this is success. It is self-respect, and it involves and implies the respect of others. It is, in a word, face.' The preservation of face' frequently requires that one should behave in an arbitrary and violent manner merely to emphasize his protests against the course of current events. He or she must fly into a violent rage, he or she must use reviling and perhaps imprecatory language, else it will not be evident to the spectators of the drama, in which he is at the moment acting, that he is aware just what ought to be done by a person in his precise situation; and then he will have no way to descend from the stage,' or in other words, he will have lost face.'" 1

·

Even in death this remains the ruling passion. Chinese coffins require much wood and are an expensive burden in this land where timber is scarce, for Confucius said that a coffin should be five inches thick. So the poorer Chinese thriftily meet this requirement by making the sides and ends hollow! Thus "face" is saved.

In these circumstances, it was very important that the relations of Europeans to China should be characterized not only by justice but by tact and at least decent respect for the feelings and customs of the people. The chief cause of China's hostility to foreigners undoubtedly lies in the notorious and often contemptuous disregard of these things by the majority of the white men who have entered China and by the Governments which have backed them.

There is much in the Chinese that is worthy of our respectful recognition. Multitudes are indeed, stolid and ignorant, but multitudes, too, have strong, intelligent features. Thousands of children have faces as bright and winning as those of American children. More strongly than ever do I feel that Europe and America have not done justice to the character of the Chinese. I do not refer to the bigoted and corrupt Manchu officials, or to the lawless barbarians who, like the "lewd fellows of the baser sort" in other lands, are ever ready to follow the leadership of a demagogue. But I refer to the Chinese people

1 Smith, "Rex Christus," pp. 107, 108.

as a whole. Their view-point is so radically different from ours that we have often harshly misjudged them, when the real trouble has lain in our failure to understand them.

Let us be free enough from prejudice and passion to respect a people whose national existence has survived the mutations of a definitely known historic period of thirty-seven centuries and of an additional legendary period that runs back no man knows how far into the haze of a hoary antiquity; who are frugal, patient, industrious and respectful to parents, as we are not; whose astronomers made accurate recorded observations 200 years before Abraham left Ur; who used firearms at the beginning of the Christian era; who first grew tea, manufactured gunpowder, made pottery, glue and gelatine; who wore silk and lived in houses when our ancestors wore the undressed skins of wild animals and slept in caves; who invented printing by movable types 500 years before that art was known in Europe; who discovered the principles of the mariner's compass without which the oceans could not be crossed, conceived the idea of artificial inland waterways and dug a canal 600 miles long; who made mountain roads which, in the opinion of Dr. S. Wells Williams, "when new probably equalled in engineering and construction anything of the kind ever built by Romans; and who invented the arch to which our modern architecture is so greatly indebted.

In the Great Bell Temple two miles from Peking is one of the wonderful bells of the world. It is fourteen feet high, thirty-four feet in circumference at the rim, nine inches thick and weighs 120,000 pounds. It is literally covered inside and out with Chinese characters consisting of extracts from the sacred writings, and the Rev. Dr. John Wherry, who is an expert in the Chinese language, says that there is "not one imperfect character among them." The bell when struck by the big wooden clapper emits a deep musical note that can be heard for miles. Such a magnificent bell vividly illustrates the stage of civilization reached by the Chinese while Europe

was comparatively barbarous, for the bell was cast as far back as 1406 in the reign of Yung-loh, and the present temple buildings were erected about it in 1578. The Germans began using paper in 1190, but Sven Hedin found Chinese paper 1,650 years old and there is evidence that paper was in common use by the Chinese 150 years before Christ. Until a few hundred years ago, European business was conducted on the basis of coin or barter. But long before that, the Chinese had banks and issued bills of exchange. There has recently been placed in the British Museum a bank-note issued by Hung-Wu, Emperor of China, in 1368.

The Chinese exalt learning and, alone among the nations of the earth, make scholarship a test of fitness for official position. True, that scholarship moves along narrow lines of Confucian classics, but surely such knowledge is a higher qualification for office than the brute strength which for centuries gave precedence among our ancestors. A Chinese writer explains as follows the gradations in relative worth as they are esteemed by his countrymen: "First the scholar: because mind is superior to wealth, and it is the intellect that distinguishes man above the lower orders of beings, and enables him to provide food and raiment and shelter for himself and for other creatures. Second, the farmer: because the mind cannot act without the body, and the body cannot exist without food, so that farming is essential to the existence of man, especially in civilized society. Third, the mechanic: because next to food, shelter is a necessity, and the man who builds a house comes next in honour to the man who provides food. Fourth, the tradesman: because, as society increases and its wants are multiplied, men to carry on exchange and barter become a necessity, and so the merchant comes into existence. His occupation -shaving both sides, the producer and consumer-tempts him to act dishonestly; hence his low grade. Fifth, the soldier stands last and lowest in the list, because his business is to destroy and not to build up society. He consumes what others

produce, but produces nothing himself that can benefit mankind. He is, perhaps, a necessary evil."1

While the Government of China is a paternal despotism in form and while it is always weak and corrupt and often cruel and tyrannical in practice, nevertheless there is a larger measure of individual freedom than might be supposed. "There are no passports, no restraints on liberty, no frontiers, no caste prejudices, no food scruples, no sanitary measures, no laws except popular customs and criminal statutes. China is in many senses one vast republic, in which personal restraints have no existence." "

We must not form our opinion from the Chinese whom we see in the United States. True, most of them are kindly, patient and industrious, while some are highly intelligent. But, with comparatively few exceptions, they are from the lower classes of a single province of Kwan-tung-Cantonese coolies. The Chinese might as fairly form their opinion of Americans from our day-labourers. But there are able men in the Celestial Empire. Bishop Andrews returned from China to characterize the Chinese as "a people of brains." When Viceroy Li Hung Chang visited this country, all who met him unhesitatingly pronounced him a great man. The New York Tribune characterizes the late Liu Kan Ji, Viceroy of Nanking, as a man who "rendered inestimable services to China and to the whole world," "a man of action, who acted with a strong hand and masterful leadership and at the same time with a justice and a generosity that made him at once feared, respected and loved."

After General Grant's tour around the world, he told Senator Stewart that the most astonishing thing which he had seen was that wherever the Chinese had come into competition with the Jew, the Chinese had driven out the Jew. We know the persistence of the Jew, that he has held his own against every 1 Quoted by Beach, "Dawn on the Hills of T'ang," pp. 45, 46. E. H. Parker, "China."

other people. Despite the fact that he has no home and no Government, that he has been ridiculed and persecuted by all men, that everywhere he is an alien in race, country and religion, he has laboured on, patiently, resolutely, distancing every rival, surmounting every obstacle, compelling even his enemies to acknowledge his shrewdness and his determination, till to-day in Russia, in Austria, in Germany, in England, the Jew is bitterly conceded to be master in the editorial chair, at the bar, in the universities, in the counting-house and in the banking office; while the proudest of monarchs will undertake no enterprise requiring large expenditure until he is assured of the support of the keen-eyed, swarthy-visaged men who control the sinews of war. Generations of exclusion from agriculture and the mechanical arts and of devotion to commerce, have developed and inbred in the Jew a marvellous facility for trade.

And yet this race, which has so abundantly demonstrated its ability to cope with the Greek, the Slav and the Teuton, finds itself outreached in cunning, outworn in persistence and overmatched in strength by an olive-complexioned, almond-eyed fellow with felt shoes, baggy trousers, loose tunic, round cap and swishing queue, who represents such swarming myriads that the mind is confused in the attempt to comprehend the enormous number. The canny Scotchman and the shrewd Yankee are alike discomfited by the Chinese. Those who do not believe it should ask the American and European traders who are being crowded out of Saigon, Shanghai, Bangkok, Singapore, Penang, Batavia and Manila. In many of the ports of Asia outside of China, the Chinese have shown themselves to be successful colonizers, able to meet competition, so that to-day they own the most valuable property and control the bulk of the trade. It is true that the Chinese are inordinately conceited; but shades of the Fourth of July orator, screams of the American eagle! it requires considerable self-possession in a Yankee to criticize any one else on the planet for conceit. The Chinese have not, at least, padded a census to make the