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Page 31
In all these questions we have a stake, reluctantly it may be, but
necessarily, for our evident interests are involved, in some instances
directly, in others by very probable implication. Under existing
conditions, the opinion that we can keep clear indefinitely of
embarrassing problems is hardly tenable; while war between two foreign
states, which in the uncertainties of the international situation
throughout the world may break out at any time, will increase greatly
the occasions of possible collision with the belligerent countries,
and the consequent perplexities of our statesmen seeking to avoid
entanglement and to maintain neutrality.
Although peace is not only the avowed but for the most part the actual
desire of European governments, they profess no such aversion to
distant political enterprises and colonial acquisitions as we by
tradition have learned to do. On the contrary, their committal to such
divergent enlargements of the national activities and influence is one
of the most pregnant facts of our time, the more so that their course
is marked in the case of each state by a persistence of the same
national traits that characterized the great era of colonization,
which followed the termination of the religious wars in Europe, and
led to the world-wide contests of the eighteenth century. In one
nation the action is mainly political,--that of a government pushed,
by long-standing tradition and by its passion for administration, to
extend the sphere of its operations so as to acquire a greater field
in which to organize and dominate, somewhat regardless of economical
advantage. In another the impulse comes from the restless, ubiquitous
energy of the individual citizens, singly or in companies, moved
primarily by the desire of gain, but carrying ever with them,
subordinate only to the commercial aim, the irresistible tendency of
the race to rule as well as to trade, and dragging the home government
to recognize and to assume the consequences of their enterprise. Yet
again there is the movement whose motive is throughout mainly private
and mercantile, in which the individual seeks wealth only, with little
or no political ambition, and where the government intervenes chiefly
that it may retain control of its subjects in regions where but for
such intervention they would become estranged from it. But, however
diverse the modes of operation, all have a common characteristic, in
that they bear the stamp of the national genius,--a proof that the
various impulses are not artificial, but natural, and that they
therefore will continue until an adjustment is reached.
What the process will be, and what the conclusion, it is impossible to
foresee; but that friction at times has been very great, and matters
dangerously near passing from the communications of cabinets to the
tempers of the peoples, is sufficiently known. If, on the one hand,
some look upon this as a lesson to us to keep clear of similar
adventures, on the other hand it gives a warning that not only do
causes of offence exist which may result at an unforeseen moment in a
rupture extending to many parts of the world, but also that there is a
spirit abroad which yet may challenge our claim to exclude its action
and interference in any quarter, unless it finds us prepared there in
adequate strength to forbid it, or to exercise our own. More and more
civilized man is needing and seeking ground to occupy, room over which
to expand and in which to live. Like all natural forces, the impulse
takes the direction of least resistance, but when in its course it
comes upon some region rich in possibilities, but unfruitful through
the incapacity or negligence of those who dwell therein, the
incompetent race or system will go down, as the inferior race ever has
fallen back and disappeared before the persistent impact of the
superior. The recent and familiar instance of Egypt is entirely in
point. The continuance of the existing system--if it can be called
such--had become impossible, not because of the native Egyptians, who
had endured the like for ages, but because there were involved therein
the interests of several European states, of which two principally
were concerned by present material interest and traditional rivalry.
Of these one, and that the one most directly affected, refused to take
part in the proposed interference, with the result that this was not
abandoned, but carried out solely by the other, which remains in
political and administrative control of the country. Whether the
original enterprise or the continued presence of Great Britain in
Egypt is entirely clear of technical wrongs, open to the criticism of
the pure moralist, is as little to the point as the morality of an
earthquake; the general action was justified by broad considerations
of moral expediency, being to the benefit of the world at large, and
of the people of Egypt in particular--however they might have voted in
the matter.
But what is chiefly instructive in this occurrence is the
inevitableness, which it shares in common with the great majority of
cases where civilized and highly organized peoples have trespassed
upon the technical rights of possession of the previous occupants of
the land--of which our own dealings with the American Indian afford
another example. The inalienable rights of the individual are entitled
to a respect which they unfortunately do not always get; but there is
no inalienable right in any community to control the use of a region
when it does so to the detriment of the world at large, of its
neighbors in particular, or even at times of its own subjects.
Witness, for example, the present angry resistance of the Arabs at
Jiddah to the remedying of a condition of things which threatens to
propagate a deadly disease far and wide, beyond the locality by which
it is engendered; or consider the horrible conditions under which the
Armenian subjects of Turkey have lived and are living. When such
conditions obtain, they can be prolonged only by the general
indifference or mutual jealousies of the other peoples concerned--as
in the instance of Turkey--or because there is sufficient force to
perpetuate the misrule, in which case the right is inalienable only
until its misuse brings ruin, or until a stronger force appears to
dispossess it. It is because so much of the world still remains in the
possession of the savage, or of states whose imperfect development,
political or economical, does not enable them to realize for the
general use nearly the result of which the territory is capable, while
at the same time the redundant energies of civilized states, both
government and peoples, are finding lack of openings and scantiness of
livelihood at home, that there now obtains a condition of aggressive
restlessness with which all have to reckon.
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