easily have resulted in a great European war, and which left the Union Jack as the predominating flag on the broad bosom of the Pacific. The game did not at the time seem worth the candle, but who can say what part these insular groups may yet play in the development of the Pacific? They are, at any rate, stepping-stones between the two vast borderlands. Britain has tapped the North Pacific by railway to Vancouver, just as Russia is tapping it by railway to Vladivostok. The Anglo-Saxon races are filling up British Columbia and the Pacific States of the Union just as the Amur and Manchuria will soon be filled with emigrants from Russia. Thus is Europe streaming into Asia, while Japan stands as a young giant between the old and the new, and China looks on in placid ignorance that the front of the world is being changed, and she more than all.

Well may the thoughtful American ask what will happen if the redundant population of Asia reverses its old westward flow into Europe and turns eastward to submerge the American shores of the Pacific. What will happen is such a racial struggle for existence as the world has never yet seen. Let us not deceive ourselves. The development of the Pacific is no mere question of commercial geography, but means the creation of a new series of world problems, in the solution of which the nationalities of to-day will lose their identity. What will be the American of the twenty-first century? And where will be the American negro? It seems inevitable that the chief industrial outlet of the United States should be to the West. In the markets of Europe the manufacturers of America have to compete with the experienced and resourceful producers of the Old World on their own ground, whereas in the Pacific area both have to compete on neutral ground to which America has the advantage of contiguity. With the enormous and enormously increasing productivity of the American Union, an export valve will become more and more an absolute necessity of industrial existence. It will naturally be found toward what we call the Far East, in Australasia and throughout the wide Pacific area.

It

is probable, indeed, that America will first regain her lost position as an ocean-carrier in the Pacific-that in her western ports will rapidly grow up a mercantile marine such as she had in her pre-Protection days, when the "Baltimore Clippers" were the pride of the Atlantic. It is certain that she will not be content to remain much longer dependent on foreign-chiefly British-vessels for the conveyance of her oversea traffic. For this conveyance it has been calculated that Americans pay some £100,000 per day to foreign shipowners-for carrying what they buy and sell. We may take it that the next development of American competition will be in the ocean-carrying trade. As a very significant fact we may recall that in the decade 188494, while the shipping on the American register on the Atlantic coasts decreased about 130,000 tons, the register on the Pacific coast increased by about 125,000 tons. The tonnage at present entered in and out at the great ports on both sides of the Pacific basin is about twenty million tons per annum. Every year we may expect to see more and more of that tonnage under the Stars and Stripes. A large mercantile marine necessitates a large navy. In the future of the Pacific, therefore, we foresee America as a great maritime power, whose territorial ambitions will not be limited by Hawaii, or even by the Philippines.

Many of us now living may reasonably expect to see the completion of the Trans Asiatic railway to Vladivostok and Talienwan. It will be quickly followed by the Nicaragua Canal, and from each terminus will radiate great lines of giant steamships traversing the whole of the Ocean area. Meanwhile, the Trans-Andine railway will have been completed, the long projected links with the American railroad system will have been carried northward to Alaska, and southward through Mexico and the central neck to Chili, and the new cycle of Cathay will be worth vastly more than fifty years of Europe. Even now the sea-borne commerce of the Pacific exceeds a thousand millions sterling per annum, and it is not extravagant to assume that the twentieth century will see it doubled.

We have hardly yet grasped the importance of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the development of the Pacific. Take China alone. In the mind of the average Briton, Pekin is dimly pictured as probably the remotest city on the globe. At present, by the fastest methods of conveyance, it takes five weeks to go from London to the capital of China. But, as Mr. Moreing pointed out in the September number of this Review, by the railway one will be able to go from London to Pekin in seventeen days and to Shanghai in twenty days. The one will be brought as near to us as Bombay, the other as near as Calcutta. To expedite transit is to multiply trade, to create new trade, and to stimulate social evolution.

It has been said that history is but. the register of the follies and crimes of mankind. If this is true of any part of the globe, it is true of the Pacific, from the American slopes where the Spaniards plundered and blundered only to be plundered in turn by blundering hybrids, to the China Seas, where for centuries the barrier reef of barbarism has broken the European wave into dangerous surf. And this vast Pacific basin, which is to be the future battleground of nations and the great area of racial development, is bordered in China as in Peru with the relics of some of the oldest civilizations in the world. The Incas have come and gone, the Aztecs are but a name, the Spanish conquerors of both have left but a thin veneer on an Indian framework, and new nations are working out their salvation or otherwise-in South America. But in China, we thought, the old order changeth not, and giveth place to new only in name and for a time. In her national senility China seems to have lost the natural forces that make for regeneration. Her conversion will have to come from without, and the oldest empire in the world can only be saved by being destroyed. She has four hundred millions of people who know nothing of that mysterious thing called "prestige" which we are every now and again told we are losing; who care nothing for treaties; who are unable to distinguish one European from another; who are amenable only to a government by force; who are

naturally and nationally adepts in industrial and commercial pursuits; and who only need the "open door" (so men say) to entice them forth from their long sleep. Yet it is two hundred years since the wicket-gate of British trade was opened on the Canton River. Two hundred years! and we are still striving to open the door! This long delay cannot be correctly ascribed entirely to Chinese exclusiveness. Our own intercourse with China has been filled with sins of omission and commission, by John Company's Tyepans," by zealous and indiscreet missionaries, by rapacious and unscrupulous traders, by non-compromising and tactless political agents.

66

We have never understood China, and are amazed that the Chinese as yet do not understand us. We have too often shown the iron hand when we should have offered the velvet glove, and too often put on the glove when we should have presented the mailed fist. But at least if we have sinned we lay the flattering unction to our souls that we have not sinned as these others

Russia and France-who have carried out a policy of spoliation at the point of the sword. How many political blunders we have made between the days of Lord Macartney and those of Sir Harry Parkes-and since—it would be a weary task to recall. But, at any rate, we have so far kept the larger commercial hold, and the Chinese are essentially a people whose development will be effected by and through commerce. As a political force China is a cipher ; as a commercial entity her potentiality is illimitable. But in China we are between the devil and the deep sea; the relentless policy of Russia, which, generation after generation, ohne Hast, ohne Rast, pursues its way to its goal, and the instability of the Manchu, with neither the ability to frame a policy nor the strength to carve one out. The part which China has to play in the development of the Pacific is, in the meantime, conditioned on the one side by the restless ambition of Russia, and on the other by the ambitious restlessness of France. But one day she will cease to be an instrument, and will become an active agent.

Probably no one is more familiar

with the commercial aspects of the Yangtse Valley than Mr. Archibald Little, and this is what he says about Szechuan :

"The surface of this vast region lying mainly between the 28th and 32d degrees of latitude is covered with every sub-tropical product which the most painstaking and capable agriculturists on the globe can elicit from the soil in a succession of crops, two or three in rotation, during the year, forced on by the stimulating manure obtained from the thickly crowded towns and villages of the basin. Thus we have opium and wheat sown in November and gathered in April; rice sown in April and harvested in August; maize and the tall millet sown in May and gathered in September. The

sugar-cane, an excellent tobacco, indigo,

with the sweet potato and the taro, also cotton, may be added to the list, which is -till not half exhausted. All but the very lowest stratum of its thick population are clad in silk grown and woven in the province, which also yields a considerable surplus for export to the coast and to France. The celebrated insect-wax is a product of Szechuan and of Szechuan alone. Coal and ion abound everywhere, the former mineral forming the sole fuel of the natives. Petroleum accompanied by natural gas, which is led through the town in bamboo pipes, cooks the daily rice of the inhabitants of Tze-liu-Ching, a town and district renowned throughout China for its productive brine wells, which have supplied the province with salt for two thousand years past, besides supplying many of the neighboring provinces. Thus Szechuan is self-sufficient, and we have here a province 220,000 square miles in extent, inhabited by some forty or fifty millions of industrious, intelligent, and mostly prosperous people."

And to this promising emporium of trade the Yangtse Kiang is the only serviceable highway. Besides Szechuan the Yangtse traverses, or serves, the large and populous provinces of Hupeh, Hunan, Kiangsi, Ngan-hui, and Kiangsu. It is, roughly speaking, the main highway of an area of 600,000 square miles, inhabited by the most naturally industrious and commercial people in the Eastern hemisphere, if not in the whole world. And the Yangtse flows into the great Pacific basin at Shanghai-" the coming New York of the Far East "-whose foreign trade even at present exceeds £15,000,000 sterling per annum. The entire trade of the towns in the Yangtse Valley, in so far as reported to the Imperial Maritime Customs, exceeds £30,000,000 sterling per annum, but a very large trade is, in addition, carried on

by the native junks, which do not re port to the Maritime Customs. The population of the region is at least 180,000,000, and with such a population, with such natural resources, and with such a magnificent waterway to the outer world, it does not seem extravagant of Mr. Little to predict that the annual value of the trade of the Yangtse Valley will be soon not 30 but 300 millions sterling. And yet this is only a portion of China-one corner of the great Pacific area.

With what is called the new birth of Japan a new era opened in the Pacific -a new factor appeared in the worldproblem. If the revolution which began some thirty years ago were solely the result of contact with European civilization-that is to say, of purely external influences-we might have doubts about the constitutional strength of this new Power in the East. But it was not so. However large a part foreign contact may have played in the regeneration of Japan, by stimulating the art of a naturally mimetic people, the causes of the change lay deeper. Mr. Tokiwo Jokoi warns us that the political or historical canons formulated for Europe are not to be applied to politics or history in Asia. And he states the case thus :*

Japan being an Asiatic country, any random reason seems to suffice in the minds of most observers to explain one of the most momentous events in her history. The Japanese are gifted, it is said, with a supreme imitative genius, and their recent civilizing activity is a great achievement of this genius. That so much has already been accomplished by this Oriental people is worthy of all commendation: nevertheless, these critics go on to say that the new civilization in Japan remains an imitated article, and, with all its splendid exterior, is but skin deep. The adjectives 'Asiatic' and 'Oriental' have, in fact, peculiar associated notions which largely shut out peoples under their category from fellowship with the peoples of the west. Now, no mistake could be greater than such a wholesale characterization. The Japanese are, for instance, an insular people, and as such have characteristics quite distinct from those of other peoples in Asia. But the chief thing which separates Japan from China or India is the fact that the civilization of Japan is young, being no older than that of England or France."

* The Contemporary Review, September,

1898.

In other words, then, Japan is not oppressed with any burden of pre-historic splendor. She is not a new-born nation of the East in the sense that China will be, when she has that "awakening" which the Marquis Tseng announced years ago as about to begin. She is, in fact, a modern nation of the East, to be ranked rather among the modern nations of the West than among the ancient relics of the Orient. The great industrial movement, we are to understand, had its impetus in a political ideal created by the uprising of democracy. Now, this is a view of Japan that is much more wholesome and satisfying than the view that is commonly entertained in the West. The growth of Japan is natural, and therefore healthy, and the chief danger as regards the future is not that Japan will break down as a constitutional Power, with a right to a controlling voice in the Pacific, but that her industrial expansion may proceed at a greater pace than her political development. In that case she will be weak, because her risks will be greater than her influence. But Mr. Tokiwo Jokoi has no fear of this. He is confident that before another generation has passed away Japan will be as firmly and naturally settled under constitutional government as either France or Germany is to-day.

In considering the future of the Pacific, the subject of cable communication cannot be ignored. At present we are linked telegraphically with our Eastern Empire by four lines of wire(1) via Lisbon, Egypt, and the Red Sea, (2) via France, Italy, Egypt, and the Red Sea, (3) via Germany, Turkey, Russia, and the Pacific Coast, (4) via Lisbon, West Africa, the Cape, and the Indian Ocean. The recommendation of the Selborne Conference of 1896 in favor of an all-British cable to the Pacific has not been acted on, mainly perhaps owing to one reason that has never been mentioned in public discussions of the matter, which is that the overland telegraphs in Canada, which must form the connecting links between the two ocean cables, are "controlled" by a powerful United States telegraph combination. So long as that control exists, a telegraphic con

nection between West and East via North America would be "all-British " only in name. If cables are no longer to be regarded as immune from attack in times of war, we might have very serious complications in American rights over Canadian land lines. Are they in present circumstances any more dependable for Imperial purposes than is the Russo-Siberian line of communication, on which Lord Wolseley has said that it is "suicidal" for us to depend? It may, however, be argued that the very fact of this American impact upon the all-British line of Imperial inter-communication emphasizes the necessity for an Anglo-American bond of what Mr. Chamberlain calls "permanent amity." The four existing lines of telegraph with the East all pass through the dominions of several foreign governments. The enmity of one of these governments would sever two or more of these lines. The cables in the Red Sea would be at the mercy of any belligerent. In fact, in the event of a war with a European maritime Power we would be absolutely dependent on the very precarious link round the Cape, which might be broken at many different points. sia makes no secret of the fact that in the event of a war with us her first task would be to cut off all our wire communications with India and Australia; and it is known that she has had ready cable-cutting ships to despatch on short notice. There seems little room to doubt that a cable laid in the great depths of the open Pacific would be much less open to attack than any existing, or perhaps any possible, alternative line. But a little reflection will show that, desirable as is this allBritish bond of wire by way of North America and the Pacific, its value will depend on the preservation of "permanent amity" with the United States. We cannot yet count on that, and therefore we cannot afford to reject the plan for a complete system of entirely British cables connecting all our naval stations with London, India, and Australia.

Rus

It is a curious thought that in seeking to reach the Orient by a canal across Nicaragua, and by a cable across the Pacific, we are just carrying out

the design of the old Spaniards to reach the East by the West. We have We have successfully followed the Portuguese Vasco da Gama, round the Cape of Good Hope, to Mombasa and India. And now we are following upon the westward track of Columbus when he went in search of Zipandu ; and of Alvaro de Mendaña when, setting sail from Callao, he plunged into the wide Pacific in search of the Islands of Solomon. In noting this movement, moreover, let us not overlook the curious fact that the entire set of migration of

the Latin races of Europe (for French Tongking and Italian Erythrea are not true colonies) is westward to the great South American continent which flanks the Pacific. The future of South America is a vast and deeply interesting problem, but while it is, as we have seen, only one of a series of problems associated with the opening of the Far East, it is one which emphasizes and accentuates the necessity for the maintenance of a British hold on the western outlet of the Pacific.The Nineteenth Century.

LITERARY reputations have often been rapidly won. To wake one morning and find himself famous has been the lot of many a writer besides the poet, the England of whose time-the England, that is to say, of the Peninsula and Waterloo-the England of Wellington, Scott, and Castlereagh-is pronounced by Mr. Stephen Phillips to have been "for the most part petty and hypocritical !" (See the Cornhill Magazine for January, 1898, p. 21.) Our fathers were almost as much on the alert as ourselves for the appearance of a new genius; but never have men of letters succeeded in reaching the substantial honor of a "collected edition" so early in life as at the present day. That distinction used to be jealously reserved for veterans. Now it is liberally bestowed upon authors who (one hopes) have at least as many years of at least as good work before as behind them. We do not grumble at the innovation. The old style of "édition de luxe," whose inconveniences were so feelingly portrayed by the late Mr. Du Maurier, has fortunately gone out of fashion; and the new style is sure to be convenient for reading as well as ornamental to the bookshelf. The resources of typography are freely drawn upon for its production, and the result is something eminently pleasant to the eye, whether the contents of the volumes are to be desired to make one wise or the reverse. From our lips, therefore, no word of disparagement shall fall

NEW SERIES.-VOL. LXVIII., No. 5.

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Mr.

with reference to the edition of Mr. Kipling's works, the publication of which has just been completed.* The printing is all that could be desired, though no though no more than was to be expected from the celebrated house founded by the late Mr. Robert Clark, that warrior" and hero of a hundred well fought golf-matches. Kipling, too, has done well in refraining from introductory prefaces-a sort of writing which calls for a touch of the Magician's own wand. But were the edition as mean and unworthy in externals as it is handsome and sumptuous, we should none the less welcome it as supplying a convenient pretext for attempting to weigh in the critical balance the productions of the most remarkable writer of his generation.

It is not much more than ten years since the attention of the English public was first attracted to an unknown author (with a name suspiciously like a nom de guerre) by the appearance of some spirited prose sketches and of one or two ballads, possessing the genuine ring of poetry, in the pages of a contemporary. The attention so drawn was riveted by certain poems from the same pen in which a new and original note was undoubtedly struck, and