THE TYRANNY OF ARRANGEMENTS.
LI HUNG CHANG found many strange and unexpected things in Europe, but we suspect that what seemed to him the strangest of all was what may be termed the tyranny of arrangements. Here was a force of which the Asiatic world knows very little. In the Far as in the Near East, men, or at any rate great men, do pretty much as they like—or at any rate they conduct their personal affairs with freedom from ex- ternal restraint. Of course no one not a Sultan or an Emperor is absolutely free to change his mind twice in ten minutes, or to do exactly what he likes at the moment. If Li has been sum- moned to the Palace, to the Palace he must go. Short, how- ever, of the commands of those who have a right to command, men in the East hold themselves free to do what they like at the moment,—the great man in almost everything, the small man in as many things as he can. How different from what happens here ! Here the greater a man is the less he is able to do exactly what he wants to do,—tbe more, that is, he is trammelled by a mysterious external force which overrides his will.
This external force is not the will of another man, or one of the forces of Nature, or mere blind fate. Instead, it is a purely human product, and men call it "arrange- ments." If any special personal desire conflicts with this great Juggernaut, it is the personal desire which is squeezed out of existence, not the arrangements. When once arrangements have been made nothing can stop them, as Li Hung Chang found to his amazement. One day he wished to put off a railway journey for a couple of hours, and prepared to carry out his intention. Immediately he found himself in conflict with the great force of our modern life. The arrangements already made forbade his changing his plans, and after a short, sharp struggle Li had to own himself beaten, and to give way. He found that though in China a Grand Secretary might suddenly change his mind in regard to arrangements, he could not do so in Europe. Possibly it was a consolation for him to find that he shared his thraldom to arrangements with all the Emperors and Kings of the West. Sovereigns are, indeed, peculiarly under the sway of arrangements. So complete, indeed, is their sub- mission to the tyranny that they often endure the greatest possible bodily suffering and inconvenience in carrying out its behests. It is said, for example, that the late Czar suffered greatly in health because of his inability to resist Palace arrangements which put too great a strain upon him. When once arrangements have been made for a Court festival they go on, crashing, it may be, over the bodies of men and women as go the guns over a battle-field. The King may feel so wretchedly ill or unhappy that the idea of a pageant is utterly loathsome to him, but if the arrangements have been made he must go through the ordeal. Nothing but absolute inability to put on his uniform will prevent him from keeping his appointment. Look what happened at Moscow last spring after two thousand people had been crushed to death in the fight at the booths. The Emperor and Empress were terribly shocked by the tragedy, and would most gladly have abandoned the rest of the fetes. They found themselves, however, utterly powerless to do so. The arrangements, they were told, had been made, and the moment the question was fairly faced it was evident that there was no possibility of escaping. The will of the autocrat was as nothing before the tyranny of arrangements. Something of the same kind is going on at this moment owing to the death of Prince Lobanof. The Czar would doubtless like to postpone his visits to Breslau and Paris till he had replaced his dead adviser and had proved the capacity of the new Foreign Minister. But no one dreams of his being able to postpone his tour. The arrangements have been made, and nothing but the gravest illness or death of the Czar or his wife could now stop their being carried out. This special subservience of Sovereigns to arrangements makes them, indeed, the least free of human beings. The complexity of their lives makes it necessary for them to arrange their doings weeks and months beforehand. But when once the arrange- ments have been made the Kings are caught in a spring. trap, and nothing can free them. If the officials of the Palace at Vienna or Berlin were to be consulted, and were to speak freely of their master's engagements, it would, we believe, be found that their days were already mapped out for a month or two ahead. A sudden call for three free days in the
middle of October would probably prove impossible to answer. Of course the European Monarchs manage to secure plenty of time for pleasure and sport, but these are only sand- wiched in, and are also mapped out beforehand. The King cannot say, 'I will shoot whenever I feel inclined.' Instead, he says, I will arrange to shoot on October 4th, 5th, and 6th, and these days must be kept free for that.' The King may, no doubt, get just as much pleasure out of his prearranged day's shooting, but the fact that be has to settle it all before- hand would seem to an Asiatic entirely to destroy the pleasure. What the Asiatic wants is the immediate and visible action of his supreme volition, and that, owing to the tyranny of arrange- ments, the King can never get. He cannot even, we are told, alter his dinner-hour backwards and forwards from day to day. A Palace is like a very strictly-kept hotel, and unless the King is willing to throw the whole machine out of gear, which no sane man is willing to do, he must dine at the hour appointed for his meals. It is all very well to say, "If I were a King 1 leo,ild put dinner back an hour or forward an hour just as pleased ; " but as a matter of fact, the arguments against upsetting the arrangements are irresistible. We will dine at eight to-day instead of nine,' says the young King, flushed with the sense of personal power. The Palace official does not, of course, say, 'Your Majesty will do nothing of the kind.' That is not necessary. He merely takes the order and retires. Very soon, however, he comes back, and says,
I fear, Sir, the change in the dinner-hour for to-night will require some little modifications, which I trust will not inconvenience your Majesty. I have had the twenty telegrams prepared for the various guests, though I fear Prince — will hardly be in time, as he only arrives from Pumpernickel by the 8 o'clock train. There is also a little difficulty about the deputation which you promised to see at 8 o'clock. If I put them at 7 o'clock, it will unfortunately make it necessary to put off the review,'—and so on and so on, till at last the King sees that he is caught in the toils of fate, and tells the official that after all he has changed his mind, and that 9 o'clock is to remain the hour for dinner to-night.
We have taken Royal people as our examples of the tyranny of arrangements, but in their small way the small people suffer nearly as much. If Mrs. Ponsonby de Tom king has arranged to have an "At home," she will have her party though she has to stand in a low dress at the head of a draughty staircase with a temperature of 104. Smith, again, eLuddenly finds that he ought to stop in town and attend to a very serious and perilous development in his business. It is ten to one, however, that if all the arrangements have been made for his annual holiday, he will take it and risk the consequences. The Whips, again, know something about the tyranny of arrangements. When once the Members have made arrangements to leave town, leave it they will. The Government to which they are sincerely attached may be liable to fall, but they care not, or rather they feel that obedience is required to a higher power. They are impelled by an irresistible force to carry out their arrangements, and carry them out they do in the face of every obstacle. Truly there is no such power in the world, and he would be no fool who should say, "Let who will make the laws of the land if I can make the arrange- ments."
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