The Daily News. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1911. WHAT THE ORIENT CAN TEACH US.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 91, 7 October 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1911. WHAT THE ORIENT CAN TEACH US.

Mr. Clarence Poe recently made a Jong tour throughout the' Far East, to discover what the Orient had to teach the Occident. He tells his impressions in an interesting article in the World's Work, of America. "Now that I come to summarise the lessons / growing out of my investigations," he writes, "1 find them embraced in a single word, Conservation—the conservation not only of natural resources, but of racial strength and power, of industrial productiveness, of commercial opportunities, and of the finer things of the spirit. The lesson begins with the conservation of natural resources. Hardly anything that 1 saw on my whole trip burned itself more deeply into my memory than the heavy penalty that the Celestial Empire is now paying for the neglect of her forests in former years. In the country north of Pekin I found river valley after river valley—once rich and productive, but now become an. abomination of desolationcovered with countless tons of sand and stone brought dowu from the treeless mountain-sides. So long as these slopes were forest clad, the decaying leaves and humus gave a sponge-like character to the soil upon them, and it gave out the water gradually to the streams below. Now, however, the peaks are in most cases only enormous rock-pikes, the erosion having laid waste the 1 country* round about; or else they are mixtures of rock and earth, rent by gorges through which furious torrents rush down immediately after each rainfall, submerging once fruitful plains with rock and infertile gully-dirt. Where the thrifty, pig-tailed Chinese peasant, once cultivated broad and level fields in such river valleys, he is now able to rescue only a few half-hearted patches by piling the rock in heaps and saving a few intervening arable remnants from the general soil-wreck. Japan, Corea and India the whole Orient, in fact—bear witness to the importance of the forestry, messages which Gifford Pinehot has been drumming into our more or less unheeding ears for a decade past. When I reached Yokohama T found it impossible to get into the northern part of the island of Hondo because of the flood-damage to the railroads. The lives of several friends of mine had been endangered in the same disaster. The dams of bamboobound rocks that T found men building near Nikko by way of remedy may not amount to much ; but there is hope in the general programme for re-foresting the desolated areas, which I found the Japanese Department of Agriculture and Commerce actively carrying out. Yet another kind of conservation to which our people in Occidental lauds need to give more earnest heed is the conservation of the individual wealth of the people. Take an old Japanese sage like Baron Shibusawa, who, like Count. Okuma, it seems, might well have been one of Plutarch's men, and you are not surprised to hear him mention the extravagance of Americans as the thing that impressed him more than anything else in travelling in our country. 'To spend so much money on making a mere railroad

station palatial, as .you have done in "Washington, for example, seems ) to me to be uneconomic,' he de- ] elared. What most impressed him, > be it remembered, and other Ori-i ental critics with whom I talked, | was the wastefulness of expenditure not for genuine comforts, but for fashion and display—the vagaries, for example, of idle-rich women who will pay any price for half-green strawberries in January, but are hunting some other .exotic, diet when the berries get deliciously ripe in May, and who rave over an American Beauty rose in December, but have no eyes for the full-grown glory of the open-air roses in June. It is such unnatural display that most grates against the 'moral duty of simplicity of life,' as the Eastern sages bave taught it. The importance of saving the wealth of nations from the wastes of war and the wastes of excessive military expenditure is another lesson that one brings home from a study of conditions abroad. 'The world is going to be one before you die, ■ sir,' said Dr. Timothy Richard, one of the most distinguished' Englishmen in China' as we talked together just outside the walls of the Forbidden City. '"We are living in the days of anarchy. Unite the ten leading nations; let all their armaments be united into one to enforce the decrees of the Supreme Court of the "World. And since it will then be the refusal of recalcitrant nations to accept arbitration that will make necessary the maintenance of any very large armaments by these united nations, let them protect themselves ■ | by levying discriminating tariff; duties against the countries that would perpetuate present condi- ! tions.' The necessity of preserving the national wealth from the wastes of war I regard as one of the most important lessons that we may get from the Orient. Even > more important, whether we consider it from the standpoint of the j general welfare or as a matter of national defence, is the conservation of our physical stamina and racial strength. Whether the J wars of the future are commercial I or military it doesn't matter: the | prizes will go to the people who | are strong of body and clear of j mind. And just -here we may question whether the growth of wealth and luxury in the United States is not tending, as it tended in all other nations, towards phy-' sical softness and deterioration. It may be argued on the contrary that while a few Occidental child- | yen are luxury-weakened, a great ■ body of Oriental children are drudgery weakened. But is there not much'more reason to fear that in our ease there is really decay at both ends of. our social system—with the pampered rich! children who haven't work enough, and with the hard-driven poor who have too much? The overtaking of the very young is certainly a serious evil in America as well as in Asia; and even in this matter the Eastern folkare perhaps doing as well, according to their lights, as we are. In China manufacturing is not yet extensive enough for the problem to be serious; but in both Japan and India I found the Government councils thoroughly alive to the importance of conserving childlife, and grappling with different measures for the protection .of both child and women workers."

YVHEUK ASIA, IS BEHIND. While the white races double in eighty years, the yellow or brown double in sixty, and the black in forty. This last consideration leads us very naturally to enquire: What are the qua'i ties that have given the white nee leadership thus far? And what may we do for the conservation of these qunliJiis? Km- one thing, there is the tonic jir of democratic ideals in which long general ions of white men have lived and developed,, as contrasted with the sliding absolutism of the East. There is al»o our emphasis upon the worth of the individual, our conception of the sacredncss of personalty, as compared with the Oriental lack of concern for the individual in the supreme regard for tin* family and the state. And even more important perhaps is the fact that the while innir has had a religion that has taught—even if somewhat confusedly at times—that '■' man is man and master of his fate," that he is not a plaything of fate, but a responsible sou of God with enormous possibilities for good or evil, whereas the Oriental has been the victim of a benumbling fatalism that has made him indifferent in industry and achievement, even though it has given him greater recklessness in war. These things are indeed basic and fundamental, and the question of their conservatism, the preservation' of the ideals of the Occident as compared with those of the Orient, is supremelv important not only to us as a nation but to all our human race. We must find the real cause of Asia's poverty, in the opinion of Mr. foe, in just two things: the failure of the Asiatic Governments to educate their people, and the failure of the people to increase their productive capacity by the use of machinery. He points out that in China only I per cent, of the people can now read and write, and the highest hope of the Government is that a per cent, may be literate liy 1017. In India only -5 per cent, can read and write. In Japan, for centuries past, the education of the common man has also been neglected, and although Japan is now compelling every child to go into the schools—an enforcement that will doubtless revolutionise, its industrial system—we are concerned only with conditions as they exist at present. "And this general study can lead to but one conclusion." says Mr. roe: "that ignorance and lack of machinery are responsible for Asia's poverty: that knowledge and modern tools are responsible for America's prosper- j ity.''

of'the people are unthinking in all countries. One man may cause a nation to think, may make it war, may make it monarchist or republican, may make it eminent, or may make it utterly insignificant. Tims Portugal—royal ancient I Portugal—was and is peopled by a proud | and ignorant race, who would have been content to drousc along in poverty and under misrule but for the leadership of bright minds. It probably meant nothing to the peasants that Manuel had an intrigue with an actress, or that he squandered money. They conceived no other form of government than >a corrupt monarchy and an avaricious, cruel aristocracy. But men like Don Arriaga "made them wise." Just as a great man may depose a king, so might a great man send him back to his throne to the accompaniment of the cheers of the people who are the tools of the great men. -Manuel of Portugal is not a great man, but he has been a king. It is conceivable that he has the necessary brains to make adequate plans for his triumphal return, to Lisbon as monarch of the ancient country. The church has suffered much at the hands of the new republic, and the power of its brains is at the service of the ex-King. If the people of Portugal can bo persuaded by their eminent men that monarchy will give them more bread and meat, greater freedom, less taxation, and so on, the republicans must fall. It in merely a war of wits between rival leaders, and by no means n truly national affair. A curious phase is that Britain has recognised the re-public-while she gives sanctuary and hospital to its ex-King and its ex-Queen Dowager. It is also ' entirely obvious that the monarchist cause is being helped in England—a remarkable, but not unprecedented event. The monarchists, after the manner of incensed aristocrats, are at present making demonstrations against republican authority, but they cannot achieve their end or get Manuel his throne again unless their leadership is as potent as the leadership of the republicans. ■ It is most probably that should an attempt be made to reinstate Manuel a civil war of a virulent type will take place.