18th April.
A JOURNEY up and down the China Coast, especially when taken for the first time, sets the traveller wondering. He starts we will suppose from Hongkong, where the bustle and life of the harbour are a fitting prelude to his subsequent experience, inasmuch as with those surroundings he cannot fail to be struck at the very outset with the unlimited supply of hardy seamen which, if other places bear out che promise of this beginning, China must have at her disposal. Tt is roughly 800 miles from Hongkong to Shanghai, and another 800 to the northern limits of Pechili. Allowing a very small addition for the many fine rivers on the way, we may say 2,000 miles in a fairly straight line, and this, allowing again for inlets, bays, and the innumerable ins and outs which are characteristic of the China Coass may be doubled without exaggerating in the least degree the length of the coast-line. We have thus 4,000 miles of sea front to consider. Much of it would need no defence, since nature has done her full share in that respect. But Chinese history, since it has had to do with foreigners, has been mainly a history of what has happened along the sea-bourd. Inland the empire has slept its long sleep, undisturbed even by echoes of the stirring deeds done around its ports and islands. It is the sea that has proved the path to China: it was her water gate that was left open, and it was through it that the Far West found its way into the heart of the Far East. And luckily for China it was the greatest of sea powers that first did so. It is still the fashion in high native circles to deplore the day when the Western barbarian keel first turned up the waters of the Yellow Sea, and brought the earliest news of the restless races beyond the setting sun, The native literati still regret the advent of Western learning as being infinitely inferior to the teaching of the sages, but there is an ever-growing section, including all that is progressive in the ration, which recognises the coming of the Westerner, rude though it was, as a blessing in disguise, as a means, the only means of rousing their country from the coma in which for centuries it had been living. But in common with ourselves, they think that the process of awakening, so far as the foreigner is concerned, has now gone nearly far enough. They are thankful for the shaking that roused them, but seeing that sleep has now departed from their drowsy eyelids, they begin to think that further knocking about is unnecessary.
But what are they to do to prevent repetitions of the past? Several lines of advice are open, but we would condense ours into the sentences, "Carry out with all honesty the treaties formed already and develop your powers." Of these one is the power we glanced at above, the power of the coast. Hitherto her coast line has been China's one vulnerable side, Why should she not strengthen it? If along her 4,000 miles of sea board we allow but 100 fishermen to the mile, we have 400,000 men from whom she may pick the personnel for her navy that is to be. What kind of men are they? That is a question which any of our coast captains would answer in a moment They have watched these men from babyhood to old age. They know that from their first breath they breathe the invigorating ozone of the open sea, that they grow up accustomed to the briny ocean with all its hardships, i's difficulties and dangers, that they are not afraid to face, and do face, the ever present perils of the typhoon season, and not infrequently pay the penalty. They have seen them at Swatow, at Amoy, Foochow, ningpo, Chefoo, and along the myriad islands that adorn the coast as with a fringe, and they find them as ready to face the icy blasts of the wintry gulf up north as they are to stand the boiling sun of the southern sea.
Could any nation wish better raw material than this? Has Britain herself got better, or Japan? We doubt it. China then should take heart of grace and lay the foundations of a navy, which by and by shall be in a position to protect her corists as that of Japan does hers. Tt cannot be done in a day, and for that reason it is that the advice given above recommends a strict observance of treaty rights. China has made more than one effort to create a navy, and the results have been disastrous. But that was not the fault of the navy, but of China's diplomacy, which' first got her into a quarrel with France, and then into another with Japan. A diplomacy worth anything would have steered clear of both these dangers, and had there been honest and efficient administration the Chinese navy might by this time have been of respectable proportions. Experience has abundantly proved that the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.