THE REFLEX VALUE OF PRESTIGE.
THERE is scarcely a problem in politics more difficult than to estimate the precise value of prestige. A few years ago politicians held it to be all in all, the one thing which made national action effective without the use of direct force, the one advantage worth a great risk or a doubtful war. To prove to them that the nation was strong was comparatively nothing ; they wanted the nation to be felt to be strong. We may be as powerful as you like, they argued, but if we are not seen to be powerful we shall be resisted, even when we are in the right, and if resisted we must fight, and there will be ten wars for one. Their first idea there- fore in foreign, colonial, and even home politics, was "to preserve the prestige of Great Britain," and it often implied in their mouths a preference for high-handed action, even when conciliation would have equally served their turn. Lord Palmerston, though really a cautious man, never quite lost that idea to the end of his life, and there are still politicians who think, and think earnestly, that a sacrifice by this country of any appearance of power is an evil not only to this country, but to the world at large. As long, they say, as England is felt to be at once vigorous and willing to display 'vigour, the despots and other evil-minded persons of the world are kept in some sort of awe, which the mere existence of latent strength in Great Britain would not inspire. Of late years there has been, chiefly among contemplative minds, a violent recoil against this theory. The taste for realism, so marked in painting, literature, and science—odd as the last illus- tration may seem—has extended to politics, and prestige is de- cided to be unreal. It means, say the new school of thinkers, always one of two things—either an appearance of power which you have not, or a show of power which you really have, but do not intend to exert. Our prestige on the ocean is of the former kind, our prestige in the East of the latter. We maintain on the ocean claims which are only real provided the British Navy can beat the combined navies of the world, an assumption which, once certainly true, is now, since the discovery of steam and the rise of an immense maritime power across the Atlantic, very much more than doubtful. We also maintain claims in Constantinople which are only real if we mean to fight whenever Constantinople is threatened, and judging from Mr. Gladstone's repeated speeches we do not.now so mean. We could no doubt, if thoroughly determined, throw into the Turkish scale a sword of terrible weight—the fighting power of India—but we do not, unless under very impro- bable pressure, mean to do it, and are therefore, in plain English, playing a grand political trick. This school abhors tricks, and in its recoil from them would abandon the pursuit of prestige alto- gether, would look chiefly to our interests—that is, to our real instead of our apparent strength, would never threaten except when we intended to strike, would pass over minor insults as matters interfering with business, and would, above all, never wage a war unless a direct pledge, an immense principle, or a very great interest were at stake. Why seem strong at Constantinople? Whfkeep troublesome colonies like Jamaica ? Why worry our- selves about the effect concession may have on the Oriental, or American, or even the European mind? We are, they say, strong, stronger perhaps than the world knows, and anybody who attacks us will find that out, and for the rest let us keep our pretensions within reasonable limits, treat as equals with every- body, even Bootan.
There is much sense and some love of truthfulness in this argu- ment, but it does not altogether convince our minds, and fails altogether to convince our consciences. It is not settled to our thinking that the appearance of power is not a reality as much as the power itself, whether there is not something in national force, independent of the ships and the cannon, and the men and the money which a call on that force puts in motion. Could Mr. Gladstone, for example, having power to hold Neapolitan prisons up to execration, morally abstain from using that power?—yet the source of that power was simply his moral prestige. Suppose &- merchant to be very rich and to give no hint of his riches, does he= notlose a force in business which possession of the real cash all the while will not of itself regain? A man is very able but habitually, talks nonsense, will he not when attacked have to exert much more intellectual strength to get a hearing than he would have been corn-. pelled to exer t had his capacity been always en evidence? We suspect that fora nation to cease to make itself respected may be as immoral as for a man to cease to make his views felt among those with whom he deals, that England has, for example, no more right to be silent when despotism is gaining ground than John Smith, merchant, has to be silent when swindling is growing the quickest road to wealth. Prestige is influence, and neither State nor man can have a right to say, " My moral treasury is always full, and there- fore I will give the world no benefit from it."
It is not, however, with the moral value of prestige that we are now concerned, but with an element in the question which seems to us habitually disregarded. People are always talking as if the effect of prestige were exclusively external, whereas its internal effect is by much the more important of the two. Supposing even that the opinion of foreigners about our strength and readiness to use it did not matter at all—a most in- correct idea—still our own opinion about it does matter a great deal. Every time we surrender an influence we surrender also a condition of self-reliance. It may be quite right to surrender it if ill acquired, or unreal, or exhausting, as it may be quite right for a merchant to surrender a credit based on bad gains, or manu- factured paper, or over developed trading, but if he does it he parts with a distinct source of self-confidence, and ought to take in that inevitable result. If we give up defending Turkey we may be right or we may be wrong, but at all events in giving it up we weaken or destroy our own belief in our capacity to- defend Turkey, and therefore our capacity for defence. Nations.- are not permanently self-conceited. On the contrary, self-conceit, which is in nations self-reliance misdirected, only springs up when some strong man has repeatedly done what the nation thought it could not do. France at this moment believes in its heart that it cannot found colonies, but when France was founding them France did not believe that, but on the contrary went mad about schemes like the Mississippi Scheme, the basis of which was the belief of the country in its power to colonize. Per- haps the best possible illustration of the reflex action of prestige is to be found in the recent affair with Bootan. Sir John Lawrence has made a treaty with that State to which no broad exception can be taken except that we have lost prestige. We have attained our ob- jects, butinot recovered our lost guns. " Well," say the friends of political realism, " that is a loss of 2001. ; are we to spend a million in recovering them ?" " Yes," say Anglo-Indians who hold the position English statesmen occupied twenty years ago, " yes, for otherwise the natives will think you unwilling to punish attack when punishment involves exertion incommensurate with the loss." That argument clearly at best reduces the matter to one of calculation. Granted that to abstain from securing the guns was to incur some slight contempt, was not that contempt less injurious than the positive loss of strength which would have accrued from a great loss of money ? It might be, and we are even willing to admit that as the march must have been through snow, and as snow turns Sepoy fingers into thumbs, the expense might ultimately have justly outweighed every idea about anything so vague as the result of a political act upon "native opinion," a subject of which no human being, native or European, knows or can know any- thing, "native opinion" being about as much an ascertainable quantity as the consensus of humanity on the effect of an indi- vidual battle. But there is the reflex action to be considered. India is held and ruled by two armies and a limited num-
ber of European and native, gentry of all kinds. All these
persons have always thought it indispensable to British peace in India to show that the British power, when once pro- voked into the field, is in small things as well as great irresis-
tible. Consequently they have embarked in every undertaking with a conviction that, come what might, Government would push it through, that nothing short of victory would be accepted, that they must win, that they could make no compromise, suffer no losses, endure no stain, however trifling, on military honour. In a political sense always, and frequently in a positive sense, they must conquer or die. Consequently the army and the governing class, though extremely afraid of the responsibility of commencing any contest, when they had once commenced one became perfectly self-reliant and at ease. Whatever the immediate result, the ultimate end was certain, or the British Empire in India would cease to exist. They had only to go forward ; if beaten they would be supported, if destroyed amply avenged ; a catastrophe would be only a check, a retreat something the State could never endure. They went forward therefore with an aplomb and audacity almost incredible. They felt the prestige now so readily decried, felt themselves the depositaries of irresistible power, and dared anything. Under all circumstances they thought of the Empire, for the Empire, believing its own pres- tige involved in theirs, was certain to think of them. Lieutenants Agnew and Anderson told Moolraj when he menaced their lives that killing them was certain to involve his ruin, and so went on confident, and by and bye their coffins were borne through the breached walls of Moolraj's city, and an inscription told how the Sikh monarchy had been piled above their graves. Mr. Eden, on the contrary, feeling keenly that though the State might avenge him, it would under its new realism excessively dislike spending many lives to avenge one, deemed it a State duty to avoid a sacri- fice which would produce a war, and so ceded part of Assam. That was weak, but the weakness was the result of the loss of the Imperial prestige not in Bootan, where it never existed, but among British officers, where it did exist. The treaty now under discussion does not give up any reality, on the contrary, the real objects are secured, but it shows that the Government is not prepared to exert its whole strength to secure its military prestige with its own soldiers. Consequently the army will either be compelled to avoid risks which may endanger its honour, or will become pro Canto less sensitive to that honour, as being at all events something for which an Empire will not incur expense. In either case indifference to prestige produces a serious loss of effective power, a loss not among natives, which is say x, but among those who control those natives, which is at least x3. A general belief among natives that the British Govern- ment was weak might produce an attack, but a similar general belief in the army would make that attack successful, a much more im- portant matter. The reflex action of prestige is in fact to its external action as the decay of courage in a man is to a belief in his cowardice among his friends. The latter can be set right, the former destroys the possibility of action on which the reparation depends.
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