The Russian road to China

CHINA

DESTINY has bequeathed to his once subject-race the heritage of Genghis Khan, but whether its Manchu possessor can or cannot hold even his own birthright is to-day an enigma. The last few years have seen the gathering of the eagles, disputing the mastery of eastern Asia, where China stands against the world. Slav, Saxon, and Frank press in, upon the supine empire. Has this yellow race the manhood and the capacity to rally against them and retrieve its national integrity?

The cession of Formosa after the war of 1895 began the partition. China’s defenselessness was then visualized. The revelation of her easy defeat set every predatory nation on the alert. Watchful for an occasion, which two murdered missionaries supplied, Germany, by clumsy but successful unscrupulousness, seized Kiao-chow and two hundred miles of hinterland. Three weeks after the bludgeoned ratification of Admiral Diedrich’s grab, Russia procured the signature of the intimidated Emperor to the lease of Port Arthur. France demanded and secured the cession of Kwang-chow-wan, on the mainland opposite the island of Hainan. England acquired the lease of Wei-hai-wei, and continental territory opposite Hong-kong. Italy came to claim as its portion Sanmen Bay; but this at least China found courage to refuse.

Then followed a period when, backed each by its government, invading cohorts of promoters scooped in franchises and special privileges of every description. The latter part of 1899 saw foreigners pushing in from Manchuria on the north, where Russia with her so-termed railway guards held the strategic route, and from Yun-nan on the south, where France was constructing a similar road of conquest. It showed four European nations so established along the coast that only by courtesy of a foreign government could a Chinese vessel cast anchor in some of the principal ports of China. It saw a Belgian-French railway driving from Peking into the heart of the Empire at Hankow; an American line started north from Canton to the same objective; an English line controlling the territory between the main northern trade-centres, Niu-chwang and Tien-tsin; a French society in possession of a great south-country copper concession; Russians with the exclusive right to all the gold in two eimucks of Mongolia; and an English syndicate deeded the best of the Chinese coal-fields.

The partition was thus far accomplished. The continental nations seemed to be ready for all that they could get. The strength of Great Britain’s traditional position, based upon maintaining the integrity of China, was shaken by her lease of Wei-hai-wei, although this lease was to run only so long as Russia should hold Port Arthur. England was on the point of recognizing openly “spheres of influence,” as is shown by the inferential claim to special British rights in the Yangtse region set forth in the official transactions of Sir Claude McDonald, and brought out under parliamentary interpellation, when a Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the Balfour Ministry spoke of “British rights” to the provinces adjoining the Yangtse River and Ho-nan and Che-kiang.

There was apparently good warrant for the general belief that in expectation of an impending partition a provisional understanding had been reached by the different chancelleries, regarding the share of each nation, England being allotted the mighty domain from the Yellow Sea to Burma and Afghanistan, including all Tibet, as well as six hundred and fifty thousand square miles in China proper. In general, from Shan-tung inland the valley of the Hoang-ho was destined for Germany; the district north of her Anamese possessions for France; all Mongolia and Manchuria for Russia; Corea and the province of Fokien on the mainland opposite Formosa, for Japan. Peking and the surrounding district, whose disposition was embarrassed by jealousy if not by scruples, was alone left for the Chinese.

At this critical juncture, when the day of dismemberment seemed indeed to have arrived, the United States came forward in behalf of the “open-door” doctrine, as a means of preserving the nationality and the integrity of China. In a circular letter to the Powers, our Secretary of State, Mr. John Hay, asked that adhesion be given in writing to three main propositions, appertaining to each country “within its respective sphere, of whatever influence.” These points were that no treaty port rights or other vested interests should be interfered with; that the Chinese tariff should be maintained; that no discriminating railway charges or harbor-dues should be imposed.

America’s might, thrown into the wavering balance, turned the scale. Great Britain gave ready adhesion. Though the responses of some of the other Powers were evasive, none was at this time willing to bear the onus of an adverse stand: each nation nominally accepted, and the movement toward partition was checked.

To most people Chinese matters seemed settled. The preservation of a nation had been combined with the guaranteeing of a great free market; the orgy of grabbing had ceased. Russia, assenting to the open door, had promised to evacuate Manchuria. The special concessions, though secured by stand-and-deliver methods, it was felt would bring economic improvements and would furnish to the Chinese a demonstration of the beneficent results of Western civilization.

It was recognized that there would be frictions: misunderstandings are inevitable when old ways are faced with new. The extra-territorial rights of foreigners and their converts, absolutely necessary to protect their liberties if not their lives, could not but create occasional unharmonious situations, in which the consuls would have to intervene. The severity of the judicial punishment meted out at times to rioting cities for harm done to the protégés of the Powers was to be deplored, each nation grieving at the atrocities the others had seen fit to perpetrate.

But periodic local and temporary disturbances had been going on from time immemorial. Did not the Chinese realize, we reasoned, that their old corrupt government had been given another undeserved chance to try and march with the rest of the race; that this world is not the place for graft-ridden relics from the fifth century B.C.? The least we felt was that, thanks to the bearer of the “Flowery Banner,” the Chinese had been given a last opportunity. A self-denying Occident had guaranteed the nation’s existence and had presumably earned its everlasting gratitude. “Let China get up and do something—let it redeem itself.”

A very small circle of Chinese shared this Western view, and realized at their true value the mights if not the rights. There existed among the literati at Peking and in the coast cities the rudiments of a foreign liberal party. Recognizing that Western methods must come, they had been in favor of accepting foreign improvements even at the cost of railway concessions and the violated dwellings of wind and water spirits. When this party won over the young Emperor, there began the period of foreign concessions. Reforms, too, covering every subject, from queue-cutting to postage-stamps, were inaugurated.

The summer of 1898 saw the important edict which ordered the abolition of the Wen-chang essays and the penmanship posts, with the Emperor’s personal comment that the examinations should test “a knowledge of ancient and modern history, and information in regard to the present state of affairs, with special reference to the governments and institutions of the countries of the five great continents, and their arts and sciences.” A Bureau of Mines was established, a patent-office, schools, a scheme of army reform.

The climaxing decree was the one abolishing sinecures. For the Emperor’s unreconstructed entourage this last was too much. Foreign aggression had embittered to the point of unreason mandarin and coolie alike. The coup d’état planned by the Dowager Empress, and executed by the reactionaries, virtually dethroned the Emperor, exiled his advisers, and ended the foreign-encouragement reform.

Indeed it was not within human nature for it to endure. From the point of view of the party of the second part the aspect of the whole foreign relationship, even after the Hay Note, looked very ugly indeed. The fact of guaranteed integrity was obscured by the laissez-faire of the already consummated grabs. The idea that gripped them was the humiliation of foreign occupation and foreign aggression. It was as if the Russians and the English had just seized rival reservations on Long Island and the Jersey coast, commanding New York City; as if the English had wrenched away Charleston; the Germans, Philadelphia; the French, New Orleans; and Cossacks were garrisoned in strategic points throughout New England. It was as if the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railway were manned and guarded by Slavs, the New York Central by Belgians, the Pennsylvania by Prussians; as if the Pittsburgh mines were handed over en bloc to an English corporation, and the Russians had exclusive mining rights to the gold of Alaska’s Yukon region. It was as if America’s protective-tariff and contract-labor laws were repealed at foreign dictation, and a flood of foreign machine-made goods and undesired immigrants were poured into the unwilling country. It was as if yellow-robed Buddhist lamas were everywhere haranguing the Yankee farmers, telling them of the fraudulent nature of the Christian creed, and urging upon them an approved canine method for disposing of deceased ancestors, to replace their superstitious funeral services. It was as if astrologers, calling themselves engineers, were to dig up New York cemeteries in order to erect prayer-wheels; as if the apostates whom these yellow priests had drawn into their joss-houses were enabled to dodge part of the taxes, which consequently fell with added oppression on the rest of the people; and as if, when they did something which others would in the normal course of events get punished for, a lama came before the magistrate and got them off. As if the President and the Senate were given a weekly wigging by the diplomatic corps, and were periodically forced to deed away sections of the forest reserve and tracts of particularly desirable territory.

With such an aspect as this, which represents what in an undefined, bewildered way the Chinese saw and felt, it is no wonder that they considered the Confucian dictum obsolete: “Do not unto others, what you would not that they should do unto you”; and joined the patriotic harmonious Fists,—the Boxers.

Chinese sentiment was ungauged in the West because we had never put ourselves in their places. Unforeseen save by a few unheeded Cassandras, and unprepared for, there broke out the planless, leaderless Boxer Rebellion, grim fruitage of the national resentment. A few hastily gathered legation guards were alone available for defense. Spreading from the Shan-tung Province, where the severity of the Germans had goaded the usually peaceable people to madness, the I-Ho-Chuan besieged the legations at Peking. It was the infuriated and ill-directed rush of a patriotism real if futile,—a turning against the spoilers.

The movement was crushed in a torrent of blood, and with a devastation that for long will leave its mark upon the northern provinces. The closing year of the nineteenth century saw the Taku forts stormed, Tien-tsin, the Liverpool of the North, taken over and administered by a foreign board, Manchuria and Mongolia swarming with Cossacks, the Dowager Empress in flight, and her capital looted by foreign armies.

The coming of alien soldiery to the Forbidden Palace left its impress in the fiercer though more carefully smothered hatred of mandarins and people. It was still a blind resentment. They were injured, stung in all their pride and self-sufficiency, but dumb, bewildered, not knowing what to do, which way to turn. The liberals with their solution were gone; with them had passed the hopes of a progressive policy.

The people, perplexed, looked to their reëstablished reactionary rulers for guidance. But these officials, mostly of advanced age, and steeped in the ideas and ideals of the Confucian classics, were anxious mainly to close the ears and eyes of the masses to the unpleasant realities; to feather their own nests and finish off their lives in tranquility.

The Chinese Minister to the United States, Wu Ting Fang, gives a graphic picture of these Celestial Bourbons:—

“It must be remembered that most of the high officials in Peking are born and bred Chinese of the old school. All the princes and nearly all the ministers of state have spent most of their days within the four walls of the capital. They have never visited even other parts of the empire, not to say foreign lands; nor can they speak any other language besides their own. They have absolutely no knowledge or experience of foreign ways except those who are ministers of the Tsung-li Yamen, and the experience of these men has been confined exclusively to their official intercourse with the foreign representatives at Peking.”

Buttressing their hereditary intransigeance, these mandarins had, after the Hay Circular, possessed a measure of confidence that their yielding of open-door trade privileges to the greed of the foreigners had enlisted a combined support which would preserve China’s remaining national powers.

But so powerless to fulfill their purposes had these paper pledges become, so far was the open-door doctrine from settling the situation, that in China’s own territory, where by solemn promises of both parties no special privileges could accrue, the year 1904 saw two Powers in the throes of the greatest war of modern times.

If the realization of the combatants’ purpose has signified much to the nations of the West,—perhaps rather to the United States, for the others nursed no illusions,—to China it has meant far more. It has brought for the first time a real and general appreciation of the necessity for modernized, efficient self-defense.

Fifteen years of aggression have been needed to drive home this knowledge. While the defeats of 1895 came as a blow to a few keen-minded Chinese, to most they were a matter of entire indifference. China was not conquered, they reasoned: only two provinces took part while the viceroys of the rest looked idly on. “That Shan-tung man’s war” was the general attitude; “Li Hung Chang’s boats beaten.” When it was over, merely Formosa, the little-valued island of “tame barbarians,” had been lost. The traditional policy of playing off the jealous powers one against the other had apparently succeeded; it had cleared the Japanese from Corea and Port Arthur. China as a nation was hardly touched, and multitudes of people never knew there had been a war.

The seizures of 1897-1899, coming close upon each other, exasperated, but taught no lesson. The mass of Chinese, and even those in high official circles, believed that a little effort would drive the foreign devils into the sea. The march of the Allies to Peking stunned them. It was their first facing of the fact.

The Russo-Japanese War, and the partition of the province that had cradled their Emperor’s dynasty, dissipated their fool’s paradise. It was seen then, clearly, by all, that China’s only hope of maintaining her integrity lay in her defensive power. With the object, not of securing the blessings of civilization (which the overwhelming majority of Chinamen desire no more than we do the Holy Inquisition), but of beating away the spoilsmen, the Peking rulers turned at length to the survey of their actual military condition. As this concerns intimately the Chinese internal situation, a summary of it may be pertinent.

The Hwai-lien regulars, to the number of twenty-five thousand, are well-drilled, and well-armed with Chinese-made Mausers. They are stationed in the northern provinces, including the Taku and Peht’ang forts, the Tien-tsin station, and the neighborhood of Peking. These make up the only national force of modern troops at the disposal of the Chinese Government, but the private armies of various viceroys bring up the total somewhat as follows: The camps of foreign-drilled troops, formerly Yuan Shi Kai’s, probably the best in China, number roundly twenty thousand. From the Shen-ki Ying, or artillery force, from the camps of the Manchu Banners, which the Government is making an effort to whip into some kind of shape, from the Imperial body-guard, and other scattered and less important troops, ten thousand effectives might be culled. In the south the Viceroy of Nanking has, all told, some twenty thousand more men holding the Wusung forts, who may be classed as efficient and well-armed; some of these are German- and Japanese- drilled. This total of seventy-five thousand represents China’s numerical military strength in effective modern troops.

The old hereditary organization of twenty-four Banners, adds some two hundred thousand Manchus, Mongols, and Chinese,—of the privileged soldier caste, which through two hundred and fifty years has drawn an annual subsidy of eight million taels from the Peking treasury. Billeted as the nominal wardens of the provincial cities and garrisoned around Peking, these Tatars have become as a rule so degenerated by immemorial idleness as to be useless save for picturesque parades. The one positive element is that they are men under pay, subject to order, and available for initial experiments.

The Green Banner, or militia, under the command of a general for each province, is theoretically composed of a large number of native Chinese. The army is made up mainly of officers. The higher officials of the Green Banner acquire the pay, commissary, and weapon-allotments of their nominal armies, and pad the rolls with the names of coolies who come out for the annual review in return for the small portion of their nominal wage which must be spent to keep face.

To expect these men to get out and fight is obviously more than they bargained for. The Green Banner can deliver about the same relative number of actual soldiers per unit of population that a Mississippi backwoods county polls for the Republican party. The most that can be said for the Green Banner is that it has a list of men’s names from which a certain number of real recruits might be obtained.

The military organization of even the best regular troops is feeble. Constant word reaches the press of soldiers revolting for lack of pay. In one such instance nine hundred men near the Manchuria border mutinied and were put down with difficulty, tying up the caravans for some time. Aside from questions of discipline, and considering number only, it is doubtful if, in the whole empire of four hundred million people, one hundred thousand decently armed and drilled troops could be gathered, in an extremity, for defensive purposes.

Drilled and armed men in whatever numbers are, however, but one element of a country’s defensive power. Organization, transportation, commissary, and supply are factors of hardly less importance. The troops that get there are the ones which count, and even a Chinese army marches on its belly. Russia’s defective transport, to mention but one case, undoubtedly decided both the Crimean and the Japanese wars. The question of territorial defense is one of several dimensions, first of which is how soon could a given force, with its necessary commissary and ammunition-supply, be disposed along the various lines of possible attack.

Making the round of the Chinese Empire, it is apparent that Tibet and Mongolia, for all the resistance that could be made, might be taken by England and Russia respectively whenever they were minded to cross the border. The Chinese could throw out barring columns no further westward than Sze-chuan, no further northward than the Great Wall.

On the frontier of Corea, the Yalu River formerly defined the first line of defense. But this frontier has been moved westward by the Japanese, so that it would be a political impossibility to put men there even were it practically possible. The present line would of necessity be between Shan-hai-kwan and Yung-ping. Perhaps withdrawals from the northern provinces, the viceroys permitting, might admit massing here fifty thousand troops. But this, as well as any other possible line, is entirely unfortified, giving hardly more advantages to the repelling than to the attacking forces. There would be no second line of defense, nothing to fall back upon but the old Tatar Wall of Peking. Beyond this fifty thousand any quota brought from the south would consume a very considerable time, probably a month, even allowing that their semi-independent viceroys did not discreetly hold off altogether.

Further east, at Shan-tung, Germany’s railway pierces to the heart of the Confucian province; while from the Chinese military centre in Chi-li there is no corresponding railroad, Chinese-manned, giving them access, were it necessary to repel aggression. The Anamese railways afford the French means of bringing up troops, where China could assemble an army only after weeks of marching. The Burmese frontier of Britain’s dominion is similarly vantaged.

The German Land-Wehr, while the first armies go to the front, may be called out and mobilized, until the whole manhood of the nation is in arms. Such a body is nonexistent in the Celestial Empire. Like her own lichee nut, once the frail shell of her resistance is broken, the meat is ready for the eating. Considered solely from the military standpoint, aside from reform as such, China is as supine as a huge helpless jelly-fish, with disconnected nerve-ganglia, and not even the rudiments of a backbone.

For the first requirements of national defense, what is necessary? For the north there should be a thoroughly drilled and equipped regular army of at least one hundred and fifty thousand men, with capacity for rapid concentration in the neighborhood of Peking. For the south a standing army of at least fifty thousand men. An intermediate army of fifty thousand more should be available near Hankow, capable of being thrown either way. The Peking-Hankow railway line must have strategic branches to Canton, Shanghai, Yun-nan, and Shan-tung. These must be controlled not by foreigners but by Chinese. There must exist a reserve of, say, five hundred thousand men, at least partially drilled, from which to draw reinforcements. There must be arsenals able to make all the weapons and ammunition for these forces, since foreign nations will continue to command the sea. The sums needed to realize such a programme must be available, and China must possess the organization and fiscal system for the conduct of a war. From this summary it may be seen that adequate defense requires a measure of increase in her efficiency that is revolutionary. The demand which such measures would make upon any nation is stupendous. How much more would it exact of China, where for its accomplishment every single factor must overthrow the ideas, the principles, the very morals evolved through centuries in the most conservative race of the globe!

At the outset, for the personnel of such a regular army, two hundred and fifty thousand adults must be transformed from stolid, superstitious field-tillers and coolies, never of combative spirit, into courageous, disciplined fighting men. Can this be done? Some, eminently qualified to judge, answer that it can; but Chinese history has not for several thousand years furnished many glorious annals. Where a stark fight is recorded, as at Albazin, or against the Mongol khans in the sixteenth century, the warriors have been Manchus rather than Chinese. Whenever an aggressive nation, be it Hiung-nu or Khitan, Mongol or Manchu, British or Japanese, has gone against the genuine Chinaman, the latter has invariably submitted. It is only when his subjugators, absorbed into the swarming mass of conquered, have degenerated, that the native has been able to rise and drive out his enfeebled oppressor. The Chinese have conquered by time and their birth-rate.

On the other hand, the Chinaman has qualities which, translated into military virtues, should theoretically give him a great initial advantage over any other race. He is comparatively without nerves; he can hold a gun without a tremor for what to a Westerner is an inconceivably long time; he has good eyes and a strong sight; he can be victualed on a few handfuls of rice; he is entirely indifferent as to where or how he lodges; he is sober and reliable; he is a big-bodied man, stronger even, perhaps, than the Japanese; he is docile, obedient, and susceptible to discipline. Indeed, in all that concerns his physical qualities and certain moral superiorities, one could not ask for better raw material. When well led he has at times done very creditably. A generation of such leadership as Yuan Shi Kai’s would do not a little toward bringing out what there is latent in this people.

If in the army organization the gap between what is and what should be is so great, how much wider is it in the government organization needed to finance reform. The revenues of China are some $100,000,000. About $36,000,000 are allotted to military purposes. When from this has been deducted the eighteen million-odd which go to the generals of the Red and Green Banners, there is left, theoretically, about $18,000,000 for the real army. Actually there is efficiently applied probably not over $10,000,000. The regular army of Japan—two hundred and twenty-five thousand—takes $40,000,000 effectively expended. China must begin from the very bottom, whereas Japan is simply carrying along. A judicious total expenditure of at least $50,000,000 is needed for China’s army. With the additional railway and arsenal programme, and other concomitant work, the demands over and above present outlays would reach around $110,000,000. Add this to the present budget, less the well-spent ten millions, and there is to be reckoned a total budget of at least $200,000,000.

Could China raise such a defense-fund on top of her present hundred-million-dollar budget? Could she cut down on present expenses to help it out? The latter might be considered. Theoretically the wasted army money of the present budget might be saved and applied. Practically the vested interests in the graft are so important as to make it of infinite difficulty. The mere beginning of sinecure-cutting cost the Emperor the actuality of his throne and nearly his head.

The list shows other items of expenditure which cannot be materially economized. The large and growing sum which goes to repay interest, foreign loans, and indemnities, cannot be touched, nor can the $16,000,000 sent to the provinces for their local expenditures. The $8,000,000 for the Peking salaries and palace expenses is a fixture. The modest and well-administered $3,000,000 of the customs expenditures, covering about all the public works that China undertakes,—the lighthouse and coast-patrol allowances, the mails, the interpreters’ school,—this cannot be pared. The needed money must come if at all by increase of the receipts. One is driven irresistibly back to the Government’s taxing capacity.

The physical possibility of such taxation undoubtedly exists. The per capita revenue which the Government receives from its four hundred million subjects is but twenty-five cents. The American per capita revenue is eight dollars, the Japanese five dollars, the Russian twelve dollars, the Indian—perhaps in conditions the closest parallel to the Chinese—one dollar and a quarter. An extra twenty-five cents would raise the Chinese Government well above all financial difficulties, and still leave the rate far below that of the other great nations of the world.

Looking at the actual mechanism for revenue collection, one is met by difficulties which have rooted themselves deeply into the system. One cannot squeeze any larger proportion of the needed sum than the present $25,000,000 from the Imperial Maritime Customs. Tariff-rates are fixed by treaty, and the collections, under English direction, are as efficient as they can become. The likin duties on freight during inland transit are such a plague to commerce that, far from being increased, they should be swept away altogether as one of the earliest of reform measures. This $14,000,000 is produced at so heavy a price of fettered and thwarted commerce that added tariff would but aggravate the strangulation without materially increasing income. The opium revenue of $5,000,000 is likewise an item which, for the best interests of China, should disappear from a reformed budget, and the “foreign dirt” from the Celestial domain. In any event opium cannot be made much more productive.

After these eliminations there are left items which bring in $56,000,000. The sources consist principally of the land-tax, the grain-tribute, native customs, and the salt gabelle. The returns from these factors would require to be nearly trebled, if they were relied upon to make up the bulk of the needed total.

The method of collection is a further check to greater income. The existing machinery of fiscal administration operates, roughly, as follows: When the funds begin to run short for the usual expense-accounts, the various executive boards apply to the Board of Revenue. The latter makes a glorified guess at the sum which, considering harvests, rebellions, and other elements, each province might be able to pay. It is thereupon put to the provincial officials, consisting usually of a viceroy, a governor, a treasurer, and a judge, to supply something approximating this sum. The provincial syndicate, through the medium of various intermediate officials, such as the tao-tai and the fu-prefect, whose powers are nebulous and overlapping, call upon the eighty-odd county magistrates for an estimated share. The magistrates, shien-kwan, called colloquially “father and mother officials,” whose varied functions include rendering justice, keeping the jail, leading the religious processions, and collecting the taxes, send out each his hundred henchmen to get the actual money or grain. Of this hierarchy of officials not one has a salary which would keep his establishment going for a month. Of necessity the laborer must draw his own hire first from the harvest.

Under such a satrap system, by the grace of human nature, each official takes what the traffic will bear, letting pass to the man higher up enough to conciliate his claim and to keep face with Peking. If the penalties which follow deficient generosity to a superior define the maximum contribution, the minimum is fixed by the famine or the rebellion point. With this method in vogue, it is not unreasonable to assume that the amounts gathered in the first instance are about as great as can be wrung from the people. An increase of the Government’s receipts would have to come through shaking down the office-holders for a larger share of their pickings. Such a revenue as a real reform would demand must despoil of vested rights in his livelihood every mandarin, viceroy, tao-tai, fu-prefect, magistrate, and petty publican in the empire. It might be practicable to commute the likin, or inland octroi dues, for fixed sums by agreement with the hongs, or merchant associations. This was done in Li Hung Chang’s province, Kwang-tung, where $2,750,000 was paid in order to get rid of likin dues which netted only $670,000. Enough might be raised by this means to pay the officials at just rates. Then honest collections might reasonably be demanded, and a beginning be made of fiscal reform. But it is apparent from these outlines how long a way China has to travel before her capacity for self-defense is a reality.

The facts are now being comprehended by all classes. From the coast cities, a growing number of young Chinese have been sent to study abroad, mainly in Japan—as many as fifteen thousand in 1907. Returning, these so-called “students” have become the leaders in the boycotts against the United States and Japan. They have engaged actively in propaganda of a patriotic nature, and, more constructively, have translated into their mother tongue hundreds of books on history, economics, and law, including the whole Japanese code, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Voltaire, Montesquieu, the “Contrat Social” of Rousseau, the works of Henry George and Karl Marx, and many others of the same general nature.

These movements show a widespread public opinion friendly to Chinese regeneration. Various administrative measures have been inaugurated which are yet more promising.

The old method of dividing the Peking Bureau into provincial departments, and letting each of these care for every sort of business from its special province, has been altered. Instead of a bureau having general charge over the salt-tax, the customs, and the appointments of each province, there have been organized ten departments, dealing each with its specialty throughout the entire realm. The five recently-created bureaus—Agriculture, Works and Commerce, Police and Constabulary, Post-Office and Education—tell by their names the centralizing purpose of the new régime. Formerly five hundred clerks attended a department, with office-hours from eleven A.M. to two P.M. including lunch, smoking-time, and due intervals for examining peddlers’ wares. Now a much reduced force is employed, with actual working-hours generally from nine A.M. to four P.M. The foot-binding of children has been prohibited; pressure has been put upon the officials who smoke opium to abandon it, under penalty of dismissal from the service; classical essays as a civil-service examination subject are being given up, and the education of the Chinese youths abroad is being encouraged. A large number of Japanese officers have been engaged to train the khaki-clad and well-armed Chinese regulars, who have shown excellent aptitude. The Government has bought back practically all foreign railroad concessions, and all the valuable mining concessions except the Kai-ping coal-fields.

Even representative government is well under way. The Dowager Empress’s edict of August 27, 1908, by which a nine-year period was set for the devolution of legislative powers to provincial assemblies and a national senate has been justified by remarkable success. The local legislatures, elected under carefully restricted suffrage qualifications, have grappled earnestly with the economic problems of the districts. The senate, of thirty-two members, selected by the Prince Regent from an elected body, has not yet had time to show results, but the calibre of the men in it is encouraging.

China is making a real effort to get abreast of the times. But never was a nation brought more directly before the judgment-bar on the plain test of character. Upon the capacity of the race for private sacrifice and public honesty rests primarily her salvation. Whether China can or cannot rise to the task depends upon her own manhood, and no one can be prophet of the issue; for all estimate of Chinese character is perplexed by that curious Eastern subtlety of contradictions which baffle understanding.

The inability of the Chinese to keep fingers out of the public till is proverbial; yet the very high standard of business integrity is universally conceded.

The quality of Chinese honesty is attributed by some to the local idea of good form, and the obvious mercantile maxim that future credit depends upon present performance. Bourse operators may be scrupulously exact as to obligations which the mere lifting of a finger imposes, while engaged in campaigns diverting to their private speculations the funds of a chain of banks, or looting the values from the minority owners of a street-railway.

Chinese business integrity is said to be due to the fact that her merchants are of the upper class; cowardice in war, to the fact that her soldiers are of the lowest caste. In Japan the condition is exactly reversed: hence the prowess of her Samurai, and the peccability of her clerks—such that Japanese bankers employ Chinamen to handle their money.

Since the Japanese have built up an effective public administration, it is fair to give the Chinese the benefit of faith, and to assume that in time they too will rally to the task, and make a modern state.

With this should come the Trans-Mongolia Railway: opening to the plainsmen of Central Asia a prospect of civilization and advance.

Equally or more important, looking at things broadly, it would give to the world the best of the great Asian trade-routes. Examine a globe and see what, in the shortening of distance, this land-route to Peking signifies. Note the enormous circumnavigations that must be made in going around by India and Suez, and measure then the direct overland route by the Urga Post-Road and the Trans-Siberian Railway.

The bulky freight from the Asian Coast to western Europe will still pay tribute to the sea. To compete with vessel-transportation, which carries a ton from Shanghai to London for seven dollars, the railroads over the 7283 miles from Vladivostok to Paris would have to make a rail-rate of one tenth of a cent per ton-mile; this is impossible when one remembers the average American rate of eight tenths of a cent. But North China, all North Asia, and Europe west of Moscow, are within the railway radius of an Urga-Peking line.

From interior China may be drawn the goods for half a continent. The tea-freight which Russia receives over the long sea-trip to Odessa, or by the trans-shipped Vladivostok route, can be loaded then at Kalgan on the car that goes to Moscow. By it the silks of the Tien-tsin merchants may be rolled through into the freight-yards of St. Petersburg, and the timberless cities of interior China may build with the wood of the Yakutski Oblast forests. By it the dwellers in the valley of the Hoang-ho, “China’s Sorrow,” may be nourished in their need with the wheat of the Angara Valley; the Manchu mandarins may be clad in the furs from the Yenesei; the ploughshares tempered in Petrovski Zavod break the ancient soil of the Chi-li Province; the silver of the Altai Mountains make the bangles that deck the anklets of the purdah women.

For America the road will open a commercial highway into the very heart of a new and expanding empire. American rails may carry American cars,—those ever moving shuttles which weave the woof of trade. American woolens and felts may protect the Siberians against their Arctic cold, American machinery mine and refine their gold. New England cottons, utilizing the Panama Canal, may clothe the myriad coolies of interior China. Here is the mail-route of ten days from Paris to Peking, against the thirty-five days needed by the fastest ships. Here is the quickest passenger-route from London to Yokohama. All these potentialities lie as the fallow heritage of the Urga Road, if beyond Kalgan it is given its avenues to China and the sea. It is civilization that must profit when the equilibrium of the East is restored, and over the old Urga Road China is relinked to the West by the trains of the great Asian Railway.

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS

U . S . A