The same society lady who expects the Hindoos to accept her view of politics has herself accepted their view of religion.  She wants first to steal their earth, and then to share their heaven.  The same Imperial cynic who wishes the Turks to submit to English science has himself submitted to Turkish philosophy, to a wholly Turkish view of despotism and destiny.

There is an obvious and amusing proof of this in a recent life of Rhodes.  The writer admits with proper Imperial gloom the fact that Africa is still chiefly inhabited by Africans.  He suggests Rhodes in the South confronting savages and Kitchener in the North facing Turks, Arabs, and Soudanese, and then he quotes this remark of Cecil Rhodes:  “It is inevitable fate that all this should be changed; and I should like to be the agent of fate.”  That was Cecil Rhodes’s one small genuine idea; and it is an Oriental idea.

Here we have evident all the ultimate idiocy of the present Imperial position.  Rhodes and Kitchener are to conquer Moslem bedouins and barbarians, in order to teach them to believe only in inevitable fate.  We are to wreck provinces and pour blood like Niagara, all in order to teach a Turk to say “Kismet “; which he has said since his cradle.  We are to deny Christian justice and destroy international equality, all in order to teach an Arab to believe he is “an agent of fate,” when he has never believed anything else.  If Cecil Rhodes’s vision could come true (which fortunately is increasingly improbable), such countries as Persia or Arabia would simply be filled with ugly and vulgar fatalists in billycocks, instead of with graceful and dignified fatalists in turbans.  The best Western idea, the idea of spiritual liberty and danger, of a doubtful and romantic future in which all things may happen—­this essential Western idea Cecil Rhodes could not spread, because (as he says himself) he did not believe in it.

It was an Oriental who gave to Queen Victoria the crown of an Empress in addition to that of a Queen.  He did not understand that the title of King is higher than that of Emperor.  For in the East titles are meant to be vast and wild; to be extravagant poems:  the Brother of the Sun and Moon, the Caliph who lives for ever.  But a King of England (at least in the days of real kings) did not bear a merely poetical title; but rather a religious one.  He belonged to his people and not merely they to him.  He was not merely a conqueror, but a father—­yes, even when he was a bad father.  But this sort of solid sanctity always goes with local affections and limits:  and the Cecil Rhodes Imperialism set up not the King, but the Sultan; with all the typically Eastern ideas of the magic of money, of luxury without uproar; of prostrate provinces and a chosen race.  Indeed Cecil Rhodes illustrated almost every quality essential to the Sultan, from the love of diamonds to the scorn of woman.

THE ARCHITECT OF SPEARS