第八十章《胡适英文论著：民族危机与公共外交》（5）

  第八十章《胡适英文论著：民族危机与公共外交》（5）

  Ⅲ

  The third condition necessary for a durable peace in the Pacific area, I believe, is the restoration, strengthening and reinforcing of the international order for the Pacific area and for the world in general so that orderly international relationships may always prevail and recurrence of aggressive wars may no longer be possible. This newly restored international order must have overwhelming power for the enforcement of peace.
  You will agree with me that during the years between the first and second world wars there actually existed an international order both for the Far East and for the larger world—a real world order founded on a series of highly idealistic international covenants, treaties, and agreements, including the Covenant of the League of Nations, the treaties of the Washington Conference, and the Pact of Paris. The peace structure in the Pacific area, which dates back to the earlier pronouncements on the "Open Door" policy and which primarily centers around the Nine-Power Treaty and the other treaties of the Washington Conference—this international order of the Pacific area has been linked with the larger world order by the Covenant of the League and the Pact of Paris.
  The events of the last ten years have proved beyond any doubt that there was a fundamental weakness common to the general international order and the Far Eastern peace structure. Neither had the power or force to enforce its own peace and order. That international order was a reality as long as it was not subjected to any severe test by determined and forcible violation. It became "sham and pretense" when it was challenged and was found powerless to enforce its own law and order.
  The moral of the tragic events of the last decade should be plain to all. The moral is that peace must presuppose an effectively maintained order or rule of law; and that law and order do not mean the absence of force, but, on the contrary, are always dependent upon some effective form of organized power for their maintenance and enforcement. The moral, in short, is that peace must have power to enforce itself. Without this essential element of enforcement, all law and order are empty words.
  Therefore, the new world order which we want to see set up as the necessary condition or precondition for a durable peace in the Pacific area, or in any other part of the earth, must be a "League to Enforce Peace"—it must be, in the words of President A. Lawrence Lowell, "some kind of international organization based upon the principle of a threat of overwhelming power to prevent aggressive war." This new world order must command a sufficient amount of organized force to support its law and judgment, and thereby effectively to enforce peace. Its provisions for economic and military sanctions against all possible violations of peace and order must be so clear and so unmistakable that no evasion of responsibility will be possible and that both aid to outraged victims and penalty to the aggressors will not be unduly delayed.
  In the above discussion I have purposely stressed the idea of "overwhelming power or force" for the enforcement of peace and order. The old idea of "balance of power" seems now untenable, because a balance of power can be easily upset by a slight preponderance of force or a new combination of forces on any one side. The peace of the community, both nationally and internationally, can be maintained only when the organized force of the whole community is placed overwhelmingly on the side of the law and the public safety.
  I want, therefore, a new world order which will devote its first efforts to the organization of the postwar world for the effective enforcement of international peace and order. All other ornamental things such as intellectual co-operation or technical co-operation can wait. First things must come first.
  What has been outlined above seems to conform in general to the plan of peace contained in the sixth, seventh, and eighth articles of the Atlantic Charter, which hopes "to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries." I am particularly interested in the eighth article, which proposes that it is essential to disarm those "nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers." I am sure that my government and people will heartily support the disarming of Japan as one of the necessary factors in the maintenance and enforcement of peace in the Pacific area.
  And I am also in hearty support of the idea expressed in the eighth article of the Atlantic Charter that "they will aid and encourage all other practical measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments."
  But I venture to suggest that the most practical measure to lighten the burden of armaments and to establish lasting peace in the world is not through"the abandonment of the use of force," but through pooling and organizing the overwhelming forces of the peace-loving peoples for the sole purpose of enforcing the peace and collective security of the world.
  China's Fighting Strength and Fighting Faith
  China Monthly
  Apr., 1942. Vol. 3. No. 5. pp. 4-5.
  My friends, I come to you in the midst of news reports most disheartening to all the United Nations. As President Roosevelt has warned us, "there is peril ahead for us all and sorrow for many." The Prime Minister of Great Britain has also warned us that "many misfortunes, severe torturing losses, remorseless and gnawing anxieties lie before us."
  In this dark hour, I ask you to think of your old friend and new ally, China. In his recent broadcast to the Empire and to the Allied Nations, Prime Minister Churchill spoke of China's heroic and single-handed fight against the Japanese aggressor, and said "this should be a comfort and reassurance." I too want you to think of China's heroic fight as "a comfort and reassurance."
  My people have been fighting Japanese aggression for four years and eight months—longer than the Civil War in the United States, longer than the First World War. Indeed, Japanese invasion into China began over ten years ago—it began in September, 1931. A peaceful and peace-loving people, caught ill-armed and ill-supplied with munitions, was at last forced to take up the fight for its independence and freedom, indeed, for its very existence.
  In the first 15 months of the war, China lost all the important coast and river cities, all the modern centers of industry and manufacture, and all direct accesses to the sea. The Government lost over 90 per cent of its revenue. Tens of millions of people were made homeless, jobless and penniless. War casualties were tremendous, and civilian suffering was terrific. Financial distress was extreme.
  Yet, with no money, with very little modern equipment, and with no direct access to the sea, my people have fought on—for 56 long months!
  You will ask me, how did you do it? What are the main factors which make up China's fighting power?
  As we look back, we can see there are many factors which have enabled us to fight on so long and, on the whole, so well.
  First, there is the factor of large space—large space to move about in, and large space "to trade for time." After all these years of war, our enemy can scarcely claim to have effectively occupied ten per cent of Chinese territory.
  Second, there is the factor of large numbers,—large population as actual and potential supply of man power. Because of our numerical superiority, our enemy has never been able to trap any large army. In all these four years and eight months, you have never read of the surrender of any Chinese army. And the size of our army today is much greater than it was four and a half years ago.
  Thirdly, there is our age-long sense of national unity which is the result of our living together continuously for over 21 centuries in a unified empire life under one government, one system of codified law, and one system of uniform National Civil Service.
  Fourthly, there is our capacity for hard work. Without modern tools, my people have built up thousands of miles of highways in the interior by hand labor,—in some cases, as in parts of the famous Burma Road, they literally"chiseled a road into the face of sheer mountainside with thousands of feet of canyon below." And my people have moved thousands of tons of machinery and industrial equipment into the interior, most of this weight being carried on human backs and human shoulders!
  And fifthly, there is the factor of friendly assistance by all our friends abroad,—assistance from Soviet Russia, the British Empire, the United States, and France before her collapse. Before December 8, 1941, this international aid had taken all forms "short of war." From financial and material aid to China to effective economic embargo against Japan, these various forms of international assistance have been invaluable in strengthening our fighting power and morale.
  But, above all these, and behind all these, there was another and the most essential factor, namely, China's patient and unfaltering faith in the ultimate triumph of her just cause. From the very beginning, the leaders of China clearly realized and repeatedly warned the peace-loving nations that Japan's aggression in China, if unchecked, would surely result in wrecking the new international order then existing, and would sooner or later involve the whole world in a second world war. In those years of international complacency and isolationism, very few people took seriously our warning that Japan's war in China would surely develop into a second world conflagration, and that my people were in reality fighting the first battles of that world war.
  But my people never doubted that the aggressive acts of our enemy would sooner or later force the British Empire and even the United States to fight on the side of China.
  On October 1, 1937, in a speech at San Francisco, broadcast over the Columbia System, I said to my American friends:
  "In this world of ours, war as well as peace is indivisible. Any war that is fought on for a sufficiently long period will not fail to gradually involve many other nations into it. Neither neutrality nor pacifism will ever succeed in keeping you out of it. And the same stupidity of the militarists of an aggressor nation which forced you into the last war, will not be lacking to drag you into the present one."
  On December 4, 1938, in a speech in New York City, I said again:
  "The final victory of China must depend upon two things: First, she must fight on, and she has no choice but to fight on; second, in her prolonged war, the time may come when the international situation may turn in her favor and against her enemy."
  I have cited these words to show what I mean by China's fighting faith which has formed the backbone of her fighting morale. For a long time this faith was ridiculed by many as a day dream, as wishful thinking. Let me assure you that a wishful thinking becomes a living faith when millions of people are willing to fight and die for it.
  China has had to fight for two years and two months before the European war broke out. She had to fight fully four years before the United States and the British Empire began to enforce a complete economic embargo against Japan. She has had to fight four years and five months before the treacherous acts of Japan forced you and the other Anglo-Saxon democracies to declare war on her.
  The tide has now turned. The faith of my people has been vindicated. China is no longer fighting alone, but with 25 allies on her side. But victory is not yet in sight. A long and hard war still faces your nation, my nation, and all our allies. But we have not the slightest doubt about the ultimate and not too distant victory of our common fight against our common foes.
  Let us, therefore, learn from China a little lesson of patience. Let us remember that this is the greatest war in all human history, which cannot be won in three months. Let us swerve not from our common faith, best expressed by Mr. Churchill the other day, that "the gigantic, overwhelming forces which now stand in the line with us in this world struggle for freedomwill be found pretty capable of squaring all accounts and setting all things right for a long time to come." Let us work together, work hard, but work with patience, for the coming of that day when, in the cheering words of Mr. Roosevelt, "the sun shines down once more upon a world where the weak will be safe and the strong will be just."
  China, Too, Is Fighting to Defend a Way of Life
  Pamphlet
  San Francisco: The Grabhorn Press. July, 1942. 17 pages.
  The issue at stake, as far as the Western world and the Western civilization are concerned, is, therefore, despotism versus democracy: it is freedom versus oppression and peace versus the lust for conquest by brute force.
  Now, the issue at stake in the Pacific is exactly the same issue which faces you in the Western world. It is the issue of the totalitarian way of life versus the democratic way of life: it is freedom & peace versus oppression & aggression.
  Just as in the West the issue is focused on a conflict between Nazi Germany and the Western European and the Anglo-Saxon democracies so is the issue in the Pacific best symbolized by the conflict between Japan and China.
  The conflict between China and Japan is basically a conflict between the way of freedom and peace and the way of despotic oppression and militaristic and imperialistic aggression.
  The best way to understand this basic conflict in the Pacific is to remember these plain historical facts in contrast:
  (1) China discarded feudalism when she became a unified empire twenty-one centuries ago, whereas Japan was still at the height of a fully developed militaristic feudalism as late as the middle of the nineteenth century when Commodore Perry knocked on her doors.
  (2) China for twenty-one centuries has developed an almost classless social structure and has been governed by civilian officials selected through an open and competitive system of civil service examinations, whereas Japan has been governed at least for the last 800 years by a militaristic caste which has always occupied the unchallenged position of a ruling class.
  (3) China, even at the height of her power and glory, has never encouraged the arts of war and has always condemned wars and imperialistic expansion, whereas continental expansion and world conquest have long been the national ideals of militant Japan.
  These contrasting historical facts are of the greatest significance in the life and civilization of China and Japan. They have shaped and moulded the national life and institutions of these two peoples. In short, they have made China a democratic and peaceful country, and Japan, a totalitarian and militaristic nation.
  Ⅱ

  Let us have a look at historic China and see how it has worked out its free, democratic and peaceful ways of life.
  China was unified into a great Empire in 221 B.C. Before the unification, there had been a long period when there existed many separate and independent states, some of which developed into great powers. It was during this period of separate and contending states, especially during the period from 600 to 200 B.C., that Chinese thought and culture attained their creative development and full flowering comparable to the Hellenic period of Western thought and civilization.
  It is from this period of original and creative intellectual and philosophical development that China has derived the ideas and ideals of free, democratic and peaceful life. Of these philosophical foundations for a democratic China, I shall mention only a few.
  First, there was the ideal of laissez faire (wu wei ) as the highest form of government. Lao-tze and his followers taught that the best government is one whose presence is least felt by the people, and that the worst government is one which is feared by the people. "Follow nature. Nature does nothing, and yet there is nothing it does not accomplish."
  Second, there was the ideal of universal peace taught by Mo Ti and the Mo School. Mo Ti condemned all wars and devoted his whole life to the teaching of the Will of God which he interpreted as Love for all men and peace among all nations.
  Thirdly, there was the ideal of a classless society to be brought about through the infinite teachability of man. "Men," said Confucius, "are near one another by nature, but practice sets them apart. Only the wisest and the most idiotic cannot be changed." "With education, there is no class."
  Fourthly, there was the ancient tradition of free speech and frank political criticism. A statesman of the eighth century B.C. is said to have laid down this wise dictum: "To gag the voice of the people is more dangerous than to dam the flow of a river. The wise manager of the river deepens its basin and facilitates its flow. The wise ruler of men encourages them to speak out freely." A little classic, the Book of Filial Piety , has this saying of Confucius: "If an Emperor has seven outspoken ministers, he could not lose his empire in spite of his misdeeds. If a prince of a feudal state has five outspoken ministers, he could not lose his state in spite of his misdeeds Therefore, in the face of a wrong or unrighteousness, it is the duty of the son to oppose his father and the duty of the minister to oppose his sovereign."
  Fifthly, there was the conscious recognition of the people as of the supreme importance in a state, and there was the scriptural justification of rebellion against tyrannical government. Mencius said: "The people are of the first importance; the state comes next; the ruler is the least important." "When a ruler treats his people like grass and dirt, then the people should regard him as a bandit and enemy." On such democratic and revolutionary grounds, Mencius held that the rebellion of the people against tyrannical government and even the killing of despotic rulers by the people were justifiable.
  Sixthly, there was the ideal of equitable distribution of wealth in society. "He who rules a state," said Confucius, "should worry, not about the poverty of the people, but about the inequality in distribution. For with equitable distribution, there is no poverty."
  These are some of the theoretical and philosophical foundations for a peaceful and democratic China. All these ideas and ideals have come down to us from the great thinkers of that first period of Chinese intellectual maturity before the third century B.C. My friend Dr. A. W. Hummel, Chief of the Division of Orientalia, the Library of Congress, in commenting on the democratic doctrines of Mencius, says: "The surprising thing is that these revolutionary utterances and many like them could survive through more than twenty centuries of monarchical rule, and that the classics containing them should have been used in the competitive civil service examinations for the selection of government officials."
  Many of these philosophical ideals of the classical age have been put into practice and become institutionalized in the twenty-one centuries of unified empire life.
  (I) A huge unified empire has made peace a possibility and laissez faire a necessity. The Chinese empire of the second century B.C. was almost as big as China is today. To govern such a large empire without modern means of communication and transportation was no easy matter. The founders of the First Empire tried to govern it in a militaristic and totalitarian way and failed miserably. The Empire lasted only fifteen years and was overthrown by a revolution. The Second or Han Empire lasted 400 years. The statesmen had learned from history and were determined to establish a reign of peace by gradually developing a permanent system of civilian government and by consciously practising the political philosophy of wu wei or laissez faire. There was a conscious attempt to let the people learn to enjoy the benefits of a unified empire life without undue interference by the government.
  The system of civilian government and laissez faire policy, worked out during the long reign of the Han Empire, has been more or less continued by the later dynasties throughout the ages.
  Peace and practical disarmament have been possible in a country comparatively free from the dangers of foreign invasion by strong and militaristic neighbors. Even the few disastrous invasions by the nomadic and warlike tribes from the North, never taught China the necessity of armament and militarization. Governmental policy, philosophy, religion and literature have conspired to condemn war and the arts of war.
  Peace and laissez faire have been conducive to the development of individual freedom, local autonomy and self-government. There has grown up in China an inveterate tradition of political individualism almost anarchistic in its solicitous avoidance of governmental action and control.
  This ideal is best expressed in the Chinese proverb:
  "I begin to work at sun-rise.
  I rest at sun-set."
  It is also best expressed in the famous song:
  "Heaven is high;
  The Emperor is far away.
  I drill my own well and get my drink;
  I plow my field and get my food.
  What has the Emperor's power to do with me!"
  That is a free and democratic ideal possible only under a laissez faire policy of government.
  (II) With the early discarding of feudal society, there was abolished the institution of primogeniture throughout the Empire. It was a conscious policy of the statesmen of the Han Empire to encourage the division of big family estates equally among the male heirs. From titled nobility down to the plain merchant and farmer, it has become the accepted custom throughout the ages to divide the family property equally among the male heirs. "No great family can stand three generations of equal sub-division." Twenty-one centuries of absence of feudalism and primogeniture have brought about an equalization of wealth and landed property and gradual democratization of the social structure.
  (III) Chinese society was further democratized through twenty centuries of civil service examinations. These examinations originated in the demand for men who knew the classical language of ancient China—the language of Confucius and Mencius which, though no longer spoken by the people, had become the necessary medium for empire communication and for all scholarly writings. As education gradually spread and as the system of civil service came to be more firmly established, the examinations were open to more and more people who were prepared to take them. In the course of time, the examinations became the only legitimate and the only respectable channel of civic advancement, through which sons of the poorest families could steadily rise to the highest offices in the empire. As the subject-matter of the examinations was, in later ages, largely confined to the "Four Books" of Confucianism, it was possible for promising and ambitious youths of the poor and lowly homes to acquire a classical education and pass the examinations. The development of the civil service examinations was an institutional embodiment of the Confucianist ideal that "with education there is no class."
  (IV) Just as China fought the battle of equality through the early abolition of primogeniture and through the system of open and competitive examinations for the civil service, so has she fought the battle of freedom through the peculiarly Chinese institution of censorial control of the government. The institution of Censors dates back to very ancient times when courageous ministers braved the wrath of despotic rulers by their outspoken advices. In later ages, the right of petition was enjoyed not only by the Censoria Tribunal, but by all officials above a certain rank. And there grew up a semi-religious tradition under which even the most notorious despots dared not subject the outspoken censors to severe punishments. Tolerance to outspoken censure has always been regarded as a supreme virtue of the ruler. And those great censors who lost their lives or suffered severe penalties at the hands of tyrannical rulers, were always honored and even deified by the nation as great heroes who championed the interests of the people against tyranny and misrule.
  (V) But the most important and most positive phase of China's fight for freedom has been in her intellectual life and tradition. Independent thinking and courageous skepticism have always been the characteristics of the best periods of Chinese thought. Confucius, the sanest of Chinese thinkers, laid down this sagacious rule: "Learning without thinking leads to confusion; thinking without learning is perilous." "Knowledge," said Confucius, "is to know that you know and to know that you don't know."
  It is this great tradition of reasonable skepticism which has made possible the free and critical spirit of Chinese thinking. Wang Chung, who lived in the first century A.D., boldly subjected all the religious and occult ideas and beliefs of his age to a highly scientific technique of philosophical criticism. This critical spirit was responsible for China's gradual emancipation from the powerful medieval religions of Buddhism and Taoism. Even within the schools of Confucianism or Neo-Confucianism themselves, there was always much independent thinking and critical doubt. Textual criticism and "Higher" criticism of the Confucianist Canon were early developed and the scholars had little hesitation in rejecting a part or the whole of a highly venerated text as spurious or interpolated. This spirit of free criticism went so far that, by the last decades of the nineteenth century, there was hardly any major text of the Confucianist Canon that was accepted without serious questioning by the liberal scholars.
  The same spirit of doubt and criticism has characterized all the social and political thinking of China during the last half of the century. Practically all the great leaders of Chinese thought of this period have been men who have studied the national cultural heritage critically and who have had the moral courage to subject every aspect of it to searching and unsparing criteria of doubt and criticism. Neither religion, nor the monarchy, nor the towering sages of the past, nor the institutions of marriage and the family, was too sacred to be critically examined in the light of their survival value in a new age and a new world.
  It is important to note that this free and critical spirit in Chinese intellectual life is not imported but indigenous. Last year, when I deposited my father's unpublished manuscripts at the Library of Congress for safe keeping, I pointed out to the Library authorities that, on every page of the regulation notebooks used by my father in an old-fashioned Chinese college about eighty years ago, there were printed in red these words:
  "The student must first learn to approach the subject in a spirit of doubt The philosopher Chang Tsai [1020-1077 A.D. ] used to say: 'If you can doubt at points where other people feel no impulse to doubt, then you are making progress.'"
  It is this spirit of free criticism and doubt that has overthrown the dynasty and the monarchy, discarded the classical language as a tool of education and literature, and brought about a new age of political and social revolution and cultural renaissance in modern China.
  Ⅲ

  How totally different is historic Japan!
  Historic Japan has been totalitarian in political organization, slavishly credulous in intellectual life, militaristic in training, and imperialistic in aspiration.
  The totalitarian and dictatorial form of government in historic Japan has been noted by both native and foreign observers. Sir George Sansom, the most sympathetic authority on Japanese history, says: "From 1615 or thereabouts Japan was ruled by a feudal oligarchy, which anticipated in many respects the methods of government used by modern totalitarian states. The distinguishing features were there, the rule of a self-constituted elite, the disabilities imposed upon certain classes, the restriction of personal liberty, the sumptuary laws, the monopolies, the censorship, the secret police and the doctrine that the individual exists for the state. When in 1868 this regime was overthrown, it was replaced not by a popular government, but by a powerful bureaucracywhich perpetuated the essential features of totalitarianism."
  Mr. Shiratori, former Japanese Ambassador to Rome, and one of the authors and signers of the Tripartite Alliance of September, 1940, goes even further than Sansom by saying that "totalitarianism has been the fundamental principle of Japan's national life for the past thirty centuries."
  It is therefore no mere historical accident that Japan readily and willingly becomes a partner of the European Axis Powers and regards that partnership as the "immutable policy" of the Empire.
  Secondly, much has also been written about the slavish acceptance of authority and tradition in Japanese intellectual life. The historical scholar in Japan must not question such traditionally accepted myths as those of the divine descent of the Japanese dynasty and nobility, of the Sun Goddess, of the date of February 11, 660 B.C. as the founding of the Empire or of the three Sacred Treasures—the Mirror, the Jewel, and the Sword—handed down by the gods. Many years ago, Professor Tetsujiro Inoue of the Imperial University of Tokyo, in one of his learned works, ventured to express the opinion that the Three Sacred Treasures at the Shrine of Ise might be of possibly disputable authenticity. For this mild expression of doubt, Dr. Inoue was persecuted for years, was turned out of the University, and was actually subjected to the physical violence of the enraged mob resulting in the loss of one of his eyes. No scholar came forward to defend him or his scientific doubt.
  In such an atmosphere of authoritarian and mob control of the intellectual life, it is most natural that not only "dangerous thoughts" are rigorously prohibited, but all thinking is regarded as dangerous.
  Thirdly, the same historical tradition also explains the ease and rapidity with which Japan has transformed herself into a first class militaristic power. It explains one of the greatest historical puzzles. The puzzle is why, of all the non-European nations, Japan alone has been successful in adopting and mastering the martial and militaristic aspects of Western civilization. Neither China, nor India, nor Persia, nor Korea, nor Annam, nor Siam, could do it. Japan alone was best qualified to undertake this rapid militarization because her ruling class, the daimyo and the samurai , had been educated, trained and imbued in the militaristic tradition, and because what a ruling class did was always eagerly emulated by the whole nation.
  So it is again no mere historical accident that Japan of all the non-European nations has alone succeeded in becoming one of the greatest military powers within the short space of a few decades.