The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1895-04-11
GARRETT Co, MD.
The NEW OLD WORLD.

While the roar of victorious Japanese
cannon is still sounding in our cars
We are apt to think that somehow or
other the east is being awakened from
a slum Der of centuries, and that the
older Asia of fable and legend and
mystery is about to be modernized il
some striking way, and for the frst
time made over into the likeness of our
own progressive west. IT may be well,
therefore, to bear in mind the enormous
changes which, not always accom-
panied by the shock of war. have been
going on for the past ifty years in the
less accessible regions of the planet.
Most of us regard the east as the
cradle of human civilization, and yet
Tor a century or more the colonies
which it sent out to all the ends of the
earth have been drifting back to the
old home, now on warlil<e, now on
peaceful errands, to teach there the
lessons learned in happier chimes auc
more favorable conditions.
To people who lived in the days Of
Columbus, the vast territories that
constitute Asia and Africa, as we know
them, would be scarcely recognizable.
Some have exchanged native for Eu-
ropean rule in one form or another,
but nearly all have come more or less
under the influence OF modern ideas.
The dark continent" for example
has in the last few years fallen almost
wholly into the hands of the great
powers, and is thus in fair way of
being civilized. India, once the scene
of constant feuds between native
potentates, rival races and hostile re-
ligions, now supports four hundred
newspapers and has all the machinery
of modern state.
Further north, the Chinese wall no
longer shuts out foreigners and peo-
pie who formerly refused to trade with
outsiders boast to-day of their twenty
three ports open to the commerce of the
world. In central Asia, up to fifteen
years ago given over to nomad robbers
and fanatical, slaveholding Mussul-
mans, order has been established and
the arts of peace have been introduced
until the desert blossoms like a gar.
den.
In thirty years of effort and progress
Japan has risen from a state of help.
less inferiOrity to that of one of the
most advanced civilizations of our time.
In sluggish Persia the air of new
epoch is stirring; even in well-nigh
hopeless Turkey, the voice of the en-
hghtened west from time to time finds
way Of making itself heard. The
Pacific itself-those magic isles
OF reef and palm" where the trader
never came and no European flag eve7
tloated, has yielded up to the modern
spirit much of it's idleuess, its ignorance
and its cruelty.
The general result of changes like
these has been mark ID. Influences
hostile to life have been removed,
among them the scourge of wild ami
mails, cannibalism, slavery and other
savage practices. A knowledge of san
itary and medical science has been
promoted, and famines, as well as cpl
denies of disease, have either beer
made impossible or been greatly dimin-
iShed.
Vast stretches of territory have beeE
irrigated, brought under cultivation by
improved methods of agriculture and
laid down to crops with special refer
ence to the worlds needs. At the
same time, millions of human beings,
not long emerged from the savage
state, have received at least an ele-
mentary training in modern schools;
while Justice, with it's courts and pro-
cesses of law, has been set up where
before their reigned only anarchy and
individual caprice.
Not only are the nations of the east
becoming modernized in ideas; they are
being bound more closely than ever
with roads of iron and cables that run
beneath the sea. The locomotive, for
years familiar object in the land of
the Pyramids, now crosses the Urals
into Siberia; already it's whistle is
heard in the very heart of the desert,
at Merv. In the Flowery Land its
wheels are beginning to follow in the
track of Marco Polo; ere long they will
carry the couriers of the tsar to the
very uttermost parts of Siberia.
The telegraph too, now sends it's
message from st. Petersburg far out
to the mouth of the Amur; it connects
Europe with Pel1in and Shanghai.
When the new cable under the Pacific,
now projected, has been constructed,
the electricians girdle round the world
will be complete. Youths Companion.