Leavings of the Great War (1914-1918)

1. The War and Asia.

Spiritually speaking, Asia was temporarily paralyzed during the World-War. Down to 1914 the continent had depended for its culture mostly on influences radiating from West to East. And the war closed the flood-gates of these currents. For example, the slow but steady development of China was arrested. Still clearer was the plight of Persia— the one Asian country which was in utter need of western science and finance, especially for railways and irrigation. She was then completely cut off. Egypt and India have suffered too. The number of merchants, scholars and travellers who came to the West for inspiration fell off almost to zero.

The only Asian country to advance has been Japan, because she was able to step into the industrial and commercial vacuum created by the withdrawal of Germany and Austria. Through being able to furnish maritime transportation, Japan expanded enormously in the fields of Eastern and Southern Asia, the South Sea Islands and Latin America. And yet her cultural intercourse with Eur-America was considerably cut short owing to the uncertain conditions that kept Japanese politics in suspense all through the war period.

But, on the other hand, in Asia there has been a second great effect of the war which is not to be ignored. This conflict has been, potentially at least, a mighty factor toward Asia's advance in the near future. For the war has given Asia the one thing she needed— a complete change in the diplomatic grouping of powers and in the values obtaining in the political psychology of all nations.

The status quo which obtained from the opening of China by the Nanking Treaty in 1842 down to 1914 was very detrimental to the realization of Asia's natural and legitimate aspirations. But this state of affairs has now received a very rude shock. One fact— that England was compelled to retain Japan as the de facto protector of British interests in Eastern and Southern Asia and to draw on the military assistance even of China-this one fact has entitled Young Asia to visualize a continent not dominated by England.

Another fact has set Young Asia to thinking. During all that period from 1842 down to 1914 Asia got not one chance-except in the Russo-Japanese War (1905)— to break the hard-and-fast line of distinction between East and West which Westerners had drawn, to prove its fallacy. The war has altered also that perspective in international life. For example, India alone placed 1,500,000 men and more on the fronts of Europe and Asia. These Indians bore their full share of the brunt of the fighting in Flanders in 1914, and their merit was heartily recognized by the French. Incidentally, they proved to Asia that India's fighting men can stand the rigors of any climate.

2. Revolution vs. Reaction.

The New Asia can discover two forces of a diametrically opposite character in the world politics of today. These are manifest, first, in the conditions of international diplomacy brought about by the "Peace", and secondly, in the spirit of universal unrest focussed and embodied, for the time being, in the Bolsheviks Soviets of Russia. The one, represented by the association of the victorious allies, miscalled the League of Nations, has reproduced the reactionary regime of the Congress of Vienna, the Holy Alliance, and the dictatorship of Metternich, the arch-protagonist of absolutism. The other has for its counterpart, to continue the analogy from the past century, the revolutionism militant, which born in the "ideas of 1789", maintained its checkered career by combating the powers that be in 1815, 1830 and 1848. The problem of world-reconstruction of our own times is therefore bound to repeat, may be during comparatively shorter intervals, the great conflict between revolution and status quo on well known historic lines. It is in and through the fire-baptism of this new war or series of wars that Asia seeks liberation from the imperialistic and capitalistic domination by Europe and America.

This is not the first time in human development when grandiloquent phrases and sonorous shibboleths have been invented to camouflage the old Adam. The present generation of intellectuals and statesmen have but taken the cue from their great grandparents of the Napoleonic era. Who, indeed, could have been more emphatic in proclaiming from house-tops the principles of a "lasting peace", the "just division of power", etc. in their schemes for the "reconstruction of social order" than were those diplomats of the early nineteenth century?

Nor has human nature been re-made overnight to warrant us in believing that we are far removed from the age of scramble for spheres of influence. In the new doctrine of self-determination of peoples that has been employed with vigour against the Germanic and Turkish interests one can easily recognize the old statecraft of the balance of power, only "writ large". From the standpoint of allies it is in fact the same thing turned inside out. As such it bids fair to be the greatest disturber of the tranquillity of Europe. The bunch of new buffer-states that have been conjured up to lie between the Germans and the Russians is in reality a row of live storm-centres where the Great Powers will have to encounter legion of old Balkan problems. And at least half a dozen Alsace-Lorraine have been manufactured by recklessly giving away German populations over to Italy, France, Poland, Tchecho-Slovakia and Jugoslavia. One great hope of the enslaved nations of Asia lies in the activities of these German "irredentas" each of which is pregnant with the seed of a new war.

3. Evacuation of Asia.

It is obvious in any case that at the present crisis the New Orient can contribute to the Occident only a most paradoxical offer. The one serious question that is worth considering today is the question of the evacuation of Asia by the armies, navies and air-fleets of Europe and America. The expulsion of the West from the East is the sole preliminary to a discussion of fundamental peace terms. For the greatest problem before the statesmen of the world-reconstruction in the interest of durable peace is that of the freedom of Asia. Not until this has been solved satisfactorily are there any chances for the genuine social-industrial democracy of Man hoped for by the international socialists or for the conventional League of Nations championed by the capitalists and the capitalist-bossed intelligentsia.

Humanity is in the sorest need of an emancipated Asia, independent of foreign control, unhampered in any legitimate line of activity. Every inch of Asian soil has to be placed under a sovereign state of the Asian race, no matter whether sovietic-communal, republican, monarchial, democratic or autocratic. For the present there is the urgent call for at least another Japan of fifty, sixty, or seventy million people on continental Asia, able to work its own mines, finance its own administration, and man its own polytechnic colleges.

Is the political consciousness 'of Europe and America alive to these demands? Certainly not. For, the one fact which has been systematically ignored both by the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is that the last war arose neither out of the nationality problems in Europe nor out of the class-struggle in the Western world but essentially out of the keen rivalry for dominating the lands and seas of Asia. And yet where did Asia stand at the peace conference? Virtually no where. The Congress at Versailles had practically no problem as to the reconstruction of Asia left for solution to the diplomatic tug-of-war. For, the fate of Asia had already been sealed. Asia was doomed months before the humiliating armistice was swallowed by the Germans, long before the ignominious surrender of the German navy.

4. Bolsheviks and the British Empire.

Asia was reshaped almost automatically through the Bolshevik unmaking of the Russian Empire. The collapse of military Russia left Asia absolutely to the tender mercies of British Imperialism. The hegemony of England over the Asian continent was thus brought about not more by the war itself than by one of its by-products, the Russian Revolution.

In 1914 the equilibrium of Asian politics rested on three important props. The first was the Anglo-French treaty of 1904, the second the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, 1906 and 1911 and the third the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907. These three arrangements had served to stabilize for a decade the balance of power in Asia.

The Entente was a final confession of defeat on the part of the French in their imperialistic race with the English. Since the loss of Egypt in 1883 and the humiliation at Fashoda in 1898 France had been used to pursuing a pinprick policy with her rival wherever she could. But to shunt her off from the Asian tracks England gave her a free hand in Morocco. French mastery in Indo-China however was not questioned in any way. The French sphere of influence in Siam, moreover, was clearly delimited, and of course like that of every other power France's finger in the Chinese pie remained undisturbed.

Having eliminated France from the Asian game or rather having localized French ambitions within fixed areas the British proceeded to strengthen the new friendship of Japan on the morrow of her victory at Port-Arthur and on the Tsushima Sea. For Japan was the strongest of the powers likely to compete with her in China and the Chinese waters. Besides, Japan might eventually become the rallying-ground of rebels and political refugees from India and Burma. The British overtures could not but be welcomed by the Japanese themselves as the line of least resistance was the only advisable course for Japan. She needed, furthermore, the backing of a first class European power. She agreed, therefore, to help England put down revolutions among the Hindus and Moslems of the British Empire, and glibly proclaimed the policy of open door in the Far East. England was thus assured of the status quo in Southern and Eastern Asia.

The next great force to reckon with was Russia. But the loss of her navy in the Japanese War, the humiliation abroad, and the revolution at home had deprived the bear of its claws and nails. England, therefore, had nothing serious to fear from the Northern Colossus against whose solid advance in Siberia and Manchuria through the concession of the Chinese Eastern Railway (granted by the Cassini-Li Hung Chang convention 1896) she had been forced to contract the Japanese Alliance in 1902. The rising German power, on the other hand, was threatening, to be a portentous menace to the British world dominion. Consequently Great Britain managed to put in abeyance the traditional Russophobia and by a sudden change of front successfully pooled her interests with her greatest enemy in Asia since the Crimean War of 1856-55. The upshot was the Anglo-Russian Convention leading to a friendly settlement of claims in Persia, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Tibet. The Middle Eastern Question was thus closed satisfactorily for the British Empire.

That question like all other questions in Asian and colonial politics was indeed opened by Germany's ultimatum to the established powers in 1914. But for all practical purposes there were no changes in the situation as long as there was a fighting Russia. The extinction of her military power, however, since Nov. 9, 1917 created a huge gap in the politics of Asia. The consequence was a violent shifting of its centre of gravity. For one thing, the equilibrium of China, so far as the Powers are concerned, has been completely upset. Its stability cannot be restored until and unless the issues are finally decided in the Yangtze Valley between England advancing through the South and through Tibet and Turkestan, and Japan advancing from the East and through Manchuria and Siberia. In every other sphere of Russian influence, however, England has stepped in as a matter of course. Today she is thus the sole arbiter of the fate of the entire Middle East, and the so-called Anglo-Persian Treaty of 1919 has only legalized the de facto robbery.¹

5. A Monopoly in World Control.

Even without the Great War the Russian Revolution would have bequeathed to the British Empire the undisputed suzerainty over Persia, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Tibet, and the lion's share in the control of Central Asia and China. Add to this the results of the War. Mesopotamia has been conquered from Turkey, Arabia and Armenia are British protectorates, the Palestine zone. is in Franco-British hands. With. the exception of French complications in Syria and Japanese in Kiao-chao England finds herself the exclusive master of the situation. The entire sea-front from Suez to Singapore is British. And over the whole land mass between the South Asian Seas and the series of Mid-Asian waterpartings, the Caucasus, the Karakum Desert, the Hindu Kush, and the Tianshan, Great Britain's will is law.

Verily, this single-handed domination of Asia is the greatest peril the world has ever known. Never was British Imperial and colonial power more formidable than it is today. The triumphs of England over the Spanish Armada and over Louis XIV after the reconstruction at Utrecht or even her expansion since Waterloo are but insignificant beginnings of world-subjugation compared with what is in store for her from now on after the eclipse of Russia and Germany as powers. The British Empire has besides been insured for a few decades at least against the challenge of a powerful enemy. The last and only possible rival of England has been brought to its knees. The united militarism of the Allies has now made the world safe for Pax Britannica.

Nay, democracy has thus been granted a safe asylum among the children of men! For, in sooth, is not the expansion of Britain in naval power, commerce, colonies, and protectorates, or those newfangled mandatories tantamount to the conquest of liberalism, liberty and law on earth? This is how the average American has been taught to regard the end of the war. Indeed the entire intellect of the United States has not seen any further than this. How could it? The mind of man even in the twentieth century, even after the event of November 7, 1917 is as indolent as in the days of Duns Scotus and Galileo. It is tenaciously clinging to the old political moorings. It is tremendously afraid of new mores in international ethics. And the brain of America used as it is to the comfortable atmosphere of a thoughtless optimism induced by the century-old seclusion of the Monroe Doctrine is naturally too timid to rise to the height of the occasion. Men and women, inured to the unquestioning dogmatism of Browning's "All is well on earth" since "God is in His Heaven", are the least expected to look facts squarely in the face. When therefore the bullion power of the United States determined to enter the lists of the armageddon as the St. John the Baptist of world democracy, on what other political psychology could the quixotic adventure be based except on the postulate that the world is safe for democracy, civilization and humanity as long as it is safe for the British Empire?

But even America, pragmatic as she is, cannot long remain blind to accomplished facts. She cannot help asking the question now that the peace is tending to create new wars: "How is the world to be delivered of the British peril?" France has long been a non-entity, at best only a second fiddle. For the time being Russia is pulverized and enfeebled, although her message is quite powerful all the world over. The Germans can hardly raise their head for a generation. And Italy, although growing, is not yet a formidable power.

The only protests can come from Japan in regard to Eastern Asia, if at all. But they are bound to be too feeble. Little Nippon is dazed by the extraordinary changes that have taken place. Even her own independence may be in danger. She cannot any longer look for self-defence in the mutual competition among the Great Powers, for virtually there are no Great Powers left. The complete annihilation of German influence in the Pacific and the Far East is certainly not an unmixed blessing to the Japanese people or to the Asians as a whole.

Is then the American merchant marine and navy destined to contest the British monopoly of world control? Or, is an Anglo-American Alliance going to be the terror of the second quarter of the twentieth century? Perhaps the so-called Disarmament Conference at Washington (November 11, 1921) furnishes the first term in the answer to these queries.

6. Achievements of the War.

Every cloud, however, has its silver lining. The Orient is not blind to the fact that so far as Europe is concerned, the achievements of the war are already great. Notwithstanding the problem of German irredentas and other minorities, Europe is certainly going to be a far more decent place to live in than before. The nationality principle for which Kosciusko died and Kossuth fought, and to which Bismarck and Mazzini gave a recognizable shape has at length been thoroughly realized. It has in fact been carried to its furthest logical consequence. The slogan, "one language, one state", may not in all cases turn out to be as convenient in practice as it is mystical and romantic in theory. Europe may need federations and Zollvereins in order to modify the extreme atomistic organization of the new ethnic polities. The causes of friction, besides, between neighbouring tariff or administrative unions may long continue to be at work. Besides, the French policy of using Poland against Russia and Germany or Tchecho-Slovakia against Germany and Italy or the British strategy of helping Greece against Turkey and Italy in the Mediterranean will follow automatically from the "human nature" in international relations as embodied in the Hindu Kautilyan doctrine of mandala². But, on the whole, the anachronism of race-submergence and race-autocracy that prevailed on a large scale between the Jura and the Urals and between the Baltic and the Black Seas has been rung out once for ever.

Not less fundamentally than the problem of nationality has the foundation of sovereignty been reconstituted. The People's participation and control in industry and "public law" have almost been tending to revive the old gilds, local units, and "direct" democracies. The power of the peasants and urban working classes in the administration of national interests is coming to the forefront in referendum, municipalization and public ownership schemes. The corporations are growing in legal authority. The form of government in every state of Europe is thus tending to be far more liberal than the idealists could ever conceive. The age of Lenin's anti-property democracy, labor republic or proletarian dictatorship is perhaps yet rather far off from universal acceptance, but the phenomenal expansion of the rights of the people or "constitutional liberties" is a settled fact. And "progressive taxation" as well as the repudiation (partial or complete) of national debts are bound to emerge as the principles of the "new order" in public finance. Democracy (swarâj) has sunk deeper into the human soul than it did in 1848 or 1870.

Last but not least in importance must be admitted the enrichment of European polity through the creation of a new democratic type in the Soviets of Russia. This new species of constitution is a distinctively original contribution to the social development of mankind. In so far as the agrarian organization is concerned, the almost spontaneous emergence of soviets throughout the length and breadth of Russia indicates that these institutions are essentially akin to, if not identical with, the traditional Mirs of the Slavic peasants. Only, these village communities, or autonomous "little republics" of rural communes, have been harnessed to the new problem of controlling the factors of production in the interest of the working class. And in the industrial field, the same communal principle has been introduced into gilds. As such, the Russian experiment is of profound significance to the medieval, i. e. to the economically and intellectually "backward" countries of the present day, where agricultural "communities" or industrial gilds in one form or another have obtained from time immemorial. For it is demonstrating that in order to evolve a democratic republic every people need not, item by item, repeat the industrial revolution, capitalistic regime and the centralized parliamentary system by which Western Europe and the United States were transformed in the nineteenth century. The new nationalities of Eastern Europe and the Balkans as well as the subject and semi-subject peoples of Asia have thus got before them the precedent of a new popular sovereignty. The experiments in the republican constitution such as are being conducted in Russia are going to be the starting-point of all nationality-movements anywhere on earth.

7. The Fallacies of Neo-liberalism.

But, on the other hand, through the impact of the war, an intense wave of militarism has enveloped all ranks of the Asian and African peoples from Manila to Morocco. The vindictive nationalism of the last two decades has been lifted up to the spiritual plane in Asia's consciousness.

This circumstance will be regretted no doubt by the liberal or rather radical forces of new Europe and new America, such as the the Communists, Syndicalists, Anti-militarists and "International Workers of the World". For, from the stage at which they themselves have arrived theirs is today the creed of internationalism and disarmament. But can it be expedient for the suffering races to trust themselves peacefully to the vague dreams of a millennial utopia?

For obvious reasons Asia cannot afford to be misguided by such a hallucination, brilliant though it be, nor to have confidence in the ignis fatuus of Western good-will. The liberals and radicals of the new Orient have to be militarists perforce. Theirs is the natural and necessary reaction to the oppressive "white man's burden" of the last century.

The goal of nationalist Asia is however identical with that of internationalist Eur-America. The emancipation of mankind from all possible sources of exploitation, atrophy and degeneracy is the common objective of both. The class-struggle of the West thus becomes anti-alienism or race-struggle in the East; because for all practical purposes capitalism is there embodied in the foreign rulers and foreign captains of industry. Until foreign domination is overthrown, the socialists and labor leaders of Asia must have to advocate the tenets of nationalism, backed by indigenous capitalism if need be. Asia's struggle with her own capitalists is of course not in abeyance for the present, but will be accelerated as soon as the foreign incubus is subverted.

The neo-liberals and socialistic or communist radicals of the Western world seem moreover to harbour the illusion that the form of government at home cannot but affect the colonial policy of nations. Theoretically it should, but actual history is different. Evidently the Western liberals are ignorant of the conditions of foreign commerce and empire in Asia. But can they forget the fact that justice in home politics has ever gone hand in hand with injustice and tyranny abroad? And are there any grounds for admitting that the popular governments of the Western world are less detrimental and ruinous to the dependencies and protectorates than are the formally autocratic states?

Look to France, the "cradle of liberty." Which of the colonial powers has been a more criminal offender on this score than the French republic? The exploitation of Indo-China³ by France has surpassed even the notorious repressiveness of the Dutch in Java and the East Indies. The treatment of the Chinese Empire since 1842 and subsequently of the Chinese republic by the Powers has left no warm corner in Young China's heart for one "foreign devil" as against another. It was not possible likewise for Young Persia to make any distinction between Czaristic Russia and constitutional England whether as regards the forceful partition of a weak people's territory into spheres of influence or as regards the interpretation of those spheres. Italy has not displayed greater humanity, or fair play in occupying the Turkish Island off the Southwest coast of Anatolia (against the terms of the treaty of 1912) than did Germany in seizing Kiao-chao.

The inroads of America, again, although Monroe-doctrinated, through the Hawaii and Philippine Islands into the Asian sphere cannot be less dreadful in Japanese estimation than was the slow but steady Russian avalanche which culminated in the event of 1904. Belgium has come in contact with Asia only in the Customs service of Persia. Yet the Belgians have succeeded in earning the Persian hatred even more bitterly than the English and the Russians. The Ottomans tried alliance with every denomination of Christianity. and with every species of European nationality. All have been found equally wanting. And India's-long experience with Great Britain has brought into relief the fixed idea of all imperialism viz., that, be the Cabinet liberal or tory, no subject race must be dragged into the whirlpool of party politics. About every specimen of Eur-America therefore Young Asia is entitled to generalize to the effect that

"His honour rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true."

But perhaps the neo-liberals would meet New Asia with a ready made rejoinder: "Well, you are talking only of the chauvinists, the junkers and jingoes, the bourgeoisie and capitalists of Europe and America. They are the enemy of labor everywhere on earth. But the working classes of the different nations bear no grudge against one another. They are not committed to any distinctions of race, or to any policy of exploitation." The best reply to such a position of alleged internationalism in the labor world is the systematic maltreatment and persecution of Chinese and Japanese "immigrants" by the people of the United States. That story has out-pogromed the pogroms of Romanoff Russia. In this instance, however, curiously enough, friends of Asian labor were the American bourgeoisie and capitalists. The anti-Asian Immigration Bills of 1904 and 1917 were the direct consequences of the resistance offered by the organized labor force of America.

Can any economist or ethnologist prove that the Tchechs, the Slovaks, the Sicilians, the South Italians, the Serbs or the Greeks are more assimilable or Americanizable than are Orientals? In their European homes the Slav and the Latin peasants do not have a higher standard of life or better civic sense or richer social outlook than have the unskilled laborers of Asia. Culturally or economically the European immigrants are not more conveniently situated with regard to the domicile in the United States than are Orientals of the same social standing.

Are the leaders of the workingmen awakened to the injustice perpetrated on the Asians in the U. S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand? It is not surprising, therefore, that "Thou, Brutus, too?" is the only remark with which the radicals of the Orient can greet their comrades of the Occident. With whom, then, is Asia to flirt? With the bourgeoisie or with the proletariat of Eur-America? It is too much to expect that Asia should be able to discriminate between the Jew and Gentile, the Greek Church and the Methodist, the republics and the monarchies, the employer and the laborer, while reacting to the despotism of the ruling races. Young Asia expects the labor parties and socialists of Europe and America to demonstrate their distinctiveness from the bourgeoisie classes by championing the freedom of subject races in an effective and convincing manner.

8. Bulwark of World Peace.

The new Asia fully realizes the situation. It knows that the Orient has nothing more to lose. It has grown desperate in the consciousness that the only future that awaits the peoples of Asia is an extermination like that of the dodo or the bison. It has, therefore, accepted the challenge and ultimatum of Eur-America. It has also formulated its own demands in response. These are being pressed into the world's notice not indeed loud enough, for as yet Asia is unarmed and disarmed. But humanly speaking, it cannot remain armless for an indefinite period. The day of reckoning is not far off.

The time is fast approaching when Europe and America will have to admit that their peoples must not command greater claims or privileges in Asia than the peoples of Asia can possibly possess within the bounds of Europe and America. The West will then be compelled to appreciate the justice of the demand that the Asians must enjoy the same rights in Europe and America as Europeans and Americans wish to enjoy in Asia.

In the meantime the world is witnessing the dawn of a new era in international relations. The idealists of revolutionary Russia have made their debut by dissipating to the winds the secret and other treaties of the old regime as so many scraps of paper, and by declaring the independence of subject races both Asian and European. This is the first instance in the annals of diplomacy and foreign policy when Europe has been honest and sincere to Asia. This is the first time in modern history when the East and the West have been treated on equal terms. This is why intellectuals of the New Orient hail with enthusiasm the birth of Bolshevism as a spiritual force. For they find in Young Russia their only Western colleague in the task of making the world safe from economic exploitation, colonialism and foreign rule.

Syndicalists, Anti-militarists and other radicals of Eur-America, howsoever they may differ among themselves in regard to tenets of labour or politics are at least equally united with Bolsheviks in so far as the freedom of Asia is concerned. They are seeking to prevent the workingmen of colonial powers from fighting against the rebels in the dependencies or in any way helping the imperialist armies, fleets and munition factories.

The surest bulwark of international peace will then be furnished by an alliance of the international socialism of continental Europe with the militant nationalism of Young Asia until the new Metternichs are forced to capitulate and find their proper place in the limbo of oblivion. Simultaneously from the insular angle let the British Labor Party, if it chooses to be sincere, warm itself up to bring out an Anglo-Saxon edition of Bolshevism and manufacture it in a shape understandable by the sluggish intellect of the newly fleshed imperialists of America. Ultimately through this grand rapprochement will the principles of the Russian Revolution, like those of the French, become the first postulates of a renovated age of World-Liberation. It is on such an understanding that the platform of cooperation between the Sinnfeiners of Asia and fighters for the New Order in Eur-America can be erected for the emancipation of the races and classes from political and economic thraldom.

9. The New Germany and Young Asia.

In the coming decades Germany, robbed as she is of her infant colonies, has a great role to play in the emancipation of Asia. From now on Young Asia will classify the great powers of the world into two fundamentally different groups. One will be called the colonial powers, and the other the non-colonial. It is to this latter category that the New Germany belongs. The most important incident in the present German constitution lies herein. Not that Germany is republican or democratic or socialistic but that the German-speaking peoples are non-colonial bids fair to be one of the supreme factors in the international relations of the twentieth century.

The crushing defeat sustained by German arms entailing, as it has, the loss of colonies promises almost to be a blessing in disguise to Germany. For it has served to enlarge the horizon of German ambitions and energies. It has enfranchised German idealism from the narrow territorial limits of the Teutonic race. German Kultur has at last been compelled to take note of the many races outside of Europe in whose service and development Germany's humanists and cosmopolitan thinkers must have to devote their brains and brawns.

The new Freiheitskampf, the coming war of Liberation, to which the diplomacy, science, arts and philosophy of Young Germany are addressing themselves is accordingly not to have for its objective merely the regions of Mitteleuropa on the lines of the little Vaterland for which the heroes of 1806-1813 fought. No, the Kleists and Schillers of Germania in the twentieth century are destined to evoke the romanticism of their compatriots for the emancipation of much larger areas of the earth's surface. The continent of Asian peoples who are striving to achieve their freedom and shatter the fetters of the colonial powers is looming large in the consciousness of Germany's liberators as a great field for cooperation and comradeship on which to work out the spiritual reconstruction of mankind.

These colonial powers are the common enemy of Young Asia and New Germany. Automatically therefore German idealists have their natural allies in Asian revolutionaries.

The present is not the time for a Schopenhauerian pessimism for the German race. There is still a great future before Germany, greater than she ever could imagine for herself while she was carving out little slices from China or Africa or taking possession of tiny unknown islands in the South Seas. German statesmen, intellectuals and manual workers have only to open their eyes and see that their place in the sun is yet assured in and through the friendly cooperation which is being extended to them by the peoples of Egypt, Persia, Afghanistan, India and China.

The few crumbs which the British Empire may choose to grant to the Germans, its vanquished and humiliated enemies, from out of its table by way of commercial concessions and favours in the markets of its colonies, dependencies and mandated areas,—although temporarily these doles may be useful in Germany's economic and financial reconstruction,—can only add insult to injury in the estimation of every normally thinking German. But Germania's genius has far more honourable and much more momentous work to do for the world.

It is to the dignity of being an ally in the liberation of colonies and dependencies that the New Germany as the greatest noncolonial power of today is being invited by the manual and brain workers of Asia. A free Orient is sure to offer infinitely greater chances to German brain and bullion than Germany can reasonably expect from the self-seeking charity of her hated enemies of yesterday. The grim determination with which German working men and leaders of public life have been grappling with the facts of defeat and humiliation and act up to the terms of the victors to the very letter,—notwithstanding the exchange difficulties and financial crisis brought on by the exorbitant indemnities, notwithstanding the loss of industrial regions in Alsace-Lorraine and Silesia, and notwithstanding the expensive and demoralizing army of occupation in the Rhine Province,—this sullen and proud endeavour will be crowned with its highest achievements and reward only when the teeming Asian millions (half the humanity of the world as they constitute in themselves) will be brought under the banners of Asian Swarâj and thrown open to the free competition and free intercourse of the nations.

The New Russia has started on its career by declaring the independence of Asian colonies and dependencies or protectorates. Colonialism will have its greatest enemy among the Russian peasants, workers and intelligentsia. The people of the United States, also, which may almost be described as half non-colonial (notwithstanding its aggressive Mexican policy and notwithstanding its Haiti, Santo Domingo and the Philippines) are actively championing the cause of Asian independence, thanks to the optimism and historic love of liberty among the Americans.

It now remains for Germany to speak out and act in the manner in which the Orient expects that a great race bent on the revindication of its claims should act both for its own honour and national self-assertion as well as for opening out new vistas in international relations and world-culture. The infiniteward energism of the "Fausts" of Young Asia as well as their Siegfried-like sâdhanâ (Streben) for freedom will supply the Volksseele of Germania not only with its spiritual nourishment but will also furnish for it a bracing milieu of hopefulness and the perennial springs of creative youth.

Notes

1. In 1922 one must observe, however, that both in Persia and Afghanistan Great Britain has been compelled by the force of circumstances to practice a policy of retreat.↩
2. Vide the present author's Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus, Leipzig 1922. ↩
3. Ireland: Far Eastern Tropics, p. 155 (Between 1900 and 1905 Indo-China contributed forty million francs to France).↩