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II One of the oldest of problems is the conflict between East and West which is now becoming more acute owing to the growth of populations, increased communication, a closer contact of cultures, growth of knowledge, economic questions, the assertion of the Asiatic Consciousness, the intensity of the struggle for life and other causes. The whole world is now in ferment preparing for the next great advance in the evolution of the race. Once there was greater equality between East and West which was disturbed by the white man's conquest of the sea; leading in the case of the English to world dominion. Asia, however, once played her role. By a succession of vast onslaughts, She, as has been well-said, "shook and hardened Europe to new life." Before then, Greek and Roman had struggled for mastery with Oriental Empires. Thereafter the Huns carried fire and sword into the heart of Europe. Later the Arabs conquered Spain and poured across the Pyrenees to be smitten by Charles the Hammer: and yet they retained parts of Spain for hundreds of years imbuing Europe with their great learning and culture. Then followed the Second Tartar invasion when the Mongols were defeated under the walls of Vienna largely by the aid of Hungarians, themselves nothing but Asiatics left behind from the flood of the first invasions of the fifth century. Finally, the Ottoman Turks, rivalling the military success of the Arabs, captured the whole Byzantine Empire and were only arrested after immense struggles along the line of the Danube, thus terminating in the fifteenth century the vast series of forays undertaken by Asia against Europe with which in the course of a thousand years there was an unending conflict; for with the Turks (though their Empire is now threatened) the last word has not yet been spoken. Through this hardening process the white man's position in the world was established. As an American writer, whose conclusions I here, in his own language, summarise (' The Conflict of Colour' by B. L. Putnam Weale) points out, another factor in the Evolution of the white races was Christianity, not because (according to his view) Christianity as a religious system (that is institutional Christianity) had special value, but because it supplied just that inspiration and organization which were needed by rude and unimaginative peoples to give them discipline and to intensify the conflict with Asia and Africa. " The political mark which the Christian Church has consequently made in Europe, can never be wholly effaced; though it is a mark entirely different from anything which could be anticipated from a reading of the Gospels" with their essentially spiritual and other-worldly and therefore Eastern message. Thus by the time of the last Turkish forays a new Europe was born and the position of East and West was reversed. The latter conquered the sea. To the European the whole world was unmasked, and, landing on the most distant shores, he made rapid conquests with the modern magic—explosive matter. If India be once again mighty, those who now ignorantly speak of Her as " uncivilized " will at least not dare to assert it. Whilst it is a demoniac notion that the power to harm alone gives civilized title, that power, it must be admitted, at least ensures a kind of human respect.
The Christian middle-ages (whatever was their practice) possessed a beautiful ideal; an ideal of human unity and of the blending of the spiritual and temporal. With the discovery of America and of the East and a declining Christianity, Europe cast its eyes abroad and became predatory. The sense of unity was lost and the period of base exploitation began. Money became more important than land (for Feudalism had rested on an agricultural basis) and "Vulgar Nationalism" (as a friend of mine calls it) arose, and being reinforced by the coarse industrialism of the " age of the machine" became more and more aggressive, until in our day it has met with its natural retribution. The Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and the English imposed, by force and with desire for trade and loot, their will upon the Asiatic. The Spanish Conquistadores in the Americas were called by that humane apostle Las Casas "destroyers of the Indians." In India the work of conquest went on from the sixteenth century until the age in which we live. Throughout and in every instance there was the worship of brute force. The Portuguese, the Spaniard and the Dutch gradually lost their pre-eminence. Then followed England's struggle with the French when She at the close of the Napoleonic Wars was found the victor. Macaulay says that, until Clive went to India, the English " were despised as mere pedlars whilst the French were revered as a people formed for victory and command." But from the moment that England displaced France, her history became world-history and her land became covered with worldly renown. By the middle of the Eighteenth century, just prior to the birth of the present European civilization, the force of the European attack had been spent and matters moved more leisurely; but, as the independent author, I cite, says, the old tradition remained and was acted upon, wherever possible, strengthened by the inventions of a scientific age. Suzerainty was displaced by the notion of actual ownership. Later still Power covered itself and its actions with what he calls some " pleasant fictions." To the honest these are hypocrisies which time will sweep into the sink of all other falsities.
Again Asia reacts and as the author cited says " In the far East the return swing of the pendulum is clear; in the middle East it has commenced ; and elsewhere smaller oscillations have to be noted in Egypt, in Morocco, in Algeria and in the French Soudan."
This was written four years before the present European War. Of the great European Powers in Asia before that event, France and Holland occupied a subordinate position to the Russians and the English. The predominance, as I write after the internal strife in Russia, rests with the last mentioned alone who now seems to hold the key to nearer Asia. As Dr. Yujiro Miyake in his article on "The future of Asia" written in January last has said, " Hitherto Asiatic countries have changed, so far as they have changed at all, diversely and independently according to their racial traits and history. But at present great changes are going on in all countries of Asia simultaneously. It is a change more collosal, far-reaching and profound than any that has taken place in the past." Not the least of the influences operating is the European War. This War, if read rightly, marks the close of an epoch of civilization, and, through it and its aftermaths, both the feudalism which yet lingers in Europe and particularly in England, as well as the modern purely materialist industrialism is likely to disappear. Even now what was before 1914 is seen as an old world. The close of this epoch also definitely affects both the relations of, and balance between, East and West. The same writer says that " If the 850,000,000 people of Asia become self-conscious and begin to display the latent forces of democracy, the whirlwinds for which Asia has been famous for ages, will grow in magnitude and sweep round the world. The whirlwind of Asia has already circumscribed the globe and is now just starting on its second circuit with greater vehemence than on the first journey. Already it is beginning to effect mighty changes in Asia itself." The movement is of profound interest to a world seeking to know where it will end. No wonder that another writer of the same race (which some think may assume the hegemony of this movement) states that the Christian missions are labouring harder than ever since the "War to extend their religion in the East; no wonder is it that missionaries of race and culture are by attack or persuasion endeavouring to get the East to adopt, in place of its present inherited civilization, their own. The " coloured peril" and the world-peace will, it is thought, be more vastly diminished if the East is westernised than if it retains its secular ideals and practices alien to the life of Europe. The cultural attack by Europe on the East is, in short, an effort to save its own psychic possessions by the assimilation of that which opposes them, and (let me at once say it) this is for Europe, in this era of conflict, right, if done in sincerity and with truth; for each must defend his own. Similarly India's Dharma is to stand by Her cultural inheritance and to repel all assaults upon it. Were the English to absorb the Indian civilization which the spread of the English language ideas and customs threaten, its people would not be monsters on that account. The act would only show that those of this country were fit to be eaten. It is for them to say whether they, shall be so or not. Hitherto military might has been with Europe. By the exhaustion of the present War it will be shorn of much of this strength and will need all its powers to reconstitute itself internally; possibly after social revolutions. Moreover there are signs that allegiance to the reign of brute force in the west is weakening and commencing (though the way may be yet long) to disappear. But apart from this, the Japanese writer has truly said, "The lands where Confucious, Buddha, Christ and Mahomed were born and taught (and wherein, we may add, the immortal Upanishads appeared) are possessed of a power greater than military force and may yet be able to change the face of the whole world. They have not much money or anything that visibly impresses worshippers of the things of this world, but they have vast numbers of people, many of whom have brains and souls more significant of real manhood and real living than all the wealth of occidental materialism;" which however, I may add, is only a passing stage in what has, been (despite its modern vulgarians) a vital civilization with elements of greatness. |
