AMERICA AND CHINA.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—What have we to do with China? I have just returned from the Pacific Coast of America. There, within a few days' sail of the Chinese coast, is a great nation of eighty million industrious, pushing, commercial people, with illimitable re- sources and up-to-date machinery capable of turning out everything which the Chinese want better and cheaper than we can hope to turn it out; with half a dozen great trunk railways ramifying all over the land and ending at San Fran- cisco, Portland (Oregon), and Puget Sound in some of the finest harbours in the world. What chance have we to com- pete, who must make our goods at greater original cost and carry them for weeks under steam, and pay the costly dues of the Suez Canal ? In fighting in China we can only contend for the " open door," and through that " open door " neither English nor Germans in the long run, but Americans first and last, will enter. It is the American mission to " civilise " the Chinese. It is not ours, and God knows we have enough on our hands without it.—I am, Sir, &c.,
W. H. SEDDON.
Painsuick Vicarage, Stroud, Gloucestershire.
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