Excerpt from The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 48: A Monthly Review; July-December, 1900 England has been for fifty years the paramount Power in China. By the vast preponderance of her trade, the numbers of her nationals living and trading there, her experience of the East, her supply of capable administrators, her unquestioned command Of the sea highway thither, the position Of leader has naturally fallen to her among the nations. How she has acquitted herself Of this responsible and proud task is sufliciently shown by the facts of the situation to-day as summarised above. The humiliation, the loss, the possible horrors, lie chiefly at the door of England. Her paramountcy is gone for ever, beyond the faintest possibility of retrieval. That the openings for her trade will be largely curtailed is also no longer a matter Of doubt. Our statesmen have been lamentably and conspicuously wanting in the energy necessary to the performance of their task, and as the most important problems have arisen during Lord Salisbury's present Government, it is the Cabinet of to-day that has done, or left undone, most to bring this injury upon the nation. Since Lord Salisbury has been in oflice there have been several occasions when an intelligent appreciation of affairs, backed by bold and straightforward action, would have preserved the integrity of China, kept for all nations alike the huge actualities and greater potentialities of her trade, and postponed indefinitely, if not for ever, the dangers Of a war over her partition. The ability of England to do this thing was far greater than that Of any other country, for the simple reason that the world realises that we are by fixed policy a free-tradin g nation, and that our Object is to maintain Open markets for all. The United States and Japan, with possibly Germany as well, would have supported us in diplo matic action directed to this end - indeed, when it became evident that nothing was to be expected from Lord Salisbury, the United States Government took the matter up and secured assurances of definite adherence to the open door from every nation except Russia, whose reply was characteristically vague and unsatisfactory. But this was too late to prevent the absorption of Manchuria by a Power whose fixed policy is the prohibition of foreign trade, whereas there was plenty of time, after the intentions Of Russia were plain to all the world, to secure a general declaration of open trade policy for all China for ever, which no Power could have subsequently abrogated except by force of arms. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.