Studies in Literature and History
purpose it would be necessary, and would be practicable, to establish
strong posts among the turbulent highlanders, to make roads, and
probably to insist on a general disarmament, as the Russians did in
the Caucasus. But the British Government has always been reluctant to
undertake so arduous and so costly a task; though until some measure
of that kind is found possible, the intestine strife and chronic
disorder must continue; and in fact it is the natural and inevitable
solution of the problem.
'No doubt,' Dr. Pennell observes, 'the Government desires not to
make any further annexation of this barren, mountainous, and
uninviting region, but it is not always easy to avoid doing so; and
it is an universal experience of history that when there are a
number of disorganised and ill-governed units on the borders of a
great power, they become inevitably, though it may be gradually and
piece by piece, absorbed into the latter.'
In short, to manage a country without occupying it is no less
impossible than to steer a boat without taking a seat in it. The
process of subordinating the Afghan tribes to effective control will
probably go forward slowly and at intervals. It may be that when one
part of the country is taken resolutely into hand, the rest will be
overawed and quieted; but we doubt whether any other remedy can be
found for the feuds and forays that from time immemorial have
distracted this borderland, which has preserved the primitive
conditions of life and habits that have long disappeared from the
frontiers of all other civilised nations. Yet the objections to
pushing forward our landmarks into these mountains are great and
manifest, while the disadvantages of the present system are equally
patent. The attempt to protect our subjects by a line of outposts, to
adopt the tactics of stationary defence, varied by occasional sallies
forth from our cantonments to pursue assassins or to punish
depredators by destroying houses and crops, is to assume a somewhat
impotent and undignified attitude, hardly creditable in the case of a
mighty empire worried by mere highland caterans. The Indian
Government, therefore, finds itself placed in a dilemma: to advance or
to stand still is equally difficult; nor is any practicable issue out
of this situation to be foreseen.
We are compelled, unwillingly, to pass over without the notice that it
undoubtedly deserves Dr. Pennell's very impressive accounts of his
intercourse, as medical missionary, with the strange folk whom he was
trying to reclaim from savagery, of the risks which he faced with cool
courage and self-command in his travels among them, and of his quaint
theological disputations with arrogant Mullahs, whose invincible
ignorance easily convinced a congenial audience of their argumentative
superiority. His skill in surgery naturally invested him with a high
reputation among people who were incessantly fighting--he had more
success in healing their wounds than in curing their vices. His
general 'Deductions' in regard to the present state and prospect of
Christian missions in India are well worth attention, and with his
survey of the existing conditions and tendencies of religious
movements in India all who have studied the subject will generally
agree. He lays stress on the delusion that to assault and overthrow
the citadels of Islam and Hinduism, if such an achievement were
possible, would be to lay open a clear field for the success of
Christianity. 'Much more probably we should find an atheistic and
materialistic India, in which Mammon, Wealth, Industrial Success, and
Worldliness had become new gods.' Such attacks upon Eastern religion
'may for the moment win a Pyrrhic victory ... but they are at the same
time undermining the religious spirit, the ardent faith, the
unquestioning devotion which have been the crown and glory of India
for ages.' The wisdom and enlightened morality of these warnings are
incontestable. But at such questions we can only glance, although from
one point of view they may be said to have an important bearing upon
the main subject of this article.
In conclusion, we may observe that the frontiers of European dominion
in Asia are the battleground upon which the forces of archaic and
modern societies meet in arms for decisive conflict. In the ancient
world the contest was only ethnical and political; the rude tribes
were coerced into amalgamation with an expanding State, far superior
in power and usually more humane. 'The nations of the empire[40]
insensibly melted away into the Roman name and people.' But the
antique polytheism had no fanatical element; the deities of the
victorious Romans were often acknowledged and accepted by the
conquered population. Whereas in these latter days the Russians in the
Caucasus and the English on the Afghan border have discovered that in
the passionate religious animosity between Islam and Christendom lies
the mainspring of the stubborn energy and fierce hatred that so long
held their armies in check, and that still prevents the establishment
of even a pacific _modus vivendi_ on the most important frontier of
India.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] (1) _The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus._ By John F. Baddeley.
London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1908. (2) _Among the Wild Tribes of
the Afghan Frontier._ By J. L. Pennell, M.D., F.R.C.S. London, Seeley
and Co., 1909.--_Edinburgh Review_, July 1909.
[39] _Border Raids and Reivers_, by Robert Borland, Minister of Yarrow
(1898). This valuable work, founded entirely on the study of original
documents, may be heartily commended to all who are interested in the
political and social life, the customs and traditions, of the old
Border.
[40] Gibbon.
L'EMPIRE LIBERAL[41]
The fourteenth volume of _L'Empire Liberal_, issued in 1909, carries
M. Emile Ollivier's very interesting reminiscences of that eventful
period up to the outbreak of the Franco-German War in July 1870. It
contains many curious particulars of the incidents and transactions
culminating in the rupture with Prussia that brought about the
downfall of his ministry and the ruin of the Second Empire.
Autobiographies by men who have taken a prominent part in the
momentous scenes which they describe have often the powerful effect of
a dramatic representation: the actors reappear on the stage; they
plead for themselves; they give vivid impressions of the scenes; they
repeat the very words that were spoken; they revive the intense
emotion of the audience during the contest between those who are
hurrying on toward some fatal catastrophe and those who are striving
to prevent it. M. Ollivier's volume is the story of a great historic
tragedy; the principal _dramatis personae_ are celebrities of the first
rank; on their speech and action depend the destinies of France, and
the spectators are the nations of Europe. If we make due allowance for
the fact that the author's main object is to explain and defend the
part which he himself played in these important affairs, we may credit
him with an honest desire to set a strange, complicated, and oft-told
story in a clear light before the present generation.
M. Ollivier cites, in the first page of this volume, Machiavelli's
observation that mankind at large judges those who give advice in
affairs of state not by the wisdom of their counsels but by the
results. He agrees that this method is not rational, looking to the
haphazard course of human affairs, but he admits that the multitude
can judge by no other standard; and he appeals to historians for an
impartial revision of the popular verdict, founded on careful
examination of the real facts and circumstances. Yet he fears lest in
his own country the decline of patriotic enthusiasm, the cooling of
military ardour, that he notices in France at the present time, may
have rendered Frenchmen incapable of realising the hot resentment, the
intense susceptibility to affronts, the element of heroism, which were
dominant forty years ago in the national character. And he therefore
has little or no expectation that the falsehood of legends which have
been circulated regarding the events of 1870 will be proved, to his
countrymen, even by the most irrefragable demonstration. All political
parties in France, he says, have combined to hold their own ministry
responsible for that calamitous war; he despairs of obtaining from
them a hearing. He awaits with resignation the time when some
inquisitive student of history may light upon a dusty copy of his book
in the recesses of a library, and may set himself to explain how these
things actually happened to readers of the future.
The story of the decline and fall of the second French empire has
often been told; yet it may be worth while to remind English readers
of the political situation in France just forty years ago. The Emperor
Napoleon III., importuned by reformers and reactionaries, by those who
pressed him to step forward into Liberalism, and by those who insisted
that he must stand still, had at last decided upon making those
changes in the form of his government that inaugurated the Liberal
Empire; and on January 3, 1870, the new ministry took office,
supported by the goodwill of the moderate party in the Chamber of
Deputies and by the general approval of the country. M. Ollivier was
recognised as its leader and spokesman, chosen by the emperor, and
enjoying his particular confidence; though he was not prime minister
in the English constitutional sense, for the power of issuing direct
orders, and of overruling the Cabinet, was still reserved to the
sovereign; nor was he always consulted in important military or
foreign affairs. The complex and enigmatic character of Napoleon III.
is becoming gradually intelligible to the world at large, and public
opinion has lately been veering round to a less unfavourable
conclusion upon it than heretofore. He had long been reviled as a
truculent despot, artful and dangerous, powerful and perfidious; the
genius of Victor Hugo had set on him a brand of infamy. In reality, if
we may trust later French writers, there was much that was good in his
nature, and they are disposed to regard him with compassion. M. de la
Gorce says that throughout his life Napoleon had been a humane prince.
From the entertaining memoirs of General du Barail, whose military
services brought him into frequent relations with the emperor, we
should draw the impression that the emperor was affable, considerate,
and sincerely well-intentioned. Giuseppe Pasolini, the Italian
statesman, found him simple and easy in conversation, naturally
right-minded and kindly,[42] though weak and irresolute. He was
equally capable of forming bold projects or adopting cautious
decisions; but he was apt to hesitate and turn round at the moment for
action; and it was just here that he was so unlike his uncle, Napoleon
I., who would have classed him among the _ideologues_ whom he
despised. He invented the theory of nationalities to justify his
polity of encouraging the unification of Italy, and of permitting the
aggrandisement of Germany; in the former instance he alienated the
Italians by refusing obstinately to allow them to occupy Rome; in the
latter case his neutrality when Prussia attacked Austria in 1866 was
the proximate cause of his ruin. He might have read in Machiavelli's
_Principe_ a warning of the danger of standing aside when the
neighbouring potentates come to blows. The result, it is there said,
is that the winner in such a contest becomes doubly formidable, while
the loser resents your neutral attitude, and will not help you when
the victor turns upon you with all his strength. Machiavelli declares
that this policy has always been _perniciosissimo_; and so it proved