Selected Articles on Non-Resistance

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916. Excerpt: ... AFFIRMATIVE DISCUSSION CHINA, FOR INSTANCE1 Perhaps a few words on China may not be out of order. That country constitutes a several-thousand-years-long argument for non-resistance. If those who clamor for a big army and navy as the only means of guaranteeing the safety of a nation will not listen to reason, perhaps they will look at so tremendous a fact as China. It is the oldest, or one of the oldest, countries on earth. It has been longest in continuous independence and self-government. And it has never fought back. Minister Wu, while representing China in the United States, said (I follow Mr. A. W. Wright's pamphlet on War's Folly and Futility) that China was for forty-five centuries without a soldier. We may look down upon the civilization of the Chinese; such is the ingrained egotism of the white race; but the basis of our contempt seems to be that the Chinese are lacking in the military virtues; that is, they are not sea robbers like the Anglo-Saxons, conceited Nietzscheans like the Germans, or wild Chauvinists like the French. All they want is to work and mind their own business. Nevertheless they have a civilization that seems to suit them. And the point is that while the empires of Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon rose, burst like a rocket, and fell, these orientals have persisted. The war empires of Europe, such as Spain, have rotted and dropped. China is doing business at the old stand. China has been attacked and invaded. Their enemies have perished. Those people that would not fight have lived on. By various hostile nations China has suffered some, but she never had to bear the infinitely greater suffering which mili 1 From War and World Government, p. 105-7, by Frank Crane. Copyright, 1915, by John Lane Company and reprinted here by ...