Júne 26, 1905.]
LECTURE BY DR. ARTHUR SMITH,
F
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT. PRESENT SITUATION IN CHINA. | it, before we knew it. She is at of be slow and swift. She does everything as she makes war, by "prearrangement." After the siege of Peking she moved toward the grana-ies in which the Imperial rice was stored as camels in the desert make for wells. She laid her hand on the Board of Revenue with the instinct of the panther for the jugular vein. She is the one who knows; she is the one who can. Her emissaries are all over Eastern Asia in endless capacities (or apparent incapacities), silent, unobtrusive as the white ant, but equally efficacious. On.y their energies are construc- tive, not destructive, bat, be it observed, they build not for the Setting, but for the "Rising Sun." This policy has been in progress for a long time. but most of us have contented our selves with smiles, with frowus, with shrugs, with platitudes about different-coloured "Perils."
On June 15th at Shanghai, Dr. Arthur Smith delivered an interesting lecture on The Pre sent Situation in China." It was given onder the auspices of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, whose President, Sir Pelham Warren, K. C. M. G., was in the Chair. He was supported by Dr. Knappe, Senior Consul, Mr. J. N. Jameson, Chairman of the meric Asiastic Association, and Mr. R. W. Little, Chairman of the China Assoc'at'on, and Mr. J. C. Ferguson, Hon. Sec. of the China Branch.
The author of "Chinese Character- istics," said :-It is always dißcult to take the measure of one's own times, and rightly to gauge the real significance of any event. Despite this truism, there can be no questions that within the past month a new stadium of human history has been tiaver da mile-stone of the ages. Henceforth the Occidental and Far East can never be to each.. ther in exactly the same relations. It has been said that the most puzzling question may be resolved by answering three of hers:
What is it? Why is it?
What then?
What is it? Measured numerically, the greatest prob em ever presented in modern times. What shall the West and the East do with each other? The East cannot get on with the West; the West cannot get on without the East. Their past relations have been full of menace to each other. There is dauger that in the mere distaut future the peace of the whole civilised world may be involved. That world now f on's on the Pacific Ocean rather than on the Atlantic, and fifty years bence this fact will be mor obvious and more emphasised than now. The world Fowers will then be Pacific powers-will they be pacific Powers?
What is it? The East was doing well enough
as it was a few centuries or millenniums mora or less made no difference to it. The discovery of America changed all that.
In 1492
Columbus crossel the ocean blue, "And 'ife was never the same again." Observe the different carcers of different races. "Eugland was ma le by her adven urers." From wild covely she was tamed into active alti aism, and in India, as in Egypt, she afforded on a large scale en example of government for the benefit of the gorera-d. After four hundred years of a po icy direly the opposite, Spain has lost every colony. What is the lesson? Westera nations bave invariably shown their worst side to the Eastern nations and not the best. Trade is inherently selfish. "Commerce like the rainbow bends toward the pot of gold." Adam Smith defines man as "a trading animal;"
no two dogs," he says, "exchange bones."
Firearms and intoxicating liquors to the ancivilised races, opium and morphia to the civilised, have been a shirt of Nessus. The West is not responsible for all the mischief of these curses, but we cannot esca such responsibility as we have by ignoring, forget ting, or denying known facts. The fusion point of diver. 3 civlizations often product: au amalgam worse than either. We do not like to face the facts which we know to be such, but whether we face them or not, they remain, and sooner or latter will pursue us with a Nemesis which is but another name for the "ientific truth of cause and effect. Our own nduct- that of men of our Occidental races, has been and to-day is our own worst enemy. Yet on the whole, the Wt and the Ers have muddied on with but an occasional explosion, to be followed by partial qu'escence and apparent (but never re I) to por.
That is the condition of Dhina to-day rest, inve-t brate, or if vertebrate disjointed China is an Empire without a head-a ship without a helm. By the events of the past eighteen mouths Japan is more than ever "the radder of Asia" This is, however, but a new and a atthing application of ou own scientific law, "thatthe fit at survive."
Who so fit, messred by any standrada, as Japan Japan is about ate charge of Chine-in fact she has done
What then? It has been said that San Franeisco is 3,000 miles from New York, but the time may come when New York will be 3,000 miles from San Francisco. Some of you may live to see Shanghai the largest city in Asia- its industrial and commercial capital. Half a mile of the Shanghai Bund may represent five hundred thousaud or a thousand million dollars but when. as recently in Nanking, bunds and buildings together slowly slide iato a waiting and a yawning Yangtze, where theu is your boasted real estate? Nothing more uureal, and your scurities might as well be styled insecurities.
It is Let bunds bonds, nor business which laws, which man never made, and can never perman ntly euric's, but conformity to moral
unmake.
men.
"The world knows nothing of its greatest of cannon, but the real opening of China has Commerce has opened China by the aid
been done by men whose very names some of us do not know. Robert Mortison, the centenary of whose arrival we mean to celebrate in 1957, a scholar of wonderful patience, porseverance and Pnetration, who made the first English Chinese Xctionary, first translate 1 the whole Bible, and almost single-Landed produced a literature for China opened. Roberi Milne, his co-labourer burat out before this time with excess of zeal. Samuel Wells Williams, a printer, student of everything Oriental, editor of the great Chinese Repository, maker of the first Commercial Guide, the first modera dictionary of Chinese to whom all successors owe a great, though some imes unacknowledged, debt. Peter Parker, who opened China at the point of his lancet and was eqrly skilful in diplomacy.
Wm. M-lhur t, a man of equal diligence and learning Wm Lockhart, al. o of Shanghai, an la er of Peking, a pioneer medical missionary on which topic he wrote his best book. Alexander Wylie, whose learing was equalled by his modesty, who left a compendium ef all Chinese literature. Our own William Muirhead, sealous in all god work. Jos-ph Edkins, who had forgotten more about Cuina than most of us ever know, John G. Nevius, the best all-round missionary it was ever my privilege to know, broad-minded, meek-spirited, catholic, dear even to the secular heart by reason f his pears and bis apples. Time would fail to naine others, but one should not be mitted, recently laid tresi in Chinking, Hudson Taylor. His great Society, ridiculed at its incep ion, has been a foremost agency in unlocking Crina to the world and to that trade which some of us
worship. In general. every mission station in inland China is a dycam, diffusing light and radiating heat. Look at such a work as that of Duncan Main in Hangchow, or of Dr. Wil. son in Suiting in dist nt Szechuan, scattering blessings broadcast with impartial and raweariel hands. There are scores of other centres of a like kind bat smaller in their scale of opus- tions.
395
as help her. We need no new ways; use the ones already in existence.
(1) As a basis, the Royal Asiatic Society should be raised from the dead. It should have a new building, and a library which shall not be as now the ridicule of Asia, but which shall contain everything of importance published on China and the Far East. Each current work should be promptly secured. Then ita reading-room would be a seat of learning, and not as at present a seat in a cemetery.
отег
(2) The "Diffusion Society" is equipped to do a work which is important-esential. It has the ablest editors to be found, and it needs more of them. But i' most urgent want is money. Why do you not give it twenty or thirty thousand taels to set it on its feet? No investment would or could be better worth while. Already the 1 mes of Timothy Richard, Dr. W. A. P. Martin, Dr. Young J. Allen, and Dr. Gibert Reid are known all over China. This is an excellent fundation on which to build. and to buil: high and strong after digging deep.
(3) The Educational Society of China is equipped for a cagaate but distinct work. It lacks articulateness. It lacks funds. It should have a paid secretary, and many translators. Im'tate the wise business sagacity of the Commercial Press-a semi-Japanese agency. You ought to rise the sum of twenty thousand i els aud endow the Education Society as one of the test investments you can make in China to perpetuate the hold which Anglo-Saxon education already has in this Empire.
(4) The Chinese Department of the Y.M.C.A. is a unique agency through which to gain the acquaintance, the goodwill, and the respect of the rising generation of those who are to be powerful, controlling factors in the New China of railways and of manufacture. The Associa- tica is about to pat un a new building. Sir Thos. Hanbury has made them an offer of a large discount on a desirable site. But it is now desired to inco.porate with this the proposed Martyrs' Memorial Hall. Nothing is lacking but
the monay.
You ought to give twenty thousand taels to the Chinese Ÿ.M.C.A. as a token of your goodwill and deep interest in the New Chius. In been found to sow thickly the Chia Sea with tie present war mouey from somewhere has
deadly mines. perhaps destroying at one fell ex, lasio a million pounds sterling of fixed capital. Is it too much to ask Shanghai tɔ contribute of its over-abundance one hundred thousand taels to secure the pace of Asis-to haston the day when
"The war drum throbs no longer and the battle flags are furled,
Ia the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World?"-N. C. Daily News.
EXTENDING SHANGHAI.
CHINESE REFUSE good roads. In a lecture at Shanghai, a report of which we have to-day adapted from ar northern contemporary, Dr. Arthur Swith suggests that one day Shanghai may to the London of Asis. or words to that effect. Its oity fathers are already finding the need of more elbow-room. There is a pretty rural resort popularly spoken of as the Hills, to which at present access is had by canal, the native rosis being so bad. Shang- hai proposes to make a good road thereto, but the Chinese, ignoring the fact that they also would benefit, as a good road to the Hills means a good road to Shanghai, are stupidly opposing the work.
The people of Tsing poo (or Ching pu, as the sinologues spell it), a place to the west of the Model Settlement, do not seem to regard good communications as a blessing; and their (very) evil communications have corrupted their good
manuers.
"A good deal of excitement and hostile feeling" is reported as a result of the
surveyors visit. They have petitioned the
What then? Gentlemen of Shanghai, great merebants, great investors, great promotors! Please to remember that beneath your contracts, your concessions, your operations, there is a simple but a shining principle: "As ye world
Shanghai Taotai, who has apparently reported that men should do to you, do ye even so. to
to Viceroy Chou Fu of Nengking, who has in them likewise." Race hatred is not a valuable
tarn told the Waiwupu, who are expected to asset in business, and in an Oriental country it
dema id of the British and American Ministers is most perilous. If you have "samples," or
at Peking that all further encroachments" even what the chemisis term "traces" in your br spped. And still the missionaries tell wonderful change is coming possion, hasten to unload them into the us that a Huangpa. The Chinese appreciate sympathy over Chipa! This objection to good roads. Let us extend it. China is in deep trouble; let'smacks of the same old China.