his personal safety. Anything that he may have to put up with from a harsh or exacting employer, or from the grinding toilsomeness of poorly paid labour, is a trifle beside the fact that he may any day be seized and dragged off by robbers to a lair in the hills and shot or tortured by them if he does not work for them as a slave, or produce for them a ransom from relatives, whose homes those same robbers have probably looted and outraged. If he escapes this fate, it may only be to find himself pounced upon by a military press-gang, and again, unless he somehow finds the means of buying himself off, be commandeered to carry stores for some wandering "army" or other, engaged in an unintelligible civil war, or in plundering the countryside for the support of a predatory political adventurer; and to endure this invasion of his personal freedom, without notice, without wages or any sort of compensation, without the remotest chance of obtaining redress from the law, exposed to every extremity of brutality, and lucky if he should be among the 50 per cent. (or so) of such pressed men that ever live to see their homes again. . . . In large parts of Fukien, the most flourishing, or at any rate, the most tempting, form of "industry "is to join the very remunerative trade of brigandage.

To return to the matter of collective action by the Powers. One of the most hopeful features of the situation, as it existed in 1914, lay in the new orientation of public opinion in the United States, arising chiefly out of the European conflict, and to the awakening sense among Americans of national responsibility with regard to the affairs of the outside world. The utterances of President Wilson and other notable Americans seemed to justify a hope that the aloofness of the Monroe Doctrine would give place. to a more enlightened world-policy, and that the great Republic's benevolent idealism might be tempered by recognition of the duty of taking a direct interest in international politics. In particular, and because of America's repeated declarations of concern for the welfare of China, the hope seemed justifiable that her policy in the Far East might become more closely identified with that of Great Britain, for the protection of the common. commercial interests of trading nations, and for the preservation of China's national independence.

The conference which met in Washington, at the initiative of the American Government, in 1921, though ostensibly concerned with these objects, owed the success, which it was held to have achieved, chiefly to the fact (as Senator Lodge observed) that its scope was strictly limited to matters of immediate concern to the United States. It secured the annulment of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, a limitation of naval armaments based on America's

immediate strategic interests, and it re-vitalised the principle of equal opportunity (or the open door), under conditions which virtually established a four-Power protectorate over China, while justifying America in looking to England and France for cooperation in opposing any claims by Japan to a preferential position. There was, naturally, much talk of "a new world regenerate by the spirit of generous co-operation," and Mr. President Harding waxed eloquent concerning the services which the Conference had rendered to mankind. It was claimed by Senator Lodge, that one of its immediate results was "to render such aid to China as may help her to secure real independence." The mutual undertaking by the Powers to abstain from any aggressive independent action in China, and their agreement " to provide the fullest and most unembarrassed opportunity for China to develop and maintain for herself an effective and stable government" undoubtedly created for the Chinese Government another period of grace, similar to that which occurred after the RussoJapanese War.

Nevertheless, the root of the matter, the real crux of the Far Eastern problem, was by common consent ignored. In none of the many resolutions recorded by the Conference is there any hint of recognition of the simple truth, that the salvation of China depends entirely upon the ability and readiness of her rulers to produce an honest and efficient civil service, for without it there can be no hope of a stable government. Nor was there any mention made, during the proceedings of the Conference, of the fact that the class of politician which has come to the front since the Revolution (largely under the auspices of English and American educationists) has failed to produce from its ranks even a limited number of efficient administrators and public-spirited reformers. The Conference, in fact, overlooked those "larger interests of humanity" upon which Mr. Wingrove Cooke laid such stress in 1857; the widespread and increasing rapacity of the official class, as the main factor in China's national weakness, was tacitly ignored. It remained, therefore, untouched and the real problem no nearer to solution. Since then, the nation's financial plight and social unrest have steadily increased, and here again no small share of responsibility attaches to the missionary societies and educationists for the support which they have given, and are giving, to young China's political aspirations and to the fallacious

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theory that the country is already fit for self-government and democratic institutions.

The Conferences now convened at Peking resemble that of Washington inasmuch as they reflect a very definite intention on the part of the American Government to assume the leadership in all international discussions of the Far Eastern question. This intention has been, to some extent, fortified since 1921 by popular ich sentiment and the exigencies of domestic politics; but it remains, au fond, part of a consistent and persistent national policy, based on a clear perception of the stern realities underlying the Pacific problem and the practical necessity of safeguarding American interests in the Far East. The gestures made by America to to China are genuinely liberal, no doubt; but as The Times correspondent at Washington recently explained, the policy of the State Department on the present occasion is chiefly influenced by er the belief that the existing crisis in the relations between China and the outside world provides an unequalled opportunity for American leadership. This leadership it proposes to hold by gaining the confidence and friendship of the Chinese by liberality in policy and generosity in action.*

Thus, while the attitude of the small section of the American public which concerns itself with China is chiefly sentimental and idealistic, the policy of the State Department, beneath its generous gestures of liberalism, is evidently more closely concerned with provision for America's destinies on the Pacific than with the prospects of administrative reforms in China. It is therefore in the nature of things that the United States Government should avail itself of the present opportunity at Peking, on the one hand to indicate American idealism in world politics and, on the other, to assume the leadership in Far Eastern affairs. These two objects can simultaneously be achieved by proclaiming a belief in the

*In this connection it is permissible to observe that under Art. I of the Treaty of Washington, America, together with the other signatory Powers, agreed" to refrain from taking advantage of conditions in China, in order to seek special rights or privileges which would abridge the rights of subjects or citizens of friendly States, and from countenancing action inimical to the security of such States." The question naturally arises whether a claim to leadership at Peking, or independent action of any kind, is not a violation of the spirit, if not of the letter, of this international agreement-an agreement which Great Britain has loyally observed at no small cost to herself.

growth of an enlightened public opinion and in the efficacy of democratic institutions in China, and by turning a blind eye to any unpleasant facts which may conflict with this belief. It was already manifest at Washington, in 1921, that America's policy, unofficial but none the less unmistakable, aimed at obtaining a position of advantage at Peking, and thus throughout the country, by supporting the aspirations to rulership of the ultra-modern school of Young China officials trained to the profession of American democratic ideas in American Universities and ostensibly pledged to the furtherance of American interests."*

In justification of this policy it may fairly be argued that the sentimental idealism which figured so prominently at Washington, and which now looms so large at the Peking Conferences, represents not only the class interests of the professional educationists, but the sincere convictions of a considerable number of earnest and influential American citizens; it is moreover actively supported by persons holding similar views in Great Britain. That these convictions are the result of complete ignorance of the true state of affairs in China, is a fact which in no wise diminishes the enthusiasm of the idealists, or the pains and penalties which their activities must ultimately inflict upon the inarticulate masses of the Chinese people. A number of causes (some of them peculiar to America) have contributed to create in the mind of the American citizen, since the beginning of this century, a completely false conception of things Chinese, and particularly of the results of the Revolution of 1911 and the establishment of the "Republic." In the first place, thanks to the astute activities of skilful envoys and smooth-spoken diplomats, such as the late Wu Ting-fang and Tang Shao-yi, and later to the propaganda of a number of able publicists, the delusion has been deliberately created and fostered, that Western education is capable of imparting to the oriental mind the Anglo-Saxon's outlook on life, his standards of conduct and religious beliefs.

To those whose conception of modern China is based on observance of the intellectual precocity and assimilative capacity of Chinese students at American Universities, this delusion naturally appears as a perfectly practical idea and a consummation

*Vide "The Washington Conference and the Far East"; EDINBURGH REVIEW, October, 1922.

devoutly to be wished. It has, moreover, been reinforced, especially in the years immediately preceding the Washington Conference, by Young China's well-organized press campaign and by the publication of a number of books written by AmericanChinese intellectuals and American theorists, such as S. G. Cheng's "Modern China," Joshua Bau's "Foreign Relations of China," Dr. Tyau's "China Awakened," Sydney Greenbie's "Pacific Triangle," and Alex. Powell's " Asia at the Cross Roads." There can be no doubt as to the collective effect of these and similar works, not only upon evangelical and educational societies in the United States, but upon the minds of large numbers of good, plain citizens. In all these books and press propaganda, the reader will find scarcely any reference to the grim realities of the situation, nor any suggestion of the unpalatable truth that a foreign university degree has never yet been shown to possess any efficacy as a corrective of the abuses which distinguish the Chinese mandarinate.

It is an interesting fact, not generally recognised, that the opinion of untravelled Americans in regard to things Chinese is necessarily fallacious in so far as it is based upon observance of Chinese residents in the States, and particularly those of the Pacific Coast. Few Americans are aware that the Chinese of the coolie class with whom they come into contact on the Pacific Coast are practically all natives of the two southern provinces of Kuangtung and Fukien, a maritime race whose intellectual and physical alertness differentiates them clearly from the more passive and rigidly localised inhabitants of the interior. In the days before America was compelled to pass the Asiatic Exclusion Acts, which annulled the unrestricted rights of immigration originally conceded to China by the Burlingame Treaty of 1868, the Cantonese had ear-marked "God's own Country" as their exclusive dumping ground, in the same way and by the same methods as they had established a practical monopoly of emigration to the Straits Settlements, Burmah, Siam, the Dutch Indies and the South Seas. Amongst other qualities which peculiarly distinguish these southerners are restlessness, indiscipline and a keen zest for political intrigues. These, added to their intense clannishness and to a camarilla instinct which has been perfected by centuries of secret society plottings, mark them out as the natural leaders of the present "Nationalist " agitation,