THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1902. THE EASTERN SPHYNX.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12077, 22 September 1902, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1902. THE EASTERN SPHYNX.

Two years ago the world was agog because of doings in China. The eyes of every civilised man and woman were rivet-ted upon Pekin. The sensation having waned, the dramatic interest having subsided, little more is thought of the Chinese problem. We imagine it to have been, in some manner, settled. We conceive of a new balance of power having been struck in Far Eastern waters owing to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. And. to some* extent we are undoubtedly correct. But although some equilibrium may have been reached between the rival claims of Russia, Japan Germany, America and the other great Powers —not forgetting ourselves—to share in the extensive estates and the profitable trade of China, it is very evident that -the riddle of the Eastern sphynx is still unread. This mysterious China is as mysterious as ever. We are as far as ever from any solution of the Chinese question. The China Inland Mission, which has peculiar opportunities for knowing, reports the whole interim of the country seething with discontent, tumult and rebellion- The Boxers have reappeared, coming into notoriety when the Government defeats them, but certainly gaining many ungazetted victories and successes, or they would not be attacking walled cities and exciting alarm in the Legations. Massacres of Christian converts and missionaries are recurring even while the Powers bluster and cajole in the getting of commercial treaties. In fact, China is every day becoming more Chinese than ever, is steadily thrusting back foreign influences by unofficial actions, while her official utterances are all that could be desired. After two years Europe has China's promise to pay an. impos- ! sible indemnification for the Pekin l outrages and nothing more. China is herself, her old self, again, plus the knowledge that it is a great mistake to attack the outer barbarian in open war. The Ottoman Empire, in many superficial ways so different, is in all | essential matters akin to that of China. Both are Turanian, for the Sublime Porte rules with Tartar hand over the Semite as the Son of Heaven rules with Manchu hand over the more kindred Mongolian. The "Sick Man" of the Bosphorus is no sicker than he was fifty years ago, no nearer to dissolution. He has outlived already the French Empire that patronised him. He has seen the map of Europe alter as much as the map of the Balkans. And the rule of the Turk in the West is a passing and shifting thingcompared to the occupation by the Mongol in the East. The Yellow Man swarmed on the Hoang-ho before he had been seen from the walls of Byzantium. And we can hardly doubt that China will be still heathen and alien when Asia Minor has been regained to Christianity and civilisation. For there is a tenacity in these Easterns, particularly in the Chinese section of J them, which dwarfs our European

patience and foils our superior strength. E% tax in India, our AngloSaxon influence has notoriously stayed at political rule. 'We can enforce Law. We can establish Order. But if our power to 'hold were broken to-morrow, our engineering J works alone would remain as the monument of all that English men and women have toiled for and suffered for and died for. in India. And in China! The man from the kindred races lives a few years in the colonies and can rarely afterwards be happy in his old home. But the Chinaman longs every hour of his life for his own people and his own land, returns to them with pain- won earnings if he can and if he cannot return alive he assures himself that his bones shall some day rest there in peace. We cannot even affect the Chinese who live among us. How much less can we affect them where we, not they, arc outcasts and strangers ? The Chinese problem which was thought to be on the eve of final solution two years ago has not been solved at all ami threatens to become nu pressing as ever. We are entirely within the bounds of fact . | when we say that no European tvaf velle. is really safe there beyond j the range oi European guns and that every Christian missionary j takes his life in his hand. This state of affairs is becoming worse. j It is being aggravated by a reasonj able indignation at the exactions of the Allies and by an increased scorn for the "'barbarian'' following upon oui withdrawal from Pekin. The Powers are doing their best to smooth over the difficulty in the interest of "concessions," but at any moment an outbreak may occur which cannot be ignored. The Boxer movement which heralded the Pekin outbreak was not universal, i not nearly as universal as the pre- ] sent even graver sedition. To-day 01 to-morrow Ox next year, at any time, China may give birth to an active anti-foreigner campaign which will reproduce on a grander scale the attempt of two years ago. True, the Legations are safe, but the men and women of the missions and other peaceful Europeans, are often defenceless in the midst of enemies whose tenderest mercy is sudden death. Civilisation could not allow such another outrage to go unchecked, would be compelled to take steps to render the life and property of its citizens as safe in China as elsewhere. Another combined movement would be impossible. The only apparent alternative is that some deputy might be appointed to police and regulate China in the interest of the Powers. Were this solution of the problem determined upon the policeman stands ready in Japan, which would have AngloAmerican support in such a situation. Russia might think differently and with other Powers might wish to be her own policeman. But were I Japan thus to become suzerain of j China, with 01 without a struggle, she would become one of the strong- ! est and richest nations in the world j and a very different factor in the j politics of the Pacific.