Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

private purchasers would be materially increased by lowering the price. Nine out of ten readers of novels never think of buying the book. They would not give the four shillings and sixpence commonly asked, and they would agree with Mr. Pecksniff in thinking that the sum of eighteen pence was equally objectionable.' It is in first-class novels that I see the only probable case in which a lowering of price might increase the total profit. But only the 'first bracket' in the class would be affected. There might be as many as three or four such volumes in an exceptionally good year. One class of fiction, commonly called 'gift books,' must be distinguished. Here there is really a large class of purchasers. Some cynic has remarked that Englishmen never buy books except to give them away. It is certainly true that multitudes of people buy volumes of this kind and never think of buying any others. They have an ample store from which to choose, and they are supplied, as it is, at a very low price. Here, again, I fail to see any reason for expecting any large increase of sales. People buy these books now, and probably would not buy many more if the prices were lowered. In their inmost hearts they think the money wasted, but do not much care whether it is five shillings or half-a-crown that they waste in this fashion. A book is anyhow cheaper than any other present.

Then there are the numerous books which are addressed to a special public. There are local histories; a parson writes about his parish; a town clerk about his town; the son of a long-descended house about his family; a nobleman or squire about his seat; if these publications pay their expenses, it is as much as they do. No lowering of prices would increase the sale, simply because there are no other purchasers to be attracted by the concession. Medical books, treatises on technical subjects of all kinds, are in the same case. The readers who want them, who know that they will be helped by them in their work, buy them irrespective of price—that is, within certain limits. A high price will possibly send away a few, a low price will attract a few, but on the whole price is not considered. This accounts for a very large proportion of the total output of books.

Theological books are an important division of the year's publications. These, too, are addressed to a special public; numerous, indeed, but so much divided in its predilections that it does not furnish many purchasers for any one volume. Many, I might perhaps say most, of these books are published at a loss. Even popular preachers are apt to find themselves less sought after when they are in print than when they are in the pulpit. A friend who had been asked to publish a volume of his sermons, told me that a lady of his congregation had said to him, 'Oh ! Mr. G., I am so glad to have had the privilege of reading your book. At last I have been able to borrow it.' She was perfectly well able to spend the five shillings at which the book was priced. It never had occurred to her to buy it.

There are few Englishmen, and still fewer Englishwomen, to whom the idea does occur. There are thousands of well-to-do and even wealthy families whose expenditure on books is nothing or next to nothing. Not one in a thousand spends as much, or even half as much, on them as it does on its wine cellar.

I will conclude by giving what seem to me very significant instances of special books. Nine years ago Messrs. Macmillan published a monumental work by Dr. J. G. Frazer, Pausanias' Description of Greece, translated with a commentary. It was in six volumes, containing in all 3,129 pages and 231 illustrations, plates, and maps. The price was six guineas net, a price that probably seems monstrously high to the advocates of financial reform in books. At the end of the sixth volume is a list of subscribers, a significant document, but not encouraging to those who have the cause of learning at heart. It is worth while to analyse it. Public libraries and colleges took fiftyeight copies; private purchasers, among whom there was one titled person, as many; and booksellers 155. What would have been the effect of halving the price? Possibly a few more libraries and private persons would have purchased the work, but it is as certain as anything not capable of demonstration can be that the increase of numbers would not have made up for the decrease of price. The booksellers would scarcely have increased, and would quite possibly have diminished their orders. The lower price would have meant a much smaller profit. The fact is that in works of this kind the patron is still wanted. There the patron was Trinity College, Cambridge, a wealthy body, as wealth is reckoned in the realm of learning, which thrice renewed Dr. Frazer's fellowship in order to set him free for his work. In his acknowledgments of his Preface, Dr. Frazer puts next to his College his publishers, whom he thanks for their readiness in undertaking and their 'unflinching determination' in carrying out the work. I wonder whether any one of the fifteen thousand whom Mr. Henniker Heaton rallied round the banner of cheap books stirred a finger to help. It is certainly a good thing for literature in general that the public has taken the place of the patron; but it is not the less true that for some at least of the books that really count, that will be remembered and used long after the ephemeral multitude is forgotten, the public is not to be relied upon. If it be urged that Pausanias with his store of information about Greek art and religion appeals to a few only, what about the Dictionary of National Biography? That should have appealed to every Englishman, but we should not have had it except for the enterprise and generosity of a publisher, Mr. George Smith, and he, I believe, did not make this gift to his country, for such it really was, out of the profits of his business. In the presence of such facts these clamorous complaints seem to be as ungracious as they are ignorant.

ALFRED J. CHURCH.

PAN-ISLAMISM

THE European Powers, in their colonial enterprises and 'spheres of influence,' would seem to have created for themselves a situation singularly abnormal and unstable in equilibrium if, as is the case, the slightest manifestation of vitality on their frontiers, extending over thousands of miles of territory, at once arrests their attention and produces alarm; any tendency towards progress beyond those frontiers becomes a sign of danger to them; any revival, however small, among the inhabitants is at once construed into a menace directed against their authority and their prestige. Not so long ago Europe considered herself menaced by the 'Yellow Peril.' And what was the nature of this 'peril'? Was it that the yellow races had manifested a desire to invade Europe? Certainly not. The 'peril,' which was so much noised about at the time, did not menace the tranquillity of Europe, but it did jeopardise the hope of the colonising Powers bringing under their perpetual yoke this yellow race, whose supposed ethnical inferiority, from the European point of view, was not worthy of a better fate. The unexpected revival of the Far East, however, which apparently the European Powers would have preferred to remain perpetually backward, caused them uneasiness. To encompass its subjugation, therefore, they planned the dismemberment of the Chinese Empire and the enforced submission of Japan; and with this object in view they undertook various military expeditions, posthumous manifestations, after a fashion, of the piracies of by-gone ages. Happily for the good of humanity their efforts proved abortive; and finally the brilliant victories of the Japanese over the Muscovites, who represented the superiority of the European races, till then uncontested, and the serious anti-foreign activities of reawakened China, gave the finishing stroke to the colonial aspirations of Europe in that quarter of the globe.

If a large slice of the exploitable world thus escaped their domination, the European Powers consoled themselves with the idea that the whole Islamic family of estates still remained to satisfy their rapacity and vanity. But ever since these 'yellow devils' gave to the world a demonstration of the most efficacious method of getting rid of the yoke of Europe, they find that even in these, her private preserves,'

her political supremacy, hitherto considered unshakable, is losing ground. She is getting uneasy about the new spirit of independence which is manifesting itself in the Islamic world, so much so that she has now substituted a 'Mussulman Peril' for the Yellow Peril ' and has called it by a name coined for the occasion, that of 'PanIslamism.'

[ocr errors]

Now, the 'Mussulman Peril' is a danger that Europe need not dread any more than the Yellow Peril,' because it is equally free from an aggressive spirit, and is in reality nothing more or less than the awakening of the Mussulman consciousness, tired at last of Western tutelage, which hinders more and more the development of Mussulman society. If Europe is more alarmed at this movement, it is because the new 'peril' is a menace not only to her future projects, as was the case with the 'Yellow Peril,' but also to her already long-established colonial exploitations. Therefore, taking advantage of the geographical position of Mussulman countries which lie on her frontiers and surround her own possessions, she magnifies the peril and distorts its true significance by proclaiming that Pan-Islamism threatens the very existence of modern civilisation-all that heritage of the accumulated labours of centuries, which constitutes at once the glory and the blessing of the human race; that it incites the ignorant masses and barbarians to the worst excesses and to most unjustifiable violence; in short, that in the midst of the twentieth century it reproduces in all their horror the barbarities which the Christians practised in the Middle Ages. Briefly, in our days, it is of no consequence to Europe to rescue the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem from the 'infidels,' because it could not be in better hands, but rather to defend human civilisation against Mussulman fanaticism and barbarity.

It has been known for a long time how untrue as a rule is the European estimation of things Oriental; but never before had this estimation proved itself so tainted with partiality, so contrary to reality, and so little justified even by the most misleading appearances. Consequently, the number is large of those Mussulmans who are asking themselves if it is not a monstrous calumny invented by the Powers most directly interested in the Islamic countries as a justification for designs of excessive repression with a view to stem the tide of Moslem revival and to maintain the Mussulman world in its present state of bondage.

It is, therefore, of the utmost importance in the interests both of truth and of general harmony to define in the clearest and most sincerely honest manner the true character of Pan-Islamism, its aim, the circumstances which gave it birth, and its possible consequences, in order to avoid, while yet there is time, those misunderstandings which cannot but still further envenom the present unsatisfactory relations between the East and the West. This is, indeed, an eminently humanitarian work in which everyone should co-operate to the best VOL. LXI-No. 363

3 K

of his abilities. It is, however, a task especially incumbent on enlightened Mussulmans, because it is their cause that is under discussion, it is their legitimate aspirations that are in danger of being represented in a distorted shape by certain interested politicians and certain specialists on Oriental questions, strangers to our society and our people, who arrogate to themselves an authority which we are unable to admit. We must no longer suffer these illustrious Orientalists with their inexhaustible store of antiquarian scholarship to place in a false light before European public opinion questions of such vital importance, such intense actuality, and such profound interest to the Moslem community. Nor must we allow them to lead that opinion into channels that are intentionally tortuous and dark. To a few honoured names among them we do most willing homage; but the great majority, no doubt, think that in order to become qualified to treat of questions of the utmost importance to Mussulmans, to discuss their most cherished aspirations, or even their religious doctrines, with an easy self-confidence and imperturbability which never fail to astonish us profoundly in spite of the frequency of these cases-that in order to do all this it is only necessary for them to know, more or less imperfectly, some Oriental language or languages, to have travelled from time to time on business or pleasure in Mussulman countries, and to have put a few questions to some local functionary or interpreter versed in their own language. But, at this rate, there would be found many among Orientals who could boast of being consummate 'Occidentalists,' because, after all, their knowledge of the languages and literatures of Europe, of its manners and morals and spirit, of its mode of thought and psychology, is incontestably superior to the knowledge of the Orient possessed by many of the Orientalists and specialists most in vogue. A large number of highly enlightened Orientals have lived in Europe for long years, have finished their education there and kept up social relations with its people, but I don't know of one who has assumed the title of 'Occidentalist.' The reason is simple. They have recognised the fact that these two peoples are separated by such fundamental differences, based on their widely different mentality, that no Oriental can ever become an 'Occidentalist,' any more than an Occidentalist can become an Orientalist' in the true sense of the word.

It is to be hoped that these gentlemen will permit, without taking offence, the remark that Pan-Islamism is not, as they pretend, the grouping together of Moslem communities under the flag of some despotism which would urge them on to carnage; nor is it the political union of peoples professing the same religion. It is neither an occult religious sect nor a secret political association; it is merely a free and complete expression of progress in Moslem societies. It is a compact tacitly entered into by the most enlightened classes of the Mussulman nations, with an object which is purely moral and intellectual. It is

« VorigeDoorgaan »