New Forces in Old China | Page 6

arose to rule not only over the northeastern part of Africa,
but over half of Arabia and all of the preceding territory of Chaldea.
Assyria followed, stretching from the Black Sea nearly half-way down
the Persian Gulf and from the Mediterranean to the eastern boundary of
modern Persia. Babylon, too, was once a world power whose monarch
sat
``High on a throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth of
Ormus or of Ind.''[1]
[1] Milton, ``Paradise Lost,'' Book II.
Persia was mightier still. Two thousand years before America was
heard of, while France and Germany, England and Spain, were savage
wildernesses, Persia was the abode of civilization and culture, of
learning and eloquence. Her empire extended from the Indus to the
Danube and from the Oxus to the Nile, embracing twenty satrapies
each one of whose governors was well-nigh a king. Alexander the
Great, too, at the head of his invincible army, swept over vast areas of
Asia, capturing cities, unseating rulers, and bringing well-nigh all the
civilized world under his dominion. And was not Rome also an Asiatic
power, for it stretched not only from the firths of Scotland on the north
to the deserts of Africa on the south, but from the Atlantic Ocean on the
west to the River Euphrates on the east.
Altogether it is a majestic but awful procession, overwhelming us by its
grandeur and yet no less by its horror. It is a kaleidoscope on a colossal
scale, whose pieces appear like fragments of a broken universe.
Empires rise and fall. Thrones are erected and overturned. The
mightiest creations of man vanish. Yea, they have all waxed ``old as
doth a garment,'' and ``as a vesture'' are they ``changed.''
But were these ancient nations the last of Asia? Has that mighty
continent nothing more to contribute to the world than the memories of
a mighty past? It is impossible to believe that this is all. The historic
review gives a momentum which the mind cannot easily overcome. As
we look towards the Far East, we can plainly see that the evolution is

incomplete. Whatever purpose the Creator had in mind has certainly
not yet been accomplished. More than two-thirds of those innumerable
myriads have as yet never heard of those high ideals of life and destiny
which God Himself revealed to men. It is incredible that a wise God
should have made such a large part of the world only to arrest its
development at its present unfinished stage, inconceivable that He
should have made and preserved so large a part of the human race for
no other and higher purpose than has yet been achieved.
Within this generation, a new Asiatic power has suddenly appeared in a
part of Asia far removed from the region in which the wise men of old
lived and studied, and the might of that nation is even now checking the
progress of huge and haughty Russia. But brilliant as has been the
meteoric career of Japan, there is another race in Asia, which, though
now moving more sluggishly, has possibilities of development that may
in time make it a dominant factor in the future of the world. Great
forces are now operating on that race and it is the purpose of this book
to give some account of those forces and to indicate the stupendous
transformation which they are slowly but surely producing.
The magnitude of China is almost overwhelming. In spite of all that I
had read, I was amazed by what I saw. To say that the Empire has an
area of 4,218,401 square miles is almost like saying that it is
255,000,000,000 miles to the North Star; the statement conveys no
intelligible idea. The mind is only confused by such enormous figures.
But it may help us to remember that China is one-third larger than all
Europe, and that if the United States and Alaska could be laid upon
China there would be room left for several Great Britains. Extending
from the fifty-fourth parallel of latitude southward to the eighteenth,
the Empire has every variety of climate from arctic cold to tropic heat.
It is a land of vast forests, of fertile soil, of rich minerals, of navigable
rivers. The very fact that it has so long sustained such a vast population
suggests the richness of its resources. There are said to be 600,000,000
acres of arable soil, and so thriftily is it cultivated that many parts of
the Empire are almost continuous gardens and fields. Four hundred and
nineteen thousand square miles are believed to be underlaid with coal.
Baron von Richthofen thinks that 600,000,000,000 tons of it are

anthracite, and that the single Province of Shen-si could supply the
entire world for a thousand years. When we add to this supply of