THE COMING WORLD WAR.
How the Yellow Races are preparing for the
great struggle for the future with the White Nations.
By Shaw
Desmond
This capture is from the Union Jack magazine, 19 July 1913. It is so interesting, the parallels with what we see today. The fears of foreign nations, and other races still exists in the twenty-first century. Have we learned nothing from history? /drf
[Is the Yellow Man about to challenge the White Man’s world supremacy? If he does, who will win? If the Yellow Man is victor, what will it mean to the White Race? These are the questions which, with the awakening of China and Japan, are quickly becoming the vital questions of the twentieth century. Unless certain concessions are made by the White Powers, it seems assured, for reasons given below, that ultimately the Yellow Man will be forced to pit his 600,000,000 against the White Races in a world-war, the scene of which will be the Pacific, and the prize the domination of the world.]
Spread the map of the world before you, and look
at the Yellow Empire which to-day is knitting itself together for the coming
struggle. This Empire has every type of climate, from icy cold to torrid heat,
stretching from the Amur River in latitude 50 deg. north, to Cochin-China, in
latitude 10 deg.; and longitude 90 deg. east to 160 deg. east, nearly two and a
half million square miles of territory.
Vast as it is, and although its peoples —including
the Chinese, Japanese, Siamese, Koreans, &c.—greatly outnumber those of the
white races, the latter not only occupy a much bigger area, but possess more
than twice as much land as all the coloured races of the world together, though
the latter outnumber them two to one.
China, with its 407,331,000 people, is, of
course, the predominant partner of the Yellow Federation which is maturing,
though Japan is the moving spirit. Without China, a Yellow Empire would remain
in the land of dreams; with her, it will materialise into the most formidable
combination of the human race that has ever been engineered; and it is because
of this that we must see what is happening in the Celestial Empire.
What is known as “the awakening of China” is
due, first, to her successive humiliations by the hated White Powers in her
last five wars with them, and to their continued harping upon “the breaking up
of China,” and their forcing of “concessions”; and, secondly, to the first
defeat of a white race by a yellow, in the Russo-Japanese war, which,
incidentally, has made its rumblings felt not only amongst the yellow but
amongst the brown skinned races.
Here it should be remembered that the Yellow
Races have for the first time learned the gospel of “Force,” for their history
shows that throughout the centuries they have been pacifists.
Recognising that in arms alone can their destinies
be worked out, the Chinese are now reorganising their army and navy, placing
the former in the hands of skilled Germans, who are modelling it upon the German
military system, replacing dummy guns by the most modern Krupp artillery, and
installing wireless telegraphy and an aerial navigation corps. Three great
arsenals, with numerous smaller ones, are working at full pressure, turning out
artillery and small arms for the National Army. A Navy Board has been
established, and the nucleus of a formidable navy created.
What a reorganised Chinese Army may mean to
Europe is shown by a German military estimate issued in 1910, which, upon the
basis of the Fatherland’s army of
4,400,000 soldiers drawn from a population of sixty millions, would give China
eventually an army of 30,000,000 out
of their 400,000,000 of people. These experts stated that “such an army would be
nothing less than a menace to
white civilisation the world over.”
In the opinion of men
like General Mackay Herlot and the late General Gordon, who have
fought by the
side of and against Chinese troops,
when properly led they have no superiors, and no equals in
endurance upon a standard of living impossible
to the white soldier.
The spirit which
is likely to animate this
army is shown by the
following translation of the marching song of the army of Chang, the Viceroy of Hukwang, and one of the most
brilliant, as he
is one of the most modern, of the Chinaman of to-day:
“Foreigners laugh at our impotence.
And talk of dividing our country like a water-melon;
But are we not four hundred million strong?
If we of the Yellow Race only stand together,
What Foreign Power will dare to molest us?
Just look at
India, great in extent.
But sunk in hopeless bondage. . . .
Then look
at Japan, with her three small islands.
Think how
she got the better of a great nation. . . .”
Side
by side with this military preparation we have the dispatch, in
ever-increasing numbers of
men and women students to Europe
and to Japan to learn Western
methods. Oxford has had
its Chinese students; whilst
according to Dr.
W. A. P. Martin, D.D., LL D., formerly
President of the Chinese Imperial
University, who has
spent fifty years in China there were,
so far back as 1907, eight
thousand young men
and, what
is more significant, two hundred
young women, drawn from the most aristocratic families,
inhaling Western ideas in Japan.
How
far China has gone
it shown
by the establishment
of a Republic, the printing of some scores of daily papers giving foreign
news, the adoption of
Trade Unionism, the strike,
and the boycott; the steps taken
to sweep away polygamy, foot-binding,
and pigtails, and
head-shaving —the last
being badges of servitude of the Chinese
to the Manchurians or
Tartars —the forming of a corps of
women soldiers wearing men’s
uniforms, and the recent storming
of the Chinese Parliament
by Chinese Suffragettes. The new China is thorough.
The unique part
of educational reform
has been the invention of an alphabet of fifty
letters to replace the “picture-writing” of the Chinese
language.
Further, as an attempt
to overcome the splitting of China
by the babel of dialects into which it is divided (people of one
village sometimes do not understand
those of the next), it was decreed in 1910 that English should be the
official language for
scientific and technical education,
and the study of
that language was made compulsory in
all provincial scientific and technical high schools.
When these evidences of vitality awaken
surprise, it should be remembered that the civilisation which invented the pen,
paper, printing and powder, has never been a dying civilisation, but only a
stationary one.
China has already taken her first step in her
bid for the world’s commercial supremacy. She has the men —she only lacks the
machines. To get the machines, she needs the metal, and, to obtain this, has
abolished the ridiculous “Fungshui,” a sort of false science which held the
minerals of China sealed for fear of bringing ill-luck “through boring on the
pulse of the Dragon.” Now, huge Chinese companies are being formed to exploit
her mineral wealth. According to the report of a distinguished firm of London
mining engineers, China is probably the richest mineral and coal country in the
world.
Ironworks, cotton and silk mills, glass-works,
powder-works, etc., are to-day springing up through China like mushrooms, of
which the giant manufactories at Hanyang and the projected Shanshi ironworks
may be taken as examples. “For miles outside Wuchang the banks of the river are
lined with these vast establishments,” according to D. Martin who adds that
these works are “all designed to wage an industrial war with the Powers of
Christendom.”
The nature of her industrial challenge is shown
by the fact that between 1867 and 1911, the imports of China increased by 670
per cent., (including Western machinery); and her exports by 650 per cent., and
they are increasing at an even greater rate. The new Chinese Republic has
grasped the fact that to render the vast Empire effective by knitting it
together, a network of communications —railway, telegraphic, telephonic,
&c.—must be established.
The first grand trunk railway of the Chinese
Empire, most of which is open, runs straight down from Peking to Canton like a
vertebral column, whilst, according to Dr. Sun Yat Sen, the Chinese Republican
leader, the Government have planned the building, within ten years, of 70,000
miles of ribs from the main line, to bind together the whole Empire.
The capitals of all the provinces will soon be
railway centres, from which lines will radiate in every direction until each
capital will have eight or nine railways leading from it, rendering the
mobilisation of her future giant army an easy matter. It is interesting to note
that although the contract for half of the railway from Hankow to Canton, was
given to an American company, the whole enterprise was ultimately taken out of
their hands by the Chinese to build the railway themselves.
So far as the telegraph is concerned the
provinces are covered with wires. The wireless telegraph is firmly established
and a manual explaining its properties to the people has been issued.
Day and night this work of organisation —military,
educational, and commercial —is proceeding with the pertinacity of the yellow
man, which knows no rest.
This setting of her house in order must
ultimately lead to the expulsion of the White Powers from China, in which view
I have the support of the late Captain Mortimer O’Sullivan, himself a friend
and adviser of the late Dowager Empress and a mandarin of the Chinese Empire,
who told me that the Chinese leaders, including the Dowager Empress, cherished
an ineffacable hatred for the “arrogance” of the foreigner, and were only
waiting their chance to regain the “concessions” wrested from them at the
gun-muzzle.
This does not mean that commercial intercourse
with the white races will be barred or that the white business man will be
forbidden entry into the Empire as is so often ignorantly supposed. For good or
ill, China is committed to the stress and strain of International commerce and
the fight for the markets, and she has nothing to fear from white competition,
as will be shown.
But the expulsion of the Powers will obviously
be followed up by a demand for the admittance of the Yellow Man to Europe,
Australia, and the United States, without the present rigid racial
restrictions, and in any case by the prohibition of opium importation —a very
sore point with the Chinese, who have deeply resented European efforts to force
the drug upon them.
(The second part of this wonderful
article will be published next week.—The Skipper.)
