The-Hong-Kong-Weekly-Press-1896-03-04 — Page 7

Hongkong Weekly Press AND China Overland Trade Report All

March 4, 1896.]

and having promised us aid, now I, obeying orders of the great General Lia to exterminate the Japanese, have great fear that our army in the excitement of the fighting will kill some of the people of the friendly nations or missionaries of the same. Therefore I give orders to defend strongly these foreigners.

"I wish all military and merchant people of Taipeh, Teckcham, and Maoli districts to know that our enemy is only the Japanese and we have nothing to do with other nations except to protect their subjects.

"So our people must not cause the foreigners any damage or deceive them under any circum: stances. If soldiers or any other people kill these friends-missionaries, consuls, or mer chants-injure their property or burn down the churches, the culprits will be decapitated and their property seized. This order is given with a determined sprit, and every man must be aware and obey strictly.

"Given on 16th day, 11th month of 21st year Kwang-Hsu."

In general orders issued for the organization of the force at Gilan and Sanchao I note the troops are divided into two armies, the north and south, with officers as given below:----

NORTH, Lim-shing, in command Ha-bun-ti, in charge of Civil and Military Adminis- Civil Administration and tration, stationed west of stores, stationed east of Gilan.

Gilan.

*

Chiefs of Campe-Lee-soi, Ling-tai-hok, with an adju- tant captain and lieutenant us assistants.

Three captains, three lieutenants, and two adju- tants are mentioned as con- cluding the list of officers.

SOUTH.

General Chin-en-san, with a staff consisting of two officers (no rank given.)

Colonels two (flag officers), four captains, and adjutants complete southern officials list.

SAN-CHAO.

General in Chief Lin-lee-sinn.

two the

Three Generals and two chiefs of campe(No rank given.) Chief Guide-Teung-tung-chiung. This man is the leading beggar of Gilan and knows everything about the city.

TAIPEHFU, 20th February. Four days ago the Masatoya-maru, a steamer transport of about 700 tons burden, arrived off Tamsui late in the afternoon, but owing to her draught, being heavily loaded, she was unable to cross the bar, so the ship's master decided to anchor outside, remain over night, and then proceed to Kelung in the morning.

During the night, a slight wind arose and the ship's cable parted; the vessel drifted shore- wards, eventually going aground on the sands. For some unaccountable reason the fires had been allowed to go down, so that when the cable parted it was impossible to raise enough steam to turn the screw. That a ship should be with outssteam on the northern coast of Formosa, which is so subject to storms, shows such utter ignorance on the part of the captain that one is not surprised to hear that his other anchor was not dippped when the line of the first one parted, which might have saved her even then.

Governor Count Kabayama departs for Japan on the 24th in compliance with the command of the Emperor, who is solicitous for his Excel lency's health, H.E. having been confined to his bed several days ago with a slight attack of Tamsui fever. The departure is not due to his having resigned his post as Governor of Formosa owing to ill health, as stated in the Japanese papers and afterwards copied into the foreign journals.

Quite a party accompanies the Governor, several to take the opportunity of a few weeks' vacation in Japan, among them being Admiral Tsunoda, and two of his staff, Dr. Okubo and Captain Takagowa, I.J.N. About twenty pro- minent Chinese of the north of the island will be shown the sights of Japan and for their con- venience quite a host of servants, interpreters, etc., are included in the party.

sun-

Owing to the kind invitation of his Excel lency I will take this opportunity also of returning to Japan, to enjoy a month's rest and change of climate, for, for the last month, we have had unceasing rain with not a ray of light... Cold, wet, and gloomy days without an exception, while the mosquitos, which bloom all the year around in Formosa, turn my evenings into combats and early drive me to my fortress the mosquito curtain-the most essential article of equipment for life in Formosa.

CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.

TAIPEHFU, 24th February. The Japanese transport Masatoya-maru, that was wrecked near Hobe about a week ago, is daily being driven farther on the sands and will without doubt prove a total loss. This is the fifth ship lost by the Japanese since Novem- ber.

The arrest of Lapraik, Cass and Co.'s com- pradore, Si Tong-cook, which occurred several days ago, was a great surprise to the foreign community. The Japanese accuse him of aiding the rebellion with money, but no details doubt the authorities consider the proof at regarding the case have been made public. No hand sufficient to justify them taking the man through the street like a rebel and throwing him into the Japanese prison, but it is the is not guilty, but is the victim of an unsuccess universal opinion among the foreigners that he ful blackmailer or the subject of a deliberate plot concocted by some of his Chinese enemies. Lapraik, Cass and Co. for many years and has The man has been connected with the firm of always been a favourite among the foreigners, who considered him bright and clever, careful, and well posted in business. That such a man, who had everything to lose and nothing to gain, should aid a rebellion in which he could not have other than realized its futility does not seem reasonable, and we trust that his trial will prove him guiltless.

JAMES W. Davidson,

OCCUPY TILL I COME.

191

conformity to perfect ethics is possible only in a perfect state from which we are as yet long way off-it is our bounden daty to con form as nearly as we can, whilst ever keeping. the ideal in view, to the system most adapted to our present condition, the alternative being subjugation by those who do.

The history of mankind is the history of aggression, of compounding and re-compound- ing of societies by war. The most conspicuous result of this process at the present day is the great supremacy which one portion of the the other portions the extent to which the human family has gained and is gaining over

the expense of the yellow and black races, or, white races have spread and are spreading at to be more exact, the extent to which the white- overrun the yellowish and blackish skinned, skinned, fine-haired, orthognathous type has coarse-haired, mesognathons, and prognathous

by the first-named type. Many countries for- on this earth, about two-thirds are now owned types. Of the 60,000,000 square miles of land

merly owned exclusively by what are known as the lower races are now owned and partially inhabited by the so-called civilized races, but there are no instances on record of any large tracts formerly owned by white races being now owned by the darker races, In the lapse of time the possessions of the first have grown at the expense of the others-here by encroachment or conquest, there by treaty or purchase, but the process has always been in one direction. We have no record of a black or yellow race subduing and ruling a white race. Civilization faces the other way and refuses to allow the "The deep meaning of the language which the best of her children to hew the wood and draw West is holding to the East is simply this: the water of those to whom nature in her 'Occupy till I come.""-Modern writer.

wisdom has both assigned these tasks and given Ethnologists, after many years of indefatiga temperament fit to carry them out. Any able research and of travail in that legitimate temporary ascendency of the lower races we controversy which alone begets truth, are now might be able by careful search to discover in generally agreed as to the primordial unity of the book of history is sure to be found oblite-. the human race. This granted, we may rated on the next page: the natural order re- presume that the original family or tribe asserts itself. The question of questions for separated, without raising the vexed question of us now is: Will this process continue as hereto. the original point of separation. And we may fore, or is there a danger of its being reversed? further presumption that when, at that early world's great melting pot, we shall prove to be also, without fear of contradiction, make the Have we reasons for believing that, in the time, these ancestors of ours, whose children in the refined gold and stand the test of the fiery their millions now people the earth, set out on furnace, or are we, too, destined to be absorbed their respective journeys, their minds were as and lost in the greater mass of seething little concerned with the possibility, or the humanity? results, of a future meeting as with modern party politics or the lady bicyclist. They did not think that a time would come when the faint ripples then extending in ever- widening circles from the spot where man had appeared on the surface of the earth would roll back in mighty waves and dash against each other in the stress and strain of vital conflict. These thoughts were for another people and another time, and with those accustomed to "look before and after" the conviction is ever grow- ing stronger that the hour is now at hand when the question of our fitness for the fight should occupy our attention to the exclusion of all other questions. We do not wish to be deceived. Thrown down or sprung up on this earth (accord ing to the view we hold) we find multitudes of human beings aggregated in more or less deve- loped societies of various kinds and sizes. What ever the end and object of their existence may be, they are one and all governed by the law of self-preservation-each seeks first to maintain itself, to prolong its own life. Indeed, this state of things shadows forth a truism, for, pushed to its logical conclusion, argument in favour of any hypothesis based on a law of self-destruction is suicidal, in the case of a society as well as in the case of an indi- vidual. There is, under the conditions, no alternative; and so strongly do we endorse the law by conformity to which our lives are ren- dered possible that we put to death the traitor who, in war time or in peace time, endeavours to betray his country, without waiting to see whether his act will really have the prejudicial result we expect it to have. That we shall ultimately act on a more complete law-shall live

up to a system of ethics as superior to any now prevalent as these are to those of the wife- eating Fuegian-those who have studied the his- tory of Ethics cannot but believe; but since

* Were the subject of this paper ethical instead of sociological, it would be interesting to dwell on this highest form of our social life and to point out the'

digression may here fitly be made to recall to Before attempting to answer this question a

enquiry. A fact generally overlooked is that mind the objects and methods of sociological this science is both an inductive and a deductive one, and another fact also left unnoticed by

tions of data have been made and classified, and most is that since its foundation vast accumula- principles deduced therefrom, so that there have already been discovered certain laws of Sociology, which cannot be ignored in any discussion of sociological problems without risk of serious error. We do not refer to the pseudo-arguments of those writers who compare the intellectual traits of one moral traits of another and found on this race with the comparison conclusions as to the relative merits of the two, since unscientific methods of this kind are beneath serious attention. We refer rather to those who are ignorant of or ignore the tabulated facts showing the radical characteristics of national types, and who thus draw erroneous inferences respecting the potentialities of certain races, which a study of these tables would show do not exist. Knowing that from small beginnings some races have attained to power and greatness, they unhesitatingly conclude that it is possi ble for all other races to do the like, for- getful or ignorant of the fact that it is as stages by which it can be shown that as in the com- petition for blood going on amongst the various parts of an individual organism undue egoisni or undue altruism (to borrow ethical terms) may prove suicidal by destroying the organism itself of which the too selfish or too unselfish units are parts, so in the social organism the same result may follow im- perfect ethics in the individual social units. Thus there would seem to be no escape from the conclusion that a code of condet which prescribes unqualified altruism (the best no doubt in the time of almost

qualified egoism in which it was promulgated) must be inferior to one in which the claims of self and others are rightly balanced,

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