Riots, at Home and Abroad
By L. A. S.
A riot in Shanghai, or Peking, is a vastly different thing in the view of American citizens from a riot in one of their home cities, but when we examine the two side by side, what is there found to justify the outbreak in this country and condemn it in China? What is there which entitles rioting to more favorable consideration in this country than it merits in a foreign land? In The Outlook, some recent articles by George Kennan, the well-known traveler and writer, describing “China in Transition,” set forth very clearly the causes which underlie the existing feeling against alien races in that country. The Chinese have real grievances. There has been direct and wanton and grievous infringement of their personal and political rights by the subjects of foreign powers residing in Chinese territory. In the treatment of Chinese men and women accused of crime there has been clear violation of treaty rights. The Chinese have been subjected to humiliations to which the people of this country would not submit for a moment. From this have come the recent outbreaks of the mob spirit in China. Just now, at home, we have before us the spectacle of a mob taking possession of the city of Springfield, Ohio, overpowering the local officials, and being kept in check only by the presence of armed troops. Two negroes had murdered a white man, and the smoldering fires of race hatred at once blazed into a conflagration. There may be apparent cause for the feeling which has prompted this outbreak in Springfield, but the fact remains that mob violence is no more edifying a spectacle in Ohio than it is in China, and the people of this civilized land have no occasion to cast stones at the heathen inhabitants of Asia. The same savagery is exhibited here as there; for when the mob spirit gets hold of a person, he becomes at once neither Christian nor civilized. The mob spirit brings the people of all countries down upon a common level of savagery. The Bible is right in dividing the people of all lands, of whatever nationality or citizenship, into but two classes—Christian and heathen. L. A. S.