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October 30, 1905.]
American affords any particularly favour able chance for Canadian enterprise. The boycotters have not shown themselves uni- formly able to discriminate; and Canadian goods, with others, have already been by them confounded with American. Certainly it is incorrect to say that the boycott "has proven that the Oriental spirit is in favour of Britain." The Oriental spirit is in favour of the best value, or the apparently best, and if Canada can send candles, clocks, cut leather, safes, typewriters, sewing machines, hardware, street cars, carriages, chemicals, glass, stoves, and chairs-as enumerated in the Gazette--to compete with American or other prices, we have no doubt they will receive ample attention from Chinese buyers. But they must not build too much, as they appear to be doing, on the temporary discredit of America and the pro-British influences of the Japanese alliance.
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CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
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to read hopefully must feel the reaction at will surely be bettered in ten; and in the eud.
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THE CHINESE ARMY MANŒUVRES.
(Daily Press, 25th October.) In these iconoclastic days, when we find scientists like Professor DARWIN "going one better" than the philosophic and poetic conjectures of HERACLITES and Ecclesiastes, and affirming that even the utom is mutable and unstable, it may seem petty to emphasise the dawn of change in China. Yet the chorus is swelling that proclaims revolutionary tendencies in this portion of the unchanging East;" and while many may doubt the imminence of vital reform, it is impossible to close our eyes to the fact that, so far as the Middle Kingdom is con- cerned, the present is an epoch of history making. Our correspondent at the Chinese army manoeuvres has manifestly been impressed by the military change he has witnessed, to characterise which he has felt obliged to use the term "sensational." This endeavour to organise an army worthy of the name, in place of the old-time aughing-stock, was an inevitable outcome of recent events. China had long held the biblical idea of an army, as "terrible with banners"; and if the appliances and grimaces of her soldiers failed to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy, there was but feeble striking of any other sort. So the world has been accustomed to smile when Chinese troops were mentioned; and not even the achievements of the forces that followed General GORDON were sufficient to make them much less a byword among more warlike folk. It is interesting to note that the foreign scorn has never been shared by the Japanese. It is true, the MIKADO's fighting-men did not find their whilom enemies formidable in action; but they have not felt any contempt for the men themselves. They believe that the Chinese will one day make excellent soldiers. They are even generous enough to say that under similar conditious they would do no better. A Japanese Daval officer remarked in our hearing recently that the fact that China had no soldiers was due to three things. The first was the absence of the devoted loyalty to the Throne which characterises the Japanese forces; and for this the Chinese rank and file could not be blamed, as there had never been anything done to cause them to regard their Emperor as the father of his people. The second Was the individualistic principles taught in their popular philosophies-a proposition too indefinite for us to pursue here. The third was official corruption, which involved the recoguition by the soldiers that whatever good they did might not be recognised or rewarded, and the certainty that whatever they suffered they would not be recompensed or cared for. It is to be presumed that the measure of improvement now being witnessed at Peking is the result of better organisation, and a nascent esprit de corps. No doubt, also, the Japanese officers who have been entrusted with the task of training an army from the raw material would bring their own methodicalness into play, and probing the weak spots they knew to exist at the roots, have insisted upon cauterisa- tions wherever necessary. If not, the results of their labour, brilliant as they now appear, must prove impermanent.
Working out the shipping side of the question, our contemporary makes a very plausible showing. America is handicappel in any case, it is pointed out, by speed and by distance from Chinese markets. Cana. dian ships have a thousand miles less of longitude to traverse. If the speed of the Empress" steamers were to be raised from fourteen to cighteen knots, Canada could deliver goods in China from London, New York, and Montreal ten days sooner, aul consequently in better condition than the stuff coming from the United States via } San Francisco, which is said to be the only American port on the Pacific having suffi- cient draught for fast mail ships. There fore, niue new twelve-thousand-ton steamers of eighteen knot speed are advocated to be put on at Vancouver, to make two weekly sailings. For these, our Canadian confrères consider there would be plenty of business. "The cool northern route should, when more fully advertised in England and India, secure all of the British army travel." Railroad rates, it is admitted, would have to be lowered, as the Canadian route is three hundred miles longer; and then: Manchester will secure a large part of the cotton exports to China, twenty-seven million dollars a year of which America now enjoys, but Canada might in time do as much as five million a year of this busi- ness." This reads as if our contemporary were not particularly well posted on the Chinese demand for cotton goods, sine proportion of which Manchester is supposed to have already secured; while America's contribution, in comparison with the bulk, is regarded as a mere detail. Our con- temporary is more practical in advising that all Canadian exports should be plainly labelled: "Made
iu Canada, British Empire." Another practical suggestion is to invite Chinese students to Canadian colleges, for each Chinese graduate will be a most effective foreign commercial agent." Still labouring the point of the golden opportunity, they prophesy that "the labour element in America will never permit the American Government to take down the Chinese exclusion bars at the Pacific, treaty or no treaty." And a still more extraordinary prophecy is: "America will challenge Japan over the Philippines, and the open door' in China. The former will be lost within eight years; and Hawaii will tremble as a hostage, for the Panama canal will not be completed in fifteen years." Another forecast is one whose fulfilment we shall pray for, viz. that Japan will probably influence China to erect her finances upon a gold basis." Japan may have the credit, We will take it, however, that all is as and welcome. But in many places our it should be; and that the martial spirits Canadian contemporary is patently and of China are at last coming to their excessively optimistic; and he who begins' own. The "sensational" work of five years
another decade, we may reckon upon a China new and strange to us, one whose protests cannot be ignored, nor her diplomatic toes lightly trodden upon. It is perhaps just as well to familiarise our- selves with the idea, so that we may con- sider the order of our going. It is to be hoped, moreover, that the changes and reforms may reach high places; otherwise this new-born army will be indeed a yellow peril. An idol with feet of brass and head of clay would be every bit as dangerous as the one that has been reversely described for us. China must not Japan's success is due to military strength assume that
alone. There had to be administrative" strength also, and this is China's primary need. The news from Peking is good, so far as it goes; but to the real friends of China it but signifies a putting of the cart before the horse. As a symptom, however. like the organisation and training of, Chinese police forces, we may hail it with present satisfaction.
COREA.
were
(Daily Press, 26th October.) Corea has again become a dependency of Japan. This will be disputed by the Korea Daily News, we have no doubt; but our belief that it is true, is strengthened and confirmed as much by the lucubrations of that journal as by any of the other numerous evidences that we have been given lately. For some time we puzzled by the constant references occurring in this foreign journal published ut Seoul; and we are still at a loss to understand our contemporary's
to apparent inability recognise accomplished facts. Reluctance to accept them we can understand, if we cannot fully appreciate it; but what object is to be gained by its persistent girdings is not clear to us. Our contemporary appears to us as one kicking against the picks"; or as a SISYPHUS, hauling laboriously a useless boulder towards an inaccessible peak. For instance, so late as the ninth of this month (or subsequent to the publica- tion of the new Anglo-Japanese Treaty) we find the Korea Daily News hinting that appearances indicate what we have been supposing to be generally accepted as un fait accompli. It says in one place:
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The mysterious generosity in pressing upon the Household Department a loan of Y1,500,000 has yet to be explained, but past experience leads us to believe that it only means nuother nail in Corea's coffin." Our contemporary further fears "the relegation of Coren's diplomatic affairs to Tokyo." We suppose even that will come in time; and will certainly not be surprised. In the meantime, are we wrong in assum- ing that all the nails have been driven into the coffin that is to contain Corean inde- pendence? As we have said, we thought
that was all understood and settled.
We certainly cannot think of joining the ranks of those who wish to emphasise the wickedness of annexation-be it called by any other diplomatic term-in this case. From the Corean point of view, of course, a great deal could, no doubt, be said. But we are not Corean, any more than is our Seoul contemporary; and for us the adage con- cerning glass houses and stone throwing seems applicable. It may seem virtuous and good, but it is none-the-less old- fashioned and puerile in these days to prate too much of ethics in connection with national politics and their very serious necessities. To stick to the question at issue, we should as soon think of deprecat- ing, on moral grounds, Great Britains
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