The Daily News. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24. CHINA AND THE NAVY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 142, 24 September 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24. CHINA AND THE NAVY.

China for the last century or two has been eminently peaceful. In the very dim past it was not a bit peaceful. Its people fought like tigers. With the exceptions of the bands of murdering marauders who infest some paints of the great Empire, it is possible that China might have continued to be peaceful for the next two thousand years or so. But aggressive westerners tried hard to civilise a country that had enjoyed a peculiarly advanced civilisation since the remote ages when the ancestors of the westerners paraded in suits of blue paint. In their efforts to push manufactures down the throats of the Chinese, the westerners had occasional .conflicts, a few here and there got murdered for interference, and China began to" "wake up" to the advantages of pushing commerce with sword and making progress' with nine-inch guns. The less intellectual Jaj>s witlh a far greater imitative faculty had already assimilated the methods of the westerners, and it was the Japanese Navy fashioned on the plan of the Mother of Navies, that gave China the idea of also obtaining one. Here, then, at the present time is the commercial world aching to obtain contracts for the 'building of ships that may be used against them. It is - not a question, of maritime catastrophe or the j death of myriads of men, the wiping out of nations', but the question of obtaining contracts. Schwab, of America, boasts ! that he obtained a contract for the building of Chinese Warships by hospitably entertaining a Chinese prince. It , seems to be a fair comment on the Ame- . rican system of doing business that an American man cannot 'ask a stranger to dinner without expecting an order from, him . The opinion is current that China has not up to date possessed a navy because she could not afford one. That is to say, an Empire containing four hundred' million people, many of, whom are individually the richest men in the world, has not as great ability to obtain a navy as the forty millions of Britishers with the small help of the dominions. There is no country under- the sun that can afford to be as independent as China, because she is self-supporting.. She can produce all she needs for the support |of her immense population within her own territory. She has a big export trad? and a small import trade—and ; that means independence. China at present, with the few odds and ends of cruisers and torpedo destroyers, is not considered to be a factor in the water. But China jhas shown definitely by the creation of a Naval Department that she intends to lay down the nucleus of a navy. Last year it was said that China would- begin by securing three cruisers and eight destroyers. This is not a very formidable fleet, and the manufacturing nations do not regard it in the light of a threat but as very good, business? for them.. Prince Tao, with his retinue, was a State emissary, 'his mission, being diplomatic and naval. He was intended to visit all the European naval powers and America in order to gain informatioij and •to give orders for ships. This prijice and his retinue travelled in stale and were received with the greatest honor by all the Powers. It remained for Mr. Schwab —as the cable told us —to buy the, ordei for ships by hospitable treatment of this eminent Chinese and his staff. Although China is vastly rich, we are told that the financial position in regard to the iState Treasury is not sound. The Chinese people appear to be not only awakening to .the necessity; of adopting western methods but to the treatment of internal affaiis. There is, for instance, a very real revolt in progress in the grea't Empire against the reigning dynasty, so that home troubles'might easily militate against the possibility of naval aggression or territorial acquisition, but should China settle its domestic affairs satisfacA torily, and make up its inind to have the mist powerful navy on earthy there is nothing in the way to block the achievement. That China might with as much justice as any other overcrowded country turn her eyes towards new territory is within the bounds of probability. That she has before sent hordes of her people on missions of,.pillage and ruth, is a .matter of history. Japan is ever an object lesson to China, but because of her smallnfess has more need of outside business than the great empire. Whatever happens, the view of the thinking person must not be bounded by the business proposition of building, warships. It is hardly reasonable to view a warship merely as a means of Supplying a foreign firm with contracts. Warships are not made for playthings and when China fights she will fight with the ruthless fatalism that has always distinguished her people. And if China fought with any western nation, it would be only as the result of the commercial interference of nations the Chinese still hate and class as "foreign devils."