第七十七章《胡适英文论著：民族危机与公共外交》（2）

  第七十七章《胡适英文论著：民族危机与公共外交》（2）

  Under the third category may be grouped all the improvements and reforms in the field of education and culture in general. As I have touched upon some phases of educational and cultural improvement in an earlier issue of Asia [March, 1935, "An Optimist Looks at China">, I shall now confine myself to one item which seems to me most important. Beginning with 1935, the Ministry of Education is endeavoring to carry out a Five-Year Plan of Compulsory Education by which it aims to give every child of school age at least one year of free and compulsory education. A second Five-Year Plan is to begin in 1940 when the government hopes to lengthen the period of compulsory education to two years. The success of the first year has given us reason to hope that this very moderate program can be successfully carried out.
  It has been pointed out by some recent observers of Chinese events that there is a reactionary tendency in the social and cultural movements in China, evidenced by the revival of the worship of Confucius and by the frequent exaltation of Confucian virtues in the "New Life Movement" sponsored by important leaders of the government. As a die-hard advocate of liberalism and modernization, I must confess that such a reactionary tendency does exist and has a following chiefly among party workers and office-seekers. The explanation is clear. China is now in the midst of her nationalistic development, and all nationalistic movements easily lead to an apologetic attitude toward the indigenous civilization of the past. Moreover, there is no doubt that the reactionary movements in certain quarters of Europe and Asia have had their influence, direct or indirect, over some of the political leaders in China. The tomb and temple of Confucius, for example, were ordered by the Chinese government to be repaired and the worship of Confucius was revived as a state rite, when China learned that our neighbors in Japan had completed a new temple of Confucius at the cost of more than two million yen , and were inviting Chinese scholars to attend the ceremony of unveiling! Such reaction abroad has greatly strengthened our reactionary movements at home, with the result that there is really a vogue for such slogans as "an authoritarian or totalitarian state,""the revival of our glorious past," and "cultural reconstruction on the basis of the revival of an indigenous civilization."
  But I must confess that such reactionary tendencies are merely passing moods which do not appeal to the imagination and thinking of the younger generation. The social and cultural movements of the past twenty years have been on the whole unmistakably in the direction of liberalism and democracy, and I am fully inclined to believe that China may yet be one of the last strongholds of liberalism in the world
  I now come to the question. What are the international implications of China's program of reconstruction?
  The reconstruction work in all its phases has largely been carried out by Chinese personnel and financed by Chinese money. But, of course, there are international implications which may be summed up in these words: from the United States we get the training of the Chinese personnel; from the League of Nations, the technical advice of experts; from Great Britain, an important portion of the money; and from Japan, all the obstruction.
  Since the return of the first portion of the Boxer Indemnity to China in 1908 for the purpose of educating Chinese youths in American universities, the United States for twenty-seven years has been educating Chinese students in scientific technique, technological training and administrative ability. It is these men who form the nucleus of that vast personnel which is planning, leading, directing and executing the multifarious activities of Chinese reconstruction.
  The League of Nations has been very helpful to China in furnishing her with a large number of technical experts whose advice and assistance have been found most useful in the planning of transportation, public health, water control and rural reform. Of these advisers, mention must be made of Sir John Hope Simpson, whose great contribution to the relief work during the great floods of the Yangtze region in 1931 will surely be long remembered in China. The League has recently decided to undertake the training of Chinese technicians by allowing them to be attached to the appropriate sections of the League Secretariat.
  There has been comparatively little financial aid from the outside in this reconstruction work except the American wheat and cotton loan which made possible the initial formation of the National Economic Council as the central organ for the direction and planning of many of the projects of reconstruction, and the railway loan from the British banks for the construction of the Chientang River bridge. But mention must be made of the part played by the British portion of the Boxer Indemnity in the financing of the reconstruction projects. This fund, which had accumulated from the end of 1922 and was returned to China in 1928, has been used in the financing of productive activities, and for each amount thus used the Chinese government guarantees to pay an annual interest of five per cent, which interest is again spent on the educational and cultural activities in China. About seven million pounds sterling have been thus spent in this reconstructive work.
  The greatest obstruction to Chinese reconstruction work has come from Japan, from whom we had a right to expect sympathetic understanding and friendly assistance. This obstruction has come in at least three main directions.
  In the first place, the whole series of events from the sudden invasion and occupation of Manchuria in 1931, and the Shanghai War in 1932, down to the invasion of Jehol and the war along the Great Wall in 1933, created a war situation which made it absolutely impossible for the government to pay attention to any constructive work. The invasion of Manchuria took place at a time when China was faced with the unprecedented catastrophe of the Yangtze floods which affected twenty-five million people in one hundred and thirty-one hsiens in five provinces, and which resulted in a total material loss of two billion dollars. The Shanghai War, which lasted a little more than a month, caused untold losses in human lives and destruction of property and paralyzed the Yangtze delta for many months during which the government found it difficult to pay the school teachers and governmental employees. For two whole years, the whole nation could not settle down to any constructive work. It was not until after the failure of the Lytton Report and the League of Nations and after the war along the Great Wall that China came to a fuller realization of the significance of the new situation. She now realized that all the peace machinery of the Pacific region had been torn to shreds by the armed fist of an aggressive power, and that she had only herself to rely upon for her own national salvation. China, as it were, was aroused from the slumbers of a false sense of international security. It was not until then that China finally settled down to work on her own program of internal reconstruction. But what a change has come in the meaning and content of the program! A sense of the imminent danger of national perdition has gripped the whole people, and national defense has become the generally accepted necessary guiding principle in everything we undertake. Even the students of the universities and schools are demanding of their teachers that their educational curriculum be reorganized in order that they may be better prepared to meet the needs of what they call the "extraordinary times!"
  In the second place, Japan has not only interrupted the peaceful reconstruction work in China, but also openly told the whole world that she does not allow any other nation or nations to render to China any assistance in her reconstruction. In the famous Amau Statement of April 17, 1934, Japan warned the whole world that, because of her "position and mission" and "special responsibilities in East Asia," she could not tolerate any joint operations in respect to China "undertaken by foreign powers, even in the name of technical or financial assistance." In the same statement, Japan threatened that, in case of her warning being unheeded, she might be forced to "act alone on her own responsibility." Indeed, this threat she has tried to carry out more than once. Last November, China promulgated her new currency reform law, which was accepted by all Chinese banks, and which had the full co?peration of the English and other foreign banks. But Japan, in her anger against China for not having previously informed her, and in her suspicion of British participation and co?peration in the reform scheme, began to stir up serious troubles in North China, which, it is commonly believed, were intended not merely to weaken the authority of the Chinese government in China, but also to punish the British through the punishing of the Chinese.
  Lastly, Japan seems to have determined not to tolerate any government that may have a chance to unify and consolidate China. At least her militarists have never concealed such intentions. Throughout the whole summer of 1935, Japanese military officers of high rank both in North and South China repeatedly issued statements to the effect that Japan would not deal with the Nanking government as long as General Chiang Kai-shek remained as its powerful leader. In an equally famous Tads Statement of September, 1935, the Japanese military leader in North China declared that the Empire of Japan could not co?xist with Chiang Kai-shek and his party. "Shall the Empire surrender to them? or shall they be crushed by the Empire?" These and other similar declarations have convinced us that our neighbor is fully determined to oppose any government that shows any capability of achieving political unity in China.
  Such are the international implications of Chinese reconstruction.
  Shall China abandon all her activities of political, economic and social reconstruction and prepare to die without an effort to save herself? No, a thousand times No! We are determined to go on with our work of putting our own house in order, of solving our own urgent problems, and, if necessary, of fighting for our own existence.
  China's Chances of Survival
  The People's Tribune
  Mar. 1, 1937. Vol. XVI. No. 5. pp. 373-382.
  Ⅰ

  In their new book, Can China Survive? , my friends Hallett Abend and Anthony J. Billingham propound an interesting theme and arrive at a terrible conclusion:—

  "Unmolested, China might survive and eventually achieve real unification, particularly if she were given intelligent help from outside. But with Japan exerting a constantly growing pressure, with the Japanese government avowedly determined to keep other nations from playing a large part in China's future development, and with Soviet Russia occasionally filching away large areas of the northern territories, the prospects for survival, except under Japanese direction, or as an adjunct to the Soviet Union, seem gloomy indeed."
  I am not interested in refuting the thesis of my journalistic friends, which, I must confess, is sufficiently refuted by the main body of the book itself. For, though they have told us in the opening chapters that Chinese unification is a"myth" and that "today China seems to expect every other nation to do its duty, while making no concrete plans to do anything for itself," the reader of the book can readily see that unification is a reality. For example, we find this:
  "Today things are different Reforms, modernizations, and reconstruction projects arebeing carried out in a surprising and ever increasing measure. There have probably been more actual physical and beneficial changes made in China in the last five years than in the preceding half century. This is no doubt due to the increasing power and authority of the Central government, but must also in a large measure be attributed to a new vigour which seems to be released in the land."
  Is it necessary for me to point out to the authors that political unification exactly means the "increasing power and authority of the Central government?"
  I am, however, more interested in a sentence of my own which another friend, Mr. Lin Yu-tang, has done me the honour to quote in his book, My Country and My People. This sentence is:—"If China does not perish, God is blind." As Mr. Lin Yu-tang has quoted this saying without its context, which alone can make it intelligible, and as this remark seems to have some bearing on the question of the survival of my country, I am tempted to offer a few words of explanation.
  I remember distinctly when and under what circumstances I made such a sweeping condemnation of my own country. It was in the summer of 1920, when I was talking with an editor of the Peking Morning Post , under the shades of a 600-year-old fir tree in the Central Park, which had for centuries been a part of the imperial palace. I was in a mood of lecturing to him, because he was one of my mature students. I said that our ancestors had committed many grave sins, every one of which could have ruined a nation and destroyed a race. I enumerated half a dozen of them—foot-binding by the women for a thousand years, opium smoking for over 300 years, wasting the best brains of the intelligentsia in mastering the octopartite ("eight-legged") form of classical composition for 600 years, the use of torture in the law courts for obtaining confessions for all the centuries, conversion to an other-worldly religion of India for 2,000 years, and so on. I said to my friend:—

  "These sins of our fathers are visited on us. And we have not done enough to eradicate their evil effects. When I look back into history and contemplate these deadly burdens of a terrible heritage, I often tremble and say to myself, 'If China does not perish, there is no divine justice.' And it was really sheer luck that China did not perish during the last 80 years of her contact with the militant powers of the West."
  That was the origin of the much quoted and misquoted saying of mine of sixteen years ago. It was said in all earnestness as a stern warning to my own people, especially to those whose uncritical reading of history had led them to place too much reliance on what they called our glorious past and to those who saw in old China only the "China of blue porcelain bowls and exquisite silk scrolls" and forgot it was also the nest of vice, dire poverty, prevalent ignorance, and unbelievable cruelty. Our past was neither all glory nor all beauty. Whatever glory and beauty there was belonged to the past and does not help us to achieve our own survival today.
  Our own survival and salvation must depend on our own success in rectifying the evil effects of the sins of our fathers and in positively solving our new problems, which living in a new world has forced upon us. In the last two decades, I have watched my people work in both these directions and I am convinced that our successes in these efforts warrant us to believe that, however the present crisis in the East may turn out. China can survive.
  Ⅱ

  Herbert Spencer once said that nature was kind, in that acquired characters are not transmissible, for, if they were, the feet of the descendants of a Chinese mother of bound feet would become smaller and smaller throughout the generations. The same consideration applies to all the evil institutions of our ancestors, which, though great evils in themselves, were man-made and capable of being unrooted by human efforts. Once the Chinese girl is freed from the fetters of foot-binding and is given the benefits of modern schooling and physical exercises, she bursts forth in full blossom as one of the most beautiful and graceful species of womanhood. And her brother, when he gives up the octopartite composition and submits himself to the discipline of the modern school and the scientific laboratory, is capable of surprising the world by his dexterity in handling the test tube and the microscope, and by his quick understanding and creative ingenuity in scientific research. Six centuries of wasteful literary gymnastics apparently have not disabled the Chinese mentality any more than 1,000 years of foot-binding have permanently crippled the feet of the Chinese girls.
  These sins of our fathers are merely institutional, social, and educational. They are not biological or racial. New institutions have replaced old ones, which soon lose all their traces, because the people, once brought back to their senses, are so ashamed of them that they destroy all reminders of their former sins. I am afraid future directors of historical and sociological museums will find it very difficult to collect women's footwear of the foot-binding days or the exquisite tools of opium smoking, if such articles are allowed to disappear with the rapidity they are today. It is really amazing and indeed amusing to see that, whereas in the old days women with large feet would resort to artificial devices to make them appear small, today elderly ladies having bound feet are inventing new devices to make their feet appear "natural." And all this change of psychology has taken place in my lifetime.
  It must be admitted, however, that habits of thinking and acting formed under certain social institutions for long centuries cannot be easily eradicated. The use of torture in the law courts, for example, represented a mental habit—the habit of demanding speedy justice of impatience with careful search, argument, and sifting of evidence. The new codes and courts and the prohibition of torture, it is pointed out, cannot do away with this impatience for the "due process of law,"which is necessarily slow and expensive. It is this old mental habit which endears to the peasants of Shantung their military governor, General Han Fu-chu, who,"acting as governor, magistrate judge, jury, and lawyer at the same time," hands out "rough justice" to the people. Mr. Abend says of him that he "gets results,"and Mr. Lin Yu-tang, who elsewhere most enthusiastically praised Hanfeitse for advocating a government by law, thinks "the province is lucky which sees the type of enlightened despotism of General Han Fu-chu." It is probably the same old mental impatience that has made Mr. Lin Yu-tang dream of a "Great Executioner" as the "Saviour of China."
  "Behold, here the great Saviour comes. The Great Executioner nails the banner of Justice on the the city wall Whosoever says he is above the law and refuses to bow before the banner will be beheaded and his head will be thrown into the lake And of those whose heads the Great Executioner chops off, great is the number and the lake is dyed red with their blood of iniquity."
  When I read these beautifully written pages, I cannot help sighing, "Truly the old mental habits die hard!"
  But I do not despair. Education and experience will change and rectify these hard-dying habits. And they are changing with a truly amazing rapidity. Mr. Lin Yu-tang has said:—

  "We are an old nation We do not want to race about in a field for ball, we prefer to saunter along willow banks to listen to the bird's song and the children's laughter We do not ache to reach the foot of the mountain when we are in the middle of the lake, and we do not ache to be at the top of the hill when we are at its foot."
  All this is no longer true, fortunately. We are no longer an old nation. We are a changing and rejuvenated nation. We—Mr. Lin and I and thousands of others—are witnessing our own sons and daughters running about in a field for a ball, swimming the open seas, and aching to scale the highest peaks of the mountains.
  In short, China has been more successful in the uprooting of old evils than the outside world has suspected. In the course of a quarter of a century, my people have thrown off the monarchy, together with its huge paraphernalia of vice, which had existed from time immemorial; the practice of foot-binding, which had existed a thousand years; the whole system of education in useless literary gymnastics, which had prevailed at least 1,400 years; the old laws, which were the best examples of what Sir Henry Maine called the ancient laws based on the conception of status; and the law courts, which resorted to torture as the legitimate means to obtain confessions of guilt. These and hundreds of other things have gone overboard almost overnight and, I am quite sure, never to return.
  These changes have been tardy in coming. China paid sufficient penalties for their tardiness. But no change is ever too late. A nation that has the pluck and resolve to discard her basic social, political, educational institutions of thousands of years' standing is a nation of vitality and youth who cannot perish. She will survive.
  Ⅲ

  And the most marvelous thing about these fundamental changes in China is that they have all come from below and not from the top down. This is the point which men like Messrs. Abend, Billingham, and Lin Yu-tang have all failed to see. These men, who are most enthusiastic over Japan's successes in modernization and who belittle China's more recent efforts in the same direction, do not realize the fundamental difference; that, while in Japan all reforms began with a powerful ruling caste, in China all reformers have been men without political power who have often had to fight against the rulers in order to bring about a change. I have elsewhere pointed out that the process of modernization in Japan is a type of"centralized control" and that in China it is one of "diffused permeation."
  Japan was at the height of military Feudalism when Western civilization knocked at her shores. She was ruled by a military caste, the daimio and the samurai , who in those days numbered 260,000 families and who were politically the most powerful class in the land. When that class was finally convinced of the necessity of change, it had the power to carry out all the reforms it wished. And that class happened to be highly trained in the art and discipline of war. When the samurai put on his new uniform and was equipped with the modern arms, he was a ready-made soldier. That is why, of all the non-European nations with whom the Western civilization has come into contact, Japan is the only one who readily succeeds in mastering the military arts and making the fullest use of them. When the military caste had succeeded in solving the problem of national defence and security, the efficacy of the Western civilization was clearly demonstrated to the whole nation, and the remaining task of modernization of the country was smooth sailing.
  Not so in China. China had no ruling class, and the ignorant imperial household was deaf and blind to the demands of a new age. And because for twenty centuries the soldier and the arts of war had always been looked down on by the whole nation the early attempts at modernization of the army and the navy were doomed to fail miserably. All the changes in the direction of modernization—from the political revolution to the literary renaissance, from foot-binding to bobbed hair—have originated with the people themselves. Every reform has begun with a few advocates, spread with slow diffusion and voluntary following, and finally succeeded when the following became sufficiently powerful.
  Let us not be too easily dazzled by the brilliant success of Japan's modernization. That type of reform under centralized control has the advantages of rapidity, orderliness, and capability for large-scale enterprises. But it also has its great disadvantages. The power of initiative is centered in a small but powerful class which is conscious of its effective leadership and is unwilling to surrender it. It is up to that class to build or to ruin. And the rest of the nation is not accustomed to contest leadership with it. Moreover, class interest and prejudice on the part of that ruling class often lead to the conscious effort to protect certain phases of Japanese national life from modern influence and peaceful change. Today the whole world is seeing how those unchanging phases of mediaeval Japan are now running wild, disturbing the peace of the East, and heading that island empire toward unknown and dubious destinies.
  Ⅳ

  On the other hand, changes through "diffused permeation," as typified in modern China, are necessarily slow, sporadic, and often wasteful because of the amount of undermining and erosion that must take place before any change is possible. Moreover, without centralized direction and control it is often impossible to effect reforms in such gigantic undertakings as nationwide militarization or industrialization. Nevertheless, there are also distinct advantages. Such changes, because voluntary, go deeper and often are more permanent. The people must be first convinced of the superiority of the new over the old, before a change is accepted. When a change is at last generally accepted, its reasonableness has already become apparent, and there is little chance of a return of the old order. Moreover, because of the lack of centralized control by any powerful class, everything is subjected to the contact and influence of new ideas and new institutions. Nothing is protected from this contact and nothing is too sacred to change. In this way, the cultural changes that have taken place in China are invariably more thorough than in Japan.
  There is no doubt that the social, political, and intellectual modifications in China are far more profound than those in Japan. Political thinking in Japan today is still largely mediaeval in its predominant tenets, and some of the recent persecution of "dangerous" thought are simply ridiculous in the eyes of the Chinese intelligentsia. The political revolutions in China since 1911, however unsuccessful in their constructive aspects, have created an environment conducive to free and independent thinking on social, political, and cultural matters which is impossible in Japan under dynastic and militaristic taboos. In religious thought and practice, Japan is slavishly mediaeval and is naively ambitious to reconvert China to the mediaeval religions which Japan once borrowed from her but which Chinese iconoclasm and rationalism have long since undermined and discarded. In social changes, China has forged far ahead of Japan—in a democratized social structure, in the absence of a ruling military caste, and in the much higher and more emancipated position of women.
  Thus, contrary to all superficial observations of Japanese modernity and Chinese backwardness, life and institutions in China are more modernized in their essential aspects than in Japan. And the explanations thereof are not far to seek.
  Last year, I asked a group of Japanese newspaper correspondents in Peiping,"Who are the thinkers in Japan today?"
  After consulting with one another, one of them said:—"I am sorry to say that we have no thinkers at the present time, and we shall have none until after a war with Soviet Russia."
  I put the same question to a prominent member of the Japanese delegation at the Yosemite conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations last August, and his reply was: "I don't think there is any Japanese whom we can call a thinker."
  Twelve years ago, I raised the same question with a Japanese professor of philosophy in one of the imperial universities and received the same negative reply: "There are teachers of European philosophy, of Chinese philosophy, and of Indian philosophy. But there are as yet no Japanese thinkers."
  Without going into the more complicated question as to why there are no Japanese thinkers, let us pause and reflect upon the modernity of a nation which either cannot or dares not think for herself. Where there is no free and creative thinking, there cannot be fundamental reforms; and traditional Japan lingers on under the protective shell of superficial modernity till she shall burst in volcanic eruption.
  Our greater successes in the more fundamental social and political changes have been due, I believe, to the intellectual leadership of our veteran thinkers. Liang Chi-chao, Tsai Yuan-pei, Wu Ching-heng, and Chen Tu-shiu, who have influenced the nation for the last 40 years, are men who know our historical heritage critically and who have the moral courage ruthlessly to citicize its evil and weak aspects and to advocate whole-hearted changes. Neither Confucius nor Lao-tse nor the Buddha nor Chu Hsi was too sacred to escape their criticism. Even Dr. Sun Yat-sen, whom the Western world often belittles as a demagogue, was essentially a courageous thinker. He earned his exalted position in the nation by his moral courage to initiate the revolutionary movement for the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty as an alien rule and the monarchy as an undesirable form of government.
  A nation that has the moral courage to criticize her most sacred sages and her most time-honoured institutions, a nation that can and dare think for herself will surely have the vitality to survive all adversities.
  Ⅴ

  "But," the pessimists say, "all your arguments do not convince us of the ability of China to survive the present international crisis, which is essentially political and military. Will all the social and intellectual changes that China may have achieved give her a political and military machine that can fight your aggressors? How will you answer Mr. Lin Yu-tang's complaint that in China individually men are more mature, but politically and nationally we are as mere children?"
  As a matter of common-sense, Mr. Lin Yu-tang has answered his own question when he asks, "Why are we individually mature but politically and nationally mere children?" It is precisely because we are individually mature that we are not politically and nationally mere children, easily to be led by a "leader half the size of a Gandhi." Only those races which are politically and nationally mere children can be led by the nose by a Hitler, a Mussolini, an Araki, or a "leader half the size of a Gandhi." A mature race cannot be led by the Great Executioner of whom Mr. Lin Yu-tang dreams as the Saviour of China.
  I am quite sure that future historians will record that China has not been without leadership during all these years of her national crisis. A government that has been able to rally all the centrifugal forces that have been running wild since the collapse of a central authority and to bring about a political unity in five years cannot be without leadership. A government that, in the face of incredibly provocative and humilitating aggressions and in the face of a nationwide outcry for immediate war on the invader, has held out for five years without a war, in order to gain time for better consolidation and greater strength of resistance, cannot be without leadership. Only this leadership is of a type so different from that of the Hitlers and Mussolinis that impatient souls can never appreciate or recognize it.
  And, let it be said clearly and unmistakably, this political unity and this better consolidation and greater strength of resistance are no myths but realities. Even as I write to-day in a San Francisco hotel, the morning papers print a long dispatch from Mr. Roy Howard who, cabling from the Orient, says:—

  "America and Europe necessarily must readjust judgments and evaluations of a sensationally revitalized, unified China Today that unification which foreigners long have regarded as impossible, is an undisputed accomplishment. From Canton to Peiping, and from coolie to capitalist, Chinese appear to have a common determination to resist any further invasion and any further challenge to China's sovereignty.
  "There is no hysteria. There are no student demonstrations demanding war. Everywhere leaders, hoping for peace, are obviously and methodically preparing for war."
  This is how an individually mature nation acts. She will survive without a Hitler, a Mussolini, or an Araki.
  The Westernization of China and Japan
  Amerasia
  July, 1938. Vol. II. No. 5. pp. 243-247.
  Almost simultaneously there have appeared two very good books dealing with China and Japan during their periods of transition, that is, during the last three hundred years, and in particular during the last seven decades. They are The Invasion of China by the Western World , by E. R. Hughes (Macmillan), and Japan in Transition , by Emil Lederer and Emy Lederer-Seidler (Yale University Press). Both are excellent books, yet how different they are, and what fundamentally different stories they tell of the cultural changes in the two Oriental countries now at war!
  Mr. Hughes' book is full of historical facts and details, but he almost never indulges in theorizing. The Lederers' book promises "to proceed step by step from phenomena to underlying intangibles" and therefore gives us more of interpretative theories than factual details. Mr. Hughes was for many years a missionary in the interior of Fukien, has later lived in Shanghai and Peiping, and speaks the language of the country. With the pragmatic mentality of an Englishman, he proceeds to describe the gradual changes in every phase of Chinese life without apparently thinking of the necessity of theorizing about them. The Lederers were in Japan only for two years; and their Germanic philosophical training naturally leads them to seek to understand the vast and complicated changes in Japan by the aid of theories.
  The outcome is that Mr. Hughes' work is often over-burdened with names and details, some of which are liable to errors, while the Lederer book, which is little more than a traveling philosopher's penetrating interpretation of a people, sometimes errs in the tendency of over-theorizing without being sufficiently supported by facts.
  The factual errors in the Hughes book are of minor importance, but some of them should be corrected in a new edition. For instance, Yen Fu never translated Darwin's The Origin of Species (p. 209), and the translation "which brought him fame and influence" was of Huxley's Evolution and Ethics . The name of the Chinese Jesuit scholar, Li Chih-tsao, was correct on page 200, but was spelled as Li Chi-tao on page 11; and the Index lists both names as if they were two different persons. Ku Han-min on page 107 must be Ku Hung-ming; Ku Yen-wu on page 11 is the same Ku Ting-lin who was more than a "geographer"; Li Shih-tseng (p. 218) was never a "physicist"; and Tsui Tung-pi, the man Mr. Hughes selected to represent the "Han Learning School" (p. 257), happened to be a scholar least affected by the intellectual fashion of his time and was essentially a loyal supporter of the "Sung School."
  But these errors in detail do not diminish the value of Mr. Hughes' book as a truthful history of the epic drama of China's gradual westernization. This story may be summed up in his own words (pages 286-287):
  "First, at the beginning of the 17th century came the urbane welcome of the Jesuit Fathers
  "Second, at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, there arosean acute mistrust and contempt for the rough traders from the southern ocean, followed by a recognition on the part of a few responsible people that the military arts of these traders must be learnt.
  "Third, after the middle of the century came the discovery by a few scholars that the peoples of the West had something more than superiority in arms, something of culture and learning which China must take into account.
  "Fourth, in the 20th century came the sudden conversion of educated youth to the idea that their own culture was effete, unfitted for the modern world in which China had to join in the biological struggle for existence.
  "Fifth, came the suspicion that the West was neither as friendly nor as moral as the reformers had been thinking, and that it was time that China worked out her own salvation in her own way.
  "Finally, the post-Nationalist Revolution stage through which China is now passing. Here we find a new attitude emerging with increasing clarity and force. It is marked in men of all classes by a new confidence in themselves and their ability to adjust their half-traditional, half-newborn national conditions so as to produce unity, efficiency, and the well-being of the whole community."
  The main body of the book is a detailed narration of these stages of cultural change as they have appeared in the sphere of political thought, of education, of science and medicine, and of literature. In the Author's Preface, Mr. Hughes speaks of his own attitude of approach, which is: "In China, European culture has met a civilization as old or older than itself in the past. That civilization has expressed itself nobly in literature, poetry and art, and in the present is competent to give reasoned reflection and have a critical reaction to the results of its contact with the West." Elsewhere in the book (pp. 273-274), he repeats this point of view:
  "Looking at the situation all round, there has been widespread experimentation by this new class [the urban-minded class], and now its members have reached the point where they know what they like and what they do not. They hold the West in fee, rejecting some of its features, welcoming others, and where they welcome, not hesitating to transform to suit their own taste. In other words, a distinctive Chinese mind is at work, a distinctive Chinese sense of taste, a distinctive judgment of moral and aesthetic values."
  Simple as this general approach may seem, it is all the more generous and impressive because it comes from the pen of a life-long missionary. And we think it is on the whole true. As I have expressed it elsewhere, Chinese modernization has been the result of "long exposure" to the contact and influence of Western ideas and institutions. Because of the thoroughly democratized social structure and because of the failure and incompetence of the reigning dynasty to direct the changes, all westernization in China has come as a result of gradual diffusion and permeation of ideas, usually initiating from a few individuals, gradually winning a following, and finally achieving significant changes when a sufficient number of people is convinced of their superior convenience or efficacy. From the footwear to the literary revolution, from the lipstick to the overthrow of the monarchy, all has been voluntary and in a broad sense "reasoned." Nothing in China is too sacred to be protected from this exposure and contact; and no man, or any class, was powerful enough to protect any institution from the contagious and disintegrating influence of the invading culture. And because the changes have been on the whole voluntary, there is no regret and no retrogression.
  What a different story we find when we read the equally epic drama of modernization in Japan as told by Professor and Mrs. Lederer! This story can also be summed up in the authors' own words:
  "In this rise of a people which had hardly cast aside its medieval vestmentsthe crucial step was taken with the decision to master the Occidental methods of warfare. Japan took over the entire system of Western armaments and attained to proficiency and even to mastery of sorts in using it
  "In the beginning the full import of this process was not yet grasped Lafcadio Hearn, though a Westerner, was typical of the general attitude. Having become himself a Japanese, he was passionately concerned over the preservation of the genius of the people and championed the idea of building up a Western war apparatus which should be made to serve as a protective wall behind which everything should be preserved unaltered.
  "It could hardly be foreseen at this early stage that in this case one step leads inexorably to a second.
  "The army always represents the technological high-water mark of an age. To build up an army in Japan, to keep it efficient, to adapt it to the peculiar conditions of the land, required a corresponding education and training. Compulsory military training and the development of a large staff of officers meant that the most active sections of the entire population had to be wrenched every so often out of their specifically Japanese setting A comprehensive organization had to be developed which would provide all types of schools for most thorough-going technical training in all the natural sciences, and make it possible for industrial factories to produce the implements of war.
  "In short, since a modern military state is possible only on condition that it is an industrialized state, Japan had to develop in that direction. But industrialization, by reason of the economic interrelationship between various types of production, means also the development of branches of industry which are not essential to the conduct of war Just as militarism reaches beyond itself into industry, so the technological system of industrialism has far-reaching implications for the social system. Here lies the heart of the problem of westernization." (pp. 179-181)
  Here in these masterful paragraphs, the authors have told the true history and significance of Japanese westernization. It began with the adoption of militarism, was vindicated when the military machine won the wars over China and Russia, has greatly expanded with the ever-increasing needs and demands of the militaristic system, and is still centering round what Professor Lederer has aptly termed "the militaristic industrial system." The whole movement was unified, directed and controlled by a ruling class which happens to be a militaristic caste, and which had been profoundly trained and molded in the medieval feudalism of the Tokugawa period (which is masterfully described by the authors in a separate chapter) when it was called upon to build up a modern machine of warfare (p. 150). That is to say, this class that set the ball rolling in the direction of westernization never realized what it was doing, nor did it ever understand the disturbing, liberalizing, and even revolutionizing forces contained in Western civilization. The leaders of that class thought, as Lafcadio Hearn had thought, namely, that it was possible to build up a modernized war machine which was to serve as a protective shell within which all the traditional values of the Tokugawa Japan could be preserved unaltered. And when modernization tended to run wild and threatened to be liberating and revolutionizing, it was soon checked and suppressed. "That part of the West which continued to be accepted in Japanese life was only what was necessary associated with the development of a new power state" (p. 183). And the authors have shown concretely that Western influence has produced very little transformation in the fundamental aspects of Japanese life such as the state (p. 150), religion, and social institutions (pp. 184-189).
  Reluctantly but inevitably, the Lederers have come to the conclusion that, in spite of seven decades of dramatic modernity, the basic elements of the old Japan still continue to exist and resist all threats of westernization. I say "reluctantly,"because the authors really like and admire the old Japan and sometimes even consider it "fortunate" that some of the faddisms could not go very far in Japan (p. 182, for instance). But being honest observers, they could not escape the inevitable conclusion that "it is clear that the tenacity and relative vitality of the ancient Japanese civilization, and the completed perfection of its forms, are offering strong resistance to the facile assimilation of foreign elements." (p. 190) At this point, one is tempted to ask: Have the authors given us here a satisfactory explanation of this strange phenomenon? Has this resistance to change been really due to the "vitality of the ancient civilization" and the "completed perfection of its forms"? Are not "vitality" and "completed perfection" contradictory terms? May not this resistance to change suggest rather an absence of vitality, an incapability to adapt itself to new conditions without losing its entity, and therefore a great fear for new contacts and influences which naturally expresses itself in all extreme forms of artificial solidification and reactionary protection against dangerous contagions?
  My own view is that the latter seem to be the more satisfactory explanations. Indeed the authors themselves are greatly troubled by what they have observed as the most strange phenomenon of "immunity to the dialectic play of deep-lying evolutionary forces" (p. 47). I regret to read that a penetrating mind like Professor Lederer should think that "it is a way of life entirely different from the Occidental process of genesis and growth, for it is devoid of dialectic and dynamic" (p. viii). This is nothing peculiar to any part of the Orient or of the human race. It is a universal law that any phase of culture tends to be more conservative in its colony than in its mother country, because it is usually more carefully and consciously preserved and perpetuated in a colony, while in its mother country it is allowed to undergo the natural processes of evolution and innovation. And conscious and artificial preservation can always retard the working of the natural processes of change and decay. Buddhism, for example, died out in India many centuries before it began to decline in China, and it now only survives in Buddhistic colonies like Ceylon , and Japan. Tokugawa Japan was essentially a cultural colony of China; it was therefore natural that many cultural elements of that period took on the appearance of"immunity" to change, which simply means that artificial solidification of culture was peculiarly effective during those two hundred and sixty years of hermetic seclusion. Sitting on the floor, for example, was discarded in China so long ago that historians have difficulty in dating the first use of chairs and tables; but the Japanese to this day continue to sit on the floor. That does not mean the custom of sitting on the floor has any special "vitality" or has attained "completed perfection in form."
  Therefore the Japanese resistance to modernization in all their basic aspects of national life must be simply explained by the undeniable facts of artificial protection against change. And this is sometimes reluctantly admitted by the authors themselves when they speak of the "deliberate cultivation of national peculiarities" (p. viii), of "the Japanese spirit fighting to the last ditch against being submerged in the process of proletarianization" (p. x), and of "the old spirit of Japanshowing itself in powerful secret societies and in open fascist movements in which national pride, economic radicalism, the adherence to tradition, drive toward the 'resuscitation' of the whole nation, battling 'enemies' from within and from without, risking the structure of old Japan as well as her position as a world power" (p. xi). Herein lies the tragedy of Japan and its true explanation.
  This work of the Lederers is most beautifully written—the first chapter on"The Land" reads like a beautiful poem—but is not without its defects. One of its apparent defects is its fondness of theorizing. They have, for instance, tried to explain the origin of the shogunate by the "principle of mediation" (p. 49), which is that "in all relations of life the Japanese conducts his most important affairs through an intermediary It is almost impossible for the Japanese to give direct expression to his will or to fight through a conflict with resolute opposition."Which, of course, is not true. And the authors know it is not true in the case of Japanese warriors fighting in their own right, but the absurdity of the theory in this case is defended by another theory that the warrior's antagonist "is not so much an actual person as a formal foe."
  This fondness of theorizing is at its worst in the chapter entitled "The Forty Thousand Symbols of the Far East," which deals with the subject of language. Among the numerous theories brought in, the principle of "mediation" again makes its appearance (p. 82): "In Japan nothing speaks directly, not even the word." Which, of course, is not true. In the same chapter, the authors tell us that"the basic content of the spoken language in China is even more meager than in Japan" (p. 69). Do they realize that there are only about sixty syllabic sounds in the Japanese language, which is the poorest in sounds of all languages?
  The danger of over-theorizing without sufficient evidence is best illustrated by a long passage in the chapter on the Japanese state, where the authors speak of the lofty place of the loyalty to the sovereign in the Japanese hierarchy of loyalties: "Parents, wife, children give way to the emperor in case of conflicting loyalties. To the Chinese such a violation of family affection is inconceivable. In Japan it has been responsible for many tragedies" (p. 141). And the authors proceed to illustrate this peculiarly Japanese virtue by telling the "famous Japanese story" of the exiled nobleman, Michizane, whose son's life was saved by the loyalty and sacrifice of a former vassal who succeeded in substituting his own grandson for the real heir of Michizane. And they further comment on this story. "Such a violation of family love would be altogether incomprehensible to the Chinese" (p. 142). As a matter of fact, this "famous Japanese story" is no more than a Japanese version of an equally famous Chinese drama, The Orphan of Chao , which was among the earliest Chinese dramas translated into European languages, which inspired Voltaire to produce his play under the same title, and which is still frequently enacted on the Chinese stage today. How hazardous it is to generalize about nations and peoples!
  Japan's War in China
  Pamphlet
  New York: Chinese Cultural Society, 1938.
  If I were asked to sum up in one sentence the present conditions in my country, I would not hesitate to say that China is literally bleeding to death.
  We have been fighting for more than 16 months against an aggressor which is one of the three greatest naval powers, and one of the four or five greatest military powers of the world. We have suffered one million casualties, including the killed and the wounded. We have vast territories being occupied by the invading armies. We have lost all the important cities on the coast and along the Yangtze River: Peiping, Tientsin, Tsingtao, Tsinan, Shanghai, Hangchow, Nanking, Wuhu, Kiukiang, Amoy , Canton and the Wu-Han cities. Practically all the cities that are generally known to the outside world as centers of commerce and industry, of education and modern culture, of transportation and communication, are now either devastated or occupied by the invaders. Of the 111 universities and colleges, more than two-thirds have been either destroyed, occupied, or disabled; and the very few that are still functioning in the interior are working without equipment and under constant dangers of air raids. And, in addition to the vast number of casualties in the fighting forces, there are now 60 million civilian sufferers who have been driven from their destroyed homes, farms, shops and villages, and who are fleeing the invader and are roving the country without shelter, without medical aid, and in most cases without the barest means of subsistence. And there are every day hundreds of innocent non-combatants being murdered and slaughtered by the bombers of the Imperial Army of Japan.
  And, most serious of all, with the loss of Canton in October, China is now entirely cut off from all access to the sea,—that is, from all access to fresh supplies of arms and munitions from abroad. We have to rely upon three back doors for future war supplies from abroad, namely, the overland route to Soviet Russia, the route through French Indo-China , and the route through British Burma. All these three routes are very difficult and not always dependable. After repeated threats from Japan, the French are reported to have now closed the Indo-China Railway to Chinese munitions. The overland motor road to Soviet Russia is open, but it is 3,000 miles from the Russian border to the present capital at Chungking, a distance longer than that from San Francisco to New York. No heavy pieces of munitions can be transported over such a long road with very few service stations. The Burma route is not yet quite ready for use. So for the present we are actually completely cut off from the sea and from our sinews of war. This also means that we are faced with tremendous difficulties in sending out our exports with which to secure our foreign exchange.
  This is our present situation. Have I overstated the case in saying that China is literally bleeding to death?
  It was natural that, after the fall of Canton and Hankow, there was a brief period of doubt, hesitation and even despair on the part of many of our people and of our leaders. As I have repeatedly pointed out to my American friends, there is a limit to the ability of human flesh and blood to fight against much superior mechanical and metal equipment; and there is always the danger of collapse through sheer exhaustion. It was quite natural, therefore, that my people should have had this period of doubt and indecision during which, as the press reported, there were talks of peace,—that is, there were serious thoughts of giving up the fight. In fact, our enemy, too, made it quite clear that they wanted peace.
  But this period of hesitation was also a period of great decisions. It did not take very long for our leaders to come to the conclusion that it was impossible for China to have peace at the present moment simply because there was not the slightest chance for a peace that would be reasonably acceptable to my people. After serious considerations of all difficulties and potentialities, our leaders have definitely decided to continue our policy of resisting the invader and to fight on.
  In announcing this new determination to the nation and to the world at large, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek laid special stress on these points: that China will continue her policy of prolonged nation-wide resistance; that as the war has become really "nation-wide" and the enemy is drawn into the interior, both time and geography are on our side; that our war of resistance during the past 16 months has succeeded in retarding the westward advance of the enemy, thus enabling ourselves to develop communications and transportations in the vast hinterland and remove some industries thither; that we can only hope to win final victory through the greatest hardship and sacrifice; and that this war of resistance must be understood as a "revolutionary warfare" similar to the wars of American Independence, French and Russian Revolution and Turkish Emancipation, and in such revolutionary warfare the spirit of the people will ultimately win out.
  This is the solemn declaration of China's new determination.
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  What will the world think of this new decision of my people to fight on against tremendous and apparently unsurmountable difficulties? Will it regard this determination as sheer folly built upon no better foundation than the logic of wishful thinking?
  Whatever the world may think of us, I can assure you that a nation that has sacrificed a million men and is prepared to make even greater sacrifices in fighting for its national existence cannot be accused of basing its hopes and aspirations upon mere wishful thinking. We are making a deliberate decision on the basis of the 16 months' terrible but very instructive experience of the war. We have learned during these terrible months that our soldiers and officers are capable of heroic bravery and supreme sacrifices, that our people are bearing their losses and devastations without complaining against their Government, and that the sense of national unity and solidarity throughout the country including the parts temporarily under the military occupation of the enemy is beyond question. And we have also learned that our enemy is actually feeling the burden of the prolonged war; that Japan's finances are nearing the breaking point; that she is employing her full armed strength in fighting a nation which she had never seriously considered as capable of putting up a fight; that she is terribly worried by the vast expenditure of her store of war munitions intended for greater wars against more formidable foes; and that it is not impossible for us to wear out our enemy if we can only fight on long enough.
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