Are China's Four Hundred Millions Preparing
Themselves to Turn Against
the Western Nations?
Dr. W.A.P. Martin, who has been identified with China since 1850, and
whose least statement about that country is authoritative, gives some
interesting and important facts in the _World's Work_ with reference to
how the sleeping Chinese giant is awakening. Referring to the work of
Chang, Viceroy of central China, Dr. Martin says:
The banks of the river in front of his capital, Wuchang, are
lined for miles with cotton mills, hempworks, silk
filatures, glassworks, iron foundries, and powder-mills,
whose high chimneys proclaim the coming war. When China can
supply her own markets, foreign steamers will cease to
ascend the Yang-tse-Kiang.
In view of the fact that China's educational system was established more
than twenty-five hundred years before Christ, and that up to only a few
months ago the official examinations were restricted exclusively to
subjects relating to China's literature and history, what Dr. Martin tells
us of the rapid growth of schoolhouses is surprising and significant.
Going within the walls, we are struck by the great number of
fine schoolhouses in foreign style that rise above the huts
of the natives. Our clever viceroy knows that the industrial
arts have their root in science and that science must be
taught in schools. He thus proclaims from the housetops his
gospel of the new education. He has embodied it in a book of
rhymes, which are sung by his soldiers to the beat of the
drum, and committed to memory by all the school children in
a population of fifty millions. The following are some of
his sounding periods:
We pride ourselves on our antiquity, But foreign nations
ridicule our weakness. Knowledge is power. What but their
newly acquired knowledge Enabled the Japanese to gain the
victory over us And win for themselves a place Among the
great powers of the earth? Over against their three small
islands Have we not a vast territory with four hundred
millions? If we of the yellow race learn to stand together
Where is the nation that will dare to molest us?
The empress dowager and all her grandees have become converts
to Chang's new gospel. Not merely has she reenacted the
emperor's ordinance for the establishment of graded schools
in all the provinces--ousting the idols and using their
temples for want of houses--she has cut down the annual
expenses of her theatrical troupe to one-third and devoted
the other two-thirds to the erection of schoolhouses.
Teachers for these Chinese schools are being largely provided by the
normal colleges in Japan, which contain over four thousand Chinese
students, including both sexes. Such, at least, is the claim of another
recent writer upon the Chinese awakening; this time a Japanese, Adachi
Kinnosuke.