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Page 44
In forecasting the future, then, it is upon these particular signs of
the times that I dwell: the arrest of the forward impulse towards
political colonization which coincided with the decade immediately
preceding the French Revolution; the absorption of the European
nations, for the following quarter of a century, with the universal
wars, involving questions chiefly political and European; the
beginning of the great era of coal and iron, of mechanical and
industrial development, which succeeded the peace, and during which it
was not aggressive colonization, but the development of colonies
already held and of new commercial centres, notably in China and
Japan, that was the most prominent feature; finally, we have, resumed
at the end of the century, the forward movement of political
colonization by the mother countries, powerfully incited thereto,
doubtless, by the citizens of the old colonies in different parts of
the world. The restlessness of Australia and the Cape Colony has
doubtless counted for much in British advances in those regions.
Contemporary with all these movements, from the first to the last, has
been the development of great standing armies, or rather of armed
nations, in Europe; and, lastly, the stirring of the East, its
entrance into the field of Western interests, not merely as a passive
something to be impinged upon, but with a vitality of its own,
formless yet, but significant, inasmuch as where before there was
torpor, if not death, now there is indisputable movement and life.
Never again, probably, can there of it be said,
"It heard the legions thunder past,
Then plunged in thought again."
Of this the astonishing development of Japan is the most obvious
evidence; but in India, though there be no probability of the old
mutinies reviving, there are signs enough of the awaking of political
intelligence, restlessness under foreign subjection, however
beneficent, desire for greater play for its own individualities; a
movement which, because intellectual and appreciative of the
advantages of Western material and political civilization, is less
immediately threatening than the former revolt, but much more ominous
of great future changes.
Of China we know less; but many observers testify to the immense
latent force of the Chinese character. It has shown itself hitherto
chiefly in the strength with which it has adhered to stereotyped
tradition. But stereotyped traditions have been overthrown already
more than once even in this unprogressive people, whose conservatism,
due largely to ignorance of better conditions existing in other lands,
is closely allied also to the unusual staying powers of the race, to
the persistence of purpose, the endurance, and the vitality
characteristic of its units. To ambition for individual material
improvement they are not insensible. The collapse of the Chinese
organization in all its branches during the late war with Japan,
though greater than was expected, was not unforeseen. It has not
altered the fact that the raw material so miserably utilized is, in
point of strength, of the best; that it is abundant, racially
homogeneous, and is multiplying rapidly. Nor, with the recent
resuscitation of the Turkish army before men's eyes, can it be thought
unlikely that the Chinese may yet obtain the organization by which
alone potential force receives adequate military development, the most
easily conferred because the simplest in conception. The Japanese have
shown great capacity, but they met little resistance; and it is easier
by far to move and to control an island kingdom of forty millions than
a vast continental territory containing near tenfold that number of
inhabitants. Comparative slowness of evolution may be predicated, but
that which for so long has kept China one, amid many diversities, may
be counted upon in the future to insure a substantial unity of impulse
which, combined with its mass, will give tremendous import to any
movement common to the whole.
To assert that a few selected characteristics, such as the above,
summarize the entire tendency of a century of teeming human life, and
stand alone among the signs that are chiefly to be considered in
looking to the future, would be to take an untenable position. It may
be said safely, however, that these factors, because the future to
which they point is more remote, are less regarded than others which
are less important; and further, that those among them which mark our
own day are also the factors whose very existence is specially
resented, criticised, and condemned by that school of political
thought which assumes for itself the title of economical, which
attained its maturity, and still lives, amid the ideas of that stage
of industrial progress coincident with the middle of the century, and
which sees all things from the point of view of production and of
internal development. Powerfully exerted throughout the world, nowhere
is the influence of this school so unchecked and so injurious as in
the United States, because, having no near neighbors to compete with
us in point of power, military necessities have been to us not
imminent, so that, like all distant dangers, they have received little
regard; and also because, with our great resources only partially
developed, the instinct to external activities has remained dormant.
At the same period and from the same causes that the European world
turned its eyes inward from the seaboard, instead of outward, the
people of the United States were similarly diverted from the external
activities in which at the beginning of the century they had their
wealth. This tendency, emphasized on the political side by the civil
war, was reinforced and has been prolonged by well-known natural
conditions. A territory much larger, far less redeemed from its
original wildness, and with perhaps even ampler proportionate
resources than the continent of Europe, contained a much smaller
number of inhabitants. Hence, despite an immense immigration, we have
lagged far behind in the work of completing our internal development,
and for that reason have not yet felt the outward impulse that now
markedly characterizes the European peoples. That we stand far apart
from the general movement of our race calls of itself for
consideration.
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