Charles E. Scott to Woodrow Wilson
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President Wilson, Washington, DC
Honored and Revered Sir, Your kind letter of 15 April 1913 at hand. Many thanks for same.
Since your inauguration I have been reading with more than usual care some of the leading vernacular Chinese papers. They are gratified beyond measure that your administration has broken with the “dollar diplomacy” — which policy (as we at close range see it applied, “screwed on”, out here) is disgraceful to the nations practicing it, and which the Chinese look upon as brutal & iniquitous. Since we have pulled out of the deal America & Americans have gone up above par with the Chinese. They feel that Americans are their only friends. The things that we know Russia & Russians to be practicing at Peking, & in Outer & Inner Mongolia, & in Manchuria are beyond words. The Chinese hate them like poison. Think of Russia & England in one fell swoop practically taking over territory (Thibet & Mongolia) which is larger than all the eighteen provinces combined. Their mountains are known to be stored with minerals rich beyond calculation. And Mongolia’s plains, fertile & fine for grazing, can support many tens of millions of China’s population overcrowded to the South. Think of Shantung with one half the pop. of U. S.!When merchants recently boycotted Russian banks all over China, Russia put on the screws & forced Yuan Shi Kai to end the boycott. Russia’s indemnity for Boxer War claims are 4/10+ of all the claims allowed. And this money was used claimed by Russia for the Russian Gov’t expenses in connection with 120,000 Russ. soldiers who never saw the Boxer War! They were in Manchuria “sawing wood” for Russia while the other powers were busy at Tientsin, Peking & Pao-Ting Fu just as she has recently gotten busy in Mongolia while all the European powers had their hands full with the Balkan crisis. During the Boxer War Russia played a double–faced game. She had a secret alliance with China, & pretended to be China’s friend — the cursed heritage of the unprincipled statesmanship of Li Hung Chang, pensioner of the Russ Gov’t while Viceroy of China. To prove this friendship to the Empress Dowager Russia sent practically no soldiers for the Allied Army. Russia was at the same time leagued with the allies, & to prove to them her diligence in performing her duty as a party of the allies, she zealously put down “Boxer uprisings” in Manchuria — is to say, she used a large army to improve that golden opportunity to complete her “railroad conquest” of Manchuria. As the last straw that broke the camel’s back in the loan business, the Quintuple Group, under the lead of Russia, told Yuan Shi Kai that if he did not close with their offer of loan in May 1913, they would all & at once demand their balances due on the Boxer War Indemnity! and take steps to get it or its “equivalent.”Oh, if American businessmen could only have come forward at that time & enabled China to defy them! There is no end of good investments for American businessmen to make in China, for practically everything is untouched — waiting in a crude state ready to be developed.
Think of the incubus of superstition that would not allow the people to bore into their oil fields, or tap their coal deposits, or open their gold, silver, iron & copper mines lest they rouse the Old Dragon to fury! Immense quantities of pig iron are now being shipped regularly from China to U. S..
There is money enough among the Chinses for them to loan the Government all it needs; but the heathen heritage of centuries, the graft of which the Chinese officials are past masters; the miasmatic air of doubt, fear, suspicion, distrust — all these things & much more render the Chinese mentally powerless to function confidence! Business languishes & haltingly goes, without trust & confidence in our neighbors. Heathenism is unable to think well of others. This trusting attitude of mind is one of the many by–products of the religion of Jesus Christ. We at home don’t think of this good gift of God very much; and find it hard to sense the situation here, just as we think little of the air we are breathing, or the fish of the water running through his gills. A Christian man in a heathen land has the blessings of Christianity borne in upon his soul in keen incisiveness, by contrast; and comes to realize that one of the most heinous of sins in the sons of God’s favor is to despise the riches of His goodness & forbearance & long–suffering, forgetting that the GOODNESS of God should lead us to daily repentance. When it comes time for your Thanksgiving Message I wish you could help the people of our great & beloved & favored land more thoroughly to realize this truth.
I believe our people of all parties, whose opinion is worth most & whose support is most valuable — I am amazed at how even our Massachusetts Republican friends praise you; eg. in Mrs. Scott’s home town of Holyoke, where all the many paper mills have lived & fatted off the high tariff — are hungry for a President to summon them to the heights of moral endeavor; hungry to follow a President of vision, who is thoroughly religious with religion applied to life like “Father Abraham”, whom the people answered; like your own Washington whom they followed in war & whom they trusted in counsel, because he was to be morally counted upon.
With joy we believe in you, and joy to pray for you. Mrs. Scott encloses a little tribute from our three daughters, all of whom now speak English, Chinese German “tolerable” fairly well, without “mixin’ ’em.”
Charles Ernest Scott .
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