A CHINESE PATRIOT.

Waikato Times, Volume 109, Issue 18347, 5 June 1931, Page 3

A CHINESE PATRIOT.

COMBATING IGNORANCE. ERROR OF RACIAL SUPERIORITY. DR. KOO IN NEW ZEALAND. What is it in this quiet Chinese gentleman that has won the hearts 01 Auckland, and of Wellington and will doubtless prove no less winning in me centres of the South? asks the Wakato Diocesan Magazine, in a specnii article on Dr. T. Z. Koo. Is it the contrast between his evident meekness and his powerful Intellect? Is it the grasp he has of international factors, or his- acquaintance with the learning of two civilisations? Partly, probably, something of all these, but chie ly that he sees men and women invariably as men and women, whatever race, time or community they belong to, and his heart seems to go out to all in understanding sympathy. Understanding sympathy—yes, this is what he stresses as the first factor requisite for international peace. Goodwill does not go far enough. "The first step necessary is to overcome the ignorance that exists between the different peoples about each other. Oun Ignorance of each will sometimes create serious situationsAnd we must break the habit of thinking of each other as types. Some people think of Chinese simply as laundrymen or servants. Dr Koo was once taken by the scruff of the neck and thrown out of a big hotel, in China, because he had not gone in' by the servants’ entrance. Yet for this kind of treatment he bears no ill will, it is due to the error of thinking in types. Yet there is a kind of “type" thinking that Dr. Koo himself indulges in. He is able to see typical idiosyncrasies in great communities of peoples. For instance “Life in India,” he says, “ is based on the idea of man in relation to God. In China it is life as between man and man, and in the West it is man in relation to nature, and his conquest of nature,” But you get a real insight into Dr. Koo’s heart and mind when you hear the comment that immediately follows this classification. "You will thus see that each is incomplete, and also that there is no excuse for one country to believe Itself superior to another. We must endeavour to supplement each other, thereby rounding out our own life as a whole.” “The Abundant Life.” This leads this Christian philosopher, as all roads of nations and individual life lead him, to Jesus. “In the life of Jesus” he said, “you see the three things coming together in cooperation. You 'see each of the phases of life fully developed, and that makes clear the full meaning of the term 'the abundant life.’ ” In the realm of religion he follows the same road. He takes us with the skill of an expert, into the heart of Confucianism and into the system of “Lohti” and “Laotse,” and shows how these philosophies have produced the great stability of China, and her family piety, her simplicity of life and love of peace. But in the end he finds them deadening. “For over 1500 years China has created nothing.”. She believed once in many spirits, and for a long time in one great spirit. Then came these teachers, and they had turned away the nation’s mind from the idea of a personal god. “From that moment to the present, the idea of a leading god had faded out of Chinese life, and with that fading began the cessation of Invention and movement. Missionaries would give back the God of the Bible, which the national philosophy turned them away from, and with that would return the creative faculty. The vital contract with God was already showing its effects in many of the leading men of China. No longer was the Chinese nation like a man sitting on a chair trying to lift himself, chair and all. It was still sitting but its hands were outstretched . . . and not in vain.” Not Only a Markot. In this we see the earnest Christian patriot. Another quotation will show how essentially human in his view, and his appeal for our understanding and co-operation with his race. He was speaking of government and political turmoil, and he concluded thus: “When you think of us in China, faced with the task of bringing up a new nation, think of the problem essentially In the light of a human problem. Some people in the West see only a market in China, or see in China experiments in various forms of government, but my plea to you to-day is that we are more than just a market. In China to-day there are 400,000,000 people with essentiaily the same hearts beating in their breasts, with the same capacity for joy and sorrow, and the same aspiration to build a better social structure.” Dr. Koo’s visit will do much for the objects he has at heart. It will help us to understand the Chinese better, and ourselves better also. It will strengthen the bonds of friendship between our two peoples, and will show us how necessary is the Lord Jesus Christ for the life, “the more abundant life,” of both races.