... [In China] we are asserting and
enforcing international rights of travel and trade. But the right to
trade is a very comprehensive one: it involves a right to insist on a
settled government which can keep the peace and enforce agreements. When
a native government of this order is impossible, the foreign trading
power must set one up" (pp. 44-5). "The value of a State to the world
lies in the quality of its civilisation, not in the magnitude of its
armaments.... There is therefore no question of the steam-rollering of
little States because they are little, any more than of their
maintenance in deference to romantic nationalism. The State which
obstructs international civilisation will have to go, be it big or
little. That which advances it should be defended by all the Western
Powers. Thus huge China and little Monaco may share the same fate,
little Switzerland and the vast United States the same fortune" (p. 46).
As for South Africa, "however ignorantly [our] politicians may argue
about it, reviling one another from the one side as brigands, and
defending themselves from the other with quibbles about waste-paper
treaties and childish slanders against a brave enemy, the fact remains
that a Great Power, consciously or unconsciously, must govern in the
interests of civilisation as a whole; and it is not to those interests
that such mighty forces as gold-fields, and the formidable armaments
that can be built upon them, should be wielded irresponsibly by small
communities of frontiersmen.
Pages:
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169