The Daily News FRIDAY, JULY 24. THE UNREST OF ASIA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 183, 24 July 1908, Page 2

The Daily News FRIDAY, JULY 24. THE UNREST OF ASIA.

The Western peoples will soon be compelled to revise tbeir ideas ~{ the Ea-t----eru world. For eeiilurics pa.,f they have thought of Asia as a continent 'whose inhabitants are lost in apathetic <piieiude. Now, however, one rarely sees a telegram from any country in Asia which does not record disturbance, sometimes' of the most dangerous kind. The rise of Japan, which within the last century was supposed to be voluntarily isolated from mankind, has shattered the old conception of Asia, and restarted the idea of the "yellow peril" which was thought to be extinguished with Lin- extinction of the Tartar ascendancy in Russia. There is supposed to be a revolution pending in "far Cathav." which Pushkin once described as lying "in dotage buried." Renter records

every day some new symptom of the unrest which is prevaili'm; in India, affecting not her soldiery, as in the .Mutiny, but her whole 'population in their uncountable myriads. In ludo China the French nilicinls are haunted by the possibility of a vast popular insurrection. Jii Afghanistan the warlike clans are evidently pondering on the possibility of a new descent into the Southern peninsula, and may yet compel their nominal sovereign either ui lei them loose, or t.i take their lead in a war to winch the discontented in India are said, on good evidence, to be perpetually inciting him. Due motive, at least, for the completion of the Russian railways to the Fast is believed to be a vague apprehension that the population of the Khanates are throbbing with hope that they may rid themselves of the weight; of the heavv Russian hand. In Persia the people have caught the Western idea of superseding despotism by I an elective Legislature, and may even split up their ancient empire into jarring principalities while in Turkey the initial easte, which for so many centuries has. threatened Eastern Europe, and plundered Western Asia, is protesting that it wants to be. civilised and free of a tyranny at once military and socr- | dotal. No one even expects tranquillity in any corner of Asia, and stntcsni"ii an; surrendering the idea that Europe can either partition Asiatic dominions, or warn the people that, they are expected to be quiescent. They are even holding conferences to devise combined plans for preventing the weapons of the West being imported into States which may intend to use them against the West, perhaps even to extirpate the white man.

The makers of telegrams say that the "mild and submissive'' Hindus are promising I lie most ferocious goddess left among the pagan peoples that in the fullness of time they will oiler up the entire white race as a grand sacrifice at her shrine. Hitherto such an offering has been pronounced by all Hindus unholy, even the Thugs refusing to sac-.-i----lice the .whites on the distinct ground that they are taboo, as unlit for sacilice aVif they were pigs; but now contempt and dislike would seem in a sense to have sauetilied even such abhorrent offerings. There may be much exaggeration in all this, fur it must not be forgotten that the white peoples, who when separated front each other by descent or organisation often fail lo understand each oilier—witness (he relation between the Cellic Irish and the Scotch seem unable In penetrate the cloud which separates linn from I lie brown and vcllow peoples. Hut still II videnee of unrest troublesome unrest- from Tukio to Constantinople cannot be rudely denied. There is unrest, ami the really interesting speculation concerns, not Uic fact which is patent, but its hidden, «r at nil events still obscure, causes. What has thrown so many and such i|iiicseent peoples into an inexplicable fever of agitation (asks the London Spectator) ? Why, for instance, are the Chinese, who are independent, and the Persians, vim are the vainest of mankind, and Ihe Ottomans, who are a dominant race, and must lose their dominance in any great change, all persuading themselves th.a they need and will have radical reforms Y It is as inexplicable as the sudden movement against polygamy which is said to be ull'eeting the entire female world of Islam. Is it really the fa-i that the strength developed b'v reformed •fapau has lifted the depression of centuries from all Asiatics, and excited them to an imitation which must, of course, finally break up the ancient quietude';

The Spectator is unable to answer the question, but can testify that one of the ablest of Anglo-Indian ollicials w,i< startled and bewTTdered by finding that 111 remote villages north of Kashmir, and in the huge valley of'the Rrahmaputri. every Japanese victory was welcomed be an illumination. The fact is often questioned, hm there undoubtedly is a co- ( mity of Asia which is at least as operative as the comity of Europe. Or is if possible that an emotion akin to the one which produced the Crusades, an I. though not so directly eminceted wi'h any religious impulse, still fatal lo quiescence, is sweeping through Asia from Nagasaki to the Jiosphorus. stirring up races which for ages have slept the sleep of content, but are now determined to advance upon some path, mental or physical, which they think open': The idling occurred when the barbarians rose mi Pome, and again when science in its second revival told men that the »un, in spite of the evidence of their eyes, did not rise and set. Doubt came tiien into the world, and all the wor.d was shaken. What the result will lie we know as little as our readers: but of flu's we feel assured, Hint the relations of the continents will be permanently altered, or, it may be more exact to write, the widespread effort to uller that relation will call upon the white men for new exertions, and. above all. for new and more careful meditalion. Thai the white race are the superiors we nil believe lii'mly; but we assume toj readily (hat this superiority is acknowledged, and are at oaee too confused and too presumptuous as to its ultimate reasons, ltellect that liengalis have taken to Anarchism, and that the Chinese are boycotting Japanese for insolence, and doubt for a moment whether we understand the brown races, and whether everything was. settled when we invented wireless telegraphy.