A GREAT DANGER FOR EUROPE.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12379, 19 December 1905, Page 4

A GREAT DANGER FOR EUROPE.

COMMERCIAL COMPETITION THE REAL YELLOW PERIL. IS THERE A REMEDY? Fmdemck Greenwood, in " Tin Pali. Mall Gazkttk." In the 'Tall Mall Gazette" and elsewhere some very good articles have been printed lately to this effect:—As presented to a nervous Western world the Yellow Peril is a bogey. It is a bogey because it holds up to expectation a coming time, not far off, when tho swarming yellow races of tho East, euffioiently instructed, armed, and drilled, will pour over their frontiers ur'jpitiless hordes, to tho destruction of civilised Europe. Which is absurd. The true Yellow Peril is not at all of that sanguinary character. A great danger for Europe ie rising in the Far East, no doubt (so runs Uie argument), but of an entirely different kind. The menace is commercial > competition in the various employments of industry and trade. For such rivalry the adept and laborious peoples of China and Japan are eminently fitted. Already they are beginning to occupy tho Eastern market, and will do so more and more: for, in the first place, they are "on the spot"; in the second placo. they have an increasing command of Weetern capital: and in the third, tho labouring population is able and content to work under conditions which ensure a cheapness of production that no European nation can hope to approach. This is tho real Yellow Peril, and not the spectre called up by Charles Pearson's famous book, "National Life and Character," ten or twelve years ago. Justice for Charles Pearson's book! Everybody read it—most readers turning over its pages fascinated but with a fork. Everybody talked of it, but upon an understanding that though they could savour they must not be supposed capable of ewallowmg Mr Peareon's extravagant yet positive predictions. Predictions he himself called them: his book was described as "a forecast" on the title-page. But the Yellow Peril which ho dwelt upon was not the bogey, not the portent which had begun, to haunt the minds of students ©i the East before Pearson wrote and the German Emperor took to designing admonitory piotures for distribution to hie people. It is true that the English (Australian) professor admitted to his speculations a time when China, for example, would rise to self- , assertion, adequately tutored and equipped for war; but while taking full account of it ho put it to a distance, treating it as a secondary consideration. "It seems certain," ho eaid, "that sooner or later China must become a formidablo military Power"; "fifty years hence" (from 1893) China may have taken that "inevitable position." No ano can doubt whalt would'happen were China to be governed by a man "with the vigorous and aggressive genius of Peter tho G-reat or Frederick the Second. A leader of genius might perhaps arise 'to combine the Mahommodoiis of China in a common organisation"; in which case "it would be difficult to suppose that China would not become an aggressivo military Power, eroding out her armies in millions to cross the Himalayas," end so forth. Other passages, even stronger than these but always with qualifications of tho same or a similar kind, might be cited to show that the Yellow Spectre does stalk in the background. of Pearson's visions. It does; but only because it could not be banished, and not because the parade of it had any considerable place in his intention. After -writing one of tho sentences quoted above he says that the Chinese do not need "the accident of a man of genius to develop their magnificent future. Ordinary statesmanship, adopting the improvements of Europe without offending the prejudices of the people, may make them a Btate which no Power in Europe will dare to disregard."

Nor was Pearson's forecast specially concerned with the future of the Yellow races; America North and South, Australia, Africa, were included in it. The block peoples, who ore already bringing themselves under general observation, were as much considered as the peoples of Eastern Asia; all that ho has to say of them drawing to the conclusion which he wished to impress upon his readers: "The lower races are increasing upon the higher, end will some day confine them to a portion ,of tlio Temperate Zone." And a startling conclusion it is; but-not so improbable in 1905 as in 1893, though the interval is but twelve yeare long. In those yeiars, however, the Yedlow peoples have initiated, have accomplished developments far more rapid and decisive than Pearson or any other white man dreamed of as possible within the time. SQUEEZING THE ENGLISH OUT. Meanwhile we have had—the Germans and ourselves —some moving experiences in Africa too; and how far they accord with Pearson's forecast may be* partly teen from the following quotation.:—

British rule means order and peace, industry and trade, the enjoymeut of property under fairly equal '.awe. To nn African native tb« establishment of a colony like Natal is Uko throwing open tho gates of Paradise. Ue etreaima in, offering his cheap though not rery regular labour, and supplying ail his wants at the very smallest expenditure of toil. Where he multiplies, however, the British race begins to consider labour of all but the highest kind dishonourable; and from tho moment that a population will not work in the fields, on the reads, in the micee, in the racforiss, its doom is practically sealed. It ie limited to supplying employees, merchants, contractors, shopmen, and foremen to theh communitytho end of which must bo that "the white race will gradually be absorbed or disappear"; and the more certainly where it is "surrounded by dense masses of an unfriendly population." As to that, however, Pearson bad very little dread of such hostility oe tho Germans are experiencing in Smith Africa. Ct is much to the purpose of them remarks that though, of course, he knew that many thousands-of good black fightingmen were receiving an education in warfare and the use of its deadlier opplionoee, he evokes no Black Bogey to heighten the dramatic and moral effect of hi* anticipations. What ie now described aa "the real Yellow Peril" ie precisely that which Pearson prophesied, with the additional warning of