When the head of the Corean Government recently decided that he would no longer be called King but Emperor, it may have been supposed' that, in assuming a higher title of dignity, he would be more assertive of the independence of his country, but unhappy Corea continues the prey of civil factions and diplomatic contentions. The rival factions fight their battles about the pilnce with the daggers of assassins, and the diplomats of civilised nations look on with complacency for an advantageous move on the board of diplomacy. hus do events pass in the Hermit Kingdom.
And so when Japan had whipped China, and was preparing to remove the great barrier to the advance of civilisation in Asia, the enlightened nations of Continental Europe intervened, and China turned over to go to sleep again, The superstition and conservatism of more than four thousand years were about to be uprooted, but the steady and resolute hand that was uplifted to pave a new way on which China was to walk was stayed by the intervention of the European powers, whose diplomacy and cannon for more than a century had failed to accomplish what Japan had accomplished in one year.
Had the cannon of the Japanese sounded within the walls of Peking, China would have been so thoroughly shaken that she would never again have attempted to close her eyes; there would have been such an awakening as was never talked or written of by any of her statesmen.
But Japan was not allowed to do what would have been best for China and best
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.