ence to railway administration that was the operating factor in starting off the revolution in Szechuan. Dr. Sun Yat Sen is now devoting all his time to the promotion of railways. Doubtless there will be within a reasonably short period tremendous development of railways in China and they in turn will have a tremendous welding effect upon the country. It is necessary that within her borders there should be developed well equipped technical schools in which the Chinese may be taught the arts and sciences necessary for the construction and maintenance of railways and other works.

There is hardly time to refer in detail to the development of the postal system or telegraph lines in China, except to point out the tremendous success with which the postal system has been developed in that full-fledged post offices with the various departments are in operation all over the country and that a letter can be sent anywhere for the sum of 1 cent of our money, and that within a radius of about 60 miles from Canton for instance, it may be sent for onequarter of an American penny.

Telegraph lines connect all provincial capitals with Peking and this system is being extended. It is not thoroughly understood as yet by all the people just how these things work and I am reminded of two instances which have come under my own observation to illustrate this.

An old man in Shantung hearing of the function of the line of wire that ran across his fields declared that men who could devise such a method for the transmission of intelligence could do anything; wherefore one of his neighbors remarked that he did not think much of it, for he himself had sat for two weeks watching that line very closely and had not yet seen anything go by.

The other instance was of Hunan carrying coolies tossing their worn-out straw sandals on the telegraph lines to secure for themselves a fleetness of foot equal to the speed of the electric message.

The telegraph and the postal system have already, in combination with the development of the public press in China, done a great deal toward unifying the people and may

confidently be counted on for a much larger effect in the future and this combined with more adequate railway facilities will surely foster a greater feeling of nationhood and of closeness of relationship between the various provinces.

We have seen something of the various physical problems which China faces. It is significant that the greatest physical feat of the ancient Chinese, the Great Wall, which was executed to shut out foreign intruders, has been broken down in all essential respects, and China is today fairly ready for foreign assistance in solving her problems, if it be friendly and not predatory.

The solution of Chinese physical problems largely depends on education; the education of the people to furnish the background of general enlightenment and the education of the native leaders upon whom must rest the responsibility for carrying out in detail such plans as may be formed for the alleviation of the conditions I have referred to. In order to determine just what remedial methods should be followed, there should be first a thorough study of present conditions by the best consulting engineers and scientists who can be secured. There is at the present time, it seem to me, a most important function for foreign experts to fill in connection with the development of China, and their work is a necessary preliminary and hence it is all important that China seek and use the assistance of such men, although it is also true that her need for such assistance will be temporary, and the application of the remedies, which they in their wisdom suggest after a study of the field, will still depend upon native talent.

The new national flag of China embodies, I believe, some significant lessons in the present connection. The sewing together of five stripes of silk to form one flag is easy, but to make a united nation of five peoples so widely separated, linguistically and geographically, in a country so greatly accidented by mountains, and so harassed by flood and famine, and so lacking the ways of quick transport and general modern education which must precede the development of resources and of ways of communication, requiring native captains of industry and native leaders of all sorts-a very

much greater task. It is just here that one of the functions of our mission colleges in China comes in-to train these leaders in situ, without loss of connection with China; for they need to know China as well as Western science and institutions and methods. They need to be qualified and unselfish, then the five points of the compass assumed by the Chinese may be rightly adopted-for the north, east, south and west will then all be centered around the common pole of service to China, and from the provinces to Peking and from Peking to the most distant provinces, the people will be united in an efficient, peaceful and helpful state, at least within the boundaries left them by their at present more powerful and predatory neighbors.

THE MANCHU CONQUEST OF CHINA

By F. W. Williams, Assistant Professor of Modern Oriental History, Yale University

The expulsion of the Tartar dynasty which ruled China for two centuries and a half has excited the sympathetic approval of the civilized world. That dynasty had been tried in the balance and found wanting; under its rule the largest and potentially the richest homogenous empire in the world had been reduced to impotence by foreign powers, its resources neglected, its people mistreated. A summary of their shortcomings does not, however, set forth the meaning of the Manchu conquest of China, or explain the remarkable nature of their achievement. To estimate their place in history fairly it is necessary to review the course of that conquest and consider its effect upon the welfare of the people whom the Manchus inadvertently rescued from a condition bordering upon anarchy. A brief account of the conquest and settlement of this northern race is all that this paper contemplates. The expansion of China under their rule, and the revived prestige of a mighty nation acquired from the exercise of a higher sense of racial control than the Chinese themselves were capable of, are subjects belonging to another chapter of this story. The decadence of the Manchus-apparently an inevitable result of their contact with a higher culture-should not blind us to the extraordinary success of their great performance.

Nurhachu, the founder of the high fortune of this clan, was born in 1559 in Hutuala, the capital of a small principality among the Great White Mountains, north of the Korean border. Here his ancestors of the Aisin Gioro (Golden Dynasty) had ruled for two centuries from the time of their founders, one of the "Kings" of the Nüjen Tartars. The relationship of these peoples to the Kin and other Tartar conquerors of northern China in the Sung

period is somewhat obscure, but they belong to the same race that had been driven from China by the Mongols in the thirteenth century and relapsed more or less into barbarism in the wooded mountains between the Yalu and Sungari Rivers. China under the Mings had been fairly successful in holding them to the east of the Liao Valley while protecting her own settlers in Laiotung by garrisons in a line of border fortresses, but this fertile region was often harassed by bands of Tartar robbers. It was in pursuance of the characteristic policy of setting these predatory gangs upon one another that the empire finally engendered the genius of one of the great fighting chiefs of Asiatic history and ultimately brought about its conquest by his successors.

A khan of one of these tiny septs secured the help of the Chinese frontier guard in laying siege to a town ruled by a man who had married the granddaughter of Hüen, chieftain of Hutuala, Nurhachu's grandfather. The old man hastened with his son and heir to assist the princess, but being decoyed outside of the walls by a ruse of the Chinese captain, both were slain together with most of the garrison. Nurhachu thus became the head of his house at the age of twenty-four. The Chinese officer appears to have exceeded his instructions by embroiling the Bai, or Imperial Frontier Count, in the murder of these clansmen, and Nurhachu received the bodies of his father and grandsire as well as presents of considerable value, together with investiture in his chieftainship and the title of Tu tuh-the same as that now given to the military governors of the provinces. Instead, however, of surrendering the murderer of his father the Chinese made him lord of all the Manchu clans, which placed the young chief in a position of extreme danger and caused him to devote his energies to attacking his enemy and revenging himself upon the treacherous Chinese. Three years later, by drilling and improving his forces, he had so strengthened his position that the Chinese thought it wise to deliver up his enemy Nikan for execution, and to make a treaty that opened better trading facilities to his people. Next year, in 1587, he built Laocheng