Part 2 (2/2)
”In order to render China powerful, and at the same time preserve our own inst.i.tutions, it is absolutely necessary that we should utilise Western knowledge. But unless Chinese learning is made the basis of education, and a Chinese direction given to thought, the strong will become anarchists, and the weak slaves. Thus the latter end will be worse than the former.... Travel abroad for one year is more profitable than study at home for five years. It has been well said that seeing is a hundred times better than hearing. One year's study in a foreign inst.i.tution is better than three years in a Chinese. Mencius remarks that a man can learn foreign things best abroad; but much more benefit can be derived from travel by older and experienced men than by the young, and high mandarins can learn more than petty officials.... Cannot China follow the _viam mediam_, and learn a lesson from j.a.pan? As the case stands to-day, study by travel can be better done in that country than in Europe, for the following reasons.... If it were deemed advisable, some students could afterwards be sent to Europe for a fuller course.”
After the Russian-j.a.panese War Chinese students went to j.a.pan in thousands, and these students laid the foundation of the Republican school of reformers which is the greatest of the forces striving for mastery in China to-day. The flow of students to j.a.pan was soon checked by the then Chinese Government, for the reason that Republican sentiments seemed to be absorbed in the atmosphere of j.a.pan, despite the absolutism of the Government there. In the United States and in Europe the Chinese scholar was able, however, to absorb Western knowledge without acquiring Republican opinions! There is some suggestion of a grim jest on the part of the Chinese in holding to this view. It recalls Boccaccio's story of the Christian who despaired of the conversion of his Jewish friend when he knew that he contemplated a visit to Rome. The Chinese seemed to argue that a safe precaution against acquiring Republican views is to live in a Republican country. Chinese confidence in the educational advantages offered by the United States has been justified by results. American-educated Chinese are prominent in every phase of the Reform movement in China, except Republican agitation. The first Reform Foreign Minister in China, the first great native Chinese railway builder, the first Chinese women doctors, the greatest native Chinese banker, are examples of American training.
It would be outside the scope of this work to attempt to deal in any way exhaustively with the present position in China. What the ultimate outcome will be, it is impossible to forecast. At present a Republic is in process of formation, after the baby Emperor through the Dowager Empress had promulgated an edict stating:
”We, the Emperor, have respectfully received the following Edict from her Majesty the Dowager:
”In consequence of the uprising of the Republican Army, to which the people in the Provinces have responded, the Empire seethed liked a boiling cauldron, and the people were plunged in misery. Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai, therefore, commanded the despatch of Commissioners to confer with the Republicans with a view to a National a.s.sembly deciding the form of government. Months elapsed without any settlement being reached. It is now evident that the majority of the people favour a Republic, and, from the preference of the people's hearts, the will of Heaven is discernible. How could we oppose the desires of millions for the glory of one family? Therefore, the Dowager Empress and the Emperor hereby vest the sovereignty in the people. Let Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai organise with full powers a provisional Republican Government, and let him confer with the Republicans on the methods of establis.h.i.+ng a union which shall a.s.sure the peace of the Empire, and of forming a great Republic, uniting Manchus, Chinese, Mongols, Mohammedans, and Tibetans.”
But all men whom I have met who have had chances of studying Chinese conditions at first hand, agree that the Chinese national character is not favourable to the permanent acceptance of Republican ideas. If there is one thing which seems fixed in the Chinese character it is ancestor-wors.h.i.+p, and that is essentially incompatible with Republicanism.[3] But what seems absolutely certain is that a new China is coming to birth. Slowly the great ma.s.s is being leavened with a new spirit.
Now a new China, armed with modern weapons, would be a terrible engine of war. A new China organised to take the field in modern industry would be a formidable rival in neutral markets to any existing nation. The power of such a new China put at the disposal of j.a.pan could at least secure all Asia for the Asiatics and hold the dominant position in the Northern Pacific. Possibly it could establish a world supremacy, unless such a Yellow union forced White Races to disregard smaller issues and unite against a common foe. Fortunately a Chinese-j.a.panese alliance is not at present in the least likely. The Chinese hatred of the j.a.panese is of long standing and resolute, though it is sometimes dissembled. The j.a.panese have an ill-concealed contempt for the Chinese. Conflict is more likely than alliance between the two kindred races.
Further, the Chinese will probably move far more slowly on any path of aggression than did the j.a.panese, for they are intensely pacific. For many generations they have been taught to regard the soldier as contemptible, the recluse scholar as admirable. Ideas of overseas Empire on their part are tempered by the fanatic wish of every Chinaman that his bones should rest in his native land. It will only be in response to enormous pressure that China will undertake a policy of adventure.
That pressure is now being engendered from within and without. From without it is being engendered by insolent robberies of territory and other outrages on the part of foreign Powers. More particularly of late has the modern arrogance of j.a.pan impressed upon the old-fas.h.i.+oned arrogance of China the fact that the grave scholar, skilled in all the lore of Confucius, is a worthless atom beside a drilled coolie who can shoot straight. From within the pressure is being engendered by the great growth of population. For some time past infanticide has been common in China as a Malthusian check. Now European missionaries seek to discourage that. European medicine further sets itself to teach the Yellow Man to cope with plague, smallpox, and cholera, while European engineering abates the terrors of flood and of crop failure.
Machiavelli would have found prompting for some grim aphorism in this curious eagerness of Europe to teach the teeming millions of Asia to rid themselves of checks on their greater growth, and thus to increase the pressure of the Asiatic surplus seeking an outlet at the expense of Europe. It is in respect to the urgent demand for room for an overcrowding population that there exists alike to China and j.a.pan the strongest stimulus to warlike action in the Pacific. China in particular wants colonies, even if they be only such colonies as provide opportunities for her coolies to ama.s.s enough wealth to return in old age to China. From the fertile basin of China there have been overflow waves of humanity ever since there has been any record of history.
Before the era of White settlement in the Pacific the Chinese population had pushed down the coast of Asia and penetrated through a great part of the Malay Archipelago, an expansion not without its difficulties, for the fierce Malay objected to the patient Chinaman and often the Chinaman remained to fertilise but not to colonise the alien soil. By some Providential chance neither the Chinaman nor the j.a.panese ever reached to Australia in the early days of the Pacific, though there are records of j.a.panese fishermen getting as far as the Hawaiian Group, a much more hazardous journey. If the Asiatics had reached Australia the great island would doubtless have become the southern province of Asia, for its native population could have offered no resistance to the feeblest invader.
In the past, however, the great natural checks kept the Asiatic populations within some limits. Internal wars, famines, pestilences, infanticide--all claimed their toll. Nature exercised on man the checks which exist throughout the whole animal kingdom, and which in some regions of biology are so stern that it is said that only one adult survives of 5,000,000 sp.a.w.n of a kind of oyster. Now European influence is steadily directed in Asia to removing all obstacles to the growth of population. When the Asiatics wish to fight among themselves Europe is inclined to interfere (as at the time of the Boxer outbreak in China), on the ground that a state of disorder cannot be tolerated. In India internecine warfare is strictly prohibited by the paramount Power. In j.a.pan all local feuds have been healed by pressure from Europe and America, and the fighting power of the people concentrated for external warfare.
Not alone by checking internal warfare does Europe insist on encouraging the growth of the Asiatic myriads. European science suggests railways, which make famine less terrible; flood prevention works which save millions of lives. European moralists make war on such customs as the suicide of young widows and the exposure for death of female children.
But, far more efficacious than all, European scientists come forward to teach to the Asiatics aseptic surgery, inoculation, and the rest of the wisdom of preventive and curative medicine. Sometimes Nature is stronger than science. The Plague, for instance, still claims its millions. But even the Plague diminishes before modern medical science.
In his _Health and Empire_ (1911), Dr Francis Fremantle tells of the campaign against plague in India. He writes:
”The death-rate from plague in 1904 in the Lah.o.r.e and Amritsar districts in which I worked was 25 per 1000. Over 1,000,000 Indians died of plague in 1904, over 1,000,000 in 1905; in 1906, 332,000, and it was thought the end was in sight. But 640,000 died in the first four months of 1907; in 1908, 321,000 died; in 1909 only 175,000, but in 1910 again very nearly 500,000, and this year more than ever. The United Provinces had barely been reached by the epidemic in 1904; now with a population equal to that of the United Kingdom, they have been losing 20,000 every week; and the Punjab 34,000 in one week, 39,000, 47,000, 54,000, 60,000 and so on--over 430,000 in the first four months of this year in a population of 25,000,000. Imagine Great Britain and Ireland losing the same proportion--over 1,000,000 from plague in half a year. And India as a whole has in fifteen years lost over 7,000,000 from plague. Why wonder at her unrest?
”What, then, can the Government do? Extermination of rats is impossible; disinfection on a large scale is impracticable; evacuation of villages cannot be done voluntarily on any universal scale; the Government will not apply compulsion, and such evacuation is quite useless without a rigid cordon of police or military that will prevent communication between one infected village and others not yet infected. A cordon, it has been proved over and over again, cannot be maintained; the native who wishes to pa.s.s it has only to present some official with a cautious rupee. Extermination of rats in an Asiatic country has often failed; but here is without a shadow of doubt the key to the problem. The methods formerly adopted had been to give a capitation grant for every rat brought to the appointed place, and before long it was found, for instance in Bombay, that an extensive trade had grown up in the breeding of rats, whereby, at a few annas apiece from the Government, many families were able to sustain a comfortable existence.... But since sentence on the rat-flea has been p.r.o.nounced for the murder of 7,000,000 persons and over, the best method for his extermination will not be far off.
”It is often debated whether even half-measures are worth being continued. Professor W. J. Simpson, in his exhaustive monograph on the plague, and in 1907 in his _Croonian Lectures_, has shown how in history epidemics of plague have come and gone in different countries with long intervals between them, often of one hundred and thirty to one hundred and fifty years. In the eighteenth century, for instance, India seems to have been almost free of the plague, but early in the seventeenth century it suffered severely. The present epidemic is a.s.suming, as far as we can trust previous records, unprecedented proportions; probably after a few years it will die out again.
”An occasional cynic may argue that, since we have saved so many thousands of lives annually from famine and wars, it may be just as well to let the plague take their place. To such a pessimistic and inhuman conclusion it is impossible for one moment to submit. It may be that for economic reasons some parts of the Indian Empire would be happier if their population were less dense; but it does not follow that we should allow Death to stalk uninterrupted, unopposed, and apparently without limit, throughout the country. Economics apart, we may yet be absolutely convinced, whether as doctors or as statesmen, that it is our mission, our duty, to protect the populations included under British rule to the best of our ability against every scourge as it may arise; and therefore it is urgent that such measures as we have be pushed forward with the utmost vigour.”
That tells (in a more convincing way, because of the impatience of the doctor, accustomed to European conditions, at the slow result of work in India) how resolute is the White Man's campaign against the Yellow Man's death-rate in one part of Asia. Such a campaign in time must succeed in destroying the disease against which it is directed and thus adding further to the fecundity of Asia.
Nor is the fight against diseases confined to those parts of Asia under direct White rule. The cult of White medicine spreads everywhere, carried by j.a.panese as well as by European doctors and missionaries. Its effects already show in the enormous increase of Asiatic population, proved wherever definite figures are available. That growth adds year by year to the danger that the Yellow Man will overrun the Pacific and force the White Man to a second place in the ocean's affairs, perhaps not even leaving him that.
An older and sterner school of thought would have condemned as fatuous the White Races' humanitarian nurture of the Yellow Races. But the gentler thought of to-day will probably agree with Dr Fremantle that the White Man cannot ”allow Death to stalk uninterrupted, unopposed” even through the territory of our racial rivals. But we must give serious thought to the position which is thus created, especially in view of the ”levelling” racial tendency of modern weapons of warfare. China has a population to-day, according to Chinese estimates, of 433,000,000; according to an American diplomatist's conclusions, of not much more than half that total. But it is, without a doubt, growing as it never grew before; and modern reform ideas will continue to make it grow and render the menace of its overflow more imminent.
At present the trend of thought in China is pacific. But it is not possible to be sure that there will not be a change in that regard with the ferment of new ideas. The discussion to-day of a Republic in China, of womanhood suffrage in China, of democratic socialism in China, suggests that the vast Empire, which has been for so long the example of conservative immobility most favoured by rhetoricians anxious to ill.u.s.trate a political argument, may plunge into unexpected adventures.
China has in the past provided great invaders of the world's peace. She may in the near future turn again to the thoughts of military adventure.
The chance of this would be increased if in the settlement of her const.i.tutional troubles a long resort to arms were necessary. Then the victorious army, whether monarchical or Republican, might aspire to win for a new China recognition abroad.
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