THE FUTURE OF THE FAR EAST.* Asia at this moment
means China, and the word " ram- tion " applies more significantly to China than to Siberia or • Japan. Siberia is being developed more than renovated; and even the expressive phrase of M. Leroy-Beaulieu scarcely does justice to the extraordinary change that has been work- ing in Japan. Fermentation perhaps expresses the true in- wardness of the revolution of Japanese national life. It is to China and Siberia, and the European Power which is pressing inexorably on the oldest continuous civilisation of the East,. that our eyes are turned; Japan can take care of herself- M. Leroy-Beaulieu's description of Siberia—the Trans-Siberian - Railway, the towns which have sprung up, and the emigrants which Russia pours over the Caucasus into that vast domain— is vivid and picturesque. He draws an interesting comparison between the colonisation of Canada and Siberia, • though scarcely a just one, because he forgets that Siberia is the only outlet for the Russian emigrant, whereas Canada, though it is half a continent, is only one of the choices an Englishman has. Has he not a whole continent somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. which few Russians have ever seen ; and near to it another England ; half Africa, the whole of India, and a host of tropical gems too numerous to mention ? But M. Leroy- Beaulieu, who has written on our new .A.nglo-Saxon com- munities, brows this as well as we do, and this is perhaps the only instance in his book of a lack of the sense of proportion, only too common in writers from over the water. He is nearly always just, broad of view, possesses an even-tempered and well-balanced mind, and has that great gift, a style capable of being moulded to the subject. They teach geography here better perhaps than they do on the Continent, and for one Frenchman who leaves La Belle France a hundred Englishmen travel, yet the one man writes a book of travels worth all the rubbish that fifty mere globe- trotters produce. And if those pleasing little bits of social life present in an English Colony are absent, it is because they do not exist to any appreciable extent in Siberia. It is the fastidious Frenchman who produces a finished piece of literature, with brilliant bits of colour, characteristics hit off in a sentence, and a skill in literary landscape, that few of our writers can equal.
To a traveller who had seen British Colonies the spectacle of a vast country being colonised by the most ignorant peasantry in Europe must have appeared startling and sug- gestive of some regrets. The number of emigrants is large, but the land waiting for them is immense, and there is a great tract of that ,black soil whose fertility enables the mu jik to live with scarcely more exertion than a West Indian negro. And it seems that the Siberian settler is the Russian snujik over again, with his ignorance, his indolence, his good-natured apathy, and his passion for vodka, intensified by the hardships of a severer climate and a somewhat too paternal tyranny. Everywhere the same sight met the traveller, the bigotry and grossness of what were scarcely more than human vegetables, leavened by the dull despair of some political exile. The description of M. Leroy- Beaulieu's interminable journey by rail or tarantass is one of those sharply drawn pieces of description that enable us to realise the traveller's weariness of mind. The dreary forests with their clearings, and the notice-board relating the name of the settlement and the numbers of the population, the still drearier villages, the convoys with their military escorts, and the endless companies of emigrants patiently trudging towards the Amour, convey the impres- sion of an appalling monotony. No wonder the traveller feels it necessary for the sake of sanity to travel with com- panions, and hires the largest tarantass he can find. The life of the country is entirely agricultural, and the peasant farms on the old unprogressive and exhaustive system, a system nearly as wasteful as that of the Belize Creole, who burns a fresh bit of forest for every crop. It will be many a long year before the schemes of Russian expansion are more than a beating of the air and a threatening tinkle of the sword. Trade, manufactures, industries of all kinds, do' not exist in Siberia, and what commerce there is is due to the energy of every one but the Russian, and this is why he pushes • La nenoratton rie rdsle: Sicebrit—Chine--Japan. Par Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu. Pala : Armand Colin et Cie. (a tr.] down so continually to the south so as to hoist the eagle over a more industrious race than his own. It is the same story from time inimemorfil.. The Romans by means of a magnificent discipline held a . vast frontier for a time. Colonies they planted, of a kind, not as we understand colonies, for they were nearer the Siberian idea,—we suspect the- Roman colonist was an exile - in sentiment, if not in estimation. Unless • the- Russians • can • strengthen their advance with -the infantry • of an energetic civilisation; they will- find- their Eastern Empire a thing of shreds and patches, . and viewed as the dreariest exile- to which a soldier can be sent• • In one or two vivid paragraphs M. Leroy-Beaulieu-describes for us .the. unfortunate peasants, who may travel for, years before reaching their new homes. - Some,•by dint of unceasing travel, reach the haven, of their hopes in a year, but many take three years, working on the great Trans-Siberian line. This in itself•is no drawback—many of the.well-to-do farmers in.British Columbia have worked °tithe great American lines, the-.Canadian Pacific and the Northern Pacific—but there is no comparison between the men who aided the accomplish- ment of the great engineering triumphs of the Far West with the drudges who dig the embankments and lay the sleepers of the Trans-Siberian line :— • " J'ai &passe it plusieurs reprises Bur in grande route de poste sib6tienne de" ces longues files de voitures contenant chacune plusieurs personies, hommes, femmes et enfants, avec divers instruments de travail et de ménage. Le tableau eat pittoresque, quand ils forment le campement is soir, lee hommes detelant et entravant lee chevaux, lea femmes silent puiser de Pearl, See enfants jouant et piaillant, parfois un vieillard inonnant la Bible
I haute voix." •
According to our author the appearance of the Siberian villages was more prosperous than the Russian. They shoild be, for they are in selected districts, that of the Upper 'Obi and its tributaries drawing most of the emigrants, while the Amour ' district with its wetter climate attracts the Little Russians. The Government naturally pushes emigra- tion in the Amour basin on account of its nearness to the coast. A large number of these emigrants return, a result' proportional, of course, to their ignorance, and subsequent disenchantment.
The Chinese afford this acute and quick-minded Frenchman a study of unusual interest. The extraordinary conservatism of the Chinese has literally petrified their peculiar mental characteristics. Buddhism, as M. Leroy-Beaulieu says, was absorbed by them and moulded to their own conception of life, and its maxims and precepts, we take it, have simply been added as possible enrichments to the edifice of national life, not as interior furniture ; the letter and not the spirit of Buddhism has permeated the people. M. Leroy- Beaulieu quotes the author of Chinese Characteristics, who tells us that " Face, sauver la face," is the aim of all good Chinamen. The length to which they have carried this peculiar mental disease has its ridiculous, but also its dangerous, side. What happens to individuals whose minds are warped by some extraordinary conceit when their blind- ness is removed ? They either lose all confidence and self- respect, or become discontented and dangerous. A somewhat similar experiment on an ignorant and prejudiced race of peasants . is being tried in South Africa at this moment. M. Leroy-Beaulieu is inclined to laugh at the " Yellow Peril" because of their lack of military qualities. Probably the " Yellow Peril " is only just beginning. Chinese soldiers officered by Englishmen fired on their own countrymen the other day. The yellow man has a passive endurance too, which we can admire but may not imitate; he does not fear death, and he has a fondness for federation—in secret, which- is not reassuring. There is something impressive in the colossal conceit of the Chinese as there is some- thing even more impressive in their numbers. The lot of the great Mass of the Chinese, those patient, industrious millions, who resemble nothing so much as ants - in their numbers and hatred of interference, excites the pity of M. Leroy-Beaulieu. Their lot under a corrupt mandarinate, fettered as it is by their own conventionalism, is indeed hard, yet he, points out that the life of the community is not meddled with, and they have no means ,by which they can judge of the hardness of their condition. Moreover, they are conte,nted,_ uniny such -pleasures as they have, and possess a happy resig-.. nation which enables them to be almost-joyous in spite of their: poverty, and balances the dreadful .1loods!...and famines that sweep off millions. . We see the same happYdisPOsitionin: .the Japanese, but allied to an energy that seema ont.'of place. in the East. We quite 'agree with M. 'Leidy-, . Beaulieu that the -Japanese present one of the most astonish- - ing spectacles ever vouchsafed to a wondering . and; 'it must be confessed, half-contemptuous West. We *kin the. eyebrow • and we Smile; but . that :stage is passing. Yet. powerful and amid menacing as the new Japanseema to be, it cannot- afford to despise China. ' The race is not always to the swift; nor the battle to the strong, and there 18 'safety-in numbers.
, . . .
The chapters on the future of China may be summed-np the last few lines in which the author says that in the China-. man's instinct for trade remains his only hope of wetting the modern advance. Railways,_ he says, will be the _best missionaries of civilisation. In a chapter entitled " and the Powers," M. Leroy-Beaulieu descends to politics. . He is much amused at the.fuss we made when we thought Russia was stealing a march on us, but yields a certain admiration for our invariable return; after all scares, to the policy of the. "open door." He notes William II 's dextre gantie de for and subsequent occupation of Kiao-chow with a sort of politic regret. In the preface he seems to think we have loE;t ground in the Far East on account of the South African troubles., It may be a disadvantage to have to many irons in the fire, but .
after all practice makes perfect. -
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