Romano-British

“ Russia he might weaken and cajole; France he thought to subdue; Austria-Hungary was obedient; Italy might be persuaded; and as for the smaller nations, his foot would be on their necks. But what of the British Empire? Supreme on all seas, owning one-fifth of the habitable globe, peaceable until attacked, but when attacked indomitably stubborn, the English would never consent to an European hegemony. They might be deceived for a time; but ultimately, it seems, they must be vanquished. Now and again, in the course of the letters, that conviction of the GERMAN EMPEROR is vividly revealed. ”

“ Great enterprises have ever attracted some base adherents, and these by their very presence seem to sully every achievement recorded of nations or cities. But to arraign the fountain and the end of the high action because of this baser alloy? To impeach on this account all the valour, all the wisdom long approved? Reply is impossible; the thing simply is not British.
Indeed, in very deed, it is for another cause, and for another ideal—an ideal that, gathering to itself down the ages the ardour of their battle-cries, falls in all the splendour of a new hope about the path of England now. ”

“ The intentions of the British, as compared with the Roman Government are, however, noteworthy from one point of view, inasmuch as from a correct appreciation of those intentions it is possible to evolve a principle perhaps in some degree calculated to avert the consequences which befell Rome, partly by reason of fiscal errors. ”

“ Writing of the conquest of the British Isles by the Germans, J. R. Green says: “What strikes us at once in the new England is this, that it was the one purely German nation that rose upon the wreck of Rome. In other lands, in Spain or Gaul or Italy, though they were equally conquered by German peoples, religion, social life, administrative order, still remained Roman.” The roots of our civilization, are to be dug for in those days when the German peoples met the imperialism and the Christianity of Rome, and absorbed and renewed them. ”

“ It was very difficult in the ancient Roman Empire to become civis Romanus, because this Empire was founded upon the Pagan philosophy of lords and servants. It is, on the contrary, very easy in the British Empire of to-day to become a British citizen, because the British Empire is founded upon the Christian philosophy of democratic equality and brotherhood. All is not accomplished, but I say it is an experiment, and a good one; a prophecy, and a hopeful one.
Fourth: Great Britain is destined by Providence to be a great educator of nations. ”

“ Some people even in the allied countries are affected by doubts of this kind. The Russian Socialists, for whom imperialism has in the past meant nothing but a hideous repression of freedom, are ready to assume that the British Empire, because it is called an empire, must mean the same ugly things. And criticism of the same kind can sometimes be heard in France, in Italy, in the United States, and in Britain herself. ”

“ The British love of justice will triumph in this contest. Why, the history of England is pledged as security therefore.
Such to-day is the opinion of the four great nations of Christian Europe. What if the despotic power of the French Emperor be against us ; what if, for a moment, the cotton lords of England lead a few writers and politicians to attempt the restoration of bondage; the conscience of England and her history, the intelligence of France and Germany, the example of Russia are on our side. Yes, the teachings of universal human history. ”

“ The creation of the British Empire has been simply a part (though, perhaps, the greatest part) of that outpouring of the European peoples which has, during the last four centuries, brought the whole world under the influence of western civilisation. That is a great achievement, and it has brought in sight the establishment of a real world-order. It is merely foolish to condemn the "lust of conquest" which has driven the European peoples to subdue the rest of the world, though, of course, we ought to condemn the cruelties and injustices by which it has sometimes been accompanied. ”

“ For in very truth, in all that freedom and all that justice possess of power towards good amongst men, is not England as it were earth's central shrine and this race the vanguard of humanity?
Rome was the synthesis of the empires of the past, of Hellas, of Egypt, of Assyria. In her purposes their purposes lived. Mediaeval imperialism strove not to rival Rome but to be Rome. In Britain the spirit of Empire receives a new incarnation. ”

“ The conquerors might partially Germanise London, but, on the other hand, if the thing were skilfully managed, the British element within the Empire might impress the mark of its influence on everything German. The fighting men might remain Prussian or Bavarian, but the thinking men, and eventually the ruling men, could gradually come under British influence, or even be of British blood. ”

“ Alone among the German assailants of Rome the English stood aloof from the faith of the Empire they helped to overthrow. The new England was a heathen country. Homestead and boundary, the very days of the week, bore the names of new gods who displaced Christ.
As we stand amidst the ruins of town or country-house which recall to us the wealth and culture of Roman Britain, it is hard to believe that a conquest which left them heaps of crumbling stones was other than a curse to the land over which it passed. ”

“ We see daily the accounts published of the treatment of our own and the subjects of other Asiatic nations by sections of our colonial empire, As this was the cause of the downfall of Greece, it maybe the beginning of the downfall of our empire. Should the pernicious doctrines and theoretical fads of a large and increasing body of members of the British Empire succeed, legislation may be carried by them in the parliament of Great Britain, and the overthrow of our vast empire may follow. As the barbarians from without overthrew Rome, the barbarians from within may do the same for Great Britain. ”

“ This much, however, may be said, that whilst British Imperialism is not exposed to many of the dangers which proved fatal to Imperial Rome, there is one principle adopted by the early founders of the Roman Empire which is fraught with enduring political wisdom, and which may be applied as well now as it was nineteen centuries ago. ”

“ You see, the British Empire has no common economic interests and no natural common enemy. It is not adapted to any form of Zollverein or any form of united aggression. Visibly, on the map of the world it has a likeness to open hands, while the German Empire—except for a few ill-advised and imitative colonies—is clenched into a central European unity. ”

“ The utter failure of even the most eminent Germans to grasp British politics, British institutions, and the British point of view points to a fundamental misunderstanding, a fundamental divergence of outlook, between the political ideals of the two countries. It is the conflict between these ideals which forms the second great issue between Germany and Great Britain; and on its outcome depends the future of human civilisation.
§2. Culture.—What is the German ideal? What do German thinkers regard as Germany's contribution to human progress? ”

“ The empire of Britain is vaster in space, in population, in wealth, in wide variety of possession, in a history of multiplied and manifold achievement of every kind, than even the glorious empire of Rome. Yet, unlike Rome, Britain has won dominion in every clime, has carried her flag by conquest and settlement to the uttermost ends of the earth, at the very time that haughty and powerful rivals, in their abounding youth or strong maturity, were eager to set bounds to her greatness, and to tear from her what she had won afar. ”

“ It is only fair to the later Romano-Britons, to remember that all the flower of the youth of Britain had been carried away by one general and emperor after another, to fight the battles of Rome, or to support the claims of a usurper of the imperial purple, in Gaul and Spain and [Pg 35] Italy; and when the imperial troops were finally withdrawn, the older men and the less hardy of the youths of Britain were left to cope with enemies who had baffled the Roman arms. ”

“ In the throes of hierarchical government, torn by three irreconcilable religions,—polytheistic, Julian or Augustan, and Christian,—she had no strength to spare for these outsiders when her own life was at stake. The story of Roman Britain is the old story which history repeats down all the ages: Rome sacrificed one part of Europe that the whole might not be lost, and offered up the few for the good of the greater number. ”

“ Consider in contrast with these empires the question—What is the distinction in this phase of human life of the Empire of Britain, of its history? Steadily growing from its first beginnings—shall I say, from that great battle of the Winwaed, where three Kings are in conflict and the slayer of two lies dead—steadily growing, on to the present hour, as in politics so in religion, the effort sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious, but persistent, continuous, towards an ever purer, higher, nobler conception of man's relations to the Divine. ”

“ The ancient boundary between the Roman Empire and Germany was restored, but at a cost which the former could not pay a second time. For a hundred and fifty years longer the Emperors preserved their territory: Rome still ruled, in name, from Spain to the Tigris, from Scotland to the Desert of Sahara, but her power was like a vast, hollow shell. Luxury, vice, taxation and continual war had eaten out the heart of the Empire; Italy had grown weak and was slowly losing its population, and the same causes were gradually ruining Spain, Gaul and Britain. ”

“ The ideal of modern life, the ideal of which Britain is the supreme representative amongst existing empires, starting not from justice but from freedom, may be traced beyond the French Revolution and the Reformation, back even to the command "Render unto Caesar." That word thrust itself like a wedge into the ancient unity of the State and God. ”

“ Then the Romans had introduced a military administrative constitution, which displaced this tribal system, while it also subjected Britain to the universal Empire, of which it formed only an unimportant province. A characteristic form of life was first built up in Britain by the Anglo-Saxons on the ruins of the Roman rule. The union into which they entered with the civilised world was the freely chosen one of the religion of the human race; they had no other connexion to control them. ”

“ Britain, with all her virgin wealth unmined, furnished Rome with enormous food supplies; sent many thousand men to serve with Roman armies on the continent; and received the colonists, called auxiliaries, brought thither in accordance with Rome's invariable policy of transplanting to the land of one nation captives from another. Thus the population of Britain, composed of people from nearly every race or tribe which has been subdued by Rome, was strangely heterogeneous, yet as strangely fused. ”

“ Britain was the only one of the greater European States which possessed self-governing institutions. She has been, in truth (this is not a boast, but a mere statement of indisputable historical fact) , the inventor of political liberty on the scale of the great nation-state, as Greece was the inventor of political liberty on the scale of the little city-state. And wherever free institutions exist to-day, they have been derived from Britain, either by inheritance, as in America and the self-governing British colonies, or by imitation, as in all other cases. ”

“ Knowing that the Britons were a very fierce and brave people, he sent against them an army of forty thousand men under the command of two skilful generals.
When the inhabitants of southern Britain saw the sea about their coasts covered with Roman vessels, while more vessels were always appearing above the horizon, their anger and dismay knew no bounds. They knew that the Romans were the bravest and most skilful soldiers in the world, and that they had come to conquer them if they could, and to take their country away from them. ”

“ But in reflecting minds on the Continent, on the really great in all countries, it has produced the effect of deep reflection, and anxious investigation. They have already begun to contemplate the astonishing and long-continued empire of Great Britain as we, and all subsequent ages, have so long done the corresponding, and only parallel, dominion reared by the arms of the Roman legions. ”

“ But in the first century of the Christian era they were conquered by the Romans, who added Britain to their vast empire and held it against attacks from without and rebellions from within by stationing legions, or troops of soldiers, in strongly fortified places all over the country. Now, from their conquerors, the Britons learnt many useful arts, to read and to write, to build houses and to make roads; but at the same time, they unlearnt some of their own virtues and, among others, how to think and act for themselves. ”

“ The student of this main problem in European history, the fate of Britain, must particularly note the phenomenon here described. It is the capital point of proof that Roman Britain, though suffering grievously from the Angle, Saxon, Scotch, and Irish raids, and though cut off for a time from civilization, did survive.
Those who prefer to think of England as a colony of barbarians in which the European life was destroyed, have to suppress many a truth and to conceive many an absurdity in order to support their story ”