AN EMPIRE IN EVOLUTION.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 271, 13 November 1909, Page 10

AN EMPIRE IN EVOLUTION.

TEE VITAL CHANGES TAKING PLACE IN CHINA.

(By LOBD WILLIAM CECIL.)

A fourth of the human race has begun to revolve—l conclude that to revolve and to be in~ a state o* revolution are practically identical. I only say "that they have begun; when they are gyrating at top speed it will be unnecessary to inform the world of it. By that time we will wish vre could do. or had done, something to guide these revolutions in some way so tnat they should not become a menace to us. Regrets will then be futile, for the time of action will be past. On the other handi before the gyration has fully developed a great deal might be done to make it not a curse but a blessing to the whole After 2000 years and more conservative existence, China has realised that she must change, and China means a fourth of the world's inhabitants. The question is, Which way shall she change? There are, roughly speaking, three views on the question; there is that of the thoughtless Chinaman, and that of the thoughtless Englishman, and that of the thoughtful men of both countries. The thoughtless Chinaman only wants China to know a little more about machinery. His view is that the West is happy because her populations understand machines. The West is a place where there are no morals and plenty of machinery; therefore, if you would be "happy, do away, with morals and start machinery. If you try to argue with him he will hove the better of you, at any rate in his own estimation; if you suggest the West owes its greatness to its high moral ideals, he will answer, " You have never walked down the Foochaw-road at Shanghai and seen the moral young man of th° West." EASTERN VIEW. You see, he knows all about it—he has studied Western civilisation—he has been to Shanghai or; one of the ports h<? has read Chinese translations of some of our penny dreadfuls, and from that deep and intimate study of Western, conditions he has formed his own conclusions. The West is a nice, comfortable, easy place where peopie are wicked and rich. They are rich because they have machines .and no morals; therefore, the way to be happy is to neglect moral laws and to study engineering. Then there is the opinion of the careless Englishman. Briefly, his view may be expressed in the words, ' ; Utter rot"; the only thing which is not rotten in his estimation, but sound and real and sensible, is that he shall hare a rise in his salary, and as that depends on bis firm making more money, he views every Chinese question seriously merely from this standpoint. If souls Vere a marketable commodity he would probably be an enthusiastic supporter of missiona; but as they are not. he thinks them "utter rot," and he would be prepared to prove that assertion by his own personal experience; he once had a servant who cheated him, and who said he was a Christian; he takes it that this clearly proves that Christianity is a failure. If you suggest that the man who cheated him would not scruple to tell a lie, and lhat the fact that a ro'-ue snould take the trouble to declare he was a Christian, was evidence that in the opinion of rogues—no bad judges of mankind—-Christians were trustworthy, i-.e will with grand inconsistency change his ground and denounce missions because they interfere with his low pleasures or with his lower ideals of moneymaking. If you ask him whether he prefers the system of Chinese ethics as it is set forth in tha classics, he smiles superciliously, and thinks you must indeed be a "griffin" to ask him such a question; he wonders whether you will next aek him if a pigtail will become him. " CIVILISATION." Probably your interview with him by this time will have come to a natural end. But if you can still keep' him to the point and avoid his wandering off to tie more congenial topics of who is going to win the next race or take the leading part in the approaching private theatricals, you will find that while ho readily acknowledges the reality of the change in Chinese opinion, he has a vague idea that probably the Chinese in a. short time will order tall-hats and frock-coats, and become possessors of an ethical tradition similar to the one he is spoiling by his life, but which he will agre e has made a real difference between himself and the Chinese man of pleasure, by some such idiomatic phrase as "A Chinese Johnny cannot play the game, you know."' It is useless to suggest to such a man that the glorious moral traditions both of the West and of the

.Last have been the fruit of much human labour and human suffering, and that it is about as improbable that a high moral tradition shail develop without ait effort as that the business of the mercantile firm whom he serves shall be built up by a man lying in bed and wishing he were rich. Dollars are very hard to get, he realises, tmt such virtues as honesty and truth, he thinks, can be got by anyone who can kick a ball through a footbLll goal. NATIVE PRESS. Then there is the view of the thoughtful man of both countries; the views of tae two so nearly coincide to all intents and purposes that they may be liken as one, though, of course, there arc slight differences. Perhaps the word that expresses more than any ether the prevailing tone of those views is "awe." Fear, hope, and thankfulness are constituent parts of that feeling. The element of fear comes in from the size and extent of ths- movement, a movement which is not confined to one- province or one class of Chinaman. The activity of the native Press and the spreaod of the post and telegraph have made China one in a sense which, though unity has always been her characteristic, she has never baen fore, and such a vast extent of human opinion may crush and change Empires and civilisations. If you compare their state with ours in the West, this point becomes more controversies may come, controversies may go; elections may be won, and elections may be } lost, but the main ideas of our civilisation, we are confident, will not be altered... We confidently expect our children to hav c more or less the same ideas of right and wrong as their fathers have, tut in China no one can say what will remain or what will be lost.. The size and extent of the movement may change the very.' fundamental principles of Chinese life; good and bad may alike be swept away. One. hears, on the : one hand, of girls unbinding their feet, , so that they may enjoy healthful exercises and athletic. sports, and, on the I Qthmr. w tav»Ht e£lb* j

Chinaman breaking the fundamental canon of Chinese morality and despising the father who begat him. Truly a great and fearful movement is in progress. Then the next feeling is one of hope; tope is justified by the fact that every reformer desires to do good to his country; and if those good desires can only be directed into the right path, all men feel that good may result. Lastly, there is the feeling of thankfulness; every one is deeply grateful that a change has come; no one -who has lived Jin China for many years has any word I but of gratitude that a change as benej lieial as it was unexpected should have eorce over China. They repeat again ana again that they never could have bs-_ Ueved that so progressive a spirit should arise in a land which they used to regard as the abode of every time-honoured abuse. But what every thoughtful man desires is that the moral ideals of China shall not be destroyed, but, on the contrary, they shall be preserved and improved. The main feature of the movement— the desire of China to imitate the West— may easily cause a very serious mistake, for the West has, as the thoughtless Chinaman has found out,*a very evil side —a side which, if unrestrained by any good, must in a few years brrhg any nation, West or East, into perfect misery. The danger is that China, in endeavouring to reform, should plant in her land all the vilest abases which prosper in the West, and should leave out and ignore the counterbalancing good. What is now so necessary is to induce the men who will lead China to discriminate between good and evil and .to choose the first and discard the other. CHINESE PLAN. The plan most favoured in China by Chinese is the sending of a number of students to the West who may be thoroughly imbued with all that i; good there and bring it back to China. If this means that the Chinese boys are sent into thoughtful families, and there learn our great traditions, as do our own children, the course is not unwise; but if it means that older men are to be sent to the West, the result will probably be that those young men will learn the pleasures of our music-halls and the wantonness of our luxury, with but few of our great traditions. The plan most favoured by men who j know the West is that a university should be established in China, which shall bring to her all that is finest in the West and leave the bad behind. The great feature of such a university would be the harmonising of the high ethical teaching of the Chinese sages both with modern science, which is the product, and with religion, which is the creator of Western civilisation. Such a course seems to many who have studied this question deeply not impossible, nor even very difficult. The Chinaman is such a patriot that he welcomes the teacher who tells him that the power of the West is not inconsistent with his old culture and ethics; he is naturally so tolerant that he sees no difficulty in the suggestion that Christianity is noc more destructive to the wisdom of Confucius than it has proved to be to the Greek philosophy, on which Western thought to a great extent is founded. The difficulties that lie in the path really come from other lands, from Japan, yes, and from, the West itself. The nature of these difficulties I will reserve for another letter.