Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... III. FOB THE CAUSE OF GOOD GOVEBNMENT IN CHINA. PBACTICAL CONCLUSIONS. MOTTO: 'Depend upon it, when we grope in the dark, as we must in the East, the best course is that which is just and right." General Gordon. THINK the time has now come when it is both opportune and necessary to examine into the present policy of the Powers in China. I wish only to repeat here that I am writing entirely on my own responsibility and I alone am responsible for my opinions. SPIBIT AND ATTITUDE. Now, before any hope can be entertained for a satisfactory solution of the Chinese problem, it is first of all absolutely necessary for the Powers radically to change the spirit and attitude of their policy in dealing with the Chinese Government antLChinese officials. A writer in the Japan Mail, Mr. E. H. House, writing on the past policy of the Western nations towards Japan, says, "Strangers to the country chose to set up a theory that the policy of Japan was a maze of dissimulation and fraud; and that any action which aliens could not comprehend at all, must necessarily be part of a deep and all-embracing scheme of deception. It was the absurdest of fallacies, yet it stood as the basis of European diplomacy for a score of years." This, then, I have no hesitation in saying, is the fons et origo, the fountain-head of old disasters in the intercourse between the foreign Powers and China. It is this spirit of suspicion which, being as it were in the air, infects every foreign Minister and especially every British Minister, and produces a kind of jaundice which makes him see everything yellow in China. As I am here not writing as a mere partisan for the Chinese, but in the cause of truth, I will deny that there is certainly a certain want of frankness and plain...
