Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1891-01-21
SHOULD CHINA ADVANCE.

Then the Fate of Europe Would Indeed
Be a Deplorable One.
We hold with Lord Wolseley, who has
seen the Chinese, and seen them at war,
that the Mongolian race is quite capa-
bic. under certain easily-conceivable
circumstances, of overrunning Cont.
mental Europe, of stamping out our
progressive civilization, and of estab-
fishing their own cast-iron, immoYable
polity in its stead. That they will
actually do this Is, we grant, unlikely
enough; but it is absurd to speak as if it
would be impossible for them to do so.
1t Is not difficult to demonstrate
the existence of this possibility.
The population of China is at
least 500, OOO, 600. This was the compu-
tation of Marquis Tseng, through the
French authorities say 3Sl, 900, 600, and
Prof Legge. the professor of Chinese in
the University of Oxford, declares that
400, 600, 600 Is nearer the true number.
But the former one provides an utterly
inexhaustible reservoir of fighting men
who can learn to use weapons of pre-
cision as well as Europeans. who are as
industrious and ingenious as beavers.
who are perfectly obedient to orders,
who are quite as fearless as regards
death, not merely when in a con-
dition of mental exaltation, but
habitually, and who would not
mutiny, no matter what their
hardships, unless prevented from
gambling. IT, as Lord Wolsely says,
this population ever awakes, produces
Generals and determines not to letitself
be excluded from all the best places of
the earth, it will be impossible to with
stand it. The Chinese would not. of
course, overrun Europe like Napoleon,
but their silent steady pressure would
be quite irresistible. Inch by inch they
would appropriate the Western civilized
world. Even now. when the Chinese
are for all practical purposes dormant,
it is difficult for the Russians to prevent
them from filing up the provinces of
the AMOR. What, then, would be the
result, if they once adopted a forward
policy?
Their advance would be like that of
the Jennings in Norway, except that
they would know how to take ship, and
SO would find the sea no obstacle. If
Russia, necessarily the first victim.
were conquered, and the Chinese, wear
ing some horrible veneer of civilization,
were to establish themselves in Poland,
the rest of Continental Europe would
soon succumb, and we should then see
Lord Wolseley's Battle of Armageddon
between the Anglo-Saxon and the
Monaghan realized. If the En-
lish were beaten, civilization as we
know it must die out, for progress
is the one thing of which the Chi
naman is incapable. No doubt this
moral eclipse would not last forever,
for Providence does not intend man.
kind either to perish, as Count Tolstoi
desires to see him perish, or to sink
back into permanent barbarism. At
last the climatic conditions of the West
would modify the Chinese race, and
then some few germs of civilization,
spared by chance when all beside was
spoiled" would begin to be cultivated
and bear fruit again, and little by lit
tie, and after series of painful efforts,
the social structure would be raised
once more from the ground. Into this
dim future it is not, however, worth
while to peer, especially as we may
hope that even if the battle of Arma-
geddon has to be fought between US and
the Chinese, it may be the English
speaking peoples who will win. If they
do. the destruction of the rest of Europe
will not be an rreparable loss, for
Providence seems already to have de-
creed that civilization in the twenty
first century shall practically be Anglo
Saxon tor.