Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/580

 Baron Kaneko, in his campaign of education in America, told us that Japan intended to colonise largely in Korea, but that she would discourage intimate relations between the two peoples, that she would consider the Koreans a "lower race." Significant words these, which should be put alongside the specious protestations of Japanese statesmen that Koreans are to be humanely treated.

Every day brings news of the existence of a surprising and hitherto unguessed-at warmth of feeling for their country on the part of Koreans. This has given the lie to those special pleaders for Japan who have denied the existence of patriotism in Korea, and gives promise of a determination to do whatever may be done to weld the Korean people into a peaceful but intelligent and prosperous body which even the Japanese will be slow to stigmatise as contemptible.

As to the agencies at hand for the carrying on of this important work, a few words here will not be out of place. Without doubt the most powerful agency will be the American missionaries now resident in Korea. Not even the Japanese can openly object to any efforts that are put forth for the elevation of the intellectual and moral condition of that people, and there are special reasons for believing that only those who can speak the language, and thus can get near to the Korean heart, will be able to carry out a thorough consistent and continuous plan for the vindication of Korea's claim to intellectual capacity. The missionaries are set apart from all political complications, and their efforts for Korea can affect political affairs only as a stiffening of Korea's moral fibre and a thorough awakening of her dormant intellectual life shall make inevitable her reinstatement in the regard of the Japanese themselves.

In this great work the American people ought to be deeply interested, and with it they should be more closely identified than by an occasional word of sympathy. If there is any nation on earth that deserves the active and substantial aid of the American people that nation is Korea. We were the first Western power