The Dominion SATURDAY, MAY 16, 1908. THE NEW SPIRIT IN ASIA.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 199, 16 May 1908, Page 4

The Dominion SATURDAY, MAY 16, 1908. THE NEW SPIRIT IN ASIA.

Almost every week {nowadays brings with it fresh evidence of the new leaden of unrest that is permeating; Asia. India is seething with discontent, and, in the opinion of some of those most competent to judge,'the next ten years may perhaps witness a greater revolt against British rule than even the Mutiny itself. China, inspired by the example of Japan, is awakening 'from her age-long sleep. Persia is throwing off the shackles of the despotism that has ground down her people ; ■ and even the soldom-heard-of Annamcse are alarming their French masters with demands for self-government. The Japanese themselves, who stood but yesterday as victors in one of the greatest wars in the history of the world, are following with characteristic "energy the example set by Germany after 1870. They have only a small territory in comparison with their population; they are determined to expand; and by organisation, subsidies, and every dovice of bounties, tariffs, and rebates, they are seeking to lay the foundations of a commercial greatness that shall make their country the undisputed, mistress of the East. Japan's success against one of the mightier white: Powers has profoundly stirred the Oriental imagination, arid from all parts of Asia students are flocking to her shores to learn the secret of her greatness. The increase in the number of Indian students who resort to Japan instead of England to complete-their education is said, for instance, to have been particularly marked of late years. Beneath all the differences of creed and colour in Asia there'runs the one unifying belief that Asia should belong to the Asiatics, and anything that will bring this nearer to realisation will be welcomed from one end of the continent to the other. Whatever the future may bring forth it seems certain that Asia will no longer remain an inert mass to be carved and partitioned among the European Powers as they choose. Ine permanency of the present boundaries of white influence is uncertain, and it is quite unlikely that they, will be extended.

The great effort to conqucr Asia which has been going on for two centuries is now ccasing; the East that shook oft Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire, and foiled the Crusaders, is once more aroused, and men are asking themselves the old question whother Europe will ever permanently dominate Asia. A new factor is to-day coming into the problem, and one which may yet create the political unity of India and the fighting unity of Asia. From North Ammc&i from South Amcrica '{if tlio

Monroe doctrine counts for anything), from Africa, and from Australia, the surplus of Asia is everywhere being Hung back and penned up within its own limits. Asiatic resentment at the humiliations and restrictions ' imposed by the whites is steadily growing. " The Japanese," says a recent writer, " find thai; in spite of their status in war as one of the Greater Powers, they can cxpcct no better treatment in peace than is lhcted out to China; that they must submit to a veto imposed upon no white nation. At the same time all the Anglo-Saxon democracies alike maintain that the open door in Asia itself is a sacrcd institution; Canada builds high hopes upon the future of her trade with the Far East; the United States is asserting at this moment, by the most formidable of •ill recorded naval demonstrations, har unabated claims to make tne best of both worlds, and to enioy monopoly on one side of the Pacific and equality on the other. This is obviously a situation that does not contain within itself the elements of permanency." Formerly the Japanese thought they were despised, becausc of their backwardness and their impotence. Now they know that it is because they are yellow men and Asiatics. The same lesson is being learned in India, where the' finger-print laws in tho Transvaal,and the deportation from Vancouver of Indian- veterans wearing the King's medals have caused an intense and bitter feeling of indignation against the Empire '.that has professed to give equal rights to all races and creeds under its sway. " The Christian Empire of Great Britain," writes Ameeii An, a retired Judge of the High Court of Judicature in Bengal, in the Nineteenth Century for April, " cannot secure considerate treatment for its provincials in its own colonies.' South Africa presents at this moment an' extraordinary spectacle of what high altruistic pretensions and rank selfishness can produce in the name of. civilisation. . . Whilst Levantines, Jews, Greeks, Maltese, apd others aro welcomed into the colonial bosom, tho clean, sober, honest Moslem is alone classified as an undesirable Asiatic, and subjected to the humiliating and degrading restrictions which modern Brahminism imposes on outsiders." .We may explain to the Asiatic that in excluding him we have no personal feeling against him, and ai-e actuated solely by the consideration that to admit into our countries backward races would involve more of loss to tho higher race than of gain to. the lowdr; but however smoothly we may say no to the colonising instinct of the Asiatic surplus—an instinct that is likely to becomc infinitely stronger than it now is—wo must recognise that our negative will be worth the force that is behind it and no.more, and that all Asia is being incited to the development of a counter-force. •

; In the ease of our own Empire, India find the colonial democracies form two incompatible elements. We have promised, tho Indians freedom under, the flag; we have fed Indian schoolboys and students on a history, and a philosophy that supply arguments in abundance against submission' to an alien rule; and .now we begin to find ourselves facing a dilemma. The Imperial Government must either stand by and see its promises made a mockery by colonial laws, or else incur the enmity, of the colonics by forcing the unwelcome ■ Indian" upon them. ' To arouse the hate of its own. kith and kin overseas in an illusory attempt to get its Indian subjects to love it would be to lose the best part of its dominion in chasing a will-o'-the-wisp, and would be a foolishness that no Government is likely to commit. . In a recent number of the Fortnightly Review the suggestion was made that British East Africa, where there are already some 30,000 Indians, should be set aside as a colonising ground for the overflow from India, and the peopling of'it taken in hand systematically by the Indian Government. The alternative, .it was pointed out, was to sit back and do nothing, than which we could do nothing more dangerous. Whether the Indian overflow is of a type that would take kindly to pioneering work is a matter that is doubtful, but tho suggestion is an interesting one, and the experiment deserves a trial. "It is," says the writer we have quoted, " a matter of life and death that no artificial unity of Indian, peoples, Bengalis with Sikhs, Pathans, Rajputs, Mahrattas and the rest, should be created." The dislike of the Indians for one another is >at present greater than their dislike for us, and it is. upon this slender basis that the fabric of the British Empire in India very largely rests. The shrinkage of the world and tho progress of civilisation have,brought East and West into a contact from which they cannot escape. The .white man has given the world its science and its civilisation of to-day, ,and the yellow has given it every religion that has endured. Yet the two have always remained separate and aloof, neither understanding nor desiring over-much to understand the other. The sentiment of race-pride, the keenness of race-rivalry, have been intensified, and the future is dark with uncertainty. The hope of to-day lies in the fact that the sense of a common humanity has grown stronger, and, despite occasional ebullitions, the spirit in which the great civilised States are meeting these world-problems is higher and better than ever it has been before.