I have long wished to record my protest against the entire faith reposed by us Europeans in the sagacity and finesse of our diplomatic methods. It probably dates from the time when embassies were an indispensable necessity without which intercourse between nations was virtually impossible; for which reason the representatives of a country were bound to represent it seriously, and fairly to interpret its needs and desires, at the risk of being held responsible for grave disaster. Still more, as I think, is the diplomatic legend due to the fact that our diplomatists, who are usually selected from among the richest and most highly born of our citizens, and who always receive handsome pay, have gloried in assuming an air of lofty dignity, in impressive silence and appropriate gestures, while the actual attention bestowed upon their proper business was in an inverse ratio to its importance: just as the poor Machiavellis and Guicciardinis of the olden time, reduced to inaction by the Medici government, used to send bustling couriers from point to point within their territory, in order to give themselves the air of transacting important state-business, when the matter in hand might perhaps be the choice of a preaching friar for the capital city. At present our foreign representatives occupy themselves with sport rather than sermons, with state-balls, receptions, formal visits, official reports and the observance of minute points of etiquette:-seldom indeed, save under exceptional circumstances, with a careful study of the commercial, social and political conditions of the countries to which they are accredited. And how should it be otherwise? In their appointment, the

Translated for The Living Age.

first requisite is held to be that they should be titled nobility of the oldfashioned stamp; the second that they should have large private means and a general disposition to spend money lavishly in vain display. If not noble, they must be men of high military rank, of whose ability to manage matters outside their own sufficiently difficult sphere we have lately had some striking illustrations.

It is thus that I explain the heavy misfortunes we have lately sustained through revolts in various places, and those disastrous military enterprises, entirely disproportionate to the strength of the foe into which the most intelligent among us may well have been be trayed through a lack of proper diplomatic information, through not having been warned in time of the dangers we were confronting. I say nothing of that perilous moment when we discovered the previously unsuspected fact that the foe was upon us in Africa, one hundred thousand strong, and when we came within an ace of plunging into a general war and of losing both our insignificant navy and the small amount of money still remaining in our treasury, by invading a country which we could never have conquered, and which would have been of no use to us, if we had done so. Fortunately or unfortunately we are not alone. Germany, and even England, hitherto supposed to be so exceptionally well-informed about the condition of foreign peoples, are showing, in this matter of the Chinese insurrection, an immense ignorance of a country which, as I myself in these pages' and many others elsewhere, have vainly attempted to show, possesses an enormous popula

1 Italy in China, and the Yellow Danger. Nuova Antologia. March 16, 1899.

tion, a civilization differing widely from our own indeed, but ancient and powerful, and a tenacious and exclusive sentiment of patriotic and filial devotion; a country, too, which, from having been able to avoid the divisions and disasters which the rest of us have sustained through militarism, feudalism, industrialism and priestly superstition, constitutes for Europe a tremendous menace; not merely on account of the resistance which may be expected from innumerable hordes inspired by political fanaticism, but through the perpetual revolts due to an invincible antipathy of race which would be sure to arise, even if victory were won. Add also the fact that being able to command the best kind of manual labor at a much lower price than we, subjugated China would soon effect a far worse than warlike invasion of our territory, appearing in our markets as a most formidable industrial competitor.

But the diplomatists of Europe, animated by ideas which are, to say the least of it, academic and out of date, have been placing full reliance on their land and naval forces, and the supposed strategic weakness of the foe. They have overlooked the fact that what is needed to make a good soldier is a thing so quickly learned as to make it well worth the while even of a nation which had advanced to a higher point of civilization in this respect, to take a step backward and turn warlike again. Also that a nation animated by a mighty passion is to some extent independent of artful strategy, and can moreover impart to its soldiers that utter contempt for death which renders them peculiarly formidable to men fighting far away from home, who easily forget that they are fighting for an idea and are all the sooner discouraged, because they arrive in a presumably unhealthy country, worn out by an exhausting sea-voyage, and knowing perfectly well that if they do fall

into the hands of the enemy they may expect the most cruel treatment.

But the majority of our diplomatists in the East care for none of these things. Several of those, especially of the other Powers, who have been longest on the spot, have large interests on the turf. One is not a diplomat for nothing, and sport is of course the great concern. But meanwhile they have quite overlooked both the volcano seething under their feet and the perfect mutual accord subsisting in China, between the common people, the government, the army and the religious sects; an accord rendered sufficiently apparent by the movement of troops, casually noted now and again in some Anglo-Oriental journal, and by the alleged murder of occasional Europeans. They have been equally apathetic about the immense improvement both in the instruments and the art of warfare, which China has achieved since the war with Japan; the fact being that she has purchased no less than 600,000 muskets with money raised on European loans, by the sage advice of diplomatists who plumed themselves on the transaction and regarded it as a triumph of one of the Powers, namely Russia, over the others, and over England in particular. I am but an insignificant quill-driver, without wealth or title, who have already denounced the Yellow Danger, and the absolute futility of attempting to conquer a people so compact and so superior, in many ways, to ourselves as the people of China. But it is hardly to be expected that the traveller in a coroneted carriage should pay much heed to the suggestions of a halting pedestrian, who has immersed himself in books and maps instead of covering his breast with orders. Are there not those who still defend the expedition of San Mun, notwithstanding the fact that if it had not been thwarted by the Opposition, we should be at this moment in the throes of an enormously

costly and utterly profitless war? And our ignorance is apparently shared by those whom we have been accustomed to regard as the ablest of all statisticians and diplomatists,-I mean the Germans, who are lamenting, by the mouth of their emperor, that they have not already helped themselves to a larger piece of China! As if the energy, the zeal and the huge numbers of the Chinese-distant as they are from Germany-were quantities so entirely négligeable, that nothing would have been needed for their complete subjugation except a few more ships than the Germans happened to have in hand; not to mention the fact that the said ships-if they had had them, could never have navigated the great rivers and canals which are the principal channels of communication throughout that mighty empire.

It is much the same with America, involved against her own fundamental principles, and with an insufficient fighting force, in a costly and most unpopular war against the Philippines, whose only sin is a desire to be free, and over whom, after a year's fighting, the United States have not gained one jot of substantial advantage.

Even more inadequate to the occasion have the statesmen of England shown themselves in the war with the Boers, whom they confidently expected to beat in a few months; utterly ignoring the immense tactical, geographical and especially ethnical difficulties they had to encounter;-and simply deriding the rest of us when we foretold the same.

And now it is said that the English had not even a trustworthy topographical map of the country about TienTsin, and it is certain that Seymour plunged into an almost impracticable territory, where both water and grain were scarce, with a dash that may have been heroic, but which we cannot but consider reckless, even while

we make vows for his complete success in the rescue of the colonists and legations.

But when I hear certain strong partisans crying out, "You see now! Antimilitarism is utterly bankrupt and everything goes to show that what we have now to do is to increase our inadequate armaments an hundred fold!” I answer most emphatically, "Not at all! It is diplomacy which is bankrupt. It is the diplomats, who instead of restraining the dangerously rapacious impulses of the peoples whom they represent, have spurred them on, blindfold, to certain defeat, through the quality of the climate in which they had to fight, and the character of the populations they were expected to subdue. Whereas, on the other hand, if we had had the wisdom to bridle all this vain bluster, we might have remained in the secure enjoyment of such blessings as arise from a good mutual understanding among the European states, and our own troops need never have been exposed in action save under the circumstances when action is required, and supported by those grand ideals which are the best inspiration in warfare, and the strongest bond.

No,-what we need at this moment is not to reinforce our armaments and multiply their instruments of destruction, but to protect life and property by the selection of good foreign representatives. Let them be wealthy and titled if need be, but let them at all events be thoroughly instructed; and to this end let us strenuously require a many-sided culture; most of all in the languages of the lands to which they are sent, their history and their ethnography. Let the standard be as high as for university professorships-and higher, since our diplomats hold in their hands the destinies of the whole country. Let us revive the practice of the mediæval republics-especially of Venice and Florence-by insisting on

A solitary walking tour is not for the genial mind the most alluring of dissipations. It is all very well to proclaim oneself a vagabond, and hobnob with roadside rascals, village innkeepers, slouching peasants and women loaded with baskets by way of social converse. A walking tour is best enjoyed à deux. It is some time now since I have projected a prolonged tramp through the forest of Fontainebleau, but have never been able to carry out my plan, for lack of a comrade. Women may bicycle, but alas! the tramp's vocation is rarely revealed in them. They do not like idle exercise through miles of wood, though they will gladly wear shoe-leather for hours at a stretch on pavements lined with shops. Their general understanding of Fontainebleau is a "Murray" or "Badeker" superintended visit to the Palace, edifying reflections in the Allée of Madame de Maintenon, a drive at the coachman's will and pleasure to the accepted point of admiration, and an unusually long hotel bill. For the hotels of Fontainebleau are famed purse-unloaders. With this conventional experience I was familiar, and had no mind to renew it. What I yearned for was the experiment of sleep beneath the trees, hours of idle gazing; to break away from the high roads of the forest and, if possible, in spite of blue arrows and rigid instructions on all sides for the wanderer's guidance, to lose myself among the diverse aisles and naves of that cheerful cathedral.

Chance one evening led to my door the ideal comrade: a youth, not so young as to fill me with alarm of spirits and enthusiasm pitched too high for my own more cynical and more sober hour; not so old as to cause misgivings on the score of scandal, propriety

or sentiment. Not in the least literary, though fond of books, and capable of talking of them; nothing of the Bohemian or artist, which I devoutly abhor; able to keep his demeanor of nice and well-mannered young fellow while drowsily lolling under benignant foliage at an African temperature, with hat tilted over eyes, in abandoned shirt-sleeves. In a word, an admirable travelling companion, with temper well in training and courtesy ever on the surface; neither effaced nor aggressive in character; to whose judgment I found it extremely fresh and diverting to relinquish all the details of our exexcursion. Alexandre, my pleasant young comrade, said at the end that the experiment was very chic. I more poetically recalled the wanderings of Consuelo and Joseph Haydn. But Alexandre had not read "Consuelo," and, though he will not admit it, that is his loss. He professes to despise George Sand. You see, he is so young! His god is Wagner, and he would persist of an evening, when the stars were out, and a youth of an earlier generation would have recited poetry and mused upon his lost love, in humming different choruses from "Parsifal" and "Tristan," till exasperated nerves could no longer stand the test, and I threatened to plant him there and seek refuge in solitude. But no outbreak of mine could ruffle the placidity of his genial temper. He imperturbably regretted my inability to rise to the grandeur of Wagner's choruses as interpreted by him in the forest of Fontainebleau. It is doubtful if Wagner himself would have appreciated the interpretation any more than I did.

Our start was anything but felicitous. A dense tropical downpour fell as if through a million waterspouts. We