LOOKING upon the map of China to‐day, England might well say with Clive, “I stand amazed at my own moderation.” If thirty years ago she had seized upon the whole of that vast empire, no other Power in the world would have dared to say her nay. She was undisputed mistress of the Eastern seas. Russia had not then reached the shores of the Pacific and her hands were busily employed in the centre of Asia. Germany had only just become a nation, and had not yet dreamt of contending with England for the commerce of the world. France lay crushed beneath the weight of an overwhelming defeat; and her voice was unheard in the councils of the nations. The United States of America had no thought of realms beyond the sea; their fleet was small, and the markets of Asia held no temptation for their merchants. Japan was but a name. The Meiji, the eventful revolution that freed her from the iron fetters of hide‐bound ignorance, was scarcely ten years old; and even its authors scarce dared to hope that their little islands would one day rank high among the civilised Powers of the world.

And China itself, that unwieldy Colossus, lay a helpless prey to any strong nation that placed aggrandisement before the claims of abstract justice. The prize was tempting. An immense empire that stretched from the snows of the North to the burning heats of the torrid zone; a land of incredible fertility, of vast mineral wealth, the value of which can even now be only vaguely guessed at; a teeming population of industrious and easily‐contented millions; an enormous seaboard with natural harbours that could shelter the navies of the world; navigable rivers that pierced to the heart of the land and offered themselves as veritable highways of commerce; all the riches that the earth could bear on its surface or hide in its bosom—what a guerdon to the victor!

The conquest of China might daunt the faint‐hearted from the apparent immensity of the task; but few countries would have proved an easier prize. Her army was composed of a heterogeneous collection of ill‐armed militia, whose weapons were more frequently the spear and the bow than the modern rifle. The Chinaman is, by nature, a lover of peace. War he abhors; and the profession of a soldier, honoured among other races, is held by him in utter contempt. Unpaid, uncared for, ill‐treated, and despised, the troops had to be driven to battle and could not withstand a determined attack. And behind them was no high‐spirited nation ready to risk all in the defence of the motherland. Patriotism is unknown. The love of country, so strong in other peoples, is non‐existent in the heart of the average Chinaman. With aught beyond the limits of his village, he has no concern. No other race in the world can boast so deep a love of family. To save his relatives from poverty, the Celestial will go willingly to his death. According to their laws a criminal cannot be slain unless he has confessed his crime. To wring this confession from him, tortures inconceivable in their fiendish malignity are heaped upon him. A speedy death would be a boon. But to acknowledge his guilt and die by the hands of the public executioner would entail the forfeiture of all his property to the State, and his family would be beggared. So, grimly uncomplaining, he submits for their sake to agonies that no white man could endure. A rich man condemned to death can generally purchase a substitute, can find a poverty‐stricken wretch willing to die in his stead for a sum of money that will place his starving relatives in comparative affluence.

All this the poor Chinaman will do for those he loves. How many white men would do the same? But why should he die for his country? he asks. Why sacrifice himself and those near and dear to him for the honour of a shadowy Emperor? Why should he lay down his life that the officials who oppress the poor and wrest his hard‐earned money from him may flourish unmolested? He is told that the Japanese, yellow men like himself, have invaded the land and defeated the Imperial troops. Well, the enemies are thousands of miles away from him, and the soldiers are paid to fight. What is it to him that strangers have seized upon some seaport, the name of which he has never heard before? Let those whom it concerns go out and fight them. His duty is to stay at home and till the ground that his family may not lack food.

A few of the more enlightened Chinamen of the upper classes, those who have lived abroad in Europe or America, in Australia, Hong Kong, and the Straits Settlements, or who have been educated in European colleges, may be inspired with the love of country as we understand it. But have the leaders of the nation, the nobles and the mandarins, ever been ready to sacrifice themselves for China? They batten on its misfortunes. The higher in rank they are the readier they prove themselves to intrigue with its enemies and sell their country for foreign gold. They drive the common folk to battle and stay at home themselves. The generals and the officers, with few exceptions, are never found in front of their troops in action, unless when a retirement is ordered. Occasionally isolated cases occur when a defeated commander commits suicide. But it is generally because he prefers an easy death by his own hand to the degradation and tortures that await the vanquished general.

To prate of the patriotism of the Chinese is as though one spoke of the “patriotism of India.” Still, the latter is a favourite phrase of some of our ignorant politicians who pose as the champions of “the down‐trodden black brother.” They talk of India being made self‐governing and wish to fill its Civil Service with “enlightened natives.” They fail to see why a Calcutta Babu or a Bombay Parsee, who boasts a university degree and has passed a brilliant examination, should not be set to rule over a Punjaub district or to deal with the unruly Pathans on the frontier. They do not realise that Englishmen would sooner submit to be governed by the knout of a Russian official than the haughty Sikh or fierce Pathan would endure the sway of men they regard as lower than dogs. Our Indian Empire is composed of a hundred warring nations, all different in speech, in blood, almost in religions. We, the dominant race, hold them all in the Pax Britannica, and keep them from each other’s throats.

In like manner few realise that China is not a united and homogeneous nation. It consists of many provinces, the inhabitants of which belong practically to different races and speak in different tongues. They have little intercourse or sympathy with each other. Inter‐village wars are almost as frequent as among Pathans. Rebellions are common occurrences. The Mohammedans hold themselves aloof and regard the other Chinese with little love. The written language is the same throughout China; but the man of Canton cannot speak with the inhabitant of Pekin or the coolie from Amoy. Occasionally the curious sight may be seen of two Chinamen from different provinces holding converse with each other in pidgin‐English, the only medium of intercourse intelligible to both.

In the outbreak of 1900 the Boxers and the Pekinese showed themselves almost as hostile to the Cantonese trading or residing in the north as they were to Europeans. They considered that the southern city’s long intercourse with the white man must have rendered its inhabitants favourable to foreigners; though, indeed, this is very far from the truth.

So the Chinaman can have no patriotism. To any but the most enlightened—or the mandarins from more sordid motives—it is a matter of comparative indifference who rules the Empire. Provided that he is allowed to live in peace, that taxes do not weigh upon him too heavily or his religion be not interfered with, the peasant cares not who reigns in Pekin. Justice he does not ask for; he is too unused to it. All that he demands is that he be not too utterly ground down by oppression. Patient and long‐suffering, he revolts only against the grossest injustice. Not until maddened by famine or unable to wring a bare living from the ground does he rise to protest against the unjust officials, whose exactions have kept him poor. If he once realised the fairness of European rule, he would live content under any banner, happy in being allowed to exist in undisturbed possession of the fruit of his toil. The Chinamen in our possessions in the East are satisfied and happy under the mild law of England. Large numbers of them make their home there, content to live and die under a foreign government, and ask only that their corpses may be conveyed back to China to be interred in its sacred soil.

The average Celestial in his own land feels no pride or interest in the glory of his country. In its government he has no voice. Of its history, its achievements in the past, he is ignorant. He is content with it because it is the only one he knows and so must be the best. Of other lands beyond its confines he has dimly heard. But their inhabitants are mere barbarians. Those of them who have intruded themselves into his country are uncivilised according to his standard. They worship false gods; their manners are laughable. All they do is at variance with his customs, and so must be wrong. They cannot read his books and know nothing of the maxims of Confucius. So they must be illiterate as well as irreligious. Yet these strange beings are content with themselves, and scorn his ways! This proves their ignorance and their conceit. How can they boast, he asks, of the superiority of their own countries when they cannot stay there and, in face of contempt and hostility, seek to force their way into his? And as their coming means interference with customs hallowed by age and the uprooting of his dearest prejudices, he resents it. They strive to introduce innovations which he can very well do without. What sufficed for his father and his father’s father is good enough for him. The barbarians come only to disturb. They wish to defile the graves of his worshipped ancestors by constructing railways over the soil in which their bones rest. The shrieks of the chained devils in their engines disturb the Feng Shui, the tutelary deities of his fields, and hence follow drought and famine. And that these accursed, unneeded iron highways may be constructed, he is forced to sell the land which has been in the possession of his family for generations. The price for it passes through the hands of the mandarins and officials, and so but little reaches him. Has he not heard that to secure the safety of their bridges little children are kidnapped and buried under their foundations? Out upon the accursed intruders! China has flourished through countless ages without their aid, and wants them not.

And so, in a measure, hatred of foreigners supplies the place of patriotism. It binds all classes together. The ruling clique dread them for the reforms they seek to introduce; for these would overthrow the frail structure of oligarchical government in Pekin and hurl the privileged class from power. The mandarins tremble at their interference with the widespread corruption and unjust taxation on which the officials now batten. The educated hate them for their triumphs over China in the past, their continual territorial aggression, and their constant menace to the integrity of China. The fanatical hatred of the white man exhibited by the lower classes is the result of the blindest ignorance. It is stirred into mad rage by the exhortations of the priests, who naturally resent with true clerical bigotry the introduction of other creeds. The zealous but too often misdirected efforts of the missionaries, who tactlessly trample on his dearest beliefs, rouse the Chinaman to excesses against the strangers who seem to have intruded themselves upon him only to insult all that he holds most sacred. Every misfortune, whether it be drought and subsequent famine or devastating floods, storm or pestilence, is ascribed to the anger of the gods, irritated at the presence of the unbelievers. If the crops fail or small‐pox desolates a village, the eyes of the frenzied peasants turn to the nearest mission house where live the accursed strangers whose false teachings have aroused the anger of the immortals. Urged on by the priests and mandarins, they fall upon it and slay its inmates. But retribution comes swiftly. Their own Government are forced by dread of foreign interference to punish the misguided wretches who have, as they consider, wreaked only a just revenge. The officials are degraded. Heads fall and houses are razed to the ground. The Imperial troops quarter themselves on the luckless villagers who pay dearly in blood and silver for the harm they have wrought in their madness. And a sullen hatred of the white man spreads through all classes and bears bitter fruit in subsequent graver outbreaks.

Can we justly blame them? Would we act differently in their place? What if the cases were reversed? Suppose England to be a weak and backward country and China wealthy and powerful, with a great navy and a large army. Her merchants are enterprising and seek to push their trade into other countries, even against the wish of the inhabitants. Chinese vessels force their way up the Thames and sell the cargoes they carry to our merchants in defiance of the laws we have passed against the importation of foreign commodities. Refusing to leave, they are fired upon. Chinese missionaries make their way into England and preach ancestor‐worship and the tenets of Buddha in the East End of London. The scum of Whitechapel mob them—as the Salvation Army has often been mobbed. A missionary or two is killed. The Chinese Government seeks revenge. A strong fleet is sent to bombard the towns along the South Coast. Bristol is seized. A demand is made that the Isle of Wight should be ceded in reparation for the insult to the Dragon flag. We are forced to surrender it. A Chinese town grows up on it; and the merchants in it insist that their goods should have the preference over home‐made articles. The Chinese Government demands that tea from the Celestial Kingdom should be admitted duty free and a tax put upon Indian growths. A criminal or an anarchist, fleeing from justice, takes refuge on a small Chinese ship, which is boarded and the fugitive seized. We are only an ignorant people, and do not understand the Law of Nations. We are soon instructed. Again China sends a fleet; a force is landed and Liverpool captured. To redeem it we must pay a large ransom. To obtain peace we are obliged to grant the Chinese settlements in Liverpool, Bristol, and Southampton. This inspires other Asiatic Powers—Corea, Kamschatka, and Siam, which we will imagine to be as progressive and powerful as our supposititious China—to demand equal privileges and an occasional slice of territory. Kent, Hampshire, and Norfolk pass into their hands.

Buddhist and Taoist missionaries now flood the land. The common people regard them with fear and hatred. The clergy of the Church of England preach against them. The ignorant peasantry and the lowest classes in the towns at last rise and expel them. A few of them are killed in the process. The flame spreads. The settlements of the hated intruders are everywhere assailed. The Asiatic Embassies in London are attacked by the mob. Our Government, secretly sympathising with the popular feeling, are powerless to defend them. Even if they wished to do so, the soldiers would refuse to fire on the rioters.

Then the Allied nations of Eastern Asia band together; a great army invades our unhappy country. A dire revenge is taken for the outrages on the missionaries and the attacks on the Embassies. Middlesex is laid waste with fire and sword; neither age nor sex is spared. The brutal Kamschatkans slay the children and violate the women. London is captured and looted. The flags of China, Corea, Kamschatka, and Siam fly from the roofs of Buckingham Palace; Marlborough House shelters the invaders; Windsor Castle is occupied by a garrison of the Allied troops. Flying columns march through the land, pillaging and burning as they go; the South of England is occupied by the enemy. Before the Allied nations evacuate the devastated land a crushing war indemnity is laid upon us.

Would we love the yellow strangers then? True, we are backward and unprogressive. They are civilised and enlightened; and even against our will our country must be advanced. Still, I fear that we should be ungrateful enough to resent their kind efforts to improve us and persist in regarding them as unwelcome intruders.

All this that I have imagined as befalling England has happened to China. For similar causes Canton was bombarded and captured. The treaty ports were forced to welcome foreign trade. Hong Kong, Tonkin, Kiau‐chau, Port Arthur, all have been torn from China. Fire and sword have laid waste the province of Chi‐li. Death to the men and disgrace to the women have been unsparingly dealt. Can we wonder that the Chinese do not love the foreigner?

Our missionaries go forth to earn the crown of martyrdom. But if they gain it their societies demand vengeance in blood and coin from the murderers. The Gospel of Love becomes the Doctrine of Revenge. “Forgive your enemies!” O ye saintly missionaries who are so shocked at the ungodly lives of your sinful fellow‐countrymen in foreign lands, will you not practise what you preach? Think of the divine precept of the Master you profess to serve and pardon the blind rage of the ignorant heathen!

So much for the China of the present. What of the future? She is now fettered by the shackles of blind ignorance, by the prejudices and retrogressive spirit of the tyrannical Manchu oligarchy who rule the land. Her strength is sapped by the poison of corruption. The officials, almost to a man, are mercenary and self‐seeking. Extortion and dishonesty are found in every class. Suppose a tax is laid upon a certain province. The Viceroy orders the mandarins to collect it from their districts. They send forth their myrmidons to wring it from the people, by threats and torture if need be. Enough must be raised to satisfy the many vultures through whose claws it will pass before it reaches Pekin. Twice, three times the amount of the sum asked for originally must be gathered from the unfortunate taxpayers, in order that each official through whose hands it goes on its way to the Imperial Treasury may have his share of the spoil. And how is all the money raised in the vast Empire spent? Not on the needs of the land, certainly. Few roads or bridges exist. They have mostly been constructed by charity. The railways—and there are not many—were built by foreign capital.

Is there no hope for China? Must she remain for ever the spoil of the strong? Or will she one day recognise the secret of her weakness, reform and become a power too formidable to be lightly offended? She has an example always before her eyes. Forty years ago Japan was as ignorant and prejudiced. Foreigners were hated; the country was closed to them. The Mikado was then as powerless as the Emperor of China is now. The spear and the sword were the weapons which the soldiers of Japan opposed to the cannons and rifles of the Europeans. Foreign fleets bombarded the coast‐towns and wrung concessions from the rulers of the helpless land. The country was divided between powerful chieftains of warlike clans.

Yet at one stroke of a magic wand all was changed. Japan now ranks among the Great Powers of the world. Her army commands respect and fear; on war‐footing it numbers over half a million—and the Japanese have always been gallant soldiers. Her navy is as modern and well‐equipped as any afloat. The resources of the country have been developed. A network of railways covers the land; telegraphs and telephones link the important towns. Her manufacturers compete with Europe in every market in Asia. Her merchant ships are all but built in her own dockyards. The fleets of her steamship companies, such as the Nippon Yusen Kaisha, would not discredit Liverpool or New York. Lines of splendid passenger steamers, some of them over 6,000 tons, run to Europe, America, and Australia. Smaller lines keep up communication between Japan and the coasts of Siberia, Corea, and China. Education is widespread; universities and schools abound. Manufactures are encouraged by a liberal policy. The forest of factory chimneys in Osaka gives that town the semblance of Birmingham as one approaches it in the train. The water‐power universal throughout the islands is utilised freely. Electric light is found in almost every city in the empire. It is installed in even the smaller private houses. Automatic public telephone kiosks dot the streets of the capital. In provincial towns like Nagoya electric trams run.

All that Japan has become, China may yet be. Nay, more. The former is poor, her territory small, the greater part of the country encumbered with unprofitable mountains. The undeveloped wealth of the latter is enormous. Gold, silver, copper, iron, and coal are all found. Vast stretches of forest cover the interior. The soil is incredibly fertile; and her people are naturally intelligent. The Chinese in Hong Kong and elsewhere, as merchants, as shipowners, as professional men, prove it. The schools and colleges of our island colony are filled with the clever, almond‐eyed students. In the Straits Settlements, as in Hong Kong, they compete with the Europeans in commerce and vie with them in wealth. All that he is in other countries the Chinaman can become in his own under the liberal rule of an enlightened Government. The foreigners who trade with the Chinese say that the latter are far more trustworthy in business than many a white man. The Chinese merchant’s word is his bond. The Japanese are not so reliable; and their artisans are by no means as industrious as their Celestial neighbours. The latter, under no compulsion, will toil day and night to complete some work by the time they have agreed to finish it.

The Chinese soldier is regarded with universal contempt. His achievements in the past, when pitted against European troops, have not exalted his name. But in 1900 he first showed what splendid material he is. With the passive courage of fatalism, incomprehensible to more highly strung races, the Chinaman will face death without a struggle. When roused by fanaticism he will fight blindly to the end; but in cold blood he has no ambition for military glory. When led to battle for a cause of which he knows or cares nothing, he is ready to save his life by a timely flight with no feelings of shame or self‐reproach. He has never been taught otherwise. In China moral suasion or deceit are looked upon as more glorious weapons than sword or gun.

But if he were well disciplined and led to understand the meaning of esprit de corps, well treated and well led, he would prove no contemptible soldier. The Boxers who with knives and spears charged up to within fifty yards of Seymour’s well‐armed men and faced the withering fire of magazine rifles with frenzied courage; the Imperial troops who harassed his brave column day and night; the students who fought their guns to the last when the Tientsin Military College was taken by the Allies—were these cowards?

What the Chinaman can be made to do with proper leading may be seen in the behaviour of our Chinese Regiment, little more than a year raised, all through the campaign of 1900. When the British, American, and Russian stormers had captured the Peiyang Arsenal, on June 27th, an attempt to cut them off from Tientsin was made by a large body of Imperial troops and Boxers who tried to get between them and the river, across which they had to pass on their return. Lieutenant‐Colonel Bower, intrepid explorer and gallant soldier, led out his Chinese Regiment and drove off the enemy. The conduct of the men under fire was excellent.

It is absurd to suppose that the Chinaman cannot learn the art of modern warfare. The example of the Imperial troops who attacked Seymour and besieged Tientsin amply proves this statement. They took advantage of cover with cleverness and knowledge. They used their magazine rifles with accuracy and effect. Their gunners were excellently trained. Their shooting was so good that at first it was falsely supposed that the guns were served by renegade Europeans. The arms with which they were equipped were excellent. The troops were well supplied with quick‐firing Krupps and magazine rifles. That they could use these weapons was proved by the heavy losses among the Allied sailors and soldiers in the early part of the campaign.

The Chinese offered so little resistance to the Allies on the march to Pekin, the war collapsed so suddenly on the fall of the capital, that scant justice has been done to the courage displayed on both sides during the heavy fighting with Seymour’s column and around Tientsin. The losses among the Europeans show how desperate it was. Admiral Seymour’s column, out of less than 2,000 men, lost 295 killed and wounded in sixteen days. The casualties among the British contingent of 900 bluejackets and marines, amounted to 27 killed and 97 wounded. The Americans out of 120 men lost 4 killed and 25 wounded. The stormers of the Taku forts also lost heavily.

In the beginning of the attack on the Peiyang Arsenal by the Russians, they lost over 200 men and had to send for help to the Americans and the British.

In the Boxer night attack on Tientsin railway station in July, the British, French, and Japanese defending it had 150 casualties.

Out of a total of 5,000 men engaged in the taking of Tientsin native city on July 13th and 14th, the Allies lost nearly 800 men.

The Egyptian fellah was once considered to be utterly hopeless as a fighting‐man. But British officers nursed him, strengthened his moral fibre, and then led him into battle. Witness his behaviour at the Atbara and at Omdurman. The army that the genius of Lord Kitchener had moulded so skilfully proved invincible; and the fellah did his fair share of the fighting.

The Chinaman in natural courage, in physique, and in stamina is far superior to the Egyptian. Why should he not become a more formidable fighting‐man? Think what the Celestial Empire could do if its soldiers were properly armed, trained, and led; if the spirit of self‐respect were instilled into them and their natural passive courage fanned into active bravery! Think of a warlike army recruited from a population of 400,000,000; and at its back a reformed China, its resources developed, its immense wealth properly utilised, its people free and filled with patriotic pride!

What Japan has accomplished, China, once her leader and her conqueror, may yet achieve. And signs of the Great Awakening are at hand!