Part 6 (2/2)

”The Open Door in Manchuria--of what concern is it to me any more than the revolution in Portugal or the Young Turks movement in Constantinople?” With some such expression the average American is likely to dismiss the question--a question whose determination may prove the pivot on which will swing the greatest world-movements of our time as well as the prosperity of many European and American industries, and that of the labor dependent upon them.

I

Concerning Manchuria and all the issues involved in the present struggle for its possession, all kinds of misconceptions are rife.

That it is a small country; that it is an infertile country; that it must be already well developed in point of population and consumption of goods: this is only the ABC of Manchurian misinformation.

In answer, it need only be said that Manchuria is larger than all our New England, Middle, and South Atlantic States from Maine to Georgia inclusive, and that into its borders all of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), together with all of the German Empire, could be crowded, and still leave a gap so big that Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland would lack thousands of square miles of filling it: while as to population Manchuria has only 18,000,000 people as compared with {79} 118,000,000 in the European countries just mentioned. And after having travelled in all of them as well as in Manchuria I should say that the Asiatic area is the more fertile.

The possibilities of such an empire situated in the fairest portion of Asia's temperate zone are simply illimitable. No one who has been through the fruitful lands of the American Corn Belt and Wheat Belt and goes later through Manchuria can fail to note the similarity between them in physical appearance and natural resources, and it may well be that what the settlement of the West has meant in America these last fifty years the development of Manchuria will mean in Asia these next fifty.

In itself the sheer creation of such a country--larger far than Great Britain and Germany, as rich as Illinois and Manitoba--would appeal at once to American commerce and industry, but you have only begun to grasp the significance of Manchuria when you compare it to the creation of such an empire in some favored portion of the sea.

Manchuria means all this, but it means more: Its possession would give such vastly increased influence to any Power possessing it as to make that Power a menace to the commercial rights of all other nations in Asia--rights of almost vital importance both to Europe and America.

England and Germany, of course, are already dependent upon foreign trade for their prosperity, and President McKinley was never so seerlike as when, in his last speech at Buffalo, he reminded the American people that their own future greatness depends upon the development of trade beyond the seas. And it was to Asia, the greatest of continents, and especially to China, the greatest of countries on this greatest of continents, that he looked, as we must also look to-day. In Secretary Hay's memorial address on McKinley, which I had the good fortune to hear, the dead President's determined efforts to maintain the ancient integrity of the Dragon Empire were fittingly mentioned as one of his most distinguished services to his people and his time. {80} To keep the immense area of China from spoliation by other nations and to preserve to all peoples equal commercial rights within boundaries are absolutely essential to the proper future development of both European and American commerce and industry.

II

This is why the Open Door in Manchuria is a matter of very real concern to every Occidental citizen; this is why the other nations after the ending of the Russo-j.a.panese War were careful to see that these belligerents guaranteed a continuance of the Open Door policy; this is why it is of importance to us to know whether this pledge is being kept.

In centering my attention upon j.a.pan in this article let me say in the outset, I am not to be understood as being one whit more tolerant of Russian than of j.a.panese aggression in Manchuria--I am not. In the Russo-j.a.panese War my sympathies were all with j.a.pan, my present friends.h.i.+ps with numbers of her sons I prize very highly, but I cannot blind myself to the fact that she is apparently ”drunk with sight of power” in the Orient.

As conditions are to-day, the reason for giving primary attention to j.a.pan's position in Manchuria rather than Russia's must be self-evident. In the first place, the territory embraced in her sphere of influence is more important and contains two thirds the population.

Then again: Northern Manchuria being cold and inhospitable, j.a.pan's sphere not only covers the fairer and more favored section agriculturally, but from the standpoint of military strategy (as a mighty war taught all the world) j.a.pan is vastly better placed. With Port Arthur in her possession, and the new broad-gauge line from Antung and Mukden enabling her to rush troops across the Sea of j.a.pan and through Korea to Manchuria without once getting into foreign waters or on foreign soil, she could ask nothing better. And finally and most significant of all, Russia has {83} suffered perhaps the greatest humiliation in her history by reason of Manchurian aggression; she has learned j.a.pan's point of vantage; and whatever advance she makes in the near future will be only by j.a.panese sufferance and connivance.

{81}

[Ill.u.s.tration: LIKE SCENES FROM OUR WESTERN PRAIRIES.]

Manchuria is a vast empire--one of the most fertile portions of the earth's surface. The great money crop is the soy bean, and the lower picture shows miles of beans and bean-cake awaiting s.h.i.+pment at Changchun.

{82}

[Ill.u.s.tration: MANCHURIAN WOMEN (SHOWING PECULIAR HEAD-DRESS),]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHINESE WASTE-PAPER COLLECTOR.]

Everything in China is scrupulously saved--except human labor. That is wasted on a colossal scale through the failure to use improved machinery or scientific knowledge.

{83 continued}

Whatever may be the meaning of the alleged secret treaty between j.a.pan and Russia, the great truth which all nations need to remember is this: Whatever scotches j.a.panese aggression in Manchuria scotches Russian aggression at the same time--automatically and simultaneously.

To the Open Door in Manchuria j.a.pan carries the key.

III

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