Problems of the Pacific Part 2

That is only one of very many indications of j.a.panese national feeling.

She has gone too far on the path to greatness to be able to retire safely into obscurity. She must "see it through." Feats of strength far nearer to the miraculous than those which marked her astonis.h.i.+ng victory over Russia would be necessary to give j.a.pan the slightest chance of success in the next struggle for the hegemony of the Pacific.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Since writing the above, the j.a.panese Government has revived in a modified form the proposal for a State adoption, in part at least, of the Christian religion. A communication to the j.a.panese Press on 20th January 1912 from the Minister for Home Affairs stated:--"In order to bring about an affiliation of the three religions, it is necessary to connect religion with the State more closely, so as to give it (religion) added dignity, and thus impress upon the public the necessity of attaching greater importance to religious matters. The culture of national ethics can be perfected by education combined with religion. At present moral doctrines are inculcated by education alone, but it is impossible to inculcate firmly fair and upright ideas in the minds of the nation unless the people are brought into touch with the fundamental conception known as G.o.d, Buddha, or Heaven, as taught in the religions.

It is necessary, therefore, that education and religion should go hand in hand to build up the basis of the national ethics, and it is, therefore, desirable that a scheme should be devised to bring education and religion into closer relations to enable them to promote the national welfare. All religions agree in their fundamental principles, but the present-day conceptions of morals differ according to the time and place and according to the different points of view. It is ever evolving. It may, therefore, be necessary for s.h.i.+ntoism and Buddhism to carry their steps towards Western countries. Christianity ought also to step out of the narrow circle within which it is confined, and endeavour to adapt itself to the national sentiments and customs, and to conform to the national polity in order to ensure greater achievements. j.a.pan has adopted a progressive policy in politics and economics in order to share in the blessings of Western civilisation. It is desirable to bring Western thought and faith into harmonious relations.h.i.+p with j.a.panese thought and faith in the spiritual world."

This proposal to change in one act the religion of a nation "to ensure greater achievements" will perhaps do something to support the contention, which will be put forward later, that a nation which takes such a curious view of life is not capable of a real and lasting greatness, however wonderful may be its feats of imitation.

CHAPTER IV

CHINA AND THE TEEMING MILLIONS OF ASIA

China is potentially the greatest Power on the western littoral of the Pacific. Her enormous territory has vast agricultural and mineral resources. Great rivers give easy access to some of the best of her lands. A huge population has gifts of patient labour and craftsmans.h.i.+p that make the Chinaman a feared compet.i.tor by every White worker in the world. In courage he is not inferior to the j.a.panese, as General Gordon found. In intelligence, in fidelity and in that common sense which teaches "honesty to be the best policy," the Chinaman is far superior to the j.a.panese.

The Chinaman has been outstripped up to the present by the j.a.panese in the acquirement of the arts of Western civilisation, not because of his inferior mind, but because of his deeper disdain. He has stood aside from the race for world supremacy on modern lines, not as one who is too exhausted for effort, but as one who is too experienced to try. China has in the past experimented with many of the vaunted ideas and methods of the new civilisation, from gunpowder to a peerage chosen by compet.i.tive examination, and long ago came to the conclusion that all was vanity and vexation of spirit.

The Chinaman is not humble; not content to take an inferior place in the world. He has all the arrogance of Asia. The name of "Heavenly Kingdom"

given to the land by its inhabitants, the grandiose t.i.tles a.s.sumed by its rulers, the degrading ceremonies which used to be exacted from foreigners visiting China as confessions of their inferiority to the Celestial race, show an extravagant pride of birth. In the thirteenth century, when Confucian China, alike with Christian Europe, had to fear the growing power of the fanatical Mohammedans, a treaty of alliance was suggested between France and China: and the negotiations were broken off because of the claim of China that France should submit to her as a va.s.sal, by way of preliminary. The Chinaman's idea of his own importance has not abated since then. His att.i.tude towards the "foreign devils" is still one of utter contempt. But at present that contempt has not the backing of naval and military strength, and so in practice counts for nothing.

China cherishes the oldest of living civilisations. Her legendary history dates back to 2404 B.C., her actual history to 875 B.C., when a high state of mental culture had been reached, and a very advanced material civilisation also; though some caution is necessary in accepting the statements that at that time China made use of gunpowder, of the mariner's compa.s.s, and of printing type. But certainly weaving, pottery, metal-working, and pictorial art flourished. The n.o.ble height to which philosophy had reached centuries before the Christian Era is shown by the records of Confucianism and Taoism. Political science had been also cultivated, and there were then Chinese Socialists to claim that "everyone should sow and reap his own harvest."

There seem to have been at least two great parent races of the present population of the Chinese Empire--a race dwelling in the valleys and turning its thoughts to peace and the arts, and a race dwelling on the Steppes and seeking joy in war. It was the Tartar and Mongol tribes of the Steppes which sent wave after wave of attack westward towards Europe, under chiefs the greatest of whom was Gengis Khan. But it was the race of the valleys, the typical Chinese, stolid, patient, laborious, who established ultimate supremacy in the nation, gradually absorbing the more unruly elements and producing modern China with its contempt for military glory. But the Mongols by their wars left a deep impression on the Middle Ages, founding kingdoms which were tributary to China, in Persia, Turkestan and as far west as the Russian Volga.

The earliest record of European relations with China was in the seventh century, when the Emperor Theodosius sent an emba.s.sy to the Chinese Emperor. In the thirteenth century Marco Polo visited the Court of the Grand Khan at Pekin, and for a while fairly constant communication between Europe and China seems to have been maintained, the route followed being by caravan across Asia. Christian missionaries settled in China, and in 1248 there is a record of the Pope and the Grand Khan exchanging greetings.

When towards the end of the fourteenth century the Ming dynasty supplanted the Mongol dynasty, communication with Europe was broken off for more than a century. But in 1581 Jesuit missionaries again entered China, and the Manchu dynasty of the seventeenth century at first protected the Christian faith and seemed somewhat to favour Western ideas. But in the next century the Christian missions were persecuted and almost extirpated, to be revived in 1846. Since that date "the mailed fist" of Europe has exacted from the Chinese a forced tolerance of European trade and missions.

But Chinese prejudice against foreign intrusion was given no reason for abatement by the conduct of the European Powers, as shown, for example, in the Opium War of 1840. That prejudice, smouldering for long, broke out in the savage fanaticism of the Boxer outbreak of 1900, which led to a joint punitive expedition by the European Powers, in conjunction with j.a.pan. China had the mortification then of being scourged not only by the "white devils" but also by an upstart Yellow Man, who was her near and her despised neighbour. All China that knew of the expedition to Pekin of 1900 and understood its significance, seems to have resolved then on some change of national policy involving the acceptance of European methods, in warfare at least. Responding to the stimulus of j.a.pan's flaunting of her success in acquiring the ways of the European, China began to consider whether there was not after all something useful to be learned from the Western barbarians. The older Asiatic country has a deep contempt for the younger: but proof of j.a.pan's superior position in the world's estimation had become too convincing to be disregarded.

China saw j.a.pan treated with respect, herself with contumely. She found herself humiliated in war and in diplomacy by the upstart relative. The reason was plain, the conclusion equally plain. China began to arm and lay the foundations of a modern naval and military system. The national spirit began to show, too, in industry. Chinese capital claimed its right and its duty to develop the resources of China.

Early in the twentieth century "modern ideas" had so far established themselves in China that Grand Councillor Chang Chih-tung was able, without the step being equivalent to suicide, to memorialise the Throne with these suggestions for reform:--

1. That the Government supply funds for free education.

2. That the Army and Navy be reorganised without delay.

3. That able and competent officials be secured for Government services.

4. That Princes of the blood be sent abroad to study.

5. That a.r.s.enals for manufacturing arms, ammunition, and other weapons of war, and docks and s.h.i.+pbuilding yards for constructing wars.h.i.+ps, be established without delay.

6. That only Chinese capital be invested in railway and mining enterprises.

7. That a date be given for the granting of a Const.i.tution.

Chang Chih-tung may be taken as the representative of the new school of Chinese thought. His book _Chuen Hsueh Pien_ (China's Only Hope) is the Bible of the moderate reformers. He states in that book:--

"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.