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allowable to revive the power of individual self-protection for a time, while con- sidering how to reorganise the Government as a permanent measure.
What is the day's need? what but that our people should revive its power self-protection.
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In ages of barbarism when Governments are not, the people must have the ability to protect themselves. Who can say that in a civilised generation the people of a country must revive personal self-protection.
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Alas! my country! Woe! oh ye my people! sorry art thou, oh Government. Herefore do I exhort you, oh people: for this am I steeping my pen in ink for this drips the stream of my tears. I gazo forth upon our country: from my dreams I start. Stir yourselves, my brethren!
They say that this is the age of civilisation, of renovation. I dare not call it so : I style it a world of barbarians. The strong prey upon the weak. Right and law are not worth the paper that prates of them. Religion and reason are but as the foul off-scourings of brutes. In this precious world who goes by right, law, or reason?
When Israel fell, in all this wide world she found no place to rest her foot; when the sovereignty of India passed away, numerous though her people were, there was no bar at which she might appeal.
The people of Formosa, of the Loochews, Burmab, Annam, and all such nationless peoples bear the yoke of slavery and toil. What civilisation is this! The pivots and levers of the country are they not called the Government? But not by me; I call them a Punch and Judy Show.
The working of the State is rotten; the officials are fat-headed and incapable. The conduct of interior policy is but aimless continuing on the beaten trail. Foreign policy is to be led by the nose. The borrowing of foreign loans never ceases. Railways and mines are put up for sale. They take no care of the melancholy suffering of the people.
To the wailings of the people they pay no heed. They reck not of the ever- gathering foreign peril. Constitutional Government is but an empty sound; pro- tection of Chinese resident abroad but windy words.
They gather but a herd of greedy despicable hogs into one hall, and make of a flashing, rainbow-hued China a miserable gloom of hell. The raison d'être of forming a Government is gone. When the raison d'être is lost, what is left of the country. In such a world, with such a Government, without the power to protect itself, how can a cleansing of the Augean stables be effected ?
Alarms of the partition of China fly from mouth to mouth; the troops of the enemy assemble on every hand. The strength of China's Government forces is insufficient. By so much the more should we revive our former power of self- protection.
Whence are we to obtain this power of self-defence ? I tell you from allowing the people to practice the use of arms.
If it be said that we are worn out with taxes and improper levies, not with floods, droughts, and banditti; that in the warmer days of winter our children weep with cold that in years of abundance our wives wail for hunger: until we cannot save them alive: and how can we do what I suggest? I will reply that although our people may be all this that you say, yet although taxes and dues he many and grievous, floods and droughts overlapping each other, robbers audacious and desperate yet when once we have a Constitutional Government, the delegates of this our generation will be able to abolish the grievous taxes, prevent the floods and droughts, eradicate the robbers and banditti, and establish the happiness and prosperity of our people. Thus although we have temporary distress, there is a day of peace and enjoyment in store.
If the country be lost the griefs and sorrows of the people will be more than a hundred times as distressful as now they are; and never will there be a day of possessing our property in peace and dwelling in happiness.
You can see it from the previous cases of the Jews, of Poland, of India, and all such lost countries.
The cost moreover (of allowing the people to practise themselves in arms) is but little; and is attainable so soon as granted. As a Cantonese let me tell you of affairs in Kwantung. There the people are naturally disposed to raise volunteers; and to do so would be most easy. Kwantung has more robbers than any other province : and so the Cantonese are ever thinking of means of self-defence. They have volunteer bureaux, and village troops. The village troops number but a dozen or a
score.
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By day they follow their avocations of workmen, traders or agriculturists; by night they form a defensive body. These are paid by subscription from taxes on rice fields and gardens.
The volunteer bureaux are on rather a different footing.
For as the robbers appear with and disappear with the winter, the volunteer bureaux are usually opened in this season. The numbers of volunteers of each bureau are thirty to forty. Each man receives monthly pay of 4 dollars or 5 dollars per head.
They are always in their barracks, and undertake no other occupation. Their expenses are paid by the bureau; and the expenses of the bureau are collected in continual small amounts, not suddenly collected at the last moment.
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The bureaux are opened with winter and closed in spring. This is the annual custom. I calculate that the village troops in Kwangtung amount to 10 in every families; volunteers of the bureaux, 50 to every 10,000 families. If these men were properly trained, and one man elected from a number of bureaux and villages to drill them, and, say, 1 dollar per month added to the slender pay of the village trooper, be would willingly drill for half the year. If thereafter he could not be called an able soldier, at least he would be much superior to these called out on the spur of an alarm.
After six months' drill these men might be dismissed to their several occupations and form a reserve. The expense would thus be reduced.
Every month they might drill for one day, so as to keep them in practice. Every winter some reward for this might be given.
The succeeding winter this could be repeated, using either the former troops or training a fresh batch, or taking half of each sort, again appointing some one to drill
them.
After three or four years of this the number of those capable of acting as soldiers would be considerable; and of what enemy need we stand in fear? If this suggestion were adopted, a quite inconsiderable extra expenditure of only some 100 dollars per annum (? per village) would he needed.
Kwangtung, then, would have no difficulty in training its populace to arms; and, if Kwantung can do so, it would not be difficult to extend the same plan to the other provinces.
After the defeat of 1900 the thinkers of our country were horrified with the dreadful fear of the partition of China.
They hurried with cries of alarm bither and thither, awakening our people. Happily, that calamity did not mature; and people said that the partition of China was but an idle report. For this cause are we as men drunken or sleeping; eating, drinking, whoreing, and making merry; looking on the days as days of peace and ease, regardless of the daily growing peril.
For to-day the nations are banding in leagues; the method of dividing profits
is settled; the peril hangs, aye, at our eyebrows; the day of danger is here.
For every day's delay in forming a constitutional Government is a day's delay in abolishing the peril.
This year, next year, who can tell? Yet my people can strengthen their power of self-defence, or nip the peril in the bud. At least they can fight one battle; not stand with bound hands awaiting death.
Arise, oh my people, and attempt it.
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