(Contributed.)
At the present day if there is one thing more damning to the best interests of China than another, that one thing is want of discipline. To be great a people must be disciplined from the highest to the lowest in the land. There is no one above to discipline the highest in the land so the disciplining in that direction must be in the- nature of self-discipline.
In the so-called Republic of China the poorest coolie politically is on a level with the highest in the land, and therefore it is essential for the good of the State that, independent of any other kind of discipline, the coolie should from his earliest years be taught the principle of self-discipline. Under the various dynasties which ruled China for centuries the most useful form of discipline in vogue was that called by foreign residents "the responsibility of the unit." Now since the unit could consist of one individual or a concatenation of individuals, in the form of the family, the hamlet, the village, the district, the prefecture and the province, those in authority had a very easy task to maintain order and discipline throughout the Jand. With the coming, however, of the captains, the politicians and the professors under the Republic all idea of the responsibility of the unit was jettisoned from the ship of state. The helm of discipline having been abandoned in that year of China's storm and tribulation, 1911, it is no wonder that after the ship has floundered on for 12 years, the undisciplined parliamentarians should now leave the bridge.
The want of discipline in Republican China has brought about the downfall of the Government. The military and political parasites who through their want of self-discipline have brought the country to its present miserable plight have also brought about their own doom. A republican form of government should no longer exist in name to-day when we consider that it has never functioned in fact. If the -Chinese of to-day were only a quarter as mentally disciplined as their fathers they would have seen that there never has been a real republic in China and never can be for that matter as it is a form of government totally unsuited to the genius of the people. There is not a single phase in politics or commerce brought to the present undisciplined minds of the Chinese that does not instantly initiate the thought "what will it be worth to me," and such an idea is the an—tithesis of mental discipline.
If everything connected with the state is to be subject to an inquiry as to worth to the individual, there can be no discipline from top to bottom. Nothing can be permanent under such conditions. There is scarcely a single Chinese of the non-military and non-pocket-filling political class who is not convinced of the very early demise of this attempt at "government of the people by the people for the people."
This merchant class. the nonpolitical gentry, and those whom Mr. J. O. P. Bland so aptly describes as the "lords of the soil," are the real people of China, but they have no voice in this government of the people. They, these voiceless ones with a real stake in the country, are the people who would shout for joy at the demise of the republic and the coming of one dictator instead of many uncouth military tyrants and apolegetic politicians. They cannot voice their opinions and wishes in public! Why? Simply because China of to-day knows no discipline. The honest men with a stake in the country cannot be heard because interested parties would let loose a tribe of undisciplined students upon them, when their lives would not be worth much and their property would no longer exist. The man who is, strong enough to make himself a dictator to-day would be the saviour of China, provided he was strong enough to abolish all the petty tyrants throughout the provinces and then insist upon discipline first amongst the soldiers, sailors and police and then amongst the students who should no longer be permitted to be a menace to the country.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.