18.
SANITATION PROSECUTIONS.
(Daily Press 2nd July.)
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
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YELLOW PERIL NOT SO YELLOW,
(Daily Press, 4th July.)
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[July 11, 1904. I negative, and had the President wished to hoped would prove a source of gain to the move an amendment he would not have Khanate, has been found to have the con- been in order, because there was one, moved | trary effect. In a country where every The Sanitary Board's abortive prosecu. by Mr. RUMJAHN and seconded by Mr. LAU available acre is occupied under ordinary tion of the Kowloon Wharf and Godown: CHO PAK, already before the meeting. conditions in providing fool crops for the Company for failing to carry out the orders, Clearly a vote ought first to have been people, the displacement of rice by cotton of a sanitary inspector made it imperative taken on Mr. RUMJAHN's amendment. has had a deleterious effect. Without that the Board should reconsider the system There would have been no difference, how-human labour the land cannot be cultivated, under which the-e prosecutions are institu-
ever, in the ultimate result. The President's and without rice the people cinnot be fed; ted. At Thursday's meeting Mr. HEWETT direct negative killed the two birds with gare the Board that opportunity by moving one stone.
so that the displacement of rice means the The official vote was solid diminution of the population, and the that in future no prosecutions should be in- against change of any kind, and the casting diminution of the population re-acts in the stituted by sanitary inspectors until such
vote of the President decided that no change abandonment of still more land to the action has been approved by the President, in the procedure should be made. The encroaching desert; and land in Central or, in his absence, the Vice-President of the procedure of the Sanitary Board in this as Asia once abandoned, all history tells, can Board. The President, however, entered
some other respects is original and never more be restored to cultivation. upon a somewhat lengthy defence of the unique.
Even at present Turkestan has to import system, and a resolution to maintain it in
corn for her small population, so that the force was carried, but only by the Pre-
desiccation of the land bids fair to be con- sident's casting vote. The decision, we.
tinuous. The present population of Siberia think, is to be regretted. So far from the
is estimated at from seven to eight millions, President's speech destroying Mr. HEWETT'S
spread over an area 1 times that of case against the system, it obviously
Europe, which gives just two equare miles strengthened it. No other Board that
to each inhabitant; taken separately, the we are acquainted with entrusts its officers
greatest density in any one of the Govern. by a general resolution to institute pro-
ments into which it is divided is two per secutious without the knowledge and con-
square mile. Russia has in fact not been sent of such Board. The usual procedure
able to draw in the present war upon her at home is for the sanitary inspectors to
vast Siberian territories, but has to send report all contraventions of the Public
practically all her men and stores from Health Acts or local bye-laws to the chief
Europe over some 5,000 miles of badly- sanitary inspector, who when circum-
constructed railway. So little is the danger stances point to the necessity for legal
of any approach from Northern or Central proceedings, verifies the 1eport and
Asia.
} brings it to the notice of the Medical Officer of Health, who in turn reports the circumstances to a Committee of the Board, who make recommenda- tions to the full Board. Thus, when a prosecution takes place it is done with the knowledge and sanction of the whole Board. It is not so in Hongkong. As Mr. RUMJAHN says in his minute, "the correspondence of the department and practically all proceedings against offen- ders, real
or supposed, are carried "L out in the name of the Board generally without the knowledge and "consent of its members as a whole." The President himself in his speech admit- ted that had he been aware of the intention to institute a prosecution he could easily have explained matters and so probably avoided the necessity.
营着
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The case against the Godown Company was of no importance in itself, but when the sanitary inspectors prosecute an import- ant public company they attract public attention to their methods, and the appre- hension that similar mistakes or indiscre- tions are committed in many prosecutions taken against Chinese is natural, even though there is no evidence to justify an accusation. The Sanitary Board and its officials have a difficult work to discharge in a Colony like Hongkong, where it is very well known their operations are not widely appreciated by the Chinese, and it is extremely desirable that needless irritation should be carefully avoided. The motion made by Mr. HEWETT would have provided a necessary safeguard, but Mr, RUMJAHN's proposal that the pro- secutions should only be instituted with the approval of a committee consisting of the Medical Officer of Health and two unofficial members of the Board is perhaps to be preferred as it would bring the practice more into liue with that which obtains at home.
The excitement of the debate appears to have led to some irregularity in the procedure, for it would appear from the reports that the only vote taken "for and against the President's amendment." As a matter of fact, the President moved no amendment. "That the procedure remain as it is" is a direct
was
! There is probably little sincerity in the professed fear of the Yellow Spectre amongst the Statesmen of Europe. It is a rare thing to find Statesmen who by con- spicuous alality have raised themselves to commanding positions exhibiting in their elevation a tendency to superstitions, which during their rise they assiduously concealed; and we may well believe that the Emperor WILLIAM II, is quite sincere in his ore- bodings as to the possibility of a recru- descence of those tribal movements which eventually swamped the Roman Empire, and destroyed the old civilisation of the But of course there is the cass of JENGHIZ world. But is there any similarity between KHAN's invasion, which in the fourteenth the situation then and now ? At that period century was well nigh as fatal for modern the conditions were, so to speak, reversed; civilisation as was that of the Goths and the plains of Europe supported but a few Huns for the ancient culture of the Roman wandering tribes, certainly they were no Empire. Why should it not be repeated? better peopled than was America before its We have above shown some of the actual discovery by COLUMBUS. On the other haud, reasons; the rest may be inferred. Of all Northern Asia, in regious now given over to conquerors in history JENGHIZ KHAN did the dominion of vast deserts, in those days most to prevent for all time a recurrence of supported large populations, who have every-conquests, inasmuch as be destroyed the where left their remains in the way of buge tumuli and rude stone ruins. The very climate itself has changed. of which we find eloquent proofs in the skeletons of the huge elephants and rhinoceros which once found ample pasturage on the now frozen tundras of Northern Siberia. Wholesale migrations, we may rest assured, do not take place without adequate cause; and there is very good reason to associate the cause with the progressive deterioration of the climate, which has rendered Northern Siberia unfit to support a larger population than it at present maintains. While this was the case in Central and Northern Siberia, in Central Asia the drying up of the land and the encroachments of the desert had its effect likewise in rendering the land by degrees unfit for human habitation. We have no statistics of the Central Asian lands at any time, but history proves that once they were far more populous than now; the reason being the gradual diminution of the quantities of water carried down by the two rivers, Oxus and Jaxartes, on which the plains are entirely dependent for their cultivation. Recent travellers are pretty unanimous in pointing out that the Russian occupation has had no effect in checking the depopulation. Miss MEAK, one of the latest travellers, who draws her information from Russian sources, and who dedicates her recent book to the TSARITSA, may certainly be looked upon as a friendly witness. She describes the gradual decay of Samarkand as hastened, rather than the contrary, by the Russian occupation; people, she tells us, who settled down there in the hope of finding a reasonable return for capital invested, are one and all moving on to Khokand. The cultivation of cotton in Tur'e can, which the Russians reasonably
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resources and capabilities of the lands which he overran. We have shown how absolutely depeu lent on population are the lands he passed over for their cultivability. JENGHIZ not merely killed off entire popu lations, but he waged war with vegetation; his followers destroyed the forests through which they passed, and blighted the vegeta- tion. In a well-watered country Nature can go far towards healing the wounds of war! not so in Central Asia, where during the entire human epoch the rainfall has been deficient. There a tract of country once given up to the desert remains for ever in its deadly grasp. Persia, once covered with forests, now scarcely supports a single tree. Richly-cultivated districts have reverted to howling deserts. The entire delta of the two great Central Asian rivers, the Oxus and Jaxartes, was once a smiling, well-cultivated plain, fed everywhere by great streams, natural or artificial. Now, with the exception of the lands immediately watered by the Oxus and Zarafshan, it is a sanly desert, known as the Kizikum or Red-Sand. The slopes of the Pamir plateaux were once covered with abundant forests, and we bear little of the difficulties they offered to the advance of armies. the Pamirs are practically blocked to the passage of troops unless in the smallest of detachments, and what is true of Western Turkestan has in modern times become equally true of Eastera. There is no popula tion in Central Asia to support a solitary one of the unnumbered hordes, who even in historical times penetrated from one end of Asia to another.
Now
To all this it may of course be replied, that in Eastern Asia there is still. China and China is still at least as populous as ever she was; and suppose China were to
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