CHANGES IN INDIA.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10956, 22 December 1911, Page 2

CHANGES IN INDIA.

(By the Rev. Lord William GascoyneCecil.) It has come at last. When we were in China in 1907 everybod\- said a revolution would come when the Dowager Empress' strong hand was removed. But the prophets were wrong; when she died nothing happened. When we returned in 1909 it had not yet come; there were rumors —that was all. But powder seemed damp and would not light. But now it has come with a loud explosion that is reverberating throughout the world, with bloodshed, arson, mutiny, massacres, intrigue—hi fact, all things necessary to a terrible revolution after the French model. Yet this is not the revolution that is really interesting. Another that preceded it, though less noisy, was far more important, and one that went far more deeply into its national life than any change of Government could do; I mean the wonderful peaceful revolution that is altering .Chinese civilisation and converting China into a Western country, or at least into a -Western country after the Japanese fashion. ■ —The Old Regime on the Scrap-heap. — . It is hard for us to realise here what this peaceful revolution means. Perhaps .we shall realise it more if we. imagine that just the reverse has happened, and instead of the Chinese having accepted Western civilisation we have accepted Chinese civilisation. What should we say- if in England we were, for instance, adopting, Chinese dress? If the business men who sit opposite to us in the train turned up one morning in blue gowns and began to cultivate pigtails, or if our wives appeared with' bound feet, loose trousers, and unbound waist. What should we say if, when we got to the City, we found everyone crowding in to hear a Chinese teacher and buying copies of the works of Confucius? And what should we say if edicts appeared' forbidding the use of alcohol and summarily abolishing public-houses? What, again, should we say if the whole of the British Constitution were, being Orientalised, if every municipal-, ity were introducing Chinese methods, if the whole moral code of England were in a state of flux? Yet this is what has happened in China. The followers of Confucian civilisation with its vices and virtues on the scrap-heap. So they are abolishing opium smoking arid are unbinding their daughters' feet, learning military science (a thing abomnable to Confucius), listening to Christian teachers, sending their children to mission schools, cutting off their queues, and adopting Western dress. This movement is affecting a nation which boasts of having a quarter of the population of the globe, and which has certainly one-fifth. Nothing like this movement has been seen since the Reformation altered the whole history of Europe. A few years ago if you had told an old China hand that China was going to follow Western and not Confucian teaching he would have laughed. Then, it seemed as improbable as it now seems that a Mahommedan should eat nork chops "or a Sikh, should shave his beard or a Brahmin should embrace an outcast. Yet the improbable has once more come to pass m the history of the world. I told an American missionary that in the university scheme (which, I hope, will shortly be an actuality) Confucian learning would be encouraged as not inconsistent with Christianity. He answered that I might say that in England, but among the young Chinese "Confucius cuts no ice."

—How Will It End?— What is going to bs the end ? After having just pointed out how wrong all prophets have been, I nm not going to prophesy,' but we can see what others expect the end to be. Young China expects that a Western nation will be born in a day, and that China will be able to Westernise with as much ease as a Chinaman can cut off his queue and put on a Western dress; that his country is to be a Republic, Western fashion, _ with a. Magna "Charter," a declaration of independence, a summoning of the States-General—in fact, with all the incidents of Western constitutional history that all Young China has learni to admire and to confuse in the AVcstern college. His fuiurc ideal is to; have a President or a Prime Minister whose efforts will be neutralised by a Leader of Opposition, .and who will carry on the government with all the loquacity that modern democracy adores. But he mainly hopes that this Westernised China will defeat Japan and Russia, yes, and even France and Germany, too, till China shall again belong to the Chinese. Young Japan, on the other hand, I will not say expects, but I think I may say liopes, that somehow or other Japan will find herself mistress of a large part of China if not of all, with a purse big enough to buy a Navy which will make the Pacific Ocean her lake and make Australia and New Zealand rather anxious and very loyal to England. The German Colonial Party now expects Shantuug to be the foundation of a German Chinese Empire. Russia perhaps thinks that Tientsin would do nicely as an outlet for Siberian commerce. —A Factor in Western Civilisation. — These and many other contingencies seem possible. But it seems certain that China in one wwar3 r or another will become Western; she may make mistakes, she may fall under the complete or partial domination of other countries, but she will never again be tho Oriental country to whom the West was a. matter of indifference, and who had no effect on Western life, except to teach them to make porcelain and to drink tea. New China is going to be a factor in the history of Western civilisation for good or for evil, and it is certain she will be a factor for evil

it she fails to understand it; if she regards a telephone wire or an aeroplane as its most beautiful production or the invention of death-dealing shells as its greatest benefit to humanity, if she looks on sweated industry as a necessary and healthy feature of commercial development, she will depress the world by her mighty weight, and to avoid such misunderstanding she must be efficiently taught. A misunderstanding wili produce a mongrel civilisation having the vices of the East and ,W,est.. Western civilisation has a beautiful side and a hideous side. The •slum and the hospital, the church, and the house of vice are, all characteristics of the West; Western civilisation without Christianity would be a terrible thing, and it is this terrible thing that looms darkly_ behind the Chinese revolution and frightens the thinkers of East and West. A leading Chinese statesman, whose name Las lately been before the public, said to me m private conversation when I pressed on him the beauty of Christianity, "Yes, I know all that is good in the West comes from Christianity." What is therefore needed now is not only missionaries, but also men who shall educate the young Chinese to enable them to understand how closely Christianity and the good side of W 7 estern civilisation are allied, and that the second cannot be made a reality unless the first is accepted. ■ . ■ What China needs at the present critical juncture of her history is a university where her youth may attain to a thorough knowledge of Western thought. From that university will go out light to all China. China must be taught by the Chinese, but the teachers must themselves first learn. The moment is important for the whole world; the yellow man is entering into the white man's civilisation; what has begun in Japan is being _ -.completed in China. It is in the interest of all nations that at this crisis in the history of civilisation Chinese thought shall receive every enlightenment. When Japan accepted Western civilisation the world was incredulous, Russia greeted her action with scornful laughter. Russia does not laugh now; neither will Europe be indifferent to what is happening in China in a decade or so.