellous spiritual gift, their intuition (also since the dawn of history) and conviction of another plane of being than that in which we mostly move, and their occasional power of distinctly sensing that plane and acting on its indications. Think of their ancient religious philosophy—their doctrine of world-unity—absolutely foundational and inexpugnable, the corner-stone of all metaphysics, science, and politics, and of the latest most modern democracy; and still realized and believed in in India as nowhere else in the world.
Think of the gentle Buddhistic Burmese, the active, social Malays, the hard-featured, hard-lived Thibetans and Mongolians. Think of the Arabian and Moorish and Berber races, who, once the masters of the science and comforts of civilization, of their own accord (but in accordance also with their religion) abandoned the worship of all these idols and returned to the Biblical simplicity of four thousand years ago—having realized that they already possessed something better, namely, the glory of the sky and the earth, the sun and the desert sands, and the freedom of love and adventure. How strange, and yet how natural, that sundered only by a narrow strip of sea they even now should look back upon all the laborious, feverish, and overcrowded wealth of Europe and seeing the cost thereof should feel for it only contempt! For that, indeed, is actually for the most part the case—though not of course without exceptions among certain sections of the population.
Or again, the millions and millions of Great and Little Russian peasants. Big-framed, big-hearted, patient, friendly, with a great natural gift for association and co-operation, peacefully minded and profoundly religious; yet superstitious, and capable of rising at any moment en masse to the call of a great crusade or "holy war"; it might seem that they hold all Western Europe in the hollow of their hands. Indeed they constitute not only a hope and promise of deliverance to our modern world, but also a considerable danger. All depends on how we dispose ourselves towards them. Should the nations of Western Europe rouse their hatred by chicanery and mean treatment the result might be fatal. If their flood once began to move, no battle array of armaments would be of any use—any more than a revolver against a rising tide—the flood would flow round and over us. But if on the other hand we could really reach the heart of this great people, if we could treat them really generously and with understanding, we should create a response there, and a recognition, which would remove all risk to ourselves, and possibly help to free Russia from the great burden of political servitude and ignorance which has so long oppressed her peasantry.
Or think of the Servians—that hospitable people, good lovers and good haters, with their ancient, almost prehistoric, system of family communities surviving down to modern days, and blossoming out in a perfect genius for co-operative agriculture and Raffeisen banks!
Or the Finns, the Swedes, the Norwegians, and the Danes (if I may class these together); what a clear, clean-minded, healthy people are these, so direct in their touch on Nature and the human instincts, so democratic, bold, and progressive in their social organizations—what a privilege to have them as our near neighbours and relatives! Or the Germans, in many ways resembling the last mentioned group, only richer and more varied in their culture and racial characteristics! Or the Dutch, so well-based and broad-seated both in body and mind, with their ample bowels of compassion and their well-equipped brains, so full of tenderness and of sturdy commonsense, what a gift has been theirs to Europe, what a legacy of artistic treasure and of heroic record! Or the Spanish with their beautiful and dignified women, or the French with their fine logical and artistic sense, or the Hungarians, Greeks, and Italians!