EUROPEAN ATTITUDE
All that I have said of the amenities of Chinese civilisation will no doubt bewilder some readers who have never visited the country and who never think of China unless it happens to figure conspicuously in the newspapers in connection with wars and massacres. They have had detailed accounts of how ruffianly hordes of cut-throats tried to exterminate the Europeans in the legations at Peking, and every now and then they hear of the brutal murder of a missionary and his family. But does it never occur to them to ask what has led to such outbreaks? Surely these murders and outrages are not committed from sheer love of blood and slaughter? If such frenzied attacks are made from time to time upon foreigners, surely they cannot result from a mere loathing of fellow human beings who happen to belong to a Western land? It is well to seek information on such points, for the questioner may rest assured that the fault has not always been on the side of China, that these ebullitions of frenzy do not spring from mere wild barbarism, and that a real or fancied wrong is invariably at their root. Forthe Chinese are as keen as the proudest race in Europe to resent insult or injustice. It is no doubt true that on occasions when the Chinese find their own antiquated fighting implements totally inadequate to enable them to meet on equal terms the powerfully-armed and well-drilled soldiers of Europe, they will then, in frenzy and desperation, and stung with a sense of wrong, be guilty of grave crimes against humanity, choosing moments when their victims are few and defenceless to strike them in the dark; but they are not actuated by mere savagery and lust of blood. Nor are they cowards. That they will flee panic-stricken from a foe armed with the most deadly modern weapons of precision, is true enough: so would have fled the fathers of the splendid heroes who recently beat the best soldiers and sailors of one of the foremost Powers of Europe, yet no one dares to assume that the fathers of the Japanese soldiers of to-day were cowards. Let us hesitate before we condemn the Chinese as a cowardly race because they shrink from facing odds which we Englishmen are never called upon to face ourselves. Let us at least wait till they have met us on equal terms, armed with weapons as good as our own, and led by officers trained in the art of war.410
TREATMENT OF ORIENTALS
Many will excuse Western aggression in China and in the Orient generally on many grounds: even Kiaochou will have its apologists. But can any fair-minded gentleman of England, Germany, France or Russia say with perfect sincerity thatthe military Powers of Europe have behaved chivalrously towards the East? Have they not too often acted as bullies, too often taken advantage of their brute strength? Even so, the apologists may say, the methods of nations cannot and must not be the same as those of individual men. Conduct that the public-school boy would denounce as caddish becomes statecraft andla haute politiquewhen nation deals with nation. Yet is it not conceivable that if we treated the East with the same chivalry and courtesy which the well-bred English gentleman in private life shows to those who are weaker or humbler than himself, we might before many years are past find in China a loyal and powerful friend instead of a possible sullen and suspicious foe? It should never be forgotten that the true Oriental—even more than the Englishman bred at Winchester and New College—is a firm believer in the truth embodied in William of Wykeham's old motto,Manners makyth man; and nothing is more certain than that if we want China to welcome us as teachers, as engineers, as builders of railways, as merchants, as missionaries or as capitalists we must approach her with frankness and courtesy, not with professions of altruism covering only greedy selfishness, not with the sinister motives of Chaucer's "smyler with the knyf under the cloke."
As far as British relations with China are concerned, by far the brightest sign of the times is the willingness of our Government to assist China in stamping out the curse of opium—almost asgreat a curse as alcohol in our own country—and in doing what in us lies to prevent the further dismemberment of the empire. That this is a policy which commends itself to all Englishmen who have fairly considered the questions at issue, I have very little doubt; but it is to be feared that there will always be some who, from selfish dread of losing some material advantage which they hoped to gain from exploiting China, will always be ready to urge a narrower policy. They are indignant at the idea of the subjects of a foreign Power obtaining any valuable concessions or rights in England itself—as when the newspapers report the acquisition of Welsh coal-fields by a syndicate of Germans—yet they are intolerant of the cry of "China for the Chinese." Fortunately, the English Press of Hongkong and Shanghai is generally very fair-minded in its attitude towards international questions, and the intelligent and sympathetic view which it has taken of some of the recent regrettable episodes in Anglo-Chinese relations at Shanghai and elsewhere must go far towards broadening the ideas of many of its readers. Yet too often, I am afraid, the European in China almost prides himself on the fact that he has no liking for or sympathy with the Chinese; and those who are convicted of showing such sympathy are as often as not stigmatised as "pro-Chinese"—apparently the worst offence of which any Englishman in China can be guilty. In the treaty ports one often hears the very foolish remark made, that the acquisition of a scholarly knowledge of theChinese language and literature leads to a kind of softening of the brain: "that way madness lies." This attitude is analogous to that of the modern man of business, who, having had only a commercial or technical training himself, and regarding all education merely as a means for acquiring money and "getting on," scoffs at what he knows nothing about, and ridicules those who maintain the advantages of a study of Greek. Without a knowledge of that language it cannot, of course, be expected that they should take to heart a valuable old warning:
πᾶς τις ἀπαίδευτος φρονιμωτάτος ἐστὶ σιωπῶν.
πᾶς τις ἀπαίδευτος φρονιμωτάτος ἐστὶ σιωπῶν.
THE AWAKENING OF CHINA
China has only recently begun to awake from her old lethargy, and in her recent attempts to assert her independence and to repudiate foreign interference it must be admitted by her best friends that she has already made some grievous and foolish mistakes that may cost her dear. More than one Western Power watches these mistakes with sullen interest, sword in hand. It is to be hoped for China's sake that the statesmen who are to guide her fortunes during the next few years—which will too probably be years of strife and bloodshed—will not attempt to compress the work of a century into a year; and it is to be hoped that the great Western Powers for their own sakes will show reasonable patience in dealing with the blunders which in the course of so vast a work as the readjustment of the social and political forces of China must from time to time be committed by her responsible leaders. Chinese patriotism, for the first time since the history ofEuropean relations with China began, is becoming a force to be reckoned with. Crude manifestations of this patriotism have recently given rise to unfortunate incidents and to acts which Europe and America cannot be expected to sympathise with or to admire; indeed, in some cases the West is undoubtedly right in insisting that China should show a proper respect for her treaty obligations. But surely this is not the time to show selfish hostility to the new hopes and ideals of a great people who are struggling in the throes of regeneration. The next fifteen years will probably be decisive in determining the whole course of China's future history. If wise statesmanship brings her successfully through her present struggle she need have no fear for the remoter future. She will then be on the way to become one of the greatest nations—perhaps the greatest—in the world, and I know of little in her past history to discourage the hope that she will use her great powers for the good of mankind and the preservation of the world's peace.411
THE MIDDLE KINGDOM
After all, it is only in recent years that we have begun to realise how large the world is—a curious fact when we consider how the advance of science has tended to the annihilation of space. The Roman empire and thepax Romanawere of such enormous importance for all the races that now people Europe that we have hardly yet rid ourselves of the old idea that the Romans at the period of their widest dominion ruled the world; yet we ought to know now that the Mediterranean "world" was only a fraction of our globe, and by no means the only civilised fraction. The Chinese called their country "The Middle Kingdom," meaning that it was the centre from which all civilisation and all light and learning radiated. The countries outside China, when their existence was known of at all, were regarded as more or less civilised according as they were nearer to or further removed from that brilliant centre. Those that were altogether beyond the reach of China's influence were outside civilisation; they were countries on the fringe of the world, inhabited by barbarians. Our own attitude has hitherto been very much the same. We who have inherited, more or less directly, the civilisation and culture of Rome and Greece have for centuries past regarded ourselves as "the world." When we began to have relations with Eastern countries we found that somehow or other we could not make Oriental culture and civilisation quite fit in with our preconceived notions of those things. We regarded the East—especially China—with a kind of mingled contempt and amusement. Even to this day superficial writers cannot deny themselves the pleasure of dwelling on what to their minds are the oddities and absurdities of Chinese life: and so we have humorous descriptions from their pens of how everything in China is distorted and "upside down"—the writers forgetting that some of the salient features of our own civilisation must be quite as ridiculous when looked at from the Chinese standpoint. But the truth is, of course, that neither Europe nor China has anyright to regard the other as a subject for caricature. The time has come when we should realise that Europe and North America are not "the world"; that even the glorious heritage handed down to us by Greece, of which we are so justly proud, did not include everything that was worth having or worth knowing; that we people of the West have a monopoly neither in virtue nor in culture; and that the Far East, as well as the Far West, has inherited something of the wisdom of the ages. When we have realised these things it may then be possible for East and West to meet in friendship and frankness instead of with mutual suspicion or contempt, each ready to give the other something of the best that it has inherited from its own past. It may then be that we shall begin to trade with China in something more than cottons and silks, machinery and rifles; that a commerce will be inaugurated of which political economy knows nothing, in which customs tariffs will be unnecessary, and in which sympathy and tolerance, not money, will be the medium of exchange.