Problems of the Pacific Part 7

In one British settlement, Papua, a part of New Guinea, the Australian Government is endeavouring to lead a Kanaka race along the path of modern progress. "Papua for the Papuans," is the keynote of the administration, and all kinds of devices are adopted to tempt the coloured man to industry. His Excellency, Colonel Murray, the Administrator of Papua, told me in London (where he was on leave) last year (1911) that he had some hopes that the cupidity of the Papuans would in time tempt them to some settled industry. They had a great liking for the White Man's adornments and tools, and, to gratify that liking, were showing some inclination for work. The effort is well meant, but probably vain. "Civilisation is impossible where the banana grows," declared an American philosopher: and the generalisation was sound. The banana tree provides food without tillage: and an organic law of this civilisation of ours is that man must be driven, by hunger and thirst and the desire for shelter, to plan, to organise, to make machines, to store.

Every nation in the Pacific has the same experience. In the Hawaiian Group, the American Power finds the native race helpless material for nation-making. The Hawaiian takes on a veneer of civilisation, but nothing can shake him from his habits of indolence. He adopts American clothes, lives in American houses, learns to eat pie and to enjoy ice-cream soda. He plays at the game of politics with voluble zeal. But he is still a Kanaka, and takes no real part in the progress of the flouris.h.i.+ng territory of Hawaii. Americans do the work of administration. Imported j.a.panese, Chinese, Portuguese and others, are the coolies and the traders. The Hawaiian talks, basks in the sun, adorns himself with wreaths of odorous flowers, and occasionally declaims with the pathetic bleat of an enraged sheep at "American tyranny."

When White civilisation came to the South Pacific, the various islands held several millions of coloured peoples, very many of them enjoying an idyllically happy system of existence. To-day, 50,000 Maoris, beginning to hold their own in the islands of New Zealand, represent the sole hope of all those peoples to have any voice at all in the Pacific.

Humanitarian effort may secure the survival for a time of other groups of islanders, but the ultimate prospects are not bright. Probably what is happening at Fiji, where the Fijian fades away in the face of a more strenuous coolie type imported from India, and at Hawaii, will happen everywhere in the South Pacific.

CHAPTER X

LATIN AMERICA

Latin America is the world's great example of race-mixture. Europeans and Indians have intermixed from Terra del Fuego to the northern boundary of Mexico, and the resultant race, with some differences due to climate, has general points of resemblance over all that vast territory.

There is prompting to speculation as to the reasons why in Spanish and Portuguese America race mixture was the rule, in Anglo-Saxon America the exception. It was not the superior kindness of the Latin people which paved the way to confidence and inter-marriage. No one can doubt that, badly stained as are the records of the Anglo-Saxons in America, the records of the Latins are far, far worse. Yet the Latin, between intervals of ma.s.sacre, prepared the nuptial couch, and a Latin-Indian race survives to-day whilst there is no Teutonic-Indian race.

Probably it is a superior sense of racial responsibility and racial superiority which has kept the Anglo-Saxon colonist from mingling his blood with that of the races he made subject to him. He shows a reproduction in a modern people of the old Hebraic spirit of elect nationality. In truth; there may be advanced some excuse for those fantastic theorists who write large volumes to prove that ten tribes were once lost from Israel and might have been found soon after in Britain. If there were no other circ.u.mstances on which to found the theory (which, I believe, has not the slightest historical basis), the translation of the Old Testament into the English language would amply serve. It is the one great successful translation of the world's literary history: it makes any other version of the Bible in a European language--including that pseudo-English one done at Douai--seem pallid and feeble; it rescues the Hebrew sentiment and the Hebrew poetry from out the mora.s.s of the dull Greek translation. And it does all this seemingly because the Elizabethan Englishman resembled in temperament, in outlook, in thought, the Chosen People of the time of David.

The Elizabethan Anglo-Saxon wandering out on the Empire trail treated with cruelty and contempt the Gentile races which he encountered. He has since learned to treat them with kindness and contempt. But he has never sunk the contempt, and the contempt saves him from any general practice of miscegenation. In ruling the blind heathen, more fussy peoples fail because they wish to set the heathen right: to induce the barbarian to become as they are. The Anglo-Saxon does not particularly wish to set the heathen right. He is right: that suffices. It is not possible for inferior races ever to be like him. It is wise, therefore, to let them wallow. So long as they give to him the proper reverence, he is satisfied. Thus the superb, imperturbable Anglo-Saxon holds aloof from inferior races: governs them coolly, on the whole justly; but never attempts to share their life. His plan is to enforce strictly from a subject people the one thing that he wants of them, and to leave the rest of their lives without interference. They may fill the interval with hoodoo rites, caste divisions or Mumbo-Jumbo wors.h.i.+p, as they please. So long as such diversions have no seditious tendencies they are viewed, if not with approval, at least with tolerance. Indeed, if that be suitable to his purpose, the Anglo-Saxon governor of the heathen will subsidise the Dark Races' High Priest of Mumbo-Jumbo. Thus a favourite British remedy for the sorcerer, who is the great evil of the South Sea Islands, is not a crusade against sorcery, which would be very troublesome and rather useless, but to purchase over the chief sorcerers--who come very cheap when translated into English currency--and make them do their incantations on behalf of orderly government (insisting, by the way, on more faithful service than Balaam gave).

It is his race arrogance, equally with his robust common-sense, that makes the Anglo-Saxon the ideal coloniser and governor of Coloured Races: and there is no room for miscegenation in an ideal system.

America, considered in its two sections, Latin America and Anglo-Saxon America, gives a good opportunity for comparison of colonising methods.

To-day North of the 30th parallel the Republic of the United States shows as the greatest White nation of the world, greatest in population and material prosperity; and the young nation of Canada enters buoyantly upon the path of a big career. South of that parallel there are great populations, but they are poor in resources, and as a rule poorly governed, poorly educated. Some of the Latin-American races show promise--Chili and the Argentine Republic most of all,--yet none is comparable or ever likely to be comparable with the Republic of North America.

Yet before Columbus sailed from Europe the position was exactly reversed. North of the 30th parallel of northern lat.i.tude there was but a vagabond beginning of civilisation. South of that parallel two fine nations had built up polities comparable in many respects with those of the European peoples of to-day. What Peru and Mexico would have become under conditions of Anglo-Saxon conquest, it is, of course, impossible to say. But there is an obvious conclusion to be drawn from the fact that the Anglo-Saxon colonists found a wilderness and built up two great nations: the Latin colonists found two highly organised civilisations, and left a wilderness from which there now emerges a hope, faint and not yet certain, of a Latin-American Power.

The story of Peru is one of the great tragedies of history. The Peruvian Empire at the time of the Spanish invasion stretched along the Pacific Ocean over the territory which now comprises Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chili. Natural conditions along that coastal belt had been favourable to the growth of civilisation. A strip of land about twenty leagues wide runs along the coast, hemmed in by the Andes on one side, by the sea on the other. This strip of coast land is fed by a few scanty streams.

Above, the steppes of the Sierra, of granite and porphyry, have their heights wrapped in eternal snows. Here was the call for work, which is the main essential of civilisation. The Peruvians constructed a system of ca.n.a.ls and subterranean aqueducts, wrought with extraordinary skill by instruments and tools made of stone and copper (though iron was plentiful its use had not been learned). Thus they cultivated the waste places. In some respects their life conditions were similar to those of the Egyptians. Their agriculture was highly advanced and comprehensive.

Their religion was sun-wors.h.i.+p, and on it was based a highly organised theocracy. Tradition said that a son and daughter of the Sun, who were also man and wife, were sent by their father to teach the secrets of life to the Peruvians. These divinities were the first Incas.

The civil and military systems of the Peruvians were admirable in theory, though doomed to break down utterly under the savage test of the Spanish invasion. The Empire was divided into four parts; into each ran one of the great roads which diverged from Cuzco ("the navel"), the capital. The provinces were ruled by viceroys, a.s.sisted by councils; all magistrates and governors were selected from the n.o.bility. By law, the Peruvian was forced to marry at a certain age. Sufficient land was allotted him to maintain himself and his wife, and an additional grant was made for each child. There was a yearly adjustment and renewal of land grants. Conditions of theocratic and despotic socialism marked most departments of civil life. In what may be called "foreign politics" the Incas pursued conquest by a Florentine policy of negotiation and intrigue. In dealing with neighbouring foes they acted so that when they at last came into the Peruvian Empire, they should have uncrippled resources and amicable sentiments. The Spaniards have described the Peruvians as "lazy, luxurious and sensual." It would have been equally correct to have said that they were contented, refined and amiable.

Their very virtues made it impossible for them to defend themselves against the Spaniards.

The Spanish adventurers who were destined to destroy the elegant and happy civilisation of the Peruvians--a civilisation which had solved the problem of poverty, and gave to every citizen a comfortable existence--were children of Spain at her highest pitch of power and pride. Gold and his G.o.d were the two objects of wors.h.i.+p of the Spaniard of that day, and his greed did no more to sully his wild courage with cruelty than his religion, which had been given a fierce and gloomy bent towards persecution by the struggles with the Moors.

In 1511 Vasco Nunez da Balboa was told in Mexico of a fabulously rich land where "gold was as cheap as iron." Balboa in the search for it achieved the fine feat of crossing from Central America the mountain rampart of the isthmus. Reaching the Pacific, he rushed into its waters crying, "I claim this unknown sea with all it contains for the King of Castile, and I will make good this claim against all who dare to gainsay it." There Balboa got clearer news of Peru, and pushed on to within about twenty leagues of the Gulf of St Michael. But the achievement of Peru was reserved for another man. In 1524 Francisco Pizarro set out upon the conquest of Peru. Pizarro had all the motives for wild adventure. An illegitimate child--his father a colonel of infantry, his mother of humble condition,--he had reached middle age without winning a fortune, yet without abating his ambition. He was ready for any desperate enterprise. After two unsuccessful attempts to reach Peru, the Spanish freebooter finally succeeded, leading a tiny force across the Andes to Caxamalco, where he encountered the Inca, who received the strangers peaceably. But no kindness could stave off the l.u.s.t for gold and slaughter of the Spaniards. Because the Inca refused at a moment's notice to accept the Christian G.o.d, as explained to him by a Spanish friar, a holy war was declared against the Peruvians. The wretched people understood as little the treachery and the resolute cruelty of the Spaniards as their gunpowder and their horses. Paralysed by their virtues, they fell easy victims, as sheep to wolves.

A career of rapine and bloodshed led to the complete occupation of the country by the Spaniards, and the va.s.salage of the natives. Civil war amongst the conquerors, into which the natives were w.i.l.l.y-nilly dragged, aggravated the horrors of this murder of a nation. The Spaniards looted and tortured the men, violated the women, and were so merciless as to carry on their war even against the natural resources of the country.

They used to kill the llama or native sheep for the sake of its brains, which were considered a delicacy. Yet Pizarro, in his instructions from Spain, which secured to him the right of conquest and discovery in Peru, and various t.i.tles and privileges, was expressly enjoined "to observe all regulations for the good government and protection of the natives."

The fact that the Spaniards condescended to racial mixture with the Indians did nothing to heal the scars of such suffering. The half-breeds grew up with a hatred of Spain, and they had borrowed from their fathers some of their savagery. The mild Peruvian would have bred victims for generation after generation. The Spanish-Peruvian cross bred avengers.

Early in the nineteenth century Spain was driven out of South America and a series of Latin-American Republics inst.i.tuted.

In 1815 the Napoleonic wars having ended with the caging of the great soldier, Spain proposed to the Holy Alliance of European monarchs a joint European effort to restore her dominion over the revolted colonies in South America. But Napoleon had done his work too well to allow of any alliance, however "holy," to rea.s.sert the divine right of kings.

Whilst he had been overthrowing the thrones of Europe, both in North and South America free nations had won recognition with the blood of their people. The United States, still nationally an infant, but st.u.r.dy withal, promulgated the Monroe doctrine as a veto on any European war of revenge against the South American Republics. Great Britain was more sympathetic to America than to the Holy Alliance. The momentarily re-established Kings and Emperors of Europe had therefore to hold their hand. It was a significant year, creating at once a free Latin America and a tradition that Latin America should look to Anglo-Saxon America for protection.

Pa.s.sing north of the Isthmus of Panama, there come up for consideration another group of Latin-American States of which the racial history resembles closely that of South America. The little cl.u.s.ter of Central American States can hardly be taken seriously. Their ultimate fate will probably be that of Cuba--nominal independence under the close surveillance of the United States. But, farther north, Mexico claims more serious attention. Some time before Peru had received the blessings of civilisation from Pizarro, Mexico had reluctantly yielded her independence to Cortez, a Spanish leader whose task was much more severe than that of Pizarro. Whilst the mild Peruvians gave up without a struggle, the fierce Mexicans contested the issue with stubbornness and with a courage which was enterprising enough to allow them to seize the firearms of dead Spanish soldiers and use them against the invaders.

The original Aztec civilisation was warlike and Spartan. Extreme severity marked the penal codes. Intemperance, the consuming canker of Indian races, was severely penalised. There were several cla.s.ses of slaves, the most unhappy being prisoners of war, who were often used as sacrificial victims to the G.o.ds. Sacrificed human beings were eaten at banquets attended by both s.e.xes. The Aztecs were constantly at war with their neighbours, and needed no better pretext for a campaign than the need to capture sacrifices for their G.o.ds.

Grijalba was the first Spaniard to set foot on Mexico. He held a conference with an Aztec chief, and interchanged toys and trinkets for a rich treasure of jewels and gold. Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, was sent to Mexico by Velasquez, conqueror of Cuba. He landed in Mexico with the avowed object of Christianising the natives, and considered himself a Soldier of the Cross. Like a good Crusader, he was ready to argue with the sword when words failed to convince. For some while he engaged in amicable relations with the Mexicans, exchanging worthless trifles for Mexican gold. But eventually various small wars led up to a three months' siege of the Aztec capital, which fell after a display of grand courage on the part of the Mexicans. Their civilisation, when at a point of high development, was then blotted out for ever.

It was in 1521 that the Spaniards first landed in Mexico. Their rule extended over three centuries. In 1813 Mexico first declared her independence, and in 1821 achieved the separation from Spain. The war of liberation had been fierce and sanguinary. It was succeeded by civil wars which threatened to tear to pieces the new nation. In 1822 an Empire was attempted. It ended with the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Emperor, Augustin de Yturbidi. A series of military dictators.h.i.+ps followed, until in 1857 a Republican const.i.tution was promulgated. Because this const.i.tution was strongly anti-clerical, it led to another series of wars.

Meanwhile greedy eyes were fixed upon the rich territories thus ravaged by civil strife. The United States to the north coveted the coastal provinces of California. Napoleon III. of France conceived the idea of reviving French influence on the American continent, and in 1864 helped to set up the second Empire of Mexico with the unhappy Maximilian at its head. Maximilian left Europe in the spring of 1864. After three years of civil war he was shot by the revolutionary commander. His rule had not commended itself to the Mexicans and was viewed with suspicion by the United States, which saw in it an attempt to revive European continental influences.

Then anarchy reigned for many years, until in 1876 the strong hands of Diaz, one of the great men of the century, took control. He did for the Mexican revolutionaries what Napoleon had done for the French Terrorists. But it was different material that he had to work upon. The Mexicans, their Aztec blood not much improved by an admixture of European, gave reluctant obedience to Diaz, and he was never able to lead them towards either a peaceful and stable democracy or a really progressive despotism. For more than a quarter of a century, however, he held power, nominally as the elected head of a Republic, really as the despotic centre of a tiny oligarchy. The country he ruled over, however, was not the old Spanish Mexico. There had been a steady process of absorption of territory by her powerful northern neighbour. Over 1,000,000 square miles, included in the rich Californian and Texas districts, had pa.s.sed over by right of conquest or forced sale to the United States. The present area of Mexico is 767,000 square miles. So more than half of this portion of Spanish America has pa.s.sed over to the Stars and Stripes.

The fall of Diaz in 1911 seemed to presage the acquirement by the United States of the rest of Mexico. There had been for some months rumours of an alliance between Mexico and j.a.pan, which would have had an obviously unfriendly purpose towards the United States. The rumours were steadily denied. But many believed that they had some foundation, and that the mobilisation of United States troops on the Mexican frontier was not solely due to the desire to keep the frontier line secure from invasions by the Mexican revolutionaries. Whatever the real position, the tension relaxed when the abdication of Diaz allayed for a while the revolutionary disorders in Mexico. Now (1912) disorder again riots through Mexico, and again the authorities of the United States are anxiously considering whether intervention is not necessary.[5]

I am strongly of the opinion that by the time the Panama Ca.n.a.l has been opened for world s.h.i.+pping, the United States will have found some form of supervision over all Latin North America necessary: and that her diplomacy is now shaping also for the inclusion of Latin South America in an American Imperial system by adding to the present measure of diplomatic suzerainty which the Monroe doctrine represents a preferential tariff system. Before discussing that point, the actual strength of Latin America should be summarised. To-day the chief nations of Latin America--all of Spanish-Indian or of Portuguese-Indian origin--are:--

The Republic of Argentina, area 3,954,911 square miles; population, 6,489,000 (increasing largely by immigration from all parts of Europe); revenue, about 20,000,000 a year.

The Republic of Bolivia, area 605,400 square miles; population 2,049,000; revenue, about 1,300,000 a year.

The Republic of Brazil, area 3,218,991 square miles; population 21,461,000 (there is a great European immigration); revenue, about 18,000,000 a year.

The Republic of Chili, area 2474 square miles; population about 4,500,000; revenue about 1,400,000 a year.

The Republic of Ecuador, area 116,000 square miles; population about 1,400,000; revenue about 1,400,000.

The Republic of Uruguay, area 72,210 square miles; population 1,042,668; revenue about 5,000,000.

The Republic of Venezuela, area 393,870 square miles; revenue about 2,000,000.

The Republic of Paraguay, area 98,000 square miles; population about 650,000.

The Republic of Mexico, area 767,000 square miles; population about 14,000,000.

The total of populations is between 50,000,000 and 60,000,000.

These peoples have the possibility--but as yet only the possibility--of organising appreciable naval power, and are possessed now of a military power, not altogether contemptible, and equal to the task at most points of holding the land against a European or Asiatic invader, if that invader had to face the United States' naval power also. Presuming their peaceable acceptance of a plan to embrace them in the ambit of an American Imperial system--a system which would still leave them with their local liberties,--there is no doubt at all that they could add enormously to the strength of the United States. Presuming, on the other hand, a determined plan on their part to form among themselves a grand Federal League, and to aim at a Latin-American Empire, they might make some counterbalance to the power of the United States on the American continent and in the Pacific.

Neither contingency seems immediately likely. These Latin-American peoples have not yet shown any genius for self-government. They produce revolutionary heroes, but not statesmen. Among themselves they quarrel bitterly, and a Latin-American Confederation does not seem to be possible. On the other hand, Latin America is jealous of the United States: resents, whilst it accepts the benefits of, the Monroe doctrine, and would take as a danger signal any action hostile to the Mexican Republic which the Anglo-Celtic Republic should be forced to take. Any attempt on the part of the United States to "force the pace" in regard to Latin America would saddle her with half a dozen annoying wars.

What seems to be the aim of United States diplomacy, and what seems to be an attainable aim, is that very gradually the countries of South America will be brought closer to the northern Republic, coaxed by a system of reciprocity in trade which would offer them advantageous terms. Commercial union would thus pave the way to a closer political union. Such a development would be a very serious detriment to British trade interests, and to the British position in the Pacific. British export trade with Latin America is very considerable, amounting to some 60,000,000 worth a year. The two greatest contributors to the total are Brazil (16,426,000 in 1910) and the Argentine Republic (19,097,000 in 1910). Their communications with Great Britain will be left unchanged with the opening of the Panama Ca.n.a.l: and that event consequently will not strengthen American influence there. The same remark applies to trade with Mexico (2,399,000 in 1910), with Columbia (1,196,000), with Uruguay (2,940,000). But trade with Peru (1,315,000) and Chili (5,479,000) will be affected by the ca.n.a.l bringing New York compet.i.tion nearer.

There would, however, be a very serious position created for British trading interests if a proposal were carried out of an American preferential tariff system embracing the United States and Latin America. The total of British trade with Latin America (about 60,000,000) is nearly one-third of the total of British foreign trade (183,986,000 in 1910), and is more than half the total British trade with British possessions. Moreover, it is almost exclusively in lines in which United States compet.i.tion is already keenly felt. A tariff preference of any extent to the United States would drive British goods, to a large degree, out of the Latin-American market.

The position of Latin America in its effect on the dominance of the Pacific may be summed up as this: racial instability will probably prevent the Latin-American nations from federating and forming a great Power; the veto of the United States will prevent them from falling into the sphere of influence of any European Power; their jealousy and distrust of the United States, whether it be without or with reason, will stand in the way of their speedy absorption in an American Imperial system. But that absorption seems ultimately inevitable (though its form will leave their local independence intact). Its first step has been taken with the Monroe declaration; its second step is now being prepared with proposals for trade reciprocity.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] A dispatch from Was.h.i.+ngton, February 7, 1912, stated:

President Taft and Secretary Knox held a long conference this morning on the state of affairs in Mexico, which, it is believed, are worse than is officially admitted. Reluctant as the President is to take any steps that might compel intervention or the military occupation of Mexico, he is forced to view both as ultimate possibilities, and to make preparations accordingly. Thus the Army on the border is being strengthened, although thus far no important military movements have taken place, but the plans are complete for mobilisation.