The significance of this growth has not been ignored in Europe. Statesmen have acted or have feared to act according to their conjectures of Russian desires and powers. For years Russia has been, and indeed still is, the bugbear of the British on the Indian and Persian frontiers. Urged by the British Isles, Japan, fighting for its very existence, checked Russia. The resulting loss to that country was insignificant. It could receive many such checks and still be a formidable rival. Russia's success against Pan-Angles would mean not only to them the material loss of lands and food, but to the whole world the loss of some measure of individual liberty, for the unity and strength of that great country are founded on {140} characteristics the antitheses of those which make the Pan-Angles great.
But a danger greater than Russia has thrown its shadow in our path. The white race once felt assured that it was the chosen race among mankind. It met the red, brown, and black races never to its own ultimate disadvantage, and often, it was convinced, for their good. It felt a similar destiny toward the yellow races. It insisted that they open their doors to the white man's trade and took them to school in the white man's ways. Now the white race apprehensively wonders if it has made a mistake, if destiny is at last on the other side.
China is the wonder of history, both ancient and modern. Civilization after civilization has battered at its gates, taken some trifle only to lose it, and has departed. Chinese civilization has continued unharmed by its transient rivals. Each of these rivals has pondered over China's strangeness, and has failed to impress foreign ideals on its people. The Arab, Malay, Portuguese, Dutch, French, English, American, German, and now the Japanese and the Russian people, have taken trifles. Of these Macao, French Cochin-China, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Kiaochow, Wei-Hai-Wei, Formosa, and Tibet are modern examples. How long it will be before these land-takings revert to the Celestial Empire remains to be seen. "The old negative, anti-foreign prejudice is giving way to a positive sentiment of national ambition. With a population—according to the last census—of over 430,000,000 of the cheapest and most industrious workers in the world, China is bound sooner or later to dominate the East, unless she becomes divided {141} against herself. And this the pressure from the greedy competition of foreign powers seems certain to prevent."[141-1]
To-day China is perhaps to become definitely a republic. No one knows what China can or will do. The white race realizes that its problem now is no longer how to distribute among its nations the lands of the yellow races, but how to prevent the yellow races from distributing its lands among themselves. Men who can endure arctic cold and tropical heat with like fortitude and profit, may soon become a factor in the defensive problem of the Pan-Angles.
"The history of China, ancient and modern, is an eternal series of paroxysms; its keynote is bloodshed and famine, with periods of peace and prosperity purchased by the slaughter of countless innocents. Its splendid civilization, based on an unassailable moral philosophy and the canons of the Sages, has ever proved powerless against the inexorable laws of nature, the pitiless cruelty of the struggle for life. . . ."[141-2] It seems not impossible that the Chinese may seek to ameliorate their condition, to lessen "the pitiless cruelty of the struggle for life" by overflowing into the lands now held by the Pan-Angles. By what means could we save ourselves from being crushed before the advance of a people our superiors in thrift and industry and in ability to render the soil productive, and who are three times our number?
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Russia and China may be the active foes of our children. We can bequeath them only such aid in their struggle as our foresight dictates. Meanwhile we have problems of our own demanding more immediate solution.
Russia and China are the rivals of to-morrow.
Japan and Germany are the rivals of to-day.
To Japan the Pan-Angles should doff their hats as to their peers. Radically different, they are not our inferiors. Japan has forged ahead materially at a rate that Pan-Angles have never in their history approached. In 1853, when the American Pan-Angle Admiral Perry forced foreign commerce on Japan, the land was a feudal area given over to devastating civil wars. The privileges that the white races after 1853 exacted have been gradually and entirely taken back. Japan now stands as a world power. Its people are increasing rapidly. It builds its own ships. The three fastest merchant steamers on the Pacific to-day are Japanese.[142-1] No one forgets, and it is hoped that no Pan-Angle underestimates, the medical ability and the discipline that backed the bravery and the patriotic spirit of the Japanese in their life-and-death struggle against Russia. The Japanese have taken Formosa and Korea from China, and have held the last-named acquisition against Russia, taking also from Russia the southern half of Sakhalin. As Scotland, Wales, and England have been called Great Britain, so the Japanese have called their home group "Dai Nippon," Great Japan.