The Red triangle in the changing nations

Introduction

Ours is an international age, marked by rapid changes. The war has brought the twenty-three allied peoples into a brotherhood of common aims and efforts against a common foe. They are bound together, primarily, by the moral issues involved in this conflict, recognizing that in the war great problems are at stake, and that the violation of treaties and the commission of atrocities must cease if the world is to be safe for democracy.

Recently, Premier Lloyd George said, *'The Allies now must defend all fronts against the enemy and have a mobile army for any point of emergency." Must not the Christian Church also regard every moral and religious battlefront of vital importance, whether it be in France or Italy; in the Balkans or Palestine; in Mesopotamia or Africa ; in India or China ?

Moreover, when the war is won, how is the world to be kept safe for democracy, and how is a real and lasting brotherhood of man to be established? Brothers are brothers only because they are the sons of the same Father. It is only as men reverence and obey the Father in Heaven that they will act in a brotherly way on earth. Hence the problem connected with the work of reconstruction, after the war, cannot be solved satisfactorily without an adequate religious solution. What is the solution to be ? Among the Allies are found non-Christian as well as Christian nations. What are their moral and religious needs? Can Jesus Christ meet these needs? Does the war show that Christianity has failed, or is it the only hope for ultimate peace between the nations? If Christ is the desire of all nations, should we not proclaim Him to all? Is it fair for us to

iii iv INTRODUCTION

receive material aid for carrying on the war in France, from Indians, Chinese, and Africans, and at the same time to withhold from them and their countrymen the religious aid we can give them? How far has the Young Men's Christian Association given them such help, and how far is it qualified to render them further assistance?

Such are some of the questions which this book seeks to answer. It has been prepared by men who have labored in the lands which they describe. All are Secretaries of the Young Men's Christian Association, with the single exception of Dr. John Kelman, who tells what he has seen of Association work in the British Army on the Western war front. The other writers describe the work of the Association Movement in other lands.

While emphasis is laid in this volume upon the work of the Red Triangle, we would not lose sight of the other activities of the Christian Church in these countries. Other men have labored and Association Secretaries have entered into their labors ; but as this book is designed, primarily, for the use of the Association membership at home and of our men under the Colors, it deals, chiefly, with the work of the Association in the lands under review.

After the war, we shall undoubtedly come into even closer relationships with the non-Christian nations than those which exist at present. If we do not raise them morally and religiously, they will have a lowering influence upon us. Canon Parfit, in his recent work on Mesopotamia, has written, "When the new Asiatic lines are completed, it will be possible to travel, comfortably, from London to India in seven days." It is predicted that soon aeroplanes will cover the distance from London to Bombay in three days. The world is shrinking. Does it not behoove us to study, sympathetically, the needs of all nations and then to seek to meet those needs? Robert P. Wilder.

Contents

CHAPTER PAOF.

Introduction iii

I. Changing Japan 1

II China And The Day After Tomorrow

W. W. Peter

Secretary of Department of Public Health of the Young Men's Christian Association, 1913-1918

World Problems to Be Faced

Today the whole world is thinking of war. Tomorrow we shall have to solve the problems arising out of this war. Day after tomorrow the thought of the world will move eastward from Europe and westward from the Americas to coalesce around the Pacific basin, on whose rim dwells over half the population of the globe. The west side of this basin will be the great world stage. China, with her population of a fourth of the human race, will be one of the central figures. New world issues will be decided.

No thinking man can hold that the question of human development will be solved by this war. We must expect to be confronted by tasks more difficult than those which face us now. Dimly we see them on the horizon. After the war we shall be in the very midst of seething social forces, internal revolutions, international upheavals, and such change as we can little dream of yet, with men giving themselves then, as now, to the belief that basically man was created in the image of God and that all these things cannot but spell progress in the direction of human betterment. It is difficult to detach ourselves from the present and acquire a point of view from which we can look ahead. The reach is too far into the future. But just as surely as we believe that in the past there has gone on an unbroken struggle within the human race before it reached its present state, so man will continue his striving to find that ultimate place in the great scheme of things for which he is fitted.

Finding World Principles

Compared with the present one, past struggles have been localized, isolated, and unrelated, taking place in one part of the world, with the other parts knowing nothing about them or unconcerned as to the outcome. Is it not a hopeful sign of progress, in spite of the awfulness of it all, that for the first time in recorded history practically the whole of the human race is aware of what is taking place ? Does this mean that we are deciding upon world principles which shall apply in our future upward striving — principles, for instance, which shall apply in future dealings between the different races? between the East and the West? principles, speaking concretely, which shall apply to China?

If the war will do this for us and for China, it will have been worth the terrible cost. Then shall we have real evidence of progress in the development of the human race. For nowhere will the results of this war be felt more than on the west side of the Pacific basin.

This, then, is the setting in which we should consider China. The world is no longer divided off into compartments. That day has passed. The forces at work on either side of the present well-defined but shifting battle-lines have origin in the most widely scattered parts of the world. Geographical frontiers have melted away. Peoples are being drawn to each other by common ideals. Racial differences have been broken down. War commands are being given in all forms of speech. Difference of language is no longer an insuperable obstacle. On both sides are fighting men i 4 THE RED TRIANGLE IN THE NATIONS

and women of all religions. Religious beliefs no longer keep people from working together. Beside the white man whose mind is capable of evolving new and frightful weapons of modern warfare, fights the savage whose last battles were fought with shield and spear in forests on the other side of the sea. All stages of human development are represented. The world of today is a different world from that of yesterday. Ribbons of steel, strands of copper, ship shuttles on the sea, the printed page, and the fellowship of suffering have bound men together, making of each member of the race a world citizen.

World Citizenship

This is a thing which ought to be desired. It affords an indication of progress in the development of the human race. But this new state brings with it greater world questions than have ever confronted man in the past. World citizenship implies, for one thing, that every thinking man will make a conscious effort to understand the viewpoints which prevail in those vast reaches of human experience in other parts of the world, with which he did not concern himself seriously in the past. We are bound to live in the future in closer proximity to other peoples than our own. We must understand them, and they us, if we would solve our own problems, and they theirs, in the right way, and to our mutual satisfaction. The questions of tomorrow and of the day after tomorrow loom up before us as world questions. They will not be solved by one section for all the rest, but by all together. The individual cannot therefore be like old Mr. Jones working in a field near the Canadian border, when an airplane came down in his field. The pilot, wishing to know whether he was in Canada or the United States, asked, "Where am I ?" The reply given was, "You're in Bill Jones' hay field, and I'm Jones."

The West Side of the Pacific Basin

Accepting this viewpoint of world citizenship as the most rational one from which to work out our contribution to the solution of world problems of the future, why should the group of countries bordering the west side of the Pacific basin be of special interest to us?

*'The era of the Mediterranean Sea died with the discovery of America," said Theodore Roosevelt. "The Atlantic era is now at the height of its development and must soon exhaust the resources at its command. " "The Pacific Ocean," said W. H. Seward fifty-seven years ago (1861), "its shores, its islands, and the vast regions beyond will become the chief theater in the world's great hereafter." Leading thinkers in Europe and America agree with this viewpoint.

A great many people think of China as a place on the other side of the earth, which is land-poor, overpopulated, lacking in natural resources, poverty-stricken, the fountainhead of epidemic diseases, inhabited by hordes of semicivilized people pitching about on their last legs unable to find their way or their place among the other nations of the earth, and without question fit subjects to be controlled by others. They are afraid Asia will drift. Consequently there have been several would-be rudders of Asia. And unless out of this war there emerge world principles accepted by all nations, there will be more such would-be rudders.

China and the Past

How many people think of this newest republic as the oldest nation — a nation enjoying a golden age at a time when Teutonic tribes were hunting wild beasts by the North Sea; a nation when Egypt emerged, when Babylon fell, when Greece crumbled, and when the great Roman empire disintegrated? When Homer was composing and singing the Iliad, China's blind minstrels were celebrating her ancient heroes, whose tombs had already been with them through thirteen centuries. In those days the world was divided off into watertight compartments. These events which have come down to us in history as of great significance were never heard of by the Chinese people. Any corrective elements coming out of them as they budded, flowered, and faded away in the course of centuries, were not available to the Chinese. All this time they were making their own way by dint of their own inherent strength and ability, profiting not by the experience of others but by their own. Do not these facts of the past convince us that, whatever the weaknesses of the Chinese may be in the light of western civilization, there are present nevertheless certain elements in certain combination which make specifically for national longevity? China's frontiers have been crossed many times before now by strong influences. What happened ? These influences were either overcome or assimilated. If we think hastily that the Chinese at this time have no staying power in the face of present world conditions, it is because we hold events occurring within our own day so close to our eyes as to obscure the history of the past. China has had a great deal of practice during forty centuries in finding her way through the years, whereas other nations have flashed into being, spurted, and elbowed their way to the front, only to fall exhausted by the wayside. China's shoes may not be spiked at the bottom, but there is something very substantial from the soles up.

However, there have been changes. Living like the ancients, in a world divided off into isolated parts, is one kind of an achievement; living in a modern world grown smaller, with the people of all countries and races in close contact and interdependent, is an achievement of quite another kind.

China and Today

For forty centuries China has been the mistress of the Orient, the center of eastern civilization. But there is a western civilization also. This civilization, too, was born in her cradle on the plains of Asia 4,000 years ago, but, carried westward by the Arabs, was nurtured in the primitive home of the Caucasians, and gave birth to modern Europe. It leaped over the Atlantic and took root in a new, wild continent. Still moving westward, it crossed the Pacific and promoted the material growth of modern Japan. It is masterful in its grasp of material resources and progressive in spirit. It has threaded the Orient with paths of commerce and broken down the bars of Chinese seclusion. In the complexity of these new relationships with this western civilization China faces a crisis.

To safeguard her future and that of the world China needs to develop along four main lines : political, material, educational, and spiritual.

Political Changes

In one of the last edicts promulgated by the falling Manchu rulers (Feb. 12, 1912) occurs this statement: "So long as the form of government is undecided, the Nation can have no peace. The people sway meaningless to and fro, vainly seeking to regain the equilibrium which has been so sensationally lost."

In China a process of political metamorphosis to readjust this old nation to new conditions is under way. There is no doubt but that this effort was hastened by the coming of foreigners. For so many centuries the people were entrenched in their fastnesses that without the play of forces which to them were supernatural, their daily lives and customs would not have been affected. Foreign impact brought with it the steam engine, the telegraph, rifles, and cannon, and all the manifestations of the materialistic development of western civilization.

As early as 1600 the Dutch settled in Formosa and a few years later tried to gain a foothold in China at Amoy. Some years later they secured possession of an island in the river at Canton, where they planted cannon. Based on subsequent events that little island is known to this day as "Dutch Folly."

The great East India Company made a famous treaty with China in 1680. Nine years later a treaty was made with Russia, giving her everything north of the Amur River.

The treaty with the East India Company was abolished after 153 years (1833). Foreigners were sounding a keynote of aggression very displeasing to Chinese ears. The first serious modern conflict between China and foreign powers began in 1839, when Commissioner Lin, of Canton, destroyed 20,283 chests of opium which British merchants had brought to China contrary to Chinese law. The English government assumed responsibility by paying the merchants about 12,000,000 gold dollars and began the first Opium War, which ended so disastrously for China. Hong- Kong was ceded to Great Britain and 21,000,000 gold dollars indemnity was imposed. Opium was not legalized, however, till October, i860, after a second Opium War. Three years later Sir Robert Hart was appointed inspectorgeneral of customs. He is the greatest Englishman ever sent by Great Britain to China.

A second grievance against foreigners soon followed opium. Coolies were captured by foreign nations and taken to foreign lands to help develop newly acquired possessions. The coolie trade was not abolished till 1873, after 500,000 coolies had been transported.

By this time the cumulative effect of intercourse with foreigners resulted in an anti-foreign feeling which became deeply rooted in the minds of the Chinese. Things foreign, as well as foreigners themselves, were despised. In 1876 a ten-mile railroad from Shanghai to Woosung, which had been erected through foreign pressure, was bought by China and completely torn up.

In 1882 the French invaded Tongking. No European nation in a position to do so refrained from applying pressure of one kind or another to secure a foothold in China. But all of these acts up to this time were committed by people of another race. China was yet to learn of dangers nearer home.

During all these years Japan was making great strides toward a place among the strong nations. She introduced western ships and guns, she followed the western art of war, and, what is more significant, she followed the precedent of European nations and established herself on the mainland of Asia. In the war over Korea, 1894- 1895, she easily defeated China. She was robbed of the full fruits of her victory, however, by jealous European governments.

In November, 1897, two German Catholic priests were murdered in Shantung. Germany issued a forty-eight-hour ultimatum to China and secured Kiaochow and 117 square miles of territory surrounding that port. As soon as one nation secured some concession, the other nations instigated efforts to secure an equal advantage. When China leased Weihaiwei to Great Britain, she had to lease Kwangchow to France.

It was a succession of events such as these which formed the background for the Boxer uprising in 1900, from which

China emerged humiliated in the eyes of the world and finally convinced that the "foreign devils" had come to stay.

The weakness of the Manchu dynasty in dealing with foreigners, coupled with internal changes, made for the Revolution in 191 1. Since that time the Chinese people have been feeling their way carefully and on the whole peacefully. The oldest nation is now the newest republic.

China is in great difficulty, no doubt. Her task is made none the easier by foreign interference, prompted by various motives. Impatience on the part of foreigners at her slowness in reaching a stable form of government shows a woeful lack of historical perspective. There are two virtues which should characterize the attitude of foreign governments. These virtues are illustrated by the following story from the Sung Dynasty.

In 960 A. D. there was in Kiukiang on the Yangtse River a family which had lived together for fourteen generations. Having 1,200 members and finding their provisions insufficient, the government granted them assistance on account of their family loyalty. In another case, the emperor having asked the head of a family whose members had lived together in peace for nine generations what was the secret of their ability to continue together so long without a break, the patriarch wrote the word forbearance one hundred times. Will the great nations, made greater by suffering, grant assistance to China and exercise forbearance after this war ? Or will they attempt to use her to recoup some of their losses?

Material Development

When one comes to the possibilities of developing the material resources in China, it is difficult to speak moderately.

First of all, China lies in the zone of power in which the most masterful nations have operated (18 latitude north — 54 latitude south), a stretch equal to that from Guatemala to Labrador. Including Mongolia, Manchuria, Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, and the eighteen provinces, the whole area covers over 5,000,000 square miles, or more than twice the area of the United States, forty-seven times that of Great Britain, forty times that of Germany or France, one and one-half the area of Europe, or one-tenth of the habitable globe.

In the eighteen provinces are 600,000,000 acres of splendid soil. North of Harbin, Manchuria, China possesses 300,000 square miles of territory, or three times the area of Japan, of which not one-tenth is under cultivation. The Amur River, the old dividing line between China and Russian Siberia, is navigable for more than 2,000 miles, and is fed by great numbers of smaller navigable arteries, the total length of water being estimated at 42,000 miles. Millions of cattle could be fed on the grassy plains in this littleknown region, and one expert holds that 8,000,000 fine trees could be cut out every year for hundreds of years without in any way destroying the existence or usefulness of the forests.

Iron and coal have come to be the mainstays of our civilization. The European iron fields are beginning to be exhausted. Great Britain has practically consumed its store. In America the iron fields have been noted and marked out. In China iron and coal occur widely and together, under favorable labor and climatic conditions, and 419,000 square miles are already officially reckoned as being underlaid with coal. Up to the present the amount of coal and iron in China has been of greater interest to foreign powers than to China herself.

A German expert, Baron Richtofen, after a laborious investigation lasting many years, submitted to the German government a three-volume report on the coal and iron resources of China, showing that they are the richest in the world. He found coal in fifteen of the eighteen provinces examined by him. It was his estimate that in the province of Shansi alone there was enough coal to supply the world "for several thousand years at its present rate of consumption." Side by side existed vast deposits of iron ore. The German government was so amazed that it sent an expert commission to China in 1897 to reexamine the Baron's data. The commission "fully verified Baron Richtofen's estimates." It will be noted that Kiaochow Bay in Shantung which the Germans secured, also in 1897, is the nearest open seaport to these stores. A railroad was built half-way from the coast to the Shansi border. What would it mean to any nation to have access to 14,000 square miles of anthracite averaging twenty-one feet thick?

A railroad is being projected from Canton, in south China, to Hankow, on the Yangtse River, to which city large ocean-going steamers have easy access. This railroad passes through 850 miles of the richest coal and iron fields in the world. Perhaps Gladstone had China also in mind when he said, "No nation can remain permanently great that does not have an adequate physical basis of empire." China's resources in area and the geographical distribution of her rivers and mineral wealth are staggering in their vastness, unparalleled and incalculable. The development of these resources will make easier such difficult tasks as reforestation and flood control, the building of railroads, the dredging of canals, rivers, and harbors, the building of a merchant marine, the reorganization of her financial system, the stabilizing of her government, the building of schools, and the general rehabilitation of the country in the light of new world conditions.

That China has the man-power necessary to develop her resources is granted on every hand. In fact most people think China is overpopulated. We speak of China as having a fourth of the human race. Naturally they must hold the record for density of population. Here are some comparisons :

Country Population per square mile

Belgium 654 (before her decimation by Germany)

Great Britain. .. 360

Germany 310

Japan 270

India 180

China 97 (including her dependencies)

But the above statement is not the whole population story. About 95 per cent of the people of China are confined to one-third of the area of the country, with a density of 200 to the square mile. Only 5 per cent of the population inhabits 65 per cent of the area, with a density of 10 to the square mile. All China has but 6,467 miles of railway. The largest interests of the country are still primarily agricultural in nature. When modern scientific methods of agriculture are introduced, transportation facilities developed, the bare hills reforested, and mines in the mountains opened, there will undoubtedly take place a gradual redistribution of the population. One of the last things the Chinese have in mind as a remedy for the congestion in certain localities is an "invasion" peaceful or otherwise into other lands, as certain sensational papers would have us believe. China's greatest future lies in developing her own resources, and in this she ought to have the sympathetic and friendly cooperation of the great powers. Even selfishly speaking, more benefits will accrue to them from following this policy than from continuing any other.

Educational Outlook

The great impetus to political change and material development in China up to the present time has been contact with foreign nations. Students educated in western learning, both in China and abroad, have played leading parts. No one can measure the influence upon China of the young Chinese who in the earlier years went to Europe and America to study. The leaders of the new China are mostly men of this type. It is they who are back of the general awakening of China.

The beginning of this practice of sending students abroad took place in 1872 when Dr. Yung Wing, the "Father of the Chinese Returned Students," took over to the United States a group of thirty young students under the auspices of the Government. The stream of students going and returning has been increasing ever since.

Perhaps an even greater factor has been the establishment of schools in China with combined Chinese and western curricula. The following facts were compiled by the German Association of Shanghai :

Number Scholars

German Schools in China 197 5>3&5

English Schools in China 1,686 40*055

American Schools in China 2,278 67,394

The new Chinese system of education includes many features to be found in western schools.

The immensity of the educational problem, however, is indicated by the statement of Mr. David Z. T. Yui, General Secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association of China, who says, "Ninety-five per cent of the people are illiterate." But the western learning is already rooted in China, the mental revolution already in progress. With its growth it will be impossible for China to revert to a despotic form of government, or for progress in material development to be kept back.

Spiritual Aspects

The Chinese will realize for themselves, as their experience grows, that the fundamental defect of secular western education is that it creates ideals which it is impossible for man by merely human strength to attain. As Bishop Bashford says, "If the Chinese can once recognize that while man was originally made in the image of God, he has, in some strange manner, degenerated from his high estate, and if they once adopt Christianity as essential to their spiritual nature, very possibly they will make a wider and deeper use of it than we are making in the West. If they discard the false barrier between nature and the supernatural, seek new life and power for their daily tasks through Christ and the indwelling Spirit; if the Far East bravely meets the crisis which now confronts her and not only westernizes but Christianizes her education, then China, because of the tremendous break-up of old customs and institutions, has perhaps as bright a prospect for the future as America or Europe. If, along with her outworn civilization, she puts aside the half -Christian, half -pagan civilization of America and Europe, with its worship of material success, its glorification of war, its indulgence of lust and worldly pride, and accepts Christianity in earnest, she may surpass the Western world in realizing the New Humanity in Christ."

This is the hope of the future. Unless the nations of the world change from the directions in which they are now moving and try to attain this end, the picture of future world relations is dark indeed. Now the white races number 51 per cent of the world's population, but they control five continents and part of the sixth. The yellow races, numbering only 36 per cent of the world's population, are confined to a portion of a single continent. In this continent is to be found the treasury store-house of the future. Is the command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" a star to steer by, or is it drooling piffle? Is the picture which Christian nations have painted before the non-Christian nations an indication that Christianity is a failure or is it evidence that man has failed to grasp the principles of Christ? Is there anything through which can be solved the moral difficulties of the individual Chinese and his national and international questions except the principles of Jesus Christ?

It may be that the world will have to go through still further agonies before man will admit his inability to carry world loads in the right direction and to the right ends, in his own strength. Never before in the history of the world has man been face to face with his own weaknesses as now. Whether he admits the fact now or later remains to be seen, but only Christ will ever be able to lead the world through the maze of future difficulties. In the smaller nations He is known to some extent, even if His principles seem interwoven with those of man. But the great nations on the west side of the Pacific basin do not as yet know Him.

World leadership for the day after tomorrow belongs to the young men of today. Any organization, therefore, which relates itself to young men must realize that the program it sets up has a great deal of significance attached to it. No greater need in China exists than the establishment of spiritual values. The Young Men's Christian Association, already firmly established and growing rapidly in China, has unusual opportunities to apply the benefits of experience gained in other countries. This organization is finding itself in this war. It lives right in the middle of the lives of young men, whether in times of peace or in war. But no task which it has confronted in the past is so great or so meaningful as the one facing it in China. Through it and other Christian channels must flow a knowledge of Christ to the young men of Asia, if the world is ever to become one family and a Kingdom of Heaven on earth. No other power under the heavens can take this old world and mold it to that end.