COUNT VON WALDERSEE'S APPOINTMENT.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] have read with amazement the letter of your corre- spondent, " L. C. J.," in the Spectator of September 8th. His advice appears to be that we should scuttle out of China with- out exacting any reparation for the outrages of the past, or any guarantee for the future. We are simply to wait until, in the Greek Helenas, China civilises herself. And in sup- port of this argument we are told that the Japanese, " who were quite as conservative as the Chinese, have developed rapidly." The Japanese conservative ! Why, Sir, since " the beginning of all the days " the world's story contains no example of a country which has been so consistently ready to adopt changes as Japan. Her whole history is a record of revolutions and civil wars. No country has so often changed its form of government. Exclusive, indeed, she was, especially as regards Westerns, but conservative never. Her whole civilisation, such as we found it in 1860, was borrowed from China. Buddhism, literature, the art of writing, the teach- ings of the sages, the arts and crafts, music, painting,—all of Chinese origin. The Shin Td and the Harakiri were the only two national institutions ; the former in many sects so mixed up with Buddhism as to be hardly recognisable; while as regards the latter, when Heal, the last of the Shoguns, was invited to perform that rite as a fitting exit from the world's drama, he calmly replied that it was " out of fashion," and retired into the privacy of his own castle, there to solace his leisure, as became a scholar and a gentleman, with the composition of Chinese, not Japanese, poetry. Then came the great trans- formation scene when the yeboshi gave way to the cocked hat, when European civilisation was swallowed whole, and Japan was happy in one more change. For, indeed, change is what she revels in. Even the language has in the last thirty years undergone great alterations by the adoption of an ever-in- creasing number of bastard Chinese wotds and phrases ; so much so that one of the finest Japanese scholars living told me that, after a few years absence, he found himself quite at sea in conversing with officials, and that he had to learn practically a new vocabulary. Surely this is not the way with conservative nations. The Chinese, on the other hand, are an eminently conservative people, dearly prizing a civilisation which is their own, and wedded to customs which were ancient even in the days of Confucius, twenty-four centuries ago. "L. C. J." may as well cry for the moon as expect automatic changes in such a folk. Apparently he wishes to see repeated in China Majuba Hill with its consequences.—I am, Sir, &c , A. B. FREEMAN MITFORD.
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