Читать книгу China's Revolution, 1911-1912: A Historical and Political Record of the Civil War онлайн

7 страница из 74

"All persons and property of any foreign nation within the jurisdiction of the Republic of China will be respected and protected.

"It will be our constant aim and firm endeavour to build upon a stable and enduring foundation a national structure compatible with the potentialities of our long neglected country.

"We will strive to elevate our people, secure them in peace, and legislate for their prosperity."

At this juncture it were idle to investigate how far these ideals have been reached. There has as yet been no time for deep national reforms to have been worked, and it is not the ambition of this volume to go deeply into political actualities. But no one, realising now that the Manchu rule in China has passed for ever, will doubt that, with such excellent qualities of common sense and eminent industry as the Chinese possess, we shall see a nation move that may move the world with it. The day will assuredly come, perhaps it is not so very far distant, when the Occidental observer will look around to see the globe girdled with an indissoluble bond of Chinese peoples, no longer too weak for aggression, but independent in all departments of national life. They will be taken up as equals into social relations of the white races. They are now struggling among themselves, asking merely to be allowed to fight out their own civil battles and order their own civil affairs. They will make mistakes, but probably will profit by them. The day will come when Chinese will no longer be elbowed and hustled by their haughtier Occidental neighbours, but perhaps instead we shall find ourselves entered into no easy international and commercial competition with people whom not so long since we looked down upon as servile and considered fit only to minister to our needs in manual ways. The problems that loom across the threshold of the future of this newly emancipated race, however, surpass in magnitude any that civilisation has hitherto had to encounter. There are clear indications of progress, but they are not yet clear enough. China has to be remade, and those engaged in the project may blunder because of the varied and widely varying patterns they have in stock to choose from.