Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/21

 ing was of much avail: the Chinese were to be a constant prey to more warlike peoples. The quietist characteristics of the race had indeed become unalterably fixed in the long-ago, their own wars and disputes tending to have a municipal rather than a national character.

China's nearest neighbour in these early times was Korea; and a vast amount of Far Eastern history pivots on this fact. Whilst it is true that Chinese adventurers, sailing down from the Yangtsze estuary, began to get into touch with the Annamese and aboriginal kingdoms around Canton soon after the Christian era, the land routes southwards were still barred by mountainous country, filled with fierce peoples. The Koreans were more docile. Broken up into small communities living in caves, culture was brought to them by Chinese scholars two thousand years ago; and their genius was sufficiently literary to allow them almost immediately to evolve an alphabet of their own for their polysyllabic dialect. That they flourished and grew in numbers rapidly is proved by the fact that they had colonized all the region of Southern Manchuria called the Liaotung fifteen hundred years ago, advancing to within a few miles of Shanhaikwan. Always