AN ENGLISHMAN’S UMBRELLA

Evening Star, Issue 22577, 19 February 1937, Page 13

AN ENGLISHMAN’S UMBRELLA

WHAT A CHINESE SEES UNDER IT Dr Lin Yu-Tang is a Chinese who feels an affinity with the English. In the course of an address given by him before the Mid-Pacific Association in Shanghai, and reprinted in the ‘Review of Reviews,’ he said: — “I am going to speak about England in particular, for several reasons, lirst. because as a Chinese I feel all foreigners in China are Englishmen. The international settlement in Shanghai is known among the Chinese as the ‘ British settlement,’ and we are probably right. Secondly, because the English show more sense and less sensibility. I would at any time twist the British lion’s tail rather than pinch the whiskers of a Japanese marine. The British lion has a better sense of humour. And, thirdly, because I feel I understand England better, _ I feel the spirit of the English people is niore akin to the spirit of the Chinese people, for both nations are worshippers of realism and common sense. Both peoples have a profound distrust of logic and are extremely suspicious of arguments that are too perfect. “ The English Constitution is a masterpiece of patchwork, and yet in spite of its being patchwork it offers the English people a real guarantee of their civil rights. The English form of government is in itself a contradiction, a monarchy in name and a democracy in reality, and somehow the English people do not feel any conflict in it. The English profess the greatest love for and loyalty to their King, and then proceed to limit the expenditures of the Royal household through their Parliament. Some day 1 England will yet become a Bolshevist State with the English King still on his throne and under the leadership of a most die-hard Conservative Cabinet. I feel confident that the basis of English democracy will stand the strain of any crisis it may have to pass through, just by its sheer dogged sense of reality, and a kind of robust animal instinct for life. “ And so there goes the Englishman, with his umbrella, and, unashamed of his umbrella, refusing to talk any language but his own, demanding marmalade in an African jungle and unable to forgive his boy for not producing holly and a plum pudding in an African desert on Christmas Eve, so sure of himself, so terribly cocksure of himand so terribly decent. There is an inevitability about his words and actions and gestures when he is not looking like a dumb, persecuted animal. You could predict exactly what an Englishman would do even when he sneezes. He would take out bis handkerchief—for he always has a handkerchief—and mutter something about a beastly cold.’ And you could tell what is going on in his mind about Bovril and going home to have a hot bath, as inevitable as that the sun is going to rise in the east next morning. But you could not upset him. That cheekiness is not very lovely, but is very imposing. In fact, ho has gone round conquering the world with that bluff and that cheekiness, and his success in doing so is his best justification. “ For myself, I am rather intrigued by that cheekiness, the cheekiness of a man who thinks that any country is dog-gone and God-forsaken whose people do not take ißovril and do not produce an inevitable white handkerchief when the correct moment comes. ‘ One is lured to look behind that extremely brazen front and take a peep at his inner soul. ’ “Of course, there is something in it. His soul is not such bad stuff and his cheekiness is not just side and airs. I . sometimes feel that the Bank of England can never fall just because the English people believe so, that it cannot be closed simply because ‘ it isn't done,’ The Bank of England is decent. So is the English Post Office. So is their Manufacturers’ Life Assurance. So is the whole British Empire, all so decent, so inevitably docent. I am sure Gonfucius himself would have found England the ideal country to live i n W