ASIA AS EUROPE'S RIVAL

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 24, 22 July 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

ASIA AS EUROPE'S RIVAL

COMING INDUSTRIAL STRUGGLE. REFLECTIONS OF AN EXILE. The man who, after years of absence, suddenly finds himself whirled along on the roaring tides of London feels dazed and disconcerted. He is conscious of change, but connot rightly tell whether the change lies in his outlook or in the environment to which he has returned. He sees with astonishment great cars of Jagganath hurtling through the contracted streets; he drops down a shaft, and is whisked along beneath the very foundations of the giant city; he emerges into the. pale daylight breathless and amazed, and gazes with fresh.wonder upon the surging trafTic, upon the palaces, the new and .strange hotels, the swift and costly motor cars, all" the evidences of luxury, extravagance, and poverty that pass incessantly before his accustomed eyes. He feels like a man in a dream; the rushing, preoccupied throngs become for a time a haunting obsession that banishes sleep; but presently, after contact with his fellows, he asks himself whether he is really the dreamer, or whether it is nut rather than eager, restless people who are busy with fond illusions. They seem complacent and satisfied; they laugh when asked to look outward over distant horizons; even those who dimly realise are acquiescent. The strident newspapers are full of outcry about what seems nothing to the stranger. He is told that he is in the midst of a tremendous crisis; but to him it seems utterly unreal —a battle of puppets about shadows. He hears reverberant sentiments of empire, but he knows it is an empire held together by mere handfuls of trained men. He listens to marvellous schemes for making work easy and thrift obsolete, which seem to imply that the country has some inexhaustible mine of hidden wealth. He hears of the coming days when the burden of life is to be lightened, and all men are to be leisured and happy. No one, he thinks at last, seems to see for a moment that the struggle for existence in the West may grow keener, but he knows they would see it if they would but look with eyes uplifted to the East.

A VISION OF THE EAST. "Is it the East or the West that is dreaming?" the wanderer asks himself as he watches the fog drifting through the cheerless streets, blotting out the sky, and wrapping the city in a brown pall, lit by glimmering lamps. He broods over memories of things seen, not dimly, like these vague swift shapes that flit through the gloom, but clear-cut beneath the morning light of the East. Forests of smoking factory chimneys, owned by brown men, managed by brown men, with swarms of workers who will readily toil twelve or fourteen hours a day for a pittance of a few coppers; vast arsenals where are made all weapons from great guns to rifles, without any Western supervision; dread battleships, manned and armed and controlled and fought without the aid of any white man; the multitudinous cities of Asia, rich and prosperous and growing —and awake. Vast plains of waving wheat, illimitable stretches of green rice fields, dense and inexhaustible forests, wide, brimming rivers. The locomotive, piercing jungles, crossing chasms, speeding across immeasurable distances, binding the oldest Continent in a network of steel rails with the willing approval of the people. Incalculable stores of coal, and iron, and gold, still almost unscratched, waiting the advent of the I men of the new age. Races in myriads, who learned the secret of work when our forefathers were still clad in skins, who dream of no millennium, but ask for nothing more than to continue their patient, tireless industry. Men with brains more subtle than ours, with wills more tenacious than ours, who have never felt the Western fear of death. More than eight hundred millions of people who have watched the white races overrun and dominate their terrltoriet for 300 years, and have at last been quickened into a new spirit of resistance, a widespread determination to have and to hold their own lands in undisputed possession. An Asia savage, resentful, stirring, implacable. No; it is not Asia that is dreaming—it is Europe. There are three great problems which, in the gradual development, are likely to determine the character of the relations between Europe and Asia in the present century. The first, and the greatest, because it will most directly influence the moral attitude of Europe towards the East, is that of the course which will be shaped by Great Britain in her control of India. The coming issue in India, upon which the continued acceptance of British rule depends, will be found in the demand, already arising, for fiscal and financial liberty. If the demand is conceded, and in whatever form, it must inevitably involve some abatement of the control from England, which is essentially financial. The impending agitation will test to the utmost the professed selfishness of British motives in holding India, and will be fraught wirti destinies as great as those which lay concealed in the Declaratory Act when it was passed by the Rockingham Ministry.

The second problem is that of the future of China. It is the problem which must in its solution ultimately have the greatest material effect upon Europe, because of the vast natural resources of China and the industry and capacity of its teeming inhabitants. Many believe that the Chinese are destined to become again, as they were ages ago, the greatest power in Asia. The danger from the Chinese is that of industrial competition, and it is still so little visible that the menace is hardly realised in Europe. Every year adds strength to the position of China, and behind the medley of corruption and weakness which still constitutes her administration a new spirit of cohesion and ambition is at work.

The third groat problem is that, of the countries of the Middle East, and it has the most immediate interest, because it will probably be the first to come to a head. The Middle East is the real cock-pit of the world.

THREE GREAT FACTORS. There are three great factors which must exercise a preponderating influence in the determination of these problems. The first is the development of land communications, which is completely revolutionising the Asiatic question. The chief railway question of Asia is now the connection of India with Europe on the one hand and with China on the other, and both these schemes are no longed wild dreams. No one can foresee all the changes which the locomotive may produce, but its steady advance must profoundly modify the existing situation. The second factor is the rejuvenation of the Asiatic peoples, prompted by Japan. There can be no mistake about the new spirit in the East. A new world-improvement is beginning, which is nevertheless as old as humanity itself. The pulsating heart of Asia has begun another diastole, and the expansion must produce a renewal of the ancient conflict with the West. THE COMING CONFLICT. The third factor now coming into pl.ay is that of the industrial development of Asia, and the coming conflict between Europe and Asia will be, in its most

permanent form, a war of industrial competition. When the factories and mines of Asia have heaped up fresh riches for the East, the character of the conflict may change and become more violently militant, but the intermediate process must be a long one. Yet the results will not be less tangible because the weapons will be bales of piece-goods rather than ironclads. In the south and east of Asia are these swarming peoples with their illimitable resources, their faculty of patient labor, their realisation of the great truth which the West is forgetting—that true happiness lies in unhurried work, and not in aimless leisure. They have not lost the joy of fatherhood, or the secret of maternity. They occupy the lands made fruitful by the monsoons, and the dessication of much of the rest of Asia leaves theni untouched. They have been preoccupied with agriculture for unnumbered ages, but, now they are learning the uses of machinery. Why should they continue to buy from the West the products which they can make for themselves? China has always made most of the clothing her people require. In time she will probably make all she wants, and then China and Japan and India will ask themselves —as, indeed, they are already doing—why they should not competo in the rest of the markets of the world. That is why the renascence of Asia means so much to the workmen of Europe. That is why the West should awaken from its dreams. —London Times' correspondent.