April 16, 1906.1
BRITAIN'S DWINDLING ARMY.
(Daily Press, 10th Apsil.) Forty-five years ago, Lord PALMERSTON'S military adviser said something that is strikingly applicable to the condition of the British Army to-day, which, as our London correspondent telegraphed last week, is terribly short of men. "If you want to go masquerading about on the Continent," he said (to-day we would read, "if you intend to maintain British interests all over the world, in the Far East, in Africa, to the north of India”), “you can't do it with less than 500,000 men. Your Lordship can have that army to-day if you like to intro- dace conscription" (Lord PALMERSTON did not)," or if you can persuade the country to pay for it,' It is recorded that Lord PALMERSTON laughed at that. The final advice then given to Lord PALMERSTON was to support the Volunteer movement. To-day we find considerably less than the 500,000 men needed for a Continental masquerade, if We exclude the native | troops whose employment against non- Asiatic enemies sentiment forbids; the Volunteers, who have been snubbed, reduced, and discouraged generally; and other branches who would be available only in dire need. Conscription is as unpopular as ever, chiefly, we suspect, because it is a fashion of "foreigners," and so antipathetic to the British mind. While as to paying for an efficient army, we find the "blue water school" apparently in the ascendant, and ruthless economy the programme of the new government. The basic trouble seems to be that the people have taken too seriously all the talk of universal peace and disarmament. Pretty speeches that have all along been nothing but diplomatic counters seem to have fallen on soft ground, and sprouted amain. The very rulers of the people, elected by the people, are bitten; and show signs of approaching practical problems with the optimism of a MICAWBER or a MULBERRY SELLERS. Utopian ideals are bandied about like banknotes, as if they were payable on demand. Of all the "lessons of the Russo-Japanese war," of which we have heard ad nauseam, the chief seems to have been overlooked; that the twentieth century, so far from inaugurating the millennium of universal peace, is fuller of fight than any of its predecessors. The European monarch who set the fashion in the art of mealy-mouthed profession, and added one to Holland's group of public talking places, is now, presumably also in the interests of peace, sending messages to bis "Buddhist subjects," congratulating them on recent opportunities of obtaining salutary spiritual blessing from contact with his saintly friend, the DALAI LAMA. There may be stray disciples of GAUTAMA, or of PAUL CARUSs, who will regard this as a gracious and generous thing in one who has converted so many to the Greek Church at the point of the bayonet; the disciples of nobody in particular will have no scruple in describing it in more contemptuous terms. Even 80, we must admit that the TSAR is no worse than the multitude of dreamers who continually do cry peace, peace, where is no peace. The very apostles of peace, whose business it is to preach peace, have (in China) been lately institu- ting anxious enquiries for gunboats; and some recent notable exceptions, a group of simple priests who foolishly deemed it their duty to submit unresisting to the murderers, are publicly chided for carrying their doctrine “too far.
That is what the British people appear to be doing, carrying these empty pratings too far. The noble sentiments sound well at a ten party, look-well in
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
267
coloured capitals and a fancy frame on the | are inevitable; the mistake lay in the very Dursery wall, but they are not politics. large assumption that "Shanghai has but With the exception of a few Little Englanders | oue. who find preaching pay, and are shrewd eccentric indeed who cannot find his place. It has so many that the man must be enough to avoid too glaring inconsistency, As to the dullness of Shanghai dinner the people have been making (as Sir WIL- parties, it is a regrettably rude necessity to FRID LAWson would say) Union-Jackasses have to remind the critic that so much of themselves, chanting of the Empire on depends upon the dinner. We can with. which the sun never sets, and, in au out effort recall occasions when the feast attractive game of follow-my-leader, have of reason been trying to "thiuk Imperially." Lord eatables, which latter, all scorn of Chinese was equal to the spread of ROBERTS, perhaps in sheer despair of any cooks thing better, has turned his attention to favourably indeed with the "
notwithstanding, compared very boys' brigades and miniature rifle ranges. and
groovynesa of many monotony
European mena. This newly-discovered "composite type" would be as unwelcome as are the innovators in a really "groovy" circle, and so far as the China coast is concerned, must be reckoned a myth. One salient com- plaint of our contemporary is that the "improving conversation of early Victorian days is never now thought of. We protest: it is-and with a shudder. We lancy it was as much the improving conversation as the port, that left our ancestors so notoriously under the table. Can it be that our contemporary has been misguided by some contributor who went to a Shanghai dinner armed with carefully rehearsed "improving conversation," and who was soured by finding that the posite types chattering to hear him to the end of his were too busy eating and flowing periods? like that; it is not just to call Shanghai Society everywhere is names for it. «Visitors who go away,
Lord KITCHENER has bis hands full in India. Lord PALMERSTON is dead. There is ample room for some great man to come to the rescue of a nation of dreamers, to teach them to act Imperially as well as to think Imperially. One of the things that men who walk in the wild places of the world learn soonest is never to bluff with unloaded revolver; and we fear that the time is coming, judging by the straws in to-day's wind, when Great Britain will be in some such position.
IS THE "CHINA HAND" A COMPOSITE TYPE?
an
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31
our contemporary says,
#
"
com.
elsewhere have they found a community so saying that never
of uniformity" only say that at the wharf, restricted by grooves on such a table-land
get a bearing for something equally verbose we venture to guess, because they failed to
at the dining table. They are unfair to unfair to Surbiton. Shanghai, and, in a subtler sense, still more
THE NEW EDUCATION BILL.
(Daily Press, 11th April.) A leader-writer in the North-China Daily News has managed to stir up a remonstrance by suggesting that the society of Shanghai is uniformly dull. "Is it," he writes, evidently meaning interrogative to imply affirmative is it that by mixing all our inanners and customs together we have evolved a composite type which is so com- pletely in harmony with our environment that we bend all our energies to modelling ourselves on it?" There is an undercurrent of protest in the whole of the comments froin which we quote, as if the writer had been trying to introduce some innovation; such as insisting upon paying for his own drinks at the Club, or wearing a white tie with a dinner jacket, or a monocle in the left eye, or something equally repugnant to received opinion. The writer appears to
(Daily Press, 12th April.) believe that the Shanghailander is a com- The news conveyed in our exclusive posite type, for he reminds us that "the telegram, published by "extra" yesterday blending of all the colours produces white;" and reprinted this morning, of a bill to and adds, "not but what white is very amend the much debated Education Acts nice, but it is uninteresting." Some little of 1902-03 will not come as a surprise to knowledge of the community dealt with those who have been following the trend of causes us to wonder how any observant events in Britain, during the last three perso can think of Shanghai society 83
years. In that period the sectarian, either white or uninteresting. With the jealousies which have always been associated remonstrance evoked from an angry corres in England with the discussion of the pondent we have no concern, for he appears education question bave become more acute. to bave misinterpreted the intention and The grumbling and dissatisfaction which purport of the leader in many ways. Not occasionally found expression under the old but what the comments are very nice, we regime developed into open hostility_when night say, but they are so uninteresting. the Education Act was passed. Heated The description of the inhabitants of argument and acrimonious debate became Shanghai as “groovy"cannot be allowed to the order of the day. The toleration go unchallenged, as all that was said might towards which the spirit of the age was be said of Hongkong and other Far Eastern tending was checked, and rampant bigotry communities. The Shanghai and Hong-and intolerance once more stalked the land. kong communities are alike famed for their Admittedly, the state of education in cosmopolitan composition, and it is England before the passing of these Acts rather startling to hear now for the first was most unsatisfactory. Compared with time of this dull creature evolved from such those in other advanced countries even diverse constituents. One of the chief that in Scotland itself—the system in advantages of life in either port is that it England was very much behind the times, is not life as lived in a provincial town, in fact, there was no system worthy of the where a man's social choice is limited, name. The Education Act of 1870 had broadly speaking, to being a gentleman or proved a failure. The people apparently dis. a "bounder," or else something else quite trusted the school bourds, and, infinewood, unthinkable. In Shanghai or Hongkong, by denominationalism, adhered as we know, it is possible to out-SHAW badly-equipped schools BERNARD SHAW in contempt for SHAKE education was not all SPEARE, and still receive dinner invitations. desired, the children There is so much more choice than a religious tenets to which degrading alternative. Grooves, of course, their elders attached Importa as our contemporary ought to have known, rau a difficult question
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