China and Japan

California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 12, 1874

Now that hostilities are impending between those two leading Asiatic Empires, it may not prove uninteresting to review their Military resources and their “solidity,” to use a Gallicism. The Chinese army by the most recent advices, is composed of 678 companies of Mongolian Tartars, 106,000 Chinese cavalry, 500,000 native infantry and 820,000 irregular militia—making a total of over 1,500,000 fighting men. This immense army, with little organization, and less discipline, is spread over eighteen provinces constituting the Chinese Empire. It has to do police duty over 400,000,000 of people in a state of chronic anarchy or of open insurrection. Little is known concerning the revenues of the State. According to an official report, published in 1844, they amount to £63,000,000, or over $300,000,000,000. Of this large sum, however, between the Court expenses at Peking and the peculation of Mandarins and other subaltern officers, there remained but a small fraction at the disposal of the Army College, or what we should style the War Department.

Japan, on the other hand, has only a population of 32,000,000—a mere province, when compared with China. The army musters 78,000 men, all arms including, to wit: Six regiments of foot guards; nineteen line regiments, each 764 men strong; two squadrons of Lancers and four batteries of artillery. The budget places receipts at $51,000,000, and the expenditure at $48,000,000, leaving a surplus of 3,000,000. Japan’s public debt amounts to $64,000,000, of which $7,000,000 is due to foreign capitalists among whom appear Messrs. Hy. Schroeder & Co., of London, for £1,000,000 at nine percent., for railway purposes. The navy consists of nineteen ships of war, under the command of European and American officers.

Although so unequal in point of numbers and extent to the Chinese Empire, Japan is more than a match for the former in intelligence and civilization, in military armament and organization, and in buoyant finances. We have not very far back to travel in the world’s history to find examples of small communities in the condition of Japan facing large and unwieldy empires, routing their armaments and controlling their destinies. Whatever the merits or demerits, the rights or wrongs of the casus belli—the Formosan question—it is beyond the shadow of doubt that Japan is the lever employed by modern civilization to upheave and overthrow a cast-iron barbarism which has for centuries dwarfed and crippled the Chinese intellect, and retarded our intercourse with a vast proportion of the human race. Japan has a mighty future before her if she but espouse the cause of progress in her relations with China. The moral support and active sympathy of the “Outside Barbarians” will not fail her in the hour of need if she battle as the champion of civilization in Eastern Asia.

DUMAS.—Alexander Dumas has recently written a letter as a preface to a work, which had been submitted to him, on “The Return of Christ, an Appeal to Women.” The following passages occur in the letter: “The final triumph of Christ is not a matter of doubt, either to the author or to myself, but I do not believe with him that the triumph and the salvation which will follow will be the work of woman and of Mary. I believe that, were it not for Mary, Christianity would triumph much sooner. It is she that embarrasses Christianity in a legend which, though touching and poetical, is narrow, and better adapted to art than to conscience. I see nothing in her beyond a woman, who, with the characteristic curiosity of her sex, wished water to be changed into wine by Jesus—as Eve wished to make Adam eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge—and to whom Jesus, penetrated by his mission, replies: ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee?’ She shall never be my advocate between my God and myself. * All this, however, will not prevent Catholicism from perishing and Christianity from triumphing.”

ZEALOUS men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.

WHEN men and women think they honor the church by uniting with it, they stand about as close to the edge of perdition as any other sinners do.

The greatest truths are the simplest; and so are the greatest men.

Truth sometimes tastes like medicine, but that is an evidence that we are ill.