CHINA AWAKE.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12420, 9 December 1908, Page 4

CHINA AWAKE.

— >• . .", According to Mr Li Sum Ling, the managing editor of the "Chinese Mail," China is already wide awake. He told a" press interviewer in London that the progress made by his country during the last few years had been tremendous. Last year he .visited his own home in the interior of Southern China after an absence of seven years, and he was amazed at the changes he found. The education system had been remodelled along English -lines. Children could tell him all about Gladstone and Bismarck and Washington, and were determined to have Gladstones and Bismarcks and Washingtons for their own country.., He anticipated that the -new system of education would have a marked . effect in improving the ■ physique of the race. "Under the^old system," he stated, "we studied from six in the . morning till nine at night,, and had no time for recreation or exercise. Now our schools observe English hours, and have fine playgrounds for spare time, where cricket, football, lawn tennis and the like are played, and where military instructors drill the pupils. In the old. days the student was a delicate, consumptive youth, but now he is healthy and well set up." The Chinese journalist added that ' Great Britain was becoming very popular m. China. The support given to the Oninese effort to abolish opium had been much appreciated, as well as Britain s behaviour in several recent diplomatic matters. .. English was the foreign language; most spoken in China, and it was . Being • taught in most of the schools, even right in the interior. In his own newspaper he printed daily an instalment of some Story by a well-known English- author. We rare, a peace-loving and lawabiding nation," he added, "and all we ask is to be allowed to reform and develop at peace. ...But we fear the aggression of Japan, taking advantage of her alliance with Great Britain, and I should welcome an alliance between my country and America. Our interests are identical, and I believe a defensive and commercial .agreement would ensure the peace of the Far East. That is what we want — peace to.; -concentrate our efforts on reform." Mr Ling's attitude towards Japan seemed to be distinctly hostile. '