MUST STUDY THE EAST.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17219, 30 September 1927, Page 4

MUST STUDY THE EAST.

During the precarious summer of 19IS, an English geographer of international fame remarked: “War is a ghastly price to pay for an increase in popular knowledge of geography, but, whatever other entries are to be made in the world’s big ledger as a result of these black years, at least it is certain that the average man now knows a deal more than he did of rivers and mountains and boundaries.” And a generation ago, in the early weeks of Spanish-American difference, much the

same fact was amusingly implied by a very young lady, who, glancing up from the morning’s-paper, exclaimed: “Why the Philippines are islands! I thought they were nuts.” Broaden the -forms and living customs, and the observer has hold of a truth as valuable as paradoxical. It might be predicated thus: War compels an understanding which, had it, been earlier enjoyed, xvould have made war less pro-bablc--pcrhaps impossible. This obviously has close bearing upon to-day, for with political developments in the Orient steadily assuming larger importance, the, West must develop an enlightened sympathy with Eastern peoples if the inevitable international problems are rightly to he solved. As a test of the statement, take the news corning over from China. One sees instantly how much now is being learned of that antique land by English and Americans, by Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, and whoever else: intelligent folk enough, all of them, but until yesterday content with scantiest information of the country which houses a fifth of the human race. And how far has this same lack of understanding been the cause of the current turm-oil in the Yellow Republic?—in so far, that is, as has to do with antiforeign feeling. Surely, then, albeit a tragic degree. Surely ,then, albeit tardily, the West must study the East, both as an aid toward untangling present snarls, and as a partial prevention of others forming in the future. Especially io it to be regretted that the cultural relationship between East and West has been so one-sided. From many of the lands of Europe, from Canada and the United States, men and women have gone over to Persia and India, Japan and China, to trade and travel and teach—but how many to learn? Once more, take China as in point. Thousands of pounds are spent there yearly to educate the Chinese in "modern” (i.e. Western) ways, but how much is done toward instructing the “progressive” world to know China? It may be answered that much Chinese news is printed in Europe and "the States,” but it is a perfectly safe guess that 70 per cent, of this is devoted to the political situation, including, of course, the civil war, and not 15 per cent, to matters properly to be called cultural. Yet it is these same cultural interests which soonest beget the most genuine understanding (which is to say, sympathy) ; and precisely therein lies one of the most potent deterrents of war. It is this present lack which must be remedied if the inescapable contacts between great nations are to be most fruitful to all. At a time when world knowledge is coming to be more and more usual, the Occident must increasingly keep informed of material conditions in Asia, to the end that Asian mental processes may be grasped the better. It is not that markets of undreamed-of size and dependability there await Western merchants; it is this least of all. It is rather an integral part of that unfolding of consciousness that must presage the day tfdien all the great human brotherhood shall be possessed of so adequate an interknowledge as shall make wars to cease and enthrone justice among mankind.