MR. REID ON ENGLAND'S VIGOUR.
MR. REID is a man who has shown himself capable of stating the great political truths that underlie the doctrine of Free-trade with a force and insight worthy of Richard Cobden. But he is more than the exponent of sound views on economic subjects. He has that power of speaking out straight and clear which is the mark of all the real governing men. On Tuesday last he made a most interesting and most remarkable confession to a reporter of the Daily News. The vigour of the English was one of the things which had, he said, impressed him most while in England. "I came here," said Mr. Reid, "expecting, may I say, to find a wearied and depressed nation, that had reached the apex of its power and energy, and was now growing weaker rather than stronger. In place of that I find you are a young people." " I see," he con- tinued, "England more vigorous, more enterprising, more full of the file of life than ever before. It is a marvel- lous thing, when one comes to think of it. Here are your forty millions of people, cooped up on thirty-three million square miles of land, and yet able to thrive and lead the world." That is a most remarkable statement. It shows what we confess we were not prepared to find,—that the pessimistic talk so often indulged in at home, and the chorus of vituperative belittlement that is always to be heard from the Continent, have been taken far too seriously in the Colonies. When a man in Mr. Reid's position—a clear-sighted statesman governing over a million English- men—owns to having had such feelings about the Mother-country, what is the sort of impression that less instructed people have held and are holding? If Mr. Reid was deceived by the reports of us that reach beyond our own island, what was the condition of the "mail in the street" in Sydney or Melbourne ?
We are pleased to think that Mr. Reid found himself so completely mistaken, and we are also pleased to find that he had the courage and manliness to admit his mistake, and to speak out, for, mistaken or not mistaken, it is essential that we should know how we appear to the rest of the world, and, above all, to our fellow-countrymen beyond the sea. Nations, like men, cannot afford to give people the impression that they have become weak, flabby, and effete, even though that impression is entirely contrary to the facts. No man is quite safe when people think he has reached his zenith and begun to decline. Depend upon it, foreign nations are far more likely to combine against us if there is a general belief that we are failing than if it is common knowledge that we are in full vigour. Our colonists are no doubt Englishmen, and do not desert comrades under fire ; but even their help in the time of need would be stinted by the feeling that they were trying the hopeless task of keeping an effete community from dissolution. We ought, then, if possible, to refrain from giving the absurdly false impression that we are a spent Power. But if we are to avoid the giving of this impression, we must ask, "How has that impres- sion arisen ? What influences have produced it ?" In our opinion it is due to a great extent to our English habit of self-depreciation. This habit has many excellent results, and we should be loath to see it disappear altogether. When, however, it is carried to excess, or when it becomes a kind of hypocritical convention, it is apt to do injury. People at a distance only hear the accusations, and are unable to see the facts which answer or take half the sting out of the lamentations. To turn Tom Paine's saying upside down, they pity the draggled plumage, and forget that the bird is alive and well. Besides, accusations of wickedness, of sloth, of violent and of unmanly luxury, of degeneracy, are far more sensational, and so carry much further, than plain, dull statements to the effect that the moral status quo is well maintained. People, iJ1 telegraph to Australia a report that the British working man has lost his power of doing this or that, or that a particularly good old English trade is now entirely absorbed by the foreigner, but no one cares to report that Mr. Jones, of Yorkshire or wherever it may be, has succeeded in beating the best French brocades both in style and price. That little state- ment would give no one a thrill, and so it goes unregarded. But our wails of self-depreciation, and our plan of paying people highly to look at our daily life under a powerful journalistic microscope, and to shout with horror at all the disagreeable things they see swim into the field of vision, are not alone accountable for the impression that we have become an effete community. There are other influences which have affected the judgment of the Colonies and of our European neighbours. To begin with, the habit of showing an exaggerated sense of pity on every con- ceivable opportunity has greatly tended to make people imagine that we are going soft. There must be some- thing wrong with a nation which goes into hysterics of woe over some comparatively trifling case of misery and suffering, or which tries to prevent grown men running this or that risk because of the danger. It is a nation of sentimental old maids, they think, when they see us thrown into a state of wild excitement over half a dozen white men being cut up by a hill tribe, or worse still, when somebody's baby is vaccinated against his will, or his pet dog forced to wear a disagreeable muzzle. Again, they think we must be losing our ancient vigour when we endure so meekly our political troubles, —when we tolerate the doings of an avowedly dis- loyal section in the House of Commons, or allow our legislative institutions to be thrown out of gear by a single recalcitrant Member. 'People who can't find a way of putting down obstruction, and who allow treason to be talked in the House of Commons, must be past their work.' That is the comment that goes round the world when we allow, as we do every few years, a small group to defy the sovereignty of Parliament, and what is more, allow them to make Parliament ridiculous. Englishmen are proud, and, we hold, rightly proud, of the point to which they carry toleration. They make a sort of gospel of Burke's maxim, "I must bear with inconveniences till they fester into crimes." We must not forget, however, that this toleration is very often looked upon by outsiders as indifference. But true indifference is universally held to be a sign of degeneracy. When a man says, Oh, well, what does it matter,' we rightly declare that he is not in a sound condition morally, mentally, or physically. Of course, England as a nation does not say that, but merely, I will not fuss about attacks by small people.' Still, the world at large does not see the dis- tinction, and believes that we are really indifferent. Lastly, outsiders are often taken in by our willingness, as a nation, to endure petty international insults without retaliating. When we are opposed by a neigh bour we never show our teeth or growl, but instead look diligently about for some way out of the difficulty without fighting. We try, that is, to see if we can turn the other cheek without injuring ourselves too much. If we can find an easy and safe way of satisfying our assailants, we do so without troubling in the least about the method in which we have been approached. Other nations call this accept- ing insults without even a protest, and conclude that we must be afraid. But it may be obvious that there was nothing to be afraid of. In that case our critics have to fall back on the theory that we are conscious of some secret weakness which unmans us and prevents us striking back even when there is no real danger. In reality, of course, we only adopt this humbleness of tone and this extreme scrupulousness in our relations with foreign nations because we have a strong sense of the terrible responsi- bility involved in war. We dread the shedding of blood without due cause, and hence we are always anxious to avoid a quarrel. At bottom, however, the old fierce heart of the nation survives, as was shown in the case of the German Emperor's telegram. Rightly or wrongly, English- men thought they were in the right there. The consequence was that with one emotion the nation declared itself ready for war, and laid its hand on the sword-hilt.
But it is easy to enumerate the things which have made even men so able as Mr. Reid mistake our con- dition until they got to close quarters with us. The difficulty is to suggest how we are to prevent Englishmen giving so false an impression to the world. We certainly do not want to give up our searching self-criticism, for though it may be carried to extremes, it is a great antiseptic, and is at any rate a thousand times better than self-laudation. Nor do we want to resign our tolerance or our sense of the responsibility that rests h those who draw the sword. No doubt we should be glad to see some restraint placed on our absurd over- pitifulness, and the parade of pessimism—often for party purposes—which appears in our newspapers might also be usefully dispensed with. In this matter one side is as bad as the other. The Unionists are far too fond of talking about their opponents as "Little Englanders," and the Radicals of accusing their political enemies of being cruel and rapacious tyrants. Thus the outsiders who read both views visualise England as a misty little island in which a set of canting and hypocritical Stigginses on the one side, and of wicked and reactionary feudal Barons on the other, are tearing out each other's eyes, deaf in their factious rage to all the calls of patriotism. A little less of this party pessimism would be a great improvement. We wish, too, that the papers could be persuaded not to be always wailing over the decay of our industries and the triumph of the German. By an accident a contract for chairs in a big hotel is placed in Germany. The incident is of course quite unimportant. It is, however, recorded in our papers as an unpleasant proof of our commercial degeneracy—strange as it sounds, the chairs supplied to the new Mausoleum Hotel were all made in Germany. Apparently even the heart of the City itself is not safe from the competition of the ever-vigilant German. Soon the only thing not made in Germany will be English inefficiency.' We smile when we read this nonsense, but the colonist is apt to think with regret, So the poor old Mother-country is, after all, utterly played out.' But though the newspapers might do something to make us appear in our true light before the world, we do not sup- pose they will. They, and very likely we among the rest, will continue from time to time to be paradoxically pessi- mistic without any thought of the remoter consequences. And after all, that is the law of newspaper writing. If a man were to be always thinking whether there was not a chance of his being misunderstood in Auckland or Brisbane he would write with very little effect for London or Edin- burgh. The only thing, then, is to encourage men like Mr. Reid. to come over and see us in person, and to send them back to tell their own people what nonsense it is to suppose that as a nation we are effete or played out.
Previous page
