Valentine Chirol

“ The future historian will not improbably give to the evolution of Japan in the era of Meiji the foremost place amongst the great events of the second half of the nineteenth century. Only fifty-one years have even now elapsed since the nations of the West, applying to Japan the same forceful methods that had already been applied to China, compelled her most reluctantly to reopen to foreign intercourse the doors which she had kept hermetically sealed for two hundred years against the outer world. ”

“ If Russia really wants commercial railways in Persia, there should therefore be no difficulty in arranging for British cooperation on a business basis. But if she wants to monopolize railway construction throughout Persia for purposes of conquest by railway, she can have but one goal in view, and that goal we cannot allow her to reach if we have any regard for the future safety of India. To tell the truth, she has not been at much pains to disguise her aims. ”

“ For if her economic interests were threatened by the general trend of events in China, her very security as a nation was threatened by Russia's ambitions. Not content merely to entrench herself in Manchuria and to dominate Peking from the Great Wall, Russia was already clutching at Korea, and casting about for another Port Arthur at Masampo, which faces the Japanese islands across the now famous Tsushima Straits. The advance of Russia in the Far East was an even greater menace to the safety of Japan than the advance of the same Power in the Middle East was to the safety of India. ”

“ India is the stronghold of British power in Asia, and the security and welfare of India must always be the paramount consideration that governs our Asiatic policy, and, indeed, one of the main considerations that govern the policy of the British Empire as a whole. None the less is it essential that we should bear in mind the large and complex interests which the enterprise of generations of Englishmen have created for us in Asia beyond the immediate frontiers of India. ”

“ But for our possession of India, it is, perhaps, questionable whether, or to what extent, we should have built up at the mouth of the Red Sea, in the Persian Gulf, on the waterways of Mesopotamia, and in the southern provinces of Persia westward of India, or eastward, at Singapore and in Siam, at Hong Kong and throughout the Far East important centres of British interest and influence, either strategical, political, or commercial. However that may be, they exist to-day, and they constitute essential factors of Imperial policy which are apt to receive less attention than they deserve. ”

“ For it is in China that we must chiefly look to reap the economic advantages of the new position created by the Russo-Japanese war and the Anglo-Japanese alliance. But to reap them effectively we shall have to display greater individual energy and more sustained diplomatic activity than our people have shown of late years in China. Moreover, we must remember that in this field our allies will be our rivals, and very formidable rivals, unless we can extend to the domain of commerce and industry the same mutually beneficial cooperation which is now assured in the domain of politics. ”

“ Neither in China nor in Persia, nor anywhere else in Asia, do we need or seek territorial aggrandisement, but in both the Nearer and the Further East we must look to it that the doors we have opened shall not be closed against us, that the claims we have pegged out shall not be 'jumped' by others; and that not only the treaty rights of this country, but the interests created by the enterprise and industry of our fellow-countrymen shall not be injured or curtailed. ”

“ What we are justified in expecting from that alliance is that it will secure peace in Asia for a long term of years, and that it will therefore give us time to put our house in order, to reform and strengthen our military organization at home and in India, to place the economic future of India on a sound basis by fostering the new spirit of industrial and commercial enterprise which is already astir, to extend the great system of railway and irrigation works which is doing so much to mitigate the ruin periodically wrought by famine ”

“ But the real Shanghai, the great, thriving, bustling emporium of commerce and industry in the Far East, is the so-called 'Mixed Settlement,' which is so entirely dominated by the British element that, although cosmopolitan in theory, it is a thoroughly British city. Of the foreign, i.e., non-Chinese, population, which is increasing by leaps and bounds, two-thirds are British subjects. ”

“ The chief weakness of the British position in Asia is due to the fact that, whereas our strength resides mainly in our naval power, we can no longer rely mainly on naval power for the defence of our Asiatic interests; and, on the other hand, the experience of the present war shows that, even against Russia alone, the naval power of Japan had to be strained to the uttermost, and would scarcely have proved adequate against a coalition of Powers. In combination, however. Great Britain and Japan will each contribute what the other lacks, to the common benefit of both. ”

“ We cannot hope for any transformation of China similar to that we have witnessed in Japan, for the ruling classes in China lack those elements of patriotism and enlightenment which alone rendered possible such an evolution as Japan has accomplished. ”

“ Our alliance with Japan, based on either side, as all durable alliances must be, on an enlightened sense of self-interest, will go far to avert the dangers which have begun to threaten our position as an Asiatic Power, and with it the stability of our whole Empire. ”

“ To form an estimate of its capacities, we have only to compare the growth of foreign trade in Japan under an enlightened system of government and liberal institutions with the growth of foreign trade in China under the obstructive misrule of Peking and the obsolete methods of the Chinese authorities all over the country. Japan has barely one-eighth of the population of China, and her people, though more alert, are not more industrious ”

“ The more openly the aggressive policy of other Powers in the Far East stood revealed, the more fully did Great Britain and Japan come to realize their own community of interests. Japan had become in contact with the West a great commercial and industrial power. I have already alluded incidentally to the growth of her foreign trade. ”

“ The British merchants in Japan were, therefore, apt not merely to compare the Japanese merchant unfavourably with the same class in China—where it represents per contra the healthiest and most intelligent element in the social organism—but also to judge the whole of Japan equally unfavourably by the light of their limited experience. ”

“ Germany is hardly yet in a position to carry out this great undertaking without British cooperation, and there are good grounds for believing that she requires our cooperation for political as well as for financial reasons. It is much easier to paint 'Constantinople—Baghdad' in large letters on the rolling-stock of the Anatolian Railway than to raise in Germany the millions required for the completion of the line, especially now that the fat sections of the line are finished, and the lean sections have to be built, which cannot for a long time to come, if ever, pay their expenses. ”

“ Though no other 'settlement' or 'concession' in China approaches Shanghai in importance, it would be easy to show that many others reproduce on a smaller scale results similar to those which British energy and the British aptitude for self-government have achieved in the 'Model Settlement.' I have dwelt at some length on this aspect of British interests in China because it is not easily realized by those who have not had an opportunity of seeing with their own eyes these robust offshoots of the British tree transplanted with all their indigenous vitality on to Chinese soil. ”

“ Much of this prosperity no doubt is due to the development of the Federated Malay States, which occupy a large portion of the Malay Peninsula, and constitute one of the finest estates in the whole length and breadth of the Empire, yielding in abundance not only all the fruits of a fertile tropical soil, but also great mineral wealth. ”

“ Their importance at the present day is conditioned upon the pressure of those new forces which are making themselves felt all over Asia. As Lord Curzon observed in one of the most pregnant speeches he delivered during his memorable tenure of the Viceroyalty of India, the great Powers of the European continent are becoming, or visibly aim at becoming, also great Asiatic Powers. ”

“ But it is by no means impossible—many of those who are in the best position to study Russian policy hold it to be probable—that if Russia resigns herself to being effectually headed off from the Pacific, she will at no distant date concentrate all her energies on the Middle East in order to fight her way to the Indian Ocean. ”

“ It showed not only that we had no intention of surrendering the great commercial interests bound up with the preservation of China as a field of industrial enterprise open to all comers, but also that we realized the fundamental unity of the Asiatic problem, whether it be looked at from Teheran or from the North-West Frontier, from Peking or from Seoul. It cannot be rightfully alleged that either Great Britain or Japan have sought to deny to Russia an ample sphere of expansion in Asia. ”

“ Shanghai has well earned for itself the title of the 'Model Settlement,' and may therefore be taken as a pre-eminent type of all other settlements of a similar or kindred order in China. Except in the matter of political sovereignty, Shanghai is to all intents and purposes as essentially a British city as Hong Kong or Singapore. ”

“ Questions which concern essentially and almost exclusively the strategical defence of India do not come within the scope of this article, and I therefore leave it to others to deal with the problems connected with Afghanistan and the Pamirs, Chinese Turkestan and Tibet, which, however large and important, are mainly problems of frontier policy. For the present, at any rate, there is no room in those inhospitable regions for the commercial activity and individual enterprise which in other parts of Asia impart a living force and a concrete value to British interests and British influence. ”

“ It is now universally admitted that no country in the world possesses greater natural resources than the vast Empire of China, or offers, owing to its teeming and industrious population, a greater potential field for foreign commercial and industrial enterprise. ”

“ Under treaty, foreigners residing in certain areas set apart as 'settlements' or 'concessions'—a distinction upon which it is needless here to enter—enjoy rights and privileges of a far-reaching character. The British communities, more especially, being the oldest and the most enterprising, have thus been free to put into practice in the more important centres those methods of self-government which are characteristic of our race. ”

“ The most effectual guarantee against such a contingency, and one to which Germany's consent should be readily given if she is really innocent of any political arriere-pensée, is that the eastern section of the great trunk railway—say from the Gulf to Baghdad, together with the proposed branch on to the Persian frontier—should be built, administered, and worked by this country. It is a demand we are fully entitled to make, for the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates has been opened up exclusively by British enterprise. ”

“ Nevertheless, things are moving, even in China. The commercial genius of the Chinese people will not be denied, let the Mandarins hamper it as they may. The obstinate conservatism of official China cannot in the long-run keep the Chinese markets closed against the commercial enterprise of this country. That is a question merely of time and patience. The real danger that threatens it is the policy of economic exclusion based on political ascendancy, of which Russia and Germany have already given us a foretaste in Manchuria and Shantung.
The British Settlements in China. ”

“ In the redundant populations of India we have ready to hand the material required there for purposes both of preliminary labour and ulterior settlement. There are, therefore, excellent reasons of a positive as well as of a negative order why we should claim recognition of the predominant interests we have in the construction of a railway opening up those regions. ”

“ Though one of the great overland routes into China leads from Bhamo, in Upper Burma, through Yun-nan to the fertile and populous province of Sze-chuan, in the upper valley of the Yang-Tsze, it can never become an important highway for trade until railway communication is established ”

“ It was intended to cover the period during which railway construction in the Far East and in Central Asia would necessarily absorb their energies and their resources. Afterwards, Persia might be safely released from this eccentric engagement, on condition, of course, that she placed the construction of her railways in Russian hands. Now, Persia is, on the whole, a poor country; there are few railways that can be profitably built on a purely commercial basis, and those only the lines that would open up communication between North-Western and Central Persia and the Persian Gulf. ”

“ There must be many Russians even now who realize with scarcely less consternation than it is already realized in France how disastrously the Asiatic adventures into which Russia has wantonly plunged have weakened her power in Europe. ”

“ The influence of Germany at Constantinople is unquestionably in present circumstances very great The fact that she obtained the Baghdad concession is a proof of it But it is based mainly upon the all-powerful favour of the Sultan, whom the Emperor William II. has spared no efforts to conciliate. ”