ESTABLISHED 1875. The Manawatu Daily Times. The Oldest Manawatu Journal. Published Every Morning. MONDAY, JUNE 20, 1904. THE YELLOW PERIL.

Manawatu Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 7998, 20 June 1904, Page 2

ESTABLISHED 1875.

The Manawatu Daily Times. The Oldest Manawatu Journal. Published Every Morning. MONDAY, JUNE 20, 1904. THE YELLOW PERIL.

The London Times makes light of the yellow peril which it says is depicted in all the appalling shapes which the ingenuity of those who seek to affright us with it can devise. The hypothesis on which the "peril" is chiefly based is that a victorious Japan would immediately endeavour to induce the Chinese Empire to walk in her footsteps, and that the Chinese Empire would obediently accept her counsels and readily and effectually follow her example, It is then inferred that, as the population of China is to the population of Japan, so would be the military and naval greatness of regenerate China to the military and naval strength of the Power which has just been giving Russia such severe lessons in the conduct of modern warfare by sea and by land. The moral effect of this spectacle upon the Oriental races is pointed out at the same time, and we are invited to contemplate a general revival, upon the Japanese model, of all the decaying monarchies of Asia. It may be admitted without reserve that the prospect would be very serious, were there any reasonable grounds to suppose that it would be lealised, A host of drilled and disciplined Chinamen, several millions strong, led by scientific soldiers who had learnt the art of war in the school of General Kuroki, is in itself a sufficiently disquieting nightmare, to say nothing of a confederated Asia. Fortunately the one prospect seems about as unlikely of fulfilment as the other. The Japanese, if they attain their objects in the war, will doubtless do all they can to strengthen their influence in China, and they will almost certainly try to make China strong enough to be able to offer some resistance to open or covert attacks upon her own integrity and independence. But

tbe most elementary consideration of self-interest must dissuade them from any desire to see China armed on the same scale as themselves. It would be poor policy upon their part —and their policy has not shown itself inferior to their strategy—to get rid of one formidable neighbour at the cost of a terrible war in order wantonly to raise up another. Whatever the Japanese may do for China, they will be very careful not to make her their own rival. The other main assumption which underlies the doctrine of the " yellow peril" is that Japan is as the rest of Oriental peoples, and that she will act as they would act in the hour of success. There is no evidence whatever in support of this con ten tion, and there is a great deal of vury clear evidence against it. Japan his done what no other Oriental nation has ever made even an honast attempt to do. She has effectually and completely reformed herself from wiobin, and the mere fact that she has accomplished this transformation, which is absolutely unique in tbe history of mankind, is; a palpable and conclusive proof that she is not as they are. If Japan, adds the Times, were to find her generous endeavours to understand our habits of thought and to adopt our principles of public conduct met with cold suspicion and a contemptuous predetermination to look upon her and to treat her as a "Yellow Power," do what she would; if she were confronted by an international "boycott " and given to understand that she could never win for herself her place among the elder representatives of Western civilisation, then—and, as we believe, then only she might indeed, bend all her energies to make the " yellow peril " a reality. No policy could be more fatuous, as none could be more unjust, than to attempt to exclude this last recruit from the sisterhood of civilised peoples. Yet that is the policy which we are invited to adopt in the name of civilisation. Neither the people of Great Britain nor their kinsmen of the United States will lend their ears to advice so manifestly tainted in its origin, and so utterly repugnant to their instinctive and inherited love of even-handed justice.