The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1894-10-06
CHINA MOVES GLAC|ER-L|KE.
Grave Problems Presented by Jap
ans Struggle.
Ii HUNG CHANG LEADS THE WAY.
The Emperor's Most Powerful Subject
Foremost in Preaching the Gospel of
War-A Letter From John Russell
Young, Late U. S. Minister to China.

This lamentable war between China
and Japan is the first serious conflict
that China has known for long time.
There have been opium, Tonquin and
other small, despicable wars forced
upon China for mercenary purposes
to acquire territory, exact indemities
or crystalline a majority in the House
of Commons, says recent New York
Herald. China has dealt with them
as the respectable housekeeper in the
Scottish lowlands dealt with Rob Roy
and the freebooters. He made his best
terms with the thieves and bade them
return to their thievery and leave him
the remainder in peace. The situation
changes. China and Japan are of the
same race. We know there is no ami
mostly so unrelenting as that between
kinsmen. China might bow to the
guns of Europe, and return to her DOR
mant, peace-loving ways. 1t will be
different as regards Japan. 1t will be
in it's largest sense an internecine war.
However or whenever it may end, the
outcome can only be the disintegra-
ton of China by Russia, aided per-
haps by France, or a vendetta between
China and Japan to last for centuries,
with consequences not to be contem-
plated without sorrow by those who
love Japan for her beauty, her art and
the charm of her sincere, gentle, eX-
quisite ways.
Apart from this consideration, how
ever, which affects alone the combat
ants, there is thought inspired by q
remembrance of what the Tartars did
in other days under the lead of Gen
ghis Khan. For centuries China, so
far as the outer world is concerned,
has lain at peace-dormant, repellant
to what we call our civilization
wanting in enterprise, her people
walking in the paths of their fathers,
silent, Indifferent, perhaps contempt
uOus of mankind. The more than four
hundred millions who compose the
empire-compact, integral, bound to-
gether by laws, customs, literature
and faith, their ceremonies ordained q
thousand years before Christ-have
not for centuries troubled Christen-
dom. With a territory as large as that
of the United States, with every va
riety of climate, with the finest of
water systems, and a soil as rich as
that of France-a soil whose every
acre is fertile-the rivers and seas teem-
ing with fish cher fish and rice alone
enable her to support population that
may be estimated as one-third, or,
more probably, one-fourth, of the hu-
man race)-to awaken in this people
the war-like spirit, to compel the trans.
formation of China from the ways of
peace to those of war, is to assume a
great responsibility.
HAS LONG REMAINED AT PEACE.
The apathy of China has been ex-
planned upon many grounds, mainly
fanciful. In recent times she is the
first nation, heather though she is, to
accept the divine admOnition that
peace on earth should be the highest
aim of human endeavor. So, while
civilized States, living under the ac
cepted sacred light of Christian truth,
have undergone centuries of throat
cutting and pillage until it has become
a canon of our ethics that war must
have its season for the good of society,
that the generation is barren which
knows no war, China has remained at
peace.
Not only has she remained at peace,
but she has taught her people that
war is crime, and, the calling being
criminal, that the profession of arms
is ungracious and undeserving of
honor. This reverses the faith of
Christians since the days when the
Caesars won their crowns by the
sword. a foolish, heather fancy, no
doubt, but there is a good deal of the
New Testament in it, and it has
proved an assurance of peace.
For if China since the Ming dynasty
had been so far advanced in civiliza-
ton" as to realize that no god is so
deserving of worship as the God of
War, history would now tell differ
ent tale. If some modern Tartar ruler,
like Napoleon, had won the peoples
confidence, shown them the imminent
peril of their fine PHILOSOPHERS in the
mad, raging, warning outside world,
and, so doing, had armed China, civ
ilization would have had her r. lem.
The Chinaman contains within him.
self every faculty of the soldier. He
is fearless. He does not dread suicide.
He has extraordinary endurance. He
can march all day upon a portion of
rice. With reverence as the basis of
his faith, he knows the law of obedi-
ence. Moreover, the walking from
Moscow to Peking is good, as the car
avans of the present day will attest.
Ii HUNG CHANG PREACHED THE
GOSPEL OF WAR.
China has not had her Napoleon to
awaken the memories and possibill-