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WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 As Seen by Herself 
 
 BY 
 
 FERDINAND TONNIES 
 
 Professor at the University of Kiel ; Advising Editor of the American 
 
 Journal of Sociology ; President of the German 
 
 Sociological Society 
 
 Mere cant, however seriously put forth in official statements, no 
 longer blinds educated public opinion as to the facts in these 
 acts of international brigandage. — W. Morgan Shuster, ex- 
 Treasurer-General of Persia, The Strangling of Persia, (1912), 
 p. 222. 
 
 G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 
 
« 
 
 ^ 
 
 Copyright, 1915, by 
 G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY 
 
 Warlike England 
 
 Press of 
 
 J. J. Little & Ives Co. 
 
 New York 
 
 OEC -I 1915 
 
 ©CI.A416660 
 
"Be the Government Liberal or Tory, much the same thing hap- 
 pens — war with all its horrors and miseries and crimes and cost. 
 Talkers and writers being mostly in favor of it, and the multitude 
 approving or consenting to the wickedness in high places." (John 
 Bright to a friend, 1885 Ct. Trevelyan, "Life of John Bright," 
 P- 437.) 
 
 "The English nation .... is the most estimable agglomera- 
 tion of human beings, considered in its relation to each other. But 
 as a state in its relations with other states it is the most pernicious, 
 the most violent, the greediest for power and the most bellicose of 
 all." — (Immanuel Kant.) 
 
Foreword 
 
 PAGE 
 
 7 
 
 Introduction 
 
 11 
 
 PART I 
 
 THE ENGLISH WORLD POLICY UP TO THE FALL 
 OF NAPOLEON 
 
 First Division: Wars Against Spain, Against Hol- 
 land, and Against France from the Sixteenth to 
 the Eighteenth Century 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Expansion of England. Eliza- 
 beth, Cromwell, the Restoration. 
 Buccaneers 27 
 
 II. Commerce and War — The Ethical 
 
 Motives 37 
 
 III. The Glories of Pitt, the Elder: Tri- 
 
 umph over France 50 
 
 IV. The Loss of the North American 
 
 Colonies 53 
 
 V. The Slave Trade as the Pillar of the 
 
 Empire 58 
 
 VI. The Conquest of India 62 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Second Division: War Against the French Republic 
 and Against Napoleon 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 VII. Attack upon the French Republic. 
 
 The European Balance of Power . 77 
 
 VEIL The Piratical Expedition Against Den- 
 mark 83 
 
 PART II 
 
 THE ENGLISH WORLD POLICY IN THE NINE- 
 TEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 Third Division: Quarrels in Three Parts of the 
 Earth 
 
 IX. Afghanistan 103 
 
 X. The Opium War 115 
 
 XI. The Crimean War 128 
 
 XH. The Ionian Islands 134 
 
 XIII. Jamaica 138 
 
 XIV. The War of the Slave-owners in 
 
 America 144 
 
 XV. The Indian Mutiny 150 
 
 Fourth Division: The Newer Imperialism 
 
 XVI. Egypt 154 
 
 XVII. The Boer War 170 
 
 XVIH. Persia 182 
 
 XIX. The World War of 1914 .... 188 
 
 Conclusion 202 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 This book has been written in the cause of 
 truth. 
 
 The testimony of the most respected English 
 authors cannot be controverted. It throws 
 the best light upon the existing European 
 crisis. 
 
 This book has not been written to stir up na- 
 tional hatred. The author distinguishes 
 sharply between the English people and the 
 English world-policy. Even the leaders of 
 this policy have for the most part only an in- 
 complete knowledge of the driving forces be- 
 hind it. 
 
 The English folk is made up of elements 
 differing greatly from one another. Besides 
 the real Englishmen are Scots, Welshmen, 
 Irishmen and the manifold mixtures of these 
 races ; thereto are to be reckoned descendants 
 of Germans, Flemings, Frenchmen, Scandina- 
 vians, and others. Furthermore, character 
 and habits of thought vary greatly with differ- 
 ent occupations, callings and social position. 
 That is to say, they are manifold and complex. 
 
 7 
 
8 FOREWORD 
 
 In England, however, more than in other 
 lands, the upper classes are looked up to and 
 imitated by the lower. 
 
 The real ruling power in Great Britain and 
 Ireland has for centuries been in the hands of 
 the "squirearchy," as it is often termed in mod- 
 ern days. This "squirearchy" permits the 
 leaders of the commercial and monied aristoc- 
 racy to flourish alongside it, and even takes 
 them into its ranks — a procedure not synony- 
 mous with the much more frequent "raising to 
 the peerage." The relation is based upon the 
 tacit understanding that it is England's des- 
 tiny to rule and exploit the earth for the en- 
 richment of these classes. 
 
 In the last fifty years the real body of the 
 people, especially the laboring class, has, 
 through the press and through its parliamen- 
 tary representation, won a growing influence 
 over these its masters, but only in affairs of do- 
 mestic policy. The foreign policy has re- 
 mained the domain of the oligarchy. The 
 people have only the right and the oppor- 
 tunity to sit by as spectators, to applaud — and 
 to hiss when the play is over. 
 
 And ever anew the people of Great Britain 
 permit themselves to listen to — and to be 
 moved to applaud — the assertion that ethical 
 motives govern the conduct of English world- 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 policy and the incitements of wars for which 
 this policy is responsible. 
 
 Let us see how it stands with these ethical 
 motives. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Why did England declare war on the Ger- 
 man Empire? 
 
 The King and his ministers, writers of every 
 kind, in newspapers, magazines and books, 
 have replied to the question with the ringing 
 answer: For ethical reasons. "We fight 
 Prussia in the noblest cause for which men 
 can fight That cause is the public law of 
 Europe, as a sure shield and buckler of all 
 nations, great and small, and especially the 
 small. To the doctrine of the almightiness of 
 the state — to the doctrine that the means are 
 justified which are, or seem, necessary to its 
 self-preservation, we oppose the doctrine of 
 a European society, or at least, of European 
 comity of nations, within which all States 
 stand; we oppose the doctrine of a public law 
 of Europe, by which all States are bound to 
 respect the covenants they have made. We 
 will not and cannot tolerate the view that na- 
 tions are "in the state and posture of gladia- 
 tors" in their relations one with another; we 
 stand for the reign of law. . , . We are a peo- 
 
iz INTRODUCTION 
 
 pie in whose blood the cause of law is the 
 vital element." * 
 
 Thus speak the six members of the Oxford 
 faculty of modern history, men who have the 
 right to expect that their voice shall be heard. 
 They are the spokesmen of a public opinion 
 which is widespread in Great Britain. It may 
 be wondered whether it is widespread in Ire- 
 land. Does Ireland, too, believe that the cause 
 of law is the vital element in the blood of the 
 Englishman? That England assumes with 
 tenderness, out of the courage of nobility, the 
 protection of small nations? That it battles 
 for them against militarism for the cause of 
 justice? 
 
 "England did her best to annihilate Irish 
 commerce and to ruin Irish agriculture. 
 Statutes passed by the jealousy of English land- 
 owners forbade the export of Irish cattle or 
 sheep to English ports. The export of wool 
 was forbidden, lest it might interfere with the 
 profits of English wool-growers. Poverty was 
 thus added to the curse of misgovernment, and 
 poverty deepened with the rapid growth of 
 the native population, till famine turned the 
 country into a hell." . . . 
 
 "The murders and riots which sprang from 
 
 1 "Why We Are at War ; Great Britain's Case." By mem- 
 bers of the Oxford faculty of modern history, pp. 115, 116. 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 time to time out of the general misery and dis- 
 content were roughly repressed by the ruling 
 class." . . . 
 
 "For a while, however, the Protestant land- 
 owners, banded together in 'Orange Societies,' 
 held the country down by sheer terror and 
 bloodshed. . . . Ireland was in fact driven in- 
 to rebellion by the lawless cruelty of the 
 Orange yeomanry and the English troops." 
 
 The references are to the period preceding 
 the Union (1800). Are the quotations per- 
 haps taken from a handbook for Irish agita- 
 tors? No, they are statements employed by an 
 English historian of general repute, T. R. 
 Green, M. A., one-time examiner in the school 
 for modern history at Oxford. 1 
 
 "For an Irishman it is no moral offence to 
 deny the moral authority of the Act of Union. 
 In my opinion the Englishman has far more 
 cause to blush for the means by which that act 
 was obtained." These are the words of "the 
 Grand Old Man," William Ewart Gladstone, 
 before a committee of Parliament in 1890. 
 The reference was to the fact that the Union 
 had been achieved only through monstrous 
 bribery. 
 
 X "A Short History of the English People." London, 1875, 
 pp. 786-788. More than a half million copies of the book 
 have been circulated in England. 
 
i 4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 And what of Ireland after the Union? Ire- 
 land in the nineteenth and twentieth century? 
 The history of her people speaks a plain lan- 
 guage. Ireland had in 1841 about 8,200,000 
 inhabitants, or about 97 to the square kilo- 
 meter (247.1 acres), no very dense population 
 for the fruitful green island, that being about 
 the same population per kilometer as that of 
 Austria now. In the year 191 1, however, 70 
 years later, the population of Ireland had sunk 
 to about 4,400,000, a decrease of nearly one- 
 half. In these 70 years the population of all 
 other European lands increased steadily; in 
 many it doubled or more than doubled. In 
 Ireland it was halved. The density of popula- 
 tion fell from 97 to 52 per square kilometer. 
 
 Will England, with its "Union of Nations," 
 operate upon the other European nations as 
 it has operated upon neighboring Ireland 
 through its union with that country? 
 
 What do the other nations think of the bless- 
 ings of this "European society," which is to 
 be headed by England as the representative of 
 justice? 
 
 "Justice for Ireland" was Gladstone's pa- 
 thetic demand. A contest of thirty years' 
 duration was necessary to secure a safe ma- 
 jority for a law designed to give back to the 
 Irish nation the right of self-government. The 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 law was finally passed — and the King of Great 
 Britain and Ireland had to declare (in June, 
 1914) that the country stood on the thresh- 
 old of civil war. The Government was com- 
 pelled to stand by and observe how the rebel- 
 lion was being systematically prepared, how 
 the indignation against an imperial law was 
 nourished, furthered and conducted, how it 
 received the approval and support of a party 
 whose electoral strength in Great Britain is 
 nearly equal to that of the party in power. . . . 
 "We stand for the reign of law," say the edu- 
 cators, who presumably belong to this party. 
 And what was the meaning of this indigna- 
 tion? The meaning was and is that Ireland 
 is not to obtain its rights, that it is to suffer 
 further under the servitude which has crushed 
 and suffocated it for centuries. 
 
 Whether the moral argument — for thus we 
 may term the putting forth of ethical and le- 
 gal grounds as the basis for the English world 
 policy — will work convincingly upon Irish 
 minds may fairly be doubted. Where people 
 have not become acquainted with this policy 
 in such a direct manner, or where they have 
 forgotten their impressions, this argument 
 will still find credence. It finds credence be- 
 cause it is good, and when men are not angry 
 or embittered they are readier to believe that 
 
16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the motives of others are good than that they 
 are bad, in like degree as they are readier 
 to impute good than bad motives to them- 
 selves. 
 
 For this reason the moral argument is espe- 
 cially designed for feminine intelligences and 
 finds a responsive chord there most readily, 
 in part because women gladly sympathize with 
 and become enthusiastic for noble motives, in 
 part because even educated women seldom 
 possess an exact knowledge of diplomatic con- 
 ditions and still more seldom a profound 
 knowledge of history. But both these branches 
 of knowledge are necessary to a right judg- 
 ment of the moral argument. 
 
 The soul of a folk resembles the soul of a 
 woman. It is always difficult to penetrate 
 and lay bare the facts beneath the surface 
 of things. For this tools and apparatus are 
 needed which are not at the disposal of every 
 one. 
 
 Hamlet wonders that "one may smile and 
 smile and be a villain," but Hamlet's step- 
 father and uncle only keeps on smiling. Nay 
 more, he also makes solemn speeches. He 
 speaks of his dead brother, whom he has poi- 
 soned, "with wisest sorrow." His thoughts 
 have contended with his emotions. Statecraft 
 demanded that he take the widowed queen as 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 his wife — "with one auspicious and one drop- 
 ping eye." 
 
 Shakespeare more than once pictures with 
 classic lines the hypocrite, with the honeycomb 
 of upright thoughts and ethical motives upon 
 his lips. 
 
 Hypocrisy has often been termed the nation- 
 al vice of the English. A noted English au- 
 thor of the most modern times, Bernard Shaw, 
 says in his article on the present war: 
 
 "We know that even in circles that are most 
 friendly to the English nation an opinion is 
 going abroad that our excellent qualities 
 are being disfigured by an incorrigible hypoc- 
 risy." 
 
 He is of the opinion that this reputation 
 cannot have arisen entirely without ground. 
 In particular, he considers it to be founded 
 on the attitude of English statesmen. As a 
 type in this connection he names Sir Edward 
 Grey. 
 
 In reality, the conscious, shameless hypo- 
 crite, who deliberately and continuously plays 
 a comedy, is a rare figure. The role of an hon- 
 orable man is so hard for a base man, that of 
 a severely moral man is so hard for a TartufTe, 
 that, in life as well as on the stage, he is usually 
 very speedily unmasked. 
 
 Much more frequent, because much easier, 
 
18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 is the half-conscious or even the quarter-con- 
 scious hypocrisy, the conduct of the man gov- 
 erned not by very evil, but by mediocre, com- 
 mon and unbeautiful motives, and who under- 
 stands how to disguise these motives with glit- 
 tering finery and adorn them with pious and 
 virtuous speeches. The basis of this is fre- 
 quently a mixture of praiseworthy shame with 
 reprehensible dissimulation, for, as Lord Ba- 
 con fittingly remarks in one of his essays, 
 nakedness of mind, like nakedness of body, is 
 unseemly. One may add to this that even in 
 the case of clothes designed to conceal 
 thoughts, more weight is laid upon their pleas- 
 ing other people than upon their being genu- 
 ine and worthy. In like manner the wise man 
 imposes holy and apparently natural wrinkles 
 upon his face, which can so easily betray his 
 real thoughts, rather than to tie before it an 
 uncomfortable mask which can deceive only 
 from afar. Practice makes perfect here also, 
 and habit becomes second nature. 
 
 This remarkable mixture of shame and 
 hypocrisy is entirely alien to no individual, 
 certainly to no nation. But it is a noteworthy 
 fact that precisely in the English nation, which 
 is not without strength and greatness in evil 
 as well as in good, there is to be found a 
 marked inclination and talent for it, and that 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 English politicians, who may be upright and 
 honorable men in private life, show themselves 
 in state affairs to be masters of that art 
 which Socrate9 branded as the particular 
 art of the Sophists — that of making the bad 
 cause appear the better by devious, involved 
 speeches. 
 
 It i9 hardly an accident that the English 
 language has found a special, untranslatable 
 word for this peculiar attitude of mind, which 
 finds its purest expression in twisted but high- 
 sounding words, designed to disguise motives. 
 This is the word "cant," which philologists 
 derive from the Latin cantus (song), as if a 
 singsong manner of delivery favored this man- 
 ner of speaking, which is essentially so deeply 
 insincere, and yet half believed by the speaker 
 himself. For cant possesses also this peculiar 
 attribute: The oftener it is repeated, or the 
 louder it is proclaimed, by so much more i9 
 it not only believed and enthusiastically ac- 
 cepted, but even those who first gave it cur- 
 rency believe it themselves, and continue to 
 assert it with greater assurance and, therefore, 
 with greater effect 
 
 The English themselves, among whom the 
 truth-loving man is by no means rare, have not 
 lacked a realization of this shamefaced hypoc- 
 risy (as one may perhaps translate cant). 
 
20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Lord Byron repeatedly expressed himself witK 
 repugnance and bitterness concerning it. 1 A' 
 special treatise concerning cant, published in 
 1887 by Sidney Whitman, 2 gave occasion for 
 much comment. Even the most zealous advo- 
 
 1 Countess of Blessington. Conversations with Lord Byron, 
 passim. 
 
 2 "Conventional Cant, Its Result and Remedy." London, 
 1887. The title and the name of the author had escaped my 
 memory. After I had finished this work I found both in 
 Moritz Busch's "Leaves From My Diary," III, p. 221. Busch 
 wrote — at Prince Bismarck's orders, as ever — two articles in 
 the Grenzboten, entitled "An Evil Spirit in the England of To- 
 day."^ (Grenzboten, 1888, p. 377 et seq., p. 533 et seq.) I find 
 therein (p. 534) the following sentence, which is in perfect 
 agreement with my own conception: "The expression cant 
 means, then, untruthfulness, but joined to the feeling that 
 one is truthful or is telling the truth; the deceiving of others 
 which is at the same time a self-deception." I learn also 
 that Carlyle described cant as the art of making things appear 
 to be what they are not, "an art of such deadly nature that 
 it deadens the very soul of those who employ it by leading 
 them beyond the stage of conscious falsehood to a point where 
 they believe in their own mad representations, and brings 
 themdown to the most miserable condition conceivable, where 
 one is honestly dishonest." Carlyle is reported to have ex- 
 claimed on one occasion (the exact passage is not given) : 
 "Cant, thou curse of our nation!" I have thus far been unable 
 to get hold of Whitman's book. But I just discover an ad- 
 mirable article upon "Cant" in the New Statesman of Jan- 
 uary 23, 1915 (vol. iv, No. 94). Cant is defined therein as 
 "the singsong of the self-righteous." "It is praise and prayer 
 from the nose instead of from the heart. ... It enables us 
 to cut a presentable figure before our neighbors, and not only 
 to deceive ourselves, but to deceive ourselves into the belief 
 that we are deceiving others. England is supposed by many 
 people to be the world's factory of cant, and her annual pro- 
 duction of the article certainly reaches a creditable figure." 
 The writer believes, however, that if Germany should win 
 the war, she would become the leading exporter of cant among 
 the nations of Europe. 
 
INTRODUCTION 211 
 
 cates of the English claims to be the first na- 
 tion of the world must confess that a peculiar 
 condition exists in regard to cant. But no one 
 believes that cant can be exterminated. It has 
 always flourished in foreign politics and in 
 war. Lord Cromer, one of the most respected 
 men of the country (although of German 
 descent, from the Baring family), only re- 
 cently referred to the phrase, "the British 
 spirit of fair play," as "the cant phrase of 
 the day." 1 
 
 That the storms of the present war (1914) 
 are throwing up whole mountains of cant on 
 the strand of the literature of the day cannot 
 in the least be wondered at. The book of the 
 six Oxford scholars has already been men- 
 tioned. Even as earnest and able a weekly 
 magazine as The New Statesman (conducted 
 by Mr. Sidney Webb and Mrs. Beatrice 
 Webb-Potter) published on October 24th an 
 extended article on the question: "Why did 
 we embark on the war?" and the answer was: 
 "Because of Belgium and out of moral rea- 
 sons," whereupon a correspondent (Mr. Sad- 
 ler) raised objections in the following num- 
 ber and remarked: "The answer savors of 
 hypocrisy." 
 
 Of course it does. Cant always savors of 
 
 1 Lord Cromer, Essays, p. 9. 
 
22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 hypocrisy, even if it is not intended to be utter, 
 shameless hypocrisy. But the article referred 
 to was quite right in declaring that Sir Ed- 
 ward Grey's cant concerning the breach of 
 Belgian neutrality and England's sacred duty 
 to intervene on Belgium's behalf won public 
 opinion for the war. Public opinion in Eng- 
 land is wonderfully responsive to cant. It is 
 like a musical automat — one needs only to 
 throw a cant phrase into the slot and the in- 
 strument begins to grind out a highly moral 
 melody. 
 
 "In the political literature of Europe four 
 qualities are ascribed to England. It is as- 
 serted that England is, in the highest questions 
 of public policy, fickle, proud, selfish and 
 quarrelsome." * Thus declares a modern Eng- 
 lish author, the descendant of a famous family 
 of politicians. He ought not to have forgot- 
 ten the fifth quality which rounds out the char- 
 acter drawing of England's world policy — the 
 habitual cant, the peculiar spice of those other 
 qualities so aptly described. 
 
 A single sentiment lies at the bottom of all 
 these qualities. It is fear — the English states- 
 men call it foresight and watchfulness — the 
 fear of thieves or beggars that forms a psy- 
 che Honorable George Peel: "The Enemies of England," 
 London, 1902, pp. 8, 9. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 chological weakness of many rich people, the 
 fear of being outdone by competitors, so well 
 known to every business-man. 
 
 But are our judgments not determined by 
 partisanship? Is it not hostility that pictures 
 English policy in such a light? Does not his- 
 tory show that England has battled for justice 
 and freedom, that, with the bravery of a lion, 
 it has made the cause of the small and weak 
 states of the earth its own cause? And that, 
 therefore, its world policy has been dictated 
 by ethical motives? 
 
 To answer these questions we will open the 
 books of history. We will not call as witnesses 
 historians who might possibly be open to sus- 
 picion, we will not call foreign historians, who 
 might be infected with the hatred against po- 
 litical England, but we will call English his- 
 torians, and by preference men whose authori- 
 tativeness is not denied in England, men who 
 hold the first rank as investigators and think- 
 ers. 
 
 In line with this, I place at the head of these 
 witnesses the author of the works concerning 
 "The Expansion of England," and "The 
 Growth of British Policy," Sir J. R. Seeley. 
 The former of these two works shall serve us 
 as the basis for judging the motives of the Eng- 
 lish world policy. Seeley was knighted for 
 
24 INTRODUCTION 
 
 his services as a scholar and was otherwise 
 the recipient of the highest distinctions. 
 
 Not that Seeley fought against the foresee- 
 ing militaristic tendencies — popularly termed 
 Jingoism — of the last decades. Quite the con- 
 trary. A prominent Swedish historian (Har- 
 ald Hjarne) terms him "the Herald of Im- 
 perialism, " and thinks that he can be consid- 
 ered as an English Treitschke. His authority 
 in his own land, however, is much higher than 
 is the authority of Treitschke in the German 
 countries. Lord Cromer, "the Egyptian," for 
 instance, calls Seeley, Gibbon, Guizot, 
 Mommsen and Milman "the most able writers 
 and thinkers the world has produced." In like 
 manner Joseph Chamberlain, in one of his 
 speeches in Parliament, asserted that "our 
 greatest thinkers and writers have put this 
 problem (of Greater Britain) before us," and 
 named as such Seeley, Froude and Lecky. 
 
 In English writings — statements by 
 Treitschke are cited and joined in absurd 
 manner with quotations from Nietzsche and 
 Bernhardi in order to demonstrate how belli- 
 cose (or "chauvanistic" or "militaristic") the 
 sentiment of the Germans is to-day. 
 
 It is not in this sense that we will adduce 
 statements of Seeley and other distinguished 
 authors. The sentiments of our authorities 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 are matters of indifference to us. It is only 
 to banish the suspicion that we have sought 
 out such men as are unfriendly to England and 
 its policies that we call attention to the fact 
 that Seeley is an imperialistic historian. The 
 same is true of W. H. Lecky, to whom we have 
 several times referred. His name is favorably 
 known in the United States, in Germany, in- 
 deed, everywhere, as that of one of the most 
 learned and prominent writers. 
 
 A somewhat different significance attaches 
 to Justin McCarthy, who, next to Seeley, will 
 be most frequently called as a witness. This 
 is necessary because of the fact that for the 
 period covered by the reign of Queen Vic- 
 toria ( 1 837-1900) there is no other work that 
 enjoys such great popularity and such regard 
 in England as the "History of Our Own 
 Times," with its three divisions, (1) up to 1880, 
 (2) 1880-1897, (3) 1897-1900. "Easily and 
 delightfully written and on the whole eminent- 
 ly sane and moderate, these volumes form a 
 brilliant piece of narrative from a Liberal 
 standpoint." This is the characterization of 
 this history in the new edition of the Encyclo- 
 pedia Britannica, vol. xvii, p. 201. 
 
 The other witnesses speak for themselves. 
 In addition to historians (in whose number 
 are reckoned also the authors of works on cus- 
 
26 INTRODUCTION 
 
 toms of living), other witnesses will occasion- 
 ally be called for the better characterization 
 of criticisms that deserve to be made better 
 known, either because of their general circu- 
 lation or because of the authoritative standing 
 of the critics. 
 
 It suffices here to name Richard Price, Her- 
 bert Spencer, Gladstone, John Morley (Glad- 
 stone's biographer), John Bright, G. M. 
 Trevelyan (Bright's biographer), Lord Cro- 
 mer, and V. S. Blunt; among the historians, 
 James Mill (also known as a philosopher), 
 Kaye, Malleson, G. O. Trevelyan and Hol- 
 land Rose. 
 
 All these authorities are ornaments of the 
 English nation or of its literature and schol- 
 arship. 
 
 Use has been made in other places of the 
 Dictionary of National Biography and the last 
 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. The 
 articles cited from these monumental works 
 are from the pens of the best authorities in 
 their subjects. 
 
PART I 
 
 THE ENGLISH WORLD POLICY 
 
 UP TO THE FALL OF 
 
 NAPOLEON 
 
 First Division: Wars Against Spain, 
 Against Holland, and Against France, 
 From the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth 
 Century 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. ELIZABETH, 
 CROMWELL, THE RESTORATION. BUCCANEERS 
 
 "Between the Revolution and the Battle of 
 Waterloo it may be reckoned that we waged 
 seven great wars, of which the shortest lasted 
 seven years, and the longest about twelve. Out 
 of a hundred and twenty-six years, sixty-four 
 years, or more than half, were spent in war." 
 (Seeley, p. 24.) 
 
 Of the seven wars of this period, "five are 
 wars with France from the beginning, and 
 
 27 
 
28 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 both the other two, though the belligerent at 
 the outset was in the first Spain and in the 
 second our own colonies, yet became in a 
 short time and ended as wars with France. 7 ' 
 
 ( P . 28.) 
 
 After the seven-year pause that followed the 
 War of the Spanish Succession the following 
 wars can almost be regarded as a single con- 
 flict. "I say these wars make one grand and 
 decisive struggle between England and 
 France." (p. 31.) 
 
 "The expansion of England in the New 
 World and in Asia is the formula which sums 
 up for England the history of the eighteenth 
 century. . . . The great triple war of the 
 middle of that century (1744-1763) is neither 
 more nor less than the great decisive duel be- 
 tween England and France for the possession 
 of the New World." (p. 33.) "We had a 
 competitor in the work of settlement, a com- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 29 
 
 petitor who in some respects had got the start 
 of us, namely France." (p. 35.) 
 
 "The statement that expansion is the chief 
 character of English history in the eighteenth 
 century . . . means that the European policy 
 and the colonial policy are but different as- 
 pects of the same great national development." 
 (p. 42.) 
 
 Seeley also occasionally glances backward 
 to the history of the time preceding this pe- 
 riod, to the British ancien regime. 
 
 "It seems to us clear that we are the great 
 wandering, working, colonizing race, descend- 
 ed from sea-rovers and Vikings. The sea, we 
 think, is ours by nature's decree, and on this 
 highway we travel to subdue the earth and to 
 people it." (p. 94.) In reality, "the mari- 
 time greatness of England is of much more 
 modern growth than most of us imagine. It 
 dates from the civil wars of the seventeenth 
 
3 o WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 century and from the career of Robert Blake." 
 
 (P- 95-) 
 "There are no doubt naval heroes older 
 
 than Blake. There i9 Francis Drake and 
 Richard Grenville and John Hawkins. But 
 the navy of Elizabeth was only the English 
 navy in infancy, and the heroes themselves are 
 not far removed from buccaneers." (p. 96.) 
 
 "From this point of view from which we 
 here regard English history, the great occur- 
 rence of the seventeenth century before 1688 
 is not the Civil War or the execution of the 
 King, but the intervention of Cromwell in the 
 European War. This act may almost be re- 
 garded as the foundation of the English 
 World Empire." (p. 130.) The first Stuarts 
 directed their gaze more upon the Old World 
 than upon the New. "But the reaction comes 
 to an end with the accession to power of the 
 party of the Commonwealth. A policy now 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 31 
 
 begins which is not, to be sure, very scrupu- 
 lous, but is able, resolute and successful. It is 
 oceanic and looks westward, like the policy of 
 the latter years of Elizabeth." (p. 131.) The 
 colonial policy of Cromwell is chiefly in- 
 teresting because Charles II was guided by 
 it in the direction of his own course. 
 "Moral rectitude is hardly a characteristic of 
 it, and if it is religious, this perhaps would 
 have appeared, had the protectorate lasted 
 longer, to have been its most dangerous fea- 
 ture. Nothing is more dangerous than im- 
 perialism marching with an idea on its ban- 
 ner, and Protestantism was to our Emperor 
 Oliver what the ideas of the Revolution were 
 to Napoleon and his nephew." (p. 133.) "We 
 may well, I think, shudder at the thought of 
 the danger which was removed by the fall of 
 the protectorate." (p. 134.) 
 
 This imperialist policy developed princi- 
 
32 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 pally in regard to the New World. "Here, 
 indeed, Cromwell's policy . . . has a peculi- 
 arly absolute and unscrupulous tinge. Of his 
 own pure will, without consulting directly 
 or indirectly the people, and in spite of oppo- 
 sition in his council, he plunges the country 
 into a war with Spain. This war is com- 
 menced after the manner of the old Elizabeth- 
 an by a sudden descent, without previous quar- 
 rel or declaration of war, upon San Domin- 
 go." (p. 134.) Sir J. Stephen once told his 
 auditors that "if they had a taste for icono- 
 clasm he could recommend them to employ 
 it upon the buccaneering Cromwell." (ibid.) 
 It was not, however, the war with Spain that 
 was most characteristic of this period and the 
 period following, but the war with Holland. 
 "If Cromwell's breach with Spain shows most 
 strikingly by its violent suddenness the spirit 
 of the new commercial policy, yet it is capable 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 33 
 
 of being misinterpreted." (p. 135.) It might 
 be thought it had been directed against Spain 
 as the great Catholic power. "It is the great 
 proof that this cause is fast giving way to the 
 other, viz., the great trade-rivalry produced 
 by the New World, that all through the mid- 
 dle of the seventeenth century England and 
 Holland wage great naval wars of a character 
 such as had never been seen before." (ibid.) 
 Charles II is often condemned for the 
 boundless unprincipledness of his foreign 
 policy. In reality, however, he was only fol- 
 lowing the examples set by the Republic and 
 by Cromwell. Because of this his Govern- 
 ment was supported by some people who had 
 inherited the traditions of the Republic. "An- 
 thony Ashley Cooper, a man of Cromwellian 
 ideas, supported it by quoting the old words, 
 delenda est Carthago. In other words: 'Hol- 
 land is our great rival in trade, on the ocean 
 
34 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 and in the New World. Let us destroy her, 
 though she be a Protestant power; let us de- 
 stroy her with the help of a Catholic power.' " 
 (p. 136.) "Those were the maxims of the 
 Commonwealth and of the Protector, who, 
 though Puritans, had understood that the riv- 
 alry of the maritime powers for trade and em- 
 pire in the New World was taking the place of 
 the struggle of the churches as the question of 
 the day." (ibid.) 
 
 The result was conquest. Thus, under 
 Cromwell, Jamaica was won from Spain, and 
 Bombay was taken from Portugal and New 
 York from Holland under Charles. 
 
 One sees that this historian, who does not 
 conceal his enthusiasm for a "Greater Bri- 
 tain" (as much as he endeavors to judge ob- 
 jectively), ascribes the foundation of the em- 
 pire to men whom he describes as "buc- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 35 
 
 caneers." This comparison does not appear 
 here for the first time. Thus, for instance, in 
 a booklet 1 written in 1837, glorifying voyages 
 of exploration, appears this passage: "Al- 
 though the name (buccaneers), linked to one 
 virtue and a thousand crimes, is of much later 
 date than the era of Drake and his daring fol- 
 lower Oxenham, yet is there no violation of 
 truth in ascribing to them the character which 
 it signified, of indiscriminate plunder by sea 
 and land, in peace and in war." 
 
 The real buccaneers, "a designation too soon 
 stained with every species of crime and ex- 
 cess," belong to the seventeenth century. They 
 are also known under the name of "filibus- 
 ters," and called themselves "brothers of the 
 coast." 
 
 The conduct of English warships towards 
 
 1 "Lives and Voyages of Drake, Cavendish and Dampier, 
 Including a View of the History of the Buccaneers," London, 
 1837, p. 183. 
 
36 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 neutral trading vessels, from that day to the 
 present time, has successfully carried on the 
 traditions of the "brothers of the coast." An 
 admission of this, even though not in so many 
 words, is to be found in Seeley's writings. 
 
 This rule of conduct led to war with Den- 
 mark in 1800, to war with the United States 
 in 1 81 2 and to a sharp conflict with the same 
 country in 1841. The English policy has thus 
 far held it incompatible with its interests to 
 respect private property in time of war. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 COMMERCE AND WAR. THE ETHICAL MOTIVES 
 
 More and more, then, the expeditions of the 
 freebooters were succeeded by naval warfare; 
 at first the war against Holland, then the 
 great contest with France for the New World. 
 The climax of Seeley's descriptions is the 
 emphasizing of the significance of the latter 
 contest. He considered it as affording a clear- 
 ly visible example of the fact "that the expan- 
 sion of England has been neither a tranquil 
 process nor yet belonging purely to the most 
 recent times; that throughout the eighteenth 
 century that expansion was an active principle 
 of disturbance, a cause of wars unparalleled 
 both in magnitude and number." (p. 125.) 
 
 Of what sort were the causes and the motives 
 37 
 
38 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 of these wars? Let us hear the answer of the 
 philosophic historian to this question. 
 
 "It seems to me to be the principal charac- 
 teristic of this phase of England that she is at 
 once commercial and warlike." (p. 127.) 
 
 "The wars of the eighteenth century were 
 incomparably greater and more burdensome 
 than those of the Middle Ages. In a lesser 
 degree those of the seventeenth century were 
 also great. These are precisely the centuries 
 in which England grew more and more a com- 
 mercial country. England indeed grew ever 
 more warlike at that time as she grew more 
 commercial. And it is not difficult to show 
 that a cause was at work to make war and com- 
 merce increase together. This cause is the old 
 colonial system" (p. 128), the essential feature 
 of which is "that it placed the colony in the 
 position, not so much of a state in federation, 
 as of a conquered state." (p. 77.) "Com- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 39 
 
 merce in itself may favor peace, but when 
 commerce is artificially shut out by a decree 
 of government from some promising territory, 
 then commerce just as naturally favors war. 
 We know this by our own recent experience 
 with China." 1 (p. 128.) The old colonial 
 system "carved out the New World into terri- 
 tories, which were regarded as estates, to be 
 enjoyed in each case by the colonizing nation. 
 The hope of obtaining such splendid estates 
 and of enjoying the profits that were reaped 
 from them constituted the greatest stimulus 
 to commerce that had ever been known, and 
 it was a stimulus which acted without inter- 
 mission for centuries. . . , But inseparable 
 from the commercial stimulus was the stimu- 
 lus of international rivalry. The object of 
 each nation was now to increase its trade, not 
 
 1 This, of course, refers to the Opium War, and the troubles 
 that followed it. (See Chap. X.) 
 
4 o WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 by waiting upon the wants of mankind, but by 
 a wholly different method, namely, by getting 
 exclusive possession of some rich tract in the 
 New World. Now whatever may be the natu- 
 ral opposition between the spirit of trade and 
 the spirit of war, trade pursued in this method 
 is almost identical with war, and can hardly 
 fail to lead to war. What is conquest but ap- 
 propriation of territory? Now appropriation 
 of territory under the old colonial system be- 
 came the first national object. The five na- 
 tions of the West were launched into an eager 
 competition for territory — that is, they were 
 put into a relation with each other in which 
 the pursuit of wealth naturally led to quarrels, 
 a relation in which, as I said, commerce and 
 war were inseparably entangled together, so 
 that commerce led to war and war fostered 
 commerce. The character of the new period 
 which was thus opened showed itself very 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 41, 
 
 early. Consider the nature of that long, desul- 
 tory war of England with Spain, of which the 
 expedition of the Armada was the most strik- 
 ing incident. I have said that the English sea 
 captains were very like buccaneers, and indeed 
 to England the war was throughout an indus- 
 try, a way to wealth, the most thriving busi- 
 ness, the most profitable investment, of the 
 time. That Spanish war is, in fact, the infancy 
 of English foreign trade. The first generation 
 of Englishmen that invested capital, put it 
 into that war. As now we put our money into 
 railways, or what not, so then the keen men 
 of business took shares in the new ship which 
 John Oxenham or Francis Drake was fitting 
 out at Plymouth and which was intended to 
 lie in wait for the treasure galleons, or make 
 raids upon the Spanish towns upon the Gulf of 
 Mexico. And yet the two countries were 
 formally not even at war with each other. It 
 
42 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 was thus that the system of monopoly in the 
 New World made trade and war indistin- 
 guishable from each other. The prosperity of 
 Holland was the next and a still more startling 
 illustration of the same law. W^iat more ruin- 
 ous, you say, than a long war, especially to a 
 small state? And yet Holland made her for- 
 tune in the world by a war of some eighty year9 
 with Spain. How was this? It was because 
 war threw open to her attack the whole bound- 
 less possessions of her antagonist in the New 
 World, which would have been closed to her 
 in peace. By conquest she made for herself 
 an empire, and this empire made her rich." 
 (pp. 128-130.) 
 
 England followed in Holland's footsteps. 
 The alliance followed the war against Hol- 
 land. Both states made common cause against 
 the newly developing colonial power of 
 France. Colbert's ministry meant the delib- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 43 
 
 erate entrance of France into the competition 
 of the western states for the New World. The 
 union of the two sea powers, which made Wil- 
 liam of Orange King of England, was appar- 
 ently dictated by the common Protestant in- 
 terests as opposed to the Catholic reaction 
 which had reached its climax in the revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes. This motive also 
 made itself felt directly at the very outset. A 
 backward glance at the events culminating in 
 the Peace of Utrecht ( 171 3) furnishes the cor- 
 rect point of view of the more powerful and 
 deeper lying motives, for in the draft of this 
 treaty of peace the Spanish War of Succession 
 betrays "its intensely commercial character." 
 
 (P- 151.) 
 
 "In reality it is the most businesslike of all 
 our wars, and it was waged in the interest of 
 English and Dutch merchants whose trade and 
 livelihood were at stake." (p. 152.) The 
 
44 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 threatened union of the Spanish Empire with 
 France would have closed nearly the whole 
 New World to England and Holland. The 
 French began to explore the Mississippi and 
 to make settlements. "Behind all the courtly 
 foppery of the grand siecle, commercial con- 
 siderations now ruled the world as they had 
 never ruled it before, and as they continued 
 to rule it through much of the prosaic cen- 
 tury that was then opening." (p. 152.) The 
 Peace of Utrecht denotes one of the greatest 
 epochs in the history of England's expansion. 
 England was now the greatest state in the 
 world, and remained for many years without 
 a rival. Holland's decline became notice- 
 able. France was lamed for a time. Eng- 
 land's actual gain was, in addition to Gibral- 
 tar, Minorca, New Scotland and Newfound- 
 land, and the notorious Assiento, that treaty 
 of state which conferred upon the English 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 45 
 
 merchant a monopoly of the slave trade in 
 Spanish America. England's colonial empire 
 was, in extent, unimportant in comparison 
 with that of France, and even with that of 
 Portugal. France was also superior in many 
 respects. Her colonial policy appeared to be 
 more successful. England's rivalry now di- 
 rects itself against Spain and France, but 
 chiefly against France, England's neighbor in 
 America and India. 
 
 The decisive event in the great duel be- 
 tween England and France is the Seven 
 Years' War, and the new attitude which Eng- 
 land assumes as a consequence of the Paris 
 Peace of 1762. "Here is the culminating 
 point of English power in the eighteenth 
 century; nay, relatively to other states, Eng- 
 land has never since been so great." (p. 
 160.) "In this culminating phase England 
 becomes an object of jealousy and dread to all 
 
46 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 Europe, as Spain and afterwards France had 
 been in the seventeenth century." (p. 161.) 
 
 We have seen that this culminating point 
 had been reached by a long series of wars. All 
 these were wars of aggression. No matter of 
 what nature the pretexts or the immediate ex- 
 ternal causes which led England to carry on 
 these wars, no matter how these pretexts and 
 causes differed one from the other, they are 
 all of the same nature — commercial interests, 
 desire for commercial gain, commercial jeal- 
 ousy, envy and mistrust of competitors. 
 
 This is shown us by the dispassionate judg- 
 ment of Sir. J. R. Seeley, which assuredly is 
 not colored to the disadvantage of his own 
 fatherland. On the whole, he refrains from 
 proposing moral judgments. He seeks not to 
 praise or to judge, but to comprehend. Since, 
 however, he speaks continually of England's 
 power and greatness, he expressly asserts that 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 47 
 
 it is no part of his intention "either to glorify 
 the conquests made, or to justify the means 
 adopted by our countrymen." (p. 155.) He 
 shows how England defeated her four rivals 
 in the contest for the New World, but he has 
 not the smallest intention of claiming for Eng- 
 land superior ability or bravery because of 
 these victories. He does not wish to encour- 
 age his readers to admire Drake or Hawkins, 
 the Republic under Cromwell, or even the 
 government of Charles II. "Indeed, it is not 
 easy to approve the conduct of those who built 
 up Greater Britain, though there is plenty to 
 admire in their achievements, and much less 
 certainly to blame or to shudder at than in 
 the deeds of the Spanish adventurers." (p. 
 156.) He considers the matter "in order to 
 discover the laws by which States rise, expand 
 and prosper or fall in this world." (ibid.) He 
 desires also to throw light upon the question 
 
48 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 of whether the Greater Britain, now that it 
 exists, is likely to continue to flourish and en- 
 dure or fall into decay. "Perhaps you may 
 ask (the teacher is addressing his students) 
 whether we can expect or wish it to prosper, if 
 crime has gone to the making of it!' (ibid.) 
 But God, he says, as He has revealed Him- 
 self in history, does not usually judge in this 
 way. Out of illegal acquisitions of territory 
 by a state does not arise the probability that 
 such territory will again be lost." If we com- 
 pare the British Empire with other empires in 
 respect of its origin, we shall see that it has 
 arisen in the same way; that its founders have 
 had the same motives, and these not mainly 
 noble; that they have displayed much fierce 
 covetousness, mixed with heroism; that they 
 have not been much troubled by moral scru- 
 ples, at least in their dealings with enemies and 
 rivals, though they have often displayed vir- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 49 
 
 tuous self-denial in their dealings among 
 themselves." (p. 157.) He believes that, in 
 comparison with other empires, a good rather 
 than a bad testimonial can be given the Eng- 
 lish ; the Spanish, especially, are incomparably 
 more stained with cruelty and covetousness. 
 One finds noble traits also in the history of the 
 British Conquistadores. "Their crimes, on the 
 other hand, are such as have been almost uni- 
 versal in colonization." (p. 157.) 
 
 It is probable that the Spaniards, French 
 and Dutch will reach a somewhat different 
 conclusion as the result of a consideration of 
 these mutual crimes. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE GLORIES OF PITT, THE ELDER. TRIUMPH 
 OVER FRANCE 
 
 At this period the elder Pitt, since 1766 
 Earl of Chatham, had reached the height of 
 success and influence, albeit the popularity 
 consequent thereon did not survive his eleva- 
 tion to the peerage. He had carried through 
 the war against France, against continuous and 
 powerful opposition and despite initial fail- 
 ures in America and in Germany, where he 
 had the most gifted military leader of the age 
 (Frederick the Great) fighting for him. His 
 declaration that he would conquer America 
 in Germany, is generally known. "Not con- 
 tent therefore, to have almost annihilated the 
 
 fleets of France, he desired to deprive her of 
 
 50 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 51 
 
 all her colonial empire, and also of all partici- 
 pation in that Newfoundland fishery which 
 he described as the great nursery of her sailors. 
 Some time ago he (Pitt) said in the midst of 
 his triumphs: 'I would have been content to 
 bring France to her knees; now I will not rest 
 till I have laid her on her back.' He once con- 
 fessed, with a startling frankness, that he loved 
 'an honorable war.' He never appears to have 
 had any adequate sense of the misery it pro- 
 duces." 1 
 
 Lecky emphasizes the fact that Pitt, in his 
 love of war, was in full accord with the wishes 
 of his people. He had made it his aim to con- 
 sider patriotism as signifying an increase of 
 power as opposed to "the inevitable and natu- 
 ral enemy" (France), and the putting of an 
 end to the weakness, anarchy and corruption of 
 which, according to his opinion, recent Eng- 
 
 1 Lecky, "A History of the Eighteenth Century," II, p. 512. 
 
52 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 lish politics was full. "He considered the 
 selfishness, incapacity, intrigues and jealousies 
 of the great nobles as being the main cause of 
 those evils." * To crown his fatherland with 
 the glory of war was his aim and his accomp- 
 lishment. With complete deliberation he 
 made his policy serve the interests of trade. 
 "British policy is British trade," was his 
 motto. 
 
 1 Lecky, III, p. in. After the fall of Pitt his successor, Lord 
 Bute, left Prussia in the lurch (1762). Pitt characterized this 
 as deceitful, dishonest and treacherous. Bute and his King at 
 the same time offered East Prussia to the Tsarina and Silesia 
 to the Kaiserin as the price of peace. J. R. Green calls this 
 "shameless indifference toward our national honor," and de- 
 clares that only by fortunate accidents was England preserved 
 from this debasement ("Short History," p. 743.) 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE LOSS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES 
 
 The splendid and victorious development 
 of the British colonial empire in the eight- 
 eenth century did not, however, proceed with- 
 out interruption. There came a setback, a sud- 
 den convulsion, whose far-reaching conse- 
 quences were not comprehended when it oc- 
 curred — the loss of the American colonies, 
 which constituted nearly the entire colonial 
 empire at that time. "Like a bubble, Greater 
 Britain expanded rapidly and then burst. It 
 has since been expanding again. Can we avoid 
 the obvious inference?" (Seeley, p. 176.) 
 
 Seeley rejects this deduction, for the reason 
 
 that the old colonial system, which treated a 
 
 colony as a slave, was responsible for the 
 
 53 
 
54 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 American Revolution. No new, well thought 
 out system has as yet taken its place, accord- 
 ing to Seeley. He declares the only correct 
 system to be one which makes the colonies 
 parts of England, as opposed to the former 
 method of considering them possessions of 
 England and treating them as such. 
 
 In the words of Edmund Burke (in his fa- 
 mous speech concerning American taxation, 
 on April 19, 1774), the colonial policy was 
 from the beginning exclusively commercial, 
 and the commercial system was the system of 
 a monopoly. "No trade was let loose from 
 that constraint but merely to enable the colo- 
 nists to dispose of what, in the course of your 
 trade, you could not take, or to enable them 
 to dispose of such articles as are forced upon 
 them, and for which, without some degree of 
 liberty, they could not pay. . . . This princi- 
 ple of commercial monopoly runs through no 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 55 
 
 Ies9 than twenty-nine Acts of Parliament from 
 the year 1660 to the unfortunate period of 
 1764." Burke terms America's condition dur- 
 ing this period one of civil liberty and com- 
 mercial servitude. 
 
 At the same time Richard Price wrote his 
 "Observations on the nature of civil liberty, 
 the principles of government, and the justice 
 and policy of the war with America." (7th 
 ed. r London, 1776.) The booklet went into 
 many editions, was translated into nearly all 
 European languages, and evoked more than 
 sixty replies. It is a flaming arraignment of 
 the English world policy of that period. 
 
 "The disgrace to 'which a kingdom must sub- 
 mit by making concessions is nothing to that 
 of being the aggressor in an unrighteous 
 quarrel. 
 
 "The quarrel with America is disgraceful 
 to us because inconsistent with our feeling in 
 
56 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 similar cases. . . . This war is disgraceful on 
 account of the persuasion which led to it, and 
 under which it has been undertaken: the gen- 
 eral cry was last winter that the people of New 
 England were a body of cowards, who could 
 at once be reduced to submission by a hostile 
 look from our troops. . . . The manner in 
 which this war has been hitherto conducted 
 renders it still more disgraceful. English 
 valor being thought insufficient to subdue the 
 colonies, the laws and religion of France were 
 established in Canada on purpose to obtain the 
 power of bringing upon them from thence an 
 army of French Papists. The wild Indians 
 and their own slaves have been instigated to 
 attack them, and attempts have been made to 
 gain the assistance of a large body of Russians. 
 With like views German troops have been 
 hired; and the defence of our forts and gar- 
 risons trusted in their hands." 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 57 
 
 The modern English historians, in complete 
 accord with Price, depict the traffic in sol- 
 diers, which has been rightly regarded as the 
 disgrace of German princes, as a disgrace 
 which fell in no less degree upon Great Britain 
 and strongly embittered the feelings of the 
 colonists. 1 
 
 1 Lecky: "A History of England in the Eighteenth Cen- 
 tury," ch. 12. Sir G. O. Trevelyan: "The American Revolu- 
 tion," Part II, vol. i, pp. 34-56. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE AS THE PILLAR OF THE 
 EMPIRE 
 
 Seeley deals with the slave trade in connec- 
 tion with his consideration of the "crimes" 
 with which the English colonial empire (like 
 the Spanish and other colonial empires) was 
 built up. He calls it "the greatest of these 
 crimes." "England had taken some share in 
 the slave trade as early as Elizabeth's age, 
 when John Hawkins distinguished himself as 
 the first Englishman who stained his hands 
 with its atrocity. You will find in Hakluyt 1 ' 
 his own narrative, how he came in 1567 upon 
 an African town, of which the huts were cov- 
 
 1 "Hakluyt: The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques 
 and Discoveries of the English Nation, Made by Sea or on 
 Land," London, 1598; 2 vols. 
 
 58 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 59 
 
 ered with dry palm leaves, how he set fire to it, 
 and out of '8,000 inhabitants succeeded in seiz- 
 ing 250 persons, men, women and children.' " 
 (p. 158.) . . . "Like our colonial empire it- 
 self, our participation in the slave trade was 
 the gradual growth of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury. By the Treaty of Utrecht it was, as it 
 were, established, and became 'a central object 
 of English policy'. 1 From this date I am 
 afraid we took the leading share, and stained 
 ourselves beyond other nations in the mon- 
 strous and enormous atrocities of the slave 
 trade." (ib.) This sin was somewhat miti- 
 gated by the fact "that we published our own 
 guilt, repented of it, and did at last renounce 
 it." (p. 159.) On the whole, however, this 
 epoch (the first half of the eighteenth century) 
 secularized and materialized the English peo- 
 
 1 The phrase is borrowed from Lecky. See "History of Eng- 
 land in the Eighteenth Century," II, p. 13. 
 
60 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 pie as nothing had done before, not even the 
 period of the frivolous Kingof the Restoration 
 Charles II; never had "sordid motives" occu- 
 pied such high place. (Seeley is referring to 
 the period up to 1883.) 
 
 Indeed, the conclusion is inescapable that 
 the effect which the slave trade — which was 
 ever united with slave hunting and slave steal- 
 ing — had upon the moral qualities of that part 
 of the well-to-do citizens of the English nation 
 enriched thereby could not have been exactly 
 favorable; and if in this land, in greater de- 
 gree and earlier than in other countries, com- 
 plaints of humanitarians and philosophers 
 against the brutalities of the possessing classes 
 grew loud, one must, in order to understand 
 the basis for such complaints, recall the man- 
 ner in which these classes obtained a great 
 part of their wealth. 
 
 In the year 1750 Parliament enacted a law 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 61 
 
 against the kidnapping of negro children, but 
 it exhibited itself as "quite ineffective." 
 Twenty years later the elder Pitt (the Earl of 
 Chatham) boasted that it was due to his con- 
 quests in Africa during the Seven Years' War 
 that almost the entire slave trade had come 
 into British hands. And the great majority 
 looked upon this trade as upon a "pillanof the 
 Empire and derided its few opponents as luna- 
 tics." * 
 
 1 Rose: "Pitt and the National Revival," London, 1912, p. 
 455. The harbor of Liverpool owes its rise chiefly to the 
 slave trade, for of all businesses which had their seat there, 
 this business was "by far the most lucrative." "It has been 
 computed that in the decade 1783-1793 Liverpool's slave- 
 ships made 878 round voyages (i. e., from Liverpool to the 
 Guinea Coast, thence to the West Indies, and back to the 
 Mersey), carried 303,737 slaves and sold them for .£15,186,850" 
 (nearly $76,000,000). In view of this it can be realized what 
 indignation was aroused by the idea of forbidding this trade. 
 "Bristol, though it had only eighteen ships in the trade, was 
 also up in arms, for it depended largely on the refining of 
 sugar and the manufacture of rum. . . . Persons of a rhetorical 
 turn depicted in lurid colors the decay of Britain's mercantile 
 marine, the decline of her wealth and the miseries of a sugar 
 famine." (Rose, p. 463.) 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE CONQUEST OF INDIA 
 
 As to the conquest of India let us hear first 
 the philosopher, James Mill, author of the 
 first great history of India, himself an official 
 of the company that carried out the greatest 
 part of this conquest. He says: "The two 
 important discoveries for conquering India 
 were, first, the weakness of the native armies 
 against European discipline; secondly, the 
 facility of imparting that discipline to the na- 
 tives in the European service. . . . Both dis- 
 coveries were made by the French." Seeley, 
 who quotes this passage (p. 233), adds that it 
 is utterly incorrect to talk of the English nation 
 as having "conquered" the nations of India. 
 They were subjugated by an army of which 
 
 62 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 63 
 
 only the fifth part consisted of Englishmen, 
 The other four-fifths were composed of the 
 natives. One can thus rather say that India 
 conquered itself. In reality there never was 
 a national state of India. In reality, too, what 
 took place was not so much a conquest as an 
 internal revolution, the result of battles de- 
 signed to set a limit to anarchy. The talisman 
 which enabled the East India Company to 
 put an end to the empire of the Grand Mogul 
 "was not some incommunicable physical or 
 moral superiority, as we love to imagine, but 
 a superior discipline and military system, 
 which could be communicated to the natives 
 of India." (p. 245.) 
 
 Whether or not it can be called conquest, 
 certain it is that naked might — "blood and 
 iron" — was what first enabled the East India 
 Company and then the British state to acquire 
 dominion over the greater part of India 
 
64 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 proper. The leaders in the decisive conflicts 
 were two men who distinguished themselves 
 through strong willpower and no small intel- 
 ligence — Lord Clive and Warren Hastings. 
 
 Clive (1725-1774) is described in the last 
 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Cam- 
 bridge, 1910) as "the first of a century's bril- 
 liant succession of those 'soldier-politicals/ as 
 they are called in the East, to whom Great 
 Britain owes the conquest and consolidation of 
 its greatest dependency." 1 
 
 After his definite return to England, the 
 House of Commons adopted a resolution 
 (with 155 votes against 95), declaring that 
 Lord Clive "obtained and possessed himself 
 of £230,000 during his first administration 
 of Bengal"; following this, however, a reso- 
 lution was passed unanimously, giving rec- 
 ognition to his great services in connection 
 
 1 Encyc. Brit., xi ed., Clive. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 65 
 
 with that country. The case of Omichund 
 was not referred to. 
 
 Omichund was a treasonable Hindu who 
 was grossly defrauded by Lord Clive by means 
 of a forgery, and who, as a result, became mad. 
 The author of Clive's biography in the En- 
 cyclopedia calls this case the only one "of ques- 
 tionable honesty." Obviously the matter of 
 the £230,000 was not questionable. Lord 
 Clive committed suicide before he reached his 
 fiftieth year. That a troubled conscience im- 
 pelled him to this is not probable, even though 
 he knew "that a good part of his fellow-coun- 
 trymen regarded him as a cruel and perfidious 
 tyrant." He suffered from attacks of melan- 
 choly, and had made two attempts at suicide 
 while he was yet a young clerk in Madras. 
 Later he became passionately addicted to the 
 opium habit. 
 
 Warren Hastings, who was a bookkeeper in 
 
66 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 Calcutta in his youth, became when 39 years 
 old (1771) Governor of Bengal, and a few 
 years later Governor General of East India. 
 His conduct in these two offices gave rise to 
 the greatest state process known in history. 
 This process, which the House of Commons 
 conducted against him before the House of 
 Lords, lasted from February 13, 1788, to April 
 2 3> I 795- The chief prosecutor was no less 
 a person than Edmund Burke. The trial 
 dragged, but it must be considered that there 
 was an immense amount of material to be dealt 
 with. It ended with acquittal of the grave 
 crimes against the state with which Hastings 
 was charged, but he was condemned to pay the 
 costs, £80,000. The judgment of posterity — 
 at least in his own country — has more and 
 more swung around in his favor. Even 
 Macaulay's renowned article, which throws a 
 bright light upon the most important charac- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 67 
 
 teristics of the man, is to-day considered par- 
 tisan and inexact. Hastings is to-day looked 
 upon as the hero who first worked out a sys- 
 tem of civil government for India and who 
 put an end to the worst corruption among its 
 officials, and to the systematic and wholesale 
 plundering of the natives. It is, nevertheless, 
 admitted that he did irregular things, violated 
 the letter of the law, broke contractual prom- 
 ises, and robbed widows, and that he was any- 
 thing but a conscientious politician. 
 
 The scene of the cruelties which he felt 
 himself justified in committing was in those 
 days vastly more remote in space from the 
 homeland than to-day. But India is now, 
 in point of time, still remote. It is likely 
 that among the Mohammedans of to-day the 
 memory of that time persists in a somewhat 
 different aspect than among the fellow- 
 countrymen of Warren Hastings, despite the 
 
68 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 fact that the latter assure us that the natives 
 "honor" his name. 1 
 
 As long as six years before the Hastings trial 
 began, on April 9, 1782, Henry Dundas, then 
 the newly appointed Treasurer of the Ad- 
 miralty, and later, as Lord Melville, First 
 Lord of the Admiralty, unfolded in the House 
 of Commons, in a speech of nearly three hours' 
 length, "the causes and extent of the national 
 calamities in the East. He expatiated on the 
 misconduct of the Indian presidencies and of 
 the Court of Directors (of the East India 
 Company) ; of the former, because they 
 plunged the nation into wars for the sake of 
 conquest, condemned and violated the engage- 
 ment of treaties, and plundered and oppressed 
 the people of India; of the latter, because 
 they blamed misconduct only when it was un- 
 
 1 Cf. Enc. Brit., xi ed., s.v., and Dictionary National Bi- 
 ography, art. Warren Hastings. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 69 
 
 attended with profit, but exercised a very con- 
 stant forbearance towards the greatest delin- 
 quency, as often as it was productive of a tem- 
 porary gain." The speech was followed up 
 by a number of propositions which he moved 
 in the shape of resolutions. The resolutions 
 were solemnly voted. 1 
 
 The poet Cowper complained at the same 
 time of his country 
 
 That she is rigid in denouncing death 
 
 On petty robbers, and indulges life 
 
 And liberty, and oft times honor too, 
 
 To peculators of the public gold. 
 
 That thieves at home must hang, but he that puts 
 
 Into his overgorged and bloated purse 
 
 The wealth of India's provinces, escapes. 
 
 The loss of the Thirteen Colonies was com- 
 pensated for by the winning of India. In the 
 continuous changing of fortunes marking the 
 
 1 James Mill: "A History of the British India" (Book V, 
 Chap 9). 
 
yo WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 conflict with France, the loss of the colonies 
 signified a defeat, the gaining of India a vic- 
 tory. The result more than evened up the 
 situation. "In India, indeed, they had the 
 start of us much more decidedly than in 
 North America; in India we had at the outset 
 a sense of inferiority in comparison with them, 
 and fought in a spirit of hopeless self-de- 
 fence." (Seeley, p. 35.) Fear of the French 
 was the deciding motive. "Behind every 
 movement of the native powers we saw French 
 intrigue, French gold, French ambition, and 
 never, until we were masters of the whole 
 country, got rid of that feeling that the French 
 were driving us out of it." (p. 36.) Here, 
 then, lay also the reason for "the competition 
 of the Western states for the wealth of the 
 regions discovered in the fifteenth century." 
 (P- 3°5-) Hence the forcing of France out 
 of America as well as out of India was the 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 71 
 
 condition precedent to dominion over the Hin- 
 dus and Mohammedans in India. "This fact, 
 combined with the other fact, equally striking, 
 of the great trade which now exists between 
 England and India, leads very naturally to a 
 theory that our Indian Empire has grown up 
 from first to last out of the spirit of trade. We 
 may imagine that after having established our 
 settlements on the coast and defended these 
 settlements both from the native powers and 
 from the envy of the French, we then con- 
 ceived the ambition of extending our com- 
 merce further inland; that perhaps we met 
 with new States, such as Mysore or the Mah- 
 ratta Confederacy, which at first were unwill- 
 ing to trade with us, but that in our eager 
 avarice we had recourse to force, let loose our 
 armies upon them, broke down their custom- 
 houses and flooded their territories in turn 
 with our commodities; that in this way we 
 
72 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 gradually advanced our Indian trade, which 
 at first was insignificant, until it became con- 
 siderable, and at last, when we had not only 
 intimidated but actually overthrown every 
 great native government, . . . then, all re- 
 straint having been removed, our trade became 
 enormous." (pp. 305-306.) Seeley is not dis- 
 posed to accept this view out of hand. The 
 relation of the various events to each other is, 
 he thinks, more complex. The advance of 
 business was independent of the advance of 
 conquest. Commerce had been insignificant 
 up to 1 8 13, despite the vast annexations that 
 had gone before; it had not developed after 
 the monopoly of the East India Company had 
 been taken away by law and the company as 
 good as dissolved. The periods of the advance 
 of commerce and those of the advance of con- 
 quest do not, in Seeley's opinion, correspond 
 with each other. The world empire began 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 73 
 
 with the protection and defense of the factors. 
 "In the period which immediately followed, 
 the revolutionary and corrupt period of Brit- 
 ish India, it is undeniable that we were hurried 
 on by mere rapacity. The violent proceed- 
 ings of Warren Hastings at Benares, in Oudh 
 and Rohilcund, were of the nature of money- 
 speculations." (p. 313.) 
 
 Seeley thinks that the later history of British 
 India was of different nature. The clear per- 
 ception of the historian fails him here. His 
 statements can only show that the connection 
 between trade and conquest was less apparent 
 in more recent times. An end was put to the 
 monstrous abuses of administration — abuses 
 through which the East India Company 
 erected for itself a monument of enduring 
 shame — by a law of Pitt of 1784 and by the 
 reforms of Lord Cornwallis, who was the 
 Governor General from 1786 to 1793. From 
 
74 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 this time on there was no longer any connec- 
 tion between the governors and the chiefs of 
 the mercantile brigands. When, however, 
 Lord Wellesley as Governor General in 1798 
 elevated intervention and annexation to a prin- 
 ciple, and his successors really first began to 
 deal according to this principle, it is safe to 
 say that they not only feathered their own 
 nests; undoubtedly they well knew that they 
 were opening up a source of incomputable 
 wealth through commerce. The acts of Lord 
 Dalhousie, who ruled India from 1847 to 1856 
 and who took possession in 1856 of the King- 
 dom of Oudh, without a shadow of right, as he 
 had previously (1851-52) forcibly taken Pegu 
 away from the Birmans, may possibly not 
 have been the direct outcome of greed — See- 
 ley is of the opinion that if these were crimes, 
 they were crimes of ambition (p. 315) and it 
 was, in any event, only the commercial inter- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 75 
 
 ests of the homeland and its Government that 
 indulged and supported him. In the earlier 
 period the commercial motive was partially 
 concealed in the greater love for and con- 
 venience of direct robbery, in the later period 
 through the ostensibly purely military policy 
 of the Government But without the motive 
 of greed the conquest of India by Great Brit- 
 ain is not to be understood. For it has not only 
 cost much blood — even if it was chiefly the 
 blood of native mercenaries — but also much 
 money. The stake here was also a national 
 investment of grandiose proportions. It was 
 reckoned to Warren Hastings as a great merit 
 that he increased from three to five million 
 pounds the receipts of the State, of which the 
 East India Company was the immediate bene- 
 ficiary. 
 
 Even before Warren Hastings's deeds and 
 misdeeds were known in detail, Richard Price, 
 
76 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 already referred to, wrote (p. 103) : "Turn 
 your eyes to India. There more has been done 
 than is now attempted in America. There 
 ENGLISHMEN, actuated by the love of 
 plunder and the spirit of conquest, have de- 
 populated whole kingdoms, and ruined mil- 
 lions of innocent people by the most infamous 
 oppression and rapacity. The justice of the 
 nation has slept over these enormities. Will 
 the justice of Heaven sleep? Are we not now 
 execrated on both sides of the globe?" 
 
Second Division: War Against the 
 French Republic and Against Napoleon 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 ATTACK UPON THE FRENCH REPUBLIC. THE 
 EUROPEAN BALANCE OF POWER 
 
 In his enumeration of the seven great wars 
 which England undertook from 1688 to 1815, 
 Seeley names the last two, "Wars against revo- 
 lutionary France." In reality these were a 
 single great war, even though interrupted by 
 the Peace of Amiens ( 1802) , whose conditions 
 England did not observe. This great war is 
 pictured by Seeley as the continuation and 
 close of the conflict for the New World and 
 India. "As in the American War (the Ameri- 
 can Revolution), France avenges on England 
 
 77 
 
78 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 her expulsion from the New World (through 
 the Paris Treaty of 1763) , so under Napoleon 
 she makes titanic efforts to recover her lost 
 place there." (p. 39.) A continental question 
 furnished the first cause of the war. The 
 French National Convention had decided, on 
 November 16, 1792, that the mouth of the 
 Scheldt should be free to all shipping. The 
 convention thereupon gave notice to England 
 that it would not be bound by the treaties — • 
 there were no less than five of these since the 
 Peace of Utrecht — which England had com- 
 pelled the old monarchy to enter into. In 
 these treaties France had acknowledged the 
 right granted to the Dutch in the Treaty of 
 Westphalia to exclude foreigners from the 
 mouth of the Scheldt. England had, in addi- 
 tion, through the treaty of alliance of 1788, 
 guaranteed this and other rights of the Nether- 
 lands. "It had long been a maxim at White- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 79 
 
 hall (the street of the English Government 
 buildings in London) that the Pays Bas must 
 never go to France. To prevent such a disas- 
 ter England had poured forth blood and treas- 
 ure for more than a century." r 
 
 The execution of Louis XVI ostensibly fur- 
 nished the impulse. An ostensible moral mo- 
 tive was at hand, that of putting an end to the 
 doings of the Jacobins. The most modern 
 English historian of this epoch does not be- 
 lieve in the least in this motive. "The execu- 
 tion was in no sense the cause of the war. The 
 question turned essentially on the conduct of 
 France towards our Dutch allies." (Rose, 
 "Pitt and the Great War," p. 1 17) . "For Pitt 
 and Grenville the war was not a war of opin- 
 ion — Monarchy versus Republic. It was a 
 struggle to preserve the Balance of Power 
 which in all ages our statesmen have seen to be 
 
 'Holland Rose: "Pitt and the Great War," p. 83. 
 
80 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 incompatible with the sovereignty of France 
 in the Low Countries." (ibid., p. ioo.) The 
 European balance of power is another formula 
 tor the unconditional subjugation, brought 
 about by any method preferred, of every Eu- 
 ropean power which threatens to become or 
 appears to be dangerous to the English World 
 Power, and for the alliance with every Eu- 
 ropean power which, in like manner, be the 
 causes what they may, also finds itself in oppo- 
 sition to the rival great power. Hence the 
 maintaining of the European balance of power 
 by England is constantly equivalent, in prac- 
 tice, to a disturbance of the European balance 
 of power, and means, therefore, European 
 war. For, if the other powers are so grouped 
 that they maintain among themselves the bal- 
 ance of power or would again find themselves 
 in such a status after a short war, England in- 
 variably casts its weight into the scales against 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 81 
 
 its opponent, and by doing so it incites and 
 stirs up wars or lengthens them, in order to 
 humble, weaken and rob its opponents. In 
 this manner English world policy acquired the 
 nimbus of having freed Europe from the ty- 
 rant Bonaparte. One may picture for himself 
 what the fate of France and of Europe would 
 have been if England had not considered it 
 necessary to put down the French Republic. 
 Perhaps Napoleon's military genius would 
 have never had an opportunity to develop it- 
 self against Austria and Prussia. But these 
 are idle musings. The subjugation of France 
 (and of Spain, since 1713 a dependency of 
 France) was the consistent and important mo- 
 tive of the English world policy. Here, if 
 anywhere, we see the tremendous drama of a 
 clash of world powers whose courses had been 
 so laid out that they simply must meet and 
 come into collision with one another; for a 
 
82 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 tendency to world-domination lay in their be- 
 ginnings in the French Revolution, just as it 
 had lain in the old French Monarchy, and it 
 was by helping this tendency to prevail that 
 "the Little Corporal" made himself the execu- 
 tor of the Revolution. 
 
 It is highly fascinating to follow the twists 
 and turns of the English policy in this contest, 
 a contest which was finally victorious with the 
 help of the German powers. One of the prin- 
 cipal war methods of England has always been 
 the capture of its enemy's merchantmen at sea 
 and the searching of neutral vessels. It was 
 against this that the union of "armed neutral- 
 ity" was established by Catherine II in 1779, 
 and renewed in 1800. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE PIRATICAL EXPEDITION AGAINST DENMARK 
 
 The arbitrary interpretation of international 
 law through which England had earlier 
 stirred up the neutral sea powers against itself 
 was soon thrown into the shade by an action 
 which filled all Europe with discontent and 
 horror. This was the sudden attack upon the 
 absolutely neutral and peaceable Danish em- 
 pire — the bombardment and burning of Co- 
 penhagen. 
 
 The Peace of Tilsit was concluded on July 
 7, 1 807. On July 2 1 st Canning received a con- 
 fidential report concerning Napoleon's inten- 
 tions in regard to Denmark, and concerning 
 the secret articles of the Tilsit Treaty. Neither 
 
 83 
 
84 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 letters nor persons could at that time reach 
 London from Tilsit in fourteen days. (As a 
 matter of fact, the report dealt with an alleged 
 conversation between Napoleon and the Tsar 
 of June 25th) .* On July 26th Admiral Gam- 
 bier received orders to sail into the Baltic. 
 "On August 3d the English Minister Taylor 
 declared to Count BernstorfT at Copenhagen 
 in a ministerial conference that the English 
 Government had received the most definite 
 and indubitable information that Russia, 
 through secret articles of the Tilsit Treaty, 
 had made itself party to an agreement with 
 France directed against England, and that 
 Denmark had already joined in this agree- 
 ment. And in the middle of August, Canning, 
 the State Secretary, declared officially that the 
 English Government now possessed authentic 
 information that the Duchies of Schleswig and 
 
 1 Eng. Hist. Rev., Oct., 1901, p. 717. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 85 
 
 Holstein were actually occupied by French 
 troops." * 
 
 These Duchies have never been occupied b^ 
 French troops. It is true that a secret treaty 
 which followed that of Tilsit did, under cer- 
 tain conditions, contemplate putting pressure 
 upon Denmark. When, however, Canning, 
 speaking in the House of Commons, desired 
 to justify the attack by the alleged knowledge 
 of these articles, and was taken to task, he had 
 to admit that "the ministers have not said 
 that they had in their possession any one secret 
 
 1 This is the report of one versed in the matter, set forth 
 in an anonymous German publication which appeared the same 
 year (1807), bearing the title: "Has England succeeded in 
 justifying its piratical expedition against Denmark? An in- 
 quiry inspired by the English declaration of September 25, 
 1807." (Kiel, Akademische Buchhandlung, 1807, 157 pages.) 
 The author was Councilor of Legation Joh. Daniel Timotheus 
 Manthey. The correctness of his point of view (except for the 
 fact that he took Napoleon too lightly) is established by the 
 modern thorough investigations of Erik Moller in the Dansk 
 Historisk Tidskrift, 1910-12, pp. 309-422. Moller establishes 
 also that the real contents of the secret treaty were entirely 
 different from those suspected and asserted in London. 
 
86 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 article, but that the substance of such secret 
 article had been confidentially communicated 
 to His Majesty's Government, and that such 
 communication had been made a long time 
 previous to the date alluded to by the honor- 
 able gentleman." l (Attention had been direct- 
 ed to the fact that it was not until August 8th 
 that the news of the conclusion of peace and 
 the text of the treaty had reached England's 
 shores. ) Canning nowhere mentions this date. 
 In the "Declaration" given at Westminster on 
 September 25, 1807, the English Government 
 also maintains that it had "received the most 
 positive information of the determination of 
 the present ruler of France to occupy, with 
 a military force, the territory of Holstein — 
 for the purpose of excluding Great Britain 
 from all her accustomed channels of com- 
 munication; of inducing or compelling the 
 
 1 Jan. 22, Commons, p. 70. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 87 
 
 court of Denmark to close the passage of the 
 Sound against the British commerce and navi- 
 gation; and of availing himself of the aid of 
 the Danish marine for the invasion of Great 
 Britain and of Ireland." These (supposed) 
 plans were to be anticipated. 
 
 A modern English historian, 1 who eulogizes 
 Canning's genius and ascribes intuitive intel- 
 lectual powers to him, is at the same time com- 
 pelled to admit: "It may now be regarded as 
 almost proven that the information on which 
 he at first based was extremely meagre. In 
 part . . . it was absolutely false; but Canning 
 did not know of its falsity until August 10th." 
 (The bombardment began on September 2d!) 
 
 The action began with the instructing of the 
 British Minister at Copenhagen "to reassure 
 the Danish Minister as to the presence of the 
 
 Anon., in the Edinburgh Review, April, 1906, pp. 345-361. 
 I assume that the writer is a historian from the fact that 
 he has drawn his material from the archives. 
 
88 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 British fleet in the Baltic, that it was not in- 
 tended as a menace to Denmark, but merely 
 needful to cooperate with the King of Sweden 
 and protect British reinforcements" (which 
 had been brought to Stralsund). These in- 
 structions bore date of July 16th. On July 
 28th a special Minister (Jackson) was ap- 
 pointed to the Danish Crown Prince (and the 
 Regent), and on July 29th he received "spe- 
 cial and very confidential" instructions (in 
 Canning's own handwriting) in which ap- 
 peared the following: "You will carefully 
 bear in mind that the possession of the Danish 
 fleet is the one main and indispensable object 
 to which the whole of your negotiations is to 
 be directed, and without which no other stipu- 
 lation or concession can be considered as of 
 any value or importance. In the event, there- 
 fore, of the Danish Government even consent- 
 ing to enter into a treaty of alliance as pro- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 89 
 
 posed in the project with which you are fur- 
 nished, it will be necessary that a secret arti- 
 cle should be added to this treaty, by which 
 the delivery of the Danish fleet must be 
 stipended to take place forthwith, and without 
 waiting for the formality of the ratification of 
 the treaty. (Signed) G. Canning." * Jackson 
 first brought his ultimatum to Minister Bern- 
 storff, then (on August 9th) he was received 
 at Kiel by the Danish Crown Prince. The 
 negotiations were resultless. On August 16th 
 the British soldiers landed at Vibeck (be- 
 tween Helsingor and Copenhagen) . Attempts 
 were still made by the admirals to compel a 
 peaceful delivery. The bombardment of Co- 
 penhagen began on September 2d, and from 
 September 5th on it had terrible effect. The 
 beautiful cathedral (Fruekirke), several 
 buildings belonging to the university and 305 
 
 ^ose, in Eng. Hist. Review, Jan., 1896, p. 86. 
 
9 o WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 houses were burned. Capitulation and the 
 forcible taking away of the whole Danish fleet 
 followed. 
 
 An idea of the depth of the moral indigna- 
 tion which this action aroused in Denmark 
 and the duchies can be gained from the long 
 list of published protests that appeared, at- 
 tacking the "tiger-policy against neutral Den- 
 mark" and calling down the vengeance of 
 Heaven upon the despoiler. The most meri- 
 torious of these publications is that of Minis- 
 terial Councilor Manthey, already referred 
 to, of which the most modern Danish com- 
 mentator of these events (Moller, referred to 
 above) says that it "vindicates with great 
 power the traditional Danish view of those 
 occurrences," and this view is confirmed to the 
 fullest extent by the most recent investigations 
 of the archives. 
 
 Manthey says, among other things (p. 104) : 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 91 
 
 "To-day, when the veil is rent which hitherto 
 concealed from princes and peoples England's 
 selfishness and ambition, let us consider 
 whether so many a crown would have been 
 brought low and so many a flourishing land 
 devastated if England's policy, England's gold 
 and England's secret crimes had not been the 
 great ferment by which, in our remarkable 
 generation, the excited masses were brought 
 to revolt, and by which dissolutions, separa- 
 tions and new alliances were brought about 
 and everything tended toward an altered state 
 of affairs whose eventual realization was to 
 cost mankind much blood and many tears." 
 The booklet characterizes (p. 8) the West- 
 minster "Declaration" (supra) as "in its en- 
 tirety weak, in places malicious, but always a 
 web of hypocrisy, knavery and ignorance." 
 
 In England, too, the general horror found a 
 strong echo. In the Political Review for Sep- 
 
92 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 tember, 1807, the affair is termed "a scene of 
 complicated iniquity," and, after pouring out 
 its whole indignation over the principle — 
 Might makes Right — with which the proceed- 
 ing was sought to be defended, the Review 
 says: "If anything could add to that disgust, 
 that horror we feel whenever we contemplate 
 the subject, it is the language of humanity and 
 piety affected by our commanders-in-chief em- 
 ployed in this expedition." * The debates 
 upon the address from the throne in the session 
 of Parliament beginning in January, 1808, 
 occupied themselves chiefly with this matter. 
 While the address itself praised this glorious 
 deed, six Lords submitted a protest, "because 
 no proof of hostile intention on the part of 
 Denmark has been adduced, nor any case of 
 necessity made out to justify the attack upon 
 
 1 "Reflections on the War with Denmark," etc., extracted 
 from Flower's Political Review. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 93 
 
 Copenhagen, without which the measure is, in 
 our conception, discreditable to the character 
 and injurious to the interests of this country." 
 Lord Erskine's individual protest takes more 
 than four pages of the Register. It says "that 
 no speculation of the probable fall of the 
 Danish fleet into the possession, or power, of 
 France would justify its hostile seizure by 
 Great Britain; that such a seizure would be 
 subversive of the first elements of public law, 
 and that until this attack upon Copenhagen 
 shall receive vindication by proof of its jus- 
 tice, Great Britain has lost her moral situation 
 in the world." 1 
 
 In the Lower House also the opposition 
 made itself heard. William Windham, him- 
 self until shortly before that time a member of 
 the Ministry, declared "that the only way left 
 of effacing the stains thus brought upon the 
 
 1 The Parliamentary Register, 1808, vol. i, 2. i. 
 
94 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 country was the public avowal of their atroc- 
 ity; and he accused ministers of having sacri- 
 ficed the national reputation. The ruins of 
 Copenhagen were the monument of their dis- 
 grace." 1 On another occasion the same re- 
 nowned orator expressed the opinion that the 
 Government had openly disavowed the princi- 
 ple that honesty is the best policy, and that 
 when people began to make their theories fit 
 their evil practices, it was a condition of most 
 hopeless depravity; this new system of moral- 
 ity would prove a lasting injury to the world. 
 Several other members of Parliament termed 
 attempts at justification "contradictory and 
 inconsistent chatter." One did not know, they 
 said, which of the stories dished up by the 
 Government one was to believe. "It was, to 
 use a coarse expression, to be sure, but one that 
 was extremely applicable, it was something 
 
 1 Pari. Reg., Feb. 4, 1808. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 95 
 
 like swindling the house out of its opinion." * 
 One member called the taking away of the 
 Danish fleet plain "theft." "Dishonest as the 
 expedition to Copenhagen" became a proverb 
 in London. 
 
 As long afterward as 1822 the poet Thomas 
 Campbell spoke, in verses dedicated to a Dan- 
 ish friend, of the "scandalous matter." 
 
 That attack, I allow, was a scandalous matter; 
 
 It was a deed of our merciless Tories, 
 Whom we hate, though they rule us, and I can assure 
 you 
 They had swung for it if England had sat as their 
 jury. 
 
 Modern English historians consider the 
 matter coolly. H. W. Wilson (Trinity Col- 
 lege, Oxford) says: "That the attack was 
 necessary no one will now deny. England 
 was fighting for her existence; and however 
 disagreeable was the task of striking a weak 
 
 1 (Windham) Pari. Reg., p. 289. 
 
96 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 neutral, she risked her own safety if she left in 
 Napoleon's hand a fleet of such proportions." 1 
 Somewhat different is the judgment of J. Hol- 
 land Rose (Cambridge) in the same volume of 
 the "Cambridge Modern History." He 
 writes: "Great Britain suffered a loss of moral 
 reputation, which partly outweighed the gain 
 brought by the accession of material strength 
 to her navy and the added sense of security. 
 The peoples of the Continent, unaware of the 
 reasons that prompted the action of Great 
 Britain, regarded it as little better than pirat- 
 ical. Only by degrees did this bad impression 
 fade away. . . ." 2 
 
 There is an outward resemblance between 
 this action and the course of the German Em- 
 pire towards Belgium in 1914. In both cases 
 it was a matter of anticipating the enemy; in 
 
 1 Cambridge Modern History, vol. ix, p. 236. 
 
 2 Cambridge Modern History, vol. ix, p. 299. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 97 
 
 both cases there existed the opinion that the 
 enemy would not observe neutrality. But 
 there were these tremendous differences: (1) 
 In 1807 this opinion was an assumption based 
 solely upon rumors; in 1914 it was based on 
 facts; (2) In 1807 Denmark itself had scru- 
 pulously observed neutrality, and the Regent 
 of the country was even personally inclined to- 
 wards England; in 1914 Belgium had grossly 
 violated its neutrality by a military convention 
 into which it had entered with England; (3) 
 Denmark when assailed had no allies, and even 
 if Napoleon had desired to assist, he was ut- 
 terly unable to do so. Furthermore, the 
 greater part of the Danish land forces was in 
 Holstein, and the Government was so unsus- 
 picious that it did not even bring these to 
 Seeland. Belgium, on the contrary, had, 
 when it was attacked, the secretly allied great 
 powers, England and France, behind it, and 
 
98 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 both were in a position to render aid; (4) 
 England offered Denmark the choice between, 
 war and alliance; as a pledge for this alliance 
 it demanded the delivering up of the Danish 
 fleet, which was the sole object for which it 
 was working. The German Empire offered a 
 choice between war and a neutrality which 
 should simply permit the passage of troops, 
 for which full indemnity was solemnly 
 pledged. Many authorities on international 
 law have maintained the existence of a right 
 of passage through neutral lands, especially 
 in the case where one belligerent cannot get 
 at the other without going through neutral 
 territory. This situation plainly existed here 
 as a result of the French fortifications on the 
 Meuse. 
 
PART II 
 
 THE ENGLISH WORLD POLICY IN 
 
 THE NINETEENTH AND 
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 Third Division : Quarrels in Three Parts 
 of the Earth 
 
 The array of great wars — in Seeley's opin- 
 ion — not only begins with this period (1688- 
 1815), but appears also to end there. He 
 says: "Since 1815 we have had local wars in 
 India and some of our colonies" — and in 
 China! and in Persia! — "but of struggles 
 against great European Powers, such as this 
 period saw seven times, we have only seen one 
 (the Crimean War) in a period more than 
 half as long (1816-1882), and it lasted but 
 
 two years." (p. 25.) There is no presentiment 
 
 99 
 
ioo WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 here of what the twentieth century has re- 
 vealed to us. The able scholar forgets here 
 also that the wars against France in the eight- 
 eenth century were carried on in good part 
 on colonial soil (in North America), and 
 that, in analogy therewith, most of the conflicts 
 that arose in Asia during the nineteenth cen- 
 tury composed a latent war against Russia; 
 to say nothing of wars of the Turks and Japa- 
 nese, back of which stood the British world 
 power. For in this whole period the British 
 foreign policy never rested nor altered its na- 
 ture. Its field and object, however, no longer 
 lay chiefly in the New World, but in the Old, 
 no longer in America, but in Asia, and Africa 
 is the bridge to Asia. This is the tendency for 
 which the path was prepared in the last half 
 of the eighteenth century. To widen, retain 
 and make certain the possession of India ap- 
 pears as the most important among the great 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 101 
 
 tasks that were imposed when France was 
 forced to withdraw from the rivalry for the 
 mastery of the seas. There the fear of France 
 had formerly — for more than a hundred years 
 — been a constant goad, there comes now the 
 fear of Russia. A further factor is naturally 
 commercial interests, which demand an exten- 
 sion of spheres of interest and dominion. Fis- 
 cal interests go hand in hand with this factor. 
 And thus the agitations and warlike disturb- 
 ances through which the territory of ancient 
 civilizations is opened to the wares of indus- 
 try, persist throughout nearly the entire nine- 
 teenth century. Parallel with the gradual 
 elimination of the domination of the East 
 India Company — which, since 1784, had al- 
 ready been strongly restricted, being first de- 
 prived of its monopoly (1815, except as to 
 China, which lasted until 1833), then of its 
 commercial functions, and finally of its exist- 
 
102 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 ence (1858) — goes not only thorough and suc- 
 cessful reform of administration, but also sys- 
 tematic conquest. It finds its climax in the 
 erection of the so-called Indian Empire 
 
 (1876). 
 
 And the modern paths of English foreign 
 policy, like the old ones, have been cut through 
 crag and thicket with iron mattocks and axes, 
 and rivers of blood have been shed in the 
 work. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 AFGHANISTAN 
 
 The first important conflict into which 
 Great Britain was brought in following out 
 these aims with accustomed energy and un- 
 scrupulousness was the war with Afghanistan. 
 
 Feuds among this empire, the Indian Sikhs 
 and the neighboring Persia were at the bottom 
 of the trouble. English and Russian influ- 
 ences were everywhere opposed to one another. 
 Both, for instance, carried on a long rivalry 
 for the favors of the ruler of the eastern terri- 
 tory, Dost Mohammed, who lived in Kabul. 
 The Russians had the advantage. Together 
 with Persia they attacked Herat, the capital 
 of the western district. Lord Auckland, who 
 
 had been appointed in 1836 Governor General 
 
 103 
 
104 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 of India, considered the time ripe for par- 
 ticipation. He allied himself with the Sikhs 
 and deposed Dost Mohammed. On his throne 
 he set an unpopular pretender, who, despite 
 better title to the crown, lived in exile (August 
 7, 1839). The English Government approved 
 and supported this coup d'etat. For a time all 
 seemed to be going well, and there was rejoic- 
 ing in London over the splendid issue. In 
 November, 1841, the Afghans revolted against 
 the prince imposed upon them. The result 
 was a complete and shameful defeat of the 
 English frontier troops. They were com- 
 pelled hastily to evacuate the territory, and to 
 surrender all their cannons except six, which 
 they were permitted to retain for the march 
 back. Dost Mohammed, who had been carried 
 captive to India, returned home. His son, 
 Akhbar Khan, had been the leader of the re- 
 volt. The retreat of the English through the 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 105 
 
 Koord Kabul Pass reminds one of the great 
 retreat of 181 2, but its results were much 
 worse. As in 181 2, the winter was severe. 
 The situation was made worse by the fact that 
 many women and children were with the retir- 
 ing army. Akhbar Khan, who followed the 
 retreat, eventually took the women and chil- 
 dren under his protection. General Elphin- 
 stone, the commander-in-chief, also had to sur- 
 render to him. The army itself was continu- 
 ously attacked by the fanatical mountain 
 tribes. After thousands had fallen, the rem- 
 nant found itself trapped in the Jugdulluk 
 Pass. An indiscriminate massacre followed. 
 Of the entire army, which had numbered more 
 than 16,000 men at the beginning of the ex- 
 pedition, a single man survived, who had taken 
 refuge under the walls of Diellabad, in which 
 city an English garrison was maintained. The 
 fortress was besieged by Akhbar Khan, but in 
 
106 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 vain. English auxiliary troops under Gen- 
 eral Pollock appeared and the siege was 
 raised. The English pressed on to Kabul and 
 liberated the women and children, but they 
 held it advisable, despite this success, to evac- 
 uate the land and reinstate Dost Mohammed. 
 
 Auckland's successor, Lord Ellenborough, 
 issued on October i, 1842, a proclamation, in 
 which he declared that the Government of 
 India would remain "content with the limits 
 nature appears to have assigned to its empire," 
 and that "to force a sovereign upon a reluctant 
 people would be inconsistent with the policy as 
 it is with the principles of the British Govern- 
 ment." The noble lord appears to have looked 
 upon the preceding conquests in India as 
 "natural," and upon the English domination 
 there as an object of the eager aspiration of 
 the Indians. 
 
 A glance into the literature of that time 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 107 
 
 gives one an idea of the stupefaction and em- 
 bitterment evoked in the "Motherland" by the 
 frightful catastrophe. An author who criti- 
 cized the British foreign policy of that time 
 with unusual acumen and brilliancy was the 
 Scotchman, David Urquhart. In his polemic 
 against the Edinburgh Review, which, as or- 
 gan of the Whig party, then in the saddle, had 
 the boldness to defend the war, he seeks to 
 make the madness of the defeat clear by an 
 imaginary dialogue between Lord Palmerston, 
 both then and often thereafter the spirit of 
 the British world policy, and a privy council- 
 or. The dialogue follows: 
 
 Lord Palmerston — We must march to Ka- 
 bul, dethrone his ruler and set up another. 
 
 Privy Councilor — Are we attacked by the 
 Afghans? Are treaties violated, etc.? 
 
 Lord P. — No, none of these things. But 
 
108 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 Dost Mohammed is friendly to Persia, and 
 Persia is friendly to Russia ; and therefore we 
 must destroy him. 
 
 Councilor — Bur/ what do you propose to 
 do with Persia? 
 
 Lord P. — Oh, Persia is beaten back, the 
 siege of Herat is raised, and we have nothing 
 to fear from her. 
 
 Councilor — What do you propose to do 
 with Russia? 
 
 Lord P. — Oh, Russia has sent to us the most 
 satisfactory assurances and we have nothing to 
 fear from her; quite the contrary; indeed, she 
 can do nothing, for her missions and expedi- 
 tions have utterly failed. 
 
 Councilor — The danger is over, you are 
 satisfied with the power whence it sprang, and 
 after that you go to send armies into the terri- 
 tories of friendly people! 
 
 The Privy Councilor and the Monarch, 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 109 
 
 says Urquhart, must at once have said : "This 
 is a case for Bedlam." 
 
 In another passage he contrasts the conduct 
 of England with that of Mongolians, of whom 
 an Arab historian wrote that they systematic- 
 ally ravage and murder, but "without hatred 
 and vengeance." He continues: 
 
 "Into Central Asia we march an army 
 among a people so friendly as to be ready 
 even to accept our government — we set up a 
 pretender — we support the perpetration of 
 every internal folly and crime — we do every- 
 thing that can arouse a people already subject 
 to us through good will and respect into hatred 
 alike and contempt. Our army is destroyed. 
 We make up our minds that we shall have 
 nothing to do with the country, and yet we 
 send an army there again to ravish and destroy 
 without even the thought of retaining posses- 
 sion ; so that the contrast between the Mongols 
 
no WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 and the British is this — that the first destroyed 
 and ravished by calculation, and without 
 either hatred or vengeance, and that our 
 troops, composed of so-called citizens and 
 Christians, and sent forth from a country 
 honoring itself with the name of Britain, es- 
 teeming itself enlightened, philanthropic and 
 religious, appear there without any calcula- 
 tion, to devastate and destroy, moved only by 
 hatred and vengeance. As to the pretext that 
 we marched to regain the prisoners, however 
 it might have served for the cry of the mo- 
 ment, it is too hollow and absurd to refer to 
 now. The prisoners could have been endan- 
 gered only by the step which we took; and for 
 them to be returned to us it required that we 
 should cease to reperpetrate crime, and to 
 hold as a slave the Prince whom we had so 
 cruelly dethroned." 
 These atrocities brought a tragic fate for an 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND in 
 
 admirable and talented young man, Captain 
 Burnes, an authority on Afghanistan, who, en- 
 trusted with an official mission, warned in vain 
 against the Government's mistaken measures. 
 Sir T. W. Kaye, who is to be thanked for the 
 best history of this war, remarks that "it 
 should never be forgotten ... by those who 
 would form a correct estimate of the character 
 and career of Alexander Burnes, that both 
 have been misrepresented in those collections 
 of state papers which are supposed to furnish 
 the best materials of history, but which are 
 often in reality only one-sided compilations 
 of garbled documents — counterfeits, which the 
 ministerial stamp forces into currency, de- 
 frauding a present generation, and handing 
 down to posterity a chain of dangerous lies." 
 Justin McCarthy, who cites this passage, says 
 that not until years after Burnes met his fear- 
 ful end (he was murdered in the riots of 
 
U2 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 November 21, 1841) did it become known that 
 the reports which he had sent in had been laid 
 before the House of Commons by the English 
 Government in such a mutilated and per- 
 verted 4 form that it was made to appear as if 
 he had approved and recommended the policy 
 against which he had felt himself impelled to 
 issue a warning. 
 
 McCarthy terms the history of these years 
 (1839-42) "a tale of such misfortune, blunder 
 and humiliation as the annals of England do 
 not anywhere else present. Blunders which 
 were, indeed, worse than crimes, and a princi- 
 ple of action which it is a crime in any ruler 
 to sanction, brought things to such a pass that 
 in a few years from the accession of the Queen 
 we had in Afghanistan soldiers who were posi- 
 tively afraid to fight the enemy, and some Eng- 
 lish officials who were not ashamed to treat 
 for the removal of our most formidable foes 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 113 
 
 by purchased assassination. . . . This chapter 
 will teach us how vain is a policy founded on 
 evil and ignoble principles. . . . We had 
 gone completely out of our way for the pur- 
 pose of meeting mere speculative dangers." 1 
 Grown wiser through misfortune, England 
 did, indeed, refrain for four decades from in- 
 terfering with the affairs of Afghanistan. In 
 the meanwhile the Russian peril increased. 
 There were renewed and bitter conflicts. 
 There was again a revolt in Kabul. The en- 
 tire personnel of the British Legation was 
 slain (September 3, 1879). Entrance into the 
 country had been refused the legation in the 
 preceding year, but the Afghans, yielding to 
 force, had withdrawn their opposition. After 
 repeated battles England was compelled to 
 abandon its demand to maintain a permanent 
 
 Justin McCarthy: "A History of Our Own Times," vol. i, 
 pp. 174-5, 205. Tauchnitz edition. 
 
ii 4 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 legation, and promised once more to evacuate 
 the land. Since then the Foreign Office has 
 wooed the favor of the Emir. In the Anglo- 
 Russian Convention of August 31, 1907, Eng- 
 land renounced any purpose of altering po- 
 litical conditions in Afghanistan, of mixing in 
 its administration or of annexing its territory, 
 and pledged itself not to exert its influence in 
 any manner menacing to Russia. Russia 
 acknowledged Afghanistan as lying outside 
 the sphere of its influence. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE OPIUM WAR 
 
 Upon the Afghans English policy tried to 
 impose a hated ruler; upon the Chinese, at 
 about the same period, a hated commodity. 
 
 As is well known, China opposed for many 
 years the entrance of all European traders and 
 their wares. After the way had been finally 
 opened, John Company — as the East India 
 Company was called in England — reaped the 
 chief successes. Its main article of commerce 
 was opium, won from poppies cultivated in 
 India. The growing of poppies was exclu- 
 sively under Government control (en regie). 
 After the company lost its monopoly, the trade 
 assumed much greater proportions. It was 
 nothing but smuggling, for all commerce with 
 
 115 
 
n6 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 opium was strictly forbidden by Chinese laws. 
 The fearful moral and physical effects of the 
 indulgence in opium formed the express 
 ground for this prohibition. 
 
 But the Chinese authorities were unable to 
 check the smuggling in the face of the English 
 Government's systematic furtherance of it 
 The smugglers became bolder and more un- 
 scrupulous, the complaints of the Chinese au- 
 thorities louder. The English Government 
 declared that it had no intention of placing 
 British subjects in a position to disregard the 
 laws of the land with which they were carry- 
 ing on trade. No one took this declaration 
 seriously. Nevertheless, the Emperor Suan- 
 Tsung believed himself in a position to ven- 
 ture a decisive step. Through Governor Ling 
 in Canton he issued a demand for the deliver- 
 ing up of all contraband stores of opium. 
 Twenty thousand cases of the valuable product 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 117 
 
 were given to the flames. The English agent 
 "charged with the oversight of the commerce 
 with China" turned to the Governor General 
 of India with a plea for support. He declared 
 that the life and property of British subjects 
 had been attacked and were in danger, and 
 begged the Governor General to send as many 
 warships as he could spare. The Opium War 
 had begun. The hostilities on land and sea 
 lasted from February, 1840, until August, 
 1841. England and opium won a "glorious" 
 victory. China was compelled to open five 
 harbors, to cede Hongkong, and to pay $22,- 
 500,000 (£4,500,000) as a war indemnity and 
 an additional $6,250,000 (£1,250,000) for the 
 opium burned. 
 
 The conscience of the nation did not remain 
 mute. A flood of articles, filled with expres- 
 sions of shame and moral indignation, was 
 poured out throughout the land. In the House 
 
u8 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 of Commons William Ewart Gladstone made 
 one of his earliest important speeches. "I am 
 not competent," he said, "to judge how long 
 this war may last . . . but this I can say, that 
 a war more unjust in its origin, a war more cal- 
 culated in its progress to cover this country 
 with disgrace, I do not know and I have not 
 read of." » 
 
 After the conclusion of hostilities the vener- 
 able Duke of Wellington was charged with 
 the duty of moving in the House of Lords a 
 vote of thanks for the army and navy — "the 
 victor in years of warfare against soldiers un- 
 surpassed in history" — comments McCarthy 
 
 1 J. Morley, the biographer of Gladstone, says on this point 
 ("The Life of William Ewart Gladstone," vol. i, p. 226) : "This 
 transaction began to make Mr. Gladstone uneasy, as was in- 
 deed to be expected in anybody who held that a state should 
 have a conscience." This Morley is the same man who, as 
 Viscount Morley, represented the present Government in the 
 Upper House. He withdrew from the Cabinet on account of 
 England's participation in the War of 1914, of which he 
 disapproved. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 119 
 
 (vol. i, p. 140) — "to the fleet and army which 
 triumphed over the unarmed, helpless, child- 
 like Chinese." 
 
 The opium question was not settled by the 
 war. The import of opium from India to 
 China, which in 1810-11 amounted to hardly 
 more than 4,000 cases (so-called piculs, each 
 containing 133 pounds), had in 1835-36 
 reached a yearly average of 35,500 cases. The 
 imports continued to increase, in the face of 
 every protest, and in 1855 more than 78,000 
 cases were brought across the border. The 
 English Government put pressure upon China 
 to legalize a trade which it was powerless to 
 suppress, and thus to make of it a regular 
 source of fiscal income. This was finally done 
 by a commercial treaty of 1858. 
 
 "Concurrently there was in England a re- 
 vival of the movement against the policy of 
 forcing opium on China. Even in the time of 
 
i2o WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 the East India Company's monopoly, prior to 
 1833, some voices had been raised in favor of 
 actively assisting the Chinese Government in 
 enforcing its prohibition of the foreign im- 
 port; and quite apart from the parliamentary 
 opposition to the Government of the day, a 
 formidable body of public opinion had gath- 
 ered force and enlisted the support of the 
 leaders of religious and philanthropic work 
 on the side of the movement. This feeling was 
 encouraged and its utterance strengthened by 
 the almost unanimous expression of opinion 
 by the Protestant missionaries, both English 
 and American, working in the China field, 
 that opium smoking was a great moral evil 
 which seriously impeded their efforts to bring 
 the Chinese to recognize the truths of Chris- 
 tianity, and that it was incumbent on all Chris- 
 tian nations to dissociate themselves from a 
 trade which brought disrepute upon the for- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 121 
 
 eign, i. e., the Christian name. The move- 
 ment culminated in a memorial (Papers re- 
 lating to opium, p. 77), presented in August, 
 1855, by Lord Shaftesbury as chairman of a 
 committee formed to sever all connection of 
 the English people and its Government with 
 the opium trade. . . } 
 
 "Public opinion in America was pro- 
 nounced against the opium trade. Of the Prot- 
 estant missionaries in China during the years 
 1834 t0 i860, it may be said generally that 
 the Americans outnumbered the English in the 
 proportion of two to one; and their reports 
 to the home societies produced a marked ef- 
 fect on the deeply religious sense of the Ameri- 
 can people." 2 
 
 The repugnance against the business was 
 stronger in America than in England. The 
 
 1 Morse: "The International Relations of the Chinese Em- 
 pire" (London, 1910), p. 550. 
 
 2 Id., p. 551. 
 
122 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 representative of the United States, moreover, 
 was the only one who, in the negotiations of 
 the years 1832-44, expressly supported the 
 Chinese prohibition of the trade in opium, and 
 many American merchants in China are said 
 to have abstained from the trade before that 
 period on moral grounds. It was the Ameri- 
 can Government, in the Philippines, too, 
 which brought about the opium conference 
 which met at Shanghai on February 1, 1909, 
 and which declared that it was the duty of the 
 Government to prevent the export of opium 
 to every country which had forbidden its im- 
 port. 
 
 The trade flourished without interruption 
 (in 1880 the importations amounted to some 
 97,000 piculs, about 6,600 tons) until only re- 
 cently, when, under the influence of the revolu- 
 tionary movement in China, renewed efforts 
 were made to suppress it. Even the cultiva- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 123 
 
 tion of the opium poppy, which had steadily 
 increased in China itself, has been forbidden. 
 
 The opium trade continued to be a severe 
 burden upon the English conscience — whether 
 from religious or ethical-philosophical 
 grounds. Finally, in 1907, the British Gov- 
 ernment announced its willingness gradually 
 to reduce the export of opium from India to 
 China, so that it should cease entirely in ten 
 years. It will be interesting to see whether this 
 will really be done. 
 
 During all this period China, as is well 
 known, suffered from deep and serious dis- 
 turbances. Along with the curious Taiping 
 Rebellion, which lasted more than a decade 
 (1 855-1 866), came gradually attacks from 
 the side of England, which, as had earlier been 
 the case in the Crimean War and in all ques- 
 tions affecting the Near and Far East, had 
 France in its train. 
 
i2 4 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 The case of the lorcha (river-boat) Arrow 
 furnished the ground for this war. The Ar- 
 row was a Chinese vessel which at the time 
 was sailing under the British flag, quite with- 
 out right. A Chinese watch had, on October 
 8, 1855, arrested twelve men from this boat 
 on a charge of piracy. The English consul 
 in Canton demanded the surrender of the pris- 
 oners upon the ground that the vessel was an 
 English ship. (As a matter of fact, it had 
 for a time sailed as an English vessel, but 
 the registry period had expired). Upon the 
 refusal by the Chinese of his demand, the con- 
 sul appealed to the envoy plenipotentiary in 
 Hongkong. The latter demanded not only 
 the surrender of the arrested men, but also an 
 apology and the promise of the Chinese offi- 
 cials not to repeat such an offense. The Chi- 
 nese replied with further representations, and 
 Canton was immediately bombarded. The 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 125 
 
 operations on land and water lasted twenty- 
 two days. 
 
 In England the people were not altogether 
 pleased with this course. Its illegality was 
 only too apparent. In the Upper House the 
 venerable Lord Lyndhurst declared that 
 neither law nor common-sense could justify 
 it. It was, he declared, impossible to place 
 a Chinese boat in Chinese waters outside the 
 pale of Chinese law. "A lorcha owned by a 
 Chinese purchased a British flag; did that 
 make her a British vessel?" had been the 
 query of the Chinese governor. "Indeed," 
 said Lord Lyndhurst, "when we are talking 
 of treaty transactions with Eastern nations, 
 we have a kind of loose law and loose notion of 
 morality in regard to them." A motion to 
 disavow the proceeding was lost in the House 
 of Lords, by a vote of no to 146. In the 
 Lower House, however, Cobden procured the 
 
126 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 passage of a vote of censure by a small ma- 
 jority. It was a blow to Lord Palmerston's 
 cabinet and came in part from some of his 
 former adherents. Audacious and confident 
 as always, Lord Palmerston dissolved Parlia- 
 ment. He gave out the parole: "An insolent 
 barbarian violated the British flag, broke the 
 engagements of treaties," etc. The parole 
 worked. Palmerston won a brilliant victory 
 at the polls. 
 
 But had the case of the piratical vessel and 
 the bombardment of Canton triumphed? 
 McCarthy gave this judgment: "The truth 
 is that there has seldom been so flagrant and 
 inexcusable an example of high-handed law- 
 lessness in the dealings of a strong with a weak 
 nation!' And G. M. Trevelyan, writing as 
 recently as 1913, says: "It is probable that 
 every man, even the most hearty imperialist, 
 who to-day studies the treatment of China by 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 127 
 
 Palmerston in the affair of the Arrow, will 
 arrive at the conclusion that he abused the 
 strength of Britain and brought on a war 
 originating from an unworthy quarrel." * 
 
 It was a tedious war that was thus begun 
 and that was gladly supported by Louis Na- 
 poleon. Not until the autumn of i860 did 
 it reach its end, after the summer palace at 
 Peking had been looted for three days by 
 English and French officers. That a deep 
 hatred for Europeans has been nourished 
 among the Chinese by such methods has made 
 itself apparent in later occurrences of far- 
 reaching consequences. 
 
 1 Trevelyan, "Life of John Bright," p. 258. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE CRIMEAN WAR 
 
 After Napoleon had been crushed and the 
 conflict of more than a century against 
 France's rivalry at land and sea had been 
 closed, the eyes of the English policy were, 
 until nearly the close of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, directed anxiously toward Russia. But 
 only a single European war in which Eng- 
 land was directly interested resulted there- 
 from. The Crimean War was the work of 
 Lord Palmerston, who had the ambition to 
 accomplish for his native land what the elder 
 Pitt had accomplished a hundred years earlier. 
 What France had been to Pitt, Russia was 
 to Palmerston. To Palmerston, as to Pitt, war 
 was an object of inclination, although both 
 
 128 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 129 
 
 were anything except military leaders. Fear 
 lay at the root of the actions of both. Fear 
 of the growing strength of the rival, and the 
 
 conviction that the utmost watchfulness was 
 
 1 
 
 the duty of the state made war appear a neces- 
 sity to them in that moment when they be- 
 lieved that they could thus render futile the 
 enemy's plans. At such a time war appeared 
 to them no less "lovable" than it had appeared 
 to Napoleon the Great. 
 
 "He (Palmerston) believed from the first 
 that the pretensions of Russia would have to 
 be put down by force of arms, and could not 
 be put down in any other way; he believed 
 that the danger to England from the aggran- 
 dizement of Russia was a capital danger call- 
 ing for any extent of national sacrifice to avert 
 it. He believed that a war with Russia was 
 inevitable, and he preferred taking it sooner 
 to taking it later. . . . He understood better 
 
130 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 than any one else the prevailing temper of the 
 English people." 1 
 
 The war was undertaken, in alliance with 
 Louis Napoleon for the support of Turkey, by 
 an invasion of the Peninsula of Crimea in 
 September, 1854. The participation of the 
 Kingdom of Sardinia, whose policy was di- 
 rected by Cavour, improved the chances of 
 the allies. After Sebastopol had fallen (Sep- 
 tember 9, 1855), and Tsar Nicholas had died, 
 the war began to die down in the face of a 
 general unwillingness to carry it on, and Na- 
 poleon III brought about peace, which was 
 confirmed in his capital city in March, 1856, 
 and added to his glory. In England the Cri- 
 mean War was remembered unpleasantly, 
 among other reasons because it brought to 
 light the serious defects of the army's organ- 
 ization, especially on the sanitary side. At 
 
 1 McCarthy, II, Chap. 2, p. 208. (Tauchnitz cd.) 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 13 n 
 
 the outset the war had been popular, espe- 
 cially since it was a reaction from the pacifi- 
 cism connected with the liberal tendencies of 
 that time. Soon, however, impatience and 
 disappointment became general ; "everybody" 
 declared that the campaign was a disrepu- 
 table affair. 1 Even after peace was made, 
 public opinion remained dissatisfied with the 
 manner in which the war was conducted, as 
 well as with its political consequences. It had 
 to be admitted that those farseeing men who 
 had warned strongly against the campaign 
 were right At the head of these stood a 
 man whose genius and character no one in 
 
 1 In November, 1854, there were 2,000 wounded and sick in 
 the hospital at Scutari, and in this whole month only six 
 received clean shirts. (Trevelyan, "Life of John Bright," p. 
 242.) A leading article of the Times, which in those days 
 was still written by able and occasionally also by morally 
 earnest men, complained, on December 23, 1854, °f " tne in- 
 competency, lethargy, aristocratic hauteur, official indifference, 
 favor, routine, perverseness and stupidity which revel and 
 riot in the camp before Sebastopol." (Ibid., p. 236.) 
 
i 3 2 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 Great Britain would to-day venture to call 
 in question: John Bright. His opponent, 
 Lord Salisbury, termed him the greatest 
 English orator of his century. Immediately 
 after the breaking out of the war, in a series 
 of splendid orations in Parliament, Bright at- 
 tacked the principle of waging war in order 
 to preserve the balance of power, and the sys- 
 tem of alliances connected with such a course. 
 His reference to the Angel of Death going 
 through the land became famous during the 
 peace negotiations in Vienna. "The Angel 
 of Death has been abroad throughout the 
 land; you may almost hear the beating of 
 his wings," he exclaimed. The Vienna nego- 
 tiations came to grief over the question of 
 the neutralizing of the Black Sea; to win this 
 point, Palmerston carried on the war for an- 
 other year. Fourteen years later (1870) Rus- 
 sia declared that it would not longer be bound 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 133 
 
 by this declaration; it tore up the declaration, 
 like so much waste paper, and England was 
 frustrated. 1 A conference of the powers in 
 London (January, 1871) declared this clause 
 of the treaty null and void. 
 
 Gladstone, who belonged to the cabinet re- 
 sponsible for the war, declared afterward that 
 it had been more sentiment than reason that 
 had made the war popular, but that it was 
 more reason than sentiment that had cast him 
 into "the abyss of odium." 2 
 
 We may accept these verdicts. No thought- 
 ful man of English nationality could be found 
 to-day who would be inclined to attempt to 
 justify the Crimean War. 
 
 a The verdict is Trevelyan's. See "Life of John Bright," 
 p. 247- 
 2 Morley, "Life of Gladstone," I, p. 495. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE IONIAN ISLANDS 
 
 Great Britain had secured for itself a 
 strange legacy out of the ruins of the Napo- 
 leonic bankruptcy. Under the name of "the 
 United States of the Ionian Islands," Corfu, 
 Cephalonia, Zakynthos, Paxos, Ithaca and Cy- 
 thera had been created a "free and independ- 
 ent state" by means of a special treaty between 
 Great Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia, 
 and had been placed under the protection of 
 the power first named. A Lord High Com- 
 missioner was to assume legislative and execu- 
 tive functions. "A constitutional charter of 
 1 8 17 formed a system of government that soon 
 became despotic enough to satisfy Metternich 
 
 134 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 135 
 
 himself." 1 The Lord High Commissioner 
 could simply do whatever he wished up to 
 1848, when changes were made. 
 
 There had before that been no lack of un- 
 rest, and in this troubled year there was an 
 uprising in Cephalonia, "which the Lord 
 High Commissioner suppressed with cruel 
 rigor. Twenty-two people had been hanged, 
 three hundred or more had been flogged, most 
 of them without any species of judicial in- 
 vestigation. The fire-raisings and destruc- 
 tion of houses and vineyards were of a fierce 
 brutality to match." A regime of terror fol- 
 lowed which extended to the other islands. 
 By virtue of his "power of high police" the 
 Lord High Commissioner was able to put an 
 end to the activities of any one, that is, "to tear 
 him from his home, his business and his live- 
 lihood. This high police power was princi- 
 
 1 Morley, "Life of Gladstone," I, p. 598. 
 
136 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 pally invoked against editors of newspapers. 
 A distasteful editorial was not infrequently- 
 punished by deportation to some deserted, 
 rocky island, inhabited only by a handful of 
 fisher folk." It is a characteristic fact that 
 a special report concerning this method of 
 government, made by Gladstone, who was sent 
 to the islands on a special mission in 1858 to 
 introduce reforms, still lay in the archives of 
 the Colonial Office as late as the year 1903 
 ("still existed in the archives of the Colonial 
 Office ... a separate report which every- 
 body afterwards agreed that it was not ex- 
 pedient to publish") . 
 
 First among the reasons for the dissatisfac- 
 tion was the wish to become a part of the 
 new Kingdom of Greece ; next to this came the 
 natural opposition to the tyranny of the British 
 governor. At the basis, however, lay also 
 sociologic conditions of land-ownership and 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 137 
 
 of agriculture, since the land-owners were 
 mainly foreigners (Italians). 
 
 The conflict between the Assembly and the 
 vice-royalty gradually became chronic and 
 steadily more unpleasant for the central gov- 
 ernment in London. Despite the fact that 
 Gladstone, in terms of the most utter cant, 
 had declared in May, 1861, that the abandon- 
 ment of the undertaking would be "a crime 
 against the safety of Europe," it nevertheless 
 came to pass on March 29, 1864. Thus there 
 came to an end a British protectorate which 
 is characterized by all commentators and his- 
 torians as a chapter of the most extreme despo- 
 tism. 
 
 England contented itself in the Mediter- 
 ranean with retaining the island of Malta, 
 which it took from the French; the French, 
 for their part, had no legal title whatever to 
 the possession of the island. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 JAMAICA 
 
 In a more striking manner than in the 
 Ionian Islands did English misrule make it- 
 self noticeable in the most important of the 
 crown colonies of the West Indies. In 
 Jamaica, it is true, slavery had been abolished 
 in 1838, but the oppression of the negroes had 
 grown heavier, not lighter. In October, 1865, 
 the unrest eventuated in disturbances of a na- 
 ture more serious than usual, disturbances in 
 which the well founded complaints of the 
 negroes found expression. And yet the whole 
 affair was hardly more than an ordinary riot. 
 "So evanescent was the whole movement that 
 it is to this day a matter of dispute whether 
 there was any rebellion at all . . . or whether 
 
 138 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 139 
 
 the disturbances were not the extemporaneous 
 work of a discontented and turbulent mob." 1 
 The governor proclaimed military law over 
 the whole district with the exception of the 
 city of Kingston. In Kingston lived a negro 
 named Gordon, who had a small business 
 establishment and was a member of the House 
 of Deputies of the colony. He had made him- 
 self prominent there as an advocate of the 
 rights of the negroes, both in and out of the 
 House of Deputies, in an energetic but thor- 
 oughly lawful manner. He was soon arrested, 
 and, since martial law did not prevail in 
 Kingston and it would have been necessary to 
 bring him before an ordinary civil court, he 
 was taken to another district and brought be- 
 fore a court-martial composed of two young 
 marine officers and a subaltern of infantry. 
 Gordon was accused of high treason, found 
 
 1 McCarthy, IV, p. 117 (Tauchnitz ed.). 
 
140 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 guilty and sentenced to death. As the fol- 
 lowing day was Sunday, the judgment was not 
 carried out until Monday. 
 
 "The whole of the proceedings connected \ 
 with the trial of Gordon were absolutely il- 
 legal ; they were illegal from first to last. . . . 
 Every step in it was a separate outrage on law. 
 But for its tragic end the whole affair would 
 seem to belong to the domain of burlesque 
 rather than to that of sober history." 1 Mc- 
 Carthy goes into details to prove this and sup- 
 ports his statements by reference to the criti- 
 cism of Presiding Justice Cockburn, who later 
 declared that nine-tenths of the testimony ad- 
 mitted should have been rejected under all 
 rules of the procedure not only of civil but of 
 military courts. 
 
 "Meanwhile the carnival of repression was 
 going on. The insurrection, or whatever the 
 
 1 McCarthy, IV, p. 121. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 141 
 
 movement was which broke out on October 
 nth, was over long before. It never offered 
 the slightest resistance to the soldiers. . . . 
 An armed insurgent was never seen by them. 
 Nevertheless, for weeks after, the hangings, 
 the floggings, the burnings of houses were kept 
 up. Men were hanged, women were flogged 
 merely 'suspect of being suspect.' " 1 Four 
 hundred and thirty-nine persons were killed, 
 more than 600 flogged, a thousand houses went 
 up in flames. Especially effective whips were 
 made from piano-wire. A commission ap- 
 pointed later declared that "it is painful to 
 think that any man should have used such 
 an instrument for the torturing of his fellow- 
 creatures." 2 The report of the commission 
 was given out in April, 1866. The recall of 
 the governor followed, although public opin- 
 
 1 Id., p. 123. 
 
 2 McCarthy, IV, pp. 123-4. 
 
i 4 2 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 ion was divided. Committees for and against 
 the methods used against the Jamaicans were 
 formed. On both sides appear the best known \ 
 names of the period (the mid- Victorian era). 
 Supporting the governor were Disraeli, Ten- 
 nyson, Kingsley, Carlyle, Dickens, Ruskin; 
 cudgels were taken up for the negroes by John 
 Bright, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Goldwin 
 Smith. The leader of this group was John 
 Stuart Mill. Even the governor's party was 
 not inclined to justify the cruelties and the ju- 
 dicial murder of Gordon — at least, a great 
 many would not go so far — but they brought 
 all reasons to bear that seemed to demand the 
 relentless suppression of the uprising. The 
 governor's opponents, on the other hand, laid 
 special stress upon the assertion that the upris- 
 ing was insignificant and had already been 
 fully put down when the reign of terror be- 
 gan. Their adversaries replied by exalting 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 143 
 
 the moral qualities of the governor and attack- 
 ing the character of Gordon. The renowned 
 naturalist, Huxley, "made concerning this af- 
 fair the quiet remark that he knew of no law 
 authorizing virtuous persons as such to put to 
 death less virtuous persons as such." i] 
 
 1 Id., pp. 137-8. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE WAR OF THE SLAVE-OWNERS IN AMERICA 
 
 The traffic in negroes, in which English sea- 
 traders had "earned" so many millions, was, 
 as is well known, an issue of.the North Ameri- 
 can Civil War, even though this phase of the 
 conflict did not at first occupy the chief place. 
 
 The English Government was more than 
 once upon the point of taking sides on behalf 
 of the slave-owners of the South. Public 
 opinion — at least among the upper classes, 
 who are always in the best position to make 
 their opinions prevail — was decidedly on the 
 side of the Confederates. This was partly due 
 to aristocratic, partly to liberal and free-trade 
 grounds. The ethical repulsion to slavery, 
 whose most eloquent advocate was the fearless 
 
 144 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 145 
 
 John Bright, found only a weak response or 
 no response at all in these circles. The Times 
 pointed out that the Bible nowhere expressly 
 prohibits slavery. It was confidently believed 
 that the North would suffer a crushing defeat. 
 "The influential classes were heart and soul 
 with the South." In like manner, Napoleon 
 III had not the slightest doubt that the cause 
 of the South would triumph and that all was 
 over forever with the Union. He desired also, 
 jointly with the English Government, to sup- 
 port the Confederacy through recognition. 
 "It is well to bear in mind that there were only 
 two European states which entertained this 
 feeling and allowed it to be everywhere un- 
 derstood." 1 These were England and France. 
 Lincoln and his friends had reckoned upon 
 the sympathy of the English people and the 
 English Government. They were bitterly dis- 
 
 1 McCarthy, III, p. 253. 
 
146 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 appointed when they learned that their tem- 
 porary misfortune was mocked at by English 
 statesmen, journalists and clergymen, and gen- 
 erally by the "best society," and that all these 
 circles openly desired the success of their ene- 
 mies. A serious conflict arose from the case of 
 the English merchantman Trent, which w T as 
 searched by a cruiser of the United States. It 
 had envoys of the Southern States on board, 
 whom the captain of the cruiser made prison- 
 ers. There was great excitement in London 
 over the fact that the plebeians of the North- 
 ern States had dared to imitate the practice 
 followed by the English aristocracy for cen- 
 turies — a practice that had led to the system 
 of armed neutrality in Europe and to the War 
 of 1 812 with the United States. It makes a 
 difference whose ox is gored. President Lin- 
 coln soon yielded and released the prisoners, 
 but the affair left much bitterness, chiefly — 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 147 
 
 according to McCarthy's judgment — as a re- 
 sult of the overbearing way in which the Eng- 
 lish Government had conducted itself. 
 
 Even granting that England played here 
 the role of a defender of the rights of nations, 
 there soon came an affair which gave the 
 United States grounds for complaint. The 
 cruiser Alabama, sailing under the flag of the 
 Confederacy, captured one merchant ship 
 after another of the North. In doing so, it 
 regularly used the English flag to deceive its 
 victims. That was its right, under the rules 
 of naval warfare. But the Alabama was, as 
 a matter of fact, more an English than an 
 American ship, and the same was true of 
 several other "Confederate" cruisers. Thev 
 were built in an English shipyard; their crews 
 were almost exclusively English ; the cannons 
 and the cannoneers were English, and the lat- 
 ter belonged to the royal naval reserve and 
 
»i 4 8 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 were in the pay of the British Government. 
 The British Government had no ears for the 
 representations of the Union's envoy, so long, 
 at least, as it was believed that the Union 
 would be defeated. And this belief persisted 
 until the victories of Grant and Meade could 
 no longer be kept secret. Reports of these 
 victories were received in London with great 
 displeasure. "In some of the clubs there was 
 positive indignation that such things should 
 even be reported." 1 When the victory of the 
 North became all too apparent, there was a 
 reversal of opinion. The laboring class, under 
 the influence of John Bright and certain other 
 friends of the Union's cause, had been on the 
 side of the North since the issuance of the 
 Emancipation Proclamation by Lincoln (Sep- 
 tember 22, 1862). 
 
 The Alabama affair was for years a subject 
 
 1 McCarthy, III, p. 277. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 149 
 
 of dispute. It was finally submitted to a 
 court of arbitration which met in Geneva. 
 The verdict of this court (September 15, 
 1872) held England liable for the losses occa- 
 sioned by the Alabama and two other priva- 
 teers. England was forced to pay the United 
 States an indemnity amounting, with interest, 
 to $15,500,000, for breach of neutrality. 
 
 Thus ended the participation — for such it 
 was — of the English Government on behalf of 
 the slave-owners of America. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE INDIAN MUTINY 
 
 All these affairs were, in respect of their di- 
 rect significance for the British World Em- 
 pire, not to be compared with the rebellion in 
 India of the years 1857- 1859, which, under 
 the name of "the Indian Mutiny," is described 
 as a simple revolt of mercenaries, despite the 
 fact that it was, or at least became, much more 
 than that. It meant the collapse of the rule 
 of the East India Company. 
 
 It is still disputed in England whether the 
 annexations of Dalhousie and his governmen- 
 tal methods were the cause of the uprising or 
 not. Most striking was the manner in which, 
 in gross violation of treaties solemnly con- 
 cluded, he destroyed the Kingdom of Oudh, 
 
 150 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 151 
 
 whence the Bengalese army was mainly re- 
 cruited. It is considered certain that this con- 
 tributed to an important degree to make the 
 British domination hated. Everywhere the 
 English had disregarded the religious feelings 
 of Hindus as well as of Mohammedans, and 
 had done violence to the prejudices of caste. 
 Mutinies of the native mercenaries were as old 
 as the institution of paid armies itself. The 
 fear that they might be employed outside the 
 country and thus lose caste worked with par- 
 ticular force upon these caste-feelings. The 
 petty war which England carried on in 1856 
 in Persia added to this fear. There existed, 
 moreover, the widespread belief that British 
 domination in India was to last for a hundred 
 years, and it was in 1757, just 100 years earlier, 
 that the great victory in the battle by Plessy 
 had given Clive domination over India. 
 The history of the mutiny is a history of 
 
152 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 gruesome atrocities on both sides. Its final 
 suppression left an especially deep and terri- 
 ble impression upon the feelings of Europe 
 because of the English method of carrying out 
 the death sentence by binding the victims to 
 the muzzles of cannons, which were then 
 fired. This humane method of execution had 
 already been employed upon the Lipaki in 
 
 1764. 1 
 
 After the mutiny had been suppressed, the 
 question as to its causes became a burning 
 one. Colonel Malleson, who, supplementing 
 Kaye's work, has given us the most thorough 
 historical account of the events, answers the 
 question by declaring that the principal cause 
 was the bad faith of the English Government 
 toward the Sepoys. "The Government pun- 
 ished the Sepoys for declining to fulfil a con- 
 
 1 As early as 1764 it became necessary to stamp out mutiny 
 by blowing thirty Sepoys from the cannon's mouth. Enc. Brit., 
 XIV, p. 446. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 153 
 
 tract which the Government had broken," he 
 said. This occurred in 1843, and in 1853 "the 
 Government most unadvisedly again attempted 
 another breach of contract." Lord Dalhousie 
 was here the guilty person. His "high-handed 
 measures" were crowned by the annexation of 
 Oudh. "Of these acts, of the attempt, as I 
 have termed it, to disregard the silent growth 
 of ages and to force Western ideas upon an 
 Eastern people, and in the course of that at- 
 tempt to trample upon prejudices and to dis- 
 regard obligations, the mutiny was the too 
 certain consequence." 1 
 
 1 Malleson, "History of the Indian Mutiny," vol. Ill, pp. 
 472-476; preface, p. viii. 
 
Fourth Division : The Newer Imperialism 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 EGYPT 
 
 The land of the Pharaohs has been an apple 
 of discord between English and French as- 
 pirations for conquest since the French Revo- 
 lution. These aspirations have served directly 
 the ends of economic and financial exploita- 
 tion. Neither because of this nor for the sake 
 of the colonies themselves has it come to war 
 between the two powers since 1815. The Eng- 
 lish policy, however, succeeded without war 
 in making France more and more dependent 
 upon England. It had tamed the once so 
 powerful and so feared nation, and threw as 
 much fodder into its manger as seemed neces- 
 sary to mollify its thirst for blood. 
 
 154 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 155 
 
 French genius and French technic had 
 planned and built the Suez Canal. When, in 
 1864, Ferdinand de Lesseps appealed to Lord 
 Palmerston to stop the opposition which Eng- 
 lish diplomacy in Constantinople had organ- 
 ized against the project, the Minister declared 
 "that in the opinion of the British Govern- 
 ment the canal was a physical impossibility, 
 that if it was made it would injure British 
 maritime supremacy, and that the project was 
 merely a device for French interference in the 
 East." Assuredly a fine example of the far- 
 sightedness and broadmindedness of British 
 statesmanship, which still sees in Palmerston 
 its typical representative! 
 
 Confirmation by the Sultan of the conces- 
 sion was not obtained until 1866. In the 
 meantime de Lesseps had organized a stock 
 company for the building of the canal, which 
 was opened in November, 1869. In 1875 Dis- 
 
156 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 raeli, in whom the financier and the statesman 
 were admirably joined, bought the Khedive's 
 176,602 shares of Suez Canal stock. This 
 marks the beginning of the financial and ac- 
 companying territorial conquest of Egypt by 
 England. The state stood at the door of bank- 
 ruptcy. To avert it the incubus of Anglo- 
 French financial control (the Dual Control) 
 was laid upon the land. In the year 1881 
 came an uprising, which was also directed 
 against the Turks, under the leadership of the 
 Egyptian officer Ahmed Arabi. In the words 
 of Lord Cromer, who had been in 1878 a 
 member of a French commission and who be- 
 came later (1884) consul-general and de facto 
 governor, it was "a genuine revolt against mis- 
 government." The movement was successful ; 
 Arabi became Minister of War. This did not 
 suit the incubus. English and French ships 
 appeared in Alexandria to protect the inter- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 157 
 
 ests of the creditor states; a revolt in that city, 
 in which British subjects lost their lives, fur- 
 nished the pretext for the bombardment of the 
 weak outer forts on July 11, 1882, which re- 
 sulted in increasing the anarchy. 
 
 The English admiral did not act entirely 
 upon his own responsibility. He did not con- 
 cern himself about the law of nations, but back 
 of him stood his Government, which now held 
 it to be its task to put down the "rebellion." 
 The occupation of the land of the Nile fol- 
 lowed, which, although the subjugation of 
 the Sudan did not come until much later 
 (1898), soon amounted to political annexa- 
 tion. France, whose Government for years 
 insisted that Egypt must be evacuated, was 
 eliminated by the entente, and by the treaty 
 of 1904, which was equivalent to a partition 
 of Northern Africa. "We retain Egypt, you 
 seize Morocco. The other Powers have no 
 
158 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 business either here or there. If Germany 
 should perchance concern itself about its com- 
 mercial interests in Morocco, Great Britain 
 will protect France." 
 
 That was the real meaning of this treaty. 
 That a shadow of "right" came into the ques- 
 tion neither of the contracting parties has 
 dared to assert. The only right was that 
 which Shylock claims. 
 
 The statesman Gladstone had written as 
 long ago as 1877: "Our first site in Egypt, be 
 it by larceny or be it by emption, will be the al- 
 most certain egg of a North African empire 
 that will grow and grow . . . till we finally 
 join hands across the equator with Natal and 
 Cape Town, to say nothing of the Transvaal 
 and the Orange River on the south, or of 
 Abyssinia or Zanzibar to be swallowed by 
 way of viaticum on our journey." * 
 
 Gladstone's "Gleanings," IV, p. 357. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 159 
 
 This same Gladstone had, as Prime Minis- 
 ter, the task of defending the bombardment 
 of Alexandria. John Bright, who was a mem- 
 ber of his cabinet, resigned because of the 
 affair. Goldwin Smith (from 1858 to 1866 
 professor of modern history at Oxford, later 
 a resident of Canada) wrote to him: "This 
 is a war of bondholders." That was also 
 B right's conception. As a member of the cab- 
 inet he had authorized the bombardment, and 
 the thought oppressed him greatly. The im- 
 pulse had come from Joseph Chamberlain, at 
 that time still a Radical. A fearless and tire- 
 less advocate of decent and upright treatment 
 of the Egyptians was Wilfrid Scaven Blunt, 
 who had long lived in Egypt and was at the 
 center-point of the occurrences of 1882. He 
 enjoyed the complete confidence of Arabi, 
 whom he describes as a noble enthusiast and a 
 true Moslem believer. Bismarck termed 
 
160 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 Arabi a powerful factor with whom one must 
 reckon. General Gordon, whose tragic fate 
 in Khartoum was a consequence of the com- 
 plications in the Sudan that followed the occu- 
 pation of Egypt, wrote a letter of approval to 
 Blunt from Cape Town on August 3, 1882, at 
 the height of the publicistic excitement of the 
 year. The letter makes merry over the secrecy 
 of the then Secretary of State, Sir Charles 
 Dilke, and says: "Could things have ended 
 worse if he had said everything? I think not. 
 No more control, no more employees draw- 
 ing £373,000 a year — no more influence of 
 consuls-general, a nation hating us — no more 
 Tewfik — no more interest — a bombarded 
 town, Alexandria — these are the results of the 
 grand secret diplomacy. ... As for Arabi, 
 whatever may become of him individually, he 
 will live for centuries in the people. They 
 will never become 'your obedient servants' 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 161 
 
 again." 1 Blunt considered it necessary, 
 twenty-five years after the occurrences, to sup- 
 plement the earlier justifications of his course 
 by writing a book, which at the outset con- 
 tains many interesting documents, among 
 them several letters from Ahmed Arabi. In a 
 preface to the book, written in 1895, Blunt 
 says : "It may be also that the Egyptian ques- 
 tion, though now quiescent, will reassert itself 
 unexpectedly in some urgent form hereafter, 
 requiring of Englishmen a new examination 
 of their position there, political and moral." 
 It was to this end that he desired to contribute 
 the material he had collected. In a later 
 "Foreword," written in 1907, he declares that 
 for this purpose "it is necessary that they 
 should first have set before them the past as it 
 really was, and not as it has been presented to 
 
 1 Wilfrid Scaven Blunt, "Secret History of the English Occu- 
 pation of Egypt" (1907), p. 28. 
 
i6a WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 them so long by the fallacious documents of 
 their official Blue Books." He refers to the 
 fact that Lord Cromer was in Cairo during a 
 part of the revolutionary period. He sets for 
 himself the task, "to give a complete exposure 
 in detail of the whole drama of financial in- 
 trigue and political weakness as it was at the 
 time revealed to me." A part of the book is 
 made up of entries in the author's diary. 
 These are very gloomy over the future of his 
 country. "England's decay rests upon causes 
 far more general than any one man or party 
 of men can be responsible for. We fail be- 
 cause we are no longer honest, no longer just, 
 no longer gentlemen." 1 Blunt evidently be- 
 lieves also that at that time the honesty and 
 justice of the English policy, even if not per- 
 fect, nevertheless stood much higher at an 
 earlier period. 
 
 1 Blunt, p. 93. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 163 
 
 His views have naturally been severely at- 
 tacked. The acknowledged authority con- 
 cerning modern Egypt and the English con- 
 quest is the two-volume work of Lord Cromer, 
 "Modern Egypt." With all appreciation of 
 this excellent work, however, one must do 
 Blunt the justice of saying that Cromer is at 
 a disadvantage insofar as he did not live in 
 Egypt during the critical period. Lord Cro- 
 mer brings into the discussion the words of 
 Professor Sayce, the renowned authority on 
 Semitic languages: "Those who have been 
 in the East and have tried to mingle with the 
 native population know well how utterly im- 
 possible it is for the European to look at the 
 world with the same eyes as the Oriental. For 
 a while, indeed, the European may fancy that 
 he and the Oriental understand one another, 
 but sooner or later a time comes when he is 
 suddenly awakened from his dream, and finds 
 
164 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 himself in the presence of a mind which is as 
 strange to him as would be the mind of an 
 inhabitant of Saturn." 1 
 
 Perhaps for the observation of certain oc- 
 currences the rule will also apply that it is 
 exactly in the Orient that one must have ex- 
 perienced these things in order to understand 
 them. Furthermore, Blunt, a wealthy man, 
 lived in Egypt as a private gentleman, while 
 Cromer (formerly Sir Evelyn Baring) was 
 there only under commission of the English 
 Government. 
 
 Meanwhile, let us rather reserve our judg- 
 ment. We can, however, accept as correct 
 those things wherein Cromer and Blunt agree. 
 Even Cromer confirms, at the close of his 
 work, with respect to Egypt, what was said of 
 India soon after the annexation of the Punjab : 
 
 1 Prof. Sayce, "The Higher Criticism and the Monuments," 
 p. 55S- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 165 
 
 "We are nowhere beloved." He terms it a 
 "lack of gratitude of a foreign nation for 
 foreign benefices," but says that such ingrati- 
 tude is almost as old as history. In another 
 place 1 Cromer himself refers to Seeley's as- 
 sertion that "it were very rash to assume that 
 any gratitude which may here and there have 
 been awakened by our Government can be 
 more than sufficient to offset the dissatisfac- 
 tion which we have caused among those whom 
 we have deprived of respect and influence." 
 
 But dissatisfaction fills not only the former 
 rules, but also the rulers. Foreign rule is in 
 itself oppressive. It is felt as a burden, even 
 when it brings welcome reforms. The 
 dissatisfaction is increased and sharpened 
 through occurrences showing that the foreign 
 rulers unite a lack of understanding of native 
 
 1 Edinb. Review, Jan., 1908, reprinted in "Political and Lit- 
 erary Essays" (1913), p. 13* 
 
ii 66 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 customs with a severity toward crimes grow- 
 ing out of an attempt to observe these customs. 
 Such an occurrence in Egypt was the case of 
 Denishwai. Pigeons may be shot in the Nile 
 Land only with the permission of the village 
 "omdeh," or head man, for the inhabitants 
 look upon their half-tame pigeons as valuable 
 property and care for them with great assid- 
 uity. The English officers enjoy shooting, 
 pigeons. Thus it came to pass that a party of 
 fifty English officers, on a march through the 
 delta of the Nile, was found shooting pigeons 
 and detained. Their weapons were taken 
 away from them, a shotgun was discharged 
 and wounded several persons, among them a 
 woman. A panic followed and the English- 
 men were badly beaten. One died later of 
 sunstroke, but his death was ascribed to his 
 injuries. An extraordinary court, which 
 existed for such cases, immediately con- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 167 
 
 demned four Egyptians to death, several to 
 long terms of imprisonment and seven to re- 
 ceive fifty lashes each. The executions and 
 lashings were carried out forthwith. 
 
 Sir Edward Grey had just become Minister 
 of Foreign Affairs in the new Liberal govern- 
 ment. He not only defended the drastic ver- 
 dict, but on July 6th issued a warning against 
 further outbreaks of fanaticism in Egypt, 
 which might possibly make extreme measures 
 necessary. To this warning Mustapha Pasha 
 Kamel, the new leader of the Egyptian Na- 
 tional party, replied that he, in common with 
 his fellow-countrymen, believed that Sir Ed- 
 ward Grey had spoken in Parliament for no 
 other purpose than to choke off the discussion 
 of the dreadful reality of Denishwai. But, he 
 asked, is it worthy of England, of the land 
 that desires to be the representative of human- 
 ity, justice and civilization, to approve and 
 
i68 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 adopt as its own the acts of those who give to 
 the world the melancholy and frightful drama 
 of barbarism — the executions of Denishwai? 
 
 The further history of the English usurpa- 
 tion in Egypt will perhaps furnish a sharp 
 answer to this question. There has been no 
 lack of strong opposition and relentless criti- 
 cism of Sir Edward Grey in the House of 
 Commons and in his own party. 
 
 A word may here be said of the conflicts 
 for the Sudan, which formed a part of the 
 conquest of Egypt. The tragic fate of the 
 noted General Gordon made a deep impres- 
 sion upon his contemporaries, and also out- 
 side of England. How far his Government 
 was responsible for his death does not concern 
 us here. For the rest, however, it suffices to 
 quote a striking sentence of the great philoso- 
 pher, Herbert Spencer, written by him not 
 long before his death in 1903. He said : "Love 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 169 
 
 of country is not fostered in me on remember- 
 ing that when, after our Prime Minister had 
 declared that we were bound in honor to the 
 Khedive to reconquer the Sudan, we, after 
 the reconquest, forthwith began to administer 
 it in the name of the Queen and the Khedive, 
 practically annexing it." In the same short 
 article we find the sentence: "Contemplation 
 of the acts by which England has acquired 
 over eighty possessions — settlements, colonies, 
 protectorates, etc. — does not arouse feelings of 
 satisfaction." * 
 
 1 Article on ''Patriotism," in "Facts and Comments," pp. 88-89. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE BOER WAR 
 
 The conquest of the Transvaal and the 
 Orange Free State was for the Boers, who 
 were thus robbed of the last abiding places of 
 their political independence, the conclusion of 
 a "Century of Wrong." (This was the title 
 of a pamphlet issued by the former Secre- 
 tary of State, F. W. Reitz.) 
 
 The Cape Colony, the center-point of Brit- 
 ish dominion in South Africa, was part of 
 the booty secured on the occasion of the bat- 
 tles against the French Republic and later 
 against Napoleon. At first in 1795, then in 
 1806 and finally in 18 14 Great Britain laid 
 hand upon the old Dutch settlement. "The 
 British title to Cape Colony is based upon 
 conquest, treaty and purchase. The wishes 
 
 170 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 171; 
 
 of the inhabitants were not consulted and 
 among them resentment was felt at the way 
 in which their future was thus disposed of," 
 reports the Englishman Frank R. Cana. 1 He 
 knows perfectly that it was only conquest that 
 grounded a real "legal title." 
 
 The repugnance to the English rule, which 
 in this case holds in subjection not Asiatics, not 
 negroes nor colonists of English descent, but 
 descendants of a neighboring European land, 
 has increased in proportion as the rule has 
 been extended. The events contributing 
 thereto are still fresh in the memory. They 
 include the defeat of the English at Majuba 
 Hill (1881) ; the organization of the African- 
 der League (1882) ; the discovery of the dia- 
 mond fields and gold mines; the systematic 
 procedure of Cecil Rhodes and his Chartered 
 Company; the policy of President Kruger; 
 
 1 Encyc. Brit., article "South Africa," XXV, p. 470. 
 
172 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 the complaints of the Uitlander in the Trans- 
 vaal; the forcible invasion of Dr. Jameson 
 (the Jameson raid), which Cecil Rhodes, then 
 Minister in the Cape Colony, had instigated; 
 and the lasting, fearful results of this crime. 
 "It cannot be denied that the events accom- 
 panying this raid greatly embittered the 
 Dutch element in the Cape Colony and in- 
 fluenced its later attitude against the Trans- 
 vaal Boers." 1 In the year 1897 Sir Alfred 
 Milner, a passionately ruthless imperialist, 
 was appointed Viceroy for South Africa and 
 Governor of the Cape Colony. This meant 
 that the policy of force, which had for a time 
 been in desuetude, was to be taken up again, 
 for back of Milner stood Joseph Chamber- 
 lain as Colonial Secretary of State. From 
 the very beginning he handled the Transvaal 
 Republic as a state bound to obedience, al- 
 
 1 Encyc. Brit, ibid. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 173 
 
 though, under the treaty of 1884, the Trans- 
 vaal's standing in international law was only 
 in a limited degree one of dependence, after 
 it had freed itself from its incorporation in 
 1877 into the British Empire. The three- 
 year war (1899-1902) followed, with the final 
 subjection and regulation of the new colonies, 
 the introduction of Chinese mine laborers un- 
 der conditions which had the effect of making 
 slaves of them, and, finally, the granting of 
 self-government and the constitution of the 
 South African Union as one of the members 
 of the British Empire. 
 
 The war itself brought at first severe de- 
 feats for the British army. Later the army 
 was able to report victories. "England sent 
 during the whole course of the war nearly 
 450,000 men to South Africa. Of these, about 
 340,000 came from the mother country, the 
 rest from India, the colonies and South Africa 
 
i 7 4 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 itself. The entire fighting force brought into 
 the field by the Boers was considerably less 
 than 75,000 men." 1 McCarthy is of the opin- 
 ion that in view of the relative strength of the 
 forces (6 to 1), it were impossible for any 
 poet to grow enthusiastic about the victory, 
 and that if it had been a war between two 
 foreign powers, the sympathy of the English 
 folk would most certainly have been on the 
 side of the weaker. 
 
 The sympathy of the entire non-English 
 civilized world was on the side of the weaker 
 to a degree that signified a severe moral de- 
 feat for the English world-policy. The cant 
 phrases with which the war of conquest was 
 launched had no currency outside the English 
 borders ; no one accepted them ; they were cast 
 back into the faces of Chamberlain, Milner 
 and their lieutenants. 
 
 1 McCarthy, "History of Our Own Times," VII, p. 126. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 175 
 
 As long ago as 1850 Queen Victoria "ac- 
 quainted the Prime Minister that she could 
 not observe without pain that England was 
 generally detested." Fifty years later, after 
 she had celebrated her diamond jubilee, she 
 would have found much more reason for this 
 pain. In her place spoke the great men of 
 the land, men belonging as well to the Govern- 
 ment as to the opposition, although the latter 
 did not dare more than a weak protest against 
 the war. 
 
 On October 31st, 1900, the Earl of Kim- 
 berley referred to the fact that "we are very 
 generally hated by foreigners." 
 
 On December 16, 1901, the Earl of Rose- 
 bery, Prime Minister in 1895-6, testified that 
 "there is no parallel to the hatred and ill- 
 will with which we are regarded almost 
 unanimously by the peoples of Europe." 
 
 Lord Salisbury himself, the head of the 
 
176 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 Government, declared on May 9, 1900, "that 
 this country has been cast out with reproach 
 in almost every literature of Europe." And 
 in a later speech (on June 5, 1902), he raised 
 the question "whether the root of bitterness 
 against England, which he was wholly un- 
 able to explain, might not indicate some deep- 
 set feeling with which at a later date we shall 
 have to reckon." 
 
 In the year 1902 there appeared also the 
 interesting work of the Honorable George 
 Peel, "The Enemies of England," from which 
 the foregoing citations are taken. He thinks 
 "that this feeling has been prevalent as a gen- 
 eral factor in Europe since the latter half of 
 the eighteenth century." 
 
 He is assuredly right, for this hostility has 
 always had its seat in France. From the say- 
 ing of Minister Cardinal Bernis (about 1750) , 
 "England will become the despot of the uni- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 177 
 
 verse," down to the book of Jean de la Pou- 
 laine (1902), "The Colossus with Feet of 
 Clay," what a record of expressions of French 
 repugnance, French ridicule and French 
 hatred towards England could be adduced! 
 
 Peel recognized quite correctly the cause 
 and kernel of the "profound, widespread and 
 old standing" hostile feeling which England 
 has brought upon itself on the Continent. He 
 saw it in the fact that England's policy, "at a 
 certain stage of its progress" had regularly 
 opposed itself to every power "that aspired to 
 the primacy of the world." "Apart from all 
 bitterness," he said, "this remains the real mat- 
 ter between us and our Continental critics, 
 and to the question whether this resistance of 
 ours was justified we must content ourselves 
 to stand or fall upon the answer given by the 
 views of impartial minds." 
 
 When he answers then that "our statesmen 
 
178 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 have continuously sought our safety, which in 
 every important epoch of European affairs 
 has been identical with the safety of Europe," 
 this is not cant (to which this author is not 
 addicted), but an undependable generaliza- 
 tion from the affairs of Louis XIV and Napo- 
 leon, of whom the latter in reality fought more 
 against the supremacy of England than for 
 the supremacy of France. 
 
 To return to the Boer War, this conflict was 
 decided upon solely because of the imperial- 
 istic interests of England, and behind these 
 stood, as always, the powerful commercial 
 interests. 
 
 W. H. Lecky, the historian, politically Con- 
 servative and Unionist, wrote in 1900 a pam- 
 phlet entitled "Moral Aspects of the South 
 African War." It is throughout a defense 
 of the English policy and a severe attack upon 
 the government of the Transvaal. Yet Lecky 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 179 
 
 finds himself compelled to make the following 
 admissions : 
 
 "I am far from contending that our con- 
 duct in other respects was impeccable. There 
 are several pages in the history of the early 
 English dealings in the Transvaal which are 
 by no means to our credit. A mining popula- 
 tion like that which had its center in Johan- 
 nesburg is never of the most desirable order, 
 and in the present generation financial specu- 
 lation has mixed far too much, both in Eng- 
 land and in Africa, with South African poli- 
 tics. Party spirit runs violently at the Cape, 
 and if there was a Dutch party aiming at com- 
 plete ascendancy, there was also an English 
 party which was violent, arrogant and unscru- 
 pulous. The raid, though it was undoubtedly 
 preceded by gross misgovernment, was both 
 a great folly and a great crime. Our Govern- 
 ment had nothing to say to it, and the men 
 
i8o WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 who took part in it were tried and punished ; 
 but a section of the British public — shame- 
 fully misled by a very important part of the 
 British press — adopted an attitude towards it 
 which added largely and most naturally to the 
 deep distrust of England that prevailed in the 
 Transvaal." 
 
 Lecky declares it is undoubtedly true that 
 Rhodes prepared and planned the raid. 
 
 Herbert Spencer's verdict is short and 
 sharp. He says: "After promising, through 
 the mouths of two colonial ministers, not to 
 interfere in the internal affairs of the Trans- 
 vaal, we proceeded to insist on certain elec- 
 toral arrangements, and made resistance the 
 excuse for a desolating war." * 
 
 But the sharpest criticism of those respons- 
 ible for the Boer War came from the British 
 nation itself, when, three years after the end 
 
 1 "Facts and Comments," p. 89. 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 181 
 
 of the war, it placed the reins of government 
 by a mighty majority in the hands of those 
 men who, like Campbell Bannerman, Lloyd 
 George and Asquith, had protested loudly 
 against the war and against the manner in 
 which it was carried on. At the time they 
 were abused and ridiculed as "Little Eng- 
 landers" and "Pro-Boers." 
 
 Whether it was in accordance with the will 
 of this majority that Sir Edward Grey became 
 Foreign Minister in the new Liberal cabinet 
 may be doubted with good reason. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 PERSIA 
 
 Under the title, "The Strangling of Per- 
 sia," a distinguished American public man 
 has pictured the modern history of this coun- 
 try. Mr. Morgan Shuster was as no other 
 man in a position to give an impartial and 
 faithful report of the events which he charac- 
 terizes concisely in this title. 
 
 In the endeavors to subjugate and exploit 
 Persia, and to these ends to throw it into con- 
 fusion and anarchy, Russia played the leading 
 role throughout almost the entire nineteenth 
 century. Great Britain, drawn into Afghanis- 
 tan through its rule of might over India, was 
 in turn compelled to direct its eyes toward 
 Persia. Violent points of friction developed 
 
 182 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 183 
 
 as early as 1839, and came to a declaration of 
 war on November 1, 1856. The question at 
 issue was the possession of Herat (in Afghan- 
 istan), which England denied to the Shah. 
 From this time on, England — after a quickly; 
 won victory — above all laid claim to the ex- 
 clusive commercial supremacy over the Per- 
 sian Gulf. At the beginning of the new cen- 
 tury (1902-1907) the rivalry between Eng- 
 land and Russia first became acute, but a com- 
 promise followed during the confusion of the 
 Persian revolution, which was immediately 
 followed by the proclamation of a modern 
 constitution. On August 31, 1907, the Anglo- 
 Russian convention was signed, which in na- 
 ture and effect amounted to a partition of 
 Persia. 
 
 Sir Edward Grey advocated this treaty of 
 compromise in the House of Commons. A- 
 London periodical, which enjoys great respect 
 
1 84 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 because of its genius and frank courage in 
 openly criticizing any action of the govern- 
 ment, had this to say of the affair: 
 
 "Sir Edward Grey has not merely gone out 
 of his way to make a wholly gratuitous defense 
 of the action which Russia is now taking; he 
 has explicitly sanctioned and adopted the 
 stealthy extension of the Anglo-Russian com- 
 pact which underlies the whole of the Russian 
 aggression. So far as the wording of that 
 treaty goes, it provides for the division of Per- 
 sia into economic spheres, within which each 
 power binds itself not to compete with the 
 other for concessions. We have never thought 
 that arrangement compatible with the integ- 
 rity and independence of Persia, and we have 
 always argued that it would be stretched, and 
 must be stretched, into a political partition. 
 At length the avowal has been made, and 
 made apparently without any consciousness 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 185 
 
 that the terms of the compact have been left 
 behind. The word 'political' has been subtly 
 introduced by Sir Edward Grey to describe 
 the character of the particular interests which 
 each power reserves to itself in its own sphere. 
 When once that word is used, the independ- 
 ence of Persia is gone and its partition vir- 
 tually accomplished. 
 
 "But if a little country may be invaded by a 
 great power because a foreign official in its 
 service has ventured to write a reasoned and 
 temporate letter to the Times, in reply to edi- 
 torial attacks of semi-official British and Rus- 
 sian newspapers, we must revise all our con- 
 ceptions of international intercourse. ... It is 
 a case of the wolf and the lamb, so flagrant 
 and so cynical that one is hardly tempted to 
 analyze it further." 
 
 And in a second article the same publicist 
 makes the following observations concerning 
 
186 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 the affair, which are to-day of most especial 
 interest: 
 
 "Disastrous and foolish though we believe 
 this policy to be, we do not call it unintelli- 
 gible. It is a consequence, and one of the 
 worst consequences, of Sir Edward Grey's 
 European policy. One simple and elementary 
 principle has governed it from the first — his 
 dread lest this or the other power might be 
 drawn into what he has called 'the orbit' of 
 German diplomacy. Year in, year out, we 
 have been paying, chiefly in other people's 
 goods, for the satisfaction of keeping certain 
 powers from coming to any intimate under- 
 standing with Germany. The French side 
 of the account is represented by the Moroccan 
 transaction and its sequels. To Russia we 
 have given a free hand over the greater part 
 of Persia. It was a large price to pay for 
 anything." 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 187 
 
 The author sums up his opinion of the Eng- 
 lish foreign policy in the following sentences: 
 
 "We are playing a continental role without 
 continental resources, and from a great ambi- 
 tion based on unsuitable means there must 
 issue in the end either the humiliation of a 
 surrender or the disaster of a defeat." 1 
 
 a The Nation. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE WORLD WAR OF 1914 
 
 On the evening of August 2d the Belgian 
 Government faced the necessity of deciding 
 whether it would take sides with Germany or 
 France. But Belgium's decision had been 
 made long before. Belgium was a member 
 of the entente cordiale between France and 
 Great Britain. 1 This entente ostensibly 
 meant an assurance of English support for 
 France. In reality it meant that France and 
 Belgium had become tools of the English 
 policy. Belgium was, in the words of a Swed- 
 ish military writer, "the United Kingdom's 
 
 a The documents showing that Belgium had long ceased to 
 be a neutral State have now (January, 1915) been published 
 in a pamphlet which bears the title, "Die belgische Neu- 
 tralitat" (The Belgian Neutrality, published by George 
 Stilke, Berlin). 
 
 188 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 189 
 
 outpost on the Continent." 1 It played this 
 role in the guise of an independent State whose 
 neutrality had been guaranteed in 1839 by the 
 European concert, a concert in which Great 
 Britain played first violin. 
 
 Trusting to English and French support, 
 the Belgian Government placed itself in op- 
 position to the request of the German Govern- 
 ment that it assume a friendly neutrality and 
 permit the entry into Belgian territory of Ger- 
 man troops. 
 
 The border was crossed on August 4th. 
 The German Government had in its posses- 
 sion dependable reports over the projected 
 advance of French troops along the Meuse, 
 in the district of Givet-Namur — reports that 
 left room for no doubts concerning France's 
 intention to advance through Belgian territory 
 against Germany. The German Empire was 
 
 1 Svenska Dagblad, October 15, 1914. 
 
190 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 at war with Russia and France, and its ally, 
 Austria-Hungary, also had Servia as an oppo- 
 nent. In Petersburg — according to a report 
 of the Belgian charge d'affaires to the Belgian 
 Minister of Foreign Affairs — there was a firm 
 conviction even before July 30th — indeed, the 
 assurance had been received — that England 
 would stand by France. "This support" — 
 writes the Belgian envoy — "is of extraordi- 
 nary weight and has contributed not a little to 
 give the war party the upper hand." 
 
 Of all the documents concerning the cause 
 of the war that have become known, this is the 
 one that illuminates the situation the most 
 sharply. 
 
 England's participation in the World War 
 was assured in all circumstances. Indeed, it 
 was a matter of course, for even though Eng- 
 land was, in the sequence of events, the last 
 factor, it was the first factor in bringing these 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 191 
 
 events about. No other State had such a tre- 
 mendous material interest as England in tram- 
 pling the German power down through a 
 European coalition. For this reason the neu- 
 trality of England could have been secured 
 through no concession, not even through the 
 concession not to violate the Belgian neutral- 
 ity. 
 
 Only when it is willing to injure itself does 
 a belligerent power make concessions to a 
 power whose hostility is assured. 
 
 For this reason it was surely, in the words 
 of the message of the Secretary of State on 
 August 2d, "a requirement of self-preservation 
 for Germany to anticipate an attack by 
 France." As strongly as moral grounds de- 
 manded that Belgium's neutrality be not vio- 
 lated, the position of self-defense against a 
 mighty coalition of powers in which Germany 
 found itself not only justified, but demanded 
 
192 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 the breach of an international treaty which 
 was nothing but a weapon in the hands of an 
 enemy who would have been an enemy under 
 all circumstances. 
 
 This breach was followed immediately by 
 the English declaration of war. The British 
 Ambassador was "instructed to say that His 
 Majesty's Government feel bound to take all 
 steps in their power to uphold the neutr lity 
 of Belgium and the observance of a treaty to, 
 which Germany is as much a party as our- 
 selves." (Correspondence respecting the Eu- 
 ropean Crisis, Cd. 7467, No. 159.) 
 
 That England was in all circumstances the 
 enemy of the German Empire is proved by the 
 memorandum which Sir Edward Grey on Au- 
 gust 2d — that is to say, before any decision 
 concerning Belgium — handed to the French 
 Ambassador. (Correspondence respecting 
 the European Crisis, No. 148.) In this it is 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 193 
 
 said: "I am authorized to give you an assur- 
 ance that, if the German fleet comes into the 
 Channel or through the North Sea to under- 
 take hostile operations against French coasts 
 or shipping, the British fleet will give all the 
 protection in its power." 
 
 In the telegram in which Sir Edward Grey 
 communicated this declaration to the British 
 Ambassador in Paris it is said: 
 
 "I pointed out that we had very large ques- 
 tions and most difficult issues to consider, and 
 that Government felt they could not bind 
 themselves to declare war upon Germany 
 necessarily if war broke out between France 
 and Germany to-morrow, but it was essential 
 to the French Government, whose fleet had 
 long been concentrated in the Mediterranean, 
 to know how to make their dispositions with 
 their north coast entirely undefended. We 
 therefore thought it necessary to give them 
 
194 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 this assurance. It did not bind us to go to 
 war with Germany unless the German fleet 
 took the action indicated, but it did give a 
 security to France that would enable her to 
 settle the disposition of her own Mediterra- 
 nean fleet." 
 
 Undoubtedly it would have suited Sir Ed- 
 ward Grey and his friends better if they could 
 have been sure of the defeat of Germany with- 
 out risking a single British ship or British 
 cannon. If they could have so prescribed for 
 Germany the manner in which it should carry 
 on war, if they could have so inspired it with 
 fear that the failure of its campaign was cer- 
 tain, then, of course, England would have 
 been glad to remain neutral, and would have 
 filled its mouth with still more beautiful cant 
 phrases than it now does over freedom and 
 justice, over its mission to protect the smaller 
 nations — phrases calculated for those who are 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 195 
 
 simple enough to mistake the disguised wolf 
 for a pious sheep. 
 
 The true state of affairs will not always re- 
 main concealed even in England. 
 
 Nor has it ever been wholly concealed. Be- 
 fore the cabinet reached its decision, the voices 
 of the most important men had been raised 
 against a war on behalf of Servia and Russia 
 against the German Empire and Austria. One 
 needs only to recall flaming articles of the 
 ^Manchester Guardian , the New Statesman, 
 and even of the ministerial Westminster Ga- 
 zette. One recalls the declaration of the Ox- 
 ford professors, who termed such a war a 
 crime against culture; above all may be re- 
 called the withdrawal of the three cabinet 
 members, Morley, Trevelyan and Burns, each 
 a name whose weight would outbalance a 
 dozen Churchills and Greys if genius and 
 political highmindedness could be weighed. 
 
196 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 One can recall the manifesto of the Independ- 
 ent Labor Party, which declared in clear and 
 true words: "England is not at war for op- 
 pressed nations or on behalf of the Belgian 
 neutrality." One recalls the courageous inter- 
 vention of the upright Scotch labor leader, 
 Keir Hardie, in the House of Commons. One 
 recalls further the proclamation of the former 
 leader of the Labor Party, Ramsay Macdon- 
 ald, and the manifesto, already referred to, of 
 Bernard Shaw (Common Sense About the 
 War). And finally, H. N. Brailsford has but 
 recently directed attention to the fact that the 
 report of the Belgian charge d'affaires in St. 
 Petersburg, of which we have already re- 
 marked that it throws the clearest light upon 
 the situation, has been utterly suppressed in 
 England. Brailsford says: "A word could 
 have been spoken which would have preserved 
 peace, England's word to Russia — 'If you mo- 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 197 
 
 bilize against Germany before all resources of 
 diplomacy have been exhausted, we shall con- 
 sider you as the assailant and will not use a 
 man or a ship to help you.' Sir Edward Grey 
 did not say this word." 
 
 Sir Edward Grey could not say this word 
 because it was his secret wish that Germany 
 should be forced into war, even though it 
 would have pleased him better if Germany 
 could have suffered a severe defeat without 
 British help. Because he and his associates 
 believed that only British help could make 
 this defeat certain, he promised it, and he 
 was not in the position to state a condition 
 under which Germany could have been as- 
 sured of Britain's neutrality. 
 
 Our consideration of modern English his- 
 tory teaches us to look upon the English peo- 
 ple as a genuine Epimetheus. There is never 
 
198 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 a time when it cannot say to itself: "Sad 
 delusion vanished like mist." * Shame and 
 repentance took its place. The cultured Eng- 
 lishman thinks with shame of the piracy, mur- 
 der and arson that have established his colo- 
 nial empire. He recalls with shame and re- 
 pentance the slave trade, once praised as a 
 pillar of the empire. He knows that the con- 
 quest of India proceeded along ways paved 
 with treachery and broken promises, with 
 cruelties of every variety; he knows that sys- 
 tematic mistreatment caused the loss of the 
 Thirteen Colonies, which grouped themselves 
 around the Stars and Stripes, and that the 
 same narrow commercial spirit caused his an- 
 cestors to take the part of the emigrants 
 against the French Republic. Even the six 
 professors of modern history at Oxford, with 
 their feeble knowledge of history, know that 
 
 1 Epimetheus, in Goethe's "Pandora." 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 199 
 
 England did Denmark a great injustice in 
 1807. Only with the bitterest regret does 
 every informed man in England remember 
 the catastrophe in Afghanistan in 1837-41; 
 the very name of the Opium War recalls 
 shame and lasting reproach. And the Cri- 
 mean War? We have seen that no intelligent 
 person now defends it, no matter how greatly 
 it was rejoiced at in the beginning, and that 
 it has been plunged into the depths of odium. 
 Only a few know of the despotism with which 
 the small states of the Ionian Islands and Ja- 
 maica were kept in check, but no one familiar 
 with the facts will dare to assert that England 
 there defended right, or even freedom. Only 
 with repugnance does the Englishman of to- 
 day permit himself to be reminded that his 
 fathers and grandfathers were on the side of 
 the slave-owners against Lincoln, while all 
 Germany — which then included Austria — 
 
200 WARLIKE ENGLAND 
 
 never for a moment wavered in its sympathies, 
 and in the States themselves many thousands 
 of German men and youth enthusiastically 
 took up arms against the institution of slavery. 
 That the Indian Mutiny was due to the grave 
 guilt of the East India Company and of the 
 governor who ruled it is a historical fact 
 which is proved by the dissolution of this com- 
 pany which immediately followed. 
 
 The records of the events of more modern 
 times — of the conquest of Egypt, the bom- 
 bardment of Alexandria, the bloody verdict 
 against the peasants of Denishwai, the Boer 
 War and the strangling of Persia — are not yet 
 closed. But even now it requires a great as- 
 surance to assert that these events, so far as 
 they have become known, inure to the honor 
 of the English world-policy. One may say 
 that, in respect also of these machinations and 
 campaigns, a feeling of shame and penitence 
 
WARLIKE ENGLAND 201 
 
 has become almost universal among right- 
 thinking people of the United Kingdom. 
 
 There is, therefore, adequate reason for be- 
 lieving that this feeling in regard to the 
 causes of the present World War will continue 
 to increase and gradually reach a height con- 
 sonant with the terrible magnitude of these 
 events. 
 
 From all that has been here presented in "* 
 unprejudiced manner, based upon the testi- 
 mony of important and noted English authors, 
 we may draw the conclusion that the con- 
 science of the English people, when it is chal- 
 lenged to give a verdict on the English world- 
 policy and its motives, will not be able to 
 avoid finding them guilty and sentencing them 
 to everlasting condemnation. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 When Theseus came to Crete, the Minotaur 
 was brought before him. 
 
 "You have devoured little children and 
 youths," said Theseus. 
 
 The Minotaur trembled. 
 
 "I devoured the little children out of love," 
 he answered. 
 
 "And the youths?" asked Theseus. 
 
 "The youths out of ethical motives." 
 
 Theseus drew his sword and struck off the 
 monster's head. 
 
 The Minotaur of modern times is the Brit- 
 ish world policy. 
 
 202 
 
THE ORIGIN OF THE WAR 
 
 By Karl Federn 
 
 A lucid presentation of the underlying causes of the European conflict and its 
 meaning to the nations involved. By documents and other recently discovered 
 evidence, Mr. Federn makes out his brief — that England, scenting danger to her 
 own prosperity in the development of German science and inventive genius, sought 
 by the aid of alliances with France and Russia to crowd Germany out of the markets 
 of the world. The result of this policy, furthered by ambitious politicians, resulted 
 in this war, disastrous to this isolation program. Written dispassionately, this 
 book aims to disseminate a correct idea of the origin of this titanic struggle. 
 
 izmo. Cloth bound* $1.00 Net. 
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF BELGIUM 
 
 By Richard Grasshoff 
 
 A clear statement of facts concerning the alleged atrocities of German soldiers 
 in Belgium, giving for the first time in popular form reports and documents refuting 
 absolutely the charges spread through the press of the world by British and Belgian 
 interests. Deceived by the government, the controlled Belgian press inflamed the 
 ignorant populace to franctireur barbarities which compelled the German Army to 
 take stern measures to protect i ts line of march. The creation of the Belgian Inves- 
 tigation Commission, within three days after hostilities began, set a premium upon 
 the discovery and reporting of such activities, and the skilful coloring and publica- 
 tion of such instigated reports became a formidable instrument in the war policy 
 of England. This compact narrative of what actually occurred constitutes one of 
 the most astounding revelations of the hour, and is bound to work tremendous 
 changes in the world's judgment of the events immediately following the outbreak 
 of the war. 
 
 l2tno. Cloth. With Appendix and Illustrations. $1.00 Net. 
 
 WARLIKE ENGLAND AS SEEN 
 BY HERSELF 
 
 By Ferdinand Tonnies 
 
 Professor at the University of Kiel; Advising Editor of the American 
 Journal of Sociology, etc. 
 
 A scholarly and comprehensive indictment of England's overweening lust for 
 world-conquest. Out of the mouths of her own statesmen and historians she is 
 convicted of the appalling crimes of piracy, murder and arson in the establishment 
 of her vast colonial empire for the benefit of her so-called upper classes. The hor- 
 rors of her once vaunted slave trade, the conquest of India, the outbreaks in Afghan- 
 istan, the conquest of Egypt and the outrages of the Boer war have become a lasting 
 shame. Her struggle to preserve the balance of power among nations for her own 
 selfish advantages is set forth in this volume as the active determining factor in 
 the world's greatest war. 
 
 Cloth Bound. $1.00 Net. 
 
Germany and England 
 
 By GENERAL FRIEDRICH von BERNHARDI 
 
 General Bernhardi shows that the great European War was 
 forced by England — that Germany is not to blame. He stoutly 
 maintains that England as well as France and Belgium violated 
 the neutrality agreement before ever a German soldier set foot on 
 Belgian soil; and that world-power, not world-dominion, is the 
 key-note of Germany's activity. As he sees it, Germany has always 
 fought for liberty, while England is righting for oppression. Ger- 
 many desires only a free, autonomous development alongside the 
 other great cultural nations of the world. And if Germany wins 
 in the great struggle, there is not even the shadow of menace to the 
 United States in Germany's attitude. This is the first book General 
 Bernhardi has written since the War began, and it is also in a sense 
 a reply to Professor Cramb's attack on his writings. Nowhere 
 can there be secured a clearer understanding of the German position 
 in the present war than by a perusal of this extraordinarily direct 
 and pertinent contribution to war literature. 
 
 "Written in admirable English and possessing a style of argument which is 
 intensely interesting and convincing." — Baltimore Sun. 
 
 "The American public will surely appreciate 'Germany and England.'"— 
 St. Louis ^Republic. 
 
 "The clear logic, unfaltering courage and insistent disposition to call a spade a 
 spade, that marked von Bernhardi's other books, are apparent also in this latest 
 rejoinder to his world critics." — Phila. North American. 
 
 "As a protest from this much-discussed German general and writer, this book 
 is exceedingly interesting." — Boston Advertiser. 
 
 " General Von Bernhardi's book will claim first place in the attention of American 
 students of the War." — Springfield Republican. 
 
 "A brilliantly written book and most informing as a human document." — Phila. 
 Ledger. 
 
 "General Friedrich von Bernhardi, who has caused more newspaper discussion 
 and magazine comment than all the other war writers together, has written another 
 book, 'Germany and England,' which is well worth reading." — Sacramento Union. 
 
 " For one desiring to know the German viewpoint, nothing more succinct and 
 stronger can be had than this volume by Bernhardi." — Boston Herald. 
 
 12mo, Cloth Bound. With Portrait of the Author. 
 50 cents Net. 
 
 G. W. DILLINGHAM CO., Publishers, New York 
 
"fnp\HE ART OF THE PHOTOPLAY" is a condensed 
 textbook of the technical knowledge necessary for 
 the preparation and sale of motion picture scenarios. 
 More than 35,000 photoplays are produced annually in the 
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 Free-lance writers have greater opportunities than ever 
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 "Robin Hood,** '"The Squaw Man," "The Banker's Daughter," 
 "The Fire King," "Checkers," "The Curse of Cocaine" and 
 "The Kentucky Derby*" 
 
 WHAT THOSE WHO KNOW HAVE SAID: 
 
 "In my opinion, based upon six years' experience producing motion pictures, 
 Mr. Eustace Hale Ball is the most capable scenario writer in the business today.** 
 (Signed) W. F. Haddock, 
 
 Producing Director with Edison, Eclair, All Star, and 
 now President, Mirror Film Corporation. 
 
 "Mr. Ball has thoroughly grasped present day and future possibilities of the 
 Moving Picture business with relation to the opportunities for real good work by 
 scenario writers.'- (Signed) P. Kimberlby, 
 
 Managing Director, Imperial Film Company, Ltd., 
 
 London, England. 
 
 "To those who wish to earn some of the money which the moving picture 
 folk disburse, Eustace Hale BaH proffers expert and valuable advice. " 
 
 New York Times Review oh- Books. 
 
 "BalFs Art of the Photoplay puts into concrete form, with expert simplicity, 
 the secrets of writing photoplays which appeal to the millions of Americans 
 who attend the theatres and the producers can not buy enough of such plays to 
 satisfy the exhibitors." (Signed) Robert Lee Macnabb, 
 
 National Vice-President, Motion Picture 
 
 Exhibitor's League of America. 
 
 "You have succeeded in producing a clear and helpful exposition of the sub- 
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 Editor of "The Editor Magazine.?? 
 
 12 mo. Cloth bound, $1.00 Net. 
 
 G. W. DILLINGHAM CO., Publishers NEW YORK 
 
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