China and Korea
SIR,—Will you allow me to congratulate you on receiving and publishing (in the Spectator of January 5th) two such excellent communications as Mr. C. P. Fitzgerald's China's Price and Mr. Blackmore's letter on "The Mind of the Chinese."
Mr. Blackmore will be the first to agree that prior to 1894 China's influence had been the dominating foreign factor in Korean affairs since the end of the fourteenth century. Prior to that, and from 1894 to 1910, Japan's influence was supreme, whereafter Korea became Japanese territory. Thus the decision to free Korea was at variance with a very long tradition of subservience to competitive suzerainties, and when it was sought to implement the decision in conditions of acute Russo' American rivalry first the Koreans, then the Chinese, found themselves. reliving familiar experiences. To ignore this background and to portray the matter in terms of one-sided aggression seems to me all out of proportion. For disregard of the Russo-Chinese alliance, for the crossing of the 38th Parallel and for the advance to the Yalu it is difficult to find adequate yet permissible description. Of the suggested application of economic sanctions to China, it is sufficient to say that they cannot be applied without upsetting the economic life of i.II her south-cast Asian neighbours, all of whom we are anxious to help.-1 am, &c.,
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