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RAILWAY WORK IN CHINA.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
[May 30, 1908. form the Chinese now seem to be injuring them- | favour of the new, which is to be indeed as selves. It would be quite possible for them to well as in name a "Citizen " army. The obtain the loan of external funds and the services old one had been a king's army, but Mr. of skillel engineers on terms that would fully CARDWELL, with perhaps some lingering safeguard China's sovereignty and interests. The last agreements concluded represent a great Whig antipathies to standing armies, had advance in this respect. But though in many sought after a German fashion to "terri- provinces the people have formed associations to torialise" it; the names were changed, the ́ build their own railways, these movements have the old Buffs became the new East Kent so far been conspicuous by their failure. There Regiment, &c., but things went on much as is a lack of capital, lack of mutual confidence before, and crack regiments remained so, between people and officials, and above all lack and dowdy ones were as of old. One thing Railway which is being successfully built by a of capable engineers. The Reking to Kalgan above all others would not be touched; the Chinese engineer trained in the United States, Horse Guards might stand much, but here is a solitary example of what may be possible in they were resolute. The British Army was the future. In the meantime railway develop the most expensive in the world, some ment is one of the most urgent needs of the people (but they were radicals) hinted it Empire. That the Chinese pation should be was the most inefficient; but be that as it able to reorganise itself successfully in the near might, the expense was sacred. Mr. St. future is imperative, no less for its own sake than JOHN BRODERICK tried hard to have this for the preservation of peace and international For strengthening
amended, but like all his predecessors, stability in the Far East. the control of the Government, for facilitating found the road too hard to be successfully reforms, for giving vitality and cohesion to the traversed, teeming millions of the Empire, for developing military strength, and for fostering trade, the rapid growth of means of communication is an indispensable condition.
POLITICAL PHILIPPIC.
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Now naturally it was differont when the Cabinet of the "Mend-alls came on the scene there appeared a head, it was cer tainly a head and with true Irish instinct the Cabinet resolved that, being a head, it had to be broken. Mr. HALDANE, to whom was allotted the job, apparently misunder- stood his instructions and designed a new army; and the country, glad to find one constructive element, and having long felt that something ought to be done, to no one's astonishment more than his own, took up his scheme in a friendly spirit. It involved the entire destruction of the old Yeomanry and Volunteers, the formation out of the Line and Militia of a new Foreign-going Army, and the construction anew of a Home Army to be termed the Territorial Mr. HALDANE was sanguine as Force. to the result, and on March 31st the
(Daily Press, 25th May.) "Your most effective missionary in China is the railway," remarked a Chinese gentle- man, talking about the creditable progress being made with our little local line. It is true, and cannot too often be repeated, that a vast empire like China needs rapid and easy means of transit between its outlying parts before it can progress as a whole. In the human corporation. the circulation is the life, and when China once enjoys a complete internal circulation, there is no telling how lively she may be. Certainly it will be vastly different to what it is now, when the people of one province look upon the people of another province as foreigners. The national feeling so often desiderated by China's friends, the patriotism that depends upon the feeling of homogeneity, ought to follow soon after the adequate railway system. Indeed, the progress so far made gives promise of this. In view of so much still to do, we are apt to overlook what has actually been done, yet in the last few years, quite a respectable progress has been achieved in this connection. It is not so very long ago-the late 'Seventies- that the obstinate local officials were
(Daily Press, May 26th). opposing successfully the first attempt to
Nero fiddled while Rome was burning. introduce the short line between Shanghai We in these modern days are apt to point and Woosung. A very few months ago, with affected disdain at the folly of our Shanghai had to undertake quite a ricaba predecessors; "If we had been in the days journey to show its visitors a railway train. Now it thinks nothing of a week-end trip partakers with them," &c.
of our fathers we would not have been
"Education," inland by train, and it enjoys a wide choice
we preen ourselves in our superior know- of stopping stations. The Shanghai time-ledge and wisdom, has done away with all table as now published is quite an imposing that sort of thing, and we have plainly no document, and conduces to a certain Brad further use for common sense, which in this ahaw-like respect in the student thereof. After the war of 1894, it is generally and leave to forage for her own existence. superior age we can safely turn out of doors remembered, there was quite an epidemic True, it may be, that knowledge is power, of concessions, but it is also remembered but the very incarnation of power we can how for long there seemed little prospect of conceive embodied in a railway engine these developing into actual lines. Pressure
a siding with full steam up. standing on more than one direction had to be Now our railway managers ordinarily do applied, and now, in this year of grace, and if we include Manchuria, we can proudly unattended about railway stations. It is not leave locomotives in full steam standing point to well over three thousand miles of true that such things have happened in railway lines actually laid down, with spite of all regulations to the contrary, and another thousand in the making, and four locomotives with no mind to control them thousand miles surveyed and-or sanction- have started on the journey, and dire has ed. The three thousand miles of railway been the disaster. now in use serve to indicate what will happen when all that are projected are made. The Chinese are taking to railway travelling like ducks to water, we are told. The passenger carriages are crowded, and the goods trucks also would be crammed misunderstanding about likin. As it is, but for that little observers claim to have noticed a distinct dwindling effect upon the parochialism of the Chinese in the neighbourhood of avail- able railways. Wider outlook, growth of interest in broader issues, is being traced in some districts to the influence of the Puffing ment of a great Railway acquired that party, and what was the use fretting over Billy. Those are foreign observations, how- The Chinese are not quite awake yet to these iminaterial or indirect benefits. the still more complicate matters that humour; and there was always Free Trade The London Times points this out, and wastes upon an audience already convinced some valuable remarks that should have
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whole of the Volunteers and Yeomanry ceased to exist. Now getting into the latter half of May. things do not seem to be
merrily going along expected: The employers of labour who were mainly concerned, complain that the new arrangements will seriously interfere with the time of their men; they had grown used to Volunteer hours, and willing- ly submitted to the absence of the men as in some measure compensated for by their improved physique and more orderly Now it is this very fact that knowledge is habits; but the extra burden they seem to power that enormously increases the danger object to, At all events, not more than a of the situation, and makes our modern third of the required number of volunteers follies inconceivably more dangerous than have come forward, and unless some effort the simple errors of our ancestors. We be made to arouse national enthusiasm it have Sir EDWARD GREY'S plain statement seems that between the new stool and the position in Macedonia, which would involve left without an army at all. There were, it that attempt to set right the political old, the country is as likely as not to be the continuance of Turkish rule in Con- is true, many of the Cabinet even a year stantinople, would be followed by the ago, who looked upon such a position of immediate outbreak of a European war. affairs as a good joke; "had'nt they made Sir EDWARD Chairman, and in the complicated manage chance of getting Russia to join the merry GREY is an old Railway friends with France, and had'nt they a good
experience of men and affairs which has stood him such good stead in his control of
come within the ken of the Foreign Office. Sir EDWARD GREY is not the man of himself in steam on the line; yet something of very to leave the locomotive unattended standing much the same nature has been done by somebody, and the look-out is not altogether agreeable for the individual compelled to travel in the next train.
been printed in ideographs. For instance, it concludes 8 recent editorial thus : Hostility to foreign influence, suspicion of foreign intentions, lead the Chinese to oppose violently any scheme for railway construction in which foreign capital and direction is concerned, Strong agitation has taken place in several parts Last year Mr. HALDANE, Minister of of China to persuade the Government to cancel State for War Affairs introduced a Bill concessions held by foreign syndicates. This in Parliament for the remaking of the attitude of hostility is not without justification. Army. It was a truly radical measure, In the past, railway schemes were often a cloak for political ambitions, and Chinese interests because before the new army is to be made were sometimes ignored by groups of capita. the old army has to be destroyed; there is lists, who had secured lucrative privileges. But to be no mistake about it this time. All the in refusing to admit foreign co-operation in any old regulations and traditions are to cease in
the others? they could give the beggars & sop now and then to keep them in good (spelt with capitals, too) to fall back on; the beggars will never be foolish enough to events, we're in, and in we intend to stay quarrel with their bread and butter. At all as long as we can, and have a gay time to make up for all the time we have been out in the cold."-But a year more in harness, and the growing feeling that all was not quite as rosy as last year they had painted it, and the growing habit of work; and last, but not least, the feeling that by honest work they have done some actual good, and won the applause even of their political opponents, has commenced to show even a mirth loving cabinet that life is not, as old Sam Slick phrased it, all beer and
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