N XV RENEWED AGGRESSIONS OT content with innumerable aggressions and ex torted treaty concessions, Western nations boldly discussed the dismemberment of China as certain to come, and authors and journalists disputed as to which country should possess the richest parts of the Empire whose impotence to defend itself was taken for granted. Chinese ministers in Europe and America reported these discussions to their superiors in Peking. The English papers in China republished some of the articles and added many effective ones of their own, so that speedily all the better-informed Chinese came to know that foreigners regarded China as "the carcass of the East." Nor was all this talk empty boasting. China saw that France was absorbing Siam and had designs on Syria; that Britain was already lord of India and Egypt and the Straits Settlements; that Germany was pressing her claims in Asiatic Turkey; that Russia had absorbed Siberia and was striving to obtain control of Palestine, Persia and Korea; and that Italy was trying to take Abyssinia. Moreover the Chinese perceived that of the numerous islands of the world, France had the Loyalty, Society, Marquesas, New Hebrides and New Caledonia groups, and claimed the Taumotu or Low Archipelago; that Great Britain had the Fiji, Cook, Gilbert, Ellice, Phoenix, Tokelan and New Zealand groups, with northern Borneo, Tasmania, and the whole of continental Australia, besides a large assortment of miscellaneous islands scattered over the world wherever they would do the most good; that Germany possessed the Marshall group and Northeast New Guinea, and divided with England the Solomons; that Spain had the Ladrones, the 652 islands of the Carolines, the 1,725 more or less of the Philippines, beside some enormously valuable holdings in the West Indies; that the Dutch absolutely ruled Java, Sumatra, the greater part of Borneo, all of Celebes and the hundreds of islands eastward to New Guinea, half of which was under the Dutch flag; that the new world power on the American continent took the Hawaiian Islands and in two swift campaigns drove Spain out of the West Indies and the Philippines, not to return them to their inhabitants but to keep them herself; and that in the Samoan and Friendly Islands, resident foreigners owned about everything worth having and left to the native chiefs only what the foreigners did not want or could not agree upon. As for mighty Africa, the Berlin Conference of 1884 was the signal for a game of grab on so colossal a scale that to-day out of Africa's 11,980,000 square miles, France owns 3,074,000, Great Britain 2,818,000, Turkey 1,672,000, Belgium 900,000, Portugal 834,000, Germany 864,000, Italy 596,000, and Spain 263,000,-a total of 10,980,000, or ten-elevenths of the whole continent, and doubtless the Powers will take the remaining eleventh whenever they feel like it. Well does the Rev. Dr. James Stewart call this "the most stupendous and unparalleled partition of the earth's surface ever known in the world's history. . . . The vast area was partitioned, annexed, appropriated, or converted into 'spheres of influence,' or 'spheres of interest'; whatever may be the exact words we may use, the result is the same. Coast lands and hinterlands all went in this great appropriation, and mild is the term for the deed." 1 "Gobbling the globe," this process has been forcefully if inelegantly termed. No wonder that the white race has been bitterly described as "the most arrogant and rapacious, the most exclusive and intolerant race in history." We can understand, therefore, the alarm of the Chinese as they saw the greedy foreigners descend upon their own shores 1" Dawn in the Dark Continent," pp. 17, 18. |