306 National Life and Character 



rule undoubtedly weakens the warlike fibre of the 

 natives, and makes the usurer rather than the soldier 

 the dominant type. 



The danger to which Mr. Pearson alludes, that 

 even the negro peoples may in time become vast mili- 

 tary powers, constituting a menace to Europe, really 

 seems to belong to a period so remote that every 

 condition will have changed to a degree rendering it 

 impossible for us to make any estimate in reference 

 thereto. By that time the descendant of the negro 

 may be as intellectual as the Athenian. Even proph- 

 ecy must not look too many thousand years ahead. 

 It is perfectly possible that European settlements in 

 Africa will be swamped some time by the rising of 

 natives who outnumber them a hundred or a thou- 

 sand to one, but it is not possible that the negroes 

 will form a military menace to the people of the 

 north, at least for a space of time longer than that 

 which now separates us from the men of the River 

 Drift. The negroid peoples, the so-called "hamitic," 

 and bastard Semitic, races of eastern middle Africa 

 are formidable fighters ; but their strength is not fit 

 for any such herculean tasks. 



There is much more reason to fear the industrial 

 competition of these races ; but even this will be less 

 formidable as the power of the State increases and 

 especially as the democratic idea obtains more and 

 more currency. The Russians are not democratic at 

 all, but the State is very powerful with them; and 

 therefore they keep the Chinese out of their Siberian 

 provinces, which are being rapidly filled up with a 



