China and the West

Lecture by Bertrand Russell on "Principles of social organization" at the Beijing University.

Letter from Bertrand Russell to Elizabeth Russell ; 16. Febr. 1921.
My dear Elizabeth
Your delicious letter of December 19 reached me yesterday, with such a lovely Candide ! Thank you 1,000 times. I am glad you liked the Bolshie book. It has involved being quarreled with by most of my friends, and praised by people I hate – e.g. Winston and Lloyd George. I have no home on this planet – China comes nearer to one than any other place I know, because the people are not ferocious. It is true that the soldiers occasionally run amok, sack a town and bayonet all who do not instantly deliver up their whole wealth. But this is such a trivial matter compared to what is done by 'civilized' nations that it seems not to count. 20 million people are starving in provinces near here, and the Chinese do nothing to relive them. But they are better than we are, because the famine is not caused deliberately by them, whereas we deliberately cause famines for the pleasure of gloating over dying children.
You are quite right about the sunshine. Since I came to Peking, we have had rain once and snow 3 times, otherwise continuous sun and frost. I like the climate and am always well, but it doesn't suit Dora, who gets bronchitis. Just at the moment the weather is not at its best – there is a dust-storm from the desert of Gobi. One can't go out, and has to shut every chink of window.
I am glad you noticed the whisks of my tail. I have been severely reproved by many grave persons for one which occurs on p. 130.
My students here are charming people, full of fun – we have parties for them with fireworks in the courtyard, and dancing and singing and blindman's buff – young men and girl-students. In ordinary Chinese life a woman sees no men except relations, but we ignore that, and so earn the gratitude of the young. The students are all Bolshies, and think me an amiable old fogey, and hopelessly behind the times.
We have a very happy existence, reading, writing, and talking endlessly. Lady Clifton lent us 'In the Mountains' which we read with great delight – she wasn't sure who it was by, but I was. I gave her a rude message to you, because you hadn’t written to me, and when I got home, there was your letter.
We shall be home the end of September, unless war between Japan and U.S. delays us. Best of love, dear Elizabeth, and thanks for all the lovely things you say –
Yours affectionately B.R.

Letter from John Dewey to Albert C. Barnes
135 Peking Feb 16 [1921]
Dear Barnes,
When I wrote you about your letter concerning my lectures, I omitted my main point—appreciation of your appreciation. I was particularly touched that you found some esthetic pattern and rythym becuase that is my weak point and you are a good judge. Intermin came the other day for which more thanks; I havent had time to get far into it yet.
You wr[o]te once about Chinese pictures, and I wrote back the risk was too great, and as only an expert can tell the date—and the expert collectors are largely at loggerheads with one another, each claiming that the other has got more or less fooled by imitations which have been palmed off on him. lately Ive been buying a few cheap ones, or rather Mrs Dewey has, which do not pretend to be very old but which have some artistic merit besides being typically Chinese—two quite stunning Ming decorations, like florid wall paper or cretonne patterns, flowers and pheasant for [a] few dollars. We have had the advantage of a the knowledge of a collector who has lived here many years a Dane, and who has himself a fine collection which he generous about showing, most collectors were not And he very generously gave the benefit of his not only his advice but his ability to buy cheap. Mostly flowers and birds, she says landscapes except the old and very expensive ones have no foreign market in case one needs to sell. We also have had an opportunity at some more expesnive ones. A frien in the Ministry of Education who is something of a technical expert told us he had been given pictures this year by old officials who hasd to sell to dispose of them for them. He showed us some nice Ming2 landscapes, which could be had for from a hundred to two hundred, which he is confident are originals; we didnt get any but sent him to Russell who bought one. He says he has sold S[u]ngs this winter for from a thousand to two thousand—foreigners say that cant be done and are suspciious because he sold them so cheap—so only Chinese bought them. I didnt see any of them, but he says when he gets more he will let us see them. Really good pictures are very hard to get at here. The price is Mex dollars which are now only fifty cents gold—which cuts the price in American money in two. I am just beginning to feel a little more confidence in my judgment. Everything is so different that the except for the really fine things the standards one brings wont work. Just both the Chinese and Japanese prize foreign things that are ugly to us. Their own artistic standards wont work and so they are lost, and it is more [o]r less so with foreign appreciation of Chinese prodctions. Sometimes the [f]oreigner is right, as in the case of Japanese color prints. We have been [a]musing ourselves lately by buying belt buckles, brass and white jade. They havent been worn since the Revolution, and in general the Chinese dont care for them any more so they are on the market, tho the brass ones are hard to find comparatively. [Charles August] Ficke who made a small fortune on Japanese prints when they were selling for coppers started in buying jade buckles recently, and took a big collection home. Witter Bynner who has just been here and who is [a] friend of Bynn Fickes has is taking home a still bigger collection together with a copla hundred of the cheaper Chinese paintings. Ours will be just big enough to cost more than we can afford and not big or choice enough to be really valuable. Howver hunting and bargaining is lots of fun; its the chief outdoor amusement going around to stores and markets, and porcelains are now rare and out of re[a]ch, even good imitations are high. Otherwise life is calm, nothing sp[e]cial going on except famine drives. Chinese are depressed politically and economically students quiet and discouraged, and generally there is a great lull. Civil war between the t[w]o chief military leaders of the north is prophesied for this spring, but prophecies are the long suit here. Aside from the fortunes of the Consortium now also a lull. The only other political talk is whether the British are back of the war talk between America and Japan; practically verybody, Chinese Americans and Japanese in Peking belives they are, but it is hard to get proof. Reutrs agency which is a British political agency6 under the name of a news bureau is certainly active in keeping the rumors going. Just why they should stir up this talk when they are hard to going to ren[e]w their alliance is hard to see, also when America relations with Germany are still undetermined. One theory is that they want us to buy their alliance with Japan but by remitting her war debt but that seems incredible. Anything ^how^ British foreign policy as seen from the [A]siatic end is anything but attractive
Sincerely yours, Dewey

Bertrand Russell has lunch with Vasilyevich Ivanov Razumnik in Beijing.

Lecture by Bertrand Russell on "Mathematical logic" at the Beijing University.

Dewey, John. America and Chinese education [ID D28500].
A Chinese student who is now in this country and who was an active leader in the Students' Revolt in 1918 in Peking, recently remarked to me that the conduct of the Chinese official delegation in Washington had led him to reflect upon Chinese higher education. Or rather, he thought their course was a reflection of Chinese education in certain of its phases. He regarded the delegation as having failed essentially in their task. He recognized that conditions in China and also the exigencies of American politics—or what the American representatives took to be such—had a large share in the failure of China to accomplish her aims. But he said there was another failure for which the Chinese delegates were responsible: there had been at Washington no representative voicing of existent Chinese national sentiment. Certain practical failures might be conceded to be inevitable; but there was only one explanation of the failure to express the active contemporary attitude of the Chinese people, and that was found in unrepresentative qualities in the delegates.
So far his view of the situation is of primary and practical interest to the Chinese. It concerns Americans only as they are sympathetic with China and desirous of seeing her just aspirations properly expressed. But the connection of the fact he cites— if it be a fact—with the state of the higher education of the Chinese touches us closely. All three of the delegates are American educated; two of them studied in missionary institutions conducted by Americans in China before they came to America to study. And these two—the diplomats of the delegation—are those whose methods have been most unsatisfactory to Chinese at home and in this country. The third member, the one who had not come under missionary auspices in his preparatory education in China, is the one who is regarded as most nearly representative
of present day China. Now the educational conclusion which the student-leader had drawn was that American missionary education has failed to develop independent, energetic thought and character among even its most distinguished graduates. It has produced rather a subservient intellectual type, one which he characterized as slavish.
The literal correctness of his premises and his conclusions need not be categorically affirmed. It is easy to deny the premises, or to hold that they are too slight to bear the burden of the conclusion. There are not many non-Chinese who know enough to judge the situation and I do not count myself among the few who can judge. But one thing can be positively affirmed. The view in question expresses a belief that is widely and increasingly held in China. It contains elements that are of prime importance. It suggests the attitude of the Young China of today as distinct from that Young China which figures in the writings of men like Mr. J.O.P. Bland, who if not important in himself is important as the spokesman of a definite class of foreigners in China who have been the most influential persons in purveying information and forming foreign opinion about China.
The Young China of which the Bland School speaks consists of a group of foreign educated men, of whom the two diplomats of the official delegation at the Washington Conference are good representatives. Young China viewed from this angle means men who have gone into politics, domestic and diplomatic, with Western, usually American, preconceptions, and who have tried to force Western, usually American, political conceptions and methods upon China. They have failed, failed tragically, it is said, because of the intrinsic unfitness of their conceptions and methods to immemorial traditions and customs and engrained racial traits of the Chinese people—immemorial, atavistic and racial are the literary slogans of this school of foreign commentators on China. The failure goes back to the well-meaning efforts of missionaries who have bungled because of their ignorant attempts to foist alien ways of thought and of political action upon China. With this condemnation of Young China and its foreign sponsors goes a condemnation of all attempts of China to become republican in government and to transform its culture.
I do not know to what extent this picture ever truly represented a Young China. But events move rapidly in China, and certainly the Young China of today has nothing in common with this picture. Present Young China is bent upon a genuine transformation of Chinese culture—sometimes a revolutionary breaking with the past, but in any case a transformation. It is democratic, but its democracy is social and industrial; there is little faith in political action, and not much interest in governmental changes except as they may naturally reflect changes in habits of mind. There is in it little sympathy with missionary efforts, not because they represent the West, but because it is believed that they do not represent what China most needs from the West, namely, scientific method and aggressive freedom and independence of inquiry, criticism and action. Hence the remark quoted earlier about the cause of the failure of Chinese diplomacy in Washington and its root in the weakness of the education given by Americans in China.
In wanting a transformation of their country, the Young Chinese have no thought of a Westernized China, a China which repeats and imitates Europe or America. They want Western knowledge and Western methods which they themselves can independently employ to develop and sustain a China which is itself and not a copy of something else. They are touchingly grateful to any foreigner who gives anything which can be construed as aid in this process. They are profoundly resentful of all efforts which condescendingly hold up Western institutions, political, religious, educational, as models to be humbly accepted and submissively repeated. They are acutely aware that the spirit of imitation at the expense of initiative and independence of thought has been the chief cause of China's retrogression, and they do not propose to shift the model; they intend to transform the spirit.
There is nothing which one hears so often from the lips of the representatives of Young China of today as that education is the sole means of reconstructing China. There is no other topic which is so much discussed. There is an enormous interest in making over the traditional family system, in overthrowing militarism, in extension of local self-government, but always the discussion comes back to education, to teachers and students, as the central agency in promoting other reforms. This fact makes the question of the quality and direction of American influence in Chinese education a matter of more than academic concern. The difficulties in the way of a practical extension and regeneration of
Chinese education are all but insuperable. Discussion often ends in an impasse: no political reform of China without education; but no development of schools as long as military men and corrupt officials divert funds and oppose schools from motives of self- interest. Here are all the materials of a tragedy of the first magnitude. Apart from this question of education what is done and what is not done in Washington is of secondary moment. It makes vital the matter of American influence. There is a great and growing philanthropic interest in America for China. It shows itself in support of educational schemes and in generous relief funds. It is not motivated to any considerable extent by economic considerations, by expectation of business profits, nor by political expediencies. It is motivated largely by religious considerations. It is well intentioned, but the intentions are not always enlightened in conception nor in execution. It was not a disgruntled foreigner nor a jealous, anti-foreign Chinese who told me that American missionary colleges in China had largely simply transplanted the American college curriculum and American conceptions of 'discipline'; and that instead of turning out graduates who could become leaders in developing the industries of China on an independent Chinese basis, it had turned out men who when they went into industry took subordinate positions in foreign managed industries, because of their training especially in the English language. There is no difference in effect between this statement and that quoted at the beginning of this article about fostering the dependent, the slavish, mind and character. And a missionary actively engaged in educational work was its author. American influence in Chinese education should have something better to do than to train commercial, political and religious compradores.
Something can be done by encouraging such American managed institutions as are trying to develop a better type of school; by freeing those men who are adapting their curriculum and methods to Chinese conditions against the petty opposition and nagging they now meet from reactionaries. There are a few institutions in China where the Chinese members of the faculty are put on the same plane of salary, of social dignity and administrative importance as the foreigners. Let the philanthropically inclined whose philanthropy is something more than a cloak for fanatic meddlesomeness or selfishness select these institutions for aid. Not many know that at present some American millions of a special fund are being spent in China for converting souls; that they go only to those who have the most dogmatic and reactionary theological views, and that the pressure of these funds is used to repress the liberal element and to put liberal institutions in bad repute as well as in financial straits. That is a shameful business from any point of view, and it ought to be met by a generous and wise business. China does not need copies of American colleges, but it does still need colleges supported by foreign funds and in part manned by well trained foreigners who are capable of understanding Chinese needs, alert, agile, sympathetic in their efforts to meet them.
But of course the chief work must be done in distinctively Chinese institutions, staffed mainly and managed wholly by Chinese. Instead of carping at missionaries we should remember that they have been almost the only ones in the past with a motive force strong enough to lead them to take an active interest in Chinese education. It would seem as if the time had come when there are some persons of means whose social and human interest, independent of religious considerations, might show itself in upbuilding native schools. Above all else, these schools need modern laboratories and libraries and well trained men of the first rank who can train Chinese on the spot to the use of the best methods in the social arts and the natural and mathematical sciences. Such men could train not only students but younger teachers who are not as yet thoroughly equipped and who too often are suffering from lack of intellectual contact. First class men who go to China in this spirit with nothing to 'put over' except their knowledge, their methods and their skill will meet with a wonderful response. Somewhere in America there must be men of means who can give their money and men of science who can contribute their services in this spirit. Their work will not be done for the sake of the prestige or commerce of the United States but it will be done for the sake of that troubled world of which China and the United States are integral parts. Build up a China of men and women of trained independent thought and character, and there will be no Far Eastern 'problems' such as now vex us; there will be no need of conferences to discuss—and disguise—the 'Problems of the Pacific'. American influence in Chinese education will then be wholly a real good instead of a mixed and dubious blessing.

John Dewey : Lecture 'On the Chinese fine arts' at the Fine Arts Club of Beijing Teachers College. = Lun Zhongguo di mei shu. Hu Shi interpreter ; Cao Peiyan, Wang Huibo recorder. In : Chen bao fu kan ; March 7 (1921).

Bertrand Russell visits the Great Wall.

Letter from John Dewey to Albert C. Barnes
135 Morrison St Peking | March 13 '21
Dear Mr Barnes, …
An American business engineer who knows China of old and who has just come over, remarked that the Consortium was more anxious to protect old investments in China than to make new ones at present. I think he struck the nail on the head so far as the financial side is now concerned. Mr [Frederick Waeir] Stevens their present representative is an extraordinarily honest man, almost innocently so. You may imagine that he is so clever that he has duped me, but I know the Chinese secy very well, in fact I recommended him, and he has been with Mr S every day now for many weeks. He is not the kind of man who would be sent if there were an intrigue to be put over, but is the kind who would be sent when a waiting policy was the key-note. Meantime the Chinese govt is on the verge of bankruptcy. The business man to whom I just referred said the same was true when he was here four years, it didnt seem as if it could least another month, and one gets very suspicious of the "verge" after awhile. But no they have pledged the last thing available and pawned things ahead. For some time they have have been borrowing money to pay interest due, and at enormous rates thirty per cent being common. It is possible that before you get this letter cables may have reported a bust-up. What will happen no one can tell. There may be a kind of international receivership; there may be a monarchical restoration; there is no doubt there is wide-spread reaction agt the "Republic"; there may be a civil war between the two military leaders of the faction now in control—Chang Tsolin of Manchuria and and Tsao Kun of this province, fairly likely anyway and Chang is a monarchist—there may be secession of all central and south China, and if a monarchy in the north a virtual tho not an avowed Japanese protectorate, or any combination of some or all of these things. Yet the expected is what almost never happens in China. Id like to saty over another year to see what happens, but nothing ever comes to a head and another year and another, there would still be the waiting to see something definitive happen. The movement for provincial autonomy is the most sure thing. Five southern provinces are now practically independent of any govt outside their own borders, and the movement is spreading north. This is the most healthful sign on the horizin even tho it means a transitional breakup of China, for with locally centred govt it may [b]e possible to secure responsibility and now there is none. The ablest of the young Chinese g[ave] us a half hour conversation the other evening on Chinese history as bearing on present situation. He finds the key in the constant conflict of Chinese civilization limited to a few Central [P]rovinces with outside barbarian tribes. In this struggle, the north has been practically barbarized by the Mongols, Tartars etc, altho socially Chinafied, and to him north China is the weight that holds China back. He makes an analogy with the history of Medieval Europe, except the northern barabarians here are not as promising material. as the northern barbarians of Europe. The extreme south Canton etc w[a]s of course also barbarians but of a different type, less stolid, more adventurous and hence progressive. The Yangste regions are the backbone of China proper. In a few weeks we are going south, to the province of Fukien, Foochow and Amoy. It is likely the schools here may close for lack of funds, and in that case I hope to go to Canton also and to spend more time in the south. Teachers have been paid only up to Nov and at that only under pressure from repeated threats to strike, and the latest rumor is that to save face the govt will move first and close the schools, instead of waiting for the teachers to close them by a strike. One of the beauties of Chinese govt is that each dept has its "own" funds, so that the dept of communications is rolling in wealth, comparatively, while the rest of the govt is bankrupt. Its like each general having his own army. The present govt is a coalition of part of the generals with the financial interest of the dept of communication politicians—or financiers…
Sincerely yours, Dewey— [pencil postscript] Have got sailing from Yokahama Aug 19

Lecture by Bertrand Russell on "Problems of education" at the Baoding Middle School in Baoding (Hebei).
He caught a severe cold which led to double pneumonia. Throughout the two weeks Russell suffered of extremely high fever and the physicians lost any hope. On March 27 a Japanese news agency bulletin reporting Russell's death went around the world. A Beijing newspaper wrote : "Missionaries may be pardoned for heaving a sigh of relief at the news of Mr. Bertrand Russell's death".

Dewey, John. The Far Eastern deadlock [ID D28484].
The key to peace in the Far East exists at the present time in America. That much is fairly certain. But it is doubtful whether anyone knows just where the key is to be found and whether anyone knows well enough what it looks like to recognize it if he stumbles upon it. The lock, however, is clear. It is the relations of Japan and America. For at present the relations of the United States to China and Siberia, so far as larger matters are concerned, are not direct but through Japan. There are two keys which are being tried which certainly will not fit; the third key we may call a statesmanlike policy, while admitting this to be the x whose value is to be found. The two courses most in evidence and most talked about, which are bound to result in making affairs worse, are buying Japan off and nagging her.
The policy of keeping peace between Japan and America by bribing Japan or buying her off has had of late a number of eminent representatives—though naturally they have not called their plea by these bald words in public—possibly not within the recesses of their own minds have they named it so frankly. The steps of the argument are these. Japan has a small territory and a large and rapidly increasing population; seven hundred thousand per annum has been the favorite propagandist figure. She also has a shortage of raw materials and of food supplies. An outlet of population is imperatively demanded. The 'white' countries, having land to spare, refuse to admit the Japanese as immigrants. The alternative, necessary to the peace of the world, is expansion upon the continent of Asia and such command of the raw, natural resources of Asia as will enable Japan to develop stable industrialism at home, and increased industry that will take up the slack caused by increase of population. Japan, moreover, is an enterprising, efficient, educated modem nation, with capacity for organization, with respect for law and for government, with a reasonably honest civil service. She is, therefore, admirably suited to take up the Yellow Man's Burden in Siberia and China, countries where government is flouted and corrupt, and which are in no sense as yet fitted to become equal partners in the society of nations in either business or politics. Moreover, as respects China, there is unity of culture, some say of race; the Japanese understand the Orientals of Asia and what is good for them as no white race does—and so on to the end of the chapter.
The moral is clear. The world in general and America in particular should look with a benevolent neutrality upon the efforts of Japan to establish herself on the continent of Asia, whether in Siberia, Manchuria or Shantung. So speeches and articles always end with a vague plea for that desirable something called a sympathetic understanding of Japan and her serious problems, and with an assurance that, having been in Japan, the speaker or writer knows from personal intercourse with the real leaders of Japan that she desires above all things in the world the friendliest relations with the United States, and only waits the word from America to go ahead—upon just what course is not stated. There is usually also a vague intimation that Japan, being 'a proud and sensitive nation', will arm and bring on war with the United States if she is pressed too hard and made desperate by lack of outlet and lack of necessary economic resources. Through the whole argument runs a subtle intimation that we can avoid all trouble with Japan by permitting or encouraging her to divert her energies into Asia. Sometimes there is an incidental suggestion that, as Japan will need foreign capital in her Asiatic expansion, the United States can with no trouble to herself come in also for part of the material rewards of such a course.
This is the policy which I call buying Japan off. Its chief significance is not due to the fact that it is advanced by men of some eminence in America—and also by certain Englishmen. It is significant because it reflects the propaganda so accurately that in reading it one gets to know the mind of official and commercial Japan. The visitor may think he has evolved this policy for himself. But anyone long resident in the Far East can almost guess the names of the persons that have been talked with, and can retrace every step of the confidential disclosures and the hesitant suggestions by which the eminent and much entertained foreign guest has been led to make his 'discovery' of the way to enduring good relations between Japan and America.
The policy is adapted to keeping relations between Japan and America amicable for a time. It gives Japan what she wants, in comparison with which the Californian issue is a rattle for a baby. It relieves the United States of diplomatic anxieties for a time, and enables the stream of after-dinner speeches to continue in an increasing flood of gush. But from the standpoint of a settlement of the serious problems of the Far East it is a fraud. It represents an aggravation of the problems, the sure road to an ultimate unsettlement which may conceivably involve the whole world. Such matters as the claims of an unrestricted growth of population, due to a low standard of living and artificially stimulated by the government, to rule the fate of a continent may be passed over. So may the fact that the first and only official census taken by Japan shows the gain for the last year to be four instead of the seven hundred thousand always advertised.
We also glide over the fact that Shantung is already over-populated, and that Japanese make poor colonists for settling in undeveloped countries and bearing the hardships of Siberia or even Manchuria. We may even slur over the fact that there is already no obstacle to Japanese immigrants going into the unoccupied parts of Asia, as European immigrants go to Canada or the United States—namely as individuals and not as an advance guard of a foreign empire, emissaries of national aggression.
But we cannot pass over the accompaniments and consequences of this latter fact. The persons who repeat the plea of Japan for a free hand on the Asiatic continent, as a means of maintaining good relations and promoting order, efficiency and progress, overlook the fundamental fact of the situation. Japanese methods on the continent have been such as to arouse the profound distrust and hostility of every people with whom the Japanese have come into contact. This fact cannot be got out of the way by references to the backwardness and inefficiency of the native inhabitants. Admitting the most exaggerated statements made by apologists for Japan's course in regard to the administrative and economic superiority of the Japanese over the Chinese and Siberian Russians, it remains a fact that the operations of the Japanese upon the continent are of the exact nature which all over the world have sowed the seeds of ultimate war.
Americans may sometimes wonder in a perplexed way about the contrary reports and views of travellers in the Far East and conclude that the latter become pro- or anti-Japanese for temperamental or accidental reasons. Here is the explanation. Those who have not gone further than Japan realize Japan as a fact; the continent is still a place on the map, an impersonal factor in an intellectual calculation. Those who with eyes and ears half-open have stayed upon the continent realize the condition which has been created by Japanese methods. Apologists may more or less successfully explain away details one by one, accompanied by vague admissions of wrong deeds in the past committed by wicked militarists. But the vast continental fact remains. One may get himself to a point where his subconscious premise is that China and Russia ought to submit willingly to Japan on account of the latter's superiority. This is going far. But even if they ought, they won't. Because they won't, the peace of the Far East is subject to an explosion which may involve the world.
The other dominant fact in the situation is that the United States has no need of buying Japan off. British statesmen seem to feel differently about the need for the British Empire to become a tacit accomplice of Japan. It is arguable that they are guessing wrong. But, in any case, the United States, though she has the Philippines, has no India and no Hong-Kong. War deliberately entered into by Japan against the United States is unthinkable, as unthinkable as between the United States and Colombia. This extreme statement is made advisedly. Individuals in Japan commit hari-kari, but not the nation, and every intelligent person in Japan knows that for Japan an aggressive war with America would be national suicide. They did not know it before the last war; but then the demonstration was more than Euclidean in its rigor. When one thinks of how the United States was taxed in the last war, in spite of its railways, its financial resources and its raw materials, the idea of Japan, with its few narrow gauge railways, few forests, few mines, relatively few factories and shortage of food supply, waging a successful war with any first class industrial Power is simply silly.
At present, having spent her war gains in enterprises in China which are not yet remunerative, and in Siberia—where they will never be remunerative until Kolchak comes to life and successfully resurrects the Omsk government—and having increased her already burdensome taxation to the stretching point, Japan is on her back financially. If she gets control of the manpower and natural resources of the continent, the case will be different. But, short of that time, which, of course, is artificially hastened by encouraging Japan to exploit Asia for her own benefit, any war between Japan and America will be the result of a series of accidents due to drifting and not to the deliberate choice of the rulers of Japan. There is at least one exception to every 'never'. The exception in this case is that militarists threatened with downfall at home might try to restore their prestige and power by the last desperate gamble of war.
The fact that in order to save ourselves we do not need to buy Japan off, does not imply that we should treat her truculently or irritatingly. There is some danger of our adopting this policy, which will open no locks. I do not mean that we should ever adopt nagging deliberately as a policy; but failure to work out a clear constructive course may practically amount to it. Drifting and diplomatic opportunism making a separate issue out of every matter which comes up; never facing fundamental issues so as to arrive at an understanding regarding them, comes in the end to an irritating course of mutual pin-prickings and blockings which is the most dangerous of all courses. This seems to be the state of affairs into which we are getting, leaving principles in a twilight of purposeful ambiguity such as now exists about the Open Door and the Lansing-Ishii agreement. Dealing with each case of friction which arises, and which in reality comes under these principles, is the sure way to reduce our international relations to a kind of continuous subdued duel, with all the rancor and misunderstandings thereby generated.
Our true policy I have called x. It is not easily discoverable even as regards a statement in words, to say nothing of practical execution. But it does not lie in smooth and flattering words, which gloss over realities, any more than it does in spite, suspicion and nagging. Now is the time of all times to search for and enter upon a definite policy. Japan is practically isolated among the nations, and, what is more, she is beginning to realize it. She is also experiencing the sobering reaction that comes after a prolonged intoxication. She will be lucky, according to all accounts, if she gets off with her present depression, and does not come a greater smash. There is probably more talk about liberalism than there is effective reality; but there is a promising beginning of sentiment if not of active policy, especially in the younger generation. The talk is a sign of a new sensitiveness to the world’s opinion.
Above all, Japan realizes her actual dependence upon the United States, a dependence rarely recognized in the United States because it is so out of all proportion to our dependence upon Japan. The dependence is not exhausted in the statistics of international markets and the fact that we are the customer who keeps her industries going. Japan realizes the extent to which her career in China is connected with the ideas and policies of America. She really needs the moral support of the United States to 'go ahead' in any proper sense of that word.
Let me cite as evidence a fact which may not seem important but which, I am convinced, is of great import. Of late, Japanese liberals and Japanese Christians have made repeated, almost continuous, attempts to approach American missionaries and educators, and native Christians in China. They have insisted upon the reformed intentions of the present Japanese Ministry and have almost begged this element in China to take the lead in acting as mediators, appealing to every sentimental principle of good-will and Christian love. Now it is safe to say—and one does not rely wholly upon internal evidence—that this move is not directed primarily at China. China is still despised as weak, negligible. It is directed toward America. Japanese accusations against missionaries of misleading the Chinese and Koreans and stirring up trouble are mostly trumped up. But Japanese fear of the effects in the United States of the reports sent there by missionaries and Y.M.C.A. workers concerning the state of things in China and Korea, Siberia and Manchuria, is perfectly genuine. They estimate that the change of opinion about Japan which they know has taken place in America, the growing dislike of Japan as militaristic and ruthlessly imperialistic is largely due to this influence. They want, in effect, this body to act as mediators between Japan and the public opinion of the United States, having become seriously troubled by the growing power of the latter in the world in general and in China in particular.
In the search for an x of American policy which will be the key to the lock, there are certain known quantities. One is that every appeal to American sympathy on the ground of the growing liberalism of Japan should meet with neither credulity nor cynicism, but with a request to know what this liberalism is doing, especially what it is doing about China and Siberia. And we should not be content with generality; we should insist on details. Prominent among the details should be facts regarding what the great industrial and financial interests are actually doing in relation to the government at home and developments in China. What are the Okuras, the Mitsubishis, the Mitsuis, the Yokohama Specie Bank doing? It is all very well to talk about the power of militarism in Japan and the desire of the liberals to curb it; but there is no country in the world where financial interests are more concentrated, more powerful or in closer and more direct connection with the government. Why are these interests not using their power to curb and direct the policy of the government? Is it because, while deploring this policy for foreign consumption, they have striven to profit by it in China and Siberia?
One thing more. There are signs that the present Chinese government now recognizes that the Twenty-one Demands and the treaties which grew out of them are more important than the Shantung decision, not because the latter is not important but because it is an effect of the former affair. This government is likely soon to approach the Japanese government with a request for cancellation of these treaties. The attitude of the Japanese government and people toward this request will be an acid test of their professions regarding a change of policy and heart. The public opinion of the United States ought to be thrown openly, unanimously and intelligently in support of the request. There is no possible settlement of the problem of the peace of the Far East till the slate is wiped clean of these treaties. Till they are out of the way, all professions of reform and better relations will only create new suspicions in China, and every act will be seen to be merely a manoeuvring for an improved strategic position. The first move in breaking the existing deadlock is to obliterate the treaties connected with the Twenty-one Demands. Any sincere friend of Japanese liberalism will try to make it clear to his Japanese friends that this is the first step in effective Japanese-American cooperation, because it is the precondition of any act on the part of the United States which would not make us the guilty accomplice of Japan and a partner with Japan in the fear and dislike with which she is now regarded. The cancellation of everything connected with the Twenty-one Demands is the only way to put the relations of Japan and China upon a friendly footing. Securing this friendly relation between these two Oriental countries should be the animating purpose of American opinion and action. Then the lock will begin to give.

Letter from Fu Zhongsun and Zhang Bangming to Bertrand Russell ; 23.3.1921.
They explained that they were translating "Introduction of mathematical philosophy", based on the second edition of 1920, and that they had both attended his first lecture on mathematical logic and planned to attend the remaining three. They also intended to publish their lecture notes as an appendix to the translation of the book. The main purpose of their letter was to ask Russell to clarify some questions they had while preparing their translation.

Dewey, John. The consortium in China [ID D28483].
If anyone wants a picture in miniature of the difficulties in the way of a concert of nations or of any kind of cooperative inter-national relations, the Consortium to finance China will satisfy him up to the hilt. No one, prior to experience of it, could have believed that so many contradictory accounts of simple matters could get into circulation or so many cross-currents get into motion. No matter from what angle it is approached—and as time goes by it seems to be nothing but angles—there are opposite statements and opposite fears. Every day, for example, the American group in general and Mr. Lamont and Mr. Stevens in particular, are attacked by hostile interests in China, Chinese and foreign, for maintaining secrecy about its terms. Yet seemingly authentic reports state that the American group, backed by the American State Department, has pressed, from the day when the agreement was signed, for full publicity. This demand was checked first by the Japanese and then by the British. It was lately announced that the American demand had been sufficiently successful so that all the documents had been communicated to the Chinese government and made public. So they subsequently were. 'As might have been expected the terms of the agreement are so technical that its publication, while it blocks one source of hostile criticism, throws no great light upon the aims and methods of the Consortium'. For of course the terms form an agreement of the banking groups among themselves, not an agreement to which the Chinese government is a party. Only when—if ever—some actual agreement is made with the latter will there be adequate data for judgment.
Meantime a statement of the cross-currents will be amusing if not enlightening. Reputable Japanese statesmen, as soon as the agreement was signed, stated that the Manchurian claims of Japan had been recognized by the other nations in the Consortium and her interests there safeguarded. Kokusai, the official Japanese news agency, gave to the press in both Japan and China a speech purporting to be by the leading Japanese banking partner, the President of the Yokohama Specie Bank, which gave a definite and almost circumstantial statement of the reservations secured by Japan. Weeks afterwards, the President of the bank completely repudiated the alleged speech. Kokusai never circulated the repudiation, and no explanation of the discrepancy has ever been made public. Meantime Mr. Lamont for the American group and Sir Charles Addis for the British have explicitly denied the report of assent to Japanese reservations, and have praised the wisdom of Japanese statesmen in yielding. The latter are chary in accepting the praise. Hara, the prime minister, and Uchida, the foreign minister, have both lately repeated, although in more guarded terms, the story of due satisfaction afforded Japan in respect to Manchuria.
Meantime the Consortium is attacked in Japan as a piece of American capitalistic imperialism to circumvent legitimate Japanese aspirations in Asia, and in China it is denounced as a surrender by the United States to Japan. Why, it is asked, did the United States consent to Japan’s becoming a partner at all? Why did she not insist upon excluding Japan wholly? If she did admit Japan, why does she allow Japan to retain her railway rights in Manchuria while also permitting, by means of Consortium loans, the introduction of Japanese money into the interior, where so far Japanese money has not gone?—the reference being to the proposed railway into Szechuan. Thus the same scheme is both a checkmate to further Japanese conquest of China by means of railways and banks, and a means for extending Japanese influence in China with the complicity of the three other signatory Powers. The humor of the popular Chinese attitude of opposition is increased by the fact that the present Japanese hold upon China was secured by Chinese governmental acceptance of loans made by Japan individually, a kind of loan that would become impossible under the Consortium. The weighing of alternatives is not as yet a Chinese political habit.
While some American liberals are denouncing the Consortium as financial imperialism, committing the United States to embark upon a career of foreign financial exploitation, it is attacked in China by business interests, including some American ones, as another piece of Wilsonian idealism, a Utopian scheme to save China from being any longer the happy hunting ground of international concessionaires. For in pledging the banks which enter the Consortium to make loans only through the international combination, and virtually pledging the American government to give its moral and political support only to this group, it restricts what is euphemistically termed (in China as elsewhere) free competition and private enterprise. In other words, there are some American business interests which have become aware of the willingness of Chinese officials to give away their nation’s assets in return for loans with which to line their own pockets, and who, accordingly, find any scheme idealistic and impracticable which would limit their predatory activities. It is fair to add that their opposition seems to be somewhat 'accelerated' by support from Chinese officialdom.
Another humor of the situation is that while Chinese officialdom is practically a unit in opposing the Consortium, the press is reporting meetings and processions of Chinese in America opposing the Consortium, on the ground that it is going to make loans to the Chinese government which will be used for political purposes. And this attitude of the Chinese in America, while accentuated by the fact that they are mostly Cantonese and southern sympathizers, reflects the popular attitude in China. The opposition of the officials to the Consortium is easily understood. It has been stated over and over again—and by Mr. Stevens, the representative in China of the American banking group,—that no loans would be made for administrative or political purposes but only for constructive purposes, such as building railways. It has also been made clear that all such loans will be carefully supervised and audited to see that they actually go for the purposes designated. The opposition of the Chinese people is accounted for by the fact that their fear and suspicion of their own government officials is second only to their fear and suspicion of Japan.
In passing, it may be remarked that it would have had a happy psychological effect if the Consortium had been called by some other name. For the term Consortium is associated in the Chinese mind with the Consortium which made the so-called Reorganization Loan which was the means of consolidating the power of Yuan Shih Kai. That the United States government refused to permit American bankers to become partners in that Consortium, while it has taken the lead in forming a new one, is of little moment in comparison with the dreaded name, Consortium. Even the more thoughtful Chinese believe in the good intentions of America rather than in her wisdom and skill and freely anticipate that, when it comes to doing business, the other national partners, with their greater experience and their greater political stakes, will put it all over American plans.
Illumination upon the political-financial situation came when the subject of exclusion of Chinese bankers from membership in the Consortium was under discussion. In conversation with representative Chinese I expressed, in common with other Americans, regret for the failure to include native banks. The reply was most enlightening. Liberal Chinese said that such inclusion would be the finishing touch to confirm their fears. For the banking group which would be most naturally included were the 'political bankers'. Chinese officials long ago learned the way of making one hand wash the other. Money extracted from the government was used to found banks, which then made loans to the government at exorbitant rates, and so on around the circle. In addition, these banks naturally exercised great influence in support of the government. They brought about an alliance between powerful financial influences and the corrupt and semi-militaristic officialdom which is the political curse of China. The rates at which foreign loans are made to the Chinese government often seem unjust. Eight and ten per cent interest with ten to fifteen per cent discount on the face of the loan, hardly seems equitable. But these rates pale by the side of those of domestic loans, where twenty to thirty per cent interest is not uncommon. If, the Chinese liberals added, there was any likelihood that the bankers, known indifferently as the Shanghai or industrial bankers, were to be included, the case would be quite different, but of that there seemed no likelihood in the present condition of affairs.
Space remains for one more touch to the picture. While the opponents of the Consortium have represented it as most anxious to make loans, almost to force loans upon China, its American representatives, ever since Mr. Lamont visited the country, have disclaimed any great desire to do so. They have said that they would await specific proposals from the Chinese government; they have asserted that if China could finance herself, and never call upon the Consortium for funds, the American bankers would be more than satisfied. These statements have been received with incredulity. They have been the occasion of much sarcasm about the unusual and suddenly displayed philanthropy of bankers. Some newspapers supposed to represent American interests in China have been foremost in these ironical expressions. The statements of American representatives of the Consortium that there was plenty of demand for surplus capital at home, that investments in China at the present time were not particularly at-tractive, that the banks had no funds of their own to put permanently into China but would have to pass on their investments to the general public, that the American bankers were mainly animated by a desire to get China on its feet industrially as a customer and to put an end to the partition of China through special concessions to special nations, have been received in apathetic silence when they were not met with open derision.
So far, I have confined myself to reporting the way in which the Consortium has been received. I now venture to express my own opinion. I am credulous enough to take these statements at their face value. In fact I believe they give the key to the situation. The Consortium was not initiated by American bankers. It is matter of record that the first move came while the war was still on, from the State Department under Mr. Lansing—who is presumably familiar with the Chinese policy of John Hay and interested in its becoming an actuality, instead of, as is largely the case, a scrap of paper. In short, as far as the American government’s side is concerned, the move is political rather than financial. And the politics involved are not imperialistic but are in behalf of the principle which comes so readily to the lips of all diplomats of all nations: the maintenance of the Open Door and the preservation of the territorial integrity of China. It is evident that the chief opposition to this policy lies in separate nationalistic loans made for 'administrative purposes' and leading to concessions which partition China. The fact that Japan, Great Britain, France and England were allies in the war, that Germany and Russia were automatically out of it, gave an opportunity for making the professed policy a reality instead of a pious phrase. Mr. Lansing grasped the opportunity.
In short, the Consortium policy exists between two stools, the political and the financial. It is subject to all the dangers which attend such a position. This fact is well known to Japanese, French and British political and financial interests, even if it is ignored by Chinese sentiment and by American public opinion. The United States is thus playing a lone hand in what is ironically called a Consortium. Its policy meets with active, though generally secret, opposition from the officials of the nation it is intended to benefit and with apathy and suspicion from the people. It is not likely that either France or Great Britain will be able to supply their portion of any loans made by the Consortium. Their share will have to come from the American investor. The American investor has no concealed political ambitions to compensate for unwillingness to make investments that are more or less risky from a strictly economic standpoint. The term of the Consortium is five years. If its operations can be stalled for five years, France and Great Britain will perhaps be in a condition to resume business on their own account.
Meantime our late 'associate', Great Britain, is anything but anxious to see American prestige and influence increased in the Far East. If her dislike is not so openly proclaimed to the four heavens as that of Japan, it does not follow that her opposition is less efficacious.
Incidentally, there are some signs that a drive will be made upon the new administration, partly from sources professing to speak for the interests of China but really speaking for its officials, and partly from some other nations in the Consortium, to make it modify its terms as part of what will be called a 'permanent settlement' of the problem of the Pacific. The renewal of the British- Japanese Alliance promises to be an accomplished fact. Japan has the right to expect something from her ally. If a political, or reorganization, or administrative loan could be arranged, active Chinese opposition would melt away; the people would still be opposed and would cherish resentment against America, but they would doubtless acquiesce as they acquiesce in so many things which they hate. Such a loan could be presented to the American public as a wise and kind concession to Chinese needs, and an improvement upon the hard terms of the present Consortium policy. Incidentally, problems of Manchuria, Shantung and Siberia would come up for discussion, and a plea be made for a magnanimous recognition, in the interests of peace, of Japan's need for economic expansion.
It will be gathered from what has been said that the prospects for the Consortium are not bright. Its apparent failure, however, may mark a real success, provided the present policy remains unmodified. If a blockade or embargo can be established for even five years upon predatory foreign loans to China, the Consortium meantime doing nothing, a precedent may be established which will make such loans difficult, if not impossible, in the future. The effect may be to throw China back upon her own resources. The best thing that could happen to China would be for her to be put on a starvation diet for a while and to have to face her own problems with her own capacities. A few weeks ago, a native banking group not composed of political banks made a loan for the purchase of railway rolling stock. It was accompanied by conditions of supervision of expenditures more drastic than a foreign group could exact. It was also accompanied by an open threat of political action against the government if the funds loaned were not used honestly. It is perhaps too much to say that the loan could never have taken this form if the Consortium were not the only alternative in sight. But the existence of the Consortium certainly facilitated the creation of an honest domestic loan. It is an indication of the way the Consortium may succeed even if it fails,—fails, that is, to make a loan.

John Dewey : Lecture 'Educators as leaders in society' : delivered at the First Teachers College of Fujian. = Jiao yu zhe wei she hui ling shou. In : Chen bao fu kan ; April 30-May 2 (1921).

John Dewey : Lecture 'The aims of a university'. = Da xue di zhi chu. In : Chen bao fu kan ; April 25-26 (1921).

John Dewey stays in Guangzhou : addresses students in High Normal School and Guangzhou Christian College.

Dewey, John. Old China and new [ID D28485].
There exists on the globe—the real globe, not the papier-mâché one—a country with a population of perhaps one-sixth of this world's inhabitants. The history of this country extends over four thousand years. Nowhere else does the earth show such a record of continuity and stability. Yet the story is not one of monotony or stagnation. Within its continuity there is at least as much variety and change as in the history of Europe for two thousand years preceding the seventeenth century. Invention, industrial art, philosophy, poetry and painting of the first order adorn the civilization of this country. At no other time and in no other place have moral ideas, apart from ecclesiastic reinforcement and theological support, been so widely disseminated. Over a thousand years ago, this country gave morals, literature, art and the elements of culture to a neighbor that now ranks among the 'Great Five' of modem nations. Outside of farming, its social order was never very efficient. With an exceedingly small number of exceptions its rulers were corrupt and incompetent. But it got along somehow; it endured. It maintained itself with so little government, in any modern sense of the word, that it is surprising that anarchists have not taken it as their stock example of what can be done on a no-government basis. But it got along in seclusion. Sea, desert and mountains hemmed it in. It was sufficient unto itself, complacent in a conceit of superiority bred of isolation. But at last the industrial revolution made its barriers of no avail. Steam and electricity eliminated distance. The country found itself confronted with forces with which it was utterly unable to cope. Century-old weaknesses were no longer mere domestic incidents. They were a menace of destruction within and an invitation to imperial wolves from without. Contact with new forces produced flagrant exhibition of all accumulated defects and corruptions while at the same time a new and better organized civilization brought with it strange and irresistible temptations to new evils.
In writing of this country—China—faced as it is with the most difficult problem of reconstruction any civilization has ever known, Mr. J.O.P. Bland selects a small group of individuals as being personally responsible for most of its woes. The group he selects to bear the burden of responsibility he calls “Young China,” specifically those men who have experienced the destructive effects of western education. And to meet all evils, Mr. Bland has a panacea. It is international foreign control of governmental finance.
To any one with a slight knowledge of the facts in the situation, combined with the rudiments of a social imagination, this bare statement makes superfluous any detailed reply to Mr. Bland, although it will be necessary to point out in the course of this article some specific misstatements. An independent analysis of the elements of the problem of transition and transformation in China is, however, on its own account, well worth making. Simply as an intellectual spectacle, a scene for study and surmise, for investigation and speculation, there is nothing in the world today—not even Europe in the throes of reconstruction—that equals China. History records no parallel. Can an old, vast, peculiar, exclusive, self-sufficing civilization be born again? Made over it must be, or it cannot endure. Yet it must accomplish the making over in the face of facts and forces profoundly alien to it, physically, politically, industrially, intellectually, spiritually. All of the forces are strange, unprecedented. Many of them—aggressively hostile—are directed by those who seek to batten upon China’s decay. Much in her past, in her traditional customs, actually lames her in her effort to cope with new conditions. It puts great obstacles in the way of every endeavor to brace herself to her task, so that one meritorious attempt after another lapses into impotency. There are many good things in the old order, just as there are many in the tentative new one. But there is a social as well as a physical chemistry in accordance with which elements good in themselves give rise to explosive or poisonous com-pounds.
History may be ransacked to furnish a situation that so stirs interest, that keeps a spectator so wavering between hope and fear and that presents so baffling a face to every attempt to find a solution. One is constantly reminded of the Chinese puzzles of one's childhood, in which the complexity and variety of interlocking parts seemed to defy every attempt to form a coherent whole. There was a clue, a method for those puzzles, and perhaps a way that leads to successful solution of the enormous present puzzle may yet be found. It is no wonder that wherever a few are gathered together in China the favorite indoor sport is 'saving China'. But after, whether at the same time or on different occasions, the whole gamut from optimism to pessimism has been struck, the honest-minded give it up as a problem far beyond the size of their intellects. 'If this' and 'If that' are the last word. Many have their favorite 'ifs': if there were a strong central government—which there never was, even in the palmiest days of absolutism; if there were honest officials—which harks back to the mythical days of Yao and Shun. And now a new 'if'. If the pestilential returned students would cease from troubling and China's financial administration could be reorganized by new Sir Robert Harts and Sir Richard Danes, all would be well. Model China after the Salt Gabelle and her troubles are ended.
But the task of reorganization, of transformation, of union of old and new, is so vast, so appalling in its complexity, that neither any wholesale forecast of the future nor any simple remedy is worth the paper it is written on. The things that are certain, are few. Either failure or success will entail tremendous consequences for the rest of the world, so that no one can afford to be indifferent. A great number of specific enterprises and experiments, converging to a common end, will have to be undertaken. There is no situation in the world more calculated to justify distrust of panaceas and wholesale remedies. The moves to be made are of all sorts. Many are external, technical, changes in administration, adoption of modern ways of managing affairs. In certain moments of depression, one can picture the enormous benefit that would accrue from a simple regard for arithmetic and for modern systems of accounting and auditing. But unless China is to be rent asunder, even more than its neighbor, Japan, is spiritually rent today, changes of thought, of belief, of outlook on the world must come too. A new mind must be created. And the most important permanent result of all external administrative changes, whether in government or in industry, will be their effect upon the creation of a new mind and a new morale.
Among the external changes needed is one in public finance. Thanks to her own ineptitude, combined with the greed of some foreign nations and the stupidity of others, the government of China is helplessly dependent upon foreign loans, which are accumulating a burden of interest to be met only by new loans. In China there is wealth in some quarters. But the home security is so poor that the merchants will not invest their money unless it be under the protection of foreign governments. And rich officials will not invest because they obtain their riches by investing foreign loans—in their own pockets. International control is necessary not merely as a means of securing Chinese capital for China but also as the only thing that will prevent the further disintegration of China by a system of concessions and spheres of influence and the pawning of natural resources to this nation or that. No unprejudiced observer has any doubt about these facts.
But even superficially there is no sense in regarding this plan to secure international control of finance as antagonistic to the tendencies represented by the student movement in China. On the contrary, the leaders in explaining the plan to their countrymen, provided it is really drawn in the interest of the development of China and not of foreign financiers, must come from this movement. Mr. Lamont, who is probably quite as much interested in the success of the Consortium as is Mr. Bland, found it worth while, when in China, to give many hours to students and their leaders among teachers, for the sake of removing misconceptions and enlisting cooperation. It is common honesty to say that there is still much skepticism in China about the whole scheme. But any fair person will also acknowledge that the prior history of China's financial dealings with foreign bankers is conducive to the Missouri attitude. Mr. Bland's denial of any Japanese influence or bias in his recent writings must be accepted at its full value. But to attribute Chinese opposition to the Consortium to the student movement and to pass over in silence the extraordinary campaign carried on in China by Japanese agencies in league with Chinese venal politicians and newspapers—a campaign still waged in November, 1920—is precisely the sort of thing that awakens suspicion. Mr. Lamont's statement on the nature of the propaganda against the Consortium is too full and explicit to leave any doubt as to where responsibility lies.
Let there be no mistake about one thing. The charges of corruption and intrigue that Mr. Bland brings against Chinese politicians and the statements he makes about the strictly factional character of civil strife in China, the absence of underlying principles, the greed for place and power—in fact, for money—are the a-b-c's, the platitudes of the situation. If he had stayed more than a few weeks in his hurried trip through a few of the coast towns, he could have found material for a far blacker and more disheartening picture than he has painted. In official circles, the present situation regarding the terrible famine, for example, is sickening beyond measure. Indifference and apathy joined to squeeze, intrigue for position and prestige combined with profiteering and exploitation of the starving, land-grabbing from honest and industrious peasants by black-hearted officials, refusal, on the ground that worse than useless soldiers must be transported, to provide cars to carry grain supplied by philanthropists—these are some of the outstanding facts. The question is not about the facts, but about their cause and remedy.
In spite of his desire to leave the impression that the situation is somehow due to 'Young China', even Mr. Bland cannot avoid recognizing that all this is in accord with the traditions of Chinese officialdom. Whether things are worse than in the bad days of the Manchus, or only about as bad as things were then, it is impossible to say dogmatically. Many think them worse. Others think the appearance of greater evil is due to the fact that some degree of publicity has invaded China and the stirred cesspool spreads more noisome odors. In many respects, however, modem business conditions give new opportunities, and officialdom is no slower to grasp new chances than it is to take profit from old sources. The fact is that the state of affairs is so bad that it is hard to imagine it any worse.
It constitutes a part, a considerable part, of that problem of reorganization, of transformation from the old to the new, to which reference has been made. It affords a striking example of what can happen when Old China is projected into the situation produced not by any one set of persons in China, but by the new world forces that have taken China unawares and unprepared. Of old, intrigues and corruptions only affected China domestically. Now they imperil her national being—as is evidenced by the record of $200,000,000 borrowed from Japan by venal politicians in two years, without any public value received, and at the loss of immense resources mortgaged in return. But the point is that this evil is due to Old China, not new, Old China wallowing unashamed in the trough of new opportunities.
Such statements as Mr. Bland makes about 'Young China' as now in control of the government make one gasp: 'The militarist government is chiefly composed of the Young China of yesterday'; 'In the new game of democratic politics, which developed after the passing of the Dragon Throne, in 1911, it was the supermen of the educated class who made their way to the top. . . . And the real question in China to-day is how to limit the power and rapacity of these Tuchuns'. The fact is that there is not a Tuchun in China today who has the least smattering of western learning. Most of them have none of the old Chinese learning either. The one old scholar who is a governor today has declined to take the title of Tuchun. The nominal head of the Republic is an old mandarin, who served the Manchu dynasty. The western reader will hardly realize how contrary his holding office under the new régime is to the basic ethics of Chinese life, which dictates that the servant should retire absolutely to private life upon the overthrow or withdrawal of the master, provided he does not carry his loyalty to the point of killing himself. Another prominent leader is a former Shantung fish-seller. One Tuchun is a former hostler; another was once a lace-seller; one, upon whom Mr. Bland lavishes his praise as a type of the strong man China needs, is an ex-bandit. Some of these men cannot even read Chinese or write a Chinese character. These Tuchuns are Mr. Bland's educated supermen.
These things are not said in defense of returned students or of 'Young China'—whatever that may be. They are not said in mitigation of the evil of China's present condition. They may make the situation appear even worse than Mr. Bland makes it. They are said because they are facts, and facts that indicate the nature and seriousness of the real problem of China today—that of adapting Old China to new world conditions, of creating what does not as yet exist except in the most fragmentary sense—a Young China. And in this connection it may be not amiss to state the real origin of the term 'Young China'. The Young China party was consciously modeled after Mazzini's Young that strove to create a new Italy, so those who rallied about the cry of 'Young China' asserted, not the existence of Young China, but the necessity of rejuvenating Old China, unless China itself was to disappear. And though they have not as yet succeeded in their efforts, every passing day makes it clear that they diagnosed the case aright.
Everything said about the effect of financial maladministration in keeping China back is true. The loss of public revenues is serious in itself. But this is a mild evil compared with the encouragement of selling out or giving away the natural resources of China to foreigners who have political as well as economic designs on China. And this is what happened under the direct auspices of the followers, disciples and lieutenants of the late Yuan Shih-kai—that 'strongest, ablest and wisest' of recent Chinese statesmen! It is mild in comparison with the retardation of legitimate industry, commerce and railway development, due to the levyings of irresponsible officials in search of still more millions. It is mild in comparison with the spread of corruption from the official class to the mercantile class, which has dealings with the government and which is becoming infected with a like greed for money and a like unscrupulousness as to how it is got—an evil so serious that it may, if it goes on, empty of meaning the old saying about the Chinaman's word being as good as his bond. It is mild in comparison with the development, as an aid in money-getting, of a vast horde of undisciplined soldiers, forming habits of idleness, engaged in looting, depriving large sections in the north of needed agricultural labor, spreading venereal disease wherever they go, changing themselves upon a moment's notice from soldiery to bandits and back again.
No intelligent person in China believes that reform in financial administration is going to come from within. Some kind of international foreign control of finance is not only a financial necessity, but a political, industrial and moral necessity. No true liberal in America will, if he is wise, oppose the scheme per se. But he will, if he is wise, scrutinize its terms most carefully and insist upon real justice and honesty. A recent minister of finance borrowed money just before settling-day. Credit was bad enough, heaven knows! But the minister and his friends instituted banks, from which to borrow money at eighty per cent in order to pay interest on what they had previously stolen. Then, to make sure the interest would continue to be paid, they sold the notes to a foreign (not Japanese) bank that has foreign governmental support. The incident illustrates the need of financial supervision. But it also indicates that foreign financiers are not proof against taking part in shady transactions when the profit is good. For the careful reader Mr. Bland answers and refutes himself. Thus, on occasion, when he drops rhetoric for facts, he says, 'It seems impossible to deny that most of China's present disabilities and dangers are due to no fault of its own, but to the sudden creation by the Western Powers of a new condition of things'. In similar fashion his pathetic picture of those 'older and wiser heads', mandarins and merchants, really desiring the imposition of foreign control of finance, but intimidated by the clamor of the student body from public expression of their secret desire, is sufficiently taken care of by his true picture of the mandarinate waxing fat and powerful on the present situation. During the three or four days spent by Mr. Bland in Peking in making deep-sea Chinese soundings, certain financiers of the so-called 'Old Communications Clique' were out of power. They generally professed in conversation with foreigners great sympathy with unification of the financial and railway system of China under international supervision. It was a convenient partisan weapon. Doubtless Mr. Bland heard them talk. If they had belonged to the student class, he would probably have been suspicious. Since they belonged to Old China, he took them at their word. Some of them are now in power and are secretly taking every means to block the measure that they professed to favor and that is now in danger of being realized at their expense.
All this is said not for the sake of personal controversy with Mr. Bland but because of its bearing on the practical situation. Nothing would be more fatal to the success of the Consortium scheme than action based upon the belief that any influential part of existing officialdom is sincerely in favor of a measure that deprives it of money and power, and that the intellectual leaders toward a newer China are of necessity opposed to the scheme.
It is significant that the charges that Mr. Bland so freely brings against the student movement are precisely the reports with which the officials of the Anfu stripe, who were in power during his visit, made thick the air of Peking. Officialdom knew what it was about. It knew that the patriotic movement was directed primarily against it. It knew also every resource of the clever Chinese politician in circulating reports to discredit the potential threat to its corrupt control. Mr. Bland was not the only foreigner to accept these reports at their face value. In spite of his evident knowledge of their corruption and utter unreliability, he believed them in this instance because they fitted in with his antecedent prejudices. Although this new movement came from students who had never been out of China, Mr. Bland's acquaintance with the situation was so superficial that he identified the new student movement with the returned student movement he had previously known and damned. So he fell an easy victim to the very wiles he so profusely exposes upon other occasions.
His lack of familiarity with the new student movement may be measured by the fact that he says that Young China's 'indignation has never yet been publicly directed against the growing rapacity of the metropolitan and provincial officials'. As a matter of fact, the present student movement began on May 4 last year with precisely a protest against these officials and ended in the dismissal from the cabinet of three of its most corrupt members. It would have gone further if the military force of Peking and other places, provincial as well as metropolitan, had not crowded jails with students, closed their offices with brutal force, spied upon their every activity, filled their ranks with agents provocateurs and bribed freely the weaker among them. The story that Mr. Bland quotes with much relish of $200,000 given by one set of politicians to the Student Union of Tientsin to aid them in their movement against Peking officials at least proves that Mr. Bland knew better when he says the students have never turned upon their own officials. But in truth this is only one of the stories that were circulated by the officials in power to discredit the movement. 'Documentary evidence' to the contrary—which Mr. Bland has seen—was forged by this crowd as part of their game. This does not mean that politicians among the outs did not try to use the movement, or that the students made no mistakes or were wholly free from corrupt elements. But upon the whole, considering the inexperience of those engaged in it, the movement was surprisingly well managed and showed a power of organization that augurs well for the future.
These facts are pertinent to the practical situation. In aid of the Consortium, as well as of other reforms, the students should be enlisted against the resistance, active and (still more dangerous) passive, of officialdom. Their patriotism is easily aroused to take a negative form, especially in view of the predatory career of foreign powers in China in the past. But they are the one self-conscious class in China wholly awake to the ills that flow from the recent system of 'government'. They are the enemies, natural and avowed, of both existing and would-be officials. They have seen Chinese officials before this time take advantage, to the detriment of the country, of the cupidity of foreigners, of their ignorance and their desire for immediate results. They have seen highly disinterested foreign professions in the past used as cloaks for rapacious encroachments upon Chinese resources and sovereignty. They are naturally apprehensive lest any new scheme be manipulated by officials (whose wiles they understand better than any foreigner understands them) into new means of confirming their power and wealth while at the same time increasing the bondage of China.
But they also know how desperate the situation is, and in American leadership they have a faith that they have not in that of other foreign powers. What they fear is that, as in some previous cases, American energy and American intelligence will not, when it comes to execution, be equal to American good intentions. They fear that American leadership will be nominal rather than effectual; that something will be 'put over on' American ideas by the combined efforts of Chinese corrupt officials and non-disinterested foreign finance. It is therefore a most practical feature in the situation that pains be taken, not only that American ideas really rule the Consortium, but that every effort be made to make it clear to the intellectual leaders of public opinion that such is the fact. The evil of such outpourings as those of Mr. Bland is that they obscure this fact, and, by relying upon just the element that cannot be trusted and alienating the only element that can be employed to develop a sympathetic public opinion in China, they prejudice the success of the entire movement. The growing support of public opinion is essential to a reform anything more than superficial and external.
But, though reform of financial administration is indispensable and can be secured only through foreign control over a period of years, it is only one of a multitude of factors in the change of Old China into a China adapted to modem conditions. New China is not a fad or device of a few half-baked enthusiasts. It is a necessity unless China is to rot, and unless its rotting carcass is to become in the end a menace to the peace of the world. The notion that, by the mere introduction of western economy, China can be 'saved', while it retains the old morality, the old set of ideas, the old Confucianism—or what genuine Confucianism had been petrified into—and the old family system, is the most utopian of sentimental idealisms. Economic and financial reform, unless it is accompanied by the growth of new ideals of culture, ethics and family life (which constitute the real meaning of the so-called student movement of today), will merely shift the sore spots. It will remedy some evils and create others. Taken by itself it is a valuable practical measure. But it is the height of absurdity to use it as a stick with which to beat the aspirations of men and women, old as well as young, for new beliefs, new ideas, new methods of thought, new social and natural science—in short, for a New and Young China.
Years ago there were many Chinese who sincerely thought that the evils from which China suffered and the dangers that threatened her were due to the Manchu régime and would be remedied by the introduction of a republican form of government. Some doubtless favored the change from motives of self-interest. If there were none such, then the Chinese are more different from Westerners than I think they are. But with the mass of republicans it was a sincere belief, born of hope and inexperience. It is a matter of pathos and not one for ridicule. Probably even more numerous now than were the republicans in the old days are those who think that existing evils are due to the Republic and who would welcome a return to monarchy—just as great numbers twenty years ago thought the removal of the foreigner would heal all evils and so tried the Boxer panacea. If an attempt is made to restore monarchy, these will be disillusioned as others have been of their panaceas. But what shall we say of an experienced Westerner who still seeks for a cure-all and who says, 'Introduce foreign international control of finance, and all will be well'? It is not surprising that such a one is skeptical of the value of foreign education.
There is in China a considerable class of foreigners, especially in the outports and political centres, who are frankly attached to Old China. The reasons are complex. In part they realize its virtues, and in other part they subconsciously rely upon its weaknesses to serve their own comfort and convenience. Such persons usually deprecate the efforts of missionaries and foreign educators, not usually because they are theoretically opposed to Christianity, but because the introduction of new ideas is disturbing to what they esteem and profit by. They also see new evils coming into China and a decay of some of its old virtues. Not having sufficient social and historical grasp to trace these changes to their source and see how inevitable they are in a period of social transition, they attribute all disintegration to the influence of foreign learning and ideas, introduced by missionaries and returned students. Leave Old China alone culturally and morally, they say in effect. It had its vices, but it had its stable virtues, and if the tares are uprooted, the grain also will be destroyed. Change China only in business and material ways. Give it the benefit of railways, mills, telegraphs, reformed currency, good financial administration; give it the external technique of western civilization free from disturbing western culture, and all will be well.
This view, widely current, is as superficial as it is plausible. It is not worth while to argue whether a change merely industrial is desirable. For it is impossible. Even if it were abstractly desirable, it is sentimentally utopian, in spite of its professed allegiance to hard business facts. What is really undermining the family system, which was the basis of Old China? The teachings of returned students? The desire of a small number to select their own life companions, thereby breaking down parental authority; to have educated women as their wives, thereby revolutionizing China by changing the traditional status of women? No. These things are, at most, symptoms, not causes. The real cause is precisely the modem methods born of the industrial revolution, which fatuous observers would introduce while they dream of leaving old institutions unchanged. The railway and the factory system are undermining the family system. They will continue to do so, even if every student take the vow of eternal silence.
Here is a village in the province of Chekiang, an actual, not an imaginary, one. For thirty generations the same families have lived and died there. They have been the leading spirits in maintaining farming, industry and social order and peace. The town was a centre of scholars and literary men of the old, dignified, leisurely sort. There was little poverty and much prosperity. Now ancestral homes and temples are in a state of decay. The leading men, whose presence assured light, order and welfare are not there. Farming is degenerating. Even education has gone backward in quality, if not in amount. The lower classes are more restless and disorderly, as well as poorer, than they used to be. The influence of returned students? Precisely as much and as little as is a somewhat similar decay in parts of New England.
The town has no railway nor mills. But it is not far from Hangchow and from Shanghai. The abler and more enterprising men, representatives of the solidarity of the old family system, have moved away to places where there is more life and opportunity. This one is in Peking, that one in Shanghai, the other in Hankow. Some are teaching; some are in banks; some are interested in foreign trade, some in developing cotton mills. They are adopting new professions, establishing new relationships, forming new families in new places. It is difficult to be patient with the notion that the industrial revolution can come in China without exercising just such far-reaching political, moral, domestic and intellectual changes as it has wrought in Europe. Europe had its eighteenth century of 'enlightenment', its attack upon the old, its subversive thought and action. And China is beginning to have its century of change, involving destruction, even of good things, as well as introduction of new, good things. How shall we regard men who, in the face of this inevitable transformation, can think only of a few individuals, and who place all blame on the personal beliefs and activities of these few?
Even the greatest reactionary can hardly expect to introduce the railway and the mechanical technique of modem industry, and at the same time prevent the introduction of scientific ideas and methods. A few weeks ago there was a total eclipse of the moon. It was celebrated with the usual salute of gongs and firecrackers to prevent the heavenly dog from swallowing the moon. What is the attitude of the small boy and girl who have studied even elementary geography toward the activities of their elders? They are normal enough youngsters to enjoy the racket, but they hardly learn from the ceremony respect for the intelligence and beliefs of their ancestry. The boy learns a little about elementary chemistry, if not in school, then in the modern shop. His belief in ghosts, which is emotionally and intellectually associated with his ancestral worship, is surely modified, and with its modification goes less rigorous adherence to the traditional moral code.
These things are rudimentary. But they have a bearing on not only the whole topic of the so-called student movement, but even upon such a practical detail as foreign financial control. It is not necessary to try to assess the respective benefits and evils of the changes going on. It is enough that there are evils and dangers accompanying the transition, with its relaxation of old disciplines and codes. If schemes of reform are limited to financial and economic measures, these evils and dangers may only be increased. They can be remedied and the balance be made to fall heavily on the side of genuine progress, only as financial reform is accompanied by an intellectual and cultural renewal such as lies close to the heart of the student movement in China.
Financial reorganization, under international control, will save enormous sums of money. These funds will go largely into railways and highroads and into mills and factories. It takes an unthinking optimist to imagine that along with undoubted benefits there will be no spread of new evils, and no further loosening of old ties. Only a comic opera can do justice to the theme of those who say, 'Restore Old China', and, when asked how it is to be done, reply, 'By building railways and introducing factories'. The decay of the traditional family system will be hastened. With factories, sexual morality will go on the down-grade. Respect for the old and for custom will decrease. Love of money will get new opportunities for expression. Men will lose the chief old moral restraint, which came from lifelong living in the immediate presence of members of the family and clan, to whom every personal act was public and who exercised unremitting pressure of approbation and reproof. Labor difficulties will increase. Child labor is already increasing, and the taking of women from the home. Workmen and employers traditionally in close personal contact will become separated and divided in thought and sentiment. All of these things will surely come along with effective international control and reform of financial administration and the consequent diversion of funds into new means of communication and production.
These new evils do not, to be sure, preclude new great benefits or furnish any grounds for relaxing efforts at financial reform. But they suggest the utter ineptitude of schemes that depend wholly upon measures of financial reform, even admitting that they are carried out with complete wisdom, disinterestedness and honesty—as of course they will not be. They indicate that the leaders of the new culture movement in China who are interested in social, domestic and intellectual transformations are wiser, in the midst of all of their confusion, uncertainty and inevitable blundering, than are foreign critics who advise them to leave Old China morally and culturally alone and devote their energies to technical improvements. Here we have the background of the genuine student movement, or better, new culture movement, to some account of the aims and methods of which, my next article will be devoted.

John Dewey visits the provinces Fujian and Guangdong.

John Dewey : Lecture 'Self-activity and self-government' at the Fujian First High School. = Ze dong yu zi zhi. In : Chen bao fu kan ; May 3-6 (1921).

John Dewey : Lecture 'The organization of educational associations in America and their influence on society' : delivered at the Educational Association of Fujian Province. = Meiguo jiao yu hui zhi zu zhi ji qi ying xiang yu she hui. In : Chen bao fu kan ; May 7 (1921).