Out in China!

By: Little, Archibald

THE question propounded above will be found in Mrs. Little's admirable book, as the heading of her ninth chapter, and is one that is likely to remain for some time unanswered, for the reason, perhaps, that what is everybody's business is in reality no one's business. Great Britain cares nothing about China, save when it shows signs of becoming lost to us as a market, and latterly we have been too busy elsewhere to pay much attention to it even in that respect. The other Powers are interesting themselves to a slight extent in China's fate, but only in proportion as they are jealous of one another's advance. No serious consideration is given to the question of China's future, mainly because, as it would seem, so few people are able to form any conception of what will be the outcome of existing complications. As Mrs. Little aptly expresses it, through the medium of one of her most cleverly drawn characters-for be it understood that Out in China is an up-to-date novel-when you go to "such a. dreadful big country you ought to be prepared for there being always trouble somewhere or other. One comfort is, it is a long way off." And the conclusion she arrives at, on her penultimate page, is that men out in China have given up hoping for anything now. "Since the summer of 1900 they do not even grumble, and when Englishmen have given up grumbling you may know that they are hopeless indeed."The foregoing quotations will suffice to show that Mrs. Little must be adjudged as having written a novel with a. purpose. Based upon a. knowledge of the vast Chinese Empire and its people that it is the privilege of very few indeed among us to possess, she has but slightly changed the names of places-and perhaps also of persons-in portraying for the English reader something of the actual life of a treaty port in the Far East. The tragic element is supplied, and in plenty, by depicting in most vivid colours the massacre of a picnic party by the Big Knife fraternity on the way back from Shin-W n-Tsu. A parallel case occurred in August, 1895, when, as will be remembered, nine adults (eight of them ladies) and one child were killed at Hwasang, 120 miles west of Foochow, by anti-missionary rioters.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B086PMZR7M
• ISBN13: 9798634800172
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"