RUSSIA IN CHINA.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 4637, 16 April 1902, Page 4

RUSSIA IN CHINA.

The trend of opinion among the scientists of the world is that, with one or two notable exceptions, the various distinct branches of the human family are becoming, by inter-marriage and long in-breeding, weak and degenerate. Plants annually grown in the same soil, without additional fertilisation, gradually degenerate into weeds. The constant inbreeding of animals produces inferior stock. The law of all organic matter is towards retrogression, unless artificially compelled to superior creation by amalgamation with new and hardy varieties. This law is well-known to the Royal families of Earope and Asia, who seek renewed energy in foreign marriages. England goes to Germany or Denmark; Germany infuses her Royal blood with Anglo-Saxon and Magyar; Russia mingles her Royal purple with the blue blood of Saxony and Scandinavia; and Sweden with the Celt. Nevertheless, repeated inter-mar-riages are reducing the hereditary rulers of the Old World to intellectual inferiority. The traces of degeneracy are, of

course, more marked in the older nations. Is not tho earth covered with the ruins of ancient races and nations, which, after centuries of inter-breeding, collapsed from physical and intellectual weakness? Of the Semitic branch of tho human family, only a few Israelites and Arabs remain. The remnants of the Hamitic branch may bo found in Egypt, and in the servile African race. Who would ever associate them with the wisdom and glory of tho ancient Chaldees, tho builders of the Pyramids and the magnificence of Ethiopia? The decadence of the Chinese is not due to their strict wall of exclusion; for if expansion means perpetuation, why do Greece, Rome, Carthage, Phoenicia, Persia or Syria no longer exist, save as museum curios? As a matter of fact, the exclusiveness of tho Chinese perpetuated their national autonomy to centuries beyond that of other Powers, while the influx of Tartar blood preserved them from degeneracy. But now that they are an munixod race, the inevitable signs of racial decay are strongly marked, particularly in the southern and central provinces, beyond the Tartar influence.

Out of tho wreck of races, the great Aryan branch stands on a pinnacle, strong and magnificent, omnipotent and conquering; but showing plainly the same signs of degeneracy that reduced Imperial Rome, Greece and Phoenicia to ruin. When this remaining branch of mankind shall hare become effete, what will be the status of the nations of the earth ? Of the two great streams of the Indo-European or Aryan branch of the human family that flowed through tho valley of Cashmir, and through the gorges of the Caucasus — the one southward towards Iran and beyond tho Ganges, the other west raid north into Europe—there remains but one branch that can hold its own upon earth. The Celt, the German and the Slav remain. The Modes and Persians are history only; the caste differences of the Hindoos are fast causing the decadence of tho people of India. The GraocoRomau races are bandits; of the Celts only the Hibernians and Scotch retain any vigour. The Slavonians of Russia are expanding into a dominant nation westward; the Poles, Bohemians, Servians, Bulgarians, Illyrians and Creations will soon be absorbed. The Scandinavians occupy the north of Europe; the Franks, France; the Saxons, England—all of the Germanic division. The remaining divisions of the Germanic nation remain in middle Europe, and constitute the German Empire.

It seems to be a rule of nature to avoid a universal sameness, whether among mankind, inorganic nature or animals. By unvarying intercourse with one another, individuals become alike to a remarkable degree. Craniologists find no difficulty in detecting the nationality of any skull belonging to one of the unmixed nations. More particularly is this noticeable in the Chinese nation. The inter-marriages of that people, their exclusiveness, and their separation from foreign nations, has reduced them to the level of sameness and unintellectuality of those fallen races that have degenerated from the highest to the lowest, and have become absorbed into the more vital individuality of the invader. The contiguity of Russia to China, through Siberia and Asiatic Russia, has caused the commencement of a process of absorption which must result in the incorporation of the Chinese Empire with that of Russia. Alexander 111. pushed to the uttermost that policy of Asiatic expansion which his father had begun by the practical annexation of Khiva in 1873 and Khokand in 1876. The Triple Alliance of Prussia, Austria and Italy in 1879-1880, known as tbo “Dreibund,” and the alienation of France, by the unfriendly attitude of Russia during the Frauco-Prussian war, made it evidently easier to strengthen the Russian Empire, by securing control of the Orient, than by methods exciting the armed resistance of united Europe. In the development of Asiatic Russia, the Cossack has been the scout, skirmisher and cavalryman of the regular forces, and the armed hunter, fisherman, herdsman and farmer, whose garrison-villages hold what the army has conquered. Wherever the Persian, Afghan, or socalled Chinese frontiers offer desirable lands and a reasonable security, the Cossack trooper settles, bringing with him the young and adventurous, the vital and strong of his own race, or inter marrying, and thereby strengthening with his foreign blood, with the people whom ho proposes sooner or later to make vassals of Russia. For over a century this process has. Russianised the northern half of Asia, with all the energy, religious fervour, and practical enterprise of a great people. When massacre and anarchy have done their worst in Eastern China; when Japanese, English, French, German and American troops and warships will perchance have driven the Tartar dynasty from Pekin, it will, in all probability, be realised that Manchuria’s immense realm has been practically Russianised, and has given to “Holy Russia’’ myriads of stout and warlike infantry and cavalry (Cossack and Tartar bred), furnished with modem arms and disciplined by Muscovite officers. Then, woo betide the degenerating races of the Orient. The White Czar, Emperor Omnipotent of all the Eussias, Siberia and China, will swoop down with his all-conquering and devastating myriads of Slavs, Tartars and Mongols, and wipe the decaying races from the face of the earth, as surely as did that other Alexander, when he established the Macedonian Empire upon the ruins of the Kingdom of Darius.