CHINA AND THE WEST

Southland Times, Issue 23647, 24 October 1938, Page 2

CHINA AND THE WEST

ACCEPTANCE OF NEW LIFE LOST OPPORTUNITY 100 YEARS AGO Japan’s culture, civilization, religion, and art come originally from China as ours do from England, writes George Sokolsky in The New York HeraldTribune. And the Japanese respect and almost worship ancient China, but for modem China they have had a deep contempt I recently came across a letter which Admiral Ito, of the Japanese Navy, wrote to Admiral Ting, of the Chinese Navy, in 1895. This letter appears in one of the most informative and understanding books on the Far East that I have read in many a year—- “ Togo,” by Edwin A. Falk. Admiral Ito wrote Admiral Ting:— “You know what difficulties Japan encountered 30 years ago, what perils she has to surmount. She owes her preservation and her' integrity today wholly to the fact that she then broke away from the old and attached herself to the new. In the case of your country also that must be the cardinal course at present; if you adopt it, I venture to say that you are safe; if you reject it, you cannot escape destruction.” . There is more real understanding or Japan’s attitude towards China in that paragraph than in most things written about both countries. The Japanese have always felt that China missed her chance in the 1840’s when Great Britain, France, and the United States appeared with the ways of the West—which China continued to reject and resist from then until the emergence of Sun Yat-sen in 1911. The Japanese have felt that China, having, missed her chance, could never regain it. Therefore, they assumed some one would sooner or later occupy China. Over that conception, Japan and Russia have been struggling from 1895 to the present moment THE JAPANESE ERROR The error that the Japanese made was that they accepted too readily the outward, material evidences of Western civilization for the whole of it. They believed that because the Chinese did not respond quickly to modem science, modem means of production and distribution, modem warfare, that the Chihese were incapable of grasping the spirit of the modem world. Actually, China has been undergoing a rebirth. If the period of gestation has been slow, that is in the nature of things, but the birth of a new China, nationalistic, self-sacrificing, selfrespecting, has taken place. I am sure that the Japanese understand that now that it is too late. Each historical period has its man—and China today has her Chiang Kaishek. A most curious personality is Chiang. His education, judged by any standards, has been meagre. Until he became generalissimo of Chinas revolutionary armies in 1925 or 1926, his military experience had been rudimentary. His immediate rise was due to two accidents, Sun Yat-sen’s _ death from a cancer and the assassination of his friend, Liao Chung-kai. His marriage to Meiling Soong did not mean an alliance with a powerful family. The Soongs only became powerful through. Chiang Kai-shek. We used to call him the Red General” because of his alliance with Soviet Russia, but when it suited him he threw that alliance away and got rid of the Russians. There have been times when Chiang Kai-shek had associations with groups in Japan, but he has been able to discard them. He has broken powerful personalities in China and united unassimilable elements.and held them together as in a vise. TAKEN THE Y.M.C.A. IDEA

He has fought the Chinese Communists and today they fight under him. He has taken tbe Y.M.C.A. idea and turned it into the “New Life Movement,” and he has made that the living force in China. He was attacked by Chinese intellectuals; today they serve him. _ . '. China is not Germany., There is no goosestepping the Chinese people. They are more individualistic than Americans. No man can. be a Hitler in China, because the Chinese would laugh him out of existence. Chiang Kai-shek’s might and power then does not come from any borrowmg of the gestures of a Hitler. It comes rather from a faith that has grown: m China during the last decade that this is the man that China needs There are some who find it in in eir hearts to hate an entire people. They hate the Japanese. Ido not. I have lived too long among both the Chinese and Japanese to hate either. I have too many friends hi both countries to make hatred possible. To me tins year of fighting and murder and rape has been a constant misery. I can " not think of millions dying with any joy that the stronger is not victorious. Those who are dead are dead—and that is all. .. « Must this senseless war continue. Must these bombings and burnings go on’ Who will win this war? Surely neither China nor Japan. Both will be exhausted by it—and that exhaustion will mean that Soviet Russia or an international group of Western Powers will, in the end, step m. What advantage would that be either to China or Japan? The time has come to call a halt Whoever calls a halt will be the f real ( victor. He will have everlasting “face.”