Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

be atoned for, much less effaced.' Nevertheless, not only does he find an underlying patriotic motive in everything that was done and aimed at by the Boxers, b but he finds that even the pro-Boxer mandarins were the deserving of something better than mere execration.

ba

Hart's judgments in these matters are worth while recalling to-day, especially as many foreigners believe I they have detected symptoms of Boxerism in the present anti-foreign movement, and seem to assume that, such being the case, the movement stands self-condemned. They have learned, to their horror, that some of the leaders in the present movement have actually had the temerity to say things in praise of the Boxers that no Chinese had dared to say openly since Boxerism was crushed by the military forces of Europe and Japan; though as a matter of fact those leaders have said very little more than Sir Robert Hart was courageous enough to say twenty-six years ago.

Equally startling to some will be Hart's considered statements on the subject of the Treaties, which many foreigners think caused little or no dissatisfaction among the Chinese until the Bolsheviks had declared them to be unequal' and shameful.

[ocr errors]

We are often told nowadays that extraterritoriality was originally imposed upon us by the Chinese themselves, and this is doubtless true, or is at least a halftruth. But we are gravely mistaken if we assume that the extraterritorial privileges of foreigners caused no resentment until those troublesome 'half-baked' foreigneducated students suddenly discovered that they were dishonouring to the Chinese. A reference to Sir Robert Hart's pages will show us that the Chinese objected to extraterritoriality long before the close of the last century. Ample evidence to this effect is contained in a Memorandum (printed as an Appendix to his book) which he drew up as long ago as 1876. It was not only the principles underlying extraterritoriality that Hart (voicing the opinions of responsible Chinese) objected to. What he also complained of was the fact that it was vague, unregulated, and unlimited in scope. If the foreigner says to China, You fear our extraterritoriality too much, you see more in it than it contains, China as naturally asks in reply, What limits can be put on it?'

More than once in his work, Hart quotes a high Chinese official who said, 'Give up extraterritoriality, and you may go where you like.' It is, indeed, by no means certain that foreign intercourse with China might not have become far more intimate than it is, and that foreign trade might not have been far greater, had the foreign Powers boldly taken the obvious and very real risks involved, and abolished extraterritoriality long ago. As to the risks, Hart pointed out very properly that 'foreign countries would watch over the safety of their nationals just as jealously as they do now that they protect them by extraterritoriality.' The existence of extraterritorial privileges does not, as Hart well knew, ensure that individual foreigners will never suffer ill-treatment at Chinese hands; and the abolition of extraterritoriality would not preclude the foreign Powers from taking diplomatic action on behalf of those of their nationals who had reason to complain of cruelty or injustice.

We foreigners during the past two years have often expressed surprise at the extraordinary and apparently uncalled-for vehemence with which the leaders of the patriotic movement denounce what seems to us SO harmless a privilege as extraterritoriality. Yet few of them have spoken on the subject more vigorously than did Sir Robert Hart a quarter of a century ago. Hart felt, and said, that just as a human body may be paralysed or a human soul corrupted, so may the spirit of a people be outraged and its nature antagonised; and this, he says, is what has happened to the spirit and nature of the Chinese people as a result of their intercourse with the peoples of the West. Extraterritoriality, he says, 'may have relieved the native official of some troublesome duties, but it has always been felt to be offensive and humiliating, and has ever a disintegrating effect, leading the people on the one hand to despise their own Government and officials, and on the other to envy and dislike the foreigner withdrawn from native control.' He argued that if we foreigners wanted our people to be as safe and their interests to be as well protected in China as elsewhere, it would be necessary to treat China and the Chinese in just the same way as we treat any other civilised Power or people.'

[ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

Can we have doubts as to which side Hart would have supported in the present struggle for the abolition of the 'unequal treaties'? This mending of old clothes,' he says, 'will not do-a new garment is wanted! An international cancer is at work: as long as it works it will irritate and embroil, and it must be extirpated if international health is to be enjoyed and a sure foundation laid for building up a condition of mutual prosperity and good will.'

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Do not such utterances as these-and many of a similar nature might be quoted-go to show that Hart has a better right than Karakhan or Lenin to be regarded as the spiritual father of that Young China who is now so clamorously demanding the extirpation of the cancer of the unequal treaties? However this may be, Hart himself seems to have been gifted with the insight of a true prophet when he foresaw the growth of friendly relations between China and her then-dreaded neighbour, Russia. In December 1900 he pointed out that of all the Powers it was Russia that could best afford to be on good terms with China. Russia is a neighbour and can wait and Russia may yet be the first to restore to China her sovereign rights.' He observed that Russia was more fortunately placed than other Powers in that she had no propaganda. This was not exactly true of the Russia of twenty-six years ago, and it is laughably untrue of the Russia of to-day. Nevertheless, Hart's political sagacity was not at fault, and it may well be that Russia's 'propaganda' may yet bring to nought all her dreams of a permanent Russo-Chinese alliance against the forces of Western Imperialism.' But it does not need much political insight to perceive that there is only one way by which the Western Powers can hope to protect themselves against the dire consequences of such an alliance. They must show themselves willing to remove the irritation that now makes friendship between China and the West impossible; and they must be candid and humble enough to look for the causes of that irritation not only in the evil machinations of China's great neighbour but also in the sins and mistakes condoned or committed by themselves.

[ocr errors]

Do not let us hesitate to do the right thing by China because we see, or think we see, Bolshevik intrigue in

every demand for the revision of the treaties. As a writer in the 'Saturday Review' said lately, 'the next worst thing to being Red is to get Red on the brain.' Let us keep our brains free from that foul colouring matter. If we act as though Bolshevism in China did not exist, or as though we were not afraid of it, perhaps we shall find that it has actually vanished from many places once supposed to be that squalid bogey's chosen haunts. The last thing the Bolsheviks (Russian or Chinese) want to see, is a full reconciliation between England and nationalist China, for such a consummation would upset their schemes not only in China but in other parts of Asia and the rest of the world. Such a reconciliation should obviously be the main object of British policy in China.

BAY OF NAPLES,

Dec. 13, 1926.

R. F. JOHNSTON.

יד

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]

Art. 11.-WILLIAM CAXTON: MAN OF LETTERS.

1. William Caxton. By H. R. Plumer. Parsons, 1925.
2. Wynkyn de Worde and his Contemporaries from the
Death of Caxton to 1535. Grafton, 1925.

3. Caxton. A Study of the Literature of the First English
Press. By Nellie Slayton Aurner. Philip Allan, 1926.

THE names of eighteen English men of letters are inscribed round the rotunda of the British Museum reading room. The first is Chaucer's, the second Caxton's. Yet, though Caxton has never lacked homage as the first English printer, it has not always been so clearly acknowledged as it might have been that he was also the first of the arbiters of English literary taste, and in some respects the most important of them, since he came in the March of our renaissance and influenced enormously the kind of book that Tudor England was to read and, in consequence, the kind it was to produce. It also needs emphasis that with Caxton the press was only a means to an end and that end the spread of letters.

The two books on Caxton named above do not add anything new to our knowledge of his life or printings. Both duly record the discovery, by Lieut-Col Birch, of the Rhineland Commission, of documentary evidence of Caxton's presence in Cologne for some months in the years 1471 and 1472, but this does not really do anything to substantiate the claim that Caxton learned the art of printing in that city. That he was there in 1471 we knew from his own clear and printed assurance in the Epilogue to the second book of 'The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye,' 'which werke was begonne in Brugis & contynued in Gaunt and finysshid in Coleyn in. the yere of our lord a thousand four honderd lxxi.' But it does not look as though he was then learning printing, for he goes on to say that though there is no such great need for the third book, since Lydgate had already translated it, yet, since he has now good leisure, being in Cologne, and has nothing else to do, he will translate it as well: which he did.

Both these books, however, have the merit of dealing

« VorigeDoorgaan »