The Fight For The Republic in China Part 24

Following the publication of this manifesto a general movement of troops began. On the 5th July the important Peking-Tientsin railway was reported interrupted forty miles from the capital--at Langfang which is the station where Admiral Seymour's relief expedition in 1900 was nearly surrounded and exterminated. Chang Hsun, made desperate by the swift answer to his coup, had moved out of Peking in force stiffening his own troops with numbers of Manchu soldiery, and announcing that he would fight it out to the bitter end, although this proved as false as the rest had been. The first collision occurred on the evening of the 5th July and was disastrous for the King-maker. The whole Northern army, with the exception of a Manchu Division in Peking, was so rapidly concentrated on the two main railways leading to the capital that Chang Hsun's army, hopelessly outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, fell back after a brief resistance. Chang Hsun himself was plainly stupefied by the discovery that imperialism of the cla.s.sic type was as much out of date in the North as in the South; and within one week of his _coup_ he was prepared to surrender if his life and reputation were spared. By the 9th July the position was this: the Republican forces had surrounded Peking: Chang Hsun had resigned every appointment save the command of his own troops: the Manchu Court party had drafted a fresh Edict of Renunciation, but being terrorized by the pigtailed troops surrounding the Palace did not dare to issue it.

The usual bargaining now commenced with the Legation Quarter acting as a species of middleman. No one was anxious to see warfare carried into the streets of Peking, as not only might this lead to the ma.s.sacres of innocent people, but to foreign complications as well. The novelty had already been seen of a miniature air-raid on the Imperial city, and the panic that exploding bombs had carried into the hearts of the Manchu Imperial Family made them ready not only to capitulate but to run away.

The chief point at issue was, however, not the fate of the monarchy, which was a dead thing, but simply what was going to happen to Chang Hsun's head--a matter which was profoundly distressing Chang Hsun. The Republican army had placed a price of 10,000 on it, and the firebrands were advocating that the man must be captured, dead or alive, and suffer decapitation in front of the Great Dynastic Gate of the Palace as a revenge for his perfidy. Round this issue a subtle battle raged which was not brought to a head until the evening of the 11th July, when all attempts at forcing Chang Hsun to surrender unconditionally having failed, it was announced that a general attack would be made on his forces at daylight the next morning.

Promptly at dawn on the 12th July a gun-signal heralded the a.s.sault.

Large Republican contingents entered the city through various Gates, and a storm of firing aroused terror among the populace. The main body of Chang Hsun's men, entrenched in the great walled enclosure of the Temple of Heaven, were soon surrounded, and although it would have been possible for them to hold out for several days, after a few hours'

firing a parley began and they quietly surrendered. Similarly in the Imperial city, where Chang Hsun had taken up his residence, this leader, in spite of his fire-eating declarations, soon fled to the Legation Quarter and besought an asylum. His men held out until two in the afternoon, when their resistance collapsed and the cease-fire sounded.

The number of casualties on both sides was infinitesimal, and thus after eleven days' farce the Manchu dynasty found itself worse off than ever before. It is necessary, however, not to lose sight of the main problem in China, which is the establishment of a united government and a cessation of internecine warfare,--issues which have been somewhat simplified by Chang Hsun's escapade, but not solved. That a united government will ultimately be established is the writer's belief, based on a knowledge of all the facts. But to attain that further provincial struggles are inevitable, since China is too large a unit to find common ground without much suffering and bitterness. President Li Yuan-hung having declared that nothing would induce him to resume office, Vice-President Feng Kuo-chang has become the legal successor and has quietly a.s.sumed office. Chang Hsun's abortive coup has already cleared the air in North China to this extent: that the Manchu Imperial Family is to be removed from Peking and the Imperial allowance greatly reduced, whilst the proscription of such out-and-out imperialists as Kang Yu-wei has destroyed the last vestiges of public support. Finally the completion of China's foreign policy, _i.e._ the declaration of war against Germany and Austria, has at last been made on the 14th August, 1917, and a consistent course of action mapped out.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The National a.s.sembly sitting as a National Convention engaged on the Draft of the Permanent Const.i.tution.

_Specially photographed by permission of the Speakers for the Present Work_.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: View from rear of Hall of the National a.s.sembly sitting as a National Convention engaged on the Draft of the Permanent Const.i.tution.

_Specially photographed by permission of the Speakers for the Present Work_.]

FOOTNOTES:

[25] The final text of the Permanent Const.i.tution as it stood on the 28th May, 1917, will be found in the appendix. Its accuracy has been guaranteed to the writer by the speakers of the two Houses.

[26] Since this was written certain diplomatists in Peking have been forced to resign.

CHAPTER XVII

THE FINAL PROBLEM:--REMODELLING THE POLITICO-ECONOMIC RELATIONs.h.i.+P BETWEEN CHINA AND THE WORLD

The careful narrative we have made--supported as it is by doc.u.ments--of the history of China since the inception of the Republic six years ago should not fail to awaken profound astonishment among those who are interested in the spread of good government throughout the world. Even casual readers will have no difficulty in realizing how many lives have been lost and how greatly the country has been crippled both owing to the blind foreign support given to Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai during four long and weary years and to the stupid adhesion to exploded ideas, when a little intelligence and a little generosity and sympathy would have guided the nation along very different paths. To have to go back, as China was forced to do in 1916, and begin over again the work which should have been performed in 1912 is a handicap which only persistent resolution can overcome; for the nation has been so greatly impoverished that years must elapse before a complete recovery from the disorders which have upset the internal balance can be chronicled: and when we add that the events of the period May-July, 1917, are likely still further to increase the burden the nation carries, the complicated nature of the outlook will be readily understood.

Happily foreign opinion has lately taken turn for the better. Whilst the subst.i.tution of a new kind of rule in place of the Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai regime, with its thinly disguised Manchuism and its secret wors.h.i.+p of fallen G.o.ds, was at first looked upon as a political collapse tinged with tragedy--most foreigners refusing to believe in an Asiatic Republic--the masculine decision of the 9th February, 1917, which diplomatically ranged China definitely on the side of the Liberal Powers, has caused something of a _volte face_. Until this decision had been made it was the fas.h.i.+on to declare that China was not only not fit to be a Republic but that her final dissolution was only a matter of time. Though the empire disappeared because it had become an impossible rule in the modern world--being womanish, corrupt, and mediaeval--to the foreign mind the empire remained the acme of Chinese civilization; and to kill it meant to lop off the head of the Chinese giant and to leave lying on the ground nothing but a corpse. It was in vain to insist that this simile was wrong and that it was precisely because Chinese civilization had exhausted itself that a new conception of government had to be called in to renew the vitality of the people. Men, and particularly diplomats, refused to understand that this embodied the heart and soul of the controversy, and that the sole mandate for the Republic, as well as the supreme reason why it had to be upheld if the country was not to dissolve, has always lain in the fact that it postulates something which is the very ant.i.thesis of the system it has replaced and which should be wholly successful in a single generation, if courage is shown and the whip unflinchingly used.

The chief trouble, in the opinion of the writer, has been the simplicity of the problem and not its complexity. By eliminating the glamour which surrounded the Throne, and by kicking away all the pomp and circ.u.mstance which formed the age-old ritual of government, the glaring simplicity and _barrenness_ of Chinese life--when contrasted with the complex West--has been made evident. Bathed in the hard light of modern realities, the poetic China which Haroun al-Raschid painted in his Aladdin, and which still lives in the beautiful art of the country, has vanished for ever and its place has been taken by a China of prose. To those who have always pictured Asia in terms of poetry this has no doubt been a very terrible thing--a thing synonymous with political death. And yet in point of fact the elementary things remain much as they have always been before, and if they appear to have acquired new meaning it is simply because they have been moved into the foreground and are no longer masked by a gaudy superstructure.

For if you eliminate questions of money and suppose for a moment that the national balance-sheet is entirely in order, China is the old China although she is stirred by new ideas. Here you have by far the greatest agricultural community in the world, living just as it has always lived in the simplest possible manner, and remitting to the cities (of which there are not ten with half-a-million inhabitants) the increment which the harvests yield. These cities have made much munic.i.p.al progress and developed an independence which is confessedly new. Printing presses have spread a noisy a.s.sertiveness, as well as a very critical and litigious spirit, which tends to resent and oppose authority.[27] Trade, although constantly proclaimed to be in a bad way, is steadily growing as new wants are created and fas.h.i.+ons change. An immense amount of new building has been done, particularly in those regions which the Revolution of 1911 most devastated. The archaic fiscal system, having been tumbled into open ruin, has been partially replaced by European conceptions which are still only half-understood, but which are not really opposed. The country, although boasting a population which is only some fifty millions less than the population of the nineteen countries of Europe, has an army and a police-force so small as to allow one to say that China is virtually disarmed since there are only 900,000 men with weapons in their hands. Casting about to discover what really tinges the outlook, that must simply be held to be the long delay the world has made in extending the same treatment to China as is now granted to the meanest community of Latin America. It has been almost entirely this, coupled with the ever-present threat of j.a.panese chauvinism, which has given China the appearance of a land that is hopelessly water-logged, although the National Debt is relatively the smallest in the world and the people the most industrious and law-abiding who have ever lived. In such circ.u.mstances that ideas of collapse should have spread so far is simply due to a faulty estimate of basic considerations.

For we have to remember that in a country in which the thoroughly English doctrine of _laissez faire_ has been so long practised that it has become second nature, and in which the philosophic spirit is so undisputed that the pillars of society are just as much the beggars who beg as the rich men who support them, influences of a peculiar character play an immense role and can be only very slowly overcome. Pa.s.sivity has been so long enthroned that of the Chinese it may be truly said that they are not so much too proud to fight as too indifferent,--which is not a fruitful state of affairs. Looking on the world with callous detachment the ma.s.ses go their own way, only pausing in their work on their ancient Festival days which they still celebrate just as they have always celebrated them since the beginning of their history. The petty daily activities of a vast legion of people grouped together in this extraordinary way, and actuated by impulses which seem sharply to conflict with the impulses of the other great races of the world, appear incredible to Westerners who know what the outer perils really are, and who believe that China is not only at bay but encircled--caught in a network of political agreements and commitments which have permanently destroyed her power of initiative and reduced her to inanition. To find her lumbering on undisturbed, ploughing the fields, marrying and giving in marriage, buying, selling, cursing and laughing, carrying out rebellions and little plots as though the centuries that stretch ahead were still her willing slaves, has in the end become to onlookers a veritable nightmare. Puzzled by a phenomenon which is so disconcerting as to be incapable of any clear definition, they have ended by declaring that an empty Treasury is an empty rule, adding that as it is solely from this monetary viewpoint that the New China ought to be judged, their opinion is the one which will finally be accepted as authoritative. The situation is admittedly dangerous; and it is imperative that a speedy remedy be sought; for the heirs and a.s.signs of an estate which has been mismanaged to the brink of bankruptcy must secure at all costs that no public receivers.h.i.+p is made.

What is the remedy? That must consist simply enough in attacking the grand simplicities directly; in recognizing, as we have clearly shown, that the bases of Chinese life having collapsed through Euro-j.a.panese pressure, the politico-economic relations.h.i.+p between the Republic and the world must be remodelled at the earliest possible opportunity, every agreement which has been made since the Treaties of 1860 being carefully and completely revised.[28]

To say this is to give utterance to nothing very new or brilliant: it is the thought which has been present in everyone's mind for a number of years. So far back as 1902, when Great Britain negotiated with China the inoperative Mackay Commercial Treaty, provision was not only made for a complete reform of the Tariff--import duties to be made two and a half times as large in return for a complete abolition of _likin_ or inter-provincial trade-taxation--but for the abolition of extraterritoriality when China should have erected a modern and efficient judicial system. And although matters equally important, such as the funding of all Chinese indemnities and loans into one Consolidated Debt, as well as the withdrawal of the right of foreign banks to make banknote issues in China, were not touched upon, the same principles would undoubtedly have been applied in these instances, as being conducive to the re-establishment of Chinese autonomy, had Chinese negotiators been clever enough to urge them as being of equal importance to the older issues. For it is primarily debt, and the manipulation of debt, which is the great enemy.

Three groups of indebtedness and three groups of restrictions, corresponding with the three vital periods in Chinese history, lie to-day like three great weights on the body of the Chinese giant. First, there is the imbroglio of the j.a.panese war of 1894-5; second, the settlement following the Boxer explosion of 1900; and third, the cost of the revolution of 1911-1912. We have already discussed so exhaustively the Boxer Settlement and the finance of the Revolutionary period that it is necessary to deal with the first period only.

In that first period China, having been rudely handled by j.a.pan, recovered herself only by indulging in the sort of diplomacy which had become traditional under the Manchus. Thankful for any help in her distress, she invited and welcomed the intervention of Russia, which gave her back the Liaotung Peninsula and preserved for her the shadow of her power when the substance had already been so sensationally lost. Men are apt to forget to-day that the financial accommodation which allowed China to liquidate the j.a.panese war-debt was a remarkable transaction in which Russia formed the controlling element. In 1895 the Tsar's Government had intervened for precisely the same motives that animate every State at critical times in history, that is, for reasons of self-interest. The rapid victory which j.a.pan had won had revived in an acute form the whole question of the future of the vast block of territory which lies south of the Amur regions and is bathed by the Yellow Sea. Russian statesmen suddenly became conscious that the policy of which Muravieff-Amurski in the middle of the nineteenth century had been the most brilliant exponent--the policy of reaching "warm water"--was in danger of being crucified, and the work of many years thrown away. Action on Russia's part was imperative; she was great enough to see that; and so that it should not be said that she was merely depriving a gallant nation of the fruits of victory and thereby issuing to her a direct challenge, she invited the chief Powers in Treaty relations with China to co-operate with her in readjusting what she described as the threatened balance. France and Germany responded to that invitation; England demurred. France did so because she was already the devoted Ally of a nation that was a guarantee for the security of her European frontiers: Germany because she was anxious to see that Russia should be pushed into Asiatic commitments and drawn away from the problems of the Near East. England on her part very prudently declined to be a.s.sociated with a transaction which, while not opposed to her interests, was filled with many dubious elements.

It was in Petrograd that this account was liquidated. The extraordinary chapter which only closed with the disastrous Peace of Portsmouth opened for Russia in a very brilliant way. The presence in Moscow of the veteran statesman Li Hung-chang on the occasion of the Tsar's Coronation afforded an opportunity for exhaustively discussing the whole problem of the Far East. China required money: Russia required the acceptance of plans which ultimately proved so disastrous to her. Under Article IV of the Treaty of s.h.i.+monoseki (April, 1895) China had agreed to pay j.a.pan as a war-indemnity 200 million Treasury taels in eight instalments: that is 50 million taels within six months, a further 50 millions within twelve months, and the remaining 100 millions in six equal instalments spread over seven years, as well as an additional sum of 50 millions for the retrocession of the Liaotung Peninsula.

China, therefore, needed at once 80 million taels. Russia undertook to lend her at the phenomenally low rate of 4 per cent. the sum of 16,000,000 sterling--the interest and capital of which the Tsar's Government guaranteed to the French bankers undertaking the flotation.

In return for this accommodation, the well known Russo-Chinese Declaration of the 24th June (6th July), 1895, was made in which the vital article IX states that--"In consideration of this Loan the Chinese Government declares that it will not grant to any foreign Power any right or privilege of no matter what description touching the control or administration of the revenues of the Chinese Empire. Should, however, the Chinese Government grant to any foreign Power rights of this nature, it is understood that the mere fact of having done so will extend those rights to the Russian Government."

This clause has a monumental significance: it started the scramble in China: and all the history of the past 22 years is piled like a pyramid on top of it. Now that the Romanoffs have been hurled from the throne, Russia must prove eager to reverse the policy which brought j.a.pan to her Siberian frontiers and which pinned a brother democracy to the ground.

For China, instead of being nearly bankrupt as so many have a.s.serted, has, thanks to the new scale of indebtedness which the war has established, become one of the most debt-free countries in the world, her entire national debt (exclusive of railway debt) amounting to less than 150 millions sterling, or seven s.h.i.+llings per head of population, which is certainly not very terrible. No student who has given due attention to the question can deny that it is primarily on the proper handling of this nexus of financial interests, and not by establis.h.i.+ng any artificial balance of power between foreign nations, that the peace of the Far East really hinges. The method of securing national redemption is ready-made: Western nations should use the Parliament of China as an instrument of reform, and by limiting themselves to this one method secure that civil authority is reinforced to such a point that its behests have behind them all the wealth of the West. In questions of currency, taxation, railways and every other vexatious problem, it is solely by using this instrument that satisfactory results can be attained.[29] For once Chinese realize that parliamentary government is not merely an experimental thing but the last chance the country is to be given to govern itself, they will rally to the call and prove that much of the trouble and turmoil of past years has been due to the misunderstanding of the internal problem by Western minds which has incited the population to intrigue against one another and remain disunited. And if we insist that there is urgent need for a settlement of these matters in the terms we have indicated, it is because we know very precisely what j.a.panese thought on this subject really is.

What is that thought--whither does it lead?

It may be broadly said that j.a.panese activities throughout the Far East are based on a thorough and adequate appreciation of the fact that apart from the winning of the hegemony of China, there is the far more difficult and knotty problem of overshadowing and ultimately dislodging the huge network of foreign interests--particularly British interests--which seventy-five years of Treaty intercourse have entwined about the country. These interests, growing out of the seed planted in the early Canton Factory days, had their origin in the termination by the act of the British Government of the trading monopoly enjoyed until the thirties of last century by the East India Company. Left without proper definition until the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 had formally won the principle of trading-rights at five open ports, and thus established a first basis of agreement between England and China (to which all the trading powers hastened to subscribe), these interests expanded in a half-hearted way until 1860, when in order to terminate friction, the principle of extraterritoriality was boldly borrowed from the Turkish Capitulations, and made the rock on which the entire fabric of international dealings in China was based. These treaties, with their always-recurring "most-favoured nation" clause, and their implication of equal treatment for all Powers alike, const.i.tute the Public Law of the Far East, just as much as the Treaties between the Nations const.i.tute the Public Law of Europe; and any attempt to destroy, cripple, or limit their scope and function has been very generally deemed an a.s.sault on all the High Contracting Parties alike. By a thoroughly Machiavellian piece of reasoning, those who have been responsible for the framing of recent j.a.panese policy, have held it essential to their plan to keep the world chained to the principle of extraterritoriality and Chinese Tariff and economic subjection because these things, imposing as they necessarily do restrictions and limitations in many fields, leave it free to the j.a.panese to place themselves outside and beyond these restrictions and limitations; and, by means of special zones and secret encroachments, to extend their influence so widely that ultimately foreign treaty-ports and foreign interests may be left isolated and at the mercy of the "Higher machinery" which their hegemony is installing.

The Chinese themselves, it is hoped, will be gradually cajoled into acquiescing in this very extraordinary state of affairs, because being unorganized and split into suspicious groups, they can be manipulated in such a way as to offer no effective ma.s.s resistance to the j.a.panese advance, and in the end may be induced to accept it as inevitable.

If the reader keeps these great facts carefully in mind a new light will dawn on him and the urgency of the Chinese question will be disclosed.

The j.a.panese Demands of 1915, instead of being fantastic and far-fetched, as many have supposed, are shown to be very intelligently drawn-up, the entire Treaty position in China having been most exhaustively studied, and every loophole into the vast region left untouched by the ex-territorialized Powers marked down for invasion. For Western nations, in spite of exorbitant demands at certain periods in Chinese history, having mainly limited themselves to acquiring coastal and communication privileges, which were desired more for genuine purposes of trade than for encompa.s.sing the destruction of Chinese autonomy, are to-day in a disadvantageous position which the j.a.panese have shown they thoroughly understand by not only tightening their hold on Manchuria and Shantung, but by going straight to the root of the matter and declaring on every possible occasion that they alone are responsible for the peace and safety of the Far East--and this in spite of the fact that their plan of 1915 was exposed and partially frustrated. But the chief force behind the j.a.panese Foreign Office, it should be noted, is militarist; and it is a point of honour for the Military Party to return to the charge in China again and again until there is definite success or definite failure.

Now in view of the facts which have been so voluminously set forth in preceding chapters, it is imperative for men to realize that the struggle in the Far East is like the Balkan Question a thing rooted in geography and peoples, and cannot be brushed aside or settled by compromises. The whole future of Chinese civilization is intimately bound up with the questions involved, and the problem instead of becoming easier to handle must become essentially more difficult from day to day. j.a.pan's real objective being the termination of the implied trustees.h.i.+p which Europe and America still exercise in the Far East, the course of the European war must intimately effect the ultimate outcome.

If that end is satisfactory for democracies, China may reasonably claim to share in the resulting benefits; if on the other hand the Liberal Powers do not win an overwhelming victory which shall secure the sanct.i.ty of Treaties for all time, it will go hard for China. Outwardly, the immediate goal which j.a.pan seeks to attain is merely to become the accredited spokesman of Eastern Asia, the official representative; and, using this attorneys.h.i.+p as a cloak for the advancement of objects which other Powers would pursue on different principles, so impregnably to entrench herself where she has no business to be that no one will dare to attempt to turn her out. For this reason we see revived in Manchuria on a modified scale the Eighteenth Century device, once so essential a feature of Dutch policy in the struggle against Louis XIV, namely the creation of "barrier-cities" for closing and securing a frontier by giving them a special const.i.tution which withdraws them from ordinary jurisdiction and places foreign garrisons in them. This is precisely what is going on from the Yalu to Eastern Mongolia, and this procedure no doubt will be extended in time to other regions as opportunities arise. Already in Shantung the same policy is being pursued and there are indications that it is being thought of in Fuhkien; whilst the infantry garrison which was quietly installed at Hankow--600 miles up the Yangtsze river--at the time of the Revolution of 1911 is apparently to be made permanent. Allowing her policy to be swayed by men who know far too little of the sea, j.a.pan stands in imminent danger of forgetting the great lesson which Mahan taught, that for island-peoples sea-power is everything and that land conquests which diminish the efficacy of that power are merely a delusion and snare. Plunging farther and farther into the vast regions of Manchuria and Mongolia which have been the graves of a dozen dynasties, j.a.pan is displaying increasing indifference for the one great lesson which the war has yielded--the overwhelming importance of the sea.[30] Necessarily guardian of the principles on which intercourse in Asia is based, because she framed those principles and fought for them and has built up great edifices under their sanction, British sea-power--now allied for ever, let us hope, with American power--nevertheless remains and will continue to remain, in spite of what may be half-surrept.i.tiously done to-day, the dominant factor in the Far East as it is in the Far West. Withdrawn from view for the time being, because of the exigencies of the hour and because the Anglo-j.a.panese Alliance is still counted a binding agreement, Western sea-power nevertheless stands there, a heavy cloud in the offing, full of questionings regarding what is going on in the Orient, and fully determined, let us pray, one day to receive frank answers. For the right of every race, no matter how small or weak, to enjoy the inestimable benefits of self-government and independence may be held to have been so absolutely established that it is a mere question of time for the doctrine not only to be universally accepted but to be universally applied. In many cases, it is true, the claims of certain races are as yet incapable of being expressed in practical state-forms; but where nationalities have long been well-defined, there can be no question whatsoever that a properly articulated autonomy must be secured in such a way as to preclude the possibility of annexations.

Now although in their consideration of Asia it is notorious that Western statesmen have not cared to keep in mind political concepts which have become enthroned in Europe, owing to the fact that an active element of opposition to such concepts was to be found in their own policies, a vast change has undoubtedly been recently worked, making it certain that the claims of nationalism are soon to be given the same force and value in the East as in the West. But before there can be any question of Asia for the Asiatics being adopted as a root principle by the whole world, it will have to be established in some unmistakable form that the surrender of the policy of conquest which Europe has pursued for four centuries East of the Suez Ca.n.a.l will not lead to its adoption by an Asiatic Power under specious forms which hide the glittering sword. If that can be secured, then the present conflict will have truly been a War of Liberation for the East as well as for the West. For although j.a.pan has been engaged for some years in declaring to all Asiatics under her breath that she holds out the hand of a brother to them, and dreams of the days when the age of European conquests will be nothing but a distant memory, her actions have consistently belied her words and shown that she has not progressed in political thought much beyond the crude conceptions of the Eighteenth Century. Thus Korea, which fell under her sway because the nominal independence of the country had long made it the centre of disastrous international intrigues, is governed to-day as a conquered province by a military viceroy without a trace of autonomy remaining and without any promise that such a regime is only temporary.

Although nothing in the undertakings made with the Powers has ever admitted that a nation which boasts of an ancient line of kings, and which gave j.a.pan much of her own civilization, should be stamped under foot in such manner, the course which politics have taken in Korea has been disastrous in the extreme ever since Lord Lansdowne in 1905, as British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, pointed out in a careful dispatch to the Russian Government that Korea was a region which fell naturally under the sway of j.a.pan. Not only has a tragic fate overcome the sixteen million inhabitants of that country, but there has been a covert extension of the principles applied to them to the people of China.

Now if as we say European concepts are to have universal meaning, and if j.a.pan desires European treatment, it is time that it is realized that the policy followed in Korea, combined with the attempt to extend that treatment to soil where China rightly claims undisputed sovereignty, forms an insuperable barrier to j.a.pan being admitted to the inner council of the nations.[31] No one wishes to deny to j.a.pan her proper place in the world, in view of her marvellous industrial progress, but that place must be one which fits in with modern conceptions and is not one thing to the West and another to the East. Even the saying which was made so much of during the Russian war of 1904, that Korea in foreign hands was a dagger pointed at the heart of j.a.pan--has been shown to be inherently false by the lessons of the present struggle, the Korean dagger-point being 120 sea miles from the j.a.panese coast. Such arguments clearly show that if the truce which was hastily patched up in 1905 is to give way to a permanent peace, that can be evolved only by locking on to the Far East the principles which are in process of being vindicated in Europe. In other words, precisely as Poland is to be given autonomy, so must Korea enjoy the same privileges, the whole j.a.panese theory of suzerainty on the Eastern Asiatic Continent being abandoned. To re-establish a proper balance of power in the Far East, the Korean nation, which has had a known historical existence of 1,500 years, must be reinstated in something resembling its old position; for Korea has always been the keystone of the Far Eastern arch, and it is the destruction of that arch more than anything else which has brought the collapse of China so perilously near.

Once the legitimate aspirations of the Korean people have been satisfied, the whole Manchurian-Mongolian question will a.s.sume a different aspect, and a true peace between China and j.a.pan will be made possible. It is to no one's interest to have a Polish question in the Far East with all the bitterness and the crimes which such a question must inevitably lead to; and the time to obviate the creation of such a question is at the very beginning before it has become an obsession and a great international issue. Although the j.a.panese annexation may be held to have settled the question once and for all, we have but to point to Poland to show that a race can pa.s.s through every possible humiliation and endure every possible species of truncation without dying or abating by one whit its determination to enjoy what happier races have won.

The issue is a vital one. China by her recent acts has given a categorical and unmistakable reply to all the insidious attempts to place her outside and beyond the operation of international law and all those sanctions which make life worth living; and because of the formal birth of a Foreign Policy it can be definitely expected that this nation, despite its internal troubles and struggles, will never rest content until she has created a new nexus of world-relations.h.i.+ps which shall affirm and apply every one of the principles experience elsewhere has proved are the absolute essentials to peace and happiness. China is already many decades ahead of j.a.pan in her theory of government, no matter what the practice may be, the marvellous revolution of 1911 having given back to this ancient race its old position of leader in ideas on the sh.o.r.es of the Yellow Sea. The whole dream j.a.pan has cherished, and has sought to give form to during the war, is in the last a.n.a.lysis antiquated and forlorn and must ultimately dissolve into thin air; for it is monstrous to suppose, in an age when European men have sacrificed everything to free themselves from the last vestiges of feudalism, that in the Far East the cult of Sparta should remain a hallowed and respected doctrine. j.a.pan's policy in the Far East during the period of the war has been uniformly mischievous and is largely responsible for the fierce hatreds which burst out in 1917 over the war issue; and China will be forced to raise at the earliest possible moment the whole question of the validity of the undertakings extorted from her in 1915 under the threat of an ultimatum. Although the precise nature of Anglo-j.a.panese diplomacy during the vital eleven days from the 4th to the 15th August, 1914 [_i.e._ from the British declaration of war on Germany to the j.a.panese ultimatum regarding Kiaochow] remains a sealed book, China suspects that j.a.pan from the very beginning of the present war world-struggle has taken advantage of England's vast commitments and acted _ultra vires_. China hopes and believes that Britain will never again renew the j.a.panese alliance, which expires in 1921, in its present form, particularly now that an Anglo-American agreement has been made possible. China knows that in spite of all coquetting with both the extreme radical and military parties which is going on daily in Peking and the provinces the secret object of j.a.panese diplomacy is either the restoration of the Manchu dynasty, or the enthronement of some pliant usurper, a puppet-Emperor being what is needed to repeat in China the history of Korea. j.a.pan would be willing to go to any lengths to secure the attainment of this reactionary object. Faithful to her "divine mission," she is ceaselessly stirring up trouble and hoping that time may still be left her to consolidate her position on the Asiatic mainland, one of her latest methods being to busy herself at distant points in the Pacific so that Western men for the sake of peace may be ultimately willing to abandon the sh.o.r.es of the Yellow Seas to her unchallenged mastery.

The problem thus outlined becomes a great dramatic thing. The lines which trace the problem are immense, stretching from China to every sh.o.r.e bathed by the Pacific and then from there to the distant west.

Whenever there is a dull calm, that calm must be treated solely as an intermission, an interval between the acts, a preparation for something more sensational than the last episode, but not as a permanent settlement which can only come by the methods we have indicated. For the Chinese question is no longer a local problem, but a great world-issue which statesmen must regulate by conferences in which universal principles will be vindicated if they wish permanently to eliminate what is almost the last remaining international powder-magazine. A China that is henceforth not only admitted to the family of nations on terms of equality but welcomed as a representative of Liberalism and a subscriber to all those sanctions on which the civilization of peace rests, will directly tend to adjust every other Asiatic problem and to prevent a recrudescence of those evil phenomena which are the enemies of progress and happiness. Is it too much to dream of such a consummation? We think not. It is to America and to England that China looks to rehabilitate herself and to make her Republic a reality. If they lend her their help, if they are consistent, there is still no reason why this democracy on the sh.o.r.es of the Yellow Sea should not be reinstated in the proud position it occupied twenty centuries ago, when it furnished the very silks which clothed the daughters of the Caesars.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] The growth of the Chinese press is remarkable. Although no complete statistics are available there is reason to believe that the number of periodicals in China now approximates 10,000, the daily vernacular newspapers in Peking alone exceeding 60. Although no newspaper in China prints more than 20,000 copies a day, the reading public is growing at a phenomenal rate, it being estimated that at least 50 million people read the daily publications, or hear what they say,--a fact which is deemed so politically important that all political parties and groups have their chains of organs throughout the country.

[28] The mediaeval condition of Chinese trade taxation is well ill.u.s.trated by a Memorandum which the reader will find in the appendix.

One example may be quoted. Timber s.h.i.+pped from the Yalu river, _i.e._ from Chinese territory, to Peking, pays duties at _five_ different places, the total amount of which aggregates 20 per cent. of its market value; whilst timber from America, with transit dues and Peking Octroi added, only pays 10 per cent.! China is probably the only country that has ever existed that discriminates against its own goods and gives preference to the foreigner,--through the operation of the Treaties.

[29] We need only give a single example of what we mean. If, in the matter of the reform of the currency, instead of authorizing trade-agencies, _i.e._ the foreign Exchange Banks, to make a loan to China, which is necessarily hedged round with conditions favourable to such trade-agencies, the Powers took the matter directly in their own hands; and selecting the Bank of China--the national fiscal agent--as the instrument of reform agreed to advance all the sums necessary, _provided_ a Banking Law was pa.s.sed by the Parliament of China of a satisfying nature, and the necessary guarantees were forthcoming, it would soon be possible to have a uniform National Currency which would be everywhere accepted and lead to a phenomenal trade expansion. It should be noted that China is still on a Copper Standard basis,--the people's buying and selling being conducted in multiples of copper cent-pieces of which there has been an immense over-issue, the latest figures showing that there are no less than 22,000,000,000 1-cent, ten cash pieces in circulation or 62 coins per head of population--roughly twenty-five millions sterling in value,--or 160,000 tons of copper! The number of silver dollars and subsidiary silver coins is not accurately known,--nor is the value of the silver bullion; but it certainly cannot greatly exceed this sum. In addition there is about 15,000,000 of paper money. A comprehensive scheme of reform, placed in the hands of the Bank of China, would require at least 15,000,000; but this sum would be sufficient to modernize the currency and establish a universal silver dollar standard.

The Bank of China requires at least 600 branches throughout the country to become a true fiscal agent. It has to-day one-tenth of this number.

[30] It should be carefully noted that not only has j.a.pan no unfriendly feelings for Germany but that German Professors have been appointed to office during the war. In the matter of enemy trading j.a.pan's policy has been even more extraordinary. Until there was a popular outcry among the Entente Allies, German merchants were allowed to trade more or less as usual. They were not denied the use of j.a.panese steamers, s.h.i.+pping companies being simply "advised" not to deal with them, the two German banks in Yokohama and Kobe being closed only in the Autumn of 1916. It was not until April, 1917, that Enemy Trading Regulations were formally promulgated and enforced,--that is when the war was very far advanced--the action of China against Germany being no doubt largely responsible for this step.

That the j.a.panese nation greatly admires the German system of government and is in the main indifferent to the results of the war has long been evident to observers on the spot.

[31] A very remarkable confirmation of these statements is afforded in the latest j.a.panese decision regarding Manchuria which will be immediately enforced. The experience of the past three years having proved conclusively that the Chinese, in spite of their internal strife, are united to a man in their determination to prevent j.a.pan from tightening her hold on Manchuria and inst.i.tuting an open Protectorate, the Tokio Government has now drawn up a subtle scheme which it is believed will be effective. A Bill for the unification of administration in South Manchuria has pa.s.sed the j.a.panese Cabinet Conference and will soon be formally promulgated. Under the provisions of this Bill, the Manchuria Railway Company will become the actual organ of j.a.panese administration in South Manchuria; the j.a.panese Consular Service will be subordinate to the administration of the Railway; and all the powers. .h.i.therto vested in the Consular Service, political, commercial, judicial and administrative, will be made part of the organization of the South Manchuria Railway. This is not all. From another j.a.panese source we learn that a law is about to take effect by which the administration of the South Manchuria Railway will be transferred directly to the control of the Government-General of Korea, thus making the Railway at once an apparently commercial but really political organization. In future the revenues of the South Manchuria Railway are to be paid direct to the Government-General of Korea; and the yearly appropriation for the upkeep and administration of the Railway is to be fixed at Yen 12,000,000.

These arrangements, especially the amalgamation of the South Manchuria Railway, are to take effect from the 1st July, 1917, and are an attempt to do in the dark what j.a.pan dares not yet attempt in the open.