China and the West

Pound, Ezra. Ezra Pound speaking : radio speeches of World War II [ID D29148].
30 years or a hundred ; Febr. 3 (1942).
…The laws of right government have been known since the days of Yao and Shun, ole Chinese emperors, and from the time of Shun to King Wen was a 1000 years, and from Wen to Confucius 500.
And they say when the policies of Shun and of Wan were set together (compared), they were as the two halves of a seal, or it might be of a tally stick.
And for nigh onto 4000 years I think no one has dodged the facts of these policies. And from the time of Confucius every dynasty in China that has lasted 300 years has been founded on the law of Confucius, a man or a group, seem' the horse sense of government, as learned by Confucius, I mean he learned it looking at history, talking of Shun and Wan and after him whenever a great man learned it he started or upheld some sort of imperial order.
The President hath power ; Febr. 19 (1942).
…England's conduct in China has been for the most part an infamy. Let some bloody-minded betrayer of the British people get up in their grimy assembly and tell the world of their kind acts in the Orient. From the sacking of the Imperial Palace in Peking to the Jewsoons', Sassoons' century of infamy and of opium with Robert Cecil their advocate…
Napoleon, etc. ; March 2 (1942)
…Mencius referred t, the folly of starting a war for something you couldn't GET; something the war could not bring to the monarch Mencius was talking to. So he said, climb trees to catch fish…
Why pick on the Jew ? ; March 6 (1942).
…Very nice to hear, I mean you are mebbe comforted to HEAR that you got 100 million Chinese soldiers all ready to die for democracy. I mean if you are a democracy. But you ain't got 'em. Well, why lean on what ain't thaar ?...
Disbursement of wisdom ; July 2 (1942).
…The Chinese have a more monumental exposition of the same theme: In evil time the sage can enjoy his own wisdom; when the land is well governed, the people benefit from his instructions…
Financial defeat ; U.S. ; March 26 (1943).
…I am perfectly aware that I might as well be writing Greek or talking Chinese with a foreign accent, so far as making this statement clear to the hearer or reader is concerned. And the public can most certainly not be blamed for this, as you could read a hundred books, by no means despicable books, on economics, without finding any hint that such an idea about money is possible…
I repeat in quoting these statements that I might as well be talking Chinese or Tibetan so far as the average reader or bearer [hearer?] is concerned. Money is a means of exchange, an implement by which exchanges are effected, it is a measure of exchange, it is called 'a title to goods', a measured claim. It is both a title and a measure…
Conscience ; April 24 (1943)
… I have mentioned the small boys in Trenton N.J. who played at being Emperor of the World. Infantilism in high places! And Madame Chek, on February 18, made a stirring speech to the American Congress speaking better American than Sol Bloom and half the assembled delegates, and with a better delivery than Mr. Roosevelt. I have no doubt the audience fell for it as leaves in autumn. It was an appeal to one's sympathies. I should have been swept off my feet if I hadn't been lying down at the time, next to my radio. Bedside habit of radio. The Chinese have a very old saying, that it is an ill omen if the hen crows. Canta la gallina. Mme. Chiang's appeal was clear enough. Everyone wants their own country to be governed by their own people. But it is Wang Chin Wei and not Mons. C.K. Chek who has got back the treaty ports, the extraterritorial rights for his country.
And the grouped ideograms that are translated, 'man of high character', indicate, unless I miss my guess, the men through whom and in whom one hears the voice of his forebears. Order at home. China with 400 millions IN ORDER would indeed be an element for world stability. But that order must RISE IN CHINA. In 300 or more years of history, in fact in all the history we have of that country, the order must rise inside. At no time has China been at peace in the hands of a government run from outside on loan capital. That is Mme. Chiang's error. Her aim is admirable, but she climbs a tree to catch fish.
When Mencius said that to King Huei, of Liang, the King said: 'Is it as bad as that? ' And Mencius answered: 'Worse, for you would do no harm. You would not of course catch any fish. But you would do no further damage'.
This loss of Chinese wisdom, under the smatter of Y.M.C.A. dogmatism, and occidental class teachings is not the answer.
I have heard from someone who knows him that Chiang himself did not want the war with Japan, but was worked into it, on sheer theory, sheer western nonsense. Kung is to China as water to fishes. Meaning Confucius, the Confucian doctrine is the true habitat of the Son of Heaven, and from the Emperor down to the common people, the duty or root is ONE. And that root is NOT to be found in an exotic government imposed in the interests of foreign loan capital.
If the Chinese ever get hold of a few copies of the Talmud, there will be even less room for the servants, Jewish or Goyim, of the doctrines therein contained. And if the root be confusion, the fruit cannot be order. Mme. Chiang appealing for help to a smaller nation may be a stirring figure. But the grab in French Africa in no way assists her husband in Chungking.
Japan is NOT the hereditary enemy of China. There are over two millenia of history wherein the two nations did NOT damage each other. Whereas the history of Anglo-Saxon relations with China is one record of infamy. One almost unmitigated stink. And the Japanese have recorded some of the more recent chapters in a work whose translated title reads: 'The British Empire and British People.'
Mme. Chiang arouses one's sympathies. BUT the error lies in this idea that a universal theory will govern the world WITHOUT local order. If neither Chungking nor Washington can bring order into their OWN country, what likelihood is there that a still looser and larger bureaucracy having still less definite responsibilities, and still less competent executive offices, would be able to do any better?...
An occasional miracle happens. In China men have set up a series of dynasties. Acts of heroic creation, 160 to build or continue, and 160 years to decline. NOT one of the great dynasties, the durable dynasties, was built on gangster grab. Kublai was a great Kahn, but the Ming came 89 years later.
The cheap half baked smattering of western half learning, the lies of half trained professors, shot into foolish young students have NOT been of use to China. If the ancient Kings are too far back to be counted, the Chinese would have learned more from Han, Sung, Tiang, Hong-Vou and Tai Tsong, than from Woodrow Wilson and the Sassoons.
No one can pronounce Chinese names so as to satisfy everyone. If you don't like my transliterations, that is, if any oriental auditor is puzzled, let me put the sentence: Chinese history itself contains more lessons, and better lessons, than have been learned by a scattered joblot of college students, hurled into jerk water colleges, or into the London Fool of Economics or Oxford.
That is perhaps Mme. Chiang's tragedy. Foreign loan capital is NO substitute for the tradition of Wen and Wu, for the lesson of pre-Christian dynasties…
[On brains or medulla] ; June 20 (1943)
… My proposal was, as I say, tri-lingual. Italian, English, and ideogram. That is, Chinese ideogram used as a written tongue, but with Japanese pronunciation. That gives you the languages of Confucius, Shakespeare, and Dante. There is no sentiment in this selection. You say the Germans would never accept this. That is, you don't say so because you are quite crazy in talking of re-educating nations which are far more educated than you are. I believe our Germans would place unsentimental reasons first, the Germans are more diligent than other men, great numbers of them habitually —. Secondly, my opinion is—I omitted the German language, because that language retains more inflections than the three languages I selected.
I say, ideogram with Japanese pronunciation, because almost no foreigner can pronounce Chinese properly, let alone manage the tones, because the pronunciation varies with the different regions of China, and because I find no agreements as how the sounds, such as one can understand, or really hear, should be transcribed in our alphabet. Whereas the Japanese is phonetically simple as the Italian, whose sounds in many ways they resemble. I say Italian, not French, not merely for political reasons. French is hell to pronounce. You have to screw up your nose for the nasals. Apart from the political, Italian is spoken like she is writ. No monkey business. Every letter is pronounced in the same way wherever it occurs. The only apparent exception is the c and ch before a and o. Before a and o, c is hard and before i and e it is soft. The hard sound is written ch before i and e. But the spelling is uniform and follows in all cases and there are no— —.
I would suggest that the Japanese sign for the syllables, for the sound of the syllables, be transliterated to the Roman alphabet when they accompany the ideogram. Let me explain. The written Chinese is common in both Japan and China. All those written signs are the same for Japan and all China. Anyone who reads them in one place knows what they mean in another. It is the common tongue or common written tongue for all those millions…
Coloring ; July 3 (1943)
… Ideas are colored by what they are dipped in. There was a young Chinaman the other day, nearly accusin' me of havin' invented Confucius. He had been UNeducated by contact with half-baked occidental ideas. Lost his own cultural heritage, didn't think Confucius was so modern, that was because he hadn't read him, of course. Mencius was also accused of having brightened up Confucius, but he knew better. He knew he hadn't.
Formerly, when Kung died, the disciples after staying together three years, packed their baggage and returned to their homes, but Tzu Kung went back and built a house on the altar ground, and lived there alone for three years. And the disciples thought Yew Jo might serve as teacher, but Tzu said:
Washed in the waters of Kiang and Han, bleached in the autumn sun.
After that, no. There is nothing to add. Nothing to add to that whiteness.
Mebbe the difference between the Greek flash in the pan, and the Chinese persistence is due to Kung's having got the answer. Mencius following and enforcing it…
Civilization ; July 24 (1943)
… No, the comment on a medieval poem don't just stop there, any more than Frobenius' research just STOPS with some bit of African sculpture, or with some prehistorical drawin' on the side of a rock. Grosseteste writin' on light, hooks up with the ideogram of the sun and moon at the start of Confucius' testament…
My edition of the Great Learning is in Italian, not in American, as was my first edition. And it has the Chinese text facin' it. And I know a good deal more now than when Glenn Hughes printed my first version in his University books…