466 The National Geographic Magazine 



purpose, is the Grand Canal, which at 

 one period stretched from its capital, 

 Pekin, to its commercial metropolis, 

 Canton, reaching through the entire 

 extent of its most populous territory. 

 Today, because the modern improve- 

 ments in hydraulics have not been 

 availed of and steam navigation is a 

 successful competitor, this great work 

 has fallen much into disuse, but up to 

 the date of its construction it was the 

 greatest public commercial work ever 

 undertaken, and its completion and 

 maintenance for many centuries are a 

 striking evidence of the skill and enter- 

 prise of this people. 



It adds greatly to the merit of the 

 race for these attainments in literature, 

 philosophy, invention, the arts and in- 

 dustries, when it is remembered that 

 for the greater part of its existence as 

 a nation it has maintained a complete 

 isolation from the outside world, shut 

 up by the ocean, the mountains, the 

 deserts, and their own exclusiveness, 

 and that these achievements in human 

 progress were evolved from within the 

 nation itself. 



We look upon China, and justly so, 

 as perversely conservative and strangely 

 wedded to the past ; but such has not 

 always been its history. Up to a thou- 

 sand years ago (and it then looked back 

 upon a written history of three thou- 

 sand years) it could truly claim to be 

 the most progressive nation of the world. 

 It has passed through great changes and 

 wrought some beneficent reforms. The 

 monarchy, first elective, has become 

 centralized and hereditary. The feudal 

 system grew into an intrenched institu- 

 tion, and about 200 B. C. its abuses 

 caused a terrible struggle which re- 

 sulted in its complete overthrow. Two 

 thousand years ago the educational 

 competitive system for office-holding 

 was inaugurated, and this brought into 

 politics a democratic element which 

 practically abolished the hereditary no- 

 bility. A marked change occurred in 



the religious views of the Chinese early 

 in the Christian era by the introduction 

 of Buddhism from India. These facts 

 show that profound changes have been 

 experienced in the nation, and that the 

 race has accepted them without se- 

 riously affecting its virility or homoge- 

 neity. 



Why is it, then, that we see such 

 helplessness, such utter incapacity to 

 meet the emergencies which compass 

 this nation of unparalleled attainments 

 in the past — this homogeneous, inde- 

 structible, and multitudinous people? 

 Its causes are not far to seek. They 

 may be briefly generalized as, first, blind 

 conservatism, and, second, the low grade 

 of public and social morality. The rec- 

 ord, which I have so hurriedly summa- 

 rized, of national achievement has made 

 the ruling classes intensely proud of 

 their country and their race. Theirs is 

 the Middle Kingdom, and all the other 

 nations of the earth have been regarded 

 as mere outlying provinces or dependen- 

 cies. Well into the nineteenth century 

 all embassies from foreign nations which 

 sought intercourse with its rulers were 

 treated as belonging to suzerain states. 

 Their government was to them the per- 

 fection of many centuries of experience. 

 Their learning was the concentrated 

 wisdom of the greatest sages and schol- 

 ars of past ages. They needed no com- 

 mercial intercourse with the outside 

 world, for had they not grown to be the 

 most numerous and most contented of 

 all peoples by a policy of non-inter- 

 course ? While they believed in the arts 

 of peace and depreciated the soldier, by 

 their military system the empire had 

 withstood the assaults of its enemies and 

 was apparently impregnable. 



This confidence in their military 

 strength was greatly shaken by the 

 British and French wars in the middle 

 half of the present century, and some 

 pretense of organizing an army and navy 

 was undertaken. About the time that 

 Japan entered so energetically upon a 



