THE FRENCH AND THE SIAMESE.
T"papers make too much of the final arrangements between France and Siam, which were published in London on Tuesday. The demands of the French are undoubtedly heavy, but they would not have been condemned if Siam had fought and been beaten, as Burmah did in 1852, when we annexed Pegu ; and we do not know that morally it is much worse to obtain territory by diplomatic pressure than to obtain it by employing the irresistible weapons of civilisation. The French are irritating because they boast so much, and enjoy insolence so greatly; but the seizure of the provinces east of the Mekong is a conquest like another, and with as good a pretext as most. The true question to be disputed is the right of Europe to conquer Indo-China, not the right of France to conquer a section of it, of no great significance, after all. Anam had it all once, a century ago ; and now Anam, being under French tutelage and direction, has regained it once more. In a way, the thin population will be better governed than they were before ; and we do not know that France is any the stronger for the annexation. She cannot go northwards, for, as Mr. Gundry has pointed out in his able book on " China and her Neigh- bours," China bars the path, she claiming one intermediate province, and the English claim another, which they can transfer to China, Nor can France go westwards a bit better than she could before ; the real obstacle being Great Britain, and not Siam at all. If this country is pre- pared to permit France to create an India of her own in Asia, it will be created ; and if not, not. It is true, M. le Myre de Vilers has so managed in his final negotiations as to give the French, should fortune favour them, a hundred pretexts for declaring a new war of conquest ; but then, if fortune favours them, they will declare it on invented pretexts or none at all, and are not really helped by fresh opportunities for bringing false complaints. The French mean to have Siam whenever the chance arrives ; and the questions to be settled are only two,—whether England will think it worth while to fight in defence of Siam, which will depend on many contingencies and the national mood at the time ; and whether by any chance the Siamese can be so strengthened as to defend themselves.
To answer the latter question, which is the practical one—for, as we have said, England will defend Siam or not, according to her position and policy at the time— would be to solve one of the most inexplicable problems in the history of the world. What makes the small Asiatic States so absurdly weak ? We all write as if the quarrel were between France and Siam,—that is, between a blood- hound and a fox-terrier, and under that impression, quite pity the smaller animal ; but that is all the while a mere figure of speech. Siam, of course, could not fight France if they were side by side, and could both of them use their full power ; but Siam is not near France, and is not asked to do anything of the kind. What is required of her is that she should defeat, and keep on defeating, the minute fraction of her resources which France can employ in in- vading a tropield region eight thousand miles away ; and that is not beyond Siamese strength. It is beyond her wisdom very likely, but it is not beyond her force ; and the reason why her reason does not direct her force aright, is the most perplexing of perplexities. Siam is quite rich enough to buy repeating-rifles, her people have quite intelligence enough to use them ; and her Court, with six months to prepare, could have at least fifty thousand decent rifle- men, brave enough to fight in rifle-pits and behind stockades. They can get any number of good Asiatic officers, if not Europeans ; they can make their rivers impassable ; and why can they not stop two or three thousand French and a few thousand Anamese ? They have nothing to do but follow General Gordon's advice to the Court of Pekin, take advantage of their numbers, and kill one for ten, avoid all pitched battles, defend every village, stream, and hillock, using the spade at every point to be defended, to wither any French army which could be collected to invade their terri- tory. The Anamese do not signifj, ; and if the Siamese shot only decently well, the white soldiers would be fewer by hundreds in every month of campaigning. No invader who has eight thousand miles of sea to cross, who cannot use his national Army, and who must win in decent time or give up the effort, could hope to succeed in a struggle of that sort, in which a whole people, though a small people, was matched against a minute army. We doubt if the British, with their comparatively great numbers of soldiers white and black, and their splendid base, could hold Burmah, if they were resisted in that way ; and most assuredly the French could not hold, or even successfully invade, Siam. The whole land is full of de- fensible points. Then why do the governing Siamese who want to be independent not try some scheme of that kind, some form of guerilla war directed to the killing-down of a minute force of invaders ? It is said they have not the intelligence ; but they have intelligence enough to man fleets, to mobilise and provide for small armies, to hit upon the exact points which are the true strategical points of the country to be defended. It is said they have not courage enough ; but they have conquered great provinces, they defeated the Anamese, and they are perpetually getting killed in little wars with the Laotians and the Shans. The men of the Delta may have lost their courage, though we see no evidence of it ; but one-third of the population is Chinese, and one-third Laotian or Shan. Nobody doubts that, if they had English officers, they would fight well enough ; and why cannot they dis- play the same courage without the help of foreigners ? Nobody is asking them for any superhuman heroism, only to throw up a breastwork of earth, fight as long as they can behind it, then run away and throw up another ten miles off. We confess to a great disbelief in the cowardice of Asiatic peoples outside Bengal, where a race, singularly defective in physique, is so quick-witted as scarcely to believe that anything is worth fighting for. The Asiatics die in heaps in their own intestine quarrels, rising against taxes, rising against rulers, rising against neighbouring villages ; and why cannot they die in the national quarrel which, by their own account, involves their pride, their religious independence, and their careers ? It is all moral corruption, say the missionaries ; but when were they virtuous, or why are the Siamese worse than the Afghans, the most dissolute even of Asiatic races, who die fighting shoulder to shoulder round their guns ? We are by no means sure that the real source of their weakness is not bewilderment, an imaginative conviction that they might as well fight superior beings as fight the white men, with their science and their discipline. The Abyssinians are among the bravest of mankind, and have repeatedly defeated even the Soudanese who "broke a British square;" but the Emperor Theodore, a soldier among soldiers, sank down in despair as the rockets fell at his feet. Neither Lord Napier nor any one else could have taken Magdala, if its garrison had fought as they had often fought in local wars ; yet it was taken almost without a blow. The Indo- Chinese fight desperately on the rivers of Tong nin, their suc- cess from time to time in killing French officers driving the French Colonial Office half-frantic ; but they will not fight, or at least do not fight, as nations. In the present instance the Siamese have not fought at all, but have given way to the pressure of their own imaginations and the idea that Bangkok could not be defended ; very likely it could not be, but it could be moved easily enough. Some day or other the bewildering charm which at- taches to the European in Asia, will be dispersed as it was after Alexander's death ; and the invaders will be honestly faced in the only fitting way,—the way which avoids pitched battles, and so renders science of compara- tively no effect. This has happened with the Chinese already, in part at least ; and the next war with China, even if it is a successful one, will have widely different effects. As to Siam, the Court of that country has still time, for the French are not going to send a corps (Farm& to Tonquin, nor will M. Lanessan get anything out of his new provinces, except new expenses and a few concessions with which to gratify financial supporters at home. If the Court of Bangkok, instead of wasting its resources in the purchase of scientific toys, will arm its people, and teach them to shoot and to run away, they may, when the next French demand comes, treat it with defiance, and keep up a war as endless as the one the Atchinese have waged against the Dutch. If they will not do that, their only course will be to declare themselves either English or Chinese ; but perhaps by that time the Parisians, who will this year have a heavy Colonial bill to pay, will have for- gotten their existence.
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