The Great Pacifist. 



6ii 



all force, of gt-nerul disarmament, and the adoption of 

 what arc usually recognised as peace principles. When 

 I succeeded Mr. Morley as editor of the Pall Mall 

 Gazelle 1 preached this doctrine of a beneficent Impe- 

 rialism and the necessity for using the policeman to 

 exorcise the soldier with the utmost energy and 

 enthusiasm. .Mfred Milner, now High Commissioner 

 at the Cape, was my assistant and worked with me 

 on these lines, and together we reared a school of 

 journalists and politicians whose influence has been felt 

 in every corner of the Empire. 



CORDON SENT TO KHARTOUM. 



It was as editor of the Fall Mall Gazelle that 

 I succeeded in cornpelling the Government to 

 send out General Gordon to evacuate the Soudan, 

 believing that it was shameful on our part to pro- 

 claim the abandonment of the country and to take 

 no adequate steps to secure the safe retirement of 

 the abandoned garrisons. General Gordon being 

 besieged in Khartoum, I insisted upon the despatch 

 of Lord Wolseley to rescue him from the perilous 

 position in which he was placed by a Government 

 which had refused either to allow him a free hand or 

 to supply him with an adequate force to carry out his 

 instructions. This led many to hold me responsible 

 for the wur in the Soudan, but an examination of every- 

 thing that 1 wrote in those days will vindicate me from 

 such an accusation. When Gordon fell, I was the first 

 to protest against the wild cry for vengeance which was 

 raised in this country, and no one felt more humiliated 

 than myself at the horrible blasphemy perpetrated ten 

 years later by Lord Kitchener when he desecrated the 

 tomb of the Mahdi and held a solemn Christian service 

 of thanksgiving in the midst of the corpses of those who 

 were slain in the avenging of Gordon. 



IMI'KR[.\LISM NOT JINGOISM. 



That my lni|)erialism was really conditioned by 

 moral considerations, and was in no way to be con- 

 founded with Jingoism, may be proved by the fact that 

 I was a vehement advocate for the restoration of self- 

 government to the Boers before and after the battle 

 of Majuba Hill. .\ still more signal illustration was 

 afforded by the part which it was my privilege to play 

 in 1885, when Mr. (iladstone, with the whole country at 

 his back, prepared for war with Russia on the subject 

 of the .\fghan frontier. It was my glory at that time 

 to have been the only English journalist who main- 

 tained day after day, in the heart of a hostile country, 

 the cause of peace. The pwrt which I played in averting 

 war on that occasion has been gratefully recognised 



both in England and in Russia, and is bitterlydenounced 

 by those who were thirsting for war. 



THE TRUTH ABOUT THE NAVY. 



I had always been a strong opponent of conscription. 

 Compulsory military service seemed to me detestable, 

 but in 1884 I realised with horror that the British Navy 

 had sunk to such a condition of comparative weakness 

 that conscription might any day become inevitable 

 owing to the collapse of our first line of defence. I wrote 

 a series of articles, entitled " The Truth About the 

 Navy," which led to the rebuilding of the British Xavy, 

 and .so averted a threatened danger. But the demand 

 for an increased navy, which alone stood between us 

 and the curse of compulsory military service, was bit- 

 terly resented by those whose one idea of peace was to 

 cut down armaments. 



RHODES AS I.MI'ERIALIST STATESMAN. 



In those days I made the acquaintance of Mr. Cecil 

 Rhodes, to whom I was naturally attracted on account 

 of the liberality with which he supported the Irish in 

 their struggle for Home Rule. Jlr. Rhodes in those 

 days was the great champion of the Dutch of South 

 Africa. He was distrusted by the English Tories on 

 the ground of his sympathies with the Africander Bond. 

 But I recognised with delight that there was in South 

 ,\frica an Imperialist statesman who had the sagacity 

 to perceive that the strength and prosperity of the 

 British Empire in that continent depended upon the 

 conciliation of the Dutch, and for the years during 

 which he was faithful to that policy I was his most 

 strenuous supporter on the English Press. 



REUNION OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING RACE. 



At the same lime as I was preaching those doctrines 

 in the Pall Mall Gazelle I was ever passionately plead- 

 ing for the removal of every cau.se of friction between 

 the two great halves of the English-speaking race. I 

 never ceased to deplore the infatuation which led 

 George III. and his advisers in the last century to drive 

 the .American colonists into revolt, and I laboured 

 in season and out of season for the re-union of the 

 English-speaking race. So far was 1 from indulging in 

 any of the vainglory of naticnalism of the Jingoistic 

 type, that 1 have repeatedly declared that to secure 

 the re-union of the English-speaking race I would 

 willingly merge the independent existence of the 

 British Empire in the .American Kepui)li<-, if that union 

 could be brought about in no other way. Always and 

 everywhere I argued for the elimination of points of 

 difference, the establishment of a federal system which 

 would secure the peaceful reign of law in the place of 



