INDO-CHINA, January 10.
Ir may be supposed that the article in the " Dépéche Coloniale" dealing with the dangerous state of political unrest in Indo-China, to which one of our telegrams referred yesterday, will not be received with any great enthusiasm in France. Not only is it at variance with the general tranquillity which has marked the policy, first introduced into the colony in 1891 by M. de Lanessan, of reconciling foreign protection with native institutions, but it will prove asad disappoint ment to the Commission of the budget for the current year, which contains a recommendation to reduce the standing military force of Indo-China 13,000 men out of a total of 33,000. Partly, no doubt, these reductions are justified as a counterpoise to the heavy drain which is caused by the operations in Morocco; partly they must be attributed to the present determination of French Ministers to cut down all military expenditure, a determination which has led to alarming diminutions in the strength of the Home Army and in the time spent with the colours by French reservists. The recommendations of the budget did not escape severe criticism when they were first published: and "Lo Temps," the leading French organ, went so far as to publish an article entitled Are we to abandon Indo-China But relying upon the apparent diplomatic security to French interests in the Far East which was afforded by the Franco-Japanese treaty, the Commission has shown as yet no signs of modifying its recommendations.
OF the five states into which Indo-China is divided, Tonking, Anam, Cochin-China, Cambodia and Laos, it is evident that those principally concerned are Tonking and Anam, the two most recently subjected to French administration with the exception of Laos, which was only acquired in 1893. Of the three Temaining states Cochin-
China, is independent of the Ministry of the Colonies and is represented by one member in the French Chamber of Deputies. Cambodia which was acquired as far back as 1862, the year after Cochin-China became a French Colony, has also passed out of the experimental stage, and while the titular king of Cambodia lives in harmony with the French Resident-General, the native population appears to be unfitted for political agitation and to acquiesce contentedly in the existing regime. There remains Laos, originally one of the Shan states with a population of about 650,000 and a territory both fertile and productive of gold, tin, lead and precious stones, but difficult of access and as yet undeveloped in comparison with its larger neighbours. Both Tonking and Anam with inhabitants numbering 10,000,000 und 6,124,000 each are far more populous than Cochin-China or Cambodia, which can show but 3,000,000 and 1,500,000 inhabitants respectively. The mixed character of the races which inhabit these districts and the fact that in Tonking especially the natives dwell rather in small groups than in villages which might be governed as elsewhere through headmen, has made them difficult to deal with. Moreover the policy of French administrators has not been consistent. From 1884 the year of the acquisition of Tonking and Anam down to 1891, the French agents made the mis" take of regarding the natives of the two countries as being of different and hostile nationality. The fact that Tonking was originally governed as a viceroyalty of the kingdom of Anam lent some colour of reason to the error. But the attempt to play off one people against the other simply provoked the hostility of both and it was not until M. de Lanes-san, who was appointed Governor-General of the country in 1891 with plenary powers, had demonstrated the relationship of the Anamites and Tonkingese beyond dispute, that this part of the colony was pacified. The method adopted by M. de Lanessan was to! affix the native royal seal to every one of the Governor-General's edicts. By this simple act of courtesy and by the organization of a native police which was placed under the command of the man-daubs, hitherto regarded with suspicion and deliberately neglected, he was enabled to found an era of tranquillity in which the Anamite soon gave proof of his undoubted qualities both as worker and soldier in the native infantry. The policy which M. de Lanessan had inaugurated has been pursued by his successors, the most conspicuous of whom was M. Doumer, and hitherto it was believed with success, as might certainly be argued from the steadily increasing trade of the colony.
It is characteristic of French administration that the best part of Indo-China is covered with an elaborate bureaucratic network of sub-prefectures, cantons and com-manes, which makes all parts of the country interdependent. Into this system the natives are freely admitted, and although the principle of self-administration, particularly in municipal matters, is dear to all theories of liberalism, it has been found in Tonking and Anam to breed a certain amount of ill-feeling between the populace and the native functionaries, and several urgent suggestions have been put forward that the natives should be replaced by Frenchmen. Over and above the civil bureaucrats there are the military administrators who are frequently found to be extremely ill-adapted by nature and ill-trained—by reason of their ordinary military discipline for such work as falls to them in Anam and Tonking. Doubtless the example of the Japanese victory over Russia made as great an impression in Indo-China as it did throughout the whole of the East. But it is to the deficiencies in the military control of the country, and to: the cast-iron bureaucratic system, which tends in every country to establish an imperium in imperia, that we should prefer to trace the present unrest in Indo-China,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.