China and the West

John Dewey visits the Qinghua College in Beijing.

John Dewey : Lectures in Beijing : 'The development of democracy in America'. = Meiguo zhi min zhi di fa zhan. Hu Shi interpreter ; Han Lu, Hu Shi recorder. In : Mei zhou ping lun ; no 26 (June 15, 1919).
1) 'Background and general characteristics of American democracy'
2) 'Freedom, equality, individualism, and education in American democracy'
3) 'The social aspects of American democracy'

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
June 16. [16.6.1919].
Chinesewise speaking, we are now having another lull. The three 'traitors' have had their resignations accepted, the cabinet is undergoing reconstruction, the strike has been called off, both of students and merchants (the railwaymen striking was the last straw), and the mystery is what will happen next. There are evidences that the extreme militarists are spitting on their hands to take hold in spite of their defeat, and also that the President, who is said to be a moderate and skillful politician, is nursing things along to get matters more and more into his own hands. Although he issued a mandate against the students and commending the traitors, the students' victory seems to have strengthened him. I can't figure it out, but it is part of the general beginning to read at the back of the book. The idea seems to be that he has demonstrated the weakness of the militarists in the country, while in sticking in form by them he has given them no excuse for attacking him. They are attacking most everybody else in anonymous circulars. One was got out signed 'Thirteen hundred and fifty-eight students', but giving no names, saying that the sole object of the strike was to regain Tsingtao, but that a few men had tried to turn the movement to their own ends, one wishing to be Chancellor of the University.

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
Peking, June 20. [20.6.1919].
Some time ago I had decided to tell you that here I had found the human duplication of the bee colony in actual working order. China is it, and in all particulars lives up to the perfect socialization of the race. Nobody can do anything alone, nobody can do anything in a hurry. The hunt of the bee for her cell goes on before one's eyes all the time. When found, lo, the discovery that the cell was there all the time. Let me give you an example.
We go to the art school for lectures, enter by a door at the end of a long hall. Behind that hall is another large room and in back of the second room somewhere is a place where the men make the tea. Near the front door where we enter is the table where we are always asked to sit down before and after the lecture, whereat we sit down to partake of tea and other beverages, such as soda. Well, the teacups are kept in a cabinet at the front end of the first room right near the entrance door. Comes a grown man from the rear somewhere; silently and with stately tread he walks across the long room to the cabinet, takes one teacup in each hand and retreads the space towards the back. After sufficient time he returns bearing in his two hands these cups filled with hot tea. He puts these down on the table for us and then he takes two more cups from the cabinet, and retires once more, returning later as before. When bottles are opened they are brought near the table, because otherwise the soda would be spoiled in carrying open, never to save steps.
The Chinese kitchen is always several feet from the dining room, under a separate roof. Often you must cross a court in the open to get from one to another. As it has not rained since we have been here, I do not know what happens to the soup under the umbrella. But remember, the beehive is the thing in China, and it is the old-fashioned beehive in the barrel. When you look at the men who are doing it all they have the air of strong, quiet beings who might do almost anything, but when you get acquainted with them, how they do almost nothing is a marvelous achievement. At Ching Hua College, said being the famous Boxer Indemnity College, the houses are new and built by American initiative, and the kitchen is forty feet from the dining room door in those. I will not describe the kitchens, but when you see the clay stoves crumbling in places, no sink, and one window on one side of the rather dark room, a little room where the cook sleeps on a board and where both the men eat their own frugal meals, it is all the Middle Ages undisturbed.

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
Peking, June 20. [20.6.1919].
Last weekend we went out about ten miles to Ching Hua College; this is the institution started with the returned Boxer Indemnity Fund; it's a high school with about two years college work; they have just graduated sixty or seventy who are going to America next year to finish up. They go all around, largely to small colleges and the Middle West state institutions, a good many to Tech and a number to Stevens, though none go to Columbia, because it is in a big city; just what improvement Hoboken is I don't know. China is full of Columbia men, but they went there for graduate work. No doubt it is wise keeping them away from a big city at first. Except for the instruction in Chinese, the teaching is all done in English, and the boys seem to speak English quite well already. It's a shame the way they will be treated, the insults they will have to put up with in America before they get really adjusted. And then when they get back here they have even a worse time getting readjusted. They have been idealizing their native land at the same time that they have got Americanized without knowing it, and they have a hard time to get a job to make a living. They have been told that they are the future saviors of their country and then their country doesn't want them for anything at all—and they can't help making comparisons and realizing the backwardness of China and its awful problems. At the same time at the bottom of his heart probably every Chinese is convinced of the superiority of Chinese civilization—and maybe they are right—three thousand years is quite a spell to hold on.
You may come over here some time in your life, so it will do no harm to learn about the money—about it, nobody but the Chinese bankers ever learn it. There are eleven dimes in a dollar and six twenty-cent pieces, and while there are only eleven coppers in a dime, there are one hundred and thirty-eight in a dollar. Consequently the thrifty always carry a pound or two of big coppers with them to pay 'ricksha men with. Then there are various kinds of paper money. We are going to Western Hills tomorrow night, and under instructions I bought some dollars at sixty-five cents apiece which are good for a whole dollar on this railway and apparently nowhere else. On the contrary, the foreigners are done all the time at the hotels; there they only give you five twenty-cent pieces in change for a dollar, and so on—but they are run by foreigners, and not by the wily Chinese. One thing you will be glad to know is that Peking is Americanized to the extent that we have ice cream at least once a day, two big helpings. This helps.
A word to the wise. Never ask a Chinese whether it is going to rain, or any other question about the coming weather. The turtle is supposed to be a weather prophet, and as the turtle is regarded as the vilest creature on earth, you can see what an insult such a question is. One of their subtle compliments to the Japanese during the late campaign was to take a straw hat, of Japanese make, which they had removed from a passerby’s head, and cut it into the likeness of a turtle and then nail it up on a telephone post.
I find, by the way, that I didn't do the students justice when I compared their first demonstration here to a college boys' roughhouse; the whole thing was planned carefully, it seems, and was even pulled off earlier than would otherwise have been the case, because one of the political parties was going to demonstrate soon, and they were afraid their movement (coming at the same time) would make it look as if they were an agency of the political faction, and they wanted to act independently as students. To think of kids in our country from fourteen on, taking the lead in starting a big cleanup reform politics movement and shaming merchants and professional men into joining them. This is sure some country.

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
Peking, June 23. [23.6.1919].
Last night we had a lovely dinner at the house of a Chinese official. All the guests were men except me and the fourteen-year-old daughter of the house. She was educated in an English school here and speaks beautiful English, besides being a talented and interesting girl. Chinese girls at her age seem older than ours. The family consists of five children and two wives. I found the reason the daughter was hostess was that it was embarrassing to choose between the two wives for hostess and they didn’t want to give us a bad impression, so no wife appeared. We were given to understand that the reason for the non-appearance was that mother was sick. There is a new little baby six weeks old. The father is a delicate, refined little man, very proud of his children and fond of them, and they were all brought out to see us, even the six weeks older, who was very hot in a little red dress. Our host is the leader of a party of liberal progressives, and also an art collector. We had hopes he would show us his collection of things. He did not, except for the lovely porcelain that was on the table. The house is big and behind the wall of the Purple City, as they call the old Forbidden City, and it looks on the famous old pagoda, so it was interesting. We sat in the court for coffee and there seemed to be many more courts leading on one behind another as they do here, sometimes fourteen or more, with chains of houses around each one.
As for the dinner, I forgot to say that the cook is a remarkable man, Fukien, who gave us the most delicious Chinese cookery with French names attached on the menu. Cooking is apt to be named geographically here. Most everyone in Peking came from somewhere else, just as should be in a capital city. But they seem to keep the cooks and cook in accordance with the predilections of the old home province. They have adopted ice cream, showing the natural sense of the race, but the daughter of our host told me that they do not give it to the sick, as they still have the idea that the sick should have nothing cold.
They are now thrashing the wheat in this locality. That consists of cutting it with the sickle and having the women and children glean. The main crop is scattered on the floor, as it is called, being a hard piece of ground near the house, and then the wheat is treaded out by a pair of donkeys attached to a roller about as big as our garden roller. After it is out of the husk, it is winnowed by being tossed in the breeze, which takes the time of a number of people and leaves in a share of the mother earth. The crops are very thin round this region and they say that they are thinner than usual, as this is a drier year than usual. Corn is small, but there is some growing between here and the hills where we went, always in the little pieces of ground, of course. Peanuts and sweet potatoes are planted now, and they seem to be growing well in the dust, which has been wet by the recent day of rain.

Dewey, John. The student revolt in China [ID D28469].
The depression that bore China down after the Paris decision to hand Shantung over to Japan was fraught with as much pessimism as bitterness. China knew her weakness as against any other large Power of the world. She knew that her political division, with a civil war not yet officially closed, her industrial backwardness, her financial chaos, put her in a position where she could not say a decisive No to any country bent on exploiting her. Accordingly, she hung pathetically and tremblingly upon the deliberations of the peace conference. Morning and night she kept up her hopes by repeating the assurances given by the Allied statesmen of the creation of a new international order and of the future protection of weak nations against the rapacity of the strong. And her hopes needed support, for they were mingled with fears. Better than western nations she knew how far Japan was prepared to go, for twice during the war she had yielded to Japan's barely disguised threat of war. She also knew more about the secret treaties and understandings than did the western nations. Hence it was that the Paris decision created despair rather than the bitter antagonism to America and the other Allies which might have been expected. The outcome just proved that Force still ruled; that Might still made Right in international affairs; that China was hopelessly weak and Japan threateningly strong.
On May 4th a thrill stirred this hopelessness. Somebody had done something. Students of the Peking University had demonstrated, and in the course of their demonstration had deliberately attacked and beaten up two of the three Chinese statesmen who are popularly known as traitors because of their part in negotiating various secret treaties and loans with Japan. A stir moved vitally through the national apathy. The weakness, possibly the corruption of Chinese officials, had had a responsible share in the Shantung decision (it is always the Shantung and never the Tsingtau question in China). If China could not count upon other nations, she might at least do something to put in order her own house. The students' act was received not as a chance act of lawless lynching, but as a gesture of righteous indignation. The air was again tense with expectation. Was the Peking event anything more than a passing gesture? Events followed quickly. The government arrested a number of students. Then their fellows protested; troops were thrown about the University buildings. The city was practically under martial law. The provinces were rife with rumors of the readiness of the Chinese militarist clique to go to any extreme in the way of slaughter to put down opposition; rife even with rumors of an impending coup d’état to fix irretrievably the hold upon the government of the militarist and pro-Japanese party. The Chancellor of the University, whom the militarists hated as the intellectual leader of the liberal elements, resigned and disappeared, because, according to report, not only his life but those of hundreds of students were threatened. Then came the news that all of the students in Peking in institutions above the rank of the elementary school had struck in protest against the action of the government. They had not only struck, but they had made definite demands (of which more below); and they had organized into bands of ten, who were everywhere making open-air speeches, defying the military police to arrest them, and trying to organize the public that listened to them into similar bands of ten to carry on propaganda.
This time the thrill throughout the country was electric. The seventh of May is the day kept as the Day of National Shame. Even the primary schools have banners in them, 'Remember the seventh day of the fifth month'. This day of national humiliation is the anniversary of the Japanese twenty-one demands. The coincidence of dates had a powerful effect. Students from the Peking University rapidly dispersed through the country, addressing themselves primarily to students in all the large centres. The latter became restless; then they struck; middle (high) school students, normal and technical schools; again everything above the elementary grade. Everywhere the bands of ten were organized, speakers were drilled in what to say and how to say it, and the Popular propaganda spread through the provinces. And the multitude heard it gladly.
The unorganized hostility to Japan took form in a boycott. That was one of the themes of the boy and girl orators. They did not content themselves with general exhortations. Lists of Japanese goods were printed and mimeographed by the thousand; classified lists of all Japanese products sold in China. Similar lists of substitute native goods were circulated. In some of the schools the industrial department set to work to discover what Japanese goods could be made in existing shops without additional capital. As soon as models were constructed they were taken to small shops and their mode of manufacture explained. Then, to create a market, other students took these goods and hawked them through the streets, lecturing, exhorting, explaining the political situation at the same time. And as the vacation period comes on these students are dispersing all over China peddling goods and speaking, speaking, speaking . . .
Meantime the government was not idle. Political speeches were forbidden, students' meetings were forcibly broken up, many scores of students in different parts of China were sorely injured, a few were killed. It is not difficult to foresee the future memorial meetings in honor of these martyrs of patriotism, or even the shrines wherein their memory will be reverenced. Then the government at Peking took more drastic measures. Mandates were issued condemning the students, ordering them under penalty of dissolution of schools to return to their studies, to disband their unions, and to cease concerning themselves with what was none of their business, praising by name the men popularly regarded as traitors, warning against the boycott, and in general saying that foreign affairs should be left in the hands of the government. Coincidently several hundred students were arrested in Peking for speaking. With the fatuity which affects militarists in China as well as elsewhere, it was promised that this would put an end to the students’ agitation. The next day the number of students speaking on the streets was more than doubled, and the arrests ran to above a thousand. The students planned to go on till every man was in jail. Girl students formed a procession (some of them had to break down gates to get out) to wait upon the President and request the freeing of students; they said they would remain praying for justice all night if he did not hear them. The jails could not hold the arrested students. These were shut up in the University buildings and left with little food and less water, with cordons of troops around them. The faculty met; protested against this military invasion; against the degradation of using halls of learning as jails; against the abuse of patriotic students; and they telegraphed their protest widespread. Events had been moving outside of Peking. This last arbitrary action was the beginning of the end. Merchants in Shanghai went on strike; shops were closed, including those selling food; the merchants in Tientsin and Nanking joined; those in Peking and other cities prepared to join. There was plenty of evidence that the students had practically succeeded in converting the merchants to their side; that they no longer stood alone, but had effected an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the powerful mercantile guilds. There was talk of a strike against paying taxes. The government capitulated suddenly if not gracefully. Troops were withdrawn from the University grounds and the students invited to come out. They declined, and announced that they would stay in till the students everywhere were guaranteed the right of free speech and until the government officially apologized to them. Two days more saw the end. The government sent delegates to make the required apology; a new mandate was issued saying that the country realized that the students were actuated by patriotic motives, and should not be interfered with if they kept within the law. The 'resignations' of the three men called traitors were accepted. Undoubtedly the spread of the strike to the merchants, and the fear of its further extension, were the actuating motives in the inglorious surrender. But the students had managed to get their propaganda into the army. Rumors were afloat that the armies could not be counted upon for further suppressions—especially as pay was far in arrears. After their triumphant march from out their self-made prison, students were heard to lament that the government changed the guards so often they had not been able to convert more than half their jailers.
The original demands made upon the government were few and simple. The students arrested for engaging in the beating-up enterprise must be freed and given immunity from prosecution; the Chancellor who was so obnoxious to the militarist clique must be reinstated. By the time the government was ready to meet these first demands (in outward form, at least), the demands had greatly increased. Instructions must be given to delegates in Paris not to sign the treaty except with reservations as to Shantung, all 'traitors' must be dismissed, all secret understandings with Japan abrogated, freedom of speech guaranteed. Within about a month the Student Movement had won all its points except the third and first; and with respect to the first the government had promised to do all that the international situation permitted; and fell back vaguely upon advice received from Great Britain, France and President Wilson to sign, with hopes of later readjustment. Yet there is no evidence that the students are deceived as to the amount of success they have achieved. The military clique is still in full command; the places of the three dismissed men will probably be filled by other men of the same pro-Japanese affiliations. Externally things are much as they were before. No successful revolution in government or in foreign affairs justifies giving this amount of space to the Student Movement. But the prestige of the militarist faction has received its first great blow—and prestige is the primary feature of Oriental politics. A negative boycott, sure to fail in the end, has been changed into a constructive movement for development of home industry— a movement still in its infancy but capable of effective development. The possibilities of organization independent of government, but capable in the end of controlling government, have been demonstrated. It is hard to estimate the significance of the fact that the new movement was initiated by the student body. Reverence for the scholar is traditional in China. It still holds over from the rank accorded the literati in former days. From the western standpoint it amounts to superstitious regard. Yet this is the first time that students have taken any organized part in politics. Beyond what their speaking and writing have done in organizing public opinion at the present emergency is the abiding effect for the future. Most of the outward signs of the movement—aside from hawking goods and teaching patriotism at the same time— have now subsided. But a National Students' Union has been formed and definite plans have been made for the future. Already attempts are making to unite the people of the divided north and south in a way that will cut under the militarists of both sides. It would be highly surprising if a new constitutionalist movement were not set going. The combination of students and merchants that has proved so effective will hardly be allowed to become a mere memory. Already in some cities it has been extended into a Four Group Union, and efforts are making to extend this larger organization throughout the country.
Probably a foreign observer would count as the most precious fruit of the movement the awakening of China from a state of passive waiting. A sharp blow has been given the idea that China itself is helpless and must be saved from without. In spite of the charges of which the Japanese newspapers are full that the movement was instigated, and even financed, by foreigners, especially Americans, it was a strictly native movement, showing what educated China can do, and will do, in the future. The spell of pessimism seems broken. An act has been done, a deed performed. Perhaps there is now a healthier, better organized, movement from within China itself for China's own salvation than at any time since the Revolution. Even if nothing more were to come of the movement, it would be worth observation and record as an exhibition of the way in which China is really governed—when it is governed at all. American children are taught the list of 'modern' inventions that originated in China. They are not taught, however, that China invented the boycott, the general strike and guild organization as means of controlling public affairs. In no other civilized country of the present day (leaving Russia out of account now as an exception to all rules) is brute force such a factor in official government as in China. But in no other country could moral and intellectual force accomplish so quickly and peaceably what was effected in China in the last five or six weeks. This formulates the standing paradox of China. But in the past the moral forces which fundamentally control have been organized only for protest and rebellion. When the emergency is past, the forces have again dissolved into their elements. If the present organization persists and is patiently employed for constructive purposes, then the fourth of May, nineteen hundred and nineteen, will be marked as the dawn of a new day. This is a large If. But just now the future of China so far as it depends upon China hangs on that If.

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
Peking, June 25. [25.6.1919].
Simple facts for home consumption. All boards in China are sawed by hand—two men and a saw, like a cross-cut buck-saw. At the new Hotel de Peking, a big building, instead of carrying window casings ready to put in, they are carrying big logs cut the proper length for a casing. Spitting is a common accomplishment. When a school girl wants excuse to leave her seat she walks across the room and spits vigorously in the spittoon. Little melons are now ready to eat. They come like ripe cucumbers, small, rather sweet. Coolies and boys eat them, skins and all, on the street. Children eat small green apples. Peaches are expensive, but those who can get the green hard ones eat them raw. The potted pomegranates are now in bloom and also in fruit in the pots. The color is a wonderful scarlet. The lotus ponds are in bloom—wonderful color in a deep rose. When the buds are nearly ready to open they look as if they were about to explode and fill the air with their intense color. The huge leaves are brilliant and lovely—light green and delicately veined. But the lotus was never made for art, and only religion could have made it acceptable to art. The sacred ponds are well kept and are in the old moats of the Purple City—Forbidden. There are twice as many men in Peking as women.
Sunday we went to a Chinese wedding. It was at the Naval Club—no difference in appearance from our ceremony. Bride and groom both in the conventional foreign dress. They had a ring. At the supper there were six tables full of men, and three partly full of women and children. Women take their children and their amahs everywhere in China—I mean wherever they go and provided they want to; it is the custom. None of the men spoke to the women at the wedding—except rare returned students. Eggs cost $1.00 for 120—we get all we want in our boarding house. Men take birds out for walks—either in cages or with one leg tied to a string attached to a stick on which the bird perches.

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
Peking, June 27. [27.6.1919].
It's a wonder we were ever let out of Japan at all. It's fatal; I could now tell after reading ten lines of the writings of any traveler whether he ever journeyed beyond a certain point. You have to hand it to the Japanese. Their country is beautiful, their treatment of visitors is beautiful, and they have the most artistic knack of making the visible side of everything beautiful, or at least attractive. Deliberate deceit couldn't be one-tenth as effective; it's a real gift of art. They are the greatest manipulators of the outside of things that ever lived. I realized when I was there that they were a nation of specialists, but I didn't realize that foreign affairs and diplomacy were also such a specialized art.
The new acting Minister of Education has invited us to dinner soon. This man doesn't appear to have any past educational record, but he has pursued a conciliatory course; the other one resigned and disappeared when he found he couldn't control things. The really liberal element does not appear to be strong enough at present to influence politics practically. The struggle is between the extreme militarists, who are said to be under Japanese influence, and the group of somewhat colorless moderates headed by the President. As he gets a chance he appears to be putting his men in. The immediate gain seems to be negative in keeping the other crowd out instead of positive, but they are at least honest and will probably respond when there is enough organized liberal pressure brought to bear upon them.
It cannot be denied that it is hot here. Yesterday we went out in 'rickshas about the middle of the day and I don't believe I ever felt such heat. It is like the Yosemite, only considerably more intense as well as for longer periods of time. The only consolation one gets from noting that it isn't humid is that if it were, one couldn't live at all. But the desert sands aren't moist either. Your mother asked the coolie why he didn't wear a hat, and he said because it was too hot. Think of pulling a person at the rate of five or six miles an hour in the sun of a hundred and twenty or thirty with your head exposed. Most of the coolies who work in the sun have nothing on their heads. It's either survival of the fittest or inheritance of acquired characteristics. Their adaptation to every kind of physical discomfort is certainly one of the wonders of the world. You ought to see the places where they lie down to go to sleep. They have it all over Napoleon. This is also the country of itinerant domesticity. I doubt if lots of the 'ricksha men have any places to sleep except in their carts. And a large part of the population must buy their food of the street pedlars, who sell every conceivable cooked thing; then there are lots of cooked food stores besides the street men.

Hu, Shi. Wen ti yu zhu yi. [More talk of problems, less talk of Isms].
The article was directly based on John Dewey's pragmatic method of thinking.
"All valuable thinking starts with this or that concrete problem. To study the many facts connected with our many-sided problems, to look for the specific ills, is the first step in thinking. And then, to propose different methods of solution, which are based on our accumulated life experiences and knowledge, to suggest the many ways of healing the illness, is the second step in thinking. Afterwards, to infer the results of every kind of possible solutions, as well as whether these results will really solve our present difficulties and problems, and to choose, on the basis of this inference, a hypothetic solution, and consider it to be my opinion, is the third step in thinking. All valuable thinking has to pass through these three steps.
Here in China a number of people have asked me, 'Where should we start in reforming our society ? ' My answer is that we must start by reforming the component institutions of the society. Families, schools, local governments, the central government – all these must be reformed, but they must be reformed by people who constitute them, working as individuals – in collaboration with other individuals, of course, but sill as individuals, each accepting his own responsibility. And claim of the total reconstruction of a society is almost certain to be misleading. Social progress is neither an accident nor a miracle ; it is the sum of efforts made by individuals whose actions are guided by intelligence."

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
Peking, July 2. [2.7.1919].
The rainy season has set in, and now we have floods and also coolness, the temperature having fallen from the late nineties to the early seventies, and life seems more worth living again.
This is a great country for pictures, and I am most anxious for one of a middle-aged Chinese, inclining to be fat, with a broad-brimmed straw hat, sitting on the back of a very small and placid cream colored donkey. He is fanning himself as the donkey moves imperceptibly along the highway, is satisfied with himself and at ease with the world, and everything in the world, whatever happens. This would be a good frontispiece for a book on China—and the joke wouldn’t all be on the Chinese either.
To-day the report is that the Chinese delegates refused to sign the Paris treaty; the news seems too good to be true, but nobody can learn the facts. There are also rumors that the governmental military party, having got everything almost out of Japan that is coming to them and finding themselves on the unpopular side, are about to forget that they ever knew the Japanese and to come out very patriotic. This is also unconfirmed, but I suppose the only reason they would stay bought in any case is that there are no other bidders in the market.

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
Peking, Wednesday, July 2. [2.7.1919].
The anxiety here is tense. The report is that the delegates did not sign, but so vaguely worded as to leave conjectures and no confirmation. Meanwhile the students' organizations, etc., have begun another attack against the government by demanding the dissolution of Parliament. Meantime there is no cabinet and the President can get no one to form one, and half those inside seem to be also on the strike because the other half are there.

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
Peking, July 4. [4.7.1919].
We are going out to the Higher Normal this morning. The head of the industrial department is going to take us. The students are erecting three new school buildings this summer—they made the plans, designs, details, and are supervising the erection as well as doing the routine carpenter work. The head of the industrial department, who acted as our guide and host, has been organizing the 'national industry' activity in connection with the students' agitation. He is now, among other things, trying to organize apprentice schools under guild control. The idea is to take the brightest apprentice available in each 'factory'—really, of course, just a household group—and give them two hours' schooling a day with a view to introducing new methods and new products into the industry. They are going to take metal working here. Then he hopes it will spread all over China. You cannot imagine the industrial backwardness here, not only as compared with us but with Japan. Consequently their markets here are flooded with cheap flimsy Japan-made stuff, which they buy because it's cheap, the line of least resistance. But perhaps the Shantung business will be worth its cost. The cotton guild is very anxious to co-operate and they will supply capital if the schools can guarantee skilled workingmen, especially superintendents. Now they sell four million worth of cotton to Japan, where it is spun, and then buy back the same cotton in thread for fourteen million—which they weave. This is beside the large amount of woven cotton goods they import.
I find in reading books that the Awakening of China has been announced a dozen or more times by foreign travelers in the last ten years, so I hesitate to announce it again, but I think this is the first time the merchants and guilds have really been actively stirred to try to improve industrial methods. And if so, it is a real awakening—that and the combination with the students. I read the translations from Japanese every few days, and it would be very interesting to know whether their ignorance is real or assumed. Probably some of both—it is inconceivable that they should be as poor judges of Chinese psychology as the articles indicate. But at the same time they have to keep up a certain tone of belief among the people at home—namely, that the Chinese really prefer the Japanese to all other foreigners; for they realize their dependence upon them, and if they do not make common cause with them it is because foreigners, chiefly Americans, instigate it all from mercenary and political motives. As a matter of fact, I doubt if history knows of any such complete case of national dislike and distrust; it sometimes seems as if there hadn't been a single thing that the Japanese might have done to alienate the Chinese that they haven't tried. The Chinese would feel pretty sore at America for inviting them into the war and then leaving them in the lurch, if the Japanese papers and politicians hadn't spent all their time the last three months abusing America—then their sweet speeches in America. It will be interesting to watch and see just what particular string they trip on finally.
It's getting to the end of an Imperfect Day. We saw the school as per program and I find I made a mistake. The boys made the plans of the three buildings and are supervising their erection, but not doing the building. They are staying in school all summer, however—those in the woodworking class—and have taken a contract for making all the desks for the new buildings—the school gives them room and board (food and its preparation costs about five dollars per month), and they practically give their time. All the metal-working boys are staying in Peking and working in the shops to improve and diversify the products. Remember these are boys, eighteen to twenty, and that they are carrying on their propaganda for their country; that the summer averages one hundred in the shade in Peking, and you'll admit there is some stuff here.
This P.M. we went to a piece of the celebration. The piece we saw wasn’t so very Fourth of Julyish, but it was interesting—Chinese sleight of hand. Their long robe is an advantage, but none the less it can't be so very easy to move about with a very large sized punch bowl filled to the brim with water, or with five glass bowls each with a gold fish in it, ready to bring out. It seems that sometimes the artist turns a somersault just as he brings out the big bowl of water, but we didn't get that. None of the tricks were complicated, but they were the neatest I ever saw. There is a home-made minstrel show to-night, but it rained, and as the show (and dance later) are in the open, we aren't going, as we intended.
You can't imagine what it means here for China not to have signed. The entire government has been for it—the President up to ten days before the signing said it was necessary. It was a victory for public opinion, and all set going by these little schoolboys and girls. Certainly the United States ought to be ashamed when China can do a thing of this sort.

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
Sunday, July 7. [7.7.1919].
We had quite another ride yesterday, sixty or seventy miles altogether. The reason for the macadam road is worth telling. When Yuan Shi Kai was planning to be Emperor his son broke his leg, and he heard the hot springs would be good for him. So one of the officials made a road to it. Some of the present day officials, including an ex-official who was recently forced to resign after being beaten up, now own the springs and hotel, so the road will continue to be taken care of. On the way we went through the village of the White Snake and also of the One Hundred Virtues.
Y. M. C. A.'s and Red Crossers are still coming from Siberia on their way home. I don't know whether they will talk freely when they get home. It is one mess, and the stories they will tell won’t improve our foreign relations any. The Bolsheviki aren't the only ones that shoot up villages and take the loot—so far the Americans haven't done it.

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
Peking, July 8. [8.7.1919].
This morning the papers here reported the denial of Japan that she had made a secret treaty with Germany. The opinion here seems to be that they did not, but merely that preliminaries had begun with reference to such a treaty. We heard at dinner the other day from responsible American officials here that, after America had completed the last of the arrangements for China to go into the war, the Japanese arranged to get a concession from Russia for the delivery on the part of the Japanese of China into the war on the side of the Allies.
Well, the Japanese are still at it with the cat out of the bag. It looks now as if they are getting ready to break up the present government in Japan. This is interpreted to mean that that breakup will be made to look as if it were in disapproval of the present mistakes in diplomacy and of the price of rice; and then they can put in a worse one there and the world will not know the difference, but will be made to think that Japan is reforming. Speaking of constitutionality in Japan, I ceased to worry about that as soon as I learned the older statesmen never troubled at all about who was elected, but just let the elections go through, as their business was so assured in other ways that the elections made no difference anyway, and that the same principle worked equally well in the matter of passing bills. No bill can ever come up without the approval of the powers that be and they know how it is coming out in spite of all discussions. No wonder change comes slowly and maybe it will have to come all at once in the form of a revolution if it comes in reality. It is now reported that Tsai, the Chancellor of the University here, has said he will come back on condition that the students do not move in future in any political matter without his consent, and I am not able to guess whether that is a concession or a clever way of seeming to agree with both sides at once. The announcement of Tsai's return means that things will soon be back in normal shape and ready for another upheaval.
We seem to be utterly stumped by the house situation. All the members of the Rockefeller Foundation get nice new houses built for them, and the houses are nice new Chinese ones but free from the poor qualities of those to be rented here. All the houses in Peking are built like our woodsheds, directly on the ground, raised a few inches from actual contact with the earth by a stone floor. The courts fill with water when the rains are hard and then they are moist for days, maybe weeks, and about two feet of wet seeps up the side of the walls. Yesterday we called on one of our Chinese friends here, and the whole place was in that state, but he did not seem to notice it. If he wants baths in the house it doubles the cost he pays the water wagon, and then after all the trouble of heating and carrying the water there is no way to dispose of the waste, except to get a man to come and carry it away in buckets. You would have endless occupation here just looking on to see how this bee colony can find so many ways of making life hard for itself. A gentleman at the Foundation has just been telling us how the coolies steal every little piece of metal, leftovers or screwed on, that they can get at. The privation of life sets up an entirely new set of standards for morals. No one, it appears, can be convicted for stealing food in China.

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
Peking, July 8. [8.7.1919].
The Rockefeller buildings are lovely samples of what money can do. In the midst of this worn and weak city they stand out like illuminating monuments of the splendor of the past in proper combination with the modern idea. They are in the finest old style of Chinese architecture; green roofs instead of yellow, with three stories instead of one. One wonders how long it will take China to catch up and know what they are doing. It is said the Chinese are not at all inclined to go to their hospital for fear of the ultra foreign methods which they do not yet understand. On the other hand, there is no disposition on the part of the Institution to meet them half way as the missionaries have always done. There are a number of Chinese among the doctors and they have now opened all the work to the women. There is a great need for women doctors now in China, but evidently it will take a generation yet before this work will begin to be understood and will take its natural place in Chinese affairs. It is rather amusing that this splendid set of buildings quite surrounds and overshadows the biggest Japanese hospital and school that is in Peking, and they say the fact has quite humiliated the Japanese. At present the buildings are nearing completion, but all the old rubbishy structures of former times will have to be pulled down before these new ones can be seen in all their beauty. Among other things, they have built thirty-five houses also in Chinese style but with all the modern comforts, in which to house their faculty, and in addition to those there are a good many buildings which were taken over from the old medical missionary College, besides, perhaps, some that will be left from the palace of the Prince whose property they bought. Two fine old lions are an addition from the Prince, but no foreign family would stand the inconveniences and discomforts of the ancient Prince, in spite of all his wives.

Dewey, John. The international duel in China [ID D28470].
Everybody knows that before the war the territory and re¬sources of China were the scene of contention among five great Powers. During the war the situation completely altered. Russia and Germany ceased to exist as influential factors. Great Britain and France had their energy, attention and capital mortgaged in a life and death struggle. This left Japan mistress of the field. In accordance with the rules of established international diplomacy, she took full advantage of the unique opportunity to improve her national position. It is hardly sportsmanlike of other nations who have been engaged in the same game to whine about her success. Anyway, they have been her accomplices. Something like an offensive and defensive alliance between Japan and Russia was consummated while the latter seemed to be still a Power. Great Britain and France made secret arrangements with her. In every case, the consideration given Japan was at the expense of China. Until the circumstantial reports of the activities of Ota in Stockholm are confirmed or refuted, the question remains whether Germany, the fifth contender, had not also already entered into negotiations with Japan, also at the expense of China but this time with Russia also as a prospective victim.
Apparently Japan had the field to herself. Yet for over two years a duel has been in progress, a duel which concerns both China's internal policy and her international relationships. The duel concerns the ideas and ideals which are to control China's internal political development. Is it to become a genuine democracy or is it to continue in the traditions of autocratic government?—whether under the name of a republic or an empire being a secondary consideration. Internationally, the question is whether China's integrity can be regained and maintained under some sort of temporary international supervision, or whether China is to follow the course which in the past has made Japan the only Asiatic nation capable of protecting herself against European en-croachments and sure of the effective respect of western nations. A duel between ideas and ideals needs, however, to be embodied. The United States and Japan are the bodies through which the duel of ideals is carried on. Force of circumstances, not conscious choice, has determined the figures of the duel.
In details, Japan may perhaps have been a peculiarly adept pupil in the way of secret diplomacy practiced by the western Powers. But she has a right to claim that her ultimate object, controlling every particular step, has never been concealed. Her announced aim has been to free Asia, at least eastern Asia, from foreign, that is, European control. The Monroe Doctrine for Asia, Asia for the Asiatics, is a doctrine as public as it is sweeping. Any Japanese is entitled to claim that if the foreigner has ever taken Japanese guarantees of the territorial integrity of China in other sense than as against the European intruder, the foreigner has only his own stupidity to blame. Japan would still hold that she has kept her guarantees of the territorial integrity of Korea—kept them by the only means which under the conditions are effective. In other words, the standing minor premise of the conclusion of the recovery of China by China is the protectorate of weak, unorganized and unprogressive China by organized, militarized Japan—Japan which has adopted western methods in science, industry, education and arms in order to turn them against the West and to preserve the culture and territory of the East, of Asia, intact. Behind every word of the twenty-one demands and of the other negotiations of Japan with China lies the clamorous and luminous unuttered word: Put yourself under the complete protection of Japan, and you shall be guaranteed the same international prestige, the same immunity from projects of partition, concessions, spheres of influence and economic servitudes that Japan enjoys. In no other way can you secure integrity, freedom and respect.
Incidentally of course, great material and industrial advantages would accrue to Japan, to say nothing of the military advantage of command of unnumbered man power. But only the blindness of extreme national prejudice will fail to see that the grandiose scheme has as many ideal aspects as those which have ever clothed the plans of any western Power to fulfill its national destiny and mission. As between Japanese and European domination of Asia, a disinterested and cynical American, barring an eventual menace to his own country, might easily remain a neutral spectator. As it now stands, Japan has won official and governmental China—at least that of the internationally recognized government of the North. This does not mean that assent has been given to the basic idea, or that the very officials who are now playing the game of China do not hope that some time or other something will happen which will loosen the hold of Japan over China. But they do accept the particular acts by which Japan is making her approaches to the realization of her goal, even though they protest vigorously, as in the case of the twenty-one demands, when the pace is too much forced. Patriotism aside, all the interests of their own pockets and of their own local power and prestige require that each specific step forward should be met with obstructions and resistance until Japan is ready to pay the specific price exacted.
The extent to which Japan has won over the officially governing clique of China is evidenced in the circumstances surrounding the refusal of the Chinese peace delegates to sign the peace treaty. With all the concessions which the government made to the students’ movement, it never agreed to instruct the delegates to refuse to sign, until a semi-promise was made to an insistent incursion from Shantung to Peking; and instructions in accord with this vague promise did not reach Paris till after the delegates, on their own responsibility and with the moral backing of the country set over against their official instructions, had refused to sign. The government is now putting the best face possible upon the matter and trying to get popular credit on the one hand while it placates Japan upon the other. Quite likely it is still urging the Paris delegates to make a belated signature. But the militarist, imperialist pro-Japanese group has had an almost deadly blow dealt to its moral authority, and it is even conceivable that a signature forced at this time would be a signal for a popular revolution.
In short, the grandiose scheme of Japan failed to reckon with the most essential factor in the situation—the Chinese people. The extent of this failure may be calculated from the fact that Japanese propagandists in the United States sometimes compare their mission in China to that which they benevolently assign to the United States in Mexico. China with her four hundred million population and the author of the civilization of Japan does not see herself as a Mexico waiting for salvation from Japan. Call it pride or ignorance or national conceit or self-respect or a true sense of comparative national values on the part of China, call it what you will, the fact remains that Japan has so misjudged the psychology of China that she has made an implacable enemy of the people while she has been winning over the officials. One thing, and one thing only, can throw China back into the hands of Japan. Let there be a resumption of the old diplomacy of the western nations with respect to China, and it is conceivable that bitter as would be the dose, China would accept the domination of Japan as the lesser of two evils. And it is not enough that the western nations should have good intentions. They must avoid even the appearance of evil, for ingenious propaganda is always at hand to explain to the Chinese how westerners are trying to exploit them. Even avoiding the appearance of evil is not enough. No task more difficult can be found than the discovery and institution of ways and means by which China can be given the assistance which she imperatively needs, which must be given from outside herself without arousing her national jealousies, suspicions, fears, antagonisms and opposition and thus inviting the aid of Japan against the foreigner.
This brings us naturally to the other figure in the duel of ideas and moral influence—the United States. In the main of course it is the logic and especially the psychology of the situation that has put the United States into this position, not anything she has actually done. If the American idea has for the moment won the people as effectually as the Japanese practice has imposed upon the most influential official clique, it is by way of rebound. Idealization is most active when contrasting emotions are deeply stirred. Fear of Japan has bred trust in the United States; dislike of Japan a pathetic affection for America. It is no wonder that Japan with her poor reading of national psychology is bewildered by the present pro-American outburst of China, and can find in it only proof of superhuman ability in intrigue and of the expenditure of countless millions in propaganda. But in fact the situation has made itself. China in her despair has created an image of a powerful democratic, peace-loving America, devoted to securing international right and justice, especially for weak nations. The heroic legend that unified the United States for the war she still accepts, and she has added paragraphs and chapters of her own.
How trustingly naive is the faith in the United States may be gathered from various addresses of congratulation which were proffered to representatives of the United States on the Fourth of July. Shanghai was the real centre of the patriotic students' movement, and the following are extracts from some of the Shanghai addresses: "Your great nation is now introducing into the international relations of the world those principles of justice and right which have always been the guiding lights of its own national life. This is Platonic enough, but the concrete meaning appears a few sentences further on: "We look forward to the day when China and the United States shall both be in a position to maintain the peace of the Pacific as your country together with that of Great Britain have maintained the peace of the Atlantic." The Canton Guild congratulated the United States upon her leadership of the cause of human rights in the Councils of the Nations, and left no doubt as to its understanding of the character of this leadership by saying "China and America must have the same ideals. China and America must maintain the peace of Asia. We look to America to help in our battle for justice." Another address (this time from women and girls) is even more specific. After remarking that the American navy has never been used to wrest liberty from any people, it goes on to say that "if ever the day comes when China will have to drive the aggressor from its soil, the American navy will throw its influence in the cause of right." The Commercial Federation sounded the same note in a different key: "On this day of independence we call upon the American people to assist us to be independent, to develop our railways, our waterways, our resources, to join with the capital of China to make us free from the commercial bondage under which we have been living."
Of course through all these lines runs the hope of actual assistance against the country believed by the people to be bent upon dominating China under the pretext of helping her. But while the desire for material aid, naval, military, diplomatic, financial, is plainly there, the spirit behind these addresses is something more than national self-interest. The international appeal is bound up with national aspiration for a truly democratic China— an aspiration up to the present tragically frustrated. For the same situation which has given Japan the role of a despoiler and assigned to America the role of a rescuer, has also made Japan the symbol of autocratic and militaristic government in China itself, while the United States symbolizes the free democracy that progressive China would be and is not. No one can understand the present idealization of the United States by China who does not see in it the projection of China's democratic hopes for herself. 1 cannot quote again at length but each of the addresses to which reference has been made contains a touching reference to the fact that America's Fourth of July signalizes an accomplished fact, while the nation that offers the congratulations has for eight years fought a battle for a republic and has not yet won her victory. Deceived by the traditional officialism of the ruling clique, Japan has so far failed to see the enormous gulf that exists between her own centralized autocracy and the democratic modes of life of the Chinese masses. This perhaps is no wonder when representatives of western nations have so frequently misconceived China's essential democracy and have longed for some strong ruler to bring her the blessings of peace and order. Although this democracy is articulately held only by a comparative handful who have been educated, yet these few know and the dumb masses feel that it alone accords with the historic spirit of the Chinese race. And this fact has done for the United States what she could never have done for herself in making her the popular counterfoil to the bureaucratic and autocratic government of Japan.
The situation is one that imposes humility rather than self-glorification upon Americans. Our country will have a hard time living up to the role for which she has been cast. The difficulties are intellectual and moral as well as matters of practical judgment and tact in action. Have we the required fibre and virility? Or shall we once more fall between a clever commercialism on the one hand and a futile phrase-making idealism on the other? Above all it demands stamina and endurance of intelligence to think out a consistent and workable plan and to adhere to it.
So far as the Far East is concerned, the whole question of the attitude of the United States to the peace settlement, including the League of Nations, is how America's action is going to affect her freedom and force of action in behalf of the international democratic ideals she has professed. In China at least there is fear lest America in making the world safe for democracy be herself compromised by too close association with nations who in international matters are not as yet moved by democratic ideals. If the United States in working with the Allies was obliged to surrender at Paris her own convictions on the Shantung question, China prefers to trust a United States which is free from such commitments and entanglements. After all, democracy in international relations is not a matter of agencies but of aims and consequences. Under certain conditions, a United States which was going it alone would, so far as the Far East is concerned, be a much more effective instrument of true internationalism than a United States in a League the other members of which had no belief in American ideals. But League or no League, the task of the United States in the problems of the Far East is not an easy one. The first requisite is a definite and open policy, openly arrived at by discussion at home and made known to all the world. Then we need to be prepared to back it up in action. Idealism without intelligence and without forceful willingness to act will soon make us negligible in the Far East—and surrender its destinies to a militaristic imperialism. We can't, to take one minor illustration, go on loaning money freely to France if France is at the same time supporting the policies of Japan regarding the composition and functions of an International Consortium. This perhaps is but a hypothetical illustration. But it may well be questioned whether the United States has as yet awakened to the enormous power which is now in her hands. That which most impresses a visitor to the Far East is the extent of this power— accompanied by a query whether this same power is not largely being thrown away by reason of stupidity and ignorance.

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
Peking, July 11. [11.7.1919].
They have the best melons here you ever saw. Their watermelons, which are sold on the street in such quantities as to put even the southern negroes to shame, are just like yellow ice cream in color, but they aren't as juicy as ours. Their musk melons aren't spicy like the ones at home at all, but are shaped like pears, only bigger and have an acid taste; in fact they are more like a cucumber with a little acid pep in them, only the seeds are all in the center like our melons. When you get macaroons and little cakes here in straight Chinese houses you realize that neither we nor the Europeans were the first to begin eating. They either boil or steam their bread—they eat wheat instead of rice in this part of the country—or fry it, and I have no doubt that doughnuts were brought home to grandma by some old seafaring captain. These things are all the stranger because, except for sponge cake, no such things are indigenous to Japan. So when you first get here you can hardly resist the impression that these things have been brought to China from America or Europe. Read a book called 'Two Heroes of Cathay', by Luella Miner, and see how our country has treated some of these people in the past, and then you see them so fond of America and of Americans and you realize that in some ways they are ahead of us in what used to be known as Christianity before the war. I guess we wrote you from Hangchow about seeing the monument and shrine to two Chinese officials who were torn in pieces at the time of the Boxer rebellion because they changed a telegram to the provincial officers 'Kill all foreigners' to read 'Protect all foreigners'. The shrine is kept up, of course, by the Chinese, and very few foreigners in China even know of the incident.
Their art is really childlike and all the new kinds of artists in America who think being queer is being primitive ought to come over here and study the Chinese in their native abodes. A great love of bright colors and a wonderful knowledge of how to combine them, a comparatively few patterns used over and over in all kinds of ways, and a preference for designs that illustrate some story or idea or that appeal to their sense of the funny—it's a good deal more childlike than what passes in Greenwich Village for the childlike in art.

John Dewey : Lectures at Beijing National Academy of Fine Arts.
1) 'Trends in contemporary education'. = Xian dai jiao yu di chu shi. Han Lu, Tian Feng recorder. In : Xin Zhongguo ; vol. 1, no 3 (July 15, 1919).
2) 'The natural foundations of education'
3) 'The new attitude toward knowledge'
4) 'The socialization of education'

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
Y.M.C.A., Peking, July 17. [17.7.1919].
A young Korean arrived here in the evening and he was met here on our porch by a Chinese citizen who is also Korean. The newly arrived could speak very little English and by means of a triangle we were able to arrive at his story. It seems there is quite a leakage of Korean students over the Chinese border all the time. To become a Chinese student requires six years of residence, or else it was three; anyway enough to postpone the idea of going to America to study till rather late in case one wants to resort to that way of escape from Japanese oppression. The elder and the one who has become a Chinese citizen seemed a good deal excited; I fancy they are dramatic by nature, and made many gestures. He urged on me the importance of our going to Korea and he is going to bring us some pictures to look at. Well, it all set me thinking, and so I have been reading the Korean guide book and reflecting on the wonderful climate there and wondering if we can get a reasonable place to stay. My first discovery of the real seriousness of the Korean situation came across me in Japan early in March, when we had a holiday on account of the funeral of the Korean prince, for the reason that after the funeral and gradually in connection with it the 'Japanese Advertiser' said it was rumored that the old Korean prince had committed suicide. Doubtless you may know the story there, and then again you may not. However, the facts have leaked one way and another and now it is known that the old man did commit suicide in order to prevent the marriage of the young prince, who has been brought up in Japan, to the Japanese princess. By etiquette his death, taking place three days or so before the date set for the wedding, prevented the marriage from taking place for two years, and it is hoped by the Koreans that before two years they could weaken the Japanese grip on Korea. We all know they have made a beginning since last March and the suicide did something to help that along. Now that Japan is advertising political reforms in Korea she would probably count on that reputation again to cover her real activities and intentions with the world at large for some time to come. The Japanese are like the Italian Padrones or other skillful newly rich; they have learned the western efficiency and in that they are at least a generation ahead of their neighbors. New knowledge to take advantage of the old experience which she has moved away from and understands so well, to make that experience contribute all it has towards building up and strengthening the new riches of herself. The excuse is the one of the short and easy road to success though in the long run it is destructive in its bearings. But a certain physical efficiency is what Japan surely has and she has made that go a little further than it really can go. It is just one more evidence of the failure of the Peace Conference to comprehend the excuses that Wilson is making for the concessions he has granted to the practical needs, as he calls them. We are now getting the first echoes from his speeches here.
When I reflect on the changed aspect of our minds and on the facts that we have become accustomed to gradually since coming here I realize we have much to explain to you which now seems a matter of course over here. We discovered from reading an old back number somewhere that an American traveler had been given the order of the Royal Treasure in Japan when he was there. This order is said to be bestowed on the Japanese alone. Before he received it he had made a public speech to the effect that as China was down and out and needed some protector it was natural that Japan should be that, as by all historical reasons she was fitted to be. It appears to be true that the Militarists here who are causing the trouble for China and who are able to hold the government on account of foreign support have that idea so far as the 'natural' goes. The great man of China to-day is Hsu, commonly known as Little Hsu, which is a good nickname in English, Little Shoe. He has never been in the western hemisphere and he thinks it is better for China to give a part of her territory to the Japanese who will help them, than to hope for anything from the other foreigners, who only want to exploit them, and if once China can get a stable government with the aid of the Japanese militarists, then after that she can build herself into a nation. Meantime Little Shoe has gained by a sad fluke in the legislature the appointment of Military Dictator of Mongolia, and this means he is given full power to use his army for agricultural and any other enterprises he may choose. It means, in short, that he is absolute dictator of all Mongolia which is retained by China and which is bordered by Eastern Inner Mongolia which Japan controls under the twenty-one Demands by a ninety-nine-year lease under the same absolute conditions. These last few days since that act was consummated, nothing is happening so far as the public knows, and according to friends the government can go on indefinitely here with no cabinet and no responsibility to react to the public demands. The bulk of the nation is against this state of affairs, but with the support of foreigners and the lack of organization there is nothing to do but stand it and see the nation sold out to Japan and other grabbers. If you can get at 'Millard’s Review', look at it and read especially the recent act of the Foreign Council which licensed the press—I mean they passed an Act to do so. Fortunately the Act is not legal and will not be ratified by the Chinese Council at Shanghai.
To this house come the officers of the Y.M.C.A. who are on the way home from Siberia and other places. The stories one hears here are full of horror and always the same. Our men are too few to accomplish anything and the whole affair is not any of our business anyway. Anyway the Canadians have a sense of virtue in getting out of it and going home, and well they may, say I. The Japanese have had 70,000 there at least and they may have shipped many more than that, for they have such a command of the railroads that there is no way of keeping track of them. I believe the conviction is they are taking in men according to their own judgment of the case all the time. Everybody agrees that the Japanese soldiers are hated by all the others and have generally proved themselves disagreeable, the Chinese being thoroughly liked.
Meantime the dissatisfaction in Japan over rice in particular and food in general is quite evidently becoming more and more acute. And it is interesting to read the interviews with Count Ishii which all end up in the same way, that the fear of bomb-throwers in the United States is becoming a very serious alarm among all. The Anti-American agitation was hard for us to understand while we were there, but its meaning is less obscure now. Will it be effective? Is another world war already preparing? It is said here that the students were very successful during the strike in converting soldiers to their ideas. The boys at the High Normal said they were disappointed when they were let out of jail at the University because they had not converted more than half the soldiers. The guards around those boys were changed every four hours.
It is raining most of the time and it is typical of the Chinese character that my teacher did not come because of the rain. You have to remember he never takes a 'ricksha, though he might have looked at it that it was better to pay a man than to lose the lesson. The mud in the roads here is much like the old days on Long Island before the gravel was put there, only it is softer and more slippery here, and the water stands.