. The Japanese people are now
much more highly civilized--according to western notions--than they were
half a century ago, but it would be ludicrously erroneous to say that
they are now a higher race, from the evolutionary point of view, than
they were then. Evolution does not work quite so rapidly as that even in
these days of 'hustle.' The Japanese have advanced, not because their
brains have suddenly become larger, or their moral and intellectual
capabilities have all at once made a leap forward, but because their
intercourse with Western nations, after centuries of isolated seclusion,
showed them that certain characteristic features of European
civilization would be of great use in strengthening and enriching their
own country, developing its resources, and giving it the power to resist
aggression. If the Japanese were as members of the _homo sapiens_
inferior to us fifty years ago, they are inferior to us now. If they are
our equals to-day--and the burden of proof certainly now rests on him
who wishes to show that they are not--our knowledge of the origin and
history of Eastern peoples, scanty though it is, should certainly tend
to assure us that the Chinese are our equals, too. There is no valid
reason for supposing that the Chinese people are ethnically inferior to
the Japanese. They have preserved their isolated seclusion longer than
the Japanese, because until very recently it was less urgently necessary
for them to come out of it. They have taken a longer time to appreciate
the value of Western science and certain features of Western
civilization, because new ideas take longer to permeate a very large
country than a small one, and because China was rich within her own
borders of all the necessaries of life."[AU]

And the West, too, must learn that the peace of Europe depends upon the
integrity of China. For the time is coming--not in the lives of any who
read these lines, but coming inevitably--when China will, by her might,
by her immense numbers of trained men, by her developed naval and
military strength, be able to say to the nations of the earth, "There
must be no more war." And she will be strong enough to be able to
enforce it.

As with individuals, so with nations, and a people who are marked by
such rare physical vitality, such remarkable powers of endurance against
great odds, are surely designed for some nobler purpose than merely to
bear with fortitude the ills of life and the misery of starvation