The Anglo-Saxon Century and the Unification of the English-Speaking People

by John R. Dos Passos

Another phase of the subject, i.e., the internal condition of
China.

In the aspect in which I am considering the subject, I do not think I am wrong in saying that China bears the same relation to the civilised world as the continent of America did to Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There are, of course, great differences—China has more people—she has a more developed internal trade, her citizens have more intelligence and certain inventive and business qualities, and there are other very material features too obvious to mention, which distinguish the Chinese from the American aborigines, but in the sense in which I am speaking, the comparison is correct. China has made no distinct advance for centuries, in a civilising direction, in the sciences and arts, in commercial and manufacturing pursuits, to say nothing of political, religious, and moral improvements, schools and eleemosynary establishments. She has stood dead-still, if she has not actually taken a step backward. As a nation, China is oblivious to anything progressive. In fact, so low is she in the scale of modern civilisation, that the United States, whose commendable policy has been to invite immigrants to her shores, has deliberately shut her doors to China, and has unceremoniously refused to receive the latter's subjects either as citizens or as travellers. In ordinary circumstances, the estimation {19} of independent thinkers, this policy of exclusion would be intolerable, but its justification has been sustained upon the ground that the Chinese are not regarded as fit associates for American citizens, and no persons are wanted in this country who do not meet this requirement. In a word, China is out of harmony in her relations to the civilised powers. With but few exceptions her policy has been to close her doors to the outside world, to shut herself up in a shell upon the approach of strangers. China, in respect to modern development, must be opened by the corkscrew of progress. She does not respond with effervescence to the approaches of civilisation. The massacre of an ambassador of a great power, the altogether unjustifiable slaughter of helpless missionaries, invited and induced to reside there by treaty, and the turbulent confusion which reigns inside of her borders, form complete evidence of the utter incapacity of the nation for respectable, stable government. She is old, childish, helpless, and if her territories are to be opened and developed, if her people are to be educated, enlightened and made prosperous, it must be by the strong hands of the civilised powers. Of course, touching and effective arguments may be made against the right of nations forcibly and bodily to take possession of Chinese soil, and intelligent and cultivated Chinese statesmen and gifted scholars like Wu Ting-Fang, the late Chinese Ambassador to the United States, may make pathetic appeals against such a movement, based upon the superior moral and legal right of the {20} Chinese to their own soil and government. But we must look the question fairly in the face, undisturbed and unaffected by arguments which, ordinarily, would have preponderating weight. The Indians who occupied the soil of North America, the Britons who occupied the soil of England, had the same arguments. Nothing is finer than the pictured eloquence of the Indian chiefs as they spiritedly protested against the invasion of their soil and the dispersion and extinguishment of their tribal governments. But before the march of progress and the underlying necessities of civilisation, these cries of sentiment and sympathy will not long be heard. The invincible spirit of progress must go on. Like quicksilver, it will noiselessly run into every portion of the globe where voids created by political weakness and barbarism exist. Sympathy cannot be allowed for ever to block human advancement. In the contest between the higher and the lower order of things, it is impossible to adjust the details to our liking. There is always an intermediate period of partial injustice and confusion before the solution is reached. China can prove no exception to this view. Railroads will eventually appear in the highways of China in place of the ancient and worn-out methods of transportation which now prevail; manufacturing and mining pursuits will be established, her fields will be opened, cultivated, and enriched by modern methods and implements of agriculture. It will be in vain for the Chinese to undertake to support their religion and methods of thought and life by appeals {21} to Confucius and other teachers. These must give way under the influence of modern progress. Why? Because they have produced no fruit. A tree that bears nothing is valueless. China's ethics, laws, religion, and philosophy are barren. Primitively and simply beautiful they may be, but they are without practical value except as historical monuments marking the advance of nations. Her present condition attests the value of her institutions: "By their fruits ye shall know them."

In face of all these facts, it is hard to realise that the allied powers should precipitately have left China. Yet the reason is plain. England and the United States each had a war upon its hands. The Chinese difficulty happened at a most inopportune time, and when the United States inaugurated and persisted in a movement of abandonment of China, England was reluctantly forced to give up her convictions and to join in the retrograde march. Had England been entirely free to act, no doubt she would have forced a different settlement. The McKinley administration exhibited a natural weakness in its policy. It had to fight shy of the imperialistic cry, which had been dinned in its ears ad nauseam with respect to the Philippine possessions; it feared another broadside from opposition newspapers, which was imminent if it pursued a strong policy in China, and hence one was hit upon of apparent magnanimity towards the Chinese, but which was at once superficial, weak, and misleading, and withal the worst measure for China which could be imagined. The allied powers {22} entered China without a studied or concerted plan, and they left it without a clear solution or settlement of the questions involved. Their going in was as their coming out—hasty, ill-conceived, and impolitic. The commencement and the conclusion were both befogged. No sooner were the allied troops removed than internal dissensions appeared, and the weakness, wretchedness, and incompetence of the Chinese government was soon more plainly revealed than ever. By abandoning China, the United States played directly into the hands of Russia. England and Germany must have seen this, but they could not combat a plan of action which seemed on its face so magnanimous to a fallen people, especially with France co-operating with Russia.

The whole business must be gone over again. The weakness of China will soon be revealed in plots and revolutions all over the Empire; indignities will be again perpetrated upon foreigners, and armed intervention will follow.

I cannot leave this question without a separate word about France. The real position of France should be isolation—waiting, watching, improving. The figure which she presents to-day as an ally of Russia is false and unnatural. Let me speak of France with candour and without reserve. Her national progress is stopped, and an internal decay has set in, which will sooner or later seriously affect her influence as a first-class power. The reasons which impel me to reach this painful conclusion are the following: The effort to establish {23} a republican government in France, while not a failure, is far from being a success. No student who has conscientiously studied the history of the past one hundred years can truthfully say that she has made real progress in government. The attempt to sustain a republic in France has been almost grotesque. The great, central, pivotal point of any serious government is stability, which she has never even approached. Ministries are blown over like card houses, by the mere ebullition of political passion, and not as the result of a principle. The people are genuinely surprised if a ministry lasts six months. In the effort to establish a republic, two great fundamental mistakes—among others—are made. First, the French congress and government are held and administered in Paris, the very centre of boiling passions and the hotbed and school of every conflicting "ism" that arises to confound the good sense and prudence of mankind. The seat of government in a republic must be located away from the cosmopolitan influences of large cities. It must be held in a place where calmness—and quiet prevail, and where the officials of the government, and the legislators, are removed from the intimidating noises and the unhealthy influences of metropolitan journalism.

In the second place, the Cabinet should not participate in the proceedings of the legislative bodies.

A cabinet is chosen to aid the president. As the cabinet members are his family council they ought {24} to be in sympathy with his political views, and with his plans, as executive, and their tenure should be consistent with his pleasure. To place them in a position similar to the Ministry of England, in which nation the House of Commons represents the immediate sentiments of the English people; to take one important feature of a constitutional monarchy as it exists in England, and place it in the body of a republic like that created in France, is anomalous and incongruous; utterly out of sympathy and in discord with the real purposes of a republic.

In a republic, a cabinet represents the president, not the people. The noise, froth, and confusion which characterise every overthrow of a French ministry in the Chamber of Deputies is not the vox populi; the change is the result of coalitions, sentiment, or passion; it is a momentary variation in the temper of the legislators, often brought about by events so trivial that one is almost ashamed of legislative bodies. These topsy-turvy movements are not aimed at the executive, but are demonstrations against the cabinet, whose constant overthrow shows the instability of the administration and brings it into contempt. The frequent downfall of a cabinet weakens the confidence of the people in their government, although in fact it may be purely superficial.

I cannot pursue the subject in detail. I leave much unsaid that is important, but there are one or two more thoughts which press upon me with force, and which still further illustrate the above {25} views. France seems to be lacking the few great men who could turn her course into better roads of national policy and prosperity. She has no real leaders. Nor is the nation united in its sympathies with a republican government. That form has no great, genuine lovers in France. They love their country, but not the political mantle which envelops it. Her leading men doubt whether it is the best form for the government of her people, or whether she should not be a monarchy. Democracies thrive upon the love and enthusiasm of the people. If these feelings are not present among the masses, the government is not likely to be healthy. A fair proportion of Frenchmen are socialists. What this means in France, no one has intelligently defined or explained. So far as we can judge from a study of the mass of stuff presented, called argument, it means a general breaking up of society. Another class of Frenchmen favour a monarchy; but perhaps the largest class is composed of true republicans. These differences are vital and fundamental. They go to the form and substance of government, not to its policy, as in America, where every party cry, radical or conservative, is attuned to the music of a republican federation, and which is the sine qua non to all political conclusions. How can a nation progress until its people have chosen, or are competent to choose, a stable form of government, and are satisfied with certain organic political principles?

Nothing illustrates the vacillation of France and her utter want of stability more than her {26} alliance with Russia. The extent and nature of this alliance is now known to be of a comprehensive character—offensive and defensive. After France was released from the last obligation of the Prussian war by the payment of the money indemnity, it became the fixed, resolute, and unswerving purpose of her people to regain Alsace and Lorraine from the Germans. Her recuperative power was wonderful. In a few years she was in the full vigour of a new national life. The defeat which the nation had suffered rankled in the bosoms of her people, and for years they thought of nothing but revenge against Germany. The truth is that the result of the Franco-Prussian war casts no reflection upon the moral or physical courage of the French. The fault was that of Napoleon III: the nation was taken unawares, and before she was ready, Germany had her brave people by the throat. The victorious Germans took good care to strengthen their hold on territories wrested from France, by forming the Triple Alliance. In the meantime, the former provinces of France have become in a great measure Germanised. The longings of the people of Alsace and Lorraine to again become part of France grow weaker every day, as do the feelings of the French people to possess them. Separation and time are both acting to diminish the chances of their recovery. On the one side the inhabitants of the territories are becoming acclimated to their new national life; and on the other, the French people have become less intense in their original determination to recover {27} them. A new generation of people has grown up which did not participate in the original struggle, and which lack the enthusiasm of the original actors. Whether French diplomacy could have avoided or thwarted this result, or whether the situation has come from natural or uncontrollable conditions; upon either assumption, the cold, disagreeable fact stares the French people in the face, and they should look at the situation boldly and philosophically—the recovery of these provinces is now a remote possibility.