TOPICS OF THE DAY • THE POLICY OF PLAYING DOG
IN THE MANGER. THE English have many faults, being mortals, and mortals of the fighting kind, but we have always maintained that they are more exempt, in politics at all events, from envy and jealousy than any great people in the world. Apart from any good instincts they may have by nature, they have, as a rule, too good an opinion of themselves to be envious, and are too well aware that prosperous neighbours are safe neighbours, to be greatly inclined to jealousy. It is, therefore, with a sense of amazement as well as disgust that we read the remarks of some of our contemporaries, and hear of the murmurings in the City, and are told of angry talk in the Departments about the news of the week from China. We have lost nothing, we have suffered nothing, there is no probability that we shall lose anything or suffer anything ; but another State has gained a good deal, and therefore we are all in a fume, calling for war, screaming for vast " compensa- tions," ready to all appearance to throw our permanent policy to the winds and to embark on a new and incredibly vast adventure. The Russian Government, it is stated, has demanded from that of China a lease of Port Arthur and Talienwan, and the right of extending their Trans- asiatic Rtilway to those ports, and of guarding it with troops, through the Liau-tung Peninsula, as well as the remainder of Manchuria. Russia obtained those rights, it must be remembered, as far as Kirin many months ago. In the event of refusal, Russian troops, the Tsungli Yemen was informed, would at once take possession of Manchuria. The Pekin Government, bewildered by the insults poured upon it from the whole world, paralysed by its inability to raise troops who will fight, and, we cannot but suspect, honeycombed with corruption in its highest quarters, has, it is believed, given way, and the necessary treaty will be signed without delay, not indeed in Pekin, but in St. Petersburg. The meaning of the whole incident is, of course, that the Asiatic Department of the Russian Foreign Office, which acts independently of everybody but the Emperor, has satisfied itself as to the present impotence of China, fears that it may not last for many years, and with a prompti- tude creditable to its intelligence, if not to its character, has resolved to seize the whole of the magnificent province of Manchuria, including its dependent peninsula of Liau- tung. This seizure not only rounds off Siberia, giving that immense possession a coast-line of six hundred miles, most of it in a temperate climate, but it furnishes the Russian Government with the thing it has most of all desired,—a, great revenue-yielding province which can bear much of the expense involved in the government of all Siberia. Manchuria is already populated by twenty millions of the most industrious people in the world ; it is fertile to a marvel; and it contains, as Captain Young- husband tells us, all the profit - yielding minerals, including coal and iron, in vast quantities. A taxa- tion of only 5s. a head would yield £4,000,000 a year, and take the whole expense of Siberia off the shoulders of the central Treasury in St. Petersburg. When the process is complete, and it cannot be long delayed now that the ports and the railway route have been sur- rendered, Russia will have effected the most magnificent " grab " ever made in this world since Clive snatched from the powerless Emperor of Delhi the Soubahdaree of Bengal.
We have not the smallest intention of minimising the importance of the acquisition to Russia, or the loss it inflicts on China ; but in what way do that gain and that loss concern us ? We all knew that the moment Russia decided to build her railway across Northern Asia she also decided to take Manchuria, without which that vast undertaking would have, could have, no pro- fitable debouchure. We all knew when Japan was ordered out of Port Arthur that Russia had decided on that place as her best terminus and most defensible arsenal; and we all recognised when she asked for Talienwan that her rulers thought the time had arrived to make their policy obvious and secure. Then what are we making all this fuss for ? Because it is im- moral in Russia to seize Asiatic provinces ? We are the possessors of the whole Indian Continent. Because the House of Commons has just " resoluted " that the integrity of China must be respected ? The House of Commons passed that resolution unthinkingly, and without knowing, as regarded most Members, where Manchuria was. Because the Russians will close Man- churia to our trade ? Why should they close it any more than Riga, or Odessa, or any other centre of their commerce ? They want to make Manchuria pay, not to ruin it, and the only way to make it pay is to attract every ton of imports from which an import duty can be extracted. The Russians cannot shut us out without shutting the world out, and cannot shut the world out without stultifying themselves as to their second great object, which, we repeat, is to obtain a revenue that the steppes of Siberia until they are populated, which will take a century, cannot be made to yield.
The real truth is that we are jealous, so jealous that we are inclined to play the part of dog in the manger, and to forbid Russia having a province which we ourselves neither desire nor can seize. This is clearly proved by the alternative which is pressed upon the public attention. Russia having claimed Manchuria, we are to claim the valley of the Yangtse, a vast region stretching from the North Pacific to Burniah, and occupied by at least a hundred and twenty millions of industrious and contented people. Because it is immoral of Russia to seize Man- churia, we are to seize six times as much. Because Russia may shut up the trade of a province, we are to " open" the trade of ten provinces well knowing that all the cream of that trade will fall into our own hands. Because Russia is a grasping Power, we, who have " grasped" the rule of populations three times as numer- ous as that of Russia, are to grasp the rule of a hundred and twenty millions more. It is midsummer madness. We have no right whatever to make such acquisitions without governing them at least as well as we govern India, and that implies a great white garrison, which we have no means of raising, and the necessity of ultimately conquering Thibet, the vast and thinly populated plateau, thirteen thousand feet in the air, which hangs over and connects India and China. We say deliberately that the enterprise is beyond our strength, and that it would be better to let Russia conquer all China, and thence- forward to trade with the kingdoms of the Far East as Russian provinces, than to make so ruinous an addition to our already unwieldy domain. Englishmen never wake in the morning except to read a telegram calling upon them for some fresh exertion, and yet they are asked to undertake the government of entire countries, compared with which the government of India is an easy task. And we are asked to do this in such a way that in addition to governing scores of millions of the most difficult people in the world, a people with whom we have not even the tie of Aryan blood to help us in understanding them, we are to march frontiers for hundreds of miles with Russia, which on the theory intends to conquer Asia, and with France, with which we cannot compete even on a West African river with- out perpetual threats. The plain truth of the matter is that, to the grave misfortune of Europe, Asia and Africa have fallen in the same decade into tiro melting- pot, that all Europe is thirsting for a share in the treasure, and that if we do not want all Europe upon our necks we must let Europe take its share, without resist- ance and without grudge. If we are prepared to say that nobody shall have any, that, in fact, the black world and the brown world and the yellow world shall remain independent, well and good. That might be a lofty policy, if we gave up our own prizes, which as yet are beyond compare the biggest. But if we agree, as most of us do agree, that Asia and Africa need two hundred years of guidance and peace under European tutelage, then we must suffer Europe to do the preliminary work, and not be so madly jealous because it is not all left to us. We have quite as much to do as we can manage, and may at least abstain from taking up burdens, or, if you will, privileges, to which we have no antecedent claim. We have rights on the Niger, and must not therefore submit to be ordered out of them, but we have no rights of sovereignty on the Amoor or the Yangtse, and no reason except jealousy for taking them up. We are bound to do a great many things in this world—to protect Luxemburg, for example—but we are not bound to prevent China , from ceding territories which we cannot reach, and which the Power that claims them will govern infinitely better than China ever did. We are no friends of Russia, which in her wonderful energy and success protects the evil principle of autocracy ; but it is not our duty to risk our freedom in order to cripple a Power which, from the day it reaches the open water, it will be within our power to restrain.
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