THE MARCH OF THE WHITE MAN.
AMONG the little-noticed but most important facts in the history of the world is the enormous recent increase in the number of white men in it. It is barely two centuries (1683) since those races, though even then the most energetic of mankind, formed but a small fraction in the total of humanity—probably 10 per cent. of the whole—and were by no means certain that they could defend themselves against the remainder. The stream of Asiatic conquest had not stopped, for the Turks were at the gates of Vienna ; an African fleet was dominant in the Mediterranean ; Asia knew nothing of the whites except in one or two tolerated settlements on the coast fringe of India ; Africa belonged exclusively to Africans ; and though the whites had mastered South America, where, read in the light of subsequent history, their con- quests were incredibly rapid, most part of North America still felt Indian wars to be terrible and even formidable events. Even a hundred years later the white people, though under the operation of the still unexplained law which at one time fosters and at another time restricts the growth of a people they were increasing slowly, were still only a hundred and fifty millions, or probably a seventh of the population of the globe. They had, indeed, annexed the two Americas and Northern Asia, thus quintupling the area of their estate upon the planet, and probably multiplying their fixed wealth by at least twentyfold—a country being always the largest item in the wealth of any race or nation—but they had only begun to settle in the Western Continent ; they had but commenced to conquer in Southern Asia ; they had visited, but not occupied, Australia ; and in Eastern Europe and Western Asia they were only slaves to an Asiatic horde. The century, how- ever, ending 1884, has been marked by an advance so rapid and so unbroken as to be scarcely credible, and to present one of the most startling facts in history. The white races in and out of Europe, under the influence of some still mysterious call upon their energies, have multiplied nearly threefold, and are to-day, as Mr. R. Giffen has shown in his recent address to the Statistical Society, 420 millions. As there is no evidence of any corresponding increase in the dark races, and as, indeed, such increase has been, outside India, nearlyimpossible, the white men are now, by the best calculations, one-third of the entire population of the world, instead of being, as they were only two centuries ago, a little more than 10 per cent. They have, moreover, if anything, increased in physical strength, and have so developed in brain, and consequent power of organisation, that it may be doubted if the whole remainder of mankind, even if all were reduced to equal weapons, could seriously injure the white third, which again, if it chose to act together and employ without pity the weapons its intelligence has enabled it to construct, could in a few years reduce the remainder of the world to an uninhabited desert. Except in the South Pacific, where, by one means or another, they kill out the darker men, the white races show no tendency of that kind—though we take it in the dawn of history they exterminated pretty freely, especially in India—but they do show a strong disposition to take possession of the whole earth, and govern it as they please. The Chinese are the only great race remaining which can be said to be truly independent and free from the predominating influence, more or less directly exercised, of the energetic white men, who pour in increasing streams over the remainder of the earth's surface. They, indeed, alone traverse the ocean. The Chinese keep a few ships ; and a few small vessels manned by dark sailors, mostly pirates or slavers, or pilgrim carriers, still hang about the coasts of Southern Asia or Eastern Africa ; but the fighting navies of the world, and its great transport ships, and its mercantile marine, are all alike white. No dark race could bom- bard a white harbour, or transport an army across a hundred miles of sea in the face of a prohibition from white men,—who now exclusively occupy Europe, except the corner on which Constantinople stands ; who occupy two-thirds of North America, and dominate over North and South America down to Patagonia ; who have taken possession of Australia and New Zealand, and most of the larger isles of the South Pacific ; who claim, if they do not possess, the whole of Northern Asia, from the Ural to the Yellow Sea, and who dominate the whole of India, Indo-China, and the Delta of the Nile. They have lately taken to conquering Africa, and are entering it at a hundred points at once ; seizing, almost silently, certainly without serious effort, huge slices like French Africa, South Africa, Madagascar, the vast Valley of the Niger, and the still more extensive region drained by the system of rivers called the Congo. Nor is there much reason to believe that the process will soon be checked, for the white men are urged forward by an irresistible spur over which they have no control. The-increase of the yellow race, which must once have been so incredibly fast, has stopped, and that of the dark races of India, which for a century has been amazing, is being checked by recurrent famines ; but that of the white peoples goes on so fast that the transport of a huge army every year across the Atlantic makes no impression on their numbers, and at their present rate of increase they will in 1984 be a thousand millions, or much more than half of then existing mankind. The Chinese have recently shown some resisting power ; the English have apparently—it may prove only apparently—halted, indecisive, in their march up the Valley of the Nile ; but the general movement sweeps ever forward, and within the century it seems more than pro- bable that every corner of the earth will be ruled by white men, and that the " audax Iapeti genus," as Horace perceived them to be, will be the only independent race within the planet, which their tireless enterprise will then have rendered quite visible and very small. Not even internal war arrests the rush, still less human volition. Because Germans and Frenchmen fought, France is in Tonquin, Tunis, and Mada- gascar ; and in spite of Mr. Gladstone, Englishmen are reaching the Zambesi, are encamped in Egypt, have gained foil footing in Borneo, are legally reigning on the Niger, and are looking with greedy eyes on all the remaining lands of the South Pacific. It is difficult to read such a record without feeling that the quarrels of old Europe, of which we make so much, are not rather petty affairs, or without doubting whether after all Prince Bismarck does very greatly affect the fortunes of the human race. The ultimate law-giver, who scatters the nations, and who has taken off the ban of sterility from the Aryan to inflict it on the Turanian, seems to be stronger than he.
The world is the heritage of the white man,—that is the first lesson of Mr. Giffen's figures ; but there is another, also, which Englishmen will do well to think over patiently, and, if they can, without hatred in their hearts. They have no right to anger with the visible will of God. If Mr. Giffen's figures are correct—and, subject to some arrest of existing law, they must be as correct as if they were merely unapplied calculations—there is but one race on earth with whom it behoves the Teuton in all his branches to keep friends. This supremacy of the white man will in the end—and, recollect, children may be born to-day who will see the end, and then be younger than Sir Moses Montefiore—be the joint supremacy of the Teuton and the Slay. In 1984, when the world con- tains a thousand millions of white faces, six hundred millions of these will be English and Germans, and three hundred millions will be Slay. There will prac- tically be no other white races, the French not increasing, the Spaniards increasing slowly—if, indeed, as in Mexico, they do not rather suffer absorption into a dark people ; the Scandi- navian having stopped absolutely ; and the Irishman, true to his destiny, helping only to swell the power of the race he professes to detest. If the Teuton and the Slav can keep friends, the world is theirs ; and if not, there.will be the most
terrible struggle recorded in history since the white barbarians fought the white Romans and their darker allies. We are not sure that an agreement is possible until a great fight has taken place, for Slav and Teuton seem unwilling to comprehend each other, though there is not between them the internecine hatred sometimes observed in history ; but if their statesmen could arrange terms on which the conflict could be per- manently avoided, a huge mass of misery might be saved to our immediate descendants. To avoid the quarrel will be difficult, for the Slav is just now strangled ; and to reach the open water, and so take his natural part in the greater move- ment of mankind, he must pitch himself on somebody, be it on Turkey, or England, or China ; but the means of avoidance are worth the study and patience of years. Mankind is not very likely to be happy when all is done, for in all this movement is no cure for sin, or pain, or poverty ; anxiety increases as fast as intelligence, and sympathy—which means suffering—faster than strength ; but one grand condition of even moderate well- being is that Slav and Teuton should learn how to live together in peace. If not, the Teuton may some day—in less than a century—find that every third white man is a foe, and that the third man has the power of ranging behind him the darker races of mankind. The Teuton has the art of dominance ; but the Slav has gained a strong hold wherever he has ruled, and can do at least one thing we cannot,—he can conquer the Turanian without rousing his unquenchable hate. Now, the Turanian is the only race not white which should in 1984 be strong.
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