網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

China the foreign trade is less than four shillings per head, and were China to have a trade amounting to half a sovereign for every person, like Korea, the grand total would amount to over £200,000,000, making China the fifth greatest trading country of the world. It is only such comparisons which allow one to understand the prime necessity of retaining the present impartial and absolutely honest Customs administrations of China and Korea, both of which are largely modelled on the English Civil Service, and both of which have had such able chiefs in the past.

Great Britain in Korea is represented, therefore, by an import trade of a million sterling per annum ; a Customs Service under the absolute control of an Englishman, Mr. McLeavy Brown, has definite interests in the welfare of the country; whilst Chinese traders to the number of several thousands from the treaty ports of Tientsien, Chefoo, Shanghai, and Canton, all opened and developed by Englishmen, may be counted as an Anglo-Chinese asset in the country, in the absence of British merchants being responsible for the selling of British products. It behoves us to preserve those interests at all costs. An excellent and capable Minister in the person of Sir John Jordan watches Jordan watches over those interests and is fully alive to the necessity of protecting them by every means within his power. The principle is accepted by the Japanese that the Korean Customs Service must remain what it is at present, i.e. a service controlled by an Englishman. In this connection it is necessary to draw special

attention to the great services rendered by such Englishmen not only to England, but to the AngloSaxon traditions of fair-play, impartiality, and personal integrity. With an absolutely free hand to do just as he may please, the Chief Commissioner has devoted all his energies to accumulating handsome reserves in his Customs coffers to provide against the rainy days which so constantly threaten Korea. From the funds he has in hand he is in a position to discharge all the outstanding obligations incurred by the Korean Government without proper approval or sanction. From these reserves an efficient lighthouse and harbour system is already being inaugurated, and within three or four years Korea may be as well off in this respect as China. The Chief Commissioner, of extraordinary toughness, although upwards of sixty years of age, is counted the best-informed and best-read man in the Far East. For a number of years, long before the days of Times editions, his sole recreation was many hours' reading a day of the Encyclopædia Britannica. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is no subject in the world on which he is not able to give a complete summary, and it is this knowledge which has rendered his position impregnable. Being possessed of considerable personal means, he showed his zeal during a period of monetary stringency some years ago by dispensing with his own salary in order to accumulate a special fund. Such singlehearted devotion to an Eastern country is only shown by Englishmen.

But although Mr. McLeavy Brown is willing to do so much for Korea, he has no two opinions of what is good for Koreans when they wish to become foolish. Being fearless to an extraordinary degree, his walking stick, rapidly wielded, has quelled Korean crowds at the risk of his life; and it was this British official who disarmed the Korean troops in Seoul before the outbreak of war by removing the guns and ammunition to a safe place, thus avoiding any possibility of a collision between Kuroki's force and the native levies. Simple ignorance cannot be responsible for the fact that the British Government has only rewarded the Chief Commissioner for his services by conferring on him a Companionship of St. Michael and St. George-a decoration which, however honourable, is also conferred on Government pilots in the Far East. The British fleet has hastily steamed to Korea more than once to prevent a Korean coup d'état unseating the worthy Chief Commissioner, and therefore the British Foreign Office must admit that, unless another "retreat" is contemplated, it is high time this remote corner of the world should be remembered.

Such is the exact position of the various foreign Powers in Korea to-day. Whilst Russian, French and German, Italian and Belgian interests are of the most trifling character, those of England and America are most certainly worth preserving at all costs. It is quite certain that the Washington State Department in the present strong hands will know

how to safeguard, no matter what may be the result of the war, the rights already acquired by Americans in Korea. Can one be so certain of His

Majesty's Government? To any student of Far Eastern affairs there can be no such assurance; for the present ruinous conflict is nothing more than the direct outcome of the policy of effacement and actual retreat which has dominated Downing Street for ten long years. Whilst there is so much talk about the necessity of consolidating the interests of the component parts of the British Empire, it should not be lost sight of that in the past it has been the wilful neglect of the outposts of empire living in lonely places the neglect of their advice and their advancement-which has brought so many complications in late years. The time is rapidly approaching when the fact will have to be recognised that where there are honest men, those men must be supported or our decline will come; and that it is not only those who are sitting in the very centre who contribute most towards maintaining the traditions and prestige of an empire on which the

sun never sets.

CHAPTER XXIV

JAPAN IN KOREA

So many suppose that Japan in Korea is a modern development--at least a mere matter of decades-that it may come as a surprise to some to learn that the events of 1904, the invasion of Korea, are an almost exact duplication of what occurred in the third century of the Christian era, not to speak of the famous Hideyoshi expedition of the sixteenth century.

In the third century it was a mythical Empress bearing the appropriate name of Jingo who invaded Korea for the first time, and received a submission which endured more or less for eleven centuries. It was only at the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth, when the Chinese Mings, at the zenith of their power, assisted a new Korean dynasty to establish itself firmly on the Korean throne and busied themselves consolidating that power by building city walls, fortified positions, and other aids to supremacy that the respect of the Hermit Kingdom for Japan, established so

« 上一頁繼續 »