ENGLAND AND RUSSIA AMONG DARK MEN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5739, 5 December 1896, Page 2

ENGLAND AND RUSSIA AMONG DARK MEN.

(Spectator.) There is one link — or shall we call it resemblance? — between the English and the Russians in their external action. Both can manage the dart races of mankind without the sense of exhausting effort, and both therefore tend towards a perpetual extension of their dominion over those races. • Whatever happens to either of them, and whatever professions they may make, both are perpetually receiving the submission of new tribes, and neither, when once the sixbmission has lasted a few years, are much troubled by insurrections. The curious amalgam of pity, contempt, physical dislike "and desire to see justice done which constitxxtxxtes British feeling towards all but white men, produces a line of conduct which, when once fairly understood, seems to incline the , dark masses of the world to acquiesce in British ascendency. They seldom or never like their rulers, whose coldly proud regard chills all enthusiasm for them, and they occasionally resent their industrial demands; but they greatly respect THE AUDACITY WHICH INSISTS ON THEIR SUBMISSION whatever the numerical odds may be ; they are aware that justice is intended if it is not always done; and they are seldom, almost never, so provoked as to feel that emancipation would be worth the terrible struggle through which alone it could be obtained. The war of the dark peoples against the British is never, therefore, a war to the death, and of passive resistance there is exceedingly little. The tnxth of this statement has been manifested throughout British history in India, native leaders, however successful, never succeeding in t rousing the real people, while province after province, often equal in area and population -to a great State, after trying the ordeal by battle once, or in the cases of Mysore and the Sikh, kingdom twice, has sunk back half -sullen, half - contented, but for all political and social purposes acquiescent. It has been shown in Egypt, whei'e, if " Europe " would leave things alone, we could govern the Valley of the Nile from Alexandria to Khartoum with five thousand white regulars, a small force of mobile artillery, and twenty thousand black troops, who woiild be just as trustworthy as the soldiers from Great Britain. So strong is this disposition among dark men that the greatest difficulty of the Khalifa arises from the fact that his subjects, as distinguished from his followers, hail the British invaders as deliverers, and that Sir Herbert Kitchener is actually able to enlist the black " Dervish " soldiery, and use them, almost without a pause for drill, against their former masters. They enlist as readily as Pathans have always done after being BEATEN BY THE WHITE INVADERS. A negro gentleman, whose experience in Africa has been of a, most extensive and exceptional kind,, tells us that everywhere in the east, west and centre he found among negroes, who to him talked confidentially, the same decision, that English rule was endurable, and that no other white rule was. It seems almost certain that, if Europe permitted, we could govern from Alexandria to the Lakes, and that, though our troubles might be various and great, insurrection, even local and sporadic insurrection, would speedily ceaso to bo one of them. It will be the same in South Africa as soon as the colonists fall back on the permanent and sound British principles, that the only temptation to work shall be wages, and the only coercion the pressure of natural hunger and taxation. At present the Colonists procure labour, especially for mines, by pressure on native chiefs; that is, in fact, they impress' labour by aid of the chiefs' authority at about half the rate which would brin volunteers. It is impossible to estimate the advantage which this readiness of black and brown peoples to obey them gives to the British people in their advance over the world. Not only does it act as a solvent to resistance, but it makes it easy for us to raise entire armies of auxiliaries; who are very nearly as good as our own troops, who are much less costly, who are up to a point as trustworthy as our own, and who if they rebel, as has happened once in our history on a great scale, do not draw with them the elements of a popular revolt. In THF, GREAT MUTINY OP 1557 it repeatedly happened that with troops in full and successful revolt tho peasantry ten miles off were paying their taxes and thronging the Courts as if nothing had occurred. If we would grant to the dark men even a decent chance of rising to a command, say even ,of cavalry only, so as to tempt their natural leaders to become soldiers, we might with ease form a colonial army of Indians, negroes, Soudanese and Zulus of two hundred thousand' men, the equal of any troops in the world, except, perhaps, a very few picked regiments of Pomeranians, Guardsmen, or Zouaves. We dread a little too keenly the spread of Russian dominion as an injury to those over whom it is extended. It is not an injury until they have reached the point when almost unlimited freedom is beneficial to them; it is not an injury, for example, in tho Khanates, where the natives used to punish truancy in slaves with blindness. ( And we do not quite see sufficiently the expediency of avoiding a contest wiJh Russia for the same area of dominion, and of arriving at some territorial understanding which, would allow us both to expand without interference. We are the two peoples of the future, and no doubt may ultimately be FORCED TO COME TO DEATHGBIPS; but meanwhile there is a vast amount of work which, if we .could only agree together, we could accomplish in comfort — for instance, we could turn Siberia into a Canada, could make of Thibet a comparatively civilised region, could turn Persia into a most profitable garden, and could rescue the Armenians, a people with a genius for the industrial life, once for all fron^^fiiJ^jißressQrs^Jioiie^ftliesscjoQd.

things will be accomplished by spitting at each other in newspapers and protocols, the only positive result of that offensive proceeding being that we are both compelled to suspend the doing of good wor* in order to stand on guavd.