China and the West

Dewey, John. Lectures in China, 1919-1920 [ID D28460] :
'Social and political philosophy' in Beijing, sponsored by the National Beijing University, the Ministry of Education, the Aspiration Society and the New Learning Association. = She hui zhe xue yu zheng zhi zhe xue. Hu Shi interpreter, Wu Wang, Fu Lu recorder. In : Xue deng ; Sept. 24 ; Oct. 1, 8, 22 ; Nov. 5, 6, 22, 25, 30 ; Dec. 14, 15, 22, 23 (1919). Jan. 24, 26, Febr. 3, 4, 26, 27 ; March 3, 4, 8, 9 ; April 1, 2 (1920).
'The function of theory'
"This extreme radical statement was followed by the conservative theories of Aristotle, who in his 'Politics', his 'Ethics', and his other books, set forth theoretical bases for the perpetuation of the social and political schemes of his time. The same thing was true in China : the radical theories of Lao-tze were followed by the conservative theories of Confucius."
'Science and social philosophy'
"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 the people who constitute them, working as individuals – in collaboration with other individuals, of course, but still as individuals, each accepting his own responsibility. Any claim of the total reconstruction of a society is almost certain to be misleading. The institutions which make up the society are not 'right' or 'wrong', but each is susceptible to some degree of improvement. Social progress is neither an accident nor a miracle ; it is the sum of efforts made by individuals whose actions are guided by intelligence… I imagine that most of you in the audience today are students ; and as students, you must be peculiarly aware of the truth of what I have been saying."
'Social reform'
'Criteria for judging system of thought'
'Communication and associated living'
"Or take the history of China : transition from one dynasty to another was always attended by political and social disruption – disorder which continued until the appearance on the scene of some person forceful and powerful enough to subject contending factions to his control.”
“Workers are much better off in America than in China. Their wages are better, and are still increasing ; their working hours are shorter."
"In the history of China, for example, we note that the first emperor of the dynasty was always a strong leader, gifted with imagination and initiative, capable of accomplishing needed reforms, and interested in the people over whom he ruled."
'Economics and social philosophy'
'Classical individualism and free enterprise'
"All in all, what was good for economic development would at the same time and to the same degree be good for the spiritual elements in the social process. This outlook must obviously have considerable appeal her in China, where there has traditionally been so much interference both by the state and by the family elders. There seems to be a rapidly growing trend nowadays to reject the authority of the head of the clan, to have members of the family work more independently and responsibly, and to object to arbitrary interference in personal affairs by officers of the state."
"We have been speaking of the situation in Europe and America, but the issue between laissez faire and government regulation of industry should be of real concern to China, too, particularly at a time when the country is beginning to industrialize so rapidly. Problems of limiting hours of work, of regulating the conditions under which labor operates, of controlling the employment of women and children – these and other related problems must be planned for before the situation becomes serious."
'Socialism'
"There are today in China commercial guilds which, it seems to me, could be exceedingly useful during this period when China is undergoing the transition between cottage industry and full-scale industrial production. It is important for us to determine which aspects of the guild system ought to be preserved, and to discover ways in which we may cultivate professional self-respect by promoting more effective communication among people who are engaged in the same or similar trades… Chinese scholars should engage in research on the guild system, to the end that those aspects of it which can effectively contribute to progress can be conserved."
'The state'
'Government'
"In a book I read a few days ago, the author advances the thesis that Western political systems impose restrictions on government because of the assumption that human nature is inherently evil, while the older political system of China was based on the assumption that human nature is inherently good."
'Political liberalism'
'The rights of individuals'
"But both socialism and individualism have many ramifications. No matter what one's political orientation, he must grant that this is a basic problem. I see it as being of fundamental importance both in the West and in China. But the problem, as it concerns China, has facets which are different from those we see when we look at the same problem as it confronts the West. The problem as it exists in China can be stated as follows : assuming that we agree that our ultimate goal is the fullest possible development of individuals, should China, as the West did, first go through an age of self-seeking individualism, and then employ the power of the state to equalize society as the West has had to do ; or should it amalgamate these two steps and achieve social equality at one stroke ? It seems to me that there are grounds for hoping that China can achieve social equality in one operation. There are three reasons why I say this :
1) The first basis for hope that China can achieve social equality without repeating the sequence of events followed in the West, amalgamating two steps into one, is that she already enjoys the traditional concept of the state's obligation to protect its people, as this was propounded by Mencius. Political individualism has not made headway in China, so that the tradition of the state's obligation to protect its people, which may be likened to the parents' obligation to protect their children, or the emperor's protect his subjects, can readily be modified into the concept of the protection of its citizens by a democratic government.
2) Modern China can achieve equality of opportunity for her people by popularizing education. Popular education is not intended to satisfy the self-seeking urges of individuals, but to provide all men with equal opportunities for self-development. Education in the West became universal long after the beginning of the industrial revolution. But the industrialization of China is just now beginning ; there is thus the chance for China to universalize education now, so that by the time it reaches full-scale industrialization it will also have achieved social equality.
3) Another basis for hope is that there is still time for Chinese scholars and scientists to pursue specialized knowledge and devote their research activities to special problems. One of the shortcomings of political individualism in the West lies in the fact that it tends to deprecate specialization, and to hold that any reasonably well-educated person can pretty well take care of himself. It ignores the extreme complexities of modern society and politics, and fails to see that even in a small district the problems of education, taxation, and government as well as those of industry, can be dealt with effectively only by those who have mastered a great deal of highly specialized knowledge. If China can begin now to develop appropriate degrees of specialization, her rewards in the future will assuredly be great.
These remarks about China are no more than a few random suggestions of my own. The problem, though, is one of extreme importance, and worthy of the most careful study. Although at the moment China is confronted with particular and exacerbating problems, these are temporary. China is certain to be faced with more lasting and more fundamental problems in the near future, and the two which are of the most far-reaching import are the inevitability of industrialization, and its concomitant problem of self-seeking individualism. The problem thus becomes one of conserving the positive aspects of individualism while at the same time avoiding its negative aspects, which are certain to introduce disorder into your society."
'Nationalism and internationalism'
'The authority of science'
'Intellectual freedom'
Barry Keenan : Dewey began the lectures 'Social and political philosophy' with an instrumental definition of theory, and of politics ¸than he discussed the characteristics of experimental politics. Political theories, like any theories, he noted, arose to account for and alleviate some difficulty that developed in the operation of established social habits and institutions. Thinking was a response to problems, and so was theoretical thinking. The specific conditions of the original habits and institutions, were primary, and the theories of how they operate derivative.
Thomas Berry : The lecture 'Social philosophy and political philosophy' must be considered of special significance. It made a deep impression upon Chen Duxiu, who had already become interested in Marxism. Dewey's presentation of the democratic idea 'delayed by a strong counter-influence' the movement of Chen toward the Marxist-Leninist position. The main idea of this lecture was that democracy in any true sense of the word must begin on the local level and rise from there through successively wider application to the higher realms of political authority. The influence of Dewey on Chen did not succeed in bringing his intellectual and political abilities into the service of liberal or social democracy of a European or American style, for in 1921 Chen joined with Li Dazhao to found the Communist Party, the dynamic center of a movement that would first be the opponent and later the conqueror of all other political forces and doctrines in China. As a distinct political party, the democratic movement envisaged by Dewey was never successful in China. As an ideal it has remained a constant influence there and has seriously affected the political life of the country.

Dewey, John. Lectures in China, 1919-1920 [ID D28460] : 'The philosophy of education', delivered at Nanjing Teachers College. Sponsored by the National Beijing University, the Ministry of Education, the Aspiration Society and the New Learning Association. = Jiao yu zhe xue. Hu Shi ; Liu Boming interpreter ; Wu Wang, Fu Lu ; Zhong Fan, Guo Zhifang, Jin Haiguan, Shi Zhimian, Zhang Nianzu, Ni Wenzhou, Shen Zhensheng recorder. In : Xue deng ; Sept. 25-26 ; Oct. 2, 3, 4, 11, 25, 31 ; Nov. 10 ; Dec. 1, 2, 7, 16, 17, 24, 26, 27 (1919). Jan. 30, 31 ; Febr. 9, 11, 13 ; March 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 ; April 13, 15, 17, 20, 21, 24, 26 ; May 10, 11, 14, 19, 23, 30 ; July 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 12, 14, 15 (1920).
'The need for a philosophy of education'
'The misuse of subject matter'
'Work and play in education'
"The spirit of the new education is a complete reversal of this old concept. Once when I was lecturing in the United States on the subject of education, I said that in China pupils are required by their teachers to recite in unison and in a loud voice. I told my audience that even though this wasn't an ideal method of education, it at least allowed the pupils to have a modicum of physical movement, while in the West pupils are required to sit quietly and are not allowed to make the least noise.”
"Properly prepared, young women of China can apply Froebel's theories here, and create a new kind of kindergarten, with activities based in Chinese customs and using Chinese subject matter."
"When I first went to Nanking in May, the children in the Nanking Teachers College Kindergarten were raising silkworms. They started by collecting silkworm eggs and arranging for their protection ; then, when the eggs hatched, the children fed the tiny worms with mulberry leaves. This continued until the silkworms spun their cocoons. At the time I was there, the children were unreeling the silk from the cocoons. At first glance one might think that this business of raising silkworms in the schoolroom might fascinate the children (and it did, of course), but that there wasn't anything to it other than the mere fact of fascination. But as the situation was actually being handled, the children were also gaining knowledge. They watched the eggs hatch into larvae, the larvae become chrysalises, and then a few days later, they watched the mature moths emerge from their cocoons. In their first-hand experience with the development of the silkworms, the children were laying a basis for understanding many of the facts and principles of biology. Even in the area of industrial production the experience was profitable : th4e children learned about the selection and collection of eggs ; they had experience in distinguishing good silk from poor ; and they took the first steps toward an appreciation of the whole process of silk production. Silk is a major product of this part of southern China, so the child who has a basic understanding and appreciation of some of the chief factors in silk production has, by this token, a better understanding of the society in which he lives. Wouldn't you agree that this sounds like and effective way to pursue knowledge?"
'Creative dramatics and work'
'The cultural heritage and social reconstruction'
"I was pleased to read in the newspaper the other day that the Chinese National Education Conference has passed a resolution favoring the adoption of textbooks written in the spoken language of China. Although I am not as familiar with conditions in China as I should like to be, I believe that the use of the spoken language of the people in textbooks should prove to be one of the greatest steps forward that you could take."
"This is why I say that the broadening of the child's environment is a matter of greater urgency now than it has been in the past. Of course it is not just in China that there is such a need ; it exists everywhere. But I do believe that China faces an unprecedented and unparalleled opportunity to do this sort of thing in her schools. It is perhaps true that up to now contact with the West has brought China more disadvantages than advantages, more ill than good. But it is also true that the chaos and confusion in morality and economy have reached a point in China at which it would be ill advised, if not fatal, for China to isolate herself from the influences of Western culture. The only method by which China can remedy the present sad state of affairs is to speed up cultural exchange between East and West, and to select from Western culture for adaptation to Chinese conditions those aspects which give promise of compensating for the disadvantages which accrued from earlier contacts. This is a task which calls for men and women of wide knowledge and creative ability. The men and women who will do this are now children in our schools, and this is why the matter of broadening the child's environment is of such great urgency in China today."
'Discipline for associated living'
'The future and the present'
'The development of modern science'
"Although I do not know a great deal about the history of the development of Chinese culture, I do know that traditional Chinese culture was more concerned with a philosophy of life than with the natural sciences, so that science never developed enough to be incorporated into the general pattern of politics, religion, and other aspects of social life. Since this is true, there could not be the same reaction in China against the introduction of new thought that there was in the West. The introduction of modern science caused deep-seated conflict in the West, conflict which lasted hundreds of years ; but when the same ways of thinking were introduced into China, Chinese society did not see them as revolutionary at all."
'Science and the moral life'
"With the development of modern science the relative amount of attention devoted to the humanities has been reduced, and greater emphasis is devoted to the objective world in which we live. The tendency has been to abandon dogmatic methods of instruction, such as indoctrination in old beliefs and traditions and memorization of the Chinese classics."
"Since I arrived in China many people have asked me how China can import Western material civilization to develop her economy, and at the same time forestall the difficulties which maerial developments have brought in their wake in the West. It is true that in the Western world the development of material civilization has been accompanied by negative outcomes such as acquisitiveness and cruelty, contention between capital and labor, and strikes and lockouts. Today, however, we will explore the positive influences of the development of modern science, and identify those aspects of development which can help us overcome the difficulties with which we are confronted."
'Science and knowing'
"I have been told that there is a Chinese proverb to the effect that 'to know is easy, to act is difficult'. This is just the opposite of the experimental method, for in this method it is only after we have acted upon a theory that we really understand it. There can be no true knowledge without doing."
'Science and education'
"The other way would be for the Chinese people to start now to prepare themselves to cope with the situation which is going to emerge in the next fifty years. The Chinese can popularize education in science, and make scientific knowledge and scientific method available to all people, to that everybody can benefit equally from the development of science."
'Elementary and secondary education'
'Geography and history'
'Vocational education'
"The problem of labor unrest is a serious one throughout the world ; I'm sure you are all aware of this. The problem is not by any means solely one of hours and wages ; a fundamental source of trouble is that so many workers have no interest in their work, and this is true because they have no opportunity to make use of their knowledge and their intelligence. Workers will not be satisfied with material rewards alone. This is a particularly important problem in present-day China, as she enters into a period of rapid industrial development. The intellectuals in the universities understand the importance of the problem ; they must plan for social reconstruction in such a way that workers in the future will have full opportunity for intellectual development. If you can do this, China may not have to contend with the labor problems which trouble European countries and the United States. Lawyers, teachers, and other professionals are interested in their work because they have the opportunity for intellectual development. It is only the workers – and not even all of them – who have no interest in their work. The new leaders of China must direct their attention to this problem."
'Moral education : the individual aspect'
'Moral education : the social aspects'

Dewey, John. Chinese national sentiment [ID D28474].
Is it possible for a Westerner to understand Chinese political psychology? Certainly not without a prior knowledge of the historic customs and institutions of China, for the institutions have shaped the mental habits, not the mind the social habits. The West approaches all political questions with ideas composed on the pattern of a national state, with its sovereignty and definite organs, political, judicial, executive and administrative, to perform specific functions. We have even made history over to fit into this pattern. We have taken European political development as a necessary standard of normal political evolution. We have made ourselves believe that all development from savagery to civilization must follow a like course and pass through similar stages. When we find societies that do not agree with this standard we blandly dismiss them as abnormalities, as survivals of backward states, or as manifestations of lack of political capacity. Approached with such preconceptions, Chinese institutions and ideas are often given up as a bad job and as a case of arrested development. In actual fact, they mark an extraordinary development in a particular direction, only one so unfamiliar to us that we dispose of them as a mass of hopeless political confusion and corruption, or a striking object of what happens when there happens to be even a high code of ethics without the blessings of a divine revelation. The attempt to read Chinese institutions in terms of western ideas has resulted in failures of understanding and of action from the very beginnings of our contact. For example, in the early days of intercourse there was ground of complaint of the treatment received by western shipwrecked sailors on Korean coasts. The Foreign Offices knew that there existed some tributary relation between Korea and China. They interpreted this relation of dependence, as Mr. Holcombe has pointed out, in the way familiar to them. They thought of the connection as that of feudal suzerain and vassal. Hence they demanded that China make its dependent behave. When China disclaimed authority, they thought that this was either equivalent to a renunciation of all relationship, or else a wilful piece of deceit in a characteristic endeavor to evade just responsibility. They had no precedent for a relationship which, while one of genuine dependence, was moral and advisory in nature. The whole early history of the dealings of western nations with the Court at Peking is full of similar misconceptions. There was an undoubted monarch. The monarchy was even of the despotic kind; there were none of the checks of constitutional and representative institutions familiar to the western mind. Hence all the attributes of political sovereignty, external and internal, were attributed to the Court. Here again there was no precedent for conceiving of a dynastic rule which was a combination of a primitive tribute-levying empire and an authority of a moralistic, homiletic, hortatory kind. And as we go from such external aspects to deeper conditions we find that China can be understood only in terms of the institutions and ideas which have been worked out in its own historical evolution. The central factor in the Chinese historic political psychology is its profound indifference to everything that we associate with the state, with government. One inclines to wonder sometimes why the anarchists of the pacifist and philosophic type have not seized upon China as a working exemplification of their theories. Probably the reason is that being preoccupied with the problem of active abolition of government, they have not been able to conceive of an anarchy which should be only a profound apathy towards government. Or else they, too, have been misled by the popular association of anarchy with extreme freedom and mobility, and could not imagine it in connection with the stagnation attributed to China. According to literary records, the following verse is the oldest poem in the language—a song put into the mouth of a farmer: Dig your well and drink its water; Plow your fields and eat the harvest; What has the Emperor's might to do with me? China is still agricultural, as it was in the bygone centuries. Its farmers still go about their own business of tilling and eating, marrying and giving in marriage, begetting and dying. As of old, they attend to their own affairs, and the power of Emperor or President concerns them not. Governors come and go, and fuss about their petty intrigues of glory and greed. But they do not govern the farmers, who are the mass of the population. The only governance known to them is that of nature, the rules of the immemorial change of seasons, the fateful laws of birth and death, of seed-corn and harvest, of flood and pestilence. In the words of perhaps their oftenest quoted proverb, 'Heaven is high and the Emperor far away'. The implication is that earth is close and intimate, the family and village nearby. M. Hue tells an incident that dates from 1851; it might, however, have happened at any period in the long history of China. After the recent death of the Emperor, he endeavored without success to engage his fellow guests at a roadside tavern in a discussion of political prospects and possibilities. There was no response, though he exhausted his ingenuity. Finally one of the Chinese replied: 'Listen to me, my friend. Why should you trouble your heart and fatigue your head with all these vain surmises? The Mandarins have to attend to affairs of state; they are paid for it. Let them then earn their money. But we should be great fools to torment ourselves about what does not concern us. We should be great fools to want to do political business for nothing. ' And the anecdote continues: 'That is very conformable to reason,’ cried the rest of the company. Whereupon they pointed out to us that our tea was getting cold and our pipes were out. ' The state, the government, was a special business or trade, less interesting and less important for the mass of the people than ordinary affairs. It was, however, lucrative to those who specialized in it; let them carry its burdens. Meanwhile not merely the wedding and funeral, the sowing and reaping, concerned intimately the life of the people, but even the social consolations of the teacup and the tobacco-pipe were of more importance than affairs of state. If the people were indifferent to government, the government, which in our western terminology we have to call the state, reciprocated. In theory it was the representative of Heaven, and consequently owned the earth, namely, the soil, and was the symbolic cause of its fertility, exercising a beneficial paternal influence upon the prosperity of the country. In fact, like Heaven itself, the government was high above. In earlier days Heaven may have directly intervened in the affairs of earth, but for outnumbered centuries in later days it had remained discreetly aloof, satisfied with relations long ago established and interrupting the affairs of earth only at great crises. Except for a few purposes well understood by custom, the central government was irrelevant to the life of the people. It was a Court, and its dignity, prestige, ceremony and pleasures had to be maintained. The material side of this life required material supplies and money. The ideal life, the glory and supremacy of the reigning dynasty, could be satisfied symbolically and ceremonially, as the spirits had learned to be satisfied with symbolic money and imitations of servants, animals and food. The primary material function of government was then to receive a tribute from the products of the earth, partly in kind, partly in money. The amount was not onerous, and long custom had converted the tax into part of the regular order of nature, though, like the crops and other phenomena of nature, it was subject to unexpected ups and downs. The moral and ceremonial sovereignty was incarnated in the officialdom of viceroys, governors, heralds and other functionaries, who represented the Imperial Court, and who communicated to the people its mandates and exhortations, composed in the best literary style and manifesting the continuous benevolent solicitude of the representative of Heaven for their morals. These morals were, in turn, the source of the prosperity of the country and of the stability of the Empire. These officials also had to lead a life of a certain symbolic grandeur and glory which cost money, but taxation was kept within limits prescribed by custom, and as a rule the burden was not heavy. Pains were taken that it should fall upon the well-to-do as far as possible, thus serving the double end of keeping down the power of possible rivals and of not arousing the disfavor of the masses. It is possible to trace in the old Chinese theory of politics the survivals of an original theocracy. But in China, even more than in Europe in its most deistic days, God, or Heaven, was remote, contenting itself with a general benevolent oversight. Its lordship was of an absentee nature. And the Court which represented Heaven was contented to imitate the latter’s non-interference with the details and customs of life. The result was that for all practical purposes each province was an independent state, composed, in turn, of a large number of petty republics called villages. In 1900 an English writer, made competent by long residence and intimate experience, wrote: 'Each of China’s eighteen provinces is a complete state in itself. Each province has its own army, navy, system of taxation and its own social customs. In connection only with the salt trade and the navy certain concessions have to be made to one another under a certain modicum of imperial control. ' These independent units are traditionally called provinces. But, as the quotation shows, they might have been called principalities, save that they had no orderly lineage of princes. China was not even a confederation, much less a national state or an imperial state, in the sense which history has given those terms in the West. Again we have no precedents by which to interpret and understand such a situation. We are acquainted with empires that left local customs undisturbed and that contented themselves with levying tribute and exacting booty. But they were military powers, and always existed in unstable equilibrium. They never became so interwoven with local custom as to be a part of the established order of nature and able to dispense with military support. But China has worked out a scheme of remarkable static equilibrium—the most stable known to history. The political life of China went on essentially undisturbed, even though rebellions overthrew dynasties. Such rebellions were themselves as much a part of the established order of Heaven or Nature as was an occasional flood or plague. All such crises had their natural causes and were proper and normal, however uncomfortable or destructive they might be. The texture of life was unchanged; it continued to exhibit the same patterns. The equilibrium was a human and internal one, a moral one, not one maintained by external pressure or military force. The actual government of China was a system of nicely calculated personal and group pressures and pulls, exactions and 'squeezes', neatly balanced against one another, of assertions and yieldings, of experiments to see how far a certain demand could be forced, and of yielding when the exorbitance of the demand called out an equal counter-pressure. Long before the time of Sir Isaac Newton, China worked out a demonstration in the field of politics, of the law that action and reaction are equal and in opposite directions. It exemplified the working of the principle in every aspect of human association. Such a social system implies a high state of civilization. It produces civilized persons almost automatically. For the essence of civility, or of civilization, is the ability to live consciously along with others, aware of their expectations, demands and rights, of the pressure they can put upon one, while also conscious of just how far one can go in response in exerting pressure upon others. The Chinese, as long as they were left undisturbed by other peoples, had all the complex elements of the social equation figured out with unparalleled exactness. Their social calculus, integral and differential, exceeded anything elsewhere in existence. This fact, and this fact only, accounts for the endurance of China for almost four thousand years of recorded history. Then there came the eruption of forces from the outside which were radically new, which were unprecedented, for which the social calculus provided no rules. They were not, strictly speaking, human; they were physical forces of a strange and incalculable kind—battleships, artillery, railways, strange machines and chemicals. At first China was complacent. It remembered the numerous eruptions and invasions which had broken into its system in the past, and recalled how they had been subdued by ab-sorption, how they had been gradually worked into the patterns of adjustments, demands, concessions, compromises and intercourses which constitute China. But gradually it became evident that old formulae would not apply, that a radically new force had been introduced. And it gradually became apparent that the new physical agencies and forces which were so irresistible were themselves the tools and designs of an unaccustomed social and political order. China, a civilization, was confronted by a civilization which was organized as China was not, into national states. The consequences of this contact are written in every problem, internal as well as external, that occupies China today. There is a story of an intelligent Chinese who asked a foreigner to explain to him the nature and amount of the indemnity exacted from China by Japan after the successful war waged by the latter about the Korean question. After hearing the explanation he reflected a while to take in the full force of the matter, and then remarked in a contented way, 'Well, that is the Manchus' affair; it doesn't concern us. They will have to pay, not we. ' The remark appears to indicate not merely the extraordinary indifference to politics already spoken of, but an equally extraordinary political stupidity. But it is stupidity only to the mind built after the pattern of western political institutions. From the standpoint of Chinese customs the remark was intelligent. Relations with foreign states were the business of the Imperial Court. And any expenses consequent upon such relations had to be met out of the purse of that Court. In the established system of taxation and revenues, the funds accruing from the tariff on imports from foreign countries belonged to the Imperial Treasury. It was nobody's business what the Court did with them. It was a logical conclusion that any debit item was also the exclusive affair of the ruling dynasty. The logic was good. But it was based upon the past, upon premises that no longer hold good. The Japanese Indemnity was followed by the Boxer Indemnity. The whole revenue system was thrown out of balance. The long-established Imperial balance of expenditures and receipts was destroyed. Yet any radical change in the established system of taxation was practically out of the question, entirely out of the question in any immediate or abrupt way such as the situation required. It would have wrenched the whole social system out of order. Even such changes as had to be introduced had a large part to play in the dissatisfaction with the Manchu dynasty, which led to its overthrow. There was not merely the ordinary opposition felt anywhere to a marked increase in taxation. There was not merely the interference with custom which for immemorial ages had set limits in the game of exactions and resistance. There was an indissoluble association of taxation with the peculiar prerogatives of the Imperial Court, none too popular at best. There was an equally fixed association of increased taxes with 'squeezes' on the part of officialdom, with corruption which was not exactly corruption if kept within certain limits of percentages, but which was intolerable when it surpassed them. The internal system of taxation, adequate to all internal emergencies, was not elastic in the face of the externally induced crisis. Foreign loans had to be resorted to. The remedy increased the disease. It gave the opportunity for more and more intervention from without; it invited a multiplication of precisely those dependencies upon foreign power which were the original root of the difficulty. And gradually the entire internal equilibrium has been upset in consequence of the contact with foreign powers. It cannot be regained without a radical transformation of China's historic political system. It has to nationalize itself in some fashion in order to meet the conditions imposed by its intercourse with other peoples who are organized into national states. What is true of the matter of taxation and revenues is true of almost every phase of Chinese life. Public finance but gives a typical example. There has been discussion of whether the Chinese have national loyalty, whether they have patriotism. Here also our words in their accustomed meanings betray us. In its literal sense the word 'nation' is connected in derivation with the word for birth. In the sense of community thus implied, the Chinese are certainly a nation. But in its acquired historical meaning, nation means a people with a certain political organization, a people claiming or possessing sovereignty of a centralized sort over a certain territory. And this is what the Chinese have not, but have to acquire in the face of sharp demands from foreign nations. It is contrary to their own social inertia and momentum, which has been acquired in minute and complicated ways through centuries of adjustments. Patriotism means love of country. In the sense of love of their earth, their native soil, the Chinese are perhaps the most patriotic of all existing peoples. The love may not be acute as with the Japanese, as ardent as with the Poles, but it is inter-woven with every detail of life. It is not so much a sentiment, a fact of consciousness, as an unbreakable habit of life. Attachment to soil and birthplace is quite a different thing from an effectively organized allegiance to the state, that political entity which is constituted by political means rather than by matter-of-course habits of daily life and intercourse. It is customary to try to escape from the dilemma of a spontaneous, pervasive and unquestioned love of country that exists without the familiar manifestations of public spirit and political nationalism, by saying that the Chinese have a strong sense and pride of race which does for them what patriotism does for western peoples. Literally, this will hardly work. The Chinese regard themselves as five races, not one, as their flag testifies. In a certain genuine sense the Chinese are profoundly indifferent to race and racial distinctions. They have not been infected as have the Europeans and Japanese with the ethnological virus. While the Revolution was expedited by the fact that the Manchu dynasty was foreign, yet this ground of objection had had no effect for over two hundred years. It became significant only after western contact had aroused nationalistic feeling. What the Chinese abundantly possess is community of life, a sense of unity of civilization, of immemorial continuity of customs and ideals. The consciousness of a unity of pattern woven through the whole fabric of their existence never leaves them. To be a Chinese is not to be of a certain race nor to yield allegiance to a certain national state. It is to share with countless millions of others in certain ways of feeling and thinking, fraught with innumerable memories and expectations because of long- established modes of adjustment and intercourse. This consciousness becomes loyalty, patriotism, in our sense in just the degree in which it gets transferred to the idea of a national state made after the model familiar to us, a state with an army and navy, a system of regular taxation and public revenue, an organized system of legislation, judiciary and administration, a subordination of all local powers to a central power, and all the other paraphernalia of sovereignty which we take for granted. It is not easy to transform a traditional feeling into nationalism, and then attach it to an object which is largely non-existent, an object of faith rather than of sight. For this reason nationalistic sentiment has tended to take an anti-foreign color among the Chinese. In spite of the Boxer outbreak and other violent demonstrations against aliens, it may be doubted whether there has been a strong hostility against the foreigner as such. The Chinese, one surmises, are rather unusually tolerant. Their amiable live-and-let-live policy is applied all around. Their normal attitude is that of indifference to strangers rather than of aggressive antagonism. But conditions were such that about the only way in which they could show their devotion to their own civilization was negative. It was the outsider who was disturbing it. The Chinese lacked the positive organs of national life through which to resist foreign encroachments. Their loyalty to their own customs was therefore bound, one might say, to take the irregular and disorderly form of attack upon foreign residents. There are few who think that the Boxer days are likely to recur. The Chinese are intelligent, and they learned the hopelessness of holding their own by such methods. But it is still true that their national feeling can be aroused and concentrated more readily for purposes of resistance and opposition to foreign nations than for constructive purposes. There are fine illustrations of this fact in recent Chinese international relations. There can be little doubt that the Government had officially instructed its delegates to the Peace Conference in Versailles to sign the treaty, recognizing though it did the Japanese appropriation of German rights in Shantung. National sentiment was, however, tremendously aroused. If Japan had set out to instigate a new national spirit which should overwhelm the old local provincialisms, she could not have proceeded in a more effectual way to accomplish the purpose. The people took the matter out of the hands of the Government. By cablegrams to Paris, by telegraph to Peking, by mass-meetings and agitations, finally by a strike of students and then of the mercantile guilds in the larger cities, they made it clear that national sentiment would regard as traitors all those who should take part in signing the treaty. It was an extraordinarily impressive exhibition of the existence and the power of national feeling in China. It was all the more impressive because it had to work without organized governmental agencies, and, indeed, against the resistance of deeply-intrenched pro-Japanese officialdom. If there still remained anywhere those who doubted the strength and pervasiveness of Chinese patriotism, the demonstration was a final and convincing lesson. But it took a great crisis of foreign menace to focus the feeling; Japan in the last two years has done for China what otherwise might have taken a generation more. But when the immediate task of preventing the signing of the treaty that gave away Chinese rights was performed, the feeling lapsed. Perhaps it remains equally intense, but it has lost in sureness of direction. The outward means and the established habits of thought required for positive determination of constructive national policies are still inchoate. Everyone knows that the chief instrumentality of foreign encroachment in China has been finance. Russia first conceived the policy of conquest by bank and railway, and other nations joined in. Japan, with her usual alertness, saw the point, and with her usual energy acted upon her perception. The question of finance remains pivotal in any positive national policy for China. Even if China had the capital to take care of her own developments, and she certainly has more than she has used, the denationalized customs work against loaning it to the Government. And lack of trust in the competency and honesty of the officials reinforces the other influences that tell against extending domestic credit for public needs. Clearly, an international financial consortium which should loan money to China in bulk without assigning in return special concessions and spheres of influence to any particular nation is the obvious solution. But it is extremely difficult to arouse any popular interest in this matter. It is, so to speak, too positive and too specialized. On the contrary, it is comparatively easy for interested parties to stir up opposition. They have only to keep saying that this is a move on the part of foreign powers to get complete subjugation of China, and national feeling is excited in the negative direction. The alternative, namely, foreign loans from separate powers, in fact, Japan claiming specific rights and privileges in return, is not faced except by the more enlightened. The masses trust to a laissez-faire, happy-go-lucky policy of meeting each stringency as it arises, rather than of committing the country to some comprehensive scheme which, because of the organization involved in it, makes the fact of foreign influence obvious. Habituated to dealing with obstacles and dangers in a piecemeal way, playing off one force against another with great skill, the natural dread that all feel towards the unknown is felt towards organization on a large scale. And the fact that the organization is one on the part of foreign nationalism makes it appear particularly dreadful. And who can blame China in view of its past experiences with foreign influence? There is even now a small section which quite sincerely argues that it would be better to let Japan have Tsing-tao than to make it an international settlement. The situation is critical. The fear of coming against an organization of foreign nations was sufficient recently to defeat, at least for the time being, the proposition to unify the railways of China. Ultimately it would mean the development of a large national system under exclusive Chinese control. But for the time being it involved a certain amount of international control. Foreign nations interested in maintaining separate spheres were naturally hostile. But their easiest way of working was not to offer public opposition, but to play secretly, through domestic agencies profiting by the existing state of affairs, upon the national fears of China. The same forces are already at work attacking the proposed international consortium and may wreck it. In fact, they will almost certainly succeed in delaying it until it becomes a matter of dire necessity. Yet it seems almost axiomatic that as long as China is dependent upon foreign loans it is much better for her to be dependent upon a combination of powers that have agreed to forgo special privileges, and who will have to use their funds to build up China as a whole, than upon single separate powers that loan money only in response for special concessions and command of strategic points. These points are strategic not only economically, but in a political and military way. It seems at first sight very unreasonable that China should prefer to continue a system, or lack of system, which has brought her to the present pass. And it is unreasonable. But we need to understand that China has now reached a point of intense national feeling and a position where she can act with assurance as a nation. Feeling is feeling. It is comparatively easy to arouse national aspiration and national fears. It is not so easy to secure a national understanding of and agreement of any comprehensive or constructive plan of operations. And the reason is obvious, for there are no national institutions, no national organs, to supply the material of understanding and afford the basis of enduring faith and confidence. This union of intense national sentiment, with absence or lack of channels and organs of national action, describes the dilemma in which China finds itself today, both internally and externally. It is especially important that the United States should sympathetically comprehend the situation. Just now there is a warm wave of pro-American feelings, especially outside of the governmental circles, which have become involved in Japanese intrigues. It is genuine. Yet it is largely a rebound from the prevalent anti-Japanese feelings. It is in any case a national feeling, not a national idea. It will be subjected in the future to the forces which always operate to make feeling, as distinct from thought, a fluctuating affair. Because of past history and because of economic interests, the United States stands against the policy of partitioning China, whether overdy or by means of spheres of influence and special interests. That is all to the good with respect to China's feeling towards us. She also stands, as in the case of unifying railways and combined financial aid, for organized international assistance. With an ordinary amount of decency and good will, this policy should build up China rapidly and get her to the point where she can dispense with foreign control. But for reasons just explained, China will hesitate and object and postpone. She may conceivably completely balk, and prefer to continue the policy of playing one nation off against another, in spite of the fact that that will mean for the time being an increase of Japanese control. It is most important that America should understand the causes of this attitude and should be patient and persistent in its policy, instead of being swayed by an emotional gust of revulsion at 'ingratitude'. Revulsion and withdrawal of active interest on our part, because our advances and plans do not meet with an immediate and hearty approval, will only play into the hands of those countries who desire special and selfish rights in China, and who for this reason, and because of lack of faith in the political capacity of the Chinese, always carry in the back of their heads a scheme of ultimate partition and subjection. We need to realize that it is just because the Chinese have great political capacity that the problem of national redirection is difficult and slow. For this capacity has been committed to definite lines which are contrary to those that fit into the present situation. It will help an intelligent sympathy to remember that China has not advanced on the path of modem political nationalism to the point where national feeling is warm and intense, but where definite organs of national thought and action are only in the early stage of formation.

John Dewey : Lecture 'Student self-government' at the Beijing Teachers College.

John Dewey : Lecture on 'Student government' : a lecture given at Beijing Teachers College on the 11th anniversary of its founding. = Xue sheng zi zhi. Hu Shi interpreter ; Liu Rupu, Shao Zhengxiang recorder. In : Xin jiao yu ; vol. 2, no 2 (Oct. 1919).

Letter from Lucy Dewey to Dewey children
135 Morrison St, Oct 4 [1919]
Dear Folks.
Evelyns letter of Sept 1 came this morning just as we had about given up hope for this boat. Evelyn neednt worry about my getting buried in the past. I spend my mornings running a sewing woman, seeing about getting a horse and ridimg habit, knotting a bed quilt, and reading the magazines in the library. My afternoons are devoted to calls, curio rumaging, and bullying Mamma into hleping me plan dinner parties. Its a gay life. The horse I have on shares with another girl, I dont know just how it is going to work out, I havent riden yet as there is no habit. I hope to be able to start when we get back from Taiyuanfu. Its perfect riding weather now, couldnt be nicer. The quilt is gradually getting done so I wouldnt be able to spend the rainy mornings that way much longer. The "first" calss are gradually getting done, it certainly is a chore, the new people are supposed to call on the old. we arent attempting to do them all, just the people at our legation, the more important Rockefeller and a few of the mishs. Mrs Price, one of the legation, has just come back from America and the afternoon she called on us she said she had made fourteen that afternoon.
Numerous things have happend since I last wrote. Tuesday afternoon we went to the dress rehearsal of the Confucian sacrifice. The temple is a beautiful one with courtyards full of wonderful old Lebanon cedars. It is in very good condition, an unusual thing in Chinese temples, as it was restored by Yuan Shi-kai when he was getting ready to be emperor. We got there early and saw them making the preparations. They had all sorts of musical instruments set out, huge stringed things that we decided must be like the biblical psalteries enormous drums, and frames of bells and triangles. They had a chorus of boys who chanted and went thru formal posturing known as dancing. There were dignified old parties in black satin trimmed with gold who ran around and kowtowed every now and then. They didnt have any animal there that day. It all finished off with the dignified old parties marching off with a speech to Confucius and what would be peices of the animal. It was interesting and very impressive but we didnt understand it much. Most of the high officials were there, tho not the great president. Little Hsu, the power behind the throne, was there, but the Chinese we were with remarked in a casual way, "There goes little Hsu" when he had got all by and all we saw was his back in the distance. Thursday we rose at four in the morning and waited for the president to go by the house He almost never goest on the street as all the streets have to be cleared for him. We had received a police order telling us that no one was to leave the house after three until he had gone by. The soldiers were stationed about fifteen feet apart along the street, there were two or three in every door way, one came up stairs and turned on the light in the hall out side our door. They evidently didnt propose to have any one rush out and bomb the old gent. They had the street strewn with yellow sand in the old imperial way. After much waiting eighteen automobiles went tearing by, going about forty miles an hour The pres was in the last one, a closed car with four men on each running board. What I dont understand is how he got home, as all the soldeirs and everything deperted after him.
Thursday night the Smiths [Possibly William Roy Smith and Marion Parris Smith] came for a farewell dinner. Miss Carl came too She pained the old Empress Dowagers picture, lived in the palace for a year. She has the most interesting stories to tell and is a most entertaining person generally. The Smiths had to leave early to get their train. We are going to miss them very much.
Yesterday the rain came down in sheets and the streets were large rivers This morning was clear and lovely but its all clouded up again now and is cold as Greenland.
We are completely overcome at Evelyns style in living on West 56 street. As she didnt say anything about her plans we dont know when she will move in so I wont take any chances on this letter. We had a nice letter from Mrs Coleman and one grom Miss Cross yesterday. Also I got one from Charles today.
Im slowly freezing to death so will sally forth for some exercise. Lots of love to you all.
Lucy

Dewey, John. Our share in drugging China [ID D28473].
Of the millions who associate opium and China probably only few know, beyond a vague impression of England's part in an 'Opium War', that from the very beginning, the responsibility for the introduction and spread of the use of narcotics lies with foreign nations. Few know how repeated and consistent have been the struggles of responsible Chinese authorities to prevent the importation of the drug, nor the obstacles that officials of other nations have thrown in their way. Even when poppy growing became general throughout the Empire (and there is no denying that it did), fairness compels the acknowledgment that the Chinese had reached the conclusion that since it was impossible to prevent the introduction of opium from India, they might as well have a share in the profits themselves. In 1906 began the last great campaign against the growing of poppies and for the total eradication of the drug habit, cooperation of Great Britain regarding the importation of opium from India being secured. Even the foreigners who are most pessimistic regarding the capacity of the Chinese to carry through any general reform make an exception of the anti-opium fight. The vigor with which it was conducted was equalled by the ingenuity and skill with which offenders were detected and dealt with. What was accomplished in five years speaks wonders for the capacity of Chinese administration when it is in earnest, and for the adaptability of the Chinese people. There are few instances in history where such a sweeping reform was carried through so rapidly and thoroughly.
Belatedly and under the pressure of criticism and in opposition to the protest of business against 'sentimentalism', other countries agreed to cooperate with China. They forbade the exportation of opium save under strict regulations to secure legitimacy of use. China enforced as well as made these restrictions. Since 1905 only about forty ounces a year have passed through the Chinese customs. This amount is taken accordingly as the standard of proper medical use by physicians, hospitals and chemists. It is hard, however, for law and morals to keep up with the advance of science and business. The above figure cannot be taken to measure the state of the drug-using habit in China.
As the importation and use of opium decreased, science provided substitutes in the way of derivatives, especially morphia, heroin and codein, while cocaine was added from a new source. And the use of these forms of 'dope' is spreading so fast that they are likely to outdo the ravages of opium at its worst. Opium-smoking is expensive. It is an indulgence now confined to the wealthy. The use of the syringe is as cheap as that of the pipe is dear. Injections can be had for three coppers a 'shot' and the profit to the dealer at that rate is over a thousand per cent. Opium-smoking was an aristocratic vice; the needle reaches the coolies. It was not difficult to discover the opium-users. The dweller in any large city of the United States does not need to be told how difficult it is to detect the seller of forms of modem dope. Ingenuity when profits are at stake is not less in China than in America. On every hand one hears of the tricks employed in smuggling and distributing morphia and heroin. The sale is made easier because the Chinese are great takers of medicines, and the licensed practitioner in our sense hardly exists. Opium derivates are sold in all kinds of pills, and itinerant pedlars introduce pills and injections without the ignorant victim knowing what he is getting until after the habit is well fixed. And the weight of evidence is that the effects of morphia, cocaine and heroin are more completely demoralizing to the body, mind and character of the average dope user than were those of opium-smoking. Add the comparative minuteness of the dose for injections,—a single case of detected smuggling in Shanghai lately yielded enough for over twelve million 'shots'—and it is easy to see that the new menace is worse than the old. Since, however, the drugs now reach China only by the medium of smugglers, it might be thought that there is no longer national responsibility for forcing this evil on China—that it is now simply a matter of the individual wickedness of the smuggler and dealer. Unfortunately for the good repute of the western nations, such is not the case. Putting it mildly, carelessness and neglect in drawing and enforcing regulations regarding manufacture, transportation and exportation of opium products are such as to make the nations accomplices in guilt. In 1912 an international convention forbade the further exportation of morphia into China. Before this time the exportation from Great Britain into Japan was 30,000 ounces a year. This was a large enough amount in all conscience, and the most of it undoubtedly found its way to China. By 1917 it had jumped twenty-fold—to 600,000 ounces. Over fifty tons got from Scotland to Japan in four years, these figures being official custom statistics. It does not have to be pointed out that both the British and the Japanese governments knew that this amount was infinitely above legitimate needs—or that its destination was China, to which country exportation was nominally prohibited. But division of moral responsibility was at work. The British were far from the retail trade and the ultimate consumer. Their profits were in Indian revenue where the opium was raised, in Edinburgh the manufacturing centre, and in the shipping trade. The Japanese did not have (at that time) the responsibility for producing and exporting; they merely served as intermediaries. It is easy in such circumstances to pass on blame, and difficult to make an effective appeal to conscience. Only international cooperation would work. The Hague passed excellent resolutions—and Great Britain, the offender at the source, declared that she would put them into force when every other nation did.
In 1917, however, the appeal to the conscience of the British government was sufficiently strong, so that regulations were put into effect by which opium derivatives could be shipped into Japan and its leased territory in Manchuria (the latter being one of the chief centres whence morphia reached the Chinese) only when licenses were given to the exporter. And these licenses were to be given only after receipt of a certificate from Japanese officials that the morphia was for medical use only, and was destined for consumption in Japan itself or its leased territory. The latter proviso made Japan an underwriter that the goods should not reach China. The next year there was a great falling off. Still in view of the fact that Japan was by this time manufacturing more than enough to supply its own medical needs, it is disconcerting to find that one hundred and fifty thousand ounces were imported into Japan. The fact argues an easy conscience somewhere. But this statement does not cover the ground.
In the first place, Great Britain exacts no such license for exportation by means of parcel post—and a single postal package can easily carry stuff for a hundred thousand injections. British subjects in China accuse their home government of wilful omission and evasion. In the next place, the British authorities in both Hong Kong and Singapore farm out the opium product business, receiving in each place two millions of revenue annually for the concession. Now there are well established facts proving that the concessionaire can make his business pay only by getting contraband into China proper. It is obvious that no one would pay two millions a year for the privilege of making opium to be sold only in the city of Hong Kong. So many facilities are given to the concessionaire for smuggling into China that there are those who say that the British licensing regulations for the Japanese trade were adopted not for moral reasons but to protect the 'opium farmers' who were having difficulty in meeting Japanese competition in contraband and who appealed to the British government for protection in their rights.
So much for Great Britain's share. As to Japan. Leaving out of the question the neglect of the government in Japan in issuing licenses, and the charges that advantage was taken of the lessened British trade to encourage poppy growing in Japan and Korea, there is the fact that for Japanese territory on Chinese soil, namely in the leased territory of “Dairen and vicinity” and in Tsingtao, licenses are issued by minor officials and irresponsible officials. In a single year there were imported 'for medical use only' in 'Dairen and vicinity' sixty-six thousand ounces of morphia. The figures are conclusive that the Japanese administration was an accomplice to making its Manchurian territory a point of departure for sending contraband into China. In general Japanese control of the retail and distributing trade has of late years become so complete that they have gradually come to be regarded as the chief if not the only sinners. One cause of present anti- Japanese feeling is found in the fact that Shantung has now become a centre for distributing dope.
Now enters the American participation in the crime of poisoning China. The British require no license for exportation to the United States. Our laws are such that when the stuff arrives at one of our ports it is only necessary to put the goods into bond for transhipment to avoid payment of duty. And while the morphia could not be directly exported under our own laws into China, our laws regarding transhipment make no inquiry into the nature of the goods. They need only be described in a general way. All the morphia now manufactured in Scotland could readily pass through the United States into Japan thence to reach China illicitly if labelled 'pharmaceutical products'. Remember they could not go direct to Japan from Great Britain. If this is allowed to continue after the attention of our custom officials and of Congress has been called to it, we share with Great Britain and Japan the burden of sinning against China.
But not all our guilt is indirect. The morphia seized in the recent smuggling case in Shanghai was all manufactured in Philadelphia—a fact verified in open court by a lawyer of the International Anti-Opium Association. It would be a criminal offense to ship this direct to China. But there is no law against shipment to Japan. American traffic through the two channels of British goods in bond and our own products has reached vast proportions already. The official statistics show that for the first five months of the current year, twenty-five thousand ounces of morphia reached the port of Kobe from American ports. But the Japan Chronicle, published in Kobe, is responsible for the statement that the manifestos of ships arriving in Kobe during the same period show about ninety thousand more ounces not appearing in the custom house returns. The conclusion is certain. This amount was transhipped in Kobe harbor to be smuggled into China. That this shows gross connivance on the part of Kobe port officials may be argued. But the primary responsibility is with the laws and administration of the United States. We have become a large partner in the contemptible business of drugging China at the time when China is making heroic efforts to emancipate herself from the narcotic evil.
Our holier than thou attitude towards Great Britain and Japan must be abandoned. We have as yet no vested industrial and commercial interest possessing great political influence. It requires only a slight amount of interest in the evils of the traffic and a slight amount of energy to frame laws and administrative regulations that will compel adequate registration of all opium products reaching American ports, and make it a criminal offense to transport such goods for re-export. We can easily take steps that will make it impossible for morphia and heroin of American production to be exported to Japan thence to reach China. We can see to it that our post-office at Shanghai cannot be employed for sending narcotics into China by parcel-post (as we do not do at the present, thus making ourselves criminal accomplices in the breaking of Chinese laws and the poisoning of the Chinese people).
The International Anti-Opium Society has worked out plans which if adopted would effectually control the whole nefarious traffic not only for China but for the world. These plans start from the fact that control from the side of retail distribution and the ultimate consumer are so difficult as to be almost hopeless. But control at the source is simple. The growth of poppies can be put under supervision, and every grain of raw opium that leaves them be accounted for and traced. It is possible to determine the amount of narcotics that is required for legitimate medical use. The manufacture of this necessary amount should be put under government licensing and constant inspection. Then by serial numbering of uniform packages and records of sale all distribution could be traced. No opium products are to be shipped anywhere to the Far East except upon receipt of a requisition from the importing country certifying to the intended use, and upon prior notification to that country of the nature and date of the shipment meeting the order.
Our own interest is not a purely altruistic one, nor is it confined to doing our obvious duty by China. We have the drug evil with us, and its growth in our country is one of the most disconcerting of present events. We cannot insure ourselves against this evil till we take the measures that will guarantee China against it. The laws and regulations for the control of importation, transhipment, exportation, manufacture and wholesale merchandizing that are needed to protect China from our partnership in the crime of undermining her life are the exact means of safeguarding our own health and morals. Until we have cleaned our own house we cannot take the part that we should take in urging upon other nations, especially Great Britain and Japan, effective international action. The Paris Conference promised China that the League of Nations would take up the opium and morphia traffic. Shall the United States continue its partnership in crime until forced by outside action to abandon it? Shall it enter the deliberations of the League of Nations Assembly with unclean hands?

Dewey, John. The discrediting of idealism [ID D28468].
It will be recalled that the decision of the Versailles Conference as to Japan's claims in China was announced at the end of April. A few weeks after this time, when I was giving some lectures in one of the chief educational centres of China, the teachers and students were asked to hand in questions in writing. They responded in large numbers. The question asked most frequently, repeated over and over again in different terms, ran about as follows: 'During the war we were led to believe that with the defeat of Germany there would be established a new international order based on justice to all; that might would not henceforth make right in deciding questions between nations; that weak nations would get the same treatment as powerful ones—that, indeed, the war was fought to establish the equal rights of all nations, independently of their size or armed power. Since the decision of the peace conference shows that between nations might still makes right, that the strong nation gets its own way against a weak nation, is it not necessary for China to take steps to develop military power, and for this purpose should not military training be made a regular part of its educational system?' At every educational gathering since, this question has been uppermost.
The matter is not referred to here for discussion in connection with China. China can become a strong nation only through industrial and economic development. Any military efforts, apart from this development, would only prolong the present chaos, and at most create an hallucination as to national power. The im¬plications, however, of the question come home to every one who favored the participation of the United States in the war on what are termed idealistic grounds. It comes with especial force to those who, strongly opposed to war in general, broke with the pacifists because they saw in this war a means of realizing pacific ideals—the practical reduction of armaments, the abolition of secret and oligarchic diplomacy and of special alliances, the substitution of inquiry and discussion for intrigue and threats, the founding, through the destruction of the most powerful autocracy, of a democratically ordered international government, and the consequent beginning of the end of war. Once having taken sides, vanity is enlisted. As President Wilson is moved to 'make the best' of the actual outcome, so all those who favored America's action in the war from idealistic reasons are tempted to make the best of its outcome. And 'making the best of it' means blurring over disagreeable features so as to salve vanity. Consequently the pacifists who were converted to war are obliged to undertake an unusually searching inquiry into the actual results in their relation to their earlier professions and beliefs. Were not those right who held that it was self-contradictory to try to further the permanent ideals of peace by recourse to war? Was not he who thought they might thus be promoted one of the gullible throng who swallowed the cant of idealism as a sugar coating for the bitter core of violence and greed? Is the pacifist a outrance, the absolutist of peace, the only one who can make a valid claim to untarnished idealism? Have the ideals of humanity, of self-determination, justice to the weak, been hopelessly discredited through being inscribed?
The defeat of idealistic aims has been, without exaggeration, enormous. The consistent pacifist has much to urge now in his own justification; he is entitled to his flourish of private triumphings. Superficially, his opponent—I mean the one who placed himself also on idealistic ground—has not much to urge except the scant though true plea that things would have been much worse if Germany had won, as she would have done without the participation of the United States. The defeat, however, is the de¬feat which will always come to idealism that is not backed up by intelligence and by force—or, better, by an intelligent use of force. It may seem like a petty attempt to get back at the pacifist to say that the present defeat of the war ideals of the United States is due to the fact that America's use of 'Force to the uttermost, Force without stint, ' still suffered from the taint of complacent and emotional pacifism. But it may fairly be argued that the real cause of the defeat is the failure to use force adequately and in¬telligently. The ideals of the United States have been defeated in the settlement because we took into the war our sentimentalism, our attachment to moral sentiments as efficacious powers, our pious optimism as to the inevitable victory of the 'right', our childish belief that physical energy can do the work that only in¬telligence can do, our evangelical hypocrisy that morals and 'ideals' have a self-propelling and self-executing capacity.
If the principle of force to the limit had been in operation in behalf of our ideals, complete information would have been had at an early date regarding the secret agreements that were out¬standing, and our share in the war would have been made to depend upon a clearing of the decks. This would have shown distrust of our Allies, and an ungenerous wish to take advantage of the hour of their critical need of our help? There speaks our inveterate sentimentalism, our unwillingness to use the force at hand in support of our ideals. Either we and our Allies were fighting for the same ends or we were not. There was no moral generosity in putting them in a position of willingness to use our help for professed democratic ends when in reality they were to use it for imperialistic ends. On our side, if we had had a tenth of the faith in concrete intelligence used at the right juncture that we had in fine phrases, many of the obstacles to securing at the end a peace in accord with our idealism would have been swept away in the earlier months of 1917. It is exceedingly silly to regard as a failure of idealism what ought rather to be charged against our own lack of common sense.
Past history would have shown what any knowledge of the present situation confirms—that the type of man brought forward by war is not the type needed to make peace. The urgencies of war bring to the front the kind of man who can make quick deci¬sions in the face of immediate pressure of circumstance. Such statesmen are bound to be of the aggressive and quasi-gambling type. At best they represent the government of war, not the pursuits of normal peace with its long-time interests and consequences. Mr. Norman Angell and a few others, but Mr. Angell especially, taught all during the war the indispensable necessity of provision for popular representation at the peace conference. Everybody who heard him was impressed with the reasonableness of the proposition. But nothing was done. Was this an intel¬ligent use of the force at our command?
President Wilson as a peace-maker is the exception that proves the rule. Owing to the accidents of our electoral and party system, he was the one figure in the Councils who had not been given his place and influence by the exigencies of war. He represented and upon the whole with more than ordinary representative capacity the normal interests of men and governments in times of peace. Yet in essentials he was overruled. Why? Because it was thought that, by some magic, dumb millions could be given effective voice through him. He seems to have thought that, contrary to all experience of representative government, he could 'represent' the unrepresented interests of the common people whose main concern is with peace, not war. It would be difficult to imagine any greater travesty on the use of force to the uttermost than the idea that one man could secure a just decision by appealing a la improwisatore over the heads of diplomats to the unorganized, scattered and unenlightened peoples of the earth. When he became inclined to act in this way the diplomats had only to point out to him that he would thereby decrease the wan¬ing power of governmental authority, increase popular unrest, and run the risk of plunging Europe into the chaos of political revolutions. After that, he could not even speak effectually for himself, to say nothing of 'representing' the unrepresented peoples of the earth. He made his popular appeal in the case of Fiume, indeed, but its chief tangible effect was to strengthen Im¬perial Japan in its encroachments upon the people of China.
There is another force, an immense force, which might have been used in behalf of the war ideals of the United States, a force which might still be employed though less effectually. There is the economic and financial force of the United States. It may be doubted whether the world has ever seen such a spectacle as that of the last few years. The United States has extended money and credit almost 'without stint' to governments of Europe irrespective of whether they were supporting the announced policies of the United States, nay, even when those governments were doing what they could to undermine American ends. And doubdess the average American has taken pride in this fact. We are so generous, so disinterested, that we do not bargain or impose conditions. In short we are so childishly immature, so careless of our pro¬fessed ideals, that we prefer a reputation for doing the grand seigneur act to the realization of our national aims. This is the acme of our sentimentalism. Can we blame the European statesmen if to put it with blank vulgarity they play us for suckers?
Such considerations as these, which might be indefinitely multiplied, show that not idealism but our idealism is discredited, an idealism of vague sentiments and good intentions, isolated from judgment as to the effective use of the force in our hands. It may be said that this is not our fault, but President Wilson's. There are a few who are entitled to the benefit of this plea, but only a few. President Wilson is a scape-goat convenient to save our vanity. But he successfully appealed to the American people and led them.
If they—if we—had been different, he would have had to use different methods to get results. History will probably record that his idealistic speeches corresponded to the spirit of the American people; and that the blame which belongs to him is not that of betraying the American spirit but of embodying its weaknesses too faithfully. Take one example. The use of force in behalf of our professed ideals would certainly have involved the use of all the thinking, speaking and writing of the liberals and radicals who in the end could alone give sympathetic and intelligent support to the aims eloquently set forth by President Wilson. Instead, we had a policy of suppression of free speech, of espionage, and of encouragement of the violent unrestraint characteristic of the reactionary. It is easy to blame for this Mr. Wilson's personal desire to play the part of Atlas supporting alone the universe of free ideals. An accomplice his conceit assuredly was, but the American people who revelled in emotionalism and who grovelled in sacrifice of its liberties is the responsible cause. Immaturity and inexperience in international affairs consequent upon our isolation mitigate the blame. But they would not have taken the form they took were it not for our traditional evangelical trust in morals apart from intelligence, and in ideals apart from executive and engineering force. Our Christianity has become identified with vague feeling and with an optimism which we think is a sign of a pious faith in Providence but which in reality is a trust in luck, a deification of the feeling of success regardless of any intelligent discrimination of the nature of success.
It may be that the words idealism and ideals will have to go— that they are hopelessly discredited. It may be that they will become synonyms for romanticism, for blind sentimentalism, for faith in mere good intentions, or that they will come to be regarded as decorative verbal screens behind which to conduct sinister plans. But the issue is real, not verbal. There remains a difference between narrow and partial ends and full and far reaching ends; between the success of the few for the moment and the happiness of the many for an enduring time; a difference between identifying happiness with the elements of a meagre and hard life and those of a varied and free life. This is the only difference between materialism and idealism that counts. And until we act persistently upon the fact that the difference depends upon the use of force and that force can be directed only by intelligence, we shall continue to dwell in a world where the difference between materialism and idealism will be thought to be a matter of opin¬ion, argument and personal taste. To go on opposing ideals and force to each other is to perpetuate this regime. The issue is not that of indulging in ideals versus using force in a realistic way. As long as we make this opposition we render our ideals impotent, and we play into the hands of those who conceive force as pri¬marily military. Our idealism will never prosper until it rests upon the organization and resolute use of the greater forces of modern life: industry, commerce, finance, scientific inquiry and discus¬sion and the actualities of human companionship.

John Dewey : Lectures in Taiyuan to universities and to the annual meeting of the Chinese Federation of Educational Associations.

John Dewey : Lecture on 'Cultivation of character as the ultimate aim of education' delivered at Shanxi University. = Pin ge zhi yang cheng wei jiao yu zhi wu shang mu di. Hu Shi interpreter ; Deng Chumin recorder. In :Xin Zhongguo ; vol. 1, no 7 (Nov. 15, 1919).

John Dewey : Lecture 'School and village' at the Normal School of the headquarters of the Tenth Regiment of the Infantry of the Shanxi Army in Taiyuan. = Xue xiao yu xiang li. Hu Shi interpreter ; Deng Chumin recorder. In : Xin Zhongguo ; vol. 1, no 7 (Nov. 15, 1919).

John Dewey : Lectures 'Ethics' in Beijing. = Lun li jiang yan ji lue. Hu Shi interpreter. In : Xue deng ; Oct. 18, 24 ; Nov. 5, 6 ; Dec. 3, 8, 21, 28, 30 (1919). Jan. 2 ; Febr. 14, 15, 24 ; March 3, 4, 5 (1920).
1. 'The nature of the discussion'.
2. 'The constant and the changing elements in morality'.
3. 'Morality and human nature'.
4. 'The role of emotion in morality'.
5. 'Social emotion.
6. 'Selfishness'.
7.-8. 'Self-regard and regard for others'.
9.-10. 'Virtue and vice'.
11. 'A comparison of Eastern thought and Western thought'.
12. 'Desire and happiness'.
13. 'Desire and temptation'.
14. 'Desire and its relationship to customs and institutions'.
15. 'The essence of a democratic institution'.

Banquet to celebrate John Dewey's sixtieth birthday in Beijing.
Cai, Yuanpei. Zai Duwei bo shi 60 zhi sheng ri wan yang hui shang zhi yan shuo [ID D28515].
At the banquet, Cai Yuanpei seized on this special opportunity to portray Dewey as a modern-day Confucius. "Confucius said respect the emperor (wang), the learned doctor (bo shi) [Dewey] advocates democracy ; Confucius said females are a problem to raise, the learned doctor [Dewey] advocates equal rights for men and women ; Confucius said transmit not create, the learned doctor [Dewey] advocates creativity".
In his brief speech, Cai emphasized underlying similarities between Dewey and Confucius despite their differences : one embodies the spirit of modern West, and the other represents the wisdom of ancient China ; one values democracy, equality, and creativity, and the other privileges monarchy, hierarchy, and tradition. According to Cai, Dewey and Confucius were both educators of the common people, shared the same faith in education as a vehicle for social change, and insisted on the unity of thought and action. Cai believed that these commonalities pointed to the possibility of 'a merger between Eastern and Western cultures'.

Letter from John Dewey to Evelyn Dewey
[November 2, 1919]
Dear Evelyn…
Last night we went t[o] another dinnr at the hotel and during the dancing Ed Thomas of Chicago recognized me and astonished me by telling me who he was. He is down here from Chitato spend a month and take the Consular examinations. He thinks a change for the better is approaching in Russia and he wants to be redy for business hen that time comes. He is coming to lunch today and I asked him to stay in this apt while we are away, but that may not prove to be convenient he will decide when he comes. This afternoon we go to Mr Wans wedding at the naval club and tonight at eight we start for Mukden. We are to stay at the Japanese hotel so we shall probable send no letters from there. We expect to stay there not m[o]re than four days…
[John Dewey]

John Dewey departs at 20 hour to Mukden = Shenyang and stays about a week.

John Dewey : Lectures 'Types of thinking' at National Beijing University. = Si xiang zhi pai bie. Hu Shi interpreter ; Shao Yu, Fu Lu, Wu Kang, Luo Jialun recorder. In : Xue deng ; Nov. 20, 21, 28, 29 ; Dec. 4, 5, 12, 13, 19, 20 (1919). Jan. 22, 25 (1920).
1. 'Aristotle's concept of species'.
2. 'Characteristics of Aristotle's thought'.
3. 'Descartes : extension and motion'.
4. 'Characteristics of Descartes' thought'.
5. 'John Locke : sensation and reflection'.
6. 'Characteristics of Locke's thought'.
7. 'Experimentalism, answer to the conflict between empiricism and rationalism'.
8. 'Characteristics of experimentalist thought'.

John Dewey : Lecture 'School and village' at the Normal School of the headquarters of the Tenth Regiment of the Infantry of the Shanxi Army in Taiyuan. = Xue xiao yu xiang li. Hu Shi interpreter ; Deng Chumin recorder. In : Xin Zhongguo ; vol. 1, no 7 (Nov. 15, 1919).

John Dewey : Lecture on 'Cultivation of character as the ultimate aim of education' delivered at Shanxi University. = Pin ge zhi yang cheng wei jiao yu zhi wu shang mu di. Hu Shi interpreter ; Deng Chumin recorder. In :Xin Zhongguo ; vol. 1, no 7 (Nov. 15, 1919).

John Dewey : Lectures 'Types of thinking' at National Beijing University. = Si xiang zhi pai bie. Hu Shi interpreter ; Shao Yu, Fu Lu, Wu Kang, Luo Jialun recorder. In : Xue deng ; Nov. 20, 21, 28, 29 ; Dec. 4, 5, 12, 13, 19, 20 (1919). Jan. 22, 25 (1920).
1. Aristotle's concept of species.
2. Characteristics of Aristotle's thought.
3. Descartes : extension and motion.
4. Characteristics of Descartes' thought.
5. John Locke : sensation and reflection.
6. Characteristics of Locke's thought.
7. Experimentalism, answer to the conflict between empiricism and rationalism.
8. Characteristics of experimentalist thought.

John Dewey visits the Qinghua University for Thanksgiving.