24th March.
To the average Corean the Anglo-Japanese Alliance means naching. He is busi y engaged at a finishing snooze to his long sleep of a thousand years and is utterly unconscious of treaties, alliances, and conventions. Be could net be made to understand a fraction of their meaning, however loudly you shouted it into his ear, for he is slive only within certain limits of thought and beyond that altogether inanimate. If you ask him, for example: "Bow was nan made?" he will reply at once: "Man was made by the three spirits, out of metal, wood, water, fire, and mud." Bat if you say: "The Japanese and English sre upon you and have made an alliance," he will reply: "I don't know the sound of those words," and receed to talk about ducks' tongues ing the best kind of medicine for the " cough-sickness," etc. It will be long years before this forgotten child of the Orient can be awakened from his slumber and taught what a treaty means.
Official Coren's view of the agreement is emphatically a gloomy one. In the first place, she wonders why she was not consulted before de-ion was arrived at; in the second e, she interprets the convention to mean "business" with regard to; her personal interests, and "business," push, activity, "hustle," " move-on," are all terms specially abhorrent to the Corean. He sees an ominous future ahead everywhere, but his hope is that things may, in some way, adjust themselves and come out right in the end, when lo, this alliance is bora, not a passive concern, but an active engine equipped to push.
The condition of Corea is an exceedingly dificult one to understand, even for those who have watched her for many years; to the outside world it must be altogether uninteleligible. Bear in mind, first, that she has not changed a whit in a thousand years in thought or institution. This can be proven by running through the" History of the Three Kingdoms," written eight hundred years ago and picturing Corea as it still is. The ruts have been worn and the w: trodden so long, that the native unconscious of any other way. You may shake him and say: " Wake up, this is the twentieth century A.D., and Time is riding by on express trains and greyhounds; you'll get run over unless you fall into line." sees it and replies: " Yes I'll do but the dose ut morphia is ton paw -rful, and he drops back overcome. His ideas are never obtained from thought, but from custom; and they are not held intellectually, but are ground into his soul so that they disappear only when the soul departs, not before. He cannot adjust himself to the present; it is an utter impossibility to expect him to do so. have known a native occasionally to be on time by the cluck, but the nation as a whole carries a watch merely for " look-see," and can_never in this generation learn the differenc" between nine o'clock and half-past two.
Thus Corea exists and moves along unconsciously, as she always has moved, sleeping and eating well; where or how she gets it, no foreign-r know:
Dut she eats in spite poverty and famine. What she does by way of custom, she dees well; what she attempts by way of thoughi or reason is all unmitigated madness.
With the first opening of the ports, Corea lost her bearings and has never recovered them. Politics and education have been at sixes and sevens ever since, growing gradually worse and worse. Boys used to learn Chinese: now they smoke cigarettes and learn nothing. The country used to be governed according to fixed custom, the officials could go so fur and no further, the people also were within definite bounds: now landmarks have vanished, except in memory. This is the situation when the Japan-English Alliance is announced. On of the most intelligent Coreans I know called and said: "This Ageeement seals our doom." "Why so?" I asked. "Because it brings us under Japan." "But Japan by an adviser will put yon on your feet and teach you how to run." "Yes, that is true, bur it means that our real independence is gone." " But do you think you could get along without help?" "Yes, I think we might, I think we must," was his answer. This friend, intelligent though he is, does not realise that it is a mental, moral, physical impossibility for Corea to shake off ancient custom and rise and walk a new " She may have the best of intentions, but the faculty for action and execution is extinct. She must be helped, and that fur many years. Help must come from some quarter, and the Agreement provides for its coming from that quarter most acceptable to those who have Corea's interests most at heart. "Face" she has lost, and Corea thinks she_ crushed by the thought of it, She was not consulted, she has to be treated like a child; all she can say is that it is the end of the world, and outrageous things are happening on every hand.
Essen THIRD.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.