The Chinese Navy.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XIX, Issue 6048, 13 September 1894, Page 4

The Chinese Navy.

The Chinese Naval officers are handicapped by having not only to learn, but practically to carry on their work in English. The signal book, compiled by Captain Lang, is in English, and the drill books, in which the proper drill for every gun in the service has been elaborated by Lieutenant Bourchies, are also in English. The peculiar structure of Chinese necessitates the use of some alphabetic language, for Chinese ideographs cannot be telegraphed. Hence the men have to learn at least as much English as enables them to spell out words in semaphoring, and the officers are obliged thus to communicate in English. But while praising the discipline and training of the men, a correspondent asks whether they have reason to be proud of their officers. They see their superiors, from the admiral down to the cabin steward, greatly addicted to gambling. The highest officers are reported to be lucky; in fact, a considerable part of the monthly pay is popularly, perhaps jocularly, supposed to circulate in a back current through their fingers. Then the clan system is still rampant. Competent men are shelved in favor of brothers and nephews with no qualifications. Everybody knows that under the family system of China poor relations swarm round every man who gets on, and the navy is no exception. They can by no means be shaken off, and as they cannot all be supplied with cash, every nerve is strained to provide them with the means of living, no matter at what or whose expense. Sir Joseph Porter, with his cousins whom he reckons up by dozens, would be no burlesque in China. This is one of the rotten places in the Chinese navy. There are others—systematic peculation, the contract system with its division of the spoils, the starving of the needs of the service in order to put money into the hands of the officers, and matters of that sort, winked at by those in authority for good reasons. But these same phases of official corruption prevail throughout the civil administration, and have done so from time immemorial. Yet the Government goes on, and, indeed, it is a question whether, with all its faults, the Government of China is not on the whole as successful as that of any Western State. The same things have not in all cases the same significance. In the West if one saw a ship dirty she would be properly pronounced inefficient; not necessarily so in Oriental countries. An officer-gambling with his sentry would be incompatible with any idea of discipline at all in any country but China ; but it would be rash to build, even on such a fact as that, a theory of the worthlessness of a Chinese navy. What the fleet really would do in an emergency it would be rash in any man to predict. For the present the ships cruise in company, visiting neighboring countries, make a brave show, never collide with each other, nor even get their paint scratched.