A STRIKING ARTICLE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8392, 9 April 1907, Page 4

A STRIKING ARTICLE.

In the American Forum, a writer named Mohammad Barakatullah, contributes an article on the rehabilitation of China, which is a sign of the times. It bears witness to the awakening of China and to the resentment which foreign aggression has aroused. China neither needs imports nor exports, the writer states, and can do without foreign intercourse. The Chinese have the best food in the world, rice; the best drink, tea; and the best clothing, cotton, silk and fur; and possessing these staples and their innumerable native adjuncts, they do not need to buy a cent's worth elsewhere. Their Empire is in itself so great, and they themselves so numerous, that sales to each other make an enormous and sufficient trade, and export to foreign countries is unnecessary. The most striking passage of the article, however, is its close: "Let those who still preach the gospel of force hear what John Chinaman says, and which, in the opinion of this writer, is soon to be realised: 'Yes,/it is we who do not accept it that practise the Gospel of Peace; it is you who accept it that trample it underfoot, and—irony of ironies!— it is the nations of Christendom who have come to us to teach us by sword and fire that the Right in this world is powerless unless it is supported by Might. Oh, do not doubt that we shall leam the lesson. And woe to Europe when we have acquired it. You are arming a nation of 400,000,000—a nation which, until you came, had no better wish than to live at peace with itself and all the world. In the name of Christ you have sounded the call to arms; in the name of Confucius we- respond.' "