Western civilisation may be expected to grow with equal rapidity in China as it has in Japan. Obviously Japan is the precedent that China will follow rather than India, whether Hindu or Mohammedan. A few years ago a man would have been classed as an eccentric who dared foretell that Russia would be defeated by Japan. When Japan talked about going to war with Russia, Russia laughed. Who {24} can tell how we shall speak of China a few years hence? For Japan after all is only the same size in population as Great Britain, but China is eight times as large. There are three ways in which China may affect Europe. Militarily, she may menace her by her enormous armies enlisted from her vast population. Commercially, she may afford an outlet for our trade far greater than we possess at the present time, and perhaps be a competitor in trade and a place where the capital of Europe will be invested. Morally, she may either depress or elevate our social morals. Perhaps the reader may be inclined to smile at the idea of China being in a higher moral condition than Europe, so as to be able to react on her beneficially, but stranger things have happened; and if Europe follows the example of France in deterioration, and China continues to advance with the same rapidity, China might easily excel Europe in morals. Let us first deal with the question from the military point of view. The military authorities who know the Chinese seem to be equally divided in opinion; many are confident that they are an unwarlike race, others maintain and bring evidence to prove that under competent officers they have great military qualities. A few years ago, for instance, the development of the military power of China was regarded as a possible danger to the world, and especially to England or Russia. It was pointed out that China might easily {25} descend with a huge army on to India in the distant future, or she might turn her arms northward and conquer the wide districts of Siberia. Now the popular view is the reverse, and the military power of China is regarded as a thing incapable of great development. A Japanese diplomatist with whom we discussed the question ridiculed the idea of the yellow peril and smiled at the suggestion that China could ever be a nation great in war. Certainly her present military power can be safely ignored except in Manchuria; whether that power is capable of development is a moot point. Believers in the war-like possibilities of China point out that as a matter of fact China is by right of conquest suzerain to such warlike races as the Tibetans and the Ghurkas, and that her empire reaches as far as Turkestan. In answer it is urged that the victors were not the Chinese, but the conquerors and present rulers of the Chinese, the northern Manchus; who, till they were absorbed by Chinese civilisation, spoke a different language and wrote a different character.