LORD CHARLES BERESFORD'S PLAN.
[To THZ EDITOR OP TER " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—As Lord Charles Beresford will not arrive in England until next month, and is therefore unable to defend his plan for British policy in China, I ask permission, with real diffi- dence, to reply to your powerful indictment, and especially to your description of the Beresford plan as "as futile and needless as it is immoral." One of the main features of the Beresford plan. as Lord Charles has repeatedly explained while in the Far East, is to provide internal security for law and order in the Yangtse Valley. Without security for life and property none of the concessions granted by the impotent and revolutionary Government at Pekin is worth the paper on which it is written. Security for life and property gradually disappears as taxation increases to such a point as to render insurrection preferable to submission. Where taxation becomes unendurable is it not reasonable to sup- pose with Lord Charles Beresford and the trading com- munity in China that resistance will follow, and that the yellow man's burdens must be lightened by better government before the white man can reap his profit? When, therefore, with inexorable logic, your article of last week demolishes Lord Charles Beresford's plan for the organisation of order in China as though it consisted mainly or wholly of a sugges- tion for an Anti-Russian Quadruple Alliance, it must not be forgotten, in fairness to an absent man, that you say nothing of the guarantee against internal disorder. But this guarantee is the most essential part of the Beresford scheme. There is nothing whatever to prevent Russia from joining in the policy of the " open door"; indeed some Russian capi- talists and traders in China are warmly in favour of Lord Charles Beresford's plan. That the wind blows in that direction is shown by Count Cassini's declaration in Washington that " there is no closed door in China." That the author of the Cassini Convention as Russian Am- bassador to the United States should make such a state- ment is an interesting illustration of the resources of Russian diplomacy. Finally, is it really a fact that Great Britain "has not a man to spare " ? No matter how arduous th, enterprise or deadly the climate, efficient volunteers for foreign service, whenever England undertakes operations abroad greatly exceed the number of vacancies available. So long this is the case the fund of superfluous national energy can scarcely be said to be exhausted. In any case, it seems to be the universal opinion of men on the spot that if Great Britain does not organise order in China, Russia will do so without demur. And Russia has no middle class of citizens spoiling
for careers.—I am, Sir, &c., ARNOLD WHITE. We did mention the internal guarantee, and pronounced it impossible without direct government.—ED. Spectator.]
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