"SIXTY CELESTIAL CENTURIES."

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 18, 6 September 1911, Page 7

"SIXTY CELESTIAL CENTURIES."

THE FORCE OF PERCENTAGE

Mr Israel Zangwill, tlie novelist, has a sarcastic paper in “Concord,” which purposes to be based on Li Hang Li : s new work, “Sixty Celestial Centuries.” One part deals with that historian’s account of the corning of five per cent, to the barbarians of Europe. ■ . ' > ; • “A greater force than Christianity has arisen to divide the human heart against itself—the force of percentage. • , “At first it looked, indeed as if the development of international liyauco and of the joint-stock company was making uninterruptedly for the abolition of war, and would bring to the rest of the world the Brotherhood already established among a third of its inhabitants—the four hundred millions of mediaeval China; It seemed as if the Profits might succeed where the Prophets had failed. Kow Five Pi;r Cent Worked. “The Hebrew Bible—which was 1 read on Sundays when tire barbarians reposed themselves from life—had predicted that mankind would beat their swords info ploughshares. What seemed more imminent was their heating them into bourse shares. Their was no nation which did not take the kindliness interest in the.concerns of every other. Was there a country in need of a railway? The whole Western world co-ojiaraled to build it. Not alone the ric(i,' lurt the smallest tradespeople hastened to contribute their obol to the good work. Widows gave their mites, orphans—with a’ filial piety almost Chinese —threw upon the treasure-heap the savings of their fathers’ lifetimes'. Clergymen, for once,, Collaborating in the work of peace apd goodwill, were, the keenest to assist in these international operations. . ■

'“Those brotheVJjf societies- built harbours whore there had been only rbeks, they irrigated lands, where only weeds had thriven', and called into being new and nourishing communities. No soil was too- remote, no people too alien, for the workings of this cosmopolitan beneficence. London was lit with gas, Assisi with electricity. The Persians found their mines developed, the Belgians were assisted to the rubber of the African forest, the Russians were encouraged' to strike oil, the Sicilians were supplied with steamers, the Egyptians with hotels, the Bulgarians with waterworks, the Arabs of North Africa with tramcars, and the Esquimaux with patent medicines. No territory so backward or barren but the human brotherhood was ready to rush to its help. “Such was the state of mind to which the -West had advanced in its slow progression towards our Eastern perfection. The ancient attitude of being hostile to every other country, envious of every other Power, seemed outgrown and obsolete, and all men appeared to seek their own good in all mankind’s. Humanity bade fair to be unified by .Bonds issued at five per cent. Bcnevoliinss of the Great Powers. “A sestet of nations styling themselves Great Powers, all with vast capital invested in developing one another’s resources, were yet feverishly occupied in watching, and cramping the faintest extension of one another’s dominions. A ,more' ironic situation had never been presented in human history, not even when Christianity was at its apogee. “The results of this shock of opposite forces of development were paradoxical, farcical even. In this era the nations fought by t.dd. g ;.p one another’s war loans. In lulls ol peace they bunt, fir nm aiiothc' - the ships they would presently be. bombarding one another with. “ft was" death to give away ycur country's fortifications to anotm r country, but an'easy life to contribute i.o the strengthening of ;ne other country’s fortifications—at a percentage ” '