The Coming World War (1913)

 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.)