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he purer and more beautiful side of Western thought. The publications of these two bodies reach, I am told, to every educated man in China. If the humiliations of public events made the Chinese willing to study Western civilisation, it was these men who afforded them the means of studying and understanding the best side of that civilisation.

But perhaps those who have done most to give the Chinese a proper conception of Christianity are the Bible Societies, especially the British and Foreign Bible Society. Ever since, with the optimism of faith, the translation of the Scriptures by Dr. Morrison was published in 1814, they have been scattering the Christian Scriptures throughout the whole of China, from Mongolia to Tonkin, and I am told that those Scriptures are read by men in the highest positions and with the most conservative antecedents in the whole empire. It cannot be doubted that the indirect fruit of their work has been very great indeed. China has, through the agencies of these bodies, been brought into close contact with Christian thought, and has at last realised the true nature of our religion.

Lastly, there has been the influence of those who died for the Christian faith during the many persecutions to which Christianity has been exposed, and which culminated in the Boxer persecution. If Germany, by her action in Shantung, put before China a false and most repellent view of Christianity, the heroic sufferings of the martyred missionaries, both yellow and white, presented Christianity to a wondering world in its purest aspect. After those thousands of Christians had suffered in Shan-si, the Home bodies, especially the China Inland Mission, refused to take any compensation for the blood that had been shed in the cause of the Gospel. The Chinese were then convinced that the German presentation of Christianity was not the only one; if Germany could look on Christianity only as a stalking horse behind which she could creep up to her prey, the English-speaking races had a holier ideal to teach and one which was more consonant with the words of the Founder of our religion. The sufferings of the Christians were intense, their heroism was great, but the result has been commensurate with their efforts, and an awakening China looks to our countries, not solely to teach her the art of war and of killing men, but also to teach her the great thoughts and the great religion which has before her very eyes proved capable of producing such noble men and women.

The awakening of China has two aspects. From one aspect China is awakening to the value of the science and the arts of the West; from the other China is awakening to the fact that there is in the West a power which comes from goodness, and that goodness has its root in Christian faith. It is this twofold aspect of the awakening of China which is so important to bear in mind, for if she is to share in our civilisation in the future, it is both our duty and our interest to see that this great world-movement is encouraged to develop on its higher side.

WHAT CHINA MEANS TO THE WORLD

The day is past when any one in Europe, whether Christian or non-Christian, can be indifferent to what is happening in China. The Christian has indeed been for a long time alive to the importance of these developments, but the ordinary citizen with no strong religious views has usually neither displayed nor felt any interest in a country separated from us by so many miles and by such an untraversable gulf in thought and language. If the Christian has urged the importance of Chinese missions, his neighbours have answered by asking him why he cannot leave the Chinese to themselves and to their own religion. Whatever justice the opponent of missions in times past may have thought he had for this view, he cannot now maintain that the Chinese question is one which may be put on one side by any thoughtful man. The movements of this vast mass of humanity, amounting to a quarter of the population of the world, cannot but fail to have a very real and vital effect on the whole civilised world.

The revolution that is affecting China brings Europe and America into close contact with a country equal to Europe in size, and not far inferior in productive power. A few years ago China was so far away that except as an outlet for trade it had little interest for people here. The voyage occupied many months and was esteemed a hazardous journey, owing to the dangerous coasts and typhoons of the China seas. Now a train-de-luxe conveys the traveller in a fortnight across Asia to Peking, and if the accommodation on the Chinese part of the railway is not altogether luxurious, the traveller remembers that it is far superior to that on the first railways opened in our own land. The journey is of course tedious, but the fact that business men in the north of China are talking of always spending their summer holidays in England, will show how close China is now to Europe. It is no exaggeration to say that in reckoning distance by the time it takes to complete the journey, China is nearer to England than London was to Scotland in the days of Dr. Johnson, while in point of comfort and convenience there is no comparison. The journey from London to Peking is far easier at the present day than the journey from London to Edinburgh in the days of Johnson's famous trip to the Hebrides.

If in this way we are getting closer to China, we are still more growing closer in thought. No longer can we speak of a gulf that separates us from China. Every year English is becoming more and more the language of educated men in East; even though we cannot read their books, they are reading ours either in translations or in the original. Japan has set the example of having English taught universally in her high schools, and now China is following her example. A foreigner, talking about Esperanto, remarked: "What would be the use of making an universal language? English, at any rate in the East, is the universal language." That barbarous patois, "pidgin" or business English, lives still in China. It consists of English roots, enlarged by the addition of Portuguese words, put into Chinese idiom and pronounced Chinese fashion. But "pidgin" English is fast giving way to pure English, spoken most commonly with a marked American accent.

If this growing proximity of China compels the attention of the civilised world, the virgin wealth of her mineral resources and the cheapness of her labour have excited the cupidity of the Western capitalist, and it is daily more obvious that China must become the centre of international politics, therefore the extent to which she will affect the rest of the world should be a matter for careful consideration. India, it will be urged, has long been in contact with Europe, and the effect on Europe is small. Why should there be any difference when another Oriental race comes in close proximity with Europe? Putting on one side the fact that India has, both in trade and in politics, had a very great effect on England, it can be answered that there is an essential difference between the brown inhabitants of India and the yellow race. The former are, through religion or custom, unable to accommodate themselves to the conditions of Western civilisation; the latter have shown themselves such adepts at accepting Western life that they have excelled the white man, to his great annoyance, in his own civilisation. The Chinaman, who is forbidden to enter America, Australia, and South Africa, is refused admittance, not because he has been untried or because he has been tried and found wanting, but because he has been tried in the three continents and found by all who have tried him eminently efficient--so efficient that if he were allowed to continue in those countries, he would soon render the presence of the white settler unnecessary. He has been tried in three just balances and been found of such value that the white voter is unanimous in demanding his exclusion. But even the most aggressive Chinese exclusionist can scarcely hope to exclude him from his own country, and the Chinaman who stays at home is probably a better man than the Chinaman who goes abroad.

Western civilisation may be expected to grow with equal rapidity in China as it has in Japan. Obviously Japan is the precedent that China will follow rather than India, whether Hindu or Mohammedan.

A few years ago a man would have been classed as an eccentric who dared foretell that Russia would be defeated by Japan. When Japan talked about going to war with Russia, Russia laughed. Who can tell how we shall speak of China a few years hence? For Japan after all is only the same size in population as Great Britain, but China is eight times as large.

There are three ways in which China may affect Europe. Militarily, she may menace her by her enormous armies enlisted from her vast population. Commercially, she may afford an outlet for our trade far greater than we possess at the present time, and perhaps be a competitor in trade and a place where the capital of Europe will be invested. Morally, she may either depress or elevate our social morals. Perhaps the reader may be inclined to smile at the idea of China being in a higher moral condition than Europe, so as to be able to react on her beneficially, but stranger things have happened; and if Europe follows the example of France in deterioration, and China continues to advance with the same rapidity, China might easily excel Europe in morals.

Let us first deal with the question from the military point of view. The military authorities who know the Chinese seem to be equally divided in opinion; many are confident that they are an unwarlike race, others maintain and bring evidence to prove that under competent officers they have great military qualities.

A few years ago, for instance, the development of the military power of China was regarded as a possible danger to the world, and especially to England or Russia. It was pointed out that China might easily descend with a huge army on to India in the distant future, or she might turn her arms northward and conquer the wide districts of Siberia. Now the popular view is the reverse, and the military power of China is regarded as a thing incapable of great development. A Japanese diplomatist with whom we discussed the question ridiculed the idea of the yellow peril and smiled at the suggestion that China could ever be a nation great in war. Certainly her present military power can be safely ignored except in Manchuria; whether that power is capable of development is a moot point. Believers in the war-like possibilities of China point out that as a matter of fact China is by right of conquest suzerain to such warlike races as the Tibetans and the Ghurkas, and that her empire reaches as far as Turkestan. In answer it is urged that the victors were not the Chinese, but the conquerors and present rulers of the Chinese, the northern Manchus; who, till they were absorbed by Chinese civilisation, spoke a different language and wrote a different character.

The Manchus are far from being extinct, though through years of sensual indulgence they have lost their virility; but the discipline of religion or the call of a national emergency might restore the war-like qualities of the race. It was only in 1792 that the Chinese, under Sund Fo, defeated the Ghurkas, and we must allow that a race who could defeat these gallant soldiers must be skilled and brave in war. On the other hand I was assured that the Manchus, so far from showing any courage in the war with Japan, were the first to flee, and that they differ in nothing from the Chinese except that they are pensioners and ride horses. Those who disbelieve in the courage of the Chinese say the Chinese never had any courage except of a passive order; that they would endure suffering against any race on earth, and that their whole history tells that tale; that they have been subject in turn to the Mongols, the Kins, and the Manchus; and that the period of the Ming dynasty when they were free, was only because the Mongols had reduced every nation within many thousands of miles to subjection, and then they themselves had fallen a prey, not to the Chinese arms directly, but to the enervating and destructive effects of Chinese civilisation which rendered them absolutely unable to fight.

Those who argue in this way point to that great feature of Chinese scenery, the fortified wall. That Great Wall of China, climbing hill and dale, was built to keep the northern and warlike tribes from harrying the peace-loving and industrious Chinaman. Behind that wall lie nothing but fortress after fortress; every city is walled, and those walls tell their own tale. A warlike race never dwells in walled cities. When the traveller enters Japan after visiting China, the first thing which strikes him is the absence of walled cities. The villages and towns lie along the roads as they do in our own country instead of clustering behind the tall and gloomy walls of China. Again, those who say the Chinese will never fight, point out that they have never been able to reduce two savage races right in their midst, the Maios and Lolos. One devoted missionary who had spent many years of his life in the thankless task of attempting to approach these savage Lolos, gave us an interesting account of the relation between the Lolos and the Chinese which certainly does not show that the Chinese have much military skill. The Lolos are a sort of Highland caterans who live in the mountains in the west of China, and from time to time raid the peace-loving Chinese villages. The Chinese then retaliate by organising a large force, who advance on the Lolo country and burn their villages. The Lolos rarely offer any direct resistance, as they realise they are hopelessly outnumbered, but take an opportunity to raid another village and to slaughter hundreds of defenceless Chinese. If the forces are anything like equal, the Lolos will fight, and even sometimes when the forces are wholly unequal. On one occasion seven Lolos and two women put to flight three hundred Chinese soldiers, killing forty and wounding many more. The Chinese consequently live in considerable fear of those Highland barbarians, whose fierce yells and savage onslaught produce absolute panic in their troops.

Officers who have commanded Chinese troops seem generally to believe in their capabilities. Gordon, for instance, spoke in the highest terms of the soldiers who formed his "ever victorious army," and the English officers who commanded the Weihaiwei regiment and those who commanded the Chinese volunteers at the siege of Peking spoke equally well of their men. It is reported that the Chinese soldiers at the siege of Tientsin would carry the wounded back out of the range of fire when no European soldiers could be found ready to perform this dangerous task, but of this story I could find no first-hand confirmation. But whether the Chinese in times to come will develop an efficient army or whether they do not, the most competent judges affirm that Chinese military greatness will always make for peace; that they will never wage a war of aggression; and that, so far from being a menace to the world, they will prove to be a security for the world's peace in the Far East. In fact it is the continuance of China's military weakness rather than the growth of her military power which is most likely to disturb the political atmosphere. China is far too rich a prize to be safe if unguarded, and the acquisition of her wealth will always prove a temptation to her needy neighbours.

The integrity of the Chinese empire is for many reasons a most desirable thing, and that integrity can best be maintained by an increase of China's military power.

One of the reasons why this is so much to be desired is from the commercial effect which China may have on the rest of the world. If the vast masses of her singularly excellent workmen are to be exploited by powers who have no thought for either hers or the world's welfare; if the sweated den of the alien is a menace to the healthy conditions of the working man in London; if the policy of such philanthropists as Lord Shaftesbury has been at all beneficial to the world at large, the sudden introduction of hundreds of thousands of ill-paid but efficient working men to the great Western market will have a deleterious effect on the social conditions of the civilised world. It is obviously far more simple to bring the factories to China than to bring the Chinaman to the factories, and this will be freely done if ever the flag of the foreigner waves over China. The great advantages that China can offer of cheap labour, cheap coal and cheap carriage, coupled with the security of a European flag, will have the effect of attracting to China a very large number of the world's industries. If this is done gradually, so that the internal market in China increases proportionally, this will not result in any evil to other nations. China will share in the wealth of the world, and will be at once a large producer and a large consumer; but if before Western civilisation has been assimilated by the working classes Western factories are extensively started in China the result will be one of those dislocations of social conditions which we include under the name of sweating.

Western conditions of labour in Western countries may be deemed by some to be hard, but no one can doubt that if Western conditions of labour were forced on a population which did not understand them, they would have a tendency to become definitely oppressive. The Chinese coolie will, I fear, be as little able to maintain his ground against the foreign contractor supported by the arms of a foreign power, as the Congo native is to maintain his rights against his Belgian oppressor; and unless Western powers have the humanity and wisdom to resist those of their own nations who will clamour to make money out of Chinese labour, Western dominance in China is not to be desired by Western wage-earners.

One of the most impressive sights in China is the Han-yang Ironworks. They employ three thousand men, and are owned by a body of Chinese capitalists. They have found it worth while to triple their plant within the last two or three years, and one can hardly wonder when one realises that, though the labourers are paid a very high rate according to Chinese scale, they only get sixpence a day, and even allowing that it requires three Chinamen to do the work of one Englishman, which is a higher proportion than is generally claimed, obviously there is a very large margin of profit to be made by the owners of the works. It is worthy of note that the Chinese have been unable at present to produce any native engineers; sixteen Europeans of various nationalities manage and control the works, though they are owned by Chinese, but the skilled work is all done by Chinese. For instance, we saw a man straightening the rails with a steam hammer; it was very skilled work, and I was told he was making 7d. or 8d. a day. If any social reformer, if any one interested in the condition of the working classes, has time to consider this question and to escape from that parochial mind which so distorts the importance of things, he will see that the conditions of the working classes in Europe will depend to a greater degree on the proper development of the social conditions of China than on any factor at home. To put it briefly, if the fourth of the labour of this world is living under sweating conditions, the other three-fourths may consider themselves lucky if their income is not cut down by 25 per cent.

On the other hand, if the development of China is allowed to pursue its normal course, and education and enlightenment are encouraged to proceed by equal steps with material well-being, the commercial conditions of China, so far from being injurious, will prove beneficial to the world at large. The internal market, for one thing, will tend to keep pace with China's productions. If China exports, she will also import; the volume of trade will no doubt be enormously increased, and that trade will bring prosperity to China and to those other countries who are trading with her. Her people will gradually grow accustomed to Western conditions, and, if China maintains her independence, those conditions will not be allowed to become too onerous to the poorer classes. The wealth of another country does not injure her neighbours; it is rather her poverty which injures them. There is always the danger that the poorer country will drain the capital from the richer country, and that a rich country becomes harsh to a poor country in the same way that the creditor is harsh to the debtor; certainly it would be most undesirable if a sudden industrial expansion in China paralysed many industrial undertakings in England by depriving them of the capital they needed for enlargement, and it would be equally undesirable to have any industrial undertaking in China controlled by a Board of Directors in London, whose one object was to increase their dividends, and who were ignorant of and therefore indifferent to the injury that might be incidentally done to the welfare of thousands of Chinese who fell under their power.

And this brings me to the third point of how China may affect the rest of the world. She may, and most probably will, degrade the moral tone of Europe. On the other hand, it will be quite possible that she may act as a moral tonic. We scarcely realise the nature of the chains that bind one part of our civilisation to another. To hear men talk, one would suppose that the great factors in the government of mankind are the laws and regulations made by kings and popular assemblies; but a deeper inquiry must show that it is only the smaller part of a man's life that is controlled by law, the greater part is controlled by custom or fashion which is enforced, to use the technical term, by the sanction of public opinion. Consider, for instance, the customs of dress, or of manners, or the hours we keep, or the way we refer to things, or even our very thoughts--they are all subject to this power; the State does not generally command any particular dress, yet there is a large and increasing measure of uniformity in dress. You may go from Asia to America, from Vancouver to Vladivostock, and you will see uniformity in the rules of dress. This uniformity is all the more remarkable, because its laws, instead of being fixed and stationary, are constantly altered; indeed, in comparison with the power of fashion, the powers of the greatest autocrat or of the most efficient public office are as nothing. The autocrat may give an order; the public office, with its endless clerks and forms, with its miles of red-tape, may try to see that order carried out; but may quite possibly fail. But fashion, issuing her capricious orders, has no office, no clerks, no printed forms that have to be filled up to secure obedience, yet her subjects yield such willing service that they seek for information from every quarter as to the nature of her commands, and when they know them, they count neither money nor comfort to be of importance compared with obedience to their mistress. The world, while it wonders at its own submission, enlarges or reduces its clothes, alters its head-gear, and further, will even change its manners, its speech, and its thoughts. The latest fashion-book is but the exaggeration of a world-power; the same power that compels women to tighten their skirts and widen their hats, makes their husbands talk about socialism and observe Empire Day. The power of fashion lies in this, that while every one obeys, no one is conscious of any difficulty in obeying; the chains with which fashion binds this world may be so strong that the strongest nature cannot break them, yet they are so light that the most sensitive natures are not conscious of their restraint.

But this great power of fashion has its limits, and those are the limits of our civilisation. The mandate of the dressmaker may reach from Siberia to Peru, but it has no power in Mohammedan, Hindu, or Confucian lands; the Turkish lady still veils her face, the Hindu still adheres to his caste, the Confucian up to this moment still preserves his queue and his blue robe, but if China accepts our civilisation this must change. The modern Chinaman dresses in Western fashion; the loose flowing garment of China acts as a sort of barometer by which the extent of European pressure can be tested; up-country they are as loose as ever, but in Shanghai, wherever Chinese dress is still preserved, it has grown tight. A change typical of what may happen if the union between the civilisations takes place without any guidance may now be seen in the streets of Shanghai; the dress of the women is shaped in the Chinese fashion, they wear the traditional coat and trousers, but the cut of those garments offends both East and West alike by their great exiguity.

Every one would allow that Western fashions, or, at any rate, men's fashions, must to a great extent affect China, but there is a deeper thought beyond; Western fashions will not merely affect Chinese dress, but they will also affect Chinese thought, and when they have incorporated Chinese thought into Western civilisation, when the conquest is complete and China and the West are one, a reaction will take place, and that which has subdued China to the yoke of Western fashion will give in its turn power to China to control the Western world. Without suggesting for a moment that Peking fashions will take the place of Paris fashions, or that the Englishman will grow a queue, I do suggest that there are many precedents in history for expecting that such a moral force as the Chinese reverence for parents, or such an immoral position as the Chinese contempt for the working-man, will not be without its effect on the Western world. Again and again it has been pointed out by both missionary and Government official, that so great is the power of China, that she brings into subjugation to her thought any one who is long resident in her country. If it should happen that the Western world should neglect the Chinaman when it has the opportunity of teaching and directing him, longing as he is to learn about Western civilisation, the punishment of the West will be that she will, in years to come, be influenced for evil by the power of the great Celestial Empire. If, on the other hand, the East should turn towards Christianity, and, taught by Christianity, should learn to live a higher life, the example of her faith and of her morality will in years to come react beneficially on the Western world.

ORIENTAL AND OCCIDENTAL

The West cannot either by right or through self-interest ignore the problem that China has to solve. From being the most conservative country in the world, she has become a country in which there is rapid change. The whole civilisation of this vast country of 400,000,000 is becoming fundamentally altered by the importation into it of ideas and thoughts which are not native to her, and which have been created by a system of religion and by a history belonging to nations very different to herself. The full difficulty does not present itself till after some thought. The problem is quite different from that which has been before mankind in other parts of the world. China is trying to accept Western civilisation, but there is a danger that it will be without Christianity. I know that many Europeans living in Tientsin and Shanghai, who give but little thought to the problems before them, somewhat vaguely hope that in the near future China will become a European nation; but a little consideration must convince everybody that this is impossible. We have also already shown that China is quite determined--in fact, she has no alternative--not to remain the old conservative country that lives on ancient traditions, that looks back two thousand years for all teaching in the arts of government.

If China, therefore, is neither to become Western nor to remain what she is, of necessity she will have to blend the two civilisations together and to take a part from each. The Chinese themselves, with a sanguineness for which they have no warrant, are quite certain that this is an easy matter. They tell the inquirer that they have considered it well, and that they see their way completely through it. They intend to select from Europe only those things that are advantageous to the race, and they expect to have no difficulty in weaving these incongruous elements into their own very complete system of thought. Statesmen seriously say that three or four months' extra study will enable the educated Chinaman to learn all that is necessary of Western civilisation, and then those who have acquired this knowledge can return to China and teach their fellow-countrymen; and it is impossible to convince the Chinese that the uniting together of two different webs of thought is a matter of extreme difficulty, and, it may be added, of extreme risk. The pleasing dream that you can arbitrarily select the good points of West and East and weave them into one is the very reverse of the truth. What naturally happens is the very opposite. There is a tendency to preserve that which is bad and not that which is good in two different systems of thought when they are united into one. The reason probably is that as the bad has its common origin in the wickedness of human nature, it belongs to both systems of thought, and therefore both the Chinaman and the Western meet on common ground when they meet in vice or vileness. On the other hand, the virtues of both are the result of moral cultivation resting on authorities which are not recognised by either. Therefore the tendency is to waive all moral obligations as resting on controverted grounds. Whatever may be the cause, the result is obvious--the Westernised Oriental, unless a Christian, is as a rule only one shade better than the Orientalised Western.

While the careless thinker hopes generally that good will come out of the union of the two, he is as a rule terrified lest there should be any tendency to mingle Western with Eastern thought in any one of whom he is fond. A leading man at Tientsin, extolling the healthy climate of the place, related how he had kept his children there ever since they were born. His friend from home, ignorant of life in a Chinese port, said in an appreciative way, "How nice it must be for your children to be able to speak Chinese; I suppose you encourage them to learn it?" The dweller in China turned on him in anger and said, "Thank God, my children do not know one word of Chinese; I would send them home to-morrow if I caught them learning a single sentence." This enthusiasm for ignorance of the language of a great nation is extraordinarily difficult to understand until the danger of the mixture of Eastern and Western thought is realised. Experience has taught those who have lived in China that it is only a few that can come unscathed through the terrible trial of having to live in two moral atmospheres.

One of the most striking books that has ever been written is "Indiscreet Letters from Peking." The book is marvellous in the power it has of bringing before the eyes of its reader those awful scenes during the siege of Peking, but it is far more wonderful in the character that it imputes to the hypothetical narrator--a character typical of a man who is equally at home in England and in China; and in that character is portrayed a true but curiously unpleasant picture of the characteristics of both races. The narrator has the courage of a lion; he is absolutely without any sense of honour. He fires at an adversary under the flag of truce. He misuses a Manchu woman who in the horrors of the sack throws herself on his mercy. He connives at the breaking of a solemnly pledged word of honour by a soldier. The character is not overdrawn; characters such as these are common in a mixed world, and it is natural that English people should fear that their children should grow up so unutterably vile. But if the Englishman fears for his child, ought he to ignore the welfare of the country in which he lives, and can we pass over this whole problem as something that does not concern us; for what he fears for his child will happen to the whole Chinese nation.

The blending together of the East and the West may be accomplished with the ease which the Chinaman expects--but not in the way in which he or anybody else could wish--it may be accomplished by the eradication of all that is good in either race, on the common ground of vice and sin and evil and cruelty; unless, indeed, the efforts of those who are now labouring to weave together that which is good in both civilisations are supported. The difficulty of preserving the good points and high qualities of Chinese thought is only equalled by the difficulty of introducing the splendid traditions of the West and grafting them on to the Chinese stock. What success has followed the efforts of those who are thus labouring is rather to be credited to the intensity of their efforts, to their single-hearted purpose, to their ready self-denial, than to the ease or simplicity of their task.

No man of any feeling or any conscience could pass indifferently by a single individual eating the berries of a deadly plant, unconscious that they were poison. What shall be said, then, if we allow, not only one individual but a fourth of the population of the world, to eat of a deadly poison which must deprive them of all happiness and of life, which must condemn them by millions to the misery of the very blackest darkness, where the only motives known are selfishness, lust, pride, and cruelty, for this is what certainly will happen to China if she accepts the materialism of the West.

In an interview I had with that great statesman, Tong-Shao-Yi, he said, "We respect Confucius because he has never taught any man to err." Unlike the teaching of Christianity, Confucius preaches that the test of truth is worldly success, and therefore by that test his preaching will be tried and found wanting by the materialist. The materialist will say, if Confucius never taught men to err, how is it that the Western nations who are ignorant of his teaching have succeeded, and that China, who outnumbers them greatly, and who after years of education and training and of following faithfully his teaching, has failed? How is it, they will ask, that she is so powerless, that were it not for European jealousies she could not stand a day before the least warlike of these Western nations? The Confucian will answer, "He taught us to despise war, and that is why we are weak." The materialist will certainly retort, "So he has taught you to err." Confucianism must fall before Western materialism. I do not speak of Buddhism, for that is falling so quickly that its influence may be said to be almost gone. China will be left stripped of religion, robbed of her old ideas, and not clothed with new ones, wandering into all the misery and humiliation that vice and sin can bring upon mankind, till the curse of her millions in misery will go out against the harsh unfeeling West, who could leave her thus blind and helpless without a guide.

The call is great. Those who have knowledge have no right to keep it to themselves. The Christian and the Confucian agree in this, as they do in much else, that all knowledge must be shared. One of the purposes of this book is to arouse my readers to the importance of taking some action. Had they had an opportunity of going to China and seeing things for themselves, I would only have asked them to think; but as there are many who have not had that opportunity, I would try and show them the transitional condition through which China is passing, the danger of that condition ending in disaster, a disaster wide as the world itself. I hope to show them what is being done at the present time to lead the Chinese empire into safe paths, and to illuminate her with the highest knowledge of the West. Many efforts have been made, and there has been much success. I am glad to testify publicly to the heroic and self-denying character of the missions, but those who are most successful are those who frankly say China can never be led by aliens.

No race loves the alien, and the further away the alien is in blood and language the less he is loved; therefore the Chinese above all races are least fitted to be led by the European, as they differ from him in most racial characteristics. If they are to be led by their own race, their own race must be fit to lead them. They must have leaders who understand the whole of Western knowledge, and will be able to take what is true and leave what is false. A Japanese thinker said the other day, "Our people have made a great mistake--they have taken the false and left the true part of Western thought." Let us hope that China may be preserved from such an error, that she may learn Western knowledge so thoroughly and so well that she may be able to distinguish the good from the bad, the beautiful from the vile in our system of thought.

FOREIGN RELATIONS OF CHINA

It is impossible to study any Chinese question and ignore the relations of China with foreign powers. They are always curious and generally unique. Certainly any one who goes to China for the purpose of studying the mission question cannot but be struck at the extraordinary treaty rights possessed by missionaries. In most countries the teacher of religion has no peculiar rights. He is, alas! more often bullied than favoured by the modern State, even if that State should profess itself well inclined towards religion. Therefore one would naturally expect in China, where Christianity is reputed to be disliked, that those who teach it would have to contend with every form of disability that a hostile State could inflict.

A feeling of marvel comes over the mind when one realises that in this land of contradictions the persecuted missionary enjoys quite peculiar privileges. The ordinary foreigner cannot, for instance, travel in China except by the courtesy of the Government--a courtesy, indeed, which is never refused; but a missionary may travel freely. The ordinary foreigner has no right to stay in any town in China with the exception of the treaty ports; a missionary may stay where he likes. The ordinary man cannot buy land; the missionary has a right to purchase land for the purpose of teaching Christianity.

So it came about, when we were in China, that His Majesty's Consul, with all the might of England at his back, was unable to buy a suitable site to erect a house where he could bring his wife. He was living in a temple, and temples in China are not very comfortable. I should explain to the uninitiated that every Buddhist temple has guest-rooms attached to it--Chinese rooms largely composed of wooden screens; and these temples are let out as residences by a people whose faith has less hold upon their affections than their purse. Now, ladies are not as a rule prepared to live in a house with paper partitions in a climate where the winters are extremely cold; so the Consul asked a missionary to buy a piece of land on which he could erect a suitable house, and he had almost succeeded when the Chinese Government found out that the land was not to be used for missionary purposes and refused to allow the sale. This does seem a strange situation when one remembers that had that Consul resigned his appointment and joined a missionary body, he could have bought the land and settled his wife comfortably in four solid stone walls, but because he was England's representative and not a missionary he had to shiver between wood and paper screens, and this in a country which is supposed to hate missionaries.

The explanation of this curious situation is really twofold. First, the hatred that the official bears for the missionary is not of such an intense character as to induce him to offer a very strenuous resistance to the missionaries who desire to buy land; and secondly, missionaries have peculiar and special rights secured to them by a series of treaties among the most curious in the history of diplomacy.

In 1844 the Americans got by treaty a right to the free exercise of the Christian religion in the open ports. This right, sufficiently remarkable in itself, has often been stipulated by a State for its own nationals resident in a foreign country, but I doubt if it has ever before been known for a country to insist on the right of preaching a religion to somebody else's citizens. This was obviously an interference of the sovereign rights of China.

It was pushed even further in 1860. The French and English had just completed the sack of the "Summer Palace," and whatever the justice or the injustice of the war may have been, China had tasted her first great lesson of humiliation from the hand of Western powers, and was in no condition to resist any of their demands. The English and the French made treaties, most of them concerned with commercial and military matters with which it is not necessary to trouble the reader, and the French had a condition which was quite reasonable, that the Chinese should restore all the buildings that had been destroyed in the late troubles; the wording of the clause was so vague that it could be made to apply, and did apply, to any building which had been destroyed at any previous time in the history of China, but the most remarkable part of the clause needs further explanation. The French had as their interpreter a very able Jesuit, P?re Delamarre, and as the French Minister could not read Chinese, he had to trust his interpreter with regard to the Chinese version, and this man inserted into the treaty two other provisions, one securing that Christians should have a right to the free exercise of their religion all over China, and the other that French missionaries should have the right to rent land in all the provinces in the empire and to buy and construct houses. When this pious fraud was discovered, the French Minister thought it would do no good to denounce his interpreter, and therefore the treaty was treated by the French as binding and never questioned by the Chinese; the other powers profited by it under the "most favoured nation" clause.

Can you be surprised at the answer I got when I asked a Chinese statesman, who I knew was sympathetic with the teaching of Christianity, why China, who had always professed, and to a very great extent had practised tolerance, should persecute Christianity? His reply was, the Chinese did not hate Christianity, and were indeed tolerant of missions, but they still disliked them, because Christianity is the religion of the military races, and they had a historical tradition that the advance of Christianity was connected with war.

This bad reputation has been intensified by the action of the Germans. No reasonable man can condemn the Germans for wishing to enlarge and develop their trade. We can understand the patriotic German saying that it was the duty of Germany to establish good government in Shantung, but it is very hard to understand how any one can defend the taking of Kiauchau on the ground that certain German missionaries had been murdered. The taking of Kiauchau by the Germans has completed the work begun by the French. Christianity and the foreign relations of China are inextricably mixed up, and every Chinaman, believed till lately that Christianity was the religion which has led foreign nations to enter his land. "First the missionary, then the trader, lastly the gunboat," has been too often the order of advance. I am happy to be able to say that the Americans and the English have made great efforts to dissociate themselves from this evil, and have tried to avoid any appearance of such a connection. I was told that in Shansi, owing to the indemnity for the murders of missionaries being retained to China and spent on founding a University instead of being accepted by the missions, Protestant missions are very popular. "You have only to say you are an English clergyman," said my Chinese informant, "and every door will be open to you."

The present aspect of foreign affairs has tended to destroy the unfortunate connection between Christianity and foreign aggression. The two great powers whose armies have met in Manchuria have neither of them any interest in missions. Russia has never had any missions in China. She forbade them, I understand, because they were likely to embroil her in unnecessary wars. Japan, of course, has none. The Germans, who made the murder of missionaries the reason of aggression, have not many missionaries in China belonging to their nationality. China, therefore, is coming to look upon Christianity as not quite so dangerous a thing as it seemed when it was essentially the religion of the French and of the English whose armies and navies then held China in fear. Still the political situation cannot but have great interest to the missionary. Even while he rejoices that the foreign relations of China and his work are not so intimately connected as they used to be, he must ask himself, what will the result to my work be, if in the great world struggle Japan or Russia should dominate? At present he fears Japan more than Russia; and his fears are shared, but for other reasons, by the Chinese.

The wildest and most ambitious schemes are accredited to Japan, I cannot say with how much truth. Her purse is empty, but she has far more courage and skill in war than most nations. If she possessed even one part of China she might add to her wealth to such an extent that no race could dare to oppose her, while if she governed China, her armies, supported by the wealth of that mighty empire, might threaten the stability of Europe. She is reported to have two regiments working as private individuals in Fukien, and to be prepared to seize the province in case of any disorder. The fact that there are many Japanese in the province, and that all the Japanese are trained soldiers, gives some cloak to this suggestion. The Fukienese speak a different dialect to the rest of China, and they have a natural geographical frontier, which would enable the Japanese to maintain themselves there if they were once established.

Again, the recent events have shown that they are preparing to exercise sovereign rights over Chinese territory in Manchuria. On the other hand, Russia is arming; she is double-tracking the railway from St. Petersburg to Irkutsk, and she is getting ready again for a struggle in Manchuria; the gossip among the officers there is that there is to be a war; the Russians do not for a moment regard themselves as defeated; they think of the late campaign merely as an "unfortunate incident."

But the most important development in Russian policy is the proposed railway across Mongolia which will give Russia an entrance to the west of China and into Peking. It is hard to see how, if an advance were made along that line, Japan could in any way resist Russia; the whole breadth of China would lie between them. Meanwhile the Germans of the east have perfected a railway system which converts Kiauchau from being an out-of-the-way place which no one cared about, to a door into the very heart of China. In commercial circles in China it is reported that the Commandant of the Tientsin garrison suggested that the object of the building of the German Fleet was not so much to conquer England as to ensure that Germany should be able to maintain her position in the Far East and make full use of Kiauchau as a way by which her armies might enter China. When one looks at the map and sees how China is surrounded by these powers, and how they are pressing upon her, one realises why the Chinese are feeling that Western education is an absolute necessity, and that if they are to maintain their independence they must understand the arts of war. A great Viceroy was reported to have said that he frankly expected China to be conquered, and to learn from her conquerors the Western arts which would in turn enable her to dominate the West; for this has been her history in the past, that may be her history in the future, and I think that the nations, who propose to conquer her, will do wisely if they consider what might be the result of her influence on them.

As to the army, its exterior is certainly not prepossessing; far and away the most efficient part of it has been created by Yuan-Shi-Kei in Manchuria, and the Chinese are very anxious to show it to the passing traveller. Both times when we passed through Manchuria, on every station were armed guards, and in one case they were inspected by a General who was travelling in our train. He was saluted by the officers in charge in Chinese fashion, which is a modified form of a kow-tow, and consists to all intents and purposes of a curtsey. It had a distinctly funny appearance to see the officers in charge of the guards curtseying as we steamed into the stations. Down at Nanking the army was far less smart--in fact, it had the appearance of being a very disorderly rabble; I understand when the Empress died it was regarded as such a danger that those in authority put the broad Yangtsze between them and a possible mutiny.

The real danger to China as regards foreign relations is that her bad finance or her own want of discipline may bring about a state of internal disorder which may compel the interference of foreign powers. Last year this nearly did happen. Two regiments mutinied and seized a town on the Yangtsze; they stopped all communications with the outside world, and to all intents and purposes were in a fair way to commence a rebellion. Close by them were several other regiments who might be expected to throw in their lot with them, and the position was very critical. The missionaries inside the town were in fear of their lives, and with difficulty managed to communicate with the British Consul and to tell him of their plight. He ordered a gunboat to go down, and the presence of the gunboat intimidated the mutineers. At the same time the Governor of the city showed remarkable courage in going round the town pacifying the mob. The authorities were able to move in two other regiments, who had no sympathy with the mutiny. The mutineers were disarmed and the incident closed. But such an incident may occur at any moment. The condition of the country is such that anywhere a rising may occur, and the fire once alight may be hard to extinguish; the result of the conflagration must be that the powers must enter to secure the safety of their nationals.

Altogether poor China is in a dangerous position in regard to her foreign relations; all round her echoes the cry, "You must reform or disappear." Every railway that is made, every loan that is floated, every trade that is opened up, bring to China increased responsibilities in her foreign relations. If she by her good government and readiness to reform can show that she is able to maintain order in her own land, and to give to foreigners an equal security to that they have in any other country, her empire may endure for many hundred years; but if she be found wanting at the present time and the corruption of her officials renders her unable to maintain order in her country or to fulfil her financial obligations, a new phase in Chinese history will be reached, which will, I believe, be of extraordinary danger to Europe; China will yield to the military might of the West only to rise again to dominate those who dominated her.

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