MIGHT AND RIGHT IN THE FAR EAST
BOOKS OF THE DAY
By E. M. GULL'
A BOOK with so general and colourless a title requires prompt characterisation if it is to be read by those for whom it is, primarily intended, the vast majority of whom cannot be expected to recognise in the author's name a guarantee of competence. Let it be said at once, accordingly, that this book is the clearest and most reliable " popular " survey of the international aspects of the affairs of modern China that has been produced for many years.
" The author, retired in England after a lifetime in the East, found himself frequently consulted by his friends about the meaning of Far Eastern news. So he sat down to write what purports to be a true and objective account of China's recent history and present circumstances, an outline drawn from his personal experiences during the past thirty years, in the hope of rendering the news from China more intelligible to the uninformed reader of the daily Press." It is thus that Sir Eric describes the origin and purpose of his book. Its main thread, he goes on to say, " is the record of the efforts of the leaders of the Chinese people to build up a new China out of the ruins of the old : of their fight to claim for China a place of equality amongst the nations of the world ; and of the development of the tragic but inevitable conflict between resurgent China and the ambitions of Japan."
At a time when the inevitability of war is being widely questioned, and when the phrase " war settles nothing " is being freely used, the author's use of the adjective " inevitable " will strike everybody's eye. One wonders how many of those who put a question mark against it will wish to leave it there, or feel sure that war settles nothing, when they get to the end of Sir Eric's story.
Its warp may be described almost entirely in his own phraseology. One chief strand is European aggression. From the wars or punitive campaigns of the forties and sixties of the nineteenth- century there resulted the Unequal Treaties, of which the China of today so bitterly complains. Britain and France, dictating terms of peace, compelled the Manchu Government of China to concede extraterritorial rights, foreign-controlled treaty ports, a fixed five per cent. import tariff and other special rights and privileges. In 1898 the European Powers had seemingly decided that the Chinese Empire was moribund and was ready to disintegrate, and a ruthless scramble set in amongst them for coaling stations, leased- territories, railways and spheres of influence. The story of these years of international aggression is, the author thinks, without parallel in modern history. They were ushered in by Japan's defeat of China in 1894, an event to be referred to again presently.
A second strand is the gradual emergence and growth of Chinese nationalism. This, beginning as an element in the sporadic discontent which the inability of the effete Manchu Dynasty to withstand external aggression helped to canalise, became, under the Republic, after further aggression by Japan and her acquisition of Germany's rights in Shantung as agreed in the Treaty of Versailles, primarily an anti-Japanese move- ment. Then, after the Washington Conference in 1922, when Japan made arrangements for the return to China of Tsingtao, the Kiaochow Leased Territory and the Shantung mines and railways, it broadened into a general rights-recovery movement. " As long as China, like Germany before the days of Hitler, was content to follow methods of polite diplomacy her progress in ridding herself of the Unequal Treaties was slow and arduous. Only when she clamoured loudly and forcefully enough did her efforts meet with any measure of success." These efforts derived much of their inspiration and effectiveness from
Affairs of China. By Sir Eric Teichman, K.C.M.G., (Methuen. Its. 6d.) Russian sources and direction. Great Britain, the chief architect of the treaty-port system, was, for reasons explained on page 47-8, the obvious target for attack. Those responsible for the control of British policy in China, however, realised that Russia was trying to provoke Great Britain into using force, and at the same time recognised in Chinese nationalism a new leaven of regeneration. Accordingly, instead of resisting they met it halfway, and from 1927 to 1931 took successive steps in returning to China the rights which their predecessor, had taken from her.
A third strand in the warp of the story is the interaction of these developments and Japanese Imperialism. Going back very rightly to the nineties of last century, the author points out how Europe then looked upon Japan as " another Asiatic nation open, like China, to the pressure and exploitation of the Western world." But Japan soon shook herself free from its domination and after her defeat of China in 1894 was able to take her place vis-d-vis China as one of the exploiting Powers. For ten years she was held in check by Russian competition, but in 1904 she defeated Russia in war and succeeded to her position in South Manchuria. In 1915 by threatening force she greatly extended the leases which she had thus acquired, while the Treaty of Versailles, as we have seen, gave her control over Shantung. Having, as we have also seen, given up this control, she presently began to feel the effects of China's rights- recovery movement, which after meeting with success in the Yangtze valley advanced incautiously towards Manchuria, an area of much greater significance to Japan than the Yangtze valley was or is to Great Britain. For twenty-five years the Japanese had made no secret of the fact that they regarded their interests in Manchuria 'as vital. Rather than see them whittled away they decided to seize the territory, and did so without serious opposition either from China or the other signatories of the Nine Power Treaty.
A fourth strand comprises the circumstances in which, after adding Jehol to Manchuria, Japan embarked upon the policy which led to the present hostilities. These circumstances are the least well described. Indeed, some of them—agrarian conditions in Japan, her industrial needs, her cheap exports and the defensive economic policy of other countries—are not described at all, though they could have been surveyed in a couple of thousand words. As against this deficiency, however, the reader is shown in most masterly fashion the weft of China's practical affairs. The chapters describ:n3 these crossing threads—exterritoriality, the Boxer indemnity, the Customs, loans and railways—to name only some—explain admirably the complex web in which Might and Right now struggle so fiercely.
In one respect only might the book have been considerably improved—had it included a chapter on social, moral and intellectual affairs. These are indeed glanced at, but too briefly. We arc told misleadingly little about China's agrarian and population problems which, most readers will gather, while unlikely to result in Communism, are fundamentally hopeless ; of her mental outlook that it is materialist ; of her language that it is ugly and of her ethical system that, it is sterile.
Yet it may reasonably be argued that the problems referred to are not insoluble, that China's artistic sensibilities and capaci- ties are as delicate and great as Europe's ; that Northern Chinese is not uglier to an English ear than German or Dutch ; that her written language is a delight ; that in China respect for knowledge as such is greater than it is in England ; that China honours, in breach and observance, all the virtues which Europe similarly esteems, and has done so. for a much longer time than the countries which today constitute Europe, and that the beliefs by which she has lived stand the searchlight of modern science at least as well as our own.
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