In fact, for all Orientals, high and low alike, the "good old times" had charms which they mournfully regret. For the prince, the pasha, the courtier, existence was truly an Oriental paradise. To be sure, the prince might at any moment be defeated and slain by a rival monarch; the pasha strangled at his master's order; the courtier tortured through a superior's whim. But, meanwhile, it was "life," rich and full. "Each of these men had his own character and his own renown among his countrymen, and each enjoyed a position such as is now unattainable in Europe, in which he was released from laws, could indulge his own fancies, bad or good, and was fed every day and all day with the special flattery of Asia—that willing submissiveness to mere volition which is so like adoration, and which is to its recipients the most intoxicating of delights. Each, too, had his court of followers, and every courtier shared in the power, the luxury, and the adulation accruing to his lord. The power was that of life and death; the luxury included possession of every woman he desired; the adulation was, as I have said, almost religious worship."[99]
But, it may be asked, what about the poor man, exploited by this hierarchy of capricious despots? What had he to gain from all this? Well, in most cases, he got nothing at all; but he might gain a great deal. Life in the old Orient was a gigantic lottery. Any one, however humble, who chanced to please a great man, might rise to fame and fortune at a bound. And this is just what pleases the Eastern temperament; for in the East, "luck" and caprice are more prized than the "security" cherished in the West. In the Orient the favourite stories are those narrating sudden and amazing shifts of fortune—beggars become viziers or viziers become beggars, and all in a single night. To the majority of Orientals it is still the uncertainties of life, and the capricious favour of the powerful, which make it most worth living; not the sure reward of honesty and well-regulated labour. All these things made the life of the Orient infinitely interesting to all. And it is precisely this gambler's interest which Westernization has more or less destroyed. As an English writer very justly remarks à propos of modern Egypt: "Our rule may be perfect, but the East finds it dull. The old order was a ragged garment, but it was gay. Its very vicissitude had a charm. 'Ah! yes,' said an Egyptian to a champion of English rule, 'but in the old days a beggar might sit at the gate, and if he were found pleasing in the eyes of a great lady, he might be a great man on the morrow.' There is a natural and inevitable regret for the gorgeous and perilous past, when favour took the place of justice, and life had great heights and depths—for the Egypt of Joseph, Haroun-al-Rashid, and Ismail Pasha. We have spread the coat of broadcloth over the radiant garment."[100]
Saddened and irritated by the threatened loss of so much that they hold dear, it is not strange that many Eastern conservatives glorify the past as a sort of Golden Age, infinitely superior to anything the West can produce, and in this they are joined by many quondam liberals, disillusioned with Westernism and flying into the arms of reaction. The result is a spirit of hatred against everything Western, which sometimes assumes the most extravagant forms. Says Louis Bertrand: "During a lecture that I attended at Cairo the speaker contended that France owed Islam (1) its civilization and sciences; (2) half of its vocabulary; (3) all that was best in the character and mentality of its population, seeing that, from the Middle Ages to the Revolution of 1789, all the reformers who laboured for its enfranchisement—Albigensians, Vaudois, Calvinists, and Camisards—were probably descendants of the Saracens. It was nothing less than the total annexation of France to Morocco." Meanwhile, "it has become the fashion for fervent (Egyptian) nationalists to go to Spain and meditate in the gardens of the Alcazar of Seville or in the patios of the Alhambra of Granada on the defunct splendours of western Islam."[101]
Even more grotesque are the rhapsodies of the Hindu wing of this Golden Age school. These Hindu enthusiasts far outdo the wildest flights of their Moslem fellows. They solemnly assert that Hindustan is the nursery and home of all true religion, philosophy, culture, civilization, science, invention, and everything else; and they aver that when India's present regrettable eclipse is past (an eclipse of course caused entirely by English rule) she is again to shine forth in her glory for the salvation of the whole world. Employing to the full the old adage that there is nothing new under the sun, they have "discovered" in the Vedas and other Hindu sacred texts "irrefutable" evidence that the ancient Hindu sages anticipated all our modern ideas, including such up-to-date matters as bomb-dropping aeroplanes and the League of Nations.[102]
All this rhapsodical laudation of the past will, in the long run, prove futile. The East, like the West, has its peculiar virtues; but the East also has its special faults, and it is the faults which, for the last thousand years, have been gaining on the virtues, resulting in backwardness, stagnation, and inferiority. To-day the East is being penetrated—and quickened—by the West. The outcome will never be complete Westernization in the sense of a mere wholesale copying and absolute transformation; the East will always remain fundamentally itself. But it will be a new self, the result of a true assimilation of Western ideas. The reactionaries can only delay this process, and thereby prolong the Orient's inferiority and weakness.
Nevertheless, the reactionary attitude, though unintelligent, is intelligible. Westernization hurts too many cherished prejudices and vested interests not to arouse chronic resistance. This resistance would occur even if Western influences were all good and Westerners all angels of light. But of course Westernization has its dark side, while our Western culture-bearers are animated not merely by altruism, but also by far less worthy motives. This strengthens the hand of the Oriental reactionaries and lends them the cover of moral sanctions. In addition to the extremely painful nature of any transformative process, especially in economic and social matters, there are many incidental factors of an extremely irritating nature.
To begin with, the mere presence of the European, with his patent superiority of power and progress, is a constant annoyance and humiliation. This physical presence of the European is probably as necessary to the Orient's regeneration as it is inevitable in view of the Orient's present inferiority. But, however beneficial, it is none the less a source of profound irritation. These Europeans disturb everything, modify customs, raise living standards, erect separate "quarters" in the cities, where they form "extraterritorial" colonies exempt from native law and customary regulation. An English town rises in the heart of Cairo, a "Little Paris" eats into Arabesque Algiers, while European Pera flaunts itself opposite Turkish Stambul.
As for India, it is dotted with British "enclaves". "The great Presidency towns, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, are European cities planted on Indian soil. All the prominent buildings are European, though in some of the more recent ones an endeavour has been made to adopt what is known as the 'Indo-Saracenic' style of architecture. For the rest, the streets are called by English names, generally the names of bygone viceroys and governors, or of the soldiers who conquered the land and quelled the mutiny—heroes whose effigies meet you at every turn. The shops are English shops, where English or Eurasian assistants traffic in English goods. English carriages and motors bowl along the macadamized or tarred roads of Old England. On every hand there is evidence of the instinctive effort to reproduce, as nearly as the climate will permit, English conditions of life.... Almost the whole life of the people of India is relegated to the back streets, not to say the slums—frankly called in Madras the Black Town. There are a few points—clubs and gymkhanas specially established to that end—where Englishmen, and even women, meet Indian men, and even women, of the wealthier classes, on a basis of social equality. But few indeed are the points of contact between the Asian town and the European city which has been superimposed upon it. The missionary, the Salvation Army outpost, perhaps the curiosity-hunting tourist, may go forth into the bazaars; but the European community as a whole cares no more for the swarming brown multitudes around it than the dwellers on an island care for the fishes in the circumambient sea."[103] And what is true of the great towns holds good for scores of provincial centres, "stations," and cantonments. The scale may be smaller, but the type is the same.
The European in the Orient is thus everywhere profoundly an alien, living apart from the native life. And the European is not merely an aloof alien; he is a ruling alien as well. Always his attitude is that of the superior, the master. This attitude is not due to brutality or snobbery; it is inherent in the very essence of the situation. Of course many Europeans have bad manners, but that does not change the basic reality of the case. And this reality is that, whatever the future may bring, the European first established himself in the Orient because the West was then infinitely ahead of the East; and he is still there to-day because, despite all recent changes, the East is still behind the West. Therefore the European in the Orient is still the ruler, and so long as he stays there must continue to rule—justly, temperately, with politic regard for Eastern progress and liberal devolution of power as the East becomes ripe for its liberal exercise—but, nevertheless, rule. Wherever the Occidental has established his political control, there are but two alternatives: govern or go. Furthermore, in his governing, the Occidental must rule according to his own lights; despite all concessions to local feeling, he must, in the last analysis, act as a Western, not as an Eastern, ruler. Lord Cromer voices the heart of all true colonial government when he says: "In governing Oriental races the first thought must be what is good for them, but not necessarily what they think is good for them."[104]
Now all this is inevitable, and should be self-evident. Nevertheless, the fact remains that even the most enlightened Oriental can hardly regard it as other than a bitter though salutary medicine, while most Orientals feel it to be humiliating or intolerable. The very virtues of the European are prime causes of his unpopularity. For, as Meredith Townsend well says: "The European is, in Asia, the man who will insist on his neighbour doing business just after dinner, and being exact when he is half-asleep, and being 'prompt' just when he wants to enjoy,—and he rules in Asia and is loved in Asia accordingly."[105]