Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 March 1901 — Sir Robert Hart’s Warning. [ARTICLE]

Sir Robert Hart’s Warning.

When Sir Robert Hart speaks on the Chinese question the world does well to listen. In the Fortnightly Review for last November he directed attention to the fact that China In Arms would be a great power some day. In a second article, which appeared in the January number, he urged care in settling the present question so that the China of the future might have something to thank us for and not tp avenge. In his article in the Fehruary number, on “China and Non-China,” he gives a most warning to the powers. Many white say that it is impossible to understand the Chinese or the motives mflst likely to control them. Sir Robert believes that a little earnest effort to put ourselves in their place would show us the error of this view. They are not so inhuman, after all. The Boxers and the special advisers of the empress were plainly enough unreasonable in presuming to settle their troubles with the foreigners with gun and sword. But how much more reasonable is it for the powers to go on overriding, robbing, insulting, trifling with the four hundred million Chinese, discriminating against them in all international ways, regarding with contempt the historic Chinese aversion to war, presuming upon their everlasting meekness, sowing the seeds of vengeance and treasuring up wrath against some day of wrath when the Celestials may be forced to learn as much about fighting as the white men knows.—Ex.