TOPICS OF THE DAY.
TEE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION AND THE WAR.
IN the monthly diary which he contributes to the December Nineteenth Century Sir Wemyss Reid makes some observations in regard to American opinion on the war which have caused a good deal of comment. Sir Wemyss Reid had just returned from Washington, where he found an the whole great friendliness to England. But the friendliness was tinged by anxiety, and he tells us that one of the leading members of Mr. Roosevelt's Cabinet, a statesman marked by his feeling of goodwill towards one of the leading members of Mr. Roosevelt's Cabinet, a statesman marked by his feeling of goodwill towards this country, warned him of the dangers to which we are exposed. " I do not think," he is reported to have said, "that you in England realise the depth of the feeling that exists outside your own country on the subject of the war, or the extreme gravity of the situation which that feeling has brought into existence. I am not speaking now of American feeling, which is largely on your side; but the more friendly we are to England the more anxious we are to see you extricated from the meshes of the net in which you are now caught. It is terrible to think of the pitiful- ness of the whole thing, and of the loss which has been suffered by universal humanity, owing to the effacement of England during the past two years, and the consequent absence of her influence on the side of justice and pro- gress." The statesman in question went on to speak of the • "almost daily appeals" that were being made to the United - States Government by the representatives of European Powers to take some step for ending the war. "Of course we can do nothing. We are powerless ; every- body is powerless. It is your own country alone that can solve the problem. The European Powers know that, and when their Ministers make representations to us here, they always declare tha,t they are speaking unofficially, though we know quite well that their Governments are backing them." Does England, he continued, realise all the gravity of the situation, and the extent of the danger in which this state of foreign feeling involves her? " Does she not see how others are gaining by her absorption in South Africa ? Would Russia have ever dared to act as she has done in China during the last two years, if she had not blown how full your hands were elsewhere ? And now yOu have the Near Eastern question being opened up, whilst you are practically powerless to take any part in its solution." Not only from this statesman, but from others, he heard, says Sir Wemyss Reid, emphatic language regarding our duty to ourselves as well as to the world at large, and again and again he was asked why we did not come to a frank discussion with the Boers. "No one suggested for a moment that we should yield to the Boer demand for independence, but between independence and absolute subjection there was surely room for negotiations that might bring about the solution whiCh all desire." Such were the opinions expressed by Sir Wemyss Reid. It is alleged, however, by the corre- spondent of the Times in America that the conversation was.not only meant to be private, but was also misunder- stood. • Sir Wemyss Reid, however, maintains the accuracy of his report, and denies its confidential nature, and we therefore feel no hesitation in making it the basis for discussion, for Sir Wemyss Reid, besides being a very capable publicist, is also a man of undoubted honour, and quite incapable of publishing a conversation which he did not understand was meant to be given to the world. He may have been mistaken, of course, but we are absolutely certain he acted in good faith.
That the views expressed by the American statesman were meant in all goodwill and Lindness to this country we feel quite certain. But at the same time we think that it would be very easy to exaggerate their practical importance. That numerous unofficial attempts have been made to get the United States to lead the rest of the Powers in-the matter of intervention we do not doubt for a moment. Precisely similar • attempts were made at the beginning of the Spanish- Amencan War to induce us to take action in order to stop the outbreak of hostilities. It was suggested that we could exert our friendly influence on a kindred people with little or no offence ; that • since we should -be backed up by a unanimous Europe-intervention must be successful ; and that therefore we should play an essentially peaceful role, and should show real friendship to America, if we took the lead in intervention. Needless to say, we declined to exhibit this remarkable form of real friend- ship, and refused absolutely to have anything to do with action of the kind contemplated by the Powers. The result was, of course, to stop all attempts at interven- tion. The Powers were not going to run the risk of attempting to coerce America if Great Britain did not join. It was more than probable that they felt such refusallo join them would turn out to mean taking sides ultimately with America. Even if we began by merely holding aloof, the risks would be far too great to be worth running. Thus while we refused to join the risks run by America were practically sail. So now the fact that America will not join in intervention absolutely wrecks all schemes of the kind. The Powers could not take the risks involved in America standing out and looking on. No sooner would the war begin than America would. be forced to reflect :—' This is a battle of Armageddon, in which it is impossible not to be on one side or the other. We cannot join in utterly destroying—for it must be that or nothing-- the other half of the Anglo-Saxon race. Again, we cannot stand neutral, for when Great Britain is crushed what security have we that the Powers will not intervene in the name of humanity, and ask us to stop the war in the Philippines on the ground that the task of conquest has proved impossible, and that it is to the interest of the whole world to restore peace to the Pacific ? We must therefore, in our own interests as well as out of friendly feeling to Great Britain, refuse to allow intervention.' American statesmen would doubtless dislike greatly in theory the idea of preventing intervention, even by the tacit threat of war, but the nearer they came to the problem the more certain they would be to per- ceive the necessity for solving it in the way we have set forth. Among other things, the Monroe doctrine would not be worth a day's purchase the moment the power of Great Britain had been destroyed. That doctrine is not beloved on the Continent, and it is impossible to believe that the Powers, flushed with a victory over the lords of the sea, would tolerate a doctrine only enforceable by and through sea power. We are not therefore in the least anxious as to intervention by the Continent. It could not take place without America taking a leading part, and that part America, will not play. But though this is so, we do not wonder that American statesmen are made anxious by the situation. Our statesmen would not, in fact, haveyielded supposing the American Army had been held at bay at Santiago till it had become incapacitated by fever, or supposing that Admiral Dewey's exploit at Manila had been unsuccessful, and that therefore immense pressure had been brought to bear on us to tolerate intervention, but they would naturally have been very anxious. When one sees a friend in a desperate struggle, and an ugly crowd round him, it is impossible not to give vent to an anxious " For Heaven's sake finish that job as soon as you can." This anxiety, coupled with a very natural inability to grasp the nature of the Boer and his peculiar attitude in regard to the war, has also caused Americans, and those most friendly to England first of all, to ask how it is that we do not come to terms with the Boers, and make a reasonable compromise.—We are quite sure that if the Philippine struggle loomed as large as does that in South Africa we should ask exactly the same question here in regard to the Filipinos.—All members of the Anglo- Saxon race have a profound belief in coinpromise, and find it almost impossible not to believe that a dispute can sooner or later be settled on terms. This instinctive feeling is strengthened by the natural impatience caused by a long struggle,—an impatience which, strange as it seems, is always felt more keenly by the onlookers thaiiby the combatants. During the last six months of the Civil War the impatience here for an end of the struggle Was very great, and was by no means always felt by those_ who considered themselves on the side of the South. Many persons who sincerely believed themselves Northern in sympathy 'held that the North must make peace: on reasonable terms, and declared that if not -either the' North would bleed to death, or else there Irould be a European coalition to end the struggle. For example, at the end of September, 1864, only six or seven months before the struggle was virtually over, we find •Punch.publishing a cartoon called " Mrs: North and her Attorney," representing a young widow in deepest mourning sitting in the office of Lawyer Lincoln and addressing him thus : " You see, Mr. Lincoln, we have failed utterly in our course of action ; I want peace, and so if you cannot effect an amicable arrangement, I must put the case into other hands." The cartoon represented the very widely held opinion that it was impossible to maintain the original position of the North of no terms but unconditional surrender, and that therefore all well- wishers of the North, as of the South, should desire peace on reasonable terms. But happily Mr. Lincoln knew better, and hence no attempt at a compromise was ever favoured by him. He realised, like the supreme states- man he was, that the points of view of the North and of the South were absolutely irreconcilable, and he never believed in the possibility of making oil and water combine. Though many Americans cannot see the impossibility of any compromise with the Boers—though they see the impossibility in the case of the Filipinos— it is, we fear, most unlikely that the Boers will be willing to accept voluntarily any terms we can offer them. If they were willing we may be sure that they would long ago have made us. acquainted with the fact. But instead of doing that they have assured us in the most impressive way that they will accept nothing short of sovereign independence. Many well - meaning people here — among them the Westminster Gazette—appear to believe that this is only the rhetoric of the political auction-room, and imagine that they would take a great deal less than independence if only the matter were properly put before them. That we hold to be an entire delusion. Mr. Kruger and the so-called Boer Government here, and Mr. Steyn in South Africa, will not agree to anything but independence. Why should they when anything less means to them political annihi- lation. President Davis and his Government showed exactly the same spirit. They had no sort of notion of yielding when Lee gave way, but would have fought on for another two years if they could in the hope of something turning up. But Lee and the other commanders and their soldiers at last finished the war by a simple surrender, and on no political terms. So it will be here. The Boer Governments, such as they are, will never make terms. But some day the soldiers still in the field will come in, and the war will be over. There is no other way in which a war of this kind, waged with a people like the Boers, can possibly end. We do not write like this because we are theoretically against any form of negotiations with the Boers. If we thought it would lead to a permanent cessation of hostilities, we would gladly once more see the Government tell the Boers publicly on what terms they can have peace, and listen to any criticism of those terms from the Boers in case we might • be able to make some modification of details which would render them more satisfactory from the Boers' point of view. But we do not believe that there is the slightest chance of the Boers considering our terms seriously. They would, no doubt, not object to negotiate, in the hope that later they could use such negotiations to prove our'weakness, or duplicity, or harshness, but that they would negotiate with a bond-fide intention of ending the struggle we do not believe. The leading Boers at present do not want peace but war, and to shut our eyes to this fact, and pretend that if our terms were only better dished up they would prove palatable, seems to us the height of folly. There is no solution possible now, as far as we can see, except a military one, and therefore all we can do is to fight on steadily and actively, and not allow ourselves to be alarmed by scares of • intervention or deluded by impossible ideas of compromise and negotiation. We have just got to " stick it out." " Fight and don't fuss is the conclusion of the whole matter. Meantime there is one thing which we can and ought to remember to do. That is, to make surrender on the part of the Boer com- batants in the field as easy as possible. Let us, as far as we can, "save the face" of the Boer officers and men, and make the transition from enemies to fellow-subjects as easy as we possibly can. We want when the war is over to have as large a number of Boers as possible proud to say : "They fought us without mercy while the war lasted, but when the end came they treated us like gentlemen." Never " spoil the face " of those with whom you must some day keep house—is a _ good rule. •
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