Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1913 EDITORIAL NOTES.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXVII, Issue 10738, 1 September 1913, Page 4

Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1913 EDITORIAL NOTES.

THOUGH it may be true, in the sense in which the phrase is used by Kipling, that “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,’’ it is fairly certain that they will ere long meet in deadly conflict. It is impossible to’believe that a race who number many millions, and who are rapidly advancing in knowledge, will long submit to exclusion from other countries. In a recent magazine article Mr Shaw Desmond shows how the yellow races are preparing for the great struggle of the future with the white nations. The subject is one of special interest to the people in these southern lauds which are within easy reach of the over-populated East, The writer says:—Spread the map of the world before you, and look at the Yellow Empire which to-day is knitting itself together for the coming struggle. . . . Vast as it is.

and although its people—including the Chinese, Japanese, Siamese, Koreans, etc.—greatly outnumber those of the white races, the latter nDt only occupy a much bigger area, but possess more than twice as much land as all the coloured races of the world together, though the latter outnuber them two to one. China, with its 407,331,000 . people, is, of course, the predominant partner of the Yellow Federation which is maturing, though Japan is the moving spirit. .Without China, a Yellow Empire would remain in the laud of dreams; with her it will materialise into the most formidable combination of the human race that has ever been engineered; and it is because of this that we must see what is happening in the Celestial Empire. Recognising that in arms alone can their destinies be worked out, the Chinese are now reorganising their army and navy, placing the former in the bauds of skilled Germans, who are modelling it upon German military system, replacing dummy guns by the most modern Krupp artillery, and installing wireless telegraphy and an aerial navigation corps. Three great arsenals, with numerous smaller ones, are working at full pressure, turning out artillery and small arms for the National Army. A Navy Board has been established, and the nucleus of a formidable navy created. What a reorganised Chinese army may mean to Europe is shown by a German military estimate issued in 1910, which, upon the basis of the Fatherland’s army of 4,400,000 soldiers drawn from a population of sixty millions, would give China eventually an army of 30,000,000 out of their 400,000,000 of people. These experts stated that “such an army would he nothing less than a menace to white civilisation the world over. In the opinion of men like General Gordon, who have fought by the side of and against Chinese troops, when properly led they have no superiors,and no equals in endurance upon a standard of living impossible to, the white soldier. The article goes on to show how rapidly the Chinese are learning Western methods and carrying on the work of organisation, military, educational; and commercial. “This setting of her house in order,’’ Mr Shaw continues “must ultimately lead to the expulsion of the White Powers from China, in which'view I have the support of the late Captain’ Mortimer O’Sullivan, [himself a friend and adviser of the late Dowager Empress and a mandarin of the Chinese Empire, who told [me' that the Chinese leaders, including the Dowager Empress cherished an ineffaceable hatred for the ‘arrogance’’ of the foreigner,’ and were only waiting their chance to regain the ‘concessions’ wrested from them at the gunmuzzle. This does not mean that commercial intercourse with the white races., will be barred, or that the white business man will be forbidden entry into the Empire, as~ia so often ignorantly supposed. For good or ill, China is committed to the stress and strain of international

commerce and the fight for markets; and she has nothing to fear from white competition, as will be shown. But the-.expulsion of the Powers will obviously be followed up by a 'demand for the admittance of the Yellow Man to Europe, Australia and the United States, without the present rigid racial restrictions.

IT is contended by Mr Shaw that the European Powers and the limited States will be powerless to enforce anti-Yellow enactments within a generation or two, because a Chinese army of <30.000,000 properly equipped and practically of one religion (a great cementing force), would dominate the world by shear numbers. China would be able to keep the majority of them in the field ,owing to tbeir capacity to fight upon a minimum of rice-food, Europe and the-other white countries, according to military authorities, not being able to keep a fourth of their ‘paper’ forces actually fighting, chiefly because of the expense of feeding them. In fact, China could, with the other yellowracHs, probably put two to one in the field against her white opponents. Japan has the same problems before her as China, and it is obvious that she lias a covetous eye upon Australia,- which she regards, both by climate and position, as essentially a Yellow Man’s country. Once allied with China and its vast potential wealth, she will have a treasury to build, with her neighbour’s help, perhaps the biggest fleet in the world, with which she may be able to bold the Pacific as ‘a yellow lake, as the Rev. Lord William GascoyneOecil has put it—that‘‘lake’ which will probably be the scene of the final struggle between East and West. It is with this end in view that she is makingdieroic sacrifices to increase her army, and is spending the enormous sum of £35,000,000 upon her navy in the next six years. And when she is ready she will drop the Auglo-Japanese alliance. ... In the world-war to come, populations will be a vital factor; and when we leave mere numbers and come to other considerations, we have the eminent French diplomatist, Eugene Simon—with other trained observers—summing up the Chinese, in his ‘Ten Years of Travel and Observation,’ as ‘politically and morally superior in culture to the Europeans, ”