"No Parliament can rightly be termed incompetent when it has the support of an entire people, when it recognizes its own limitations, and when its members are willing to undergo great sacrifices for their nation's dignity and sovereign rights....

"As to the Persian people themselves, it is difficult to generalize. The great mass of the population is composed of peasants and tribesmen, all densely ignorant. On the other hand, many thousands have been educated abroad, or have travelled after completing their education at home. They, or at least certain elements among them which had had the support of the masses, proved their capacity to assimilate Western civilization and ideals. They changed despotism into democracy in the face of untold obstacles. Opportunities were equalized to such a degree that any man of ability could occupy the highest official posts. As a race they showed during the past five years an unparalleled eagerness for education. Hundreds of schools were established during the Constitutional régime. A remarkable free press sprang up overnight, and fearless writers came forward to denounce injustice and tyranny whether from within their country or without. The Persians were anxious to adopt wholesale the political, ethical, and business codes of the most modern and progressive nations. They burned with that same spirit of Asiatic unrest which pervades India, which produced the 'Young-Turk' movement, and which has more recently manifested itself in the establishment of the Chinese Republic."[133]

Mr. Shuster concludes: "Kipling has intimated that you cannot hustle the East. This includes a warning and a reflection. Western men and Western ideals can hustle the East, provided the Orientals realize that they are being carried along lines reasonably beneficial to themselves. As a matter of fact, the moral appeal and the appeal of race-pride and patriotism, are as strong in the East as in the West, though it does not lie so near the surface, and naturally the Oriental displays no great desire to be hustled when it is along lines beneficial only to the Westerner."[134]

Indeed, many Western liberals believe that European rule, however benevolent and efficient, will never prepare the Eastern peoples for true self-government; and that the only way they will learn is by trying it out themselves. This view-point is admirably stated by the well-known British publicist Lionel Curtis. Speaking of India, Mr. Curtis says that education and kindred benefits conferred by British rule will not, of themselves, "avail to prepare Indians for the task of responsible government. On the contrary, education will prove a danger and positive mischief, unless accompanied by a definite instalment of political responsibility. It is in the workshops of actual experience alone that electorates will acquire the art of self-government, however highly educated they may be.

"There must, I urge, be a devolution of definite powers on electorates. The officers of Government[135] must give every possible help and advice to the new authorities, for which those authorities may ask. They must act as their foster-mothers, not as stepmothers. But if the new authorities are to learn the art of responsible government, they must be free from control from above. Not otherwise will they learn to feel themselves responsible to the electorate below. Nor will the electorates themselves learn that the remedy for their sufferings rests in their own hands. Suffering there will be, and it is only by suffering, self-inflicted and perhaps long endured, that a people will learn the faculty of self-help, and genuine electorates be brought into being....

"I am proud to think that England has conferred immeasurable good on India by creating order and showing Indians what orderly government means. But, this having been done, I do not believe the system can now be continued as it is, without positive damage to the character of the people. The burden of trusteeship must be transferred, piece by piece, from the shoulders of Englishmen to those of Indians in some sort able to bear it. Their strength and numbers must be developed. But that can be done by the exercise of actual responsibility steadily increased as they can bear it. It cannot be done by any system of school-teaching, though such teaching is an essential concomitant of the process.

"The goal now set by the recent announcement of the Secretary of State[136] will only be reached through trouble. Yet troublous as the times before us may be, we have at last reached that stage of our work in India which is truly consonant with our own traditions. The task is one worthy of this epoch in our history, if only because it calls for the effacement of ourselves."[137]

Mr. Curtis's concluding words foreshadow a process which is to-day actually going on, not only in India but in other parts of the East as well. The Great War has so strengthened Eastern nationalist aspirations and has so weakened European power and prestige that a widespread relaxing of Europe's hold over the Orient is taking place. This process may make for good or for ill, but it is apparently inevitable; and a generation (perhaps a decade) hence may see most of the Near and Middle East autonomous or even independent. Whether the liberated peoples will misuse their opportunities and fall into despotism or anarchy, or whether they succeed in establishing orderly, progressive, constitutional governments, remains to be seen. We have examined the factors, pro and con. Let us leave the problem in the only way in which to-day it can scientifically be left—on a note of interrogation.

FOOTNOTES:

[111] T. Morison, Imperial Rule in India, p. 43 (London, 1899).