BOOKS.
BRITISH IMPERIALISM THROUGH FRENCH SPECTACLES.*
FRENCH publicists have been much concerned during the past few years with the developments of Imperialism in Britain, and the volumes before us are the fruit of that anxiety. We have read them with keen interest, but the result has been to convince us, not only that foreign opinion is not identical with the verdict of posterity, as is sometimes confidently asserted, but that it is of very little real value as criticism, however useful it may be as a revelation of the temperament of the critic. In the nature of things, it is impossible that a foreign observer, however careful, however learned, should be alive to the subtle currents of national progress. He will always miss facts which are vital and enlarge on others which are irrelevant. He cannot get the true perspective, and see our national development as a whole in its proper historical setting. The danger is especially great in the case of a French writer. M. Boutmy has shown how admirable he can be in a study of the English Constitution, and bow trivial and wrongheaded in a study of the English people. For the Frendhman loves definitions, a logical scheme of things, a complete portrait, and he has also the instinct for romance, and likes to round off his tale to a dramatic conclusion. He starts with a preconceived picture, and facts have somehow to be fitted into it. It is all brilliant and interesting, but its relation to truth is of the slightest. M. Berard is a scholar of European reputation, who has won great fame by certain studies in the topography of the Odyssey. Had England of to-day been ancient Greece, then his study of her politics might have convinced many students, for in a sense his documents are good. But his work is academic in the true sense, since he studies his authorities and theorises from them without any first-hand knowledge of facts.' It is an instructive lesson in the difficulty of estimating the development of a country from the outside, and is calculated to inlpire despair' in those who are wont to dogmatise glibly on the doings of other nations than their own.
e (I) British imperialism and Commercial Supremacy. By Victor- BArard. Translated by H. W. Fosket.t, M.A. London : Longman and Co. [7s. &I. net..1 —(2) Essai d'une Psychologie de l'Angleterre Contemporaine : les Crises Beiltgueuses. Par Jacques Bardoux. Paris: Felix Akan. [7.fr. 50 (S) Union Britann%gue. Par Paul Ilondeau. Paris: Rousseau. fr.] M. Berard professes himself a Benthamite, a Radical of the old school, a follower of Mill and Grote and Bright, in whom he discerns an idealism akin to that of French progressives. With his main thesis we are heartily in sympathy. To imagine that a cast-iron Imperial organisation will benefit our commerce is, as he says, " pur enfantillage." He thinks that England is suffering a rapid decline, but that the true remedy is not to be found in any Protectionist nostrums, but in an increased vigour and the adoption of scientific methods. " It is not the world which has to be changed, but England ; to develop British trade the change must com- mence at the other end—in England." He maintains that Germany, whom he holds up throughout as an example, only attained prosperity when she gave up dreams of territorial aggrandisement, and turned to a serious self-development. We must reform our old slack business methods, our whole system of commercial education and organisation, before we can hope to compete with her. German "Rationalism " is the force of the future. "Britannia may still make a bold show; but humanity has lost confidence and turns away from this falling greatness. Amid cannon's roar and trumpet's blare, amid songs and toasts, the Germany of Kant, of Bismarck, and of Wagner, Rational Germany, mighty and creative, sits astride the twentieth century." Of course he overstates his case, but with the main doctrine we have no quarrel. It is the vital lesson which our people have yet to learn. It is when we leave the moral and turn to the data from which it is drawn that we find M. Berard so hopelessly at sea. The earlier chapters are occupied with the career of Mr. Chamberlain. It is a romantic portrait., done with all a French novelist's skill, with a lurid picture of Birmingham sketched in as a background. But it is all done in white lights and black shadows, and the result is even more fantastic than certain famous chapters of Taine. Birmingham is the fighting centre of the new crude, radical England, as against the old green, " merry " England of the East and South, and the sober, radical Lancashire. The prosperity of Birming- ham is gimcrack, that of Manchester solid, and everything is subordinated to this contrast. We have, for example, a picture of Liverpool as a decaying port, which an appendix by a well-known Liverpool resident shows to be. false in almost every detail. M. Berard is a stout Free-trader, but if his views were correct Mr. Chamberlain would have a useful supporter, for no one is so ready to insist upon the decline of exports as against imports as the sure sign of national decay. The moral, as we have said, is sound, but it is not due to any truth in the diagnosis, which is most consistently wrong. The author identifies Unionism with Chatnberlainism, and quotes as an instance of Mr. Chamber- lain's power the number of Unionists who were included in the 1895 Cabinet. He considers Mr. Kipling the greatest English creative artist since Shakespeare. He maintains that Imperialism is in essence a despairing attempt on the part of the .Midlands to aggrandise themselves. Mr. Chamberlain's orchids are full of sinister meaning, since when Holland became enamoured of tulips she lost her commerce. M. Berard attributes the Boer War to an elaborate scheme of Imperial consolidation which depended upon the federation of South Africa. The phrase " splendid isolation " means in his eyes a serious policy of courting the detestation of the human race. He does not seem to realise the causes which brought about the decay of coffee-planting in Ceylon, but attributes it to an insular dislike of that beverage and a preference for tea. "A good Englishman does not drink coffee. Why, then, continue the cultivation of coffee ? " Lord Rosebery's Imperialism is financial, and due to his connection by marriage with the Rothsohilds. The House of Lords want Imperial federa- tion for the following delicious reason. At present a nobleman • is only a nobleman in England ; in the Colonies he is a simple citizen. But with Empire a reality he would be a "nobleman 'both of the old and new worlds," and this would please his vanity. Birmingham, as a proof of her depravity, has, we are assured, most of her houses built of wood, "semi-Gothic in style." And, culminating sign of Jingo Insularism, England refuses the metric system ! Instances might be multiplied endlessly, but these will suffice. M. Berard is a charming writer, but of English politics, of the English temperament; of Imperialism, of the personnel of English government, his conception is wholly farcical. Still, L'Angleterre et l'Imperialisme was worth
translating, if only to show the pitfalls which await the cleverest of foreign critics. The English version, in our opinion, might have been better done, for it is full of mis- prints, and many of the phrases are awkwardly rendered.
We trust that English readers will take the deductions to heart, and extract reasonable amusement from the data.
M. Bardoux merits more serious attention, if only for his delightful French. Few publicists are capable of putting forth their conclusions in a style so eloquent, and yet so clear and urbane. He has the advantage, too, of the very consider- able knowledge of this country which is given by an Oxford education. His aim is to trace the origins of that national temperament which every now and again, on his theory, for- swears its creed and becomes bellicose and aggressive under the cloak of Imperialism. He is primarily the psychologist, looking to literature, philosophy, religion—all the influences which may mould a national life—in search of the explanation of what he regards as a pathological state. On the whole, his analysis is carefully and skilfully done. He makes many small mistakes of fact, and too often he treats as authoritative documents the works of very minor authors of very minor schools. But he is always inspired with a real sympathy, and, though the picture he draws of the national character is slightly theatrical, it is not without truth ;—
"Ce patriotisme," he says, "n'est pas celui d'une democratie pieusement attachee it un patrimoine intellectuel et k une doctrine politique. Le devouement 3 un ideal abstrait, 1 une ceuvre nationale n'est partage de rautre cote• du detroit que par une elite. La grande masse de la nation revels son sans national par un attachement passionne aux organs qui incarnent la force et rap- pellent les gloires de l'Angleterre, rarmee, la marine, le commerce ; aux hommes qui, dans le passe, out vain ii leur pays une gloire sans nuages et une victoire sans contestes."
But equally with M. Berard he misunderstands English
Imperialism. To him it is only an insane belief in some divine mission to annex the habitable globe. Dominated as he is by a hatred of war, he sees in it nothing but a provo- cative and hectoring creed. The chapter in which he discusses the origin of the Boer War and condemns the conduct of England is typical, both in its painstaking fairness and its radical misapprehensions, of his whole attitude. England has always " la nostalgie des batailles," and a • misconception of Darwinian doctrines has provided her with an apparent justification for her craving. The reassertion in late months by the English democracy of its power will, he thinks, do much to counteract this dangerous tendency ; but in this hope he forgets his earlier thesis that an industrial democracy, in England at any rate, is by no means necessarily pacific. His fault lies in his diagnosis. Like most of his countrymen, he is unable to see that the Empire which means so much to England is a new type of her own creation, and is not to be judged as if based on the same principles as that of Germany to-day or of ancient Rome.
M. Houdeau in his L'Union Britannique comes nearer the truth, because his work is primarily a lawyer's study of con-
stitutional development. He is too much inclined to identify the Empire with Mr. Chamberlain, and to generalise, after the fashion of M. Boutmy, on national character. But Ole comments of an outside critic on Constitutional forms are always valuable, and he has many shrewd and sound things to say of the Imperial Constitution. The Empire, he sees, is properly an alliance or partnership rather than a federation.
In a real sense its organisation is feudal, and we recommend the pages in which M. Houdeau elaborates the doctrine of the
suzerain and the autonomous feudatories whose powers are based on an original concession. He discusses with great acumen the various proposals for consolidation, and shows in detail the difficulties of any federation on the military or fiscal side unless the way has been prepared by some Consti- tutional union. He gives a modest blessing to the scheme of an Imperial Council, but warns Imperialists against any attempt to enforce artificially what must be a slow and organio development. " Le Temps ne consacre que les ceuvres ou it a eu sa part."
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