VIII
FROM A SCRAP-BOOK
This isn't a letter. I shall take a bunch of old newspapers and with scissors and paste-pot, stick upon this sheet of paper such press comments as seem relevant to the situation. First of all, remember that China has a population of four hundred million people, of whom three hundred and ninety-nine million have never heard of the European war. But the opinion of the million that may have heard of it is of no moment. The few people it is necessary to convert to a sympathetic understanding of the European war are the handful of officials composing the Cabinet, about two hundred members of Parliament, and a small, outlying fringe of "officials in waiting" and other odds and ends, generals and such like. Once convince them, and the thing is done. The understanding million, and the three hundred and ninety-nine millions who do not understand are negligible. At present there is a good deal of talk about restoring the monarchy. You don't have to deal with as many people in a monarchy as in a so-called republic. A monarchy is a more wieldy body. China, however, a five-year-old republic, is behaving just like any other democracy,—forever appealing to the people, as if the people even in a democracy had any chance against their masters and rulers.
Thus the "Peking Gazette," under date of Tuesday, March 1:
The Entente and China. Reported Allied Decision. A report reaches us—which we have been unable to confirm—that, the Entente Ministers and Chargés d'Affaires in the capital met at the French Legation on Tuesday and considered the advisability of deputing the Japanese Chargé d'Affaires to call on the President, the Vice-President and the Premier, to ascertain the decision of the Chinese Government regarding further action against Germany. In the event of failure on the part of the Chinese Government to decide on the matter this week, the report adds that a joint Allied inquiry will follow next week.
[Pg 174]In the absence of confirmation, we have to reserve comment on what looks like an amazing blunder, if true. In the meantime, we have to warn those concerned, that unless they are bent on alienating the growing Chinese sympathy for the Allied cause, and arresting the powerful movement for some form of action, in association with or in coöperation with the Entente, it will be well if anything like Allied pressure be avoided at this juncture.
Since writing the foregoing—or rather as we go to press—we learn from a responsible quarter that the French Minister and the Belgian Chargé d'Affaires called at the Chinese Foreign Office yesterday afternoon and either informally suggested or actually invited China to join the Entente. In the name of the Allies, they are understood to have promised the postponement of the instalments of the Boxer indemnities accruing due and payable during the war, and guaranteed the revision of the Chinese customs tariff. We have just time to register our emphatic protest against this proceeding; and limiting ourselves to the bare statement of one of the many grave objections to this action of the Entente, we have to point out that it is not real Chinese interest for the Allies to thrust large sums of money on persons who may not be able to apply the same to national ends. The Chinese Government is in need of money for specific objects, like the resumption of specie payment, the disbandment of superfluous troops, and[Pg 175] the liquidation of certain unfunded indemnities. Financial assistance to the authorities is something for which the country would feel grateful to any Power or group of Powers who might render the same. But Chinese who have the real interest of their country at heart will not thank those who—without regard to the vital interest of China—are resolved upon securing the support of a few ambitious men whose single aim is to have enough money to influence, first, the Parliamentary elections, due in a few months, and next, the Presidential election to be held next year. Curses not blessings would issue from our lips for such questionable assistance to the forces of reaction in Peking.
On March 2 appears a translation from a vernacular paper, the "Shuntien Shih-Pao":
At a recent meeting of Allied Ministers in the French Legation, it was decided that if China does not declare her intention to join the Allied nations within the next few days, the Allied nations should give advice to China to that effect.
Apart from "advice" of this sort,—rather threatening advice, it would seem,—appeals are being made to Chinese vanity, by the contrasting of the potential might of China with the might of Japan. In an article entitled "China and the World War," Putnam Weale, speaking for the British interests in China, makes some clever but rather blunt suggestions:
So far, no one has gone beyond suggesting the general mobilization of Chinese labor-battalions, some of which are already at work on the Tigris building docks, and thereby contributing very materially to the vastly improved position in Mesopotamia. But it does not do credit to the stature of the Chinese giant, or to the qualities of the Chinese intellect, for Chinese to remain hewers of wood and drawers of water; it is imperative that if the nation goes to war she should actually fight, as the experience of the last five years shows what she can do with skill and science. In advancing the contention that a definite offer of a picked Chinese Division, or of several divisions, to Great Britain, against a definite treaty, to hasten the Mesopotamian campaign would be a master-stroke of policy, we have to recall that Japan herself refused to send contingents to the Balkans, and is therefore looked upon as a semi-belligerent whose stature can at once be overtopped by the Chinese giant merely rising to his feet.