The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-09-13
A FUTURE PROVINCE OF CHINA.

L the
United States must become a province of
China.
| There is but one defense, possessing the
least appearance of decency, which the admit
rers OF Gen. Grant bring forward on behalf of
his policy in refusing to exchange prisoners
and in hurting his columns, at whatever sac
rif1ce OF life, against the deadly edge of Lees
front 1t is that which supposes this policy
to have been founded in rigorous COMPARE
son OF numbers. Gen. Grant, it is argued i,
derived his first strategical inspiration in the
late war from the fact, impaired to him by
Rawlins, or some other friend of statistical
turn ofmind, that the federal government was,
numerically, about four times stronger than
the Confederacy. Assuming, as he reasonably
could assume, that the same proportion would
be maintained on the average between the op-
posing forces in the field, he concluded that
it would be a winning game to fight on the
rule of giving three men for one. To carry
out this plan with mathematical exactitude,
1T was necessary that prisoners should be
counted only as dead men. Hence the re-
mark to that effect in the celebrated letter
to Gen. Hitchcock, which doomed to death,
according to tbs testimony of Gen. Grants
own friends, fifteen or twenty thousand fed
eral soldiers captured by the Confederate
armies
1t is not to be doubted, then, that General
Grants theory of war is simply this. that the
collision OF superior numbers with inferior
numbers, obstinately continued, must, by
mere attrition, wear out the latter, and that
victory must result, as mathematical GER
tainty, to the former.
And this brings us to the contemplation of
the hopeless position in which this coun-
try will be placed when the Chinese, through
Mr.. Burlingames enlightenment, shall learn
the fatal secret Of the Grantian strategy, and
shall commence applying it for the purpose of
extending the imperial domain of China and
securing reservoirs into which to empty its two
hundred millions of surplus population. AS
individuals the Chinese are physically strong
They are intelligent, skillful, diligent, per-
seyering, and not lacking in active courage.
According to Mr.. Burlingame, indorsed by
Ralph Waldo Emerson, their education. their
philosophy, their morality, their sociology
and political economy entitle them to rank
with the most civilized of the Western ma
tions Aside from railroads and steam nayi-
cation, which the nature of their commerce
does not seem to demand, they appear to be
behind the West in nothing except due re-
gard for improved military enginery, and a
due appreciation of the significance of prepon-
derating numbers as an element in the matbe-
mates of war. That they will at length re-
cover from this backwardness is not to be
doubted. Mr. Burlingame says that they are
destined to overtake, if not to surpass, West
en civilization in every particular except its
vices. Then they will, of course, be even with
it in the art of war, including the knowledge
of the Grantian theory. and the aptitude for
applying it.
Now add this fact to the fact that the Chi
nese are almost suffocating for want of room
in their own country to the fact that they
are more and more impelled by the instinct
Of self-preservation to expand into and over
run other territory to the fact that no coun-
Try IN the world offers them SO inviting an
opening for this purpose as the United States.
Then to these facts add one other-the most
fearful of all-namely, that the population of
China is more than ten times that of the |
United States The sum is complete. Worked
'ut under the Grantian theory, the result that
must follow is plain. If Grant, backed by a
population four times that of the
'nemy could afford to give three to one
With the certainty of winning, the leader of
J Chinese invasion, pursuing the Grantian
trategy, could afford to give four, five, seven,
ven nine to one with equal certainty of a
ictorions result. Indeed, if Gen. Grant has
barge of the American armies when such an !
INVASION is undertaken, it is not to be srp-
osed that he will think of attempting de-
ense, which, according to his method of CAL
ulating the effects of collision between I'M i
quail numbers, would inevitably end in a
'orse defeat than was suffered by the Confed-
rates. All that the Chinese commander
Ill have to do to induce Grant to capitulate.
ithout waiting to be driven to his Appo-
lattox Court House, is to furnish him with
q authentic census of China. His profound
athematical intellect, seeing the difference
stween 100000 and 10000, 900, will not
estate to succumb to numerical preponder-
ice and to destiny. Thus it is that, under D
e Grantian theory of war, the United States
ust ultimately become a Chinese province.
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