25th March.
Tr is more than a matter of academic interest for the resident in Shanghai to know precisely what is intended by the international criticism from' which mankind is rarely free. How far is it allowable When is it fair and when unfair? When is the line to be drawn between caulld criticism and offensive interference? Lo the good folks in our home lands these questions are of import only so faras they affect. international relations; they are never intruded into daily lif, since nine out of tetof our people pass their days without social relations with any outside those of their own race. With us itis entirely d.fferer Here the Frenchman and the Englishman, the Gern: an and the American, the Russian and the rest, meet daily in business, at the bar, the diving table, and she club, Our existence is nearly cosmopolitan, and hence the desirability of a perfect understanding of the etiquette of criticism, and the limits of international fault-find-the first place it should be made perfectly plain that the criticism of national policy is not necessarily a criticism ofa nation, Iv very trequently happens that the national policy is more vehemently condemned within than it is without the borders. No Englishman, for instance, was half so bitter in attacks upon that section of Frenchmen which sent Dreyfus to Devil's Island as were other sections of Frenchmen; and, similarly, though p erty severe things were said in France and Germany respecting Eng'and during the Boer war, they did not exceed the venom of Stead and his following, except in so far as they consisted in attacks upon the Queen.
It is so certain as to be incontrovertible that British regard for France during the Dreylus agitation and later was in io wise lessened by the virulence of the Press at that' time. It was not France that was attacked, but what all Englishmen believed to be a distmtion, a hideous malformation that was setting itself 8p in the place of France. Were we altogether in the wrong?
The answer is now being evolved as history. The Dreyfus case is b-ing finally disposed of; and, with the utmost tranquillity, France is sifting the truth to the bottom, and wi emerge as we confidently believe, with herhistorie raga justice outright pure and unsullied. Possibly in time to coma, Great Britain will recogni<e that the vehemence of the criticism showered upon her in 1900 was not Fabogether undeserved, We ure too near the events to de n this point. Bus the travelled Knglishman knows full wel! that criticism of his national policy and his national failings is not intended to be taken personally any more than was that he so freely showered upon France, or that which he is now giving vent to for the benefit of Russia, It is in international matters as in religious. We may feel deadly enmity towans a certain "ism," and ithe same time have the highest personal regur-l for many. professors thereof. At no time in history, not even in the darkest of the Dark Ages, did the Protestant shoot the Catholic at sight. Heresy in the eyes of the Catholic might have been a deadly error, but it was frequently found possible to love the sinner in spite of his sin.
Coming now to what is agitating the world at the present moment, it is to be hoped that those of our Ras-six friends who read English, and all others who are merely being enlightened as to British opinion by ex-trac's from the Press, will distinguish clearly between national and personal criticism. Personally, the Englishman and the Russian have never found any difficulty in gesting on very comfortably together when familiar intercourse was possible. But this did not restrain the subjects of the Czar from being very outspoken in their comments upon us during the Seth African war, just as we are now plain-spoken in the mat-ler of Manchnvia. He who f-els erupted to take personal offence at Ulus should, as we have said above, remember that there are large numbers of his fellow-countrymen who (think as the outside critic thinks, look upon the Russian Govern: ment of to-day as an official despotism, Tepressive to the growing needs of the vast home population, and [dangerous to everybody else. No Russitn who remembers that there are millions of his own fellow-subjects whose ideas run in tle same groove will deny us the ight to our opinim. He may regress bus we may be right. With 1 to Japyn the matter seems to uses clear as was the Boer question to the continentals of Europe, They saw in us a bully of portentous diinwnsions when contrasted with the tiny republics. We see in the Kussian Government the embodiment ofa grasping principle which cannot rest satisfied with anyihivy it possess, but, like th: sportsman trying to mike a "record" bag, is spurred on to farther slaughter by every success, We farther tint is dificult, if not impossible, to pnt faith in any promises emanating feom St. "Petersburg. All this by no means shakes our filth the personal integrity of the Russian yenttoman, We do nov find that the Russian imerghans shirks his m-ibilitics because his Govern-vit still holds tightly to Moukden, Neither of these therefore has any personal cause of quarrel with us any more than we with him, But countries where the Press is f criticism is apt to be more Lienchant, and is certainly far less a respecter of 2, than it is in lands still strings,—Hence, French, American, and British str wider scope than Russian, even than Germin which, in home matters ab any rate, has ever the dread of lose-majesty hi Tis sting, however, should possess no persmmal venom whatever, avd, where this is absent, governmental criticism need mke none bu' official enemies.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.