CLAYTON SEDGWICK COOPER THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT A manual-training class in the government industrial school in Mandalay The Modernizing of the Orient By CLAYTON SEDGWICK COOPER Author or "The Man or Egypt," "Why Go to College," etc. hc£ i'U|illllllll|llWl[|l|l|HI|[|ilHllMilHllii| NEW YORK McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY 1914 Copyright, 1914, by McBride, Nast & Co. Published October, 1914 Ee. BI for years. A gentleman in whose house I was a guest in Lahore, said to me one day: "Do you see that man going around the corner of the stable? He is after my coachman. He comes regularly each week and carries away with him virtually every cent which my coachman can save from his salary." I asked the rate of interest which the coachman was paying and was horrified to learn that it was thirty per cent, a month. "Is there no recourse for your coachman?" I asked. "Why does he pay it?" He replied, "Public opinion is on the side of the money lender to such an extent, that if the coachman re fused to pay, his creditor might come with a band of his friends and beat him into submission to his usurious demands." One finds at present in many parts of India co operative societies and savings banks similar to those which are being established in Egypt and which are assisting greatly in affording opportunity for the laboring classes to save their earnings. But these agencies, as will be seen readily by any one who studies the question at all closely, do not go to the root of the difficulty. It is plastering the wound that should be probed to the bottom, for no matter how much the poor Indian coolie saves, it will be only a larger amount to go into the pockets of the money lender, unless something can be done to bring dishonor and disgrace upon this foolish idea of incurring debt for the sake of a mere inglo rious custom. There must be a revolution of ideas together with a new standard of economics aiming at the inauguration of probity in the conduct of INDIAN INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 173 business and household and society expenditure within the limits of the individual's income. It is at this point that the Government of India has re cently become aroused and a beginning has been made toward the passing of laws intended to make impossible the incurring of debt beyond the ability to pay, and also aiming at the abolition of these preposterous rates of interest by money lenders. If the Indians of small communities could be in duced to spend in the interest of education or home or community advancement, or even to place in the savings bank, the vast amounts which they spend in interest upon debts, there would arise speedily a new and prosperous Indian community. It is a question then of thoroughgoing economic regeneration to which the coming man of India is called as a pioneer. It is one of the phases of edu cation which is sorely neglected at present; al though in a few of the more prominent institutions I found books dealing with social and political and even municipal economics, these books are as a rule books of reference on the library shelves, and have not become the text books of departments of eco nomics in the University and college life of the country. Until educated Indians as well as Euro peans get an enlivened conscience in relation to the desperate need of India for a rejuvenated economic sense in this matter, one can hardly see how the poor laborer is to be loosened from his slavery. It .is a case that must have the combined forces of Government and public sentiment among Indians, in combination, for its solution. General education will help, but specific education and vigorous legis lation together are urgently needed to remedy this 174 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT economic disgrace of India's agricultural popula tion. Reform must begin in this matter, as in all mat ters, at the top of society. A well-to-do Moham medan, for example, told me that when his daugh ter was married, he gave her fifty suits of silk cloth ing with the jewels to match and that the feasting lasted twenty-one days. Tents were put up in his garden and he entertained relatives and friends from all parts of India, who came with their retinues of servants and remained for days and weeks as his guests. He said with a cynical smile, "If I had another daughter to be married, I am afraid I should never be able to lift my head before my creditors." And this man, too, was one of the first and most enlightened and influential citizens in the entire native state of which he was a promi nent judge. This injustice, relative to weddings especially, has caused one of the large family clans with which I happened to be closely associated in different parts of India, to inaugurate a rule that a fixed and comparatively small sum, carefully and equally reg ulated, shall be spent by the bride and the bride groom, and this quite regardless of the financial ability of the families interested. Another significant note of protest came to me in the native state of Hyderabad where one of the daughters of a wealthy Mohammedan received at her wedding, clothes and jewelry sufficient to last her entire life, but where a younger educated daughter had demanded instead of this enormous outlay in clothing, bonds which properly invested would yield yearly an interest to be used in a more INDIAN INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 175 sensible and practical way for family expenses, and the education of her children. But it is not simply in these matters of borrow ing and extravagance that the Indian comes short of his highest business possibilities. He is, fur thermore, decidedly deficient in systematic business methods. I have had occasion during my visits to India to visit many Indian editors, publishers and newspaper men. The lack of order and arrange ment in their surroundings has been one of the in delible impressions which these visits have left upon my mind. One of the leading editors of an Indian journal and owner of a large publishing house frankly and voluntarily confessed to me that he was utterly incapable of preserving any system in his office or his salesroom. When I asked him the reason for his haphazard, hit-or-miss way of running a business of great possibility, he simply shrugged his shoulders, and replied, "I know it means a loss of hundreds of rupees to me every year, but I just can't be systematic. It is Indian not to be." I was dining in the city of Calcutta one evening with a most intelligent young Bengali, who was a graduate of an American western university, and who was endeavoring to put his family estates, which consisted of several thousand acres of valu able property in Bengal, upon a paying basis. I said to him, "What do you find to be your greatest difficulty?" He replied, "Lack of system and at tention to detail in every department on the part of my assistants." "What is your remedy?" I asked. "The employment of foreigners," he said, "at least until we can teach Indians the importance of a thor- 176 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT ough attention to orderly arrangement, regularity, punctuality, and reliable business methods." The most successful and perhaps the largest busi ness concern in the city of Calcutta is owned by an Indian. He has been astute enough to appreci ate this racial weakness of his people and has placed at the head of departments, competent and trained Europeans. One reason for this disregard of order lies in the Oriental's desire for ease. This desire for freedom from harassing conventions and forms marks off the Asiatic from the races of the West. What Eu ropeans look upon as the defects of Indian civiliza tions springs frequently from the temperamental qualities of the Asiatics — the wish to be free from de tail, to be waited upon rather than personally to trace things down, to be exempted from the worry that seems a veritable part of Western successful accomplishment. I was frequently warned by Englishmen concern ing the calling hours in India. It would be useless to call upon Indian officials in the early afternoon for they were sleeping. Indeed, the Indian is probably more Asiatic than any other Oriental in his aversions to display of energy of any sort. He does not like to take trouble. To him European formalities are useless "fuss and feathers"; they get on his nerves. Like the Egyptian, he is always conscious of a to-morrow. One finds repeatedly in India among men who are sufficiently educated and self-respecting to have an opinion and hold to it, that Eastern feeling common to the Oriental every where; it is similar to that expressed by Twefyk INDIAN INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 177 Pasha who, when a Minister at Paris in 1860, spoke of that European capital as follows : What I complain of is the mode of life. I am oppressed, not by the official duties, they are easy, but by the social ones. I have had to write fifteen notes this morning all about trifles. In Turkey life is sans gene ; if a man calls on you he does not leave a card ; if he sends you a nosegay he does not expect a letter of thanks ; if he invites you he does not require an answer. There are no engagements to be remembered and fulfilled a fortnight afterwards. When you wish to see a friend, you know that he dines at sunset ; you get into your caique, and row down to him through the finest scenery in the world. You find him in his garden, smoke a chibouque, talk or remain silent as you like, dine and return. If you wish to see a Minister you go to his office; you are not interfered with or announced; you lift the curtain of his audience room, sit by him on his divan, smoke your pipe, tell your story, get his answer, and have finished your business in the time which it takes here to make an appointment, in half the time that you waste here in an ante-room. There is no dressing for dinners or for evening parties. Evening parties, indeed, do not exist. There are no letters to receive or to answer. There is no post hour to be remembered or waited for, as there is no post. Life glides away without trouble. Here everything is troublesome. All enjoyment is destroyed by the forms and ceremonies and elaborate regulation which are intended, I suppose, to increase it or to protect it. My liberal friends complain here of the want of political liberty. What I complain of is the want of social liberty ; it is far the more important. Few people suffer from the despotism of a Government and those suffer only occasionally. But this social despotism, this despotism of the salon, this code of arbitrary little reglements, observances, prohibitions, and exigencies, affects everybody, and every day and every hour. 178 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT One finds this chafing over forms and rules quite general throughout the Orient. A Mohammedan business man in Burmah told me of his chief cause of complaint against the English official who caused him to wait before his door for two hours when, had the business man been a Mohammedan, he could have seen him at once. The Indian desires the un restrained will, save possibly in matters relating to religion where he is ruled by traditional prejudices. His idea of ease is to be released from trifling mat ters. He does not wish to be obliged to do things : ' ' The 'eathen in his blindness bows down to wood an ' stone, 'E don't obey no orders unless they is 'is own." European officials continually complain of Oriental officers because they will not attend to details. Ex actness, punctuality, regularity, promptness, any thing like steady responsibility, are the bete noir of the Oriental. It is "All along o' dirtiness all along o' mess, All along o' doin' things rather more or less." They are spoiled children, as it often seems to the Occidental. It is the temperament that looks upon life as most successful when most quiet and unper turbed by details. It was said that Charles II was afflicted with what then was known as a mental low fever. It was not unlike the Oriental ennui and this trait amounts almost to hopelessness, when administra tive organization is concerned. No wonder that Indians regard the English energies as "unaccount able, uncomfortable works of God." Across their INDIAN INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 179 ideals could usually be written, "the love of the afternoon life." It is a land where all is without stress and duty, where the servants lie within call outside the door at night and where the dogs sleep in the sun. The summun bonum of the Oriental is not to be always attending to duties but to be quietly sat isfied. The still life is in his veins. School boys learn by rote Longfellow's poem, "The Psalm of Life," "Act in the living present!" — but it is only a form of words, as some one has said, "life, to be delightful, must be always afternoon, and afternoon of a holiday." The Indian poetess, Sarojini Naidu says: "My ancestors for thousands of years have been lovers of the forests and mountain caves, great dreamers, great scholars, great ascetics. My father is a dreamer himself, a great dreamer, a great man whose life has been a magnificent fail ure. ' ' None perhaps have caught more surely this spirit of dream and beauty, than Mrs. Naidu herself in her "Palanquin Bearers": Lightly, 0 lightly, we bear her along, She sways like a flower in the wind of our song. She skims like a bird on the foam of a stream, She floats like a laugh from the lips of a dream. Gaily, 0 gaily, we glide and we sing We bear her along like a pearl on a string. The Englishman or the Westerner who fails to understand or to sympathize with this idealism of India, gets disliked as a matter of course. He is an uncomfortable and disturbing factor. If he lacks the imagination to see how he is different, he makes himself even more ridiculous in the Indian's 180 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT eyes, who regards him simply as among those who "for some mysterious purpose of the All Wise are permitted to make pen knives and sell piece goods and conquer the world." The European appears on the Indian's horizon as a necessary part of civ ilization, interesting, but not compelling of either admiration or imitation. If it is true that the success of any nation de pends upon its commercial integrity, there is little doubt that India, in common with certain other Ori ental nations must give attention not only to sys tem, but also to commercial honesty. This present system, to be sure, has been a heritage from years of uneven and oppressive government and seems to be more or less ingrained in the Indian tempera ment and habit. I refer more especially to the extremely com mon instances of dishonesty and unscrupulousness found in bazaars and among shop keepers. One who endeavors to do business in any bazaar or store either in village, town or city in India will very soon discover that there are at least three prices for every article, one for the white man, another for the Eurasian and a third for the Indian. In the case of the large tourist centers the number and variety of these prices will doubtless be greatly in creased and depend largely upon the amount of gul libility which the intuitive Indian merchant per ceives in the face of the alien purchaser. Although one will find of course, many and notable exceptions to this rule, for it would be foolhardly as untrue, to state that all Indian shop keepers were dishonest in the value they affixed to their wares, it has been my experience personally (and I have asked questions INDIAN INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 181 in many sections regarding this subject), that the Indian retail business man cannot be trusted to the extent that the European or the Westerner can usually be trusted in the matter of small purchases and fixed prices. One cannot say that the bazaar keeper is entirely at fault, nor would it be possible to state that he attaches any dishonesty to that which would be considered uneven and unscrupu lous business method for a Westerner, since from time immemorial the Oriental has distrusted his neighbor in the matter of bargaining and to get the best of his customer, or on the other hand, to get the best of the trader, has been considered a mark of credit rather than disgrace. It is almost trite to observe that one of the first rules which the globe trotter and naive tourist learn, both from their guide books and often by bitter experience, is that the Indian shopkeeper places as his first price a figure from three to five times as great as he can afford to take for his com modities. Apart from the good natured manner in which the average tourist overlooks this matter of unjust business dealing, since the exercise of bar gaining furnishes local color and a certain amount of expert ingenuity and skill to a bored and blase traveler, the matter of uprightness in commercial affairs as related not only to the purchaser but also to the Indian merchant, is one of considerable mo ment. It is especially a significant question of prin ciple to those men, Indian and European alike, who entertain the hope of building a new India upon the basis of firm and equable economic and commercial probity. Nor does this barter system affect merely the 182 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT small souvenir seller in the native cities. The principle runs through the entire trading life of India, influencing even the foreign merchants. This was illustrated in a famous curio store of the high est class in one of the Indian cities where I had been purchasing certain rare objects of Indian art. As we were leaving the store my wife, with the usual feminine hesitancy to depart from such congenial surroundings, picked up a very artistic piece of brass, and while she was admiring it, the owner of the store, a European, happened to pass through the room. He came over to us and said: "That is an odd piece of Thibetan brass, is it not?" My wife said wistfully, "Yes, I wish I could buy it, but I fear my pocketbook is empty," at which the owner turned to a clerk and said, "Put this piece in the lady's carriage," saying to us aside, "I don't know what you have bought in this store, but whatever it is, I am sure you have paid too much for it." It is not simply in the vicissitudes of bargaining that one finds the Indian tradesman deficient. The Westerner is astonished at the general slackness which he finds in attendance upon customers, in fill ing orders, and in delivering purchases. There seems to be comparatively little effort expended, either in making or in holding customers. At least this effort does not appear to be at all a regular and systematic one. A certain superstition is fre quently evident amongst shop keepers throughout the Orient. Merchants have their lucky and un lucky days. As in Egypt, one hears so frequently: "Boukra!" (to-morrow) or "as God wills"!, or "perhaps another day you will buy"; likewise among Indian shop keepers there is frequently INDIAN INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 183 evident a kind of "it-is-all-on-the-knees-of-the- gods" feeling. A sort of "Kismet" fatality pre sides over the merchant and his wares. If you buy, well and good, if not, no one is sorrow-stricken and you will rarely see the cloud pass over the face of the shop keeper as is often the ca>se, amongst the re tail merchants of the West, when you walk out of the store, without purchases. This mercantile superstition, especially as it per sists in country districts and small towns, is often most ludicrous. I have been told of a village mer chant who called off a transaction because after he made the bargain, he went home and sneezed once. Had he sneezed twice or thrice he would have car ried out his contract with great joy. Another vil lager refused to hold to his bargain with a customer because he met a widow in the road while on the way to accomplish the business he had promised, so great was the ill fortune which he attached to the meeting with such an ill omened person. One finds also that certain men close their shops for days at a time without assigning any reason whatever to the public who have been accustomed to buy of them their regular rations. A certain gentleman who was thoroughly acquainted with village customs told me that he was often accustomed to press for a reply to his question.: "Why is not the shop keeper here?" and to receive the somewhat ambigu ous answer: "He does not feel happy in his mind!" It may be too much to say that this whole matter of commercial relationship lies imbedded in a faulty appreciation of right and wrong. But, at least from the Westerner's point of view, I think this is 184 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT true. The principle of elemental justice and right eousness, regardless of circumstances, is often ab sent. D. L. Moody used to say, "A man is what he is, in the dark." One cannot but feel that the In dian business man is honest or dishonest not so much from principle, as from expediency. It de pends upon the man with whom he is dealing whether his honesty is apparent or whether the light that is within him shall be darkness. In other words, the business man is not true to himself, and therefore, cannot be true to others. He does not trust himself ; he, therefore, cannot believe in others. One only has to investigate the lack of confidence which Indians have in co-operative schemes and corporate management, such as banking and agri cultural and irrigation co-operation — in fact in al most any pursuit where a man is called upon to trust his neighbor. I have been told by many repu table Indians that there are few people who are willing to trust others with their money. The av erage native prefers to melt his gold and silver and put it into jewels for his wife, or hide it in the wall or floor of the house, or bury it in the ground, rather than place it at interest in the local banks. This lack of faith in humanity in general is in a sense the heaviest hand laid in restraint upon Indian trade. The country has not yet discovered the vast pos sibilities of an extended credit system which has been the key unlocking the mighty resources of Western business endeavor. There is still the un certainty and hesitation akin to the suspicion and wariness of belated races. It is one of the puzzling things to the student of India to see a race of peo- INDIAN INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 185 pie who have advanced so far beyond the Westerner in spiritual and religious restraint, who have eclipsed anything that Europeans have yet accom plished in their power of speculative and meditative exercise through what must be considered as a su perior intellectual alertness, but still have been seemingly incapable of putting their high religious ideas and ideals to the practical test of believing in and depending upon these same lofty traits in their human relationships. An official who has spent a quarter of a century in India expressed what the thoughtful and observant Westerner must feel who has lived long in this land when he said: "In my opinion the keenest and shrewdest brain to be found in any nationality is that of the Bengali," but he added, "he lacks concentration, perseverance, and practicality, otherwise he would rule both the busi ness and political world." Is this lack a racial one or a moral one? Is it physical, temperamental or more deeply seated in the happy adjustment of creed and conduct? Does the Indian business man fail because he does not know, or because he does not will to do? These are pivotal questions for the modernizing leaders of India. xm Religious Tbansfobmation IN India every fifth Indian is a Mohammedan. Mussulmans are scattered throughout India and mixed with Hindus in almost every section. For nine hundred years the Moslem has been proselytiz ing in India, his missionary work beginning not later than three centuries subsequent to the Hegira. Islam, in contrast to Hinduism, presents to the Oriental a comparatively simple and certain mode of salvation in its worldly type of monotheism, which for the Moslem is intended to answer all doubts and mysteries about destiny and to scatter all fears by the impressive and final doctrine: "There is no God but God and Mahomet is his Prophet." According to the Mohammedan a sov ereign Will rules the universe, explaining the deep mystery of existence; to him Whatever is, is right, because it is the will of Allah. In morals, as regards the intermingling of sexes, Mohammedanism is the least strict of the Asiatic religions. Mahomet and the Koran allow four wives to each man, free, or what is called triple di vorce at the will of the man, and a system of concu binage limited only by economic power to purchase slaves. It establishes and maintains the harem idea of marriage and gives little attention to the bridling and control of the senses. Nevertheless, the Koran punishes adultery with 186 RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATION 187 death and its adherents are evidently drawn to Is lam and held to it with remarkable loyalty, not by the sexual laxity of its laws, but by the peculiar grip of its high ideal — an ideal, indeed, vastly higher than its practice. One needs only to con sider that millions of women have accepted Islam, and to-day are among its most devoted followers, and also that Mohammedanism has always won Ori entals quite regardless of the worship of the senses, to realize that this great religion has had a stronger might than that of the flesh in its victorious march among Oriental people. The Indian's home has been for years the center of religious rites and ceremonies. Religion has been his education and his very life. To him do mestic functions are religious functions; social in tercourse has been religious intercourse, his voca tion has been chosen in the name and under the in fluence of religion; birth, marriage, his calling, and his death, in short every important event is a re ligious event. His religious temper, however, is conservative. He is the exponent of a people, who like the Jews of Palestine, consider themselves the inheritors of a national and exclusive faith. It is an inheritance too valuable and too special to be shared with out siders. The Indian, therefore, is not a religious propagandist; he is not an extensive but an inten sive religionist. He may be a radical and an in surgent in politics, but in religion his inclination is to stand by the faith of his fathers. This conservatism manifested in the religious temperament has been tremendously aided by the Hindu caste system, a system which John P. Jones 188 THE MODERNIZING OF THE OKLUJNT of India has designated as "the most rigorous, if not the most cruel, inquisition that the world has known." This system has been watchfully guarded by Brahmanism, and its strict laws have defied the entrance of other religions. Against these religious barriers other faiths for centuries have hurled their weapons almost entirely in vain. The Sikh religion was originally a religious and a brave attempt to harmonize Mohammedanism and Hinduism. At the present time, this also is gradu ally yielding to caste dominance and to the fascina tion of Hindu ritual. The religious tendency of the Indian is also, para doxical as it may seem, toward an universal re ceptivity in religious thought. Almost every shade of theological and metaphysical belief is found here. India has been surfeited by religious ideas. The Westerner stands aghast at the chaotic mass of conflicting tendencies and theories pressed into the theology and philosophy of the Indian. From some angles Hinduism is a hydra-headed idolatry, and her Pantheon is an unexampled exhibition of universality in religion. We are assured that there are 30,000,000 gods in the Hindu Pantheon, and that each attends to the affairs of his own particular jurisdiction. Most of them seem inclined to be wicked, cruel, and unkind, and delight in bringing misfortune upon their devo tees, which ill luck can only be averted by the inter cession of a priest. Gods and demons haunt every hill, grove, gorge, and dark corner of the country. Their names are usually unknown, but they go on multiplying as events or incidents occur to which the priests can give a supernatural interpretation. RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATION 189 According to a leading Hindu: "Under the name of Hinduism there still exists in India to-day a system of religion which embraces all the religious thought of the world. It stands like a huge ban yan tree, spreading its far-reaching branches over hundreds of sects, creeds, and denominations, and covering with its innumerable leaves all forms of worship, the dualistic, qualified non-dualistic, and monistic worship of the One Supreme God, the wor ship of the Incarnation of God, and also hero-wor ship, saint-worship, symbol-worship, ancestor-wor ship, and the worship of departed spirits. It is based upon the grand idea of universal receptivity. It receives everything." Professor Max Miiller says: "No phase of re ligion, from the coarsest superstition to the most sublime enlightenment,, is unrepresented in that country." A recent census returned 2,728,812 priests, which is an average of one for every seventy-two mem bers of the Hindu faith, and it is believed that, al together there are more than 9,000,000 persons in cluding monks, nuns, ascetics, fakirs, sorcerers, chelas, and mendicants or various kinds of attend ants employed about the temples, who are de pendent upon the public for support. This multiplication of gods and the swallowing up of all sorts and kinds of religious conceptions of other races has added picturesqueness but little vitality to Hinduism. Buddhism alone has been able to assert itself as a religious faith which through these two milleniums has insisted upon a distinct identity. Yet Bud dhism's great power has been achieved not in the 190 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT land of its birth, but amongst other peoples where it numbers millions of adherents. After ten cen turies of conquest in India, it too was absorbed or superseded as the dominant religion in India. Buddha himself was added to the personages in the Hindu Pantheon, as the ninth incarnation of Vishnu. Students of comparative religions are repeatedly confronted with a likeness between Hinduism and Christianity. Some of the deepest and most poten tial truths find common ground and common expres sion in these two religions. Yet it is the antipodal character of Hindu and Christian ideals rather than their consonance, which impresses the student of comparative religions. The Westerner is continually puzzled with the In dian's religious attitude. To sympathize with it one must study his early training, his traditional in heritances, and his endowments of spiritual and religious experiences and illusions. The Indian's emphasis is entirely divergent from that of the Western religious emphasis as regards Deity. The Hindu sees in Brahm or the Supreme Soul, intelligence idealized. His philosophy aims "to see the formless Being of the Deity, in the re gions of pure consciousness beyond the veil of thought." The Christian student finds in God per fect Will. To the Hindu, God is supreme wisdom, intelligence, all knowledge. His goal is Brahma- guana (Divine Wisdom). "Emancipation is only the perception of that which has existed from eter nity but has hitherto been concealed from us." To the Christian, on the other hand, God is Infinite Goodness. To the Indian, God is Divine Wisdom am^nffl The musicians in a Buddhist funeral procession at Mandalay. The body is beneath the canopy at the rear ." HtiiiMiHmT! A class in an Oriental college in Hyderabad RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATION 191 far away and vague. To the Christian, He is Love, near and "My Father." There is then a difference of starting points in religious ideals, a difference as wide as that which bridges the space between absolute intelligence and ethical perfection, and this difference is evident everywhere in the intellectual and argumentative Indian religion, as contrasted with the Christian re ligion of love and good works. The Hindu's fight has been against Ignorance, ("Eridia"), that blindness of the mind which fails to see that the Supreme Soul and the self are identi cal realities. To him final emancipation arises when these two are absorbed in one. Self-knOwl- edge has been the ideal of the Indian educated man. Self-control, on the other hand, has been the su preme ethic leading the Christian to "sovereign power." Ignorance is evil and wisdom is grace to the Hindu. To the Christian, sin is evil and that obliquity which clouds God's moral and religious beauty, is to be chiefly abhorred. To know God is of first importance to the Indian. To rebel against God in the heart is to the Christian a greater evil than not to know God with the intelligence. To be transformed into the image of God of righteousness is Christianity's ideal. To realize the Absolute beyond the self is the Hindu's ideal. Here then we have quite a different point of view, and this is vital and critical to all result. The Indian student thinks, argues, and meditates in his search for freedom from self. The Western stu dent acts, decides, and regards practical religious values. The Christian idea of religion is utilita rian. It must be serviceable and it must be po- 192 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT tently personal. It is partially expressed at least in Mr. Huxley's definition of the value of true edu cation, namely — that which gives a man the power "to do what he ought to do when he ought to do it, regardless of whether he feels like doing it or not." And the Western religionist also adds that this re ligious good must be in accordance with the will of God — the perfect goodness, the righteous Father who dwells not in any far away Nirvana but even within us : ' ' Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet — Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet." Hindu philosophy, theology and metaphysics are thus divergently dissimilar to Christian thinking, in their initial premises and emphases. The Indian is immediately affected by this differ ent attitude in religious ideals. Until recently he has had little care for altruistic enterprises. His morality, also, is a matter of small moment to him. The custom of his land has made it possible for him to hold the laws of social chastity of small signifi cance. He has been wont to laugh at any attempt at social and moral reform. No meeting for the consideration of such topics as social evils has yet been possible or largely successful among Indians, since they disclaim the existence of anything like purity or chastity among men. In short, these facts do not have a place in their religious furniture or ideals. The moral consciousness of India has never been deeply touched. An old Brahmin in Calcutta said to me: "Is 'stir the conscience' a RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATION 193 right use of English?" Upon receiving an affirma tive reply, he said: "This is India's great need, a stirring of conscience for the sake of distinguishing between right and wrong." The Indian's conception of sin is often emascu lated and buried underneath huge piles of cere monial. It has usually meant superstitious error caused by pollution, or a blindness which has re sulted from ignorance. The idea of sin in India has well-nigh lost its tonic of moral sensitiveness and ethical impulse. It is difficult to convince In dians of your meaning when you refer to such sub jects as sensuality. They understand perfectly ritualistic malfeasance but moral iniquity has little meaning for them. When we speak of Hinduism or Brahminism as a religion, however, it is only a conventional use of a term, because it is not a religion in the sense that we are accustomed to apply that word. In all other creeds there is an element of ethics ; morality, pur ity, justice and faith in men, but none of these quali ties is taught by the Brahmins. With them the fear of unseen powers and the desire to obtain their favor is the only rule of life and the only maxim taught to the people. There are signs of a new attitude, however, an attitude in which sin will consist of something more than an intellectual delusion or a ceremonial irregu larity. There are indications that moral hideous- ness will one day be disassociated with culture and education in India. British laws and social reforms of the West are making way and helping to rout the pantheism of Vivekanada which consists in the be lief that the only sin of which man is capable is the 194 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT sin of regarding himself as a sinner. At no distant date such a condition in relation to crime is bound to arrive among educated men that a murderer will be unable to say, as one did recently in India, "It was not me but God within me which slew the man. ' ' The idea of incarnation is a common ground, but its meaning is quite contradictory. To the Chris tian, the Incarnation of Jesus means perfect, moral rectitude. To the Hindu, the word conveys no par ticular moral meaning. The "descents" or incar nations of Vishnu are in the first place those of the fish, Sartoris, and the boar, and here morality of course is not a question of consideration. While, furthermore, the gross and sensual "Krishna," who is the popular full incarnation of Vishnu, has as little influence toward perfect morality as one could imagine. Vishnu has no definite spiritual or ethical significance. To compare his incarnation with the Christian conception is a most hopeless undertak ing. Furthermore, the Hindu idea is of a triumphant God and not of a suffering God. In this it resem bles the Jewish conception. The cross is a stum bling-block. The glory of the Christian incarnation resides in Jesus' spotless character, his cross, and his suffering and death. The Indian does not thrill at any of these conceptions. His ideals or his re ligious heroes haye always walked in the opposite direction. The Indian student moreover, has been taught from earliest infancy that the Divine is the one and only great reality. The world is transient, passing, a shadow, a mirage, a thing to be abandoned as soon RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATION 195 as possible. The body is but the poor temporary casement of the soul partaking of the general un reality of the world, and must, therefore, be cruci fied and detested. The Indian has been taught to think of life and civilization as devices to make men comfortable until they can escape into the Nirvana of ultimate Reality. There has been, therefore, little or no significance in history, biography, or social uplift. The man of India has cared little about political leadership or industrial progress. Even morals and ethics have been considered as expedients belonging also to an unreal and passing life, associated with things that must speedily break up and vanish. Religion, morality, and every other aspect of ordi nary life are thus hopelessly secular. Therefore, the only rational conclusion is — flee from the world, from time and matter, from man and civilization, from morality and religion; so that the soul, re leased from transmigration, may be united with Re ality. The ascetic is the only saint. This idea of a great Real God dwelling in lonely reality, diffused throughout the unreal world has given rise to Hindu pantheism. Each divinity of the Hindu circle has been, as it were, a rush-light in the darkness, a glass to give him back the truth. And this pantheism has been the source of Indian philosophy and some of the most notable literature of the world. Indeed, we cannot understand the Indian unless we understand his religious consciousness, for within him and upon all sides of him we discover the subtle influences of a great religion "a deeply considered 196 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT and a large spaced system," the religion of Hindu ism with its mighty ambition and its vast accom plishment. The Indian of to-day has inherited these deep ex alted and pervasive religious ideals which continue to strongly affect his whole thinking; in fact his attitude toward life in general. No knowledge of the Indian can be at all complete which does not re gard carefully a faith which has not only influenced India by its rigid asceticism and lofty spiritual con ceptions, but has colored the religious philosophy of every nation. His conception of the world is that of a make shift. According to the ancient Hindu philosophy, the world exists only to furnish an embodiment for the soul. It is simply the place for the former em bodied lives to continue their evolution. The things that befall men in life, both good or bad, are to the Hindu, simply the rewards or the punishments for existence of evil conduct in a past incarnation. The chief characteristic of the world, in the mind of the orthodox Hindu, lies in its retributive function. Transmigration is the answer to all the varied for tunes of men. This world process of undergoing birth and death is eternal. There are a multitude of worlds as well as a multitude of souls, and these go through consecutive stages of life and death as souls do, and time is thus divided into ages styled "Kalpas." However we may disagree with this conception of the world, it must be admitted that it is a lofty and comprehensive one. We here have the problem of world justice and human sorrow explained and united. The problem of good and evil which has RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATION 197 interested and puzzled mankind is here given at least a dignified explanation. The influence of this Hindu idea of the world which the Indian has inherited is manifest in the na ture and attitude of the educated men of India. The sense of the transitoriness, worthlessness or cheap ness of world values has directly affected both their thought and action. The ambitions of youth have not until very recently been cast in the channels of worldly favor or worldly aggrandizement. His ideals have been religious, philosophical, intellectual. Poverty has been no disgrace, while the leadership of political or social world movements has held for him small recompense, since these are associated with those conditions which are part of the transient and ephemeral world. The tourist in India is frequently shocked and disgusted with the gross sensuality and blatant mendicancy of the Yogis, or holy men, who frequent the country roads and especially the temples in the neighborhood of the sacred rivers, thriving upon the superstitions of the poor. These men are quite gen erally idle, lazy, hypocritical, dirty, and useless. They form a distinct clog upon the wheels of India's laboring advance. Yet while these priests, and especially the loath some fakirs, are met with indifference, often scorned by the students of India, these same students see behind these representatives of religion a great and mighty fact, and one which helps to shape their thought and determine their decisions. This fact of Hindu asceticism, especially in its historical ex hibitions and consequences, has been breathed into the air of their earlier education. Indeed, one finds 198 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT that the two epics of the Upanishads are still com monly read by the people and children in the vil lages, both in the original and in the vernacular, much as the Homeric poems were read by the peo ple of Greece. These students as children have committed to memory and believed the wild tales of "Mahab- harata" and the miraculous "Ramayana" and the books of Buddhism and the Jains, which tell of the exercises of these ascetic priests and heroes, and the wonder-working of their mystical and powerful charms. The hideous depravity of some of these tales has left a mark on the minds and habits of India's young men; while the perfect sincerity and heroic achievement of certain of the ascetics whom these young men have revered, such as Gautama the Buddha and Mahavira the Jain, have deeply, even if unconsciously influenced their minds in be half of their own brand of religion. Belief in these wonder working heroes has also prejudiced these educated Indians against the more practical and utilitarian conceptions of religious life held by West erners. That is to say, the men of India have been im pressed with the reality of their own great visual ized religions. They have felt the impulse and have been stirred to the depths in their boyhood by be holding their countrymen abandoning all that was dear, depriving themselves of all chances of self- gratification, literally dying to themselves for the sake of a spiritual ambition. While these wonder and are impressed by the self-renunciation of our missionaries from the West, they are not without similar examples of self-abnegation wrought by RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATION 199 honest devotees to their own nation's religious prin ciples, in the silence of nature, far from the haunts of men. The influence of this ascetic idealism upon the minds of the youth of India is fittingly revealed in the words of one who "has spent his life among India's young men: "The ascetic ideal is that a man shall give up work, home, wife, society, civilization, property, ordinary food, and dress, ornaments, amusements, and the religion of home and the temple, shall live in the forest, dress in a skin, a coat of bark, or in rags, beg his food, and give his mind to thought on God alone. He must practise mental exercises so as to shut out, as far as. possible, the outer world from his senses and thought. He must harm no living thing by speech or act. He ought, also to subject himself to torture of some kind, so as to sub jugate his body the more completely, and win release more speedily." This heroic, religious history, living in the con sciousness of Indians through the influence of epic story, hymn, or idea, forms the background upon which new educational or religious impressions must be superimposed. But the evidences found commonly among think ing men of India point toward an ever increasing belief in one God who rules all. The shadowy rea sonings which satisfied the ancient centuries have lost their power to convince the modern Indian. Polytheism and idolatry are vanishing forms in the minds of educated India. Krishna is to Hindu students the Divine Being and is considered as personal. To-day we find edu cated Indians saying naturally, "God is our Heav- 200 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT enly Father." A student who talked with me at Allahabad spoke of idolatry as a concession merely to ignorance and to untrained minds. The Brahma and Arya-Samaj adherents are outspoken against idol worship and often break caste. Even the auda cious claims of Mrs. Besant and the followers of Sankara 's Vedantism, give idolatry a place, simply because of human weakness. Students in govern ment schools for the most part, regard the priests in the Benares temples as a joke. They look at them somewhat as tourists view them, as more or less of monstrosities, interesting as fanatics might be. I watched students in certain services, who seemed to be attending much as they would go to spectacular entertainments. The holy men, even, sit upon spike-beds for revenue only. The golden temple and the monkey temple of Benares are only partially supported by the votive offerings of the stupid, worshiping coolies. Tourists, who are met by dirty priests, furnish a goodly proportion of the revenue which keeps open these diminishing signs of Hindu polytheism. Forsooth, the failure to give large fees to these mercenaries of religion calls down upon the head of the unsuspecting trav eler, blasphemy more earnest than the devotion which characterizes the exercises of the sacred shrines. When members of the educated classes visit these temples to-day it is much like the yearly visit of the Emperor of Japan to the Temple of Heaven — to keep up appearances. The real heart and life of polytheism is already dead among Indian educated men. The Hindu gods, Vishnu, Siva, Ganesa (elephant- RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATION 201 headed), and Kali, are doomed to pass, and this with rapidity, as did the like gods of Babylon and Egypt, of Greece and of Rome, for their hold upon reality is no stronger than was that of these former deities. In India, however, polytheism is being swept away by what Goethe would call the ' ' time spirit. ' ' Mod ern thought, and social activity, the interaction of industrial and world competition, the arousing of educated men to a sense of responsibility for gov ernment and for the new India, these are all potent influences in the demolition of these century old su perstitions. Does this mean that India is to accept Christian ity? If by Christianity we mean the form and the method of the Christian religion, known and prac tised in the West, one must believe that it is very doubtful; even if ten or even if a hundred times the amount of missionary effort were put forth, India would not thus be Westernized religiously. But if we ask whether the spirit of Christianity will be ab sorbed and adapted eventually to Asiatic needs, temperament and character, I for one, sincerely be lieve that it will be. I am not sure that Christianity will be sufficiently similar in its outward expression in Asia to be recognized at first sight by the Western Christian. It will be, and it should be, an Oriental product growing out of the rich background of Ori ental life and history. There will be, doubtless, many caricatures of the real spirit of the faith, as well as of its method, before anything like a perfect Christianity shall be evolved in Asia. But the true Christian who believes in his Bible and in the Chris tian God, and also in the Christian history, will not 202 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT be skeptical concerning the ability of his faith to adjust itself to the Asiatic. One of the first and ever-present drawbacks in Christianizing Asia, has been our Western fear of allowing Christianity to develop Orientally rather than Occidentally. What is the quickest way to modernize India? I asked of an English Official. He answered, "To make the educated men English gentlemen." Many a missionary made the same mistake, and endeavoring to Christianize India, placed before his eyes the ideal "to make the Ori ental an English or an American Christian." One is glad to see in the present-day missionary move ments in the East, the growing tendency to empha size an indigenous Christian religion. There is still much difficulty to be overcome, however, much dog matic prejudice to be eradicated, and much training of native leaders to be accomplished before great sweeping religious changes will be brought about. There is need, for example, in nearly every Asiatic country of the establishment of native universities led and taught by native Christians, and not by Westerners, a type of Christian El Azhars devoid of the obscurantism of the Moslem University at Cairo. In the last analysis it is the Oriental and not the Occidental who must Christianize the Orient ; the Westerner can bring the "Good News," but the Easterner must absorb and translate it into his own language, habits, and civilization. Those who have not traveled among or studied the Asiatic can hardly appreciate the problems that have confronted and still are confronting the Christian missionaries from the West. I venture to say that there is no more devoted class of persons at work RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATION 203 anywhere in the world than are these missionaries of Asia. Those who deride or harshly criticize them, have usually not seen sufficient number of them to form a just opinion, or they have taken an excep tional poor sample of the missionary product, as a proof for former prejudice. I met a certain American gentleman upon a steamer in the southern seas, who made bold to tell me that he had given his last contribution to Chris tian missions in India. I began asking him what mission stations he had really visited, and from what particular nationalities of missionary workers he had drawn his unfavorable conclusions. I soon dis covered that he had not really gone out of his way to visit a single representative missionary college, hostel, or rural station, but based his inferences upon the second hand and often biased opinions of certain officials or fellow tourists as ignorant as himself regarding the eighty or more years of mis sionary effort and influence among India's millions. The witness of educational and medical missions throughout the Orient from Egypt to Japan, quite apart from any other vision of accomplishment, give Christian missions the divine right of existence in the Orient. Add to this the Christian influence upon these Asiatic civilizations, an influence impossible of calculating in any statistical table of converts, and you have three great chapters of missionary victories in Asia. The two chief difficulties before the Christian mis sions reside first of all in that peculiar tendency of the Asiatic mind to be intellectually convinced with out necessarily acting upon his conviction, and sec ondly, in the great barrier of caste influence which 204 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT still makes public confession of Christianity another word for "outcast" in Indian society. This first characteristic of the Hindu to absorb mentally Christianity without actively participating in its public expression, Mark Twain has humorously de picted in the answer of his Indian servant, concern ing his religion : Yes, he very good. Christian god very good; Hindoo god very good, too. Two million Hindoo god, one Chris tian god — make two million and one. All mine ; two mil lion and one god. I got a plenty. Sometime I pray all time at those, keep it up, go all time very day ; give some thing at shrine, all good for me, make me better man ; good for me, good for my family, dam good. But even a greater antagonist to the advance to Christianity is the iron rule of caste. For a con vert to give up caste and openly profess the West erner's faith, means that he must give up his chief authority in the home over wife and children, the majority of his daily habits, the laws and rules gov erning his eating, drinking, and general attitude toward men as well as women. I shall not forget a pathetic talk which I had with a Brahmin in the city of Madras. As far as his belief was concerned, he was evidently a Christian. "I read my Bible daily," said he, "and with great profit. Occasion ally I attend the Christian church and in my heart I worship the Christian's God. But," said he, ' ' should I come out and publicly profess Christian ity, I could no longer abide under my own roof. I should be obliged to be untrue to my family obliga tions, and I should lose every bit of influence I have in the community where I have lived my entire life. RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATION 205 Could you advise me to accept Christianity publicly upon such terms?" These problems are, indeed, not easily solved and Asiatic religions like Mohammedanism and Bud dhism which allow all their converts to remain Asiatics, furnish a suggestive example to us as Western Christians who would give the benefits and the enlightenment of Christianity to the Oriental world. Here, as in other things Oriental, to attempt to force progress unduly, is unwise. Western mil lions cannot convert Asiatics at a sweep; Western buildings and Western methods and Western men may be truly effective only as they are incorporated and borne out upon a great natural tide of Oriental desire and progress. Much water must flow under the bridge before the Orient becomes truly Chris tian. Imperfect Christianity, as in the days of Con- stantine, will precede the finer product of later generations ; and after all, it is not the name, but the spirit and the values thereof, which are most im portant. We can and we must trust the Orient to reshape its religion and to utilize the fine mission ary inspiration, the wealth of experience and the de voted zeal of the Occident in finding her way to God. In this Pilgrim's Progress of religion, may we not hope and confidently believe that the spiritual minded Easterner carrying his own burden along his own Oriental way, may find here and there a new star to guide, a new light to gladden his own as well as his Western brother's feet to the City Beauti ful? XIV Romantic and Buddhist Burma EAST and south from Assam, through an impas sable tangle of forests, isolated by massive mountains from eastern India and geographically a patch of China, there lies a land of pagodas and golden palaces, a land whose religion is the worship of the Lord Buddha and whose national history is a pure romance. It is a small country as Asiatic countries go, this Burman land — but from its forest-laden mountains in the north, cut by rushing streams and picturesque valleys reminding one of the "Algerian Switzer land" in Kabylia, to the rice deltas lying in the sun upon the broad, fertile bosom of the Irrawady, in the south, the Nile country of Asia — there dwells a distinct race of men. Like the Chinese and more especially like the Koreans in physiognomy, are these people — Indo-Chinese in fact, yet totally un like the Far East in mysticism and national patriot ism; East Indians in superstition, yet free as America in their treatment of women; pleasure-lov ing and jealous of honor as the Frenchmen, yet seriously, blindly, and religiously conservative as were the Dutch puritans. I remember as a lad reading the life of Adoniram Judson written by his noble son, a Baptist clergy man in New York City, in which I recall what seemed to me then the most puzzling and remark- 206 ROMANTIC AND BUDDHIST BURMA 207 able fact, of a great missionary spending a life-time of effort in a small country without seeing in his own life-time, scarcely a single person accept his faith. And, though this vigorous and persistent pioneer-missionary's religion, since his death, has gathered to itself many adherents in Burma, I had always been curious to know what it was in this nation that so effectually held its own against such unalloyed zeal. If I have visited and studied this nation cor rectly, one characteristic predominating over many others, singles it out in startling particularity and makes it unlike any Indian province; it is the char acteristic passion of patriotism, bred no doubt by Burma's geographical isolation and generously fed by a towering and racial, religious pride. The secret of the Burmese is read in two sets of literature, one national, the other religious; the Chronicle of the Burman kings and the precepts of the Lord Buddha. The national literature is a kind of epic, the Maha Yazawin, over whose ballad pages the light of Aladdin's lamp has been thrown, turn ing every Burmese defeat into a Burmese victory and resolving every national reverse into a volun tary act of royal clemency. No Eric Brighteyes ever converted such impregnable tasks into a playful pastime as did the Burmese kings, according to these national, fabled Chronicles, which have influ enced deeply and permanently the Burmese char acter. Here we find the astonishing historical intelli gence that English overlords ruled in Burma only through the gracious favor of King Bagyidaw, who, strict follower of Buddha, sheathed his sword be- 208 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT fore the rush of Western usurpers, saying in the words of the great Gautama : All can take life but who can give it back? As an arch example of unadulterated muzzling of the press, notice the following account of the rea sons of national defeat given by the Burmese chronicler in this "national book of history": The kalabyu, the white strangers from the west, fastened a quarrel upon the Lord of the Golden Palace. They landed at Eangoon, took that place and Prome, and were permitted to advance as far as Yandabo ; for the king, from motives of piety and regard to life, made no effort what ever to oppose them. The strangers had spent vast sums of money on the enterprise ; and by the time they reached Yandabo their resources were exhausted; and they were in great distress. They petitioned the king, who, of his clemency and generosity, sent them large sums of money to pay their expenses back, and ordered them out of the country. One can hardly wonder that English directness and practicality were bewildered by the attitude of King Mindon, who after the second Burmese war in 1852-53, would not formally cede by treaty the Province of Pegu, which was annexed by the vic torious British, saying loftily: "Let them (the English) stay there ; I cannot turn them out, but I will not be written down as the King that gave up Rangoon." "A treaty with a man like that," said Lord Dal- housie, "is useless." Such striking instances of blind patriotism and such premeditated attempts to delude the people by ROMANTIC AND BUDDHIST BURMA 209 courtly fiction, are probably not on record else where. A popular custom of showing indignity to for eigners and elevating the glory of the Golden Feet, was in keeping the English envoys waiting for hours and sometimes for days, at the gates of the royal palace. When these representatives of other na tions came into the presence of Burmese majesty, they were enjoined first to bow three times to the building when entering the outer gates, then when half way across the Esplanade, they must again bow humbly three times and when fifteen yards distant from the king, they were obliged to submit to the regulation of another set of profound bows. .Sir Doughlas Forsyth in 1874, like all envoys to Burmese royalty, had to enter the royal presence in his stocking feet and was kept sitting cross- legged on the floor so long in a cramped position that he was obliged to have the court assistants as sist him to his feet. We are told by that detailed historian of Burmese customs, Shway Yoe, how King Mintayagyi, upon hearing that Colonel Symes was coming to see him, immediately started upon a long journey to Mingon whither the Colonel promptly followed him, think ing that there he would be able to secure audience with his Majesty without the complex and varie gated ceremonials required at the palace. In this idea the envoy was greatly mistaken in the Burmese character. When he arrived at Min gon, he was directed by the King's officials to take up his residence on an island in the middle of the river. Thus beleaguered in a most barren and un desirable spot, which the envoy found was shunned 210 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT by all Burmese as a place polluted, since here dead bodies were burned and sordid criminals executed, he was made to wait forty days during all of which time not the slightest attention was paid to him by either the King or his court. When it is realized that such national Chronicles, highly colored to aggravate national pride, have been for generations, with the exception of Burmese plays, the sole literature of this people, we are not surprised that one historian has likened the old- time Burman to the Centennial Yankee: Breathes there a Yank, so mean, so small Who never says, "Wal now, by Gaul, I reckon since old Adam's fall There's never growed on this 'ere ball A nation so all-fired tall As we Centennial Yankees." It is only through the forced necessity of Bur- mans to recognize Western modernization as it is now flowing into this isolated land through the new Government schools, displacing the monastery schools of the yellow-robed priests, and in the trail of Chinese, East Indians, Jews and Western oil and rubber-kings, that Burma shows signs of rising out of her historic, national delusions. Like other Ori ental peoples, she is becoming startled by the spec tacle of advancing trade. Business-like energy which for centuries has been lacking in Burma, the women rather than the men being the shop keepers and workers, is seen. Even the pleasure- loving comedy and contentment of a race is now stirred by the competitive time-spirit of a twentieth century world. In this conflict between the old and ROMANTIC AND BUDDHIST BURMA 211 the new to which she, with other Oriental nations must address herself, Burma has the advantage over well-nigh every Eastern country in the heredi tary freedom of her women, since here there are no veils and no purdahs, no forced marriages, and comparatively little of that domestic degradation which has hung like a millstone around the neck of myriads of Moslem and Hindu peoples. Burma, furthermore, in the richness of her agri cultural possibilities, in her mineral supply, as truly as in her freedom-loving atmosphere, is a land of promise. Here is a land with an area of 237,000 square miles, if one includes the Shan Provinces, holding a population of 11,000,000. In the number of her people she is almost identical with Egypt, and she is as devoted to Buddhism, as Egypt is allied with the religion of the Prophet Mahomet. Only about one-fifth of the soil of Burma is now under agricultural cultivation, and when it is realized that almost anything will grow beneath her tropical sun, the promise of her future in the land can be appre ciated. Burma is also rich in deposits of petroleum. I found that more than four hundred Americans re sided in Burma working in connection with the local oil companies. Her mineral products are rich and various; platinum, tin, gold and silver, and a considerable wealth in wolfram, that mineral which is used in the filaments of electric lights and also in the proc esses of hardening steel. I visited also rubber plantations which were presided over by Westerners who looked forward to a great future in rubber. One finds to-day more than 300,000 people in the 212 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT City of Rangoon, and the air of the town reminds one of beginnings and possibilities both in commer cial and industrial undertakings. The influence of Englishmen is naturally predomi nant in government, school, and business. The English have controlled lower Burma since 1826, and have held sway in upper Burma since the year 1880, when King Thebaw, with his atrocities and ec centricities, lost his golden throne. An outstanding Burmese problem to-day is that of labor. Life to the Burman, as to the Indian, has beeri a comparatively easy one. The sea has fur nished his food, and the climate has relieved him of the expense of clothing, while manual labor has been and is being accomplished for him by Chinese, Hindus, women, and elephants. The Burmese man is only just beginning to feel the thirst for gold and material acquirements. First of all he must learn to work. It will be no small task for a people who have inherited an easy-going, pleasure-loving dis position, spending their years in joyousness and a blaze of color to forget it suddenly, in order to ap ply themselves to the rigorous competitive demand of economic modernization. Burma for a long time will be "On the road to Mandalay Where the flying fishes play" and only in the alembic of time and forced necessity can she be expected to change her traditional in ertia into constructive and selective action. On the other hand, Burma must carry in her march toward progress a heritage of superstition great enough, to make a nation of animists if they ROMANTIC AND BUDDHIST BURMA 213 were not nominally Buddhists. It is, indeed, with Burma as with other Oriental populations, a ques tion of religious reform which is bound to determine the future social, industrial, and political status of the nation. Burma shares with Ceylon, Thibet and with large sections of China and Japan, the distinc tion of the followers of Buddhism whose literature and practise quite as strongly as her national his tory and pride grip the consciousness of her people. As in every other faith, there is a wide chasm of difference between its books of theory and its prac tical exemplification in life. One who would secure enlightenment as to present and future possibilities, must engage in two kinds of study. He must first discover how a religion becomes a reality in the every day life of a people, and secondly, he must try through the help of a larger world-knowledge to see how this consistency between principle and practise compares with that of other nations. It is not difficult for a Westerner to write books upon the weakness and even upon the wreckage of Ori ental faiths from the Western point of view, and especially if he loses sight of the comparative re lations of his own faith to his own works. Such treatises, however, are no more valuable as contri butions to correct perspective than many of the vitriolic tirades of the Moslem press against the Copts in Cairo, or the one-sided apologetics of Ben gali Hindus who still hold it anathema to cross "the dark water" separating them from a visible knowl edge of the success or failure of Western civiliza tion. To modernize the Orient or to Orientalize the Occident is not, after all, the great question. It is rather to find out through sympathy, and if pos- 214 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT sible through unbiased comparison, the really beau tiful and the really workable tenets of faith as these are capable of interpreting the soul in great mod ern action. I have tried in visiting Burma, as in studies in other Eastern countries, to find out what religion really meant to the native rather than what his type of religion might mean to me. The difficulty of such a task is ostensible, but its attempt and its fascination are obviously worth while. In Burma as in the East generally, religion is not a matter for the side shows, it is the chief per formance in the main tent. As in Germany, every man must prove his loyalty to the national Father land by at least one year's service in the army, similarly in Burma, every youth, for a certain time, must don the yellow robe of priesthood as an ac ceptance of loyalty to the religious Lord Buddha. To the Burman, the monastery school, guided by the Buddhist priest, has for generations been the means of education, the young Buddhist boy entering these schools at the age of eight or nine years. One of the most picturesque and impressive first sights of the traveler who is wise enough to rise early, is the spectacle of the yellow-robed priests attended by their chelas or pupils, going from house to house with their begging bowls seeking their daily rice. The priests, or Pongyis, as they are generally spoken of, are forbidden by their religion to receive money, not even are they allowed to touch it with their hands, lest something of their religious retiracy from the material world should be polluted. While at Mandalay, the city of 700 temples, I made a special point of visiting a large number of mon- ROMANTIC AND BUDDHIST BURMA 215 astery schools and was particularly impressed with the complaining attitude of the priests regarding the decreasing support afforded them by the people. The environment of many of these schools was touching in its abject poverty and belated methods. While I fully realized that these pedagogues were, as a rule, ignorant men and were the teachers of comparatively ignorant people, the sordidness of it all, not unlike the Moslem Kuttabs in the rural sec tion of the Nile country, was depressing. Through my interpreter I asked one of these priests who was busy over his rice-pot, if he would be willing to part with one of the implements, a large sized knife somewhat in the form of a hatchet, which is sup posed to be one of the special sacred prerogatives of his priestly function. He greeted this suggestion with a mild look of shocked contempt, but when I left his rickety thatched house, one of his attendants came running after me with the aforesaid imple ment saying to my interpreter, that while the priest was not allowed to part with this sacred badge of his calling, and of course could not accept or touch money, he, his attending chela, would give me the knife in payment of a rupee. This Buddhist acolyte received my money in a large red handker chief which, he had spread over his hand in order that he might not receive the ceremonial contamina tion of the foreigner's silver. What he did with this money as he returned to his chief of priests, might be a matter of natural conjecture. The in cident, however, furnishes a sign, not simply of the decaying standards of Buddhist ethics and faith on the part of the priests of this order, but it also dem onstrates the dying confidence of a people in a reli- 216 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT gious expression and a clergy which they are more and more loath to adequately support. I was impressed by the statement of a far-sighted Orientalist who said: "Unless her priests reform, Buddhism is doomed." In other cities and towns, however, I met and talked with many Buddhists both men and women whose intelligent devotion to their faith lifted them as high above these mendicant orders of the yellow robe, as the educated Brahman Inspector of Educa tion, who was my host in Benares rises above the superstitious worshiper in the monkey temple on the Ganges. One highly educated woman of the Buddhist per suasion in Rangoon especially, impressed me with her serious manner of piercing through a thousand superstitious ceremonials to that, which was to her a real incentive to holy living. "We must get back to the great Buddha," said she; "it is the teachings of our great religious leader which we follow. The people who bow down to the dirty priests on the roadside are simply paying homage to the yellow robe. The priest himself is a negligible quantity, merely an objective reminder of the precepts and the surrendered life of the great Gautama. Ignorance is our fatal weakness in Burma and knowledge is the hand by which Bud dhism reaches out to universal being." I was also struck in Burma as in Japan with the humanizing influence of Buddhism in its relation to the laws of kindness, the care and the sacredness of all life, and the Buddhist high devotion to Beauty. A convert to Christianity from Buddhism thus de- ROMANTIC AND BUDDHIST BURMA 217 scribes the attitude and the effect of these early teachings in Buddha-land: My parents were prominent Buddhists, my father being one of the trustees of the temples — that is to say, a man ager and controller of finances, for the priests touch no money themselves. Every full-moon day I used to go with my parents to the temple, and I loved to go because my mind was filled with the charm of Buddha's teaching. I thought there could be nothing sweeter in all the ideas of men than Buddha's noble teaching about Kindness. "There is great virtue in Kindness." "The greatest power is Kindness." "Kindness to man and animal." I worshiped in common with all Buddhists, but very de votedly because my heart was so deeply touched by this doctrine of Kindness, the Trinity of my religion — Buddha, his Teaching, and his Disciples. I thoroughly, almost pas sionately, believed the beautiful doctrines, and like other Buddhists would worship even an immoral priest because he wore the robe that Buddha wore. We are told by Buddhist scholars that many of the incomprehensible problems of their faith are intentionally surrounded with the utmost possible uncertainty of expression, since it is through knowl edge and thought as well as by means of the sum of a man's actions that the soul is free through its endless transmigrations from all contagion with ambition, passion, incontinence and the desire for wealth in the world. It is not difficult for a West erner, wallowing in the books of Buddhist philos ophy, to accept this statement as veritable fact. After one has read and studied for a certain length of time the multifold Buddhist ideas regarding the thirty-one seats of the world, the twenty superior 218 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT heavens, the twenty-seven Buddhas before Lord Gautama, the five great precepts, the eight great chambers of Hell, each surrounded by sixteen little hells, the grades in the state of animals, the worship at the Pagodas, the six blissful seats of heaven filled with the tinkling of gold and silver bells and intoxicating music, together with a thousand injunc tions concerning transientness, incarnation, perfect fixity, the extinction of Kan, the gradations of mer its and demerits and the entire hundred and twenty volitions and desires, one and all leading up through the millions of years of extinctions and existences to the blissful, unending joys of Neban or Nirvana, where the great silence lives and "where seeking nothing they gained all"; when one has added to these complexities the interminable subjects of study relative to monasteries and That noble order of the yellow robe Which to this day standeth to help the world, and when with the genuine order of Buddhists he includes the investigation of the schismatics, which is a subject almost as impregnable as the castes of India, one may well settle back upon the thought expressed by the devoted Buddhist in Rangoon that ignorance is always the chief hinderance in the at tempt of the individual to rise out of pain, vanity and temporalities into that far-distant and sacred calm of lifeless, timeless bliss. "The books say well, my Brothers ! each man's life The outcome of his former living is, The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woes, The bygone right breeds bliss. ' ' ROMANTIC AND BUDDHIST BURMA 219 It is indeed difficult to transport oneself out of the air of the vulgar, sight-seeing day, crowded with aimless tourists and distracted by the incon veniences of strange customs, to rightly conceive of our own religious conditions, not to speak of the attempt to catch the spirit of Asiatic Buddhism in its endless interweavings of thought and practise. Even the broadest minded student needs frequently to think of Mark Twain's proverb that the only ir reverence is irreverence to another man's gods. For after all, we are in Burma in the midst of a great spirit of religion, degraded and caricatured often, but to the Easterner a religion that must have some meaning and which must not be judged by isolated instances but by great general visions upon its effects among Asiatic people. It often helps to study another nation's religion in contrast to one's own. "Knowing is distinguishing," said one phi losopher. The contrast between Buddhism and Christianity, for example, are both profitable to study and thought provoking. As Christians we often say, with a conclusive air, that Buddhism is the religion of annihilation as contrasted with Christianity, the religion of Life, that the worship of Gautama is for the sake of merit, not for the sake of communion with God; that men and women visit the shrines and Pagodas superstitiously to seek for favors rather than to search after holiness or a release from the fetters of sin. One is struck, however, with the resemblance of certain Buddhist temple worship with that of Con tinental peasants worshiping before the figure of the Mother of Jesus, where prayers seem to be in 220 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT Europe, as do certain prayers in Asia, synonyms for a kind of fortune-seeking and a search for good luck. In Hare's "Walks in Rome," we find a descrip tion of a scene which calls forth similar occasions witnessed by many a traveler in Latin countries : It is not long since the report was spread, that one day when a poor woman called upon this image of the Madonna for help, it began to speak, and replied, "If I had only something, then I could help thee, but I myself am so poor!" This story was circulated, and very soon throngs of credulous people hastened hither to kiss the foot of the Madonna, and to present her with all kinds of gifts. The image . . . now sits shining with ornaments of gold and precious stones. Candles and lamps burn around, and people pour in, rich and poor, great and small, to kiss — some of them two or three times — the Madonna 's foot. . . . Below the altar it is inscribed in golden letters that Pius VII promised two hundred days' absolution to all such as should kiss the Madonna's foot and pray with the whole heart Ave Maria. Without attempting to judge concerning the real ity and religious devotion of his fellow men, one cannot but note a similarity between these bare headed, closely shaven, yellow-robed and sandaled priests, followed by their awe-struck acolytes in the streets of Mandalay or Kandy and the holy men at Benares, the dignified Moslem shiekh at El Azhar and also the pride-filled countenances of the priests of European Christianity and not altogether absent from the clerical demeanor of our English and American ritualism. There is the appearance at least of finality of revelation and religion, the air of tyranny of a settled and ultimate creed, the ROMANTIC AND BUDDHIST BURMA 221 definite reminder of a religion based solely on au thority. Is it in the East only that we find in laity and in clergy the look of I-thank-God-I-am-not-as- other-men? Is it in Burma only that we find men and women holding on like grim death to a set of formulas out of which the vitality of experience and the meanings of religious thought have long since passed? Is it at a great Mala at Allahabad that we find the only religious convention on earth in which men march to the music of traditions of the past which have never been expanded and adapted to the growing hungering humanity of a new century? Is it not true that in Western as in Eastern lands to-day, the sheep look up and are not fed? One sometimes wonders whether hidden beneath freer customs and breathing a liberty-loving air, we, the professional representatives of North- American religion, are not more or less Buddhists and Brahmans and Catholics and Moslems. Is it Eastern only to regard credulity as a virtue and deceiving one's good sense as an act of faith? Is the spirit of inquisition which is the spirit of re ligious tyranny, entirely dead amongst us, or is that same sure intuitive sense of right versus sham that makes the Asiatic priest at times repugnant to us, also a characteristic in our own churchly leader ship and authority which separates the professional Christian from the people whom we cannot get to church? Have we not noticed the face of conservative Christianity in America harden before the exhi bition or narration of theories and practises alien to its little round of education and environment? I recall seeing one of- our own priests of Protes- 222 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT tantism stand in a prayer-meeting and make the motion to exclude his own son from the church which was founded by the Christ of loving kindness and forgiveness, because that son had made his first misstep. I have never seen greater pharisaism de picted upon the drawn face of any Buddhist or Hindu holy man than the unloving face this father revealed that day. "How dwelleth the love of God in him?" a friend whispered in my ear. Some of us are not so old but that we recall the doubt with which one sect in our country towns looked upon the other with anathema in its eyes, and even heresy trials and self-appointed regu lators of morals frequently remind the world trav eler of the caste exclusions of India. What is this loftiness of look, this arrogance and bigotry of de meanor, written upon the countenance of the high caste Brahmin or the wearer of the yellow robe stalking in his petty dignity and officialdom through the streets and pagodas of Bombay and Rangoon, but a sign language of contempt for and outcasting of heretics — the children of earth who do not and cannot think as they do? East or West, regardless of color or race, the forces that make in greater or less degree, accord ing to civilization, the apostles of religious author ity are the same. In each case it is really a lack of entering in to the deeper consciousness and life and motives of one's fellows. It is the failure to hear the still, sad music of humanity; it is the building and supporting of that middle wall of partition which divides rather than unites the common broth erhood of man. Religion, when perverted, can harden hearts as no other force can do. I have seen ROMANTIC AND BUDDHIST BURMA 223 Western travelers look with awful disgust and pity upon the arrogance and idolatry of the Asiatic, and it is the same spirit which at home passes by on the other side of the Samaritan because he is not one of us. It is not geography, it is not always the name of a doctrine that determines our religion. Far deeper, said Jesus, is the principle of true religion — even "that which cometh out of the heart of the man." Religious restoration whether in Manda lay or in New York waits not upon doctrine but upon love; without it a golden pagoda is a tawdry shrine and a gothic cathedral is a cavern of gloom. A little word of four letters has wandered out of theology into the market-place of life because of our present day need of it; that word is Love. That word is the sign of the man of true religion, be he Asiatic, European or American, the man who can by sympathetic imagination put himself in his brother's place, who cares for the individual more than for the badge he wears, who has broken out of his heart that larger chamber where love is, who has not only read but has learned in the school of life Paul's great definition of a religious man, pos sessed of the greatest thing in the world, "the love that suffers long and is kind." An old missionary in India whose shadow like that of St. Peter seemed to heal, said when I asked him the secret of missionary success in Asia: ' ' I have none, I just love these people ! ' ' Is it heresy to say that we shall not modernize the Orient religiously until we have Orientalized our selves religiously, that we shall not convert the East to Christianity until we have converted our- 224 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT selves to the "new commandment" of love given by the Great Easterner who said: "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." XV China in the Crucible AS I leave China, after weeks of travel and in vestigation and interviews with her leading men, the retrospect is neither roseate nor reassur ing. The clouds of uncertainty and danger hover thickly upon the political horizon of this old nation. Yuan Shi Kai, who by common consent is conceded to be the only man in China possessing the ability or the political force to lead strongly his country, is implicated by the Kno Mingtang party and the partisans of the southern provinces with the assas sination of the nationalist, political leader, Sung Chiao-yen, while his acceptance of the five-power loan without the approval of the new parliament has brought down upon his head a storm of abuse and protest. One evening a mass meeting was held in Shanghai with 3,000 Chinese present, when reso lutions were adopted calling upon Yuan to resign and asking the provinces fo stop paying tribute to the present government. The latter request was hardly necessary to urge, since from time immemo rial, revolutionary conditions have meant to the provinces "no taxation." In an interview with Dr. Sun Yat Sen just as I left China, I found him predicting with gloomy brows, "War, civil war." "I have held back my friends," said he, "as long as I can. This alliance 225 226 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT of the president and his prime minister with assas sins is too much to endure. Southern provinces are certain to rise up in revolt, and there is much trou ble ahead for us all." Yuan, nothing daunted, has issued a decree to the governor general of the provinces to arrest all sus picious characters; it was even reported that the president had sent hired assassins to the vicinity of Shanghai, where it was said that tens of thou sands of desperate characters had fled to the For eign Concessions for shelter; meanwhile, thirty thousand troops are said to be marching southward from Peking to Hankow. A Peking paper, organ of the government, declared that Yuan must resign or resort to a coup d'etat. Another asserted that Yuan wishes to establish an imperial government with himself on the throne ; that he had spent 4,000,- 000 taels in buying up the Nationalists. So runs the tide of changing criticism about the new repub lican president. It looks much as though China was following France in her method of establishing a republic. As Louis Napoleon once said to Richard Cobden, "France makes her changes not by reformation, but by revolution." Through all these changes, the former Chinese political leaders are cautiously assuring themselves of safety. In Hongkong I found that one of the prominent Chinese who had assisted in drawing up the new constitution had moved his family into the precincts of the English protectorate for fear of having his children kidnaped. Wu Ting Fang, after his diplomatic years, is sitting tight in Shang hai, as he expressed it to me, "playing a watching, CHINA IN THE CRUCIBLE 227 a waiting game." But one notices that he is ob serving these diplomatic tactics in his fine home in the midst of European neighbors under the protec tion of the foreign settlements. The powers, five of them, America having with drawn, have nominally accepted the 25,000,000- pound loan agreement, upon which the tardy Chinese parliament has not acted, but which agreement has been signed by the president upon his own respon sibility. As I took my steamer for Japan, I saw officials with tall hats about the jetty, which meant that the government had just been receiving official news from the office of the consulate general that the United States had recognized the Chinese republic. Exactly what that means would be difficult for a practical onlooker fo define. The real republic seems to be a different entity from that known in America. In fact, only a comparative few at the political top are interested in the least in govern ment affairs beyond the payment of taxes and the preserving of peaceable conditions. The great deeps of the still and "brooding soul of China" are quite oblivious to this whirlwind of social and po litical change. The assembly at Peking, which should know what this republic means, have taken eighteen months to wrangle among themselves over petty matters and have only recently succeeded in suffi cient union to elect a speaker of the house. The foreign officials exhibit a tendency, prevalent among the majority of the sober men of all races and classes, to stand by Yuan as the only possible strong leader capable of bringing order and prog ress out of the present chaos. The northern army 228 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT is with the president as it would not be with another Chinese, Yuan being the only member of this race who has had the honor of organizing and conducting a modern army. Some of the strong governors also are in his confidence and are loyal to him, and if the foreign loan falls into his hands there would seem to be little difficulty in his subduing the present un rest, though this unrest might easily spread to the formation of new confederacies in this vast nation. One European Consul expressed the attitude taken generally by foreign officials. "It is a prac tical matter — a Chinese matter, and we must look to the necessity for practical results and peace rather than enquire too intimately into conditions that are as yet only partly Western, indeed mostly Oriental, in character and in treatment." One Sunday I attended a great mass meeting of Chinese in the 'Martyr's Memorial Hall of the Shanghai Young Men's Christian Association build ing. It was one of several large meetings held in the city that day to celebrate a day of Christian prayer for China in response to the unusual appeal made by Yuan Shi Kai and the Peking government for prayers for the new Republic. Chinese Chris tians were addressing the meeting of several thou sand crowded into the hall and standing in the aisles. The Chinese Minister of Finance, Wu Ting Fang, and other notable Chinese public men, with the lead ing missionaries, occupied the platform. It was a solemn, impressive meeting, an overflow gathering of many hundreds being held simultaneously in an other hall of the same building. Although cynical and political interpretations are usually attached to this call for a day of prayer, CHINA IN THE CRUCIBLE 229 among the business residents of Shanghai — a mem ber of Sun Yat Sen's railway firm saying to me significantly, "Assassins need prayer if any do" — the call has made an impression upon Christian and non-Christian China and should mark a distinct point of progress in the prestige of Christian mis sions. To endeavor to prophesy concerning the future through all these baffling tendencies, even to attempt to depict the forces which are now working in these kaleidoscopic changes surging about the empty Dragon Throne, is certainly difficult. I have asked scores of prominent Chinese the question, "Just what is happening at present in China?" In most cases they answer truthfully, "We do not know." One is at least convinced that it is not a new order so much as it is no order. If it is a democracy, it is a democracy tempered with despotism. The true meaning of the word Republic has hardly dawned upon the minds even of New China's political lead ership. The whole nation is a melting pot of dis jointed ideas and ideals; the old and the new, the Confucian and the Christian, the governors and the governed have been cast suddenly and promiscu ously into a great seething caldron of change and forces only partially understood by the participants themselves. Who can tell which or what will finally struggle to the surface and survive? It is certain that something of China's repressive conservatism, her huge inertia, has been stirred. But to call this half-formed, incoherent uproar of clashing official interests a Republic, or as one of the new leaders of China has expressed it, "the declaration of the will of the Chinese people" is to be blest with a 230 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT higher degree of imagination than is vouchsafed to the common man. Meanwhile the revolution is still on. The latest telegrams reveal that the prediction of Sun Yat Sen concerning civil war is not the dream of a dreamer. The results are on the knees of the gods, the end is not yet. China is only now discovering that to change the name of a political government does not necessarily solve her political problems. She may well consider the words of James Russell Lowell, who gave advice to America that is peculiarly suitable to present day China : "We have been compelled to see what was weak in democracy as well as what was strong. We have begun to recognize that things do not grow of them selves, and that popular government is not in itself a panacea, is no better than any other form except as the virtue and wisdom of the people make it so, and that when men undertake to do their own king ship, they enter upon the dangers and responsibili ties as well as the privileges of the function. Above all, it looks as if we were on the way to be per suaded that no government can be carried on by declaration. ' ' Whether the result will be that Yuan shall be made supreme as the head of a Republic or become a monarch as some predict; whether the Manchu government will return as others maintain it must do; or whether China's disunion will mean her eventual dismemberment, those who know the Chi nese best believe that they will bring victory out of defeat in accordance with their immemorial habit of stumbling along through chaos to order, accom plishing often the seemingly impossible. It is al- CHINA IN THE CRUCIBLE 231 ways to be remembered that Chinese merchants do not want war; that the people are tired of revolu tion; that national patriotism does not run in the Chinese veins as it does in Japan, but that China craves, beyond all else, peace and with it prosperity. If the present political leaders, sinking selfish and partisan interests, can convince the people that the new government will bring about such essential conditions for the happiness of these slow moving and conservative people, the Republic may be as sured. XVI Along the Canals in China IF you would see and know the real China, you must follow the canals that make of central China especially, a net work of waterways, a kind of Oriental, rural Venice. These canals are to the country folk in China, what the Nile is to the Egyptian fellaheen. They are the sole means of communication; the carriers of both population and produce. They link together the country and the city, the farmer and the sea. Everything depends upon the canal in inland China. Out of its depths the Chinese peasant dredges the rich, fertilizing mud for his land. Along its banks in the deserted sections, grow the reeds with which the Chinese make their sleeping mats and boat covers. Into these canals the people place their great water wheels which are turned by the village water buffalos and the canal water be comes the system of irrigation for the fields. The boat of the farmer takes his rice to the market and the same boat takes his family for an outing. In these crafts one finds beggars and itinerants taking refuge on the canals from the famines as well as from war and flood. On the Canal boat occur all the tragedies and joys of life. Here the Chinese are born and marry and die. In some boats you can easily pick out father, mother, and grandmother, brothers, and 232 ALONG THE CANALS IN CHINA 233 numberless children; then extra places are rented to lodgers. These water habitations are freezing cold in win ter and scorching hot in summer. Their inhabit ants observe no sanitary laws and some of the boats look that dirty that one concludes that no microbe or self-respecting germ would condescend to live in them. In some parts of China, Foochow for example, I found literally hundreds of people who lived on their boats and had never slept upon the shore. It is a life apart and among the most fascinating ex periences of the Oriental traveler come back in memory the days when he floated along leisurely on the Grand Canal between Hanchow and Peking or followed some of the numberless branches of this main water way, which winds like country roads in the West, throughout the rural parts of central China. The villages and often the separate houses, in deed, have smaller private canals to their doors. One seldom sees roads in these sections, only the towpath or footpaths winding from village to vil lage. The villagers place their farmhouses at some distance from the large Canal because of their fear of canal pirates and thieves. It is, moreover, a just fear. We were told of an incident concerning the son of a missionary who had married and had just started upon his honeymoon taking a boat trip along one of the large canals. Upon rising in the morn ing he found that thieves had been aboard his houseboat and had taken literally everything in sight, not excepting all of his clothing. He was 234 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT obliged to continue his journey clad in paja mas. To those who really go to China to capture some thing of the spirit of this old and wonderful land, a houseboat trip upon the canals is a necessity. One often wonders why the tourists are satisfied with taking the round of sight-seeing trips in the big port cities like Shanghai, Hongkong and Peking where the Orient is so largely Occidentalized, hardly discovering the China of a thousand years ago, as it can be seen so easily by boat trips into the in terior. Around Shanghai, the country is traversed by canals which are often only wide enough to permit the passing of two boats. You will secure a house boat, a craft sixty feet long, comfortably fitted with cabin, drawing room, dining room and one or more bedrooms. At the back of the boat is a small kitchen and behind the kitchen an after-deck upon which are the two big sculls and beneath which the boat crew is quartered. The houseboat has a captain or laudah, who lives on the boat and receives a salary of six dollars a month upon which he himself lives and quite likely supports a numerous family. In addition to the captain one usually engages five or six coolies whose total wages are certainly not exorbitant, usually not exceeding a dollar a day for the entire six. Each one of these coolies boards with the laudah paying six cents a day for his rice, vegetables, and some cheap fish. The boats are moved by various means, some times by sailing, at other times by sculling or by A water-gate entrance to the city of Foochow, China The steam river-boats at Hongkong contrast pleasantly with the jinrickishas on the quay ALONG THE CANALS IN CHINA 235 being towed by launches which leave Shanghai for the interior of China each day. All this at $5, or one English pound per day. It is difficult to say which one finds most inter esting on these canal trips, the inland cities and villages or the strange, droll sights and noises greet ing one in the rural districts. Soochoo, one of the large inland cities, which one first reaches on such canal voyages, gave us a different impression than anything we had seen even in the native parts of Shanghai or Nanking. There are water gates for the entrance of the boats into the city and these as well as the seven gates to this walled town are closed at night. The keys to these gates, in an official city at least, that is in a city where there resides a governor or viceroy, are taken to the official residence for safe keeping at night and one needs only to attempt to trespass upon these gate laws to realize with what strictness the Chinese hold to some of their old conservative customs. With the morning, however, you leave your house boat and pass into a veritable hive of Orientalism. You are plunged at once into a great sea of shops, for the Chinese are the shopkeepers of the world. Indeed, China may share with all Oriental races, certain traits and tendencies, but in her shopkeep- ing instinct, she is unique among nations. India may surpass her in imagination and speculative re ligious genius. Japan is clearly her superior in military alertness and efficiency, but in the unadul terated genius of buying and selling small wares, the Chinese-«re supreme among Orientals. In the words of Archibald R. Colquhoun : 236 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT They are the original, true and only real shop-keepers, and in every position of life, even the farthest removed from the atmosphere of commerce may be said to think in money. As with the Jew, their instinctive habit is one of perpetual appraisement. It has been this commercial instinct, inborn in the Chinese race and cultivated beyond all other faculties that has lost for China her territory and has made the present political revolution most diffi cult for the leaders. The Chinese do not care for war, they have always studiously avoided it. They have made few demands upon their conquerors, the Manchus, for the past eight hundred years, save that they be allowed to go on unmolested with their shopkeeping and money-getting enterprises. The leaders of the new republican regime tell me that in these days of revolution and unrest in China, this hereditary bias towards business, this persist ent determination to amass a fortune by trade, is the chief drawback to a speedy and firm establish ment of government. When trouble or disaffection arises in a certain section or Province, the Chinese merchant inhabitating the turbulent district, gath ers up his household gods with haste, and flies with his portable business to some protected quarter like Hongkong or the foreign district of Shanghai, there beginning again his shopkeeping life under the pro tecting aegis of a foreign flag. "If these shopkeep ers," said Mr. C. H. Lee of South China, in speaking to me of the difficulties of the new Republican offi cials, "would only stay by their business and their homes and be willing to do a little fighting for the new principle of government and future political ALONG THE CANALS IN CHINA 237 quiet, we would very soon be able to establish a re public. ' ' This allegiance to the dollar, however, is even stronger in China than in Egypt, where the piastre and "the pound" are the constant accompaniments of every conversation one may overhear in any cir cle whatsoever. Chinese upon fhe street, in their homes, or in their times of relaxation, coolies, la borers, shopkeepers, boatmen, it matters not what may be the calling, will be talking of the cost of things. Abbe Hue says: The Chinese has a passionate love of lucre; he is fond of all kinds of speculation and stock-jobbing, and his mind, full of finesse and cunning, takes delight in combining and calculating the chances of a commercial operation. The Chinese, par excellence, is a man installed behind the counter of a shop, waiting for his customers with pa tience and resignation, and in the intervals of their arrival pondering in his head and casting up on his little arith metical machine, the means for increasing his fortune. Whatever may be the nature and importance of his busi ness, he neglects not the smallest profit; the least gain is always welcome and he accepts it eagerly; the greatest of all is his enjoyment when in the evening, having well closed and barricaded his shop, he can retire into some corner and there count up religiously the number of his sapeks, and reckon the earnings of the day. The Chinese is born with this taste for traffic which grows with his growth and strengthens with his strength. The first thing a child longs for is a sapek; the first use that he makes of his speech and intelligence is to learn to articulate the names of coins; when his little fingers are strong enough to hold the pencil it is with making figures 238 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT that he amuses himself, and as soon as the tiny creature can walk and speak he is capable of buying and selling. One of the first impressions of the traveler as he arrives in China from the Malay States and India is along the line of this industry in trade. No one has been carried through the streets of Canton but has noticed the difference between the comparative slackness of industry and attention to trade, both wholesale and retail, among the Indians, and that which meets his eye in the well ordered stores whose name is legion in this Chinese city, or in the great hongs and warehouses where the Chinese rather than Europeans are the successful heads of large industries. Nor is it entirely greed that actuates the Chinese merchant. He loves to bargain. It is to him his play as well as his toil. It was said that Li Hung Chang used to derive more pleasure from "doing" an employee out of half a month's pay, even if it took him an entire afternoon to accomplish this, than if he had saved a Province to the Empire. We are told that the Chinese student who wishes to ingratiate himself with a rich uncle is usually wise enough to play a losing game at chess. One need only spend a day in the tortuous streets of a native Chinese city to realize that nothing in the way of shopkeeping is foreign to the citizen of the Middle Kingdom. In fact, one remembers China in the term of shop-hemmed streets. The Westerner would scarcely call them streets, these winding paths less than eight feet in width — lined with cubby-hole stores from which the scent of silk- stuffs, fish, and bamboo comes forth to greet one, ALONG THE CANALS IN CHINA 239 mingled with many other street odors that are not perfumes. With the possible exception of the Souks of Tunis, there is nothing more curious in the Orient, nothing more diverting than are these native Chinese streets. Some of them are arched over with carved roofs, hung thick with signs of black lacquer and others are gay with flamboyant banners crying forth in startling colored characters the nature of a mul tifold merchandise. You are hurtled along in a sedan chair carried by two or three stout coolies whose "hi ! hoi ! ' ' bearer's song, in rhythm with their swift pattering feet, adds to the pleasing and strange sensations of that Orientalism belonging to the Chinese bazaars. Your chair is swept by great gilded fans that float above a shop window and lure you toward a fan shop. Gay silken hangings brush your side as you are borne swiftly along, reminding you that silk stores are at hand. The street crowds are as fascinating as an Ara bian Night's dream. Here you see in miniature the Chinese world. A coolie darts along carrying on either end of a long bamboo pole, balanced on his sturdy shoulders, great wooden buckets containing hot water or refuse or perhaps great bowls brim ming over with rice. A gong sounds and your bear ers crowd your chair into one of the small shops where you watch some old Manchu pass, seated calmly in his green chair, spirited along upon the shoulders of four chanting bearers. He is heralded by an advance guard of boys carrying the axes, banners and umbrellas which are the insignia of the 240 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT great man, while behind his Chinese Lordship, trail a picturesque bodyguard of dignified looking secre taries, and guards on horseback. There are funeral processions, too, attended by chanting priests and wailing mourners clad in white — the sign of Chinese grief; old women pass with shining coats and sleekly combed hair, carrying in cense to the temple and paper, counterfeit money — for the gods, who do not know the difference. Twenty coolies claim the entire street through re spect for their burden as they swing along to a sharp, lyric, warning cry, bearing between them a monstrous mast of pine. As background and color for these scenes so strange to Western eyes, there are sudden kaleido scopic effects made by sweetmeat sellers piping their plaintive invitation on painted bamboo flutes; old men on donkeys, glimpses of the mask-like faces of the Chinese ladies peeping out from behind elabo rate curtained chairs as they are whisked along by liveried servants. Your dreams at night are a kind of potpourri a la Chinese, as you sleep a tired, won dering sleep, filled with beggars, jade, toy shops, and porcelain, teak wood, fortune tellers, rikshaws, and the click of the habacus; yellow-robed priests, curving roofs, half-shaven heads, the smell of leather and tea chests and the sound of beating brass commingle in your dream; weavers, dyers, clattering tinsmiths, fearsome smells of fish, var nished pigs, Chinese humor and Chinese fatalism, with all the indescribable impressions in the realm of Oriental bargaining, make your houseboat slum bers memorable, and when with the morning light your boat moves you along toward the inland life ALONG THE CANALS IN CHINA 241 of peasantry, you feel that you have lived many years in one brief day in a native city. I had expected the canals of China to remind me somewhat of the poppy and hyacinth fields of Hol land, with possibly a pagoda for a wind mill and a blue-gowned peasant in the place of the neat, white- - hooded Dutchwomen. But I found a far different world, far more quaint and strange than the life along the canals in the land that Hollanders have redeemed from the sea. It is different in so many ways. Surely it is older, older than Europe and older than Nineveh and Babylon. You somehow feel as never before "that a thousand years of Eu rope is but a cycle of Cathay. " It is a relief, indeed, after the surfeit of new scenes and towns to lie stretched out in the sunshine in your long cane chair on the deck of the moving house, snatching first glimpses of that remote and unfamiliar land so far removed from the pride and progress and "base conquest" of the West. We now begin to move amid the vast reaches of rural life which is con ducive to thoughtfulness — the farming men and women toiling upon well-tilled fields and terraces, or wading in the rice bearing valleys or bargaining in the populous villages filled with dogs and chil dren: they are following the avocations of their fathers of primordial centuries. We are coming close to the real people of China. This mysterious, patient, resisting, peace-loving, industrious, and un fathomable blue-clad people, are our antipodes in their almost every thought and custom, these un numbered folk who compose one-third of the earth's population : 242 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT "Who can see the green earth any more As she was by the sources of Time? Who imagines her fields as they lay In the sunshine, unworn by the plow ? Who thinks as they thought, The tribes who then roamed on her breast, Her vigorous primitive sons?" It is well worth a trip to the Orient to experience the indelible and subtle reality of those forces that make up our fundamental humanity, as one sees them plainly in this unhurried planting and reaping, breeding and dying life of the simple, laborious, but on the whole, happy Chinese toilers. This genuine detachment from our world conquering organiza tions and labor saving devices, this relief for a time from all the bonds of scientific modernity has brought many an Occidental back to himself, con verting a leisurely trip along the canals of China into an unforgetable life epoch. To this plain and independent, agricultural people, whose hopes and fears are bounded by their rice fields and numerous households, our Western advances and armaments are as unknown as they were to their celestial sires ; or if they have heard of them they are still, to the Chinese, the "unaccountable, uncomfortable works of God." To be sure their little round of work is encompassed and shot through by the great and compelling economic necessity, by ancestor worship and by fighting off disease, poverty and famine, but au fond it is the life story of the sons of men, more clearly seen here in this unframed picture of land and sky and humble farmers, where simple things stand out like solitary trees against the sky line. One does not easily forget those curved blue-tiled ALONG THE CANALS IN CHINA 243 roofs, glimpses of which can be seen from your houseboat among the groves of bamboo and camphor trees. Sometimes there are tiny hamlets composed of less than a dozen houses constructed of loose stone and covered with. ivy. Frequently an entire village is made up of the members of one family. It began with one man in a past generation with his wife and his sons. The sons married and brought their wives to the parental roof tree. New generations rose and new wives and an ever increas ing horde of children necessitated new houses and then you have the considerable village, and round about the fields of tea and millet and rice where the various branches of the family, men, women, chil dren and babies, all take part in planting or har vest. Especially in harvest time it is no uncommon thing to be able to pick out three or four genera tions, grinding the millet seed, or stripping the cot ton fiber, which is shipped off to the larger towns by boat. The usual Chinese village houses in the country (and the farmers live in villages as a guard against pirates and thieves) are one story mud dwellings with thatched roofs, or, when the people rise in grade, the homes are of blue-gray brick without mortar, built with roofs tiled in the same color. In front of the house is a hard, beaten ground upon which the thrashing is done. Two rooms usually make up the home of the prosperous family, the front being the storage room for the few farming uten sils, while the room in the rear is kitchen, dining room, drawing room and sleeping room for a con siderable household. Light and ventilation are con- 244 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT spicuous by their absence. There is no way of heating the houses and therefore windows which admit the cold are not popular. The banks of the canals are the popular rendez vous both for work and play. You often pass a sociable family group sitting by the water side ; one woman is washing the rice in the stream, another is attending to the family laundry while a third is washing the common utensils of their household, the entire group occupying a space within a radius of ten feet. It is fortunate that these rural folk have learned to boil or to cook everything that they eat. Raw vegetables and cold water are taboo. You will see these peasant folk drinking hot tea or hot wine, for tea is the national drink and every peasant who has a few feet of land, cultivates a small tea patch and prepares his drink by the simple process of pouring hot water on fhe green leaves. To harvest these leaves for trade, he dries them with a char coal fire and tramps them for hours with his naked feet to get rid of the remaining moisture. He aft erwards steams the lowest class of dust, presses it and makes it into solid blocks called "bricks"; this is the "brick tea," the poorest and cheapest article. Not far from the women chattering at their work along the bank, one discovers the dyer washing the superfluous dye from the blue cotton cloth which clothes the hordes of Chinese millions ; or a farmer is preparing the carcass of a goat or sheep for the market. We can see the children leaning over rail ings in the private homes in the distance and you are sometimes fortunate enough to catch the glimpse of a higher class Chinese woman with an unnat urally red and white face, laboriously dressing her ALONG THE CANALS IN CHINA 245 dark oiled hair in front of an odd shaped mirror. The mirror looks Chinese but if you examine it closely you will doubtless find that it was made in Germany. Clam shell windows or windows of paper are cus tomary when the family have any windows at all. Once in a great while you will see in better class houses, a pane of glass as the center of the window with the inside of clam shells set about it. Even in these out-of-the-way places, foreign in ventions and conveniences are slowly but surely making their way. The common dip in a basin of bean oil or the native candle is being replaced in the prosperous homes by lamps and kerosene. These lamps are invariably smoky and add one more odor to the variegated smells of the Chinese village. But it is in China as in other places in the Ori ent at nightfall that many of the impressions of the day become fixed and vivid. There are some things so sharply indented in consciousness as to be un- forgetable; certain things Oriental, are indelibly fixed in memory. The first night on the Nile and the song of the shadoof men with the warm air of the desert on your face ; the moist hot and still air of a first night with its blazing stars on an Indian sea as you sleep upon the deck; the patter of the Nasan's sandals and the sliding of the rice paper doors in a little Japanese country inn ; these will be remembered after one forgets his foreign souvenirs and the society of shipboard and the European hotels. Likewise a houseboat night on the canals in China leaves a print on the brain. As twilight approaches the singing and laughing 246 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT at the great water wheels,, which lift tons of water daily to irrigate the precious land, has ceased. The tired farmers are coming back from the fields to their villages, following in groups of twos or threes the devious, well-trodden paths. The boats are now being tied up along the canals and the quarreling cries of the boatmen are hushed. Soon the village farmers can be seen in shadow outline gathering with their households about the evening rice beneath the sheltering arms of some great memorial tree; there are sounds of jests and pleasant story-telling; the tapping of pipes and the laughter of children float to our ears. As the night comes on, the mist is rising ghost like and lying in great patches over the paddy fields. There comes the clanking sound of closing cottage doors, for rural China lies down with the sun. A belated farmer hurries along with small lighted lantern for the streets are lampless; he stumbles over what you surmise is the body of a sleeping beggar curled up for the night by the side of a winding footpath. The shrill cry of dogs is heard in a distant hamlet ; one by one the little bean oil lights go out in the villages, and now only the heavy breathing of your boat's crew is heard or the evening breeze stirring in the reeds or the soft rip ple of the waves that break from beneath the broad bows. You are alone with the stars and the sleep ing Chinese sons of toil — and you know that China, timeless, faithful, hard-working China, is dreaming of ancestral palaces and tea fields where her chil dren are free from back-breaking monotonous toil. We have watched the night gods put rural China to sleep, and we cannot forget. XVII Young China and Education CHINA furnishes to-day the unique example of a nation which in five years has completely revolutionized its educational system. Five years ago I stood in the old pagoda tower overlooking the examination halls in Nanking, where 13,000 Chinese students had just completed their last examination under the old Literati system of ancient Chinese clas sics. To-day I have been marching through modern University buildings that might exist in Germany, England, or America. These Universities have eliminated much of the memorizing of old Confucian studies. They have copied Western scientific and mechanical methods. They are preeminently practi cal. During these five years the growth in the num ber of institutions and the quality of instruction has been phenomenal. Educational missions have fur nished the background for a large part of this ad vance. To-day the entire Chinese nation seems to be awake to the truth that education is the hope of China. This hope is expressed in three Chinese uni versities, nine universities so-called, and fifteen to twenty colleges maintained by foreign missions; in a military college in Peking; a medical college also founded in Peking in 1906 quite largely through Missionary influence; engineering colleges, Peyang University, Tientsin; a school at Tang Shau with three foreign professors, together with engineering 247 248 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT departments at Peking, the Polytechnic, and the University of Shansi ; also seven industrial colleges, and a large number of private institutions of sec ondary grade in various parts of China. In 1905 when five Chinese Commissioners visited the United States, scholarships were offered for competitive examination among Chinese students by Harvard and Yale Universities and Wellesley Col lege. The results of these scholarships have been a growing number of students both men and women who have been sent out into modern China equipped with Western learning. In July 1907, 600 candi dates came up to Nanking to take examinations in connection with these scholarships. Thirteen stu dents of this six hundred were chosen, of which three were women. Twelve women are now studying in Great Britain ; two women physicians trained in the United States are in charge of a hospital in Kiukiang; another Chinese woman is the head of a hospital in Foochow, and still another is editor of a paper in Peking. In China, as in India and Egypt, the educated Oriental young man is looking for an educated woman for a wife. There is no hope for the social order otherwise. The student who re turns to the old environment in China after years of study in the broadening and enlightening atmos phere of Western learning, must either find there a woman helpmate and sympathizer, one whose point of view is harmonious with his own, or, as the only other alternative, if he succeeds in remaining in his home environment, he must put off his robes of Western culture and become as he was before, a mere cog in the wheel of century old custom and conservative routine. YOUNG CHINA AND EDUCATION 249 One of the amazing surprises comes from the ob servation that the experience of Britain in India has not affrighted China. In fact she seems to be following in the steps, mistaken as they are, of In dia, gaging education in accordance with its meretricious value as a means to official appoint ment. This founding of education and the offices of government on a competitive examination may work in China. It has never worked elsewhere. To be sure the new products are very different from the old, and the man who has gone through the more practical Western training, which China is pre paring herself to give, is much more capable of ad ministering a set of new and modern laws and guiding the world's business of the twentieth cen tury than were the literati, schooled exclusively in Chinese classics. There is, however, a feeling of uncertainty already evident in China that these young Western trained students in European clothes with their glib English and their revolutionary ideas, lack something that the old Chinese, with his experience and his hard-headed training in business, could afford. Japan for example, has not thus built her new and modern civilization. She has sent to America and to Europe not merely her youngsters, but her ruling classes, and as these men returned they found their old places waiting for them, to which they have brought both the old and the new in a more truly intelligent amalgam. I find some of the older Chinese already begin ning to fear for this new, secular, Western-trained product. Sir Kai Ho Kai said to me in Hongkong that they had placed two Chinese professors in the 250 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT new Hongkong University with the particular object of training the students in the ancient Chinese clas sics for education in ethics and moral restraint, lest the tremendous sweep of the new utilitarian studies should carry them too far away from the age long traditions of China. The educators of this country may well study the results of this machine examination method for making men of affairs, which are now being reaped in India. Not all the problems of an Oriental country are to be solved by turning out as many civil servants as possible from what has been aptly styled ' ' The Western edu cation sausage machine." Western learning is go ing to be good for China but it must be made good in China and its representatives need to be reminded frequently that it is in China and not in Germany nor the United States that they are to work out their salvation with these new ideas. One cannot but feel that at present Western education is com ing a bit too rapidly to be permanently efficient. From 1895 to 1908 it seemed that Japan was to be the chief influence in Chinese education. As many as 15,000 students were at one time studying in the Japanese Empire and returning to bring Jap anese learning, even to the most remote Provinces of China. It seemed to be very much easier and much less expensive to get education from a nation that had signally proved its military strength over a European Power. Then, too, the Chinese remem bered how in 1880 the Viceroy of Nanking sent forty students to the United States promising them employment and offices- upon their return, and how these students returning to China had brought back merely the veneer of habits and dress of fhe West The wife of a Chinese farmer on wash-day "; ISFTOBf W~* ^ E 4^1fi2&flllK^.9l*» bo.c o YOUNG CHINA AND EDUCATION 251 and how these youth in that disillusionment and disappointment which is the seed of discontent, for the most part had been obliged to return to their old ways of living and became strongly anti-foreign. The government was not ready for these young re formers. China still was clinging to her conserva tism. Imperial officers had not then been sent throughout the world to study modern schemes of commerce and soldiery. To be sure a more suc cessful experiment was tried when in 1876 forty-six students were sent out by the Foochow Arsenal to study ship building and navigation. These men on their return were successful in finding places in the diplomatic service, and helped in the awakening de sire of China for a place in a world wide military policy. On the whole, however, the Western trained students of the eighties found the atmos phere of China hardly congenial for the exercise of their newly trained powers. Japan, herself, assisted in wrecking her prospects of becoming a permanent tutor of China. Self-con fident in her own recent successes, she began to pre sent to young China a superficial and secular type of education, and the students who studied under her discipline often returned to be disturbing factors and revolutionary in tendency, much to the conster nation of quiet, peace-loving China. It was about this time that America, by a wise foresight, returned the indemnity fund required of China in view of the Boxer outrages, with a sug gestion that the money be spent upon education. This turned the tide of students toward the United States, until at present there are 717 Chinese stu dents in American universities of whom 443 are in 252 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT private and the remainder in Government institu tions. Yale University has founded a college at Changsha, with fourteen American professors and a large number of Chinese instructors, where she hopes to reproduce the same kind of training as is carried on in America at New Haven. Various recently founded American college missions, such as the University of Pennsylvania's medical school in Canton, are also adding to the American influ ence in Chinese education. There is to be sure, that ambitious plan of Rev. Lord W. Gascoyne Cecil who has asked the British public for 125,000 pounds for the endowment of an Oxford and Cambridge University in China, to gether with a request for a like sum from America. This institution aims to counteract if possible, the ultra materialistic and practical education which the Chinese have copied so largely from the United States. The result of this plan is still doubtful. Important as it is to stem the tide of the education which seems to be riveting its eyes entirely upon dollars, getting the husk rather than the kernel of Western learning, the tide of the times is appar ently too strong for this type of cultural institution in China. A. R. Colquhoun in speaking of this plan of Lord Cecil says : Whether any transplantation of University customs or even personalities can supply the atmosphere of Oxford or Cambridge, remains to be seen, and it is more likely that the frank materialism and the more democratic methods of American Universities (in which a large proportion of Western trained students graduate) will flavor the new China too strongly to allow of a more subtle and delicate aroma. YOUNG CHINA AND EDUCATION 253 And in our opinion this inability of the West to transplant Western culture in old China may not be entirely unfortunate, especially at this time. For while China must needs receive her practical methods of scientific education from the West, she may not need to a like extent to import her cul ture or her ethics. In fact it is largely in accord ance with the way in which she maintains the body of her own moral and spiritual civilization that her Western science and mechanical arts will flourish. You can give a people methods of doing things, but you cannot make her men. She must do that for herself, and one who is at all acquainted with China must feel that the in herent capacity of this old nation which, for two or three thousand years, has been capable of holding to a social and ethical ideal, may also be trusted in this grave crisis of her modernity, to find the way to inspire her sons and quicken their spirit. XVIII MODBENIZING THE FILIPINOS FOR reasons adequately obvious to me at the time, during the entire three days of the six hundred and twenty-eight miles of rolling sea from Hongkong to Manila, in one of the smallest and most sinfully unsteady steamers allowed to keep afloat, I recalled frequently a remark of Oliver Wendell Holmes upon his first crossing to Europe. It was to the effect that, previous to that time, he had contributed to the Atlantic Monthly but never before that trip had he contributed to the At lantic daily. Perhaps it was because of this disturbed intro duction, or possibly due to the fact that the West ern mind and constitution get jaded even unto cyn icism by a year or more of travel and investigation in Oriental lands; anyhow, my anticipated interest and enthusiasm in the Islands, over which, through the fortunes of war, the Stars and Stripes of my country float, were not immediately forthcoming. Apart from the superior, industrial training and governmental reforms enacted by my countrymen there, also excepting the presence of the biggest and best conducted jail (with I might add, the largest number of inmates, I have ever seen any where on earth), I found comparatively little to inspire one with the presence or with the hope even of a great people in the Philippines. The East In- 254 MODERNIZING THE FILDPINOS 255 dians, despite their many weaknesses, impress one as an intelligent and spiritual race, capable also of slow but decided advance through training. The Chinese lead the world in industry, and they have a great saving common sense; while any extended study of the Sons of Nippon, brings the realization of an alert population, racially rich in patriotism and possessed with a distinct individuality. The Filipinos, however, give one the impression of a race still in the shadows of barbarism, shifty when educated, opportunists as politicians, without deep attachment to any historical background, and, seemingly more unreliable and trivial in serious purpose and religion than any other considerable section of humanity in the Far East. The conception may be false and too common of looking for people of insight and imagination be neath the southern cross. We somehow expect romance, intense individuality and tradition among islands that "lift their fronded palms in air," and amongst people secluded from the mod ern world's unceasing noise and strife, where only soft winds blow across sunlit seas upon lands where it is always afternoon. Be that as it may, when the Western traveler is fairly torn asunder, as to both body and temper, by obstreperous and almost carnivorous rikshaw coolies and carriage drivers before he reaches his hotel; and when he arrives thereunto (in this case a newly erected structure, resembling The Potter at Santa Barbara, upon the miasmic marshes that now form the Manila waterfront), to find the prices soaring at the only decent hotel in town to four and six American dollars a day; where carriage 256 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT hire is doubled for the hotel guests and where breakfast foods and pork chops cost more than they do at the Waldorf or the London Carlton, he begins, as an American, to feel much at home. He cer tainly has no reason to dream that he is visiting the Orient. But for the color of the servants, he might imagine himself more readily at some Marlbor- ough-BIenheim at Atlantic City or at Brighton at the summit of the high-cost-of -living season. The Filipinos seemed to have copied most of our American vices, and as yet to be quite unconscious of any American virtues. Not having any heredi tary body of convictions and customs of their own, they have not seemed to think of searching for such foundation in the civilization of their new rulers. The most easily adaptable people imaginable, they have copied the last fashion in hats and shoes from "Frisco" and Chicago, and, unlike the Japanese who are also arch imitators, have not thought of wearing their modern habiliments as Easterners, but are quite willing to give their souls as well as their chapeaux in exchange for something Occi dental. If readiness to ape others, and suscepti bility to change are marks of self-governing capac ity, the Jones bill should have been passed for the Filipino part of these islands some years ago. In almost every other characteristic demanded by a sturdy and independent selfhood, individual or na tional, the inhabitants of these Islands give the im pression of conspicuous singularity among Far Eastern peoples. To be sure it is a comparatively small population — eight million souls — but the territory, comprising some three thousand, one hundred and forty-one MODERNIZING THE FILIPINOS 257 islands of all sizes and conditions of civilization and barbarity, contains 115,026 square miles, a larger arable area than that supporting 50,000,000 Japa nese. The country, moreover, has had a chance for development that is measured by centuries, Manila being founded in 1571, shortly after the islands were discovered by Ferdinand Magellan. There is a kind of lives-there-a-man-with-soul-so- dead sensation, trickling up and down the spinal column of most Americans as, after months of Asiatic wanderings, they look out of their cabin windows on a tropical morning upon the headlands of Luzon, and sailing calmly into Manila Bay, pass the rocky island of Corregdor, and get a glimpse of the floating colors at Cavite. The American is more or less mindful of that May day in 1898 when, by one tragic stroke, Ad miral Dewey and his fleet ended Castilian suprem acy in the East and involved the non-colonizing American in that which has been for this Occidental of the Occident, one of the most incongruous and unsatisfactory enterprises of his history. When one sallies forth to get his bearings and Orientation — traveler-like — after his first dinner in a new land, there are signs enough of Yankeedom to make the native of the United States quite com fortable. It is something to be able to wander through streets whose signs talk to you of Pear's soap, and Boston garters, and to feel again real ice-cold, chocolate soda water percolating into your anatomy through a regulation, dust-specked straw in an ail- American drug store, while your listless eyes gloat upon advertisements of Bull Durham and fall per- 258 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT chance upon the serene undying face of Mrs. Lydia Pinkham. There are, indeed, certain parts of Manila, this metropolis of our American far flung battle line, 11,600 miles from New York via Suez, with its nearly one-half million of people, where, but for the Spanish padres, two-wheeled sulkies and an occasional touch of medievalism in an old cathedral, you might easily feel that you had dropped by mistake into a city of Texas near the Mexican border. The Filipinos however, in their latest style straw hats and turned up trousers, have out- Americanized the Mexican quite as truly as they have forgotten many of the habits and customs of their former European masters. I found the "Government" was in its summer home at Banio when we arrived, and after present ing my letters of introduction, and making my plans for the investigation of schools and the vari ous institutions of the Islands, we startexl properly guided by a Filipino teacher from the University of the Philippines, to see a bit of the real country life of the islands ; for one soon finds that it is not in the changing Westernizing hybridism of Asiatic cities, but in the children of the land that one reads most quickly and surely the spirit and the charac ter of a people. It was on this journey, at stations and at small villages where the lodgings are huts of bamboo and straw lifted high on poles, where cock fighting rather than agriculture, seems to consume the chief time and thought of many of the inhabitants, and where the beauty of flowers and the cultured palms of the Buddhist's Ceylon and Burma were absent, and the banana tree is the only resource standing between MODERNIZING THE FILIPINOS 259 the Filipino and starvation, that we caught the de pression of this passive, pulseless land. I talked en route with one of the one thousand or more Americans who have married Filipino wives. His status (or was it the influence and the ambition- less air of his misalliance?) was indicated by the fol lowing narration, which I give as nearly as possible in his own words, in answer to my question regard ing his family life: You know these Filipino women gamble too much, but I fixed my wife all right. I told her that if I found her gambling my money away again, I would lick out of her! You know I'm the only one in the bunch up our way who makes steady money ; the rest are all loafers and they think I'm an easy mark. My Filipino teacher guide took me to the country. village where he was born. It consisted of perhaps two score of dilapidated straw roofed houses, with two or three old Castilian-like homes, filled with the same kind of half-Occidentalized furniture and orna ments that I found in the home of my Bedouin Chief in the Egyptian Fayoum. The streets were de serted. There was no hum of pastoral industry, nothing resembling the laborious Nilot farmers, no busy shops like the Indian and Chinese villages, no lines of fellaheen women with pitcher clothed heads, singing as they wind their graceful way homeward from the Nile, happy in the simple rural happiness of activity and home-making. Here, it was the burden of the tropics. The air was drowsy with sleepy indolence that seemed to be a contagion. My professor, who was educated in America and had a teaching position in Manila, 260 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT was evidently infected by it, for he said, "You know, I am tempted to come back here to my old Filipino home and settle down." The only real life apparent in this town consisted of a crowd of nondescript young men whom we dis covered in a backyard pruning their roosters for a cock-fight. This was something doing at least, and I eagerly took their pictures in various stages of the national sport. To the Westerner, the game is weak and cruel and "not worth the candle. ' ' Sharp knives are attached to the feet of the cocks, which soon tear the throats of their opponents. In a circle round about, an indolent crowd squat and put up their few pesos on the event. The Moslem Morro and the fighting tribes of Min- dano, with their barbarism and their bolos, im pressed me as being far more vigorous at least than the degenerating and stagnating inhabitants of cer tain Filipino rural villages. Not even the energetic Americanism, which has for more than a decade been poured into these islands, seems capable for Fili pino regeneration. But it is for such a vast mission of civilization, that we have sent twenty thousand American sons to the Philippine Islands, charging them in the words of Kipling : Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need:l To wait in heavy harness \ On fluttered folk and wild, — Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child. And these Americans, military or official, have not been recreant to their new and gigantic tasks. In MODERNIZING THE FILIPINOS 261 less than fifteen years, they have brought to a de cadent, belated land, the rejuvenation of a scientific and industrial new birth. They have taken this monsoon, semi-tropical land for which the United States paid $20,000,000 indemnity to Spain, and have touched it with the magic wand of modernity. New and broad highways — sanitary improvements — city buildings of Western pattern — trolley cars and ice plants — pure water — and a system of industrial and primary education hardly surpassed in Asia; all these things have sprung up, as in the night, be fore the inexperienced but ever-efficient genius of the American, arch-apostle of utilitarian prog ress. Five hundred miles of steam railways now carry the population and the products of the soil which are mainly sugar, hemp, rice, cocoa-nut, coffee, and lumber. These same colonists have converted the city of Manila, which, only a few years ago, served as a dumping ground and sanctuary for grafters and criminals and the expatriated men and women of Eastern Asia, worse even than any Levantine Port Said, into a city of order and cleanliness. They have carried out the idea of the early gov ernors, and have placed Filipinos upon the Govern ing Commission, teaching them the fundamental principles of self-government by participation in local authority — a thing which England did not learn to do until she had been fifty years in India, and then not entirely at her own unaided volition. The American in the Philippines also has not feared to tackle that most difficult of all difficult questions in the Orient involving religion, and the settlement of the issues Relative to the Friars' lands, 262 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT seems to meet with general satisfaction among people of various classes. There has also been founded and equipped the University of the Philippines, favorably comparing with institutions of this order in the Orient. There have been gathered nearly one-half million children into schools that are under supervision. One finds a first-class Young Men's Christian Association system, together with a brace of missionary activi ties including hostels and schools for both boys and girls. The Americans have also begun and have accomplished much in the standardization of Eng lish as a medium in education, one of the first neces sities in producing a unified, educational policy in the Orient. Through the able leadership of the late Director of Education, Mr. Frank R. White, to whose courtesy and kindness visitors and investigators feel deeply indebted, one sees here advances in craftsmanship and trades-schools that may be studied with profit by both Americans and Europeans, being examples of enterprising genius, unique in this branch of edu cational training. For days, under the conduct of trained experts having in charge the manual training and trades- schools, I visited the institutions which are laying the permanent foundations for future success in the Philippines. Designing, carpentry, machine shops, basket-making and domestic science are carried on under the most modern circumstances of machinery and method. One sees almost every practical art from the dexterous stripping of the Tipon-tipon palm to be converted into the weaving of a lunch basket, to the manufacture of an automobile in which the A native Filipino porter A Filipino woman going to market A woman selling bread in a Bombay street MODERNIZING THE FILIPINOS 263 educational officials ride in their tours of inspec tion. The educational creed of the islands is epitomized in the words of Lowell, which the educational director has placed as a foreword in his Philippine Craftsman and incarnated in his working policy: No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him; there is always work and tools to work withal, for those who will ; and blessed are the horny hands of toil ! Although the American occupation of the Philip pines has brought about advances that are revolu tionary in their beneficial influence and sweep, the problems of the islands are ever present in the minds of the foreigners who are either temporarily or per manently finding here their homes. One of 'these problems arises from the fact that the islands are rich in timber lands, and also con tain fine possibilities for the growing of such products as rice, cocoanuts, tobacco and other trop ical crops, but that, as yet, American capital has found investment in these lines to be attended with considerable risk. Some friends of mine not long ago sent a repre sentative to the Philippines to look up the feasibility of lumber investments. The firm was a wealthy one and capable of putting in large sums of money if a report from their agent was favorable. He returned to say that although he found sections rich in timber land, the inaccessibility of these sections and the difficulties of securing labor of the right sort, together with many problems connected with transportation, made such investment most uncer tain and problematical. 264 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT I talked with a group of Americans who had made a trip to the Philippines especially for the purpose of investing in cocoanut plantations, but upon hear ing of the impediments attendant upon this tropical industry, the discovery and preparation of the soil, the securing of the right exposure, the labor of pre paring copra and many other difficulties connected therewith, abandoned the idea as impracticable. A further large problem facing prospective in vestors is the problem of labor. If the Chinese could be employed in the islands, many of the doubt ful questions of tropical cultivation undoubtedly would be solved. Filipino labor has not proved especially profitable though modern machinery is slowly being utilized to advantage. The Chinese, however, are to the manner born upon Eastern land, and have already turned the tide of in dustry in the Malay Peninsula and Java. On the other hand it is thought, and probably it is true, that the introduction of Chinese labor in the Philippines would work to the decided disadvantage of the Filipino, if it did not entirely deprive him of a place in fhe smaller industries of the islands. An ever-present difficulty is that of legislating at home for a people who live nearly 12,000 miles away. There is in America, and naturally enough, no such general knowledge and no such settled administra tive policy governing colonies as that which is found connecting the British Parliament with its Asiatic dependencies. The policy of governing India, for example, is in the main, a generally conceded and settled one, going on steadily like the English Con stitution, more or less regardless of Viceroys and changing home ministries. MODERNIZING THE FILIPINOS 265 In the Philippines, contrariwise, the shifting of party administrations at home are inclined to be fol lowed by disturbed and uncertain conditions. My visit to these islands occurred at a time of such unrest, due not only to unknown or undeter mined plans as regards the best things for these islands, but also, one is bound to believe, to the ignorance of legislators concerning Asiatic situa tions and peoples. One of the first pieces of news that greeted me upon arrival at Manila, was the dubious intelligence that the Government revenues had been falling off five hundred thousand pesos a month for several months, and the reason given by the officials was that a new political administration at home, with a somewhat different attitude toward the self-government of the islands, was throwing out of balance the whole system of trade and busi ness conditions. Without going into the merits or demerits of the case, one could easily see that all departments were being affected by the change. The educational officials and directors were feel ing the insecurity of trying to work out advance policies that had been made to cover a period of years. I talked with many Filipino politicians also, whose views varied to be sure, as widely as most politicians' views vary in both the East and the West, but regarding one question all were more or less agreed. That question was "the Philippines for the Filipinos. ' ' The attitude was not unlike that which one finds to-day in the new nationalism of Egypt, India and in fact, in the political attitude of every subject race in the Orient. One prominent native official declared: "It — self-government — may come to our islands in eight 266 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT months ; it may linger for a year or more, but our people about Manila at least are thrilled with the expectation of some form of independent self-con trol of the country on the part of the native inhabit ants. ' ' One who has not been "on the ground," can not possibly conceive of the changes in sentiment that can be brought about amongst an Oriental people by that which may seem to be, at the base of home government, a mere reiteration of policy. No one, I am sure, if he had not seen it with his own eyes, could appreciate the precarious unsettledness into which the discussions in Congress regarding the Jones bill have thrown the foreign as well as the native population in the Philippines. There are many misunderstandings growing out. of distance and the contrasts between the mental point of view of America and Asia, but the problem which is always uppermost both in the United States and in these islands, is associated with the self -independence of these people, whether or when it should come and by what means it should be brought about. We are told that a certain diplomat who was closely associated with President McKinley in 1898, stated that the Philippines were annexed because no one could suggest any other feasible way of dealing with them. As far as one can learn from association with those who have reason to know most accurately the temper and the life of these people, there is but one opinion at present amongst officials and American colonists in the islands. This opinion is to the effect that for the present and for a long time to come, the United States must remain at the helm of gov- MODERNIZING THE FILIPINOS 267 ernment in order to save the islanders from them selves or to obviate an exchange in the islands of government by the United States, to government by another European nation or by Japan. There is little doubt that the wilder tribes, which are by no means civilized, as frequent outbreaks prove, because of their powerful fighting qualities, at pres ent would overthrow any Filipino government that might be left unprotected by Uncle Sam's troops, making necessary intervention by some stronger power a veritable necessity. Those who have contrasted the character and abil ity of the East Indians, for example, and their abil ity to rule themselves, with the heterogeneous views and capabilities of these island children, are gener ally united in the opinion that the intelligent Indian should be given self-government generations ahead of the Filipino. On the contrary, the American Government is based upon the conception of freedom in a way that British government and colonization cannot fully understand or sympathetically appre ciate. The United States, to be consistent there fore, must take the position that the general principles which control at home must be given, sooner or later, the opportunity to express them selves in each of its tributary states or dependencies. In other words, the Philippines furnish the some what unique meeting-ground between ideal theories and practical politics. Here we have a melting-pot in which are seething the diverse problems known in a half-dozen of Asiatic areas, combined with the multitude of Western administrative Republican ideas and forces which have not yet been brought to full fruition in America. 268 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT The Federal official finds himself more or less distracted between his practical desire to follow England with an iron hand of authoritative ruler- ship, and his own inherent temperament and train ing which would give the "square deal" of statehood to these people. Add to these conflicting sentiments a constant stirring of the caldron by the ever- changing partisan politics at home, and you have the political dilemma of the Philippine Islands. The end is not yet, and in fact the end cannot be prophe sied with any accuracy. In the way of the English men, the best we seem to be able to do at present is to play the game of civilizing and modernizing in accordance with the plan already so wisely and suc cessfully inaugurated, and trust in the "muddling through" idea, assisted by developments which at present can only be guessed. Of one thing we are sure, the United States has put its hand to the plow and it cannot look back. In all probability there are more problems ahead than those which have already been encountered. It is a great job and a fine one, but when it is eventually accomplished, one can have little doubt but that the islander of these southern tropical seas will have grown to somewhat of the stature and the independent individuality of the free-born American. XIX In the Real Japan UNTIL you have slept for weeks beneath a padded foutan on the floor of a Japanese house ; until you have boiled your flesh in a hot bath tub in a rural Japanese inn, so that your skin re sembles in color the lobsters served in the night restaurants of Broadway, you have still to discover the reality of the Flowery Kingdom. Unless you have drunk "O-cha" at every hour of the day or night, until you are ashamed to look a tea chest in the face ; until you have been lulled to sleep by the watchman's clap-clap of brass, as he passes by your rice paper doors at night, or have been awak ened by the patter of the Nasan's feet, as she comes to light your brazier in the early light, you have yet something to learn of the life of Japan as it is to-day. Until, furthermore, you have learned how to be happy though sitting shoeless and cross-legged on your mats in a chairless room, and have learned to love the sound of waterfalls and the tinkling of temple bells ; until these with a hundred other local sights, sounds, smells, and physical sensations have mixed with the currents of your Western blood, I venture to say you will not love nor truly sympa thize with one of the most fascinating and romantic set of folks in all God's wonderful creation. You have your choice in a visit to Japan. You can go to a European, accoutered hotel and eat in 269 270 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT different imitations of your continental table d'hote meals at seven dollars per diem and at night be guided by a professional half-thief through the streets of Tokyo's Yoshiwara, accumulating Japa nese bric-a-brac, kimonos, and lacquer ash-trays en route, and you will go home to call the Japanese tricky and arrogant and every woman a daughter of shame. On the other hand you can assert your independence of the whole crew of globe-trotters, personal conductors and guide books, and make straightway for some little, rural hamlet deeply secluded from all the signs of Westernization. As you approach, the tilted picturesque roofs of the village on the well tilled hillside, look from a dis tance like a flock of gray winged birds just settling for the night. Here with the smells of the rice-fields and cherry blossoms for your nostrils, with glancing cascades and bird song and the rattle of wooden clogs for your music, with soft hills, wisteria and verdant valleys for your eyes, with pearly rice grains for your diet, with the smiling humor of rural faces for your ever-changing amusement, and — if you are wise — with the white crown of Fuji Yama at sunset for your reverence, you will find the real charm and beauty of these island children, and Japan will live with you ever afterward like the memory of a summer dream. If one really believed that modernization, as we think of it here in the Occident, with all its strain ing progress, its steam plows and its ten-room flats, was more competent in making people happy or useful, we would easily cease to pray for the con tented continuance of these pastoral conditions. IN THE REAL JAPAN 271 But when we place these Far Eastern people with their industry and cleanliness of life and motive, over against the rural conditions of our own popu lation in Maine or Pennsylvania, or compare them with our outposts of village life on the Western table lands, composed of a few stray board huts, a church and a dozen saloons ; or when we compare the pov erty of rural Japan, for it is real poverty, with the grinding, despairful country struggles for bread of many an English or Irish Riding, one cannot be blamed if he hesitates to inflict upon these sons of Nippon, our entire present status of modernization. My former experiences in the Orient led me to spend considerable time in the Japanese inns, both in the country and the city, for if one can put up with certain inconveniences, you will get more of the real country in this way than by many trips in the modern Westernized centers. It is first neces sary to have a letter of introduction, since Americans and Europeans are not welcome guests in many native inns. The proprietors claim that Western ers are untidy and soil the tatami, the immaculate matting with which the floors are covered. Our credentials being forthcoming from a Jap anese friend, we first sought out the proprietor of a small hotel which catered chiefly to the residents of a certain northern Province of the empire. After considerable searching, we found our hostelry in a tiny crooked street that seemed to wander off at random. Its roof covered entrance gate carried a long lantern, swinging in the breeze and upon which were written, in Chinese ideographs, the name of the inn. Entering a tiny yard we came to what takes the 272 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT place of the entrance hall in our homes, where we were met by the maids of the hotel all kneeling on the veranda touching their heads to the floor and murmuring "Welcome, Welcome!" in musical Jap anese. We presented our letter to the proprietor and after a few moments' hesitation he asked us to remove our shoes and follow the maid. She took us to what is called "an eight mat room," which means that it takes eight mats to cover the room. These mats are three feet by six, consequently this room was four yards square. The room looked bare enough to us at first and appeared much larger than it really was, because of the absence of all furniture. On one side was an alcove six feet long and three feet deep with a polished wooden floor raised about six inches. On this floor was a vase with some branches of flowers arranged most artistically, and hanging above them was a kake mono, picturing the jolly god of Happiness, in soft tints of brown. The partitions separating us from the other rooms of the house were made of thick ornamental paper pasted over sliding screens. Opening upon the tiny veranda were sliding doors covered with thin rice paper which admitted light but which were not transparent. From this veranda we looked out upon a typical Japanese courtyard in which was a miniature pond, surrounded with rocks of various shapes, a diminutive mountain cov ered with dwarf pines and maple trees, a stone lantern, a torii and a large bronze Buddha. Our luggage was placed in one corner and we made arrangements in regard to our food. It took time and many bowings and drawings in of the breath on the part of our host, who tried his best IN THE REAL JAPAN 273 to understand our guide-book Japanese. When this was satisfactorily arranged they all touched their heads again to the mat and left us. Soon our little maid returned with a square box filled with ashes on which was built a charcoal fire. On this fire an iron kettle is kept day and night in order that hot water for tea making will be always ready. As the maid prepared the tea, pouring it out into the miniature cups, and slid it across the matting to us, we felt very big and awkward and out of place. For some reason one's dignity goes away with one's shoes and we looked most woefully tall when we stood up, and most miserably uncom fortable when we tried to sit on the matting. When we sat on our feet, they pained us and when we stuck them straight out in front of us, they took up all the vacant space in the room. Then there are the wonderful street scenes of the real Japan. It does not seem to matter much whether you are in the city or the country, wher ever found, the Japanese stores are the shoppers' paradise. There is also in some districts of Tokyo a Fair going on each week, and upon these occasions, the sidewalks are converted into shops; tiny stalls are erected along the curb, decorated with lanterns and flags, and everything that one can imagine is tempt ingly offered for sale. It seems as though every alternate shop and the majority of the Japanese retailers are interested in the manufacture and sale of toys for children. Japan impressed me more than any other Eastern land, save possibly Burma, as being a children's country. The most self-contained Japanese counte- 274 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT nance breaks into a smile at the approach of these tiny sons or daughters of the Flowery Kingdom, who often resemble nothing so much, in their bright colored kimonos, as animated dolls. There is, indeed, what is called the "Feast of Dolls ' ' on the third day of the third month, and in each family, the doll store house is opened on this day and all these playthings, big and little, that have been accumulating in the family for many gen erations, are brought out with great care, and placed upon red covered shelves in the best room in the house. Here they rule the household for three days. In many of the better or wealthier homes these dolls are very wonderful with their representatives of the Emperor and Empress and their court, all dressed in embroidered silks and satins, and seated in dignified calm upon a lacquered dais. On lower shelves are more plebeian dolls, and arranged to suit their needs are the furnishings and utensils of the toilet ranging from those made of silver and beau tiful lacquer for the use of Their Majesties, to the common tubs and ladles for the maids of the kitchen. In the poorer homes there are no grand court ladies nor lacquer furniture, nor silver toilet articles, but there is no straw thatched roof within the Empire but on the Feast of Dolls has a few poor toys to place upon the shelves to make this day the great event in the lives of the Japanese children. There are dolls too that are not relegated to the store house, but are kept close to their little mothers night and day, and these are the ones we see in the booths of the night salesman, who shares his popularity with the man who has the puzzles and pictures to be cut out and glued together, or with the man whose IN THE REAL JAPAN 275 table is covered with the little mud images that children use in their sand gardens. There are tiny gateways, straw thatched houses, trees, bridges, pagodas, a snake, a frog, a god, all the things with which the babies of Japan are familiar. Walking down a native street it would seem that all Japan must occupy itself in making, selling, or buying toys for their little folk. Once when in Japan, I lived at the foot of a mountain, never dreaming that half way up its summit was a village of workmen, who gave all their time to fashioning the bright colored wooden toys that are seen in the hands of virtually every Japanese child. We wan dered up there one day and under each thatched roof was a little army of workmen, either at the turning-lathe or painting queer figures in bright reds and blues upon the toys. These gaily colored rattles and intricate boxes and funny looking wooden dolls looked most attractive, but I thought that if babies in Japan were like babies in America there would be many wails when baby licked off the paint. Intermingled with the toy booths we found great stands of goldfish, birds in cages, chirping insects in little baskets, pretty ornaments for the hair, fans, sweets, and cakes of all sorts and description. Ja pan never seems to grow tired of these shopping fairs and if the night is clear, the streets are crowded with fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters, all gaz ing in fascination at the pretty things exposed for sale. Every night during fair weeks, itinerant curio dealers line the sidewalks with their second-hand gods, their fifth-hand pipes, their old sword shields, their lacquer trays, embroidered pocketbooks and 276 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT tobacco pouches, old pieces of blue porcelain and all the junk they have accumulated from visits to the pawnshop or from those who have come to them with their treasures in time of need. We could not withstand the gods and fell a victim to a big terra cotta god of Happiness, with his laughing face, a huge full stomach, his rice bag slung over his rounded shoulder, and entered into an amicable quarrel with the owner for his possession. At last he was mine, and it did not mar my happiness to find that he weighed fully twenty pounds with the problem of his transportation as an item. He seemed lonely in the jinrikisha and I gave him for company a god of Wisdom made from a huge piece of bamboo, because the great round forehead, long beard and staff of knowledge in his hand, seemed just the ornaments for a study table. It is a case of bargaining to buy these wares, but it is very good-natured bargaining. They do not frown or look at you angrily if you do not buy, but bow pleasantly and hope you will come again. We are told that the Japanese have only a surface polite ness, that underneath they are really as hard as their lacquer, but whatever it is, sincere or not, it makes life in Japan most pleasant. We return to our inn laden with picturesque spoil to be met at the entrance by a row of smiling, bowing maids, who take our shoes and place them in a box marked with our names, then one runs ahead and pushing back the paper shoji, welcomes us to our room. She returns in a moment with tea, which is drunk at all times of day and night, and brings us kimonos belonging to the house. These kimonos are made of pale, blue cotton crepe and are always Miyajima Island, vhich was originally a shrine and where at one time births and deaths were forbidden IN THE REAL JAPAN 277 fresh from the laundry. In fact a Japanese hotel is scrupulously clean. It makes one instinctively neat and careful not to sully the spotless matting, the dainty white paper windows, and the polished woodwork which has never a spot or stain upon it. Things are not laid down carelessly, giving an ap pearance of disorder to a room, as all clothing is folded and placed in a cupboard whose decorated sliding doors cover its utilitarian purpose. By signs we made it understood that we would like to go to sleep, and as soon as our complicated motions and the one word we knew for bed had penetrated to the intellect of our maiden, she touched her head upon the floor and saying "Hai," left us, pattering back in a moment with her arms full of what looked like the old fashioned "comfortables" my grandmother used to make. These were put upon the floor, a heavy wadded sleeping quilt laid over them for coverlid. An addition had to be made to the bed for me as I am somewhat long, and after much giggling and measuring, it was decided that folded quilts should be put at the head and the foot of the mattress so that I need not hang over at each end. My pillow was a small bolster filled with bran, while my wife drew a narrow piece of wood with a rounded pin-cushion-looking effect at the top, on which she was supposed to rest her neck in order not to disarrange her hair. The pil lows proved most uncomfortable, but we improvised head rests from the silken mats used for cushions in the day time. This bed is not uncomfortable, as the matting is heavily wadded underneath, and one may have as many mattresses as he wishes. You may travel with a limited amount of luggage 278 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT in Japan, as the hotels furnish such necessities as slippers, brushes and a kimono which can be used as sleeping or dressing gown. In summer this kimono is of cotton crepe, and often has the name of the hotel written in great characters across the back. At a summer resort you frequently see thirty or forty men walking on the seashore, all advertis ing the hostelries where they stop. In the winter the hotel kimono is an immense wadded affair, with a cotton kimono inside to preserve its cleanliness. This loose, easy-fitting dress is extremely comforta ble, but it is made for short people and, when ar rayed in one of them, a tall man looks decidedly like a stork. After the bed is arranged, a night-light is placed at the head, together with a tobacco box containing a few glowing charcoals. The tea service is placed within easy reach, and kneeling to the floor our lit tle maid says "0 Yasumai Nasai!" which means, "Honorable Ones, Good night!" In the morning after clapping the hands to call the maid and hearing the answer "Hai" from some distant part of the house, we are greeted by the salu tation "Ohayo" and the quaint bowing begins all over again. We are conducted to the washroom where, being a modern hotel, running water is to be found and a coolie is there to fill the brass wash dishes and to assist the guests in their toilet. A smaller brass basin, polished until one's face is re flected in it, is placed near the tiny sealed packet of tooth powder and the tooth brush made from soft wood. These tooth brushes, to be used only ^nce and then thrown away, are being superseded hj those of foreign make, as are so many of the IN THE REAL JAPAN 279 purely native articles for the toilet and the house hold. The Japanese do not bathe in the morning, as in most hotels the bath water is not heated until noon. But bathing is universal in Japan and it is a kind of national institution. Practically all, rich and poor, princes and peasants, have a daily bath. There is a saying to the effect that "The Japanese wash their bodies, the Chinese their clothes, while the Coreans wash neither." The bathroom in our hotel was about twelve feet square. In one corner was the large tub filled with water heated by some invisible charcoal stove. It was large enough to hold two persons and the water is deep enough to cover a crouching body. It is an impractical luxury for Western women, because of the Japanese custom of mixed bathing, which is still in vogue in the country and in fact in most city inns which natives frequent. All of the guests of the hotel go to the bath together or singly, whenever they have the leisure to indulge in this most enjoy able means of relaxation. Mr. and Mrs. Okura may .be there, the door will open and Mr. Oshima will enter and perhaps soon Miss Fijiyoma and Mrs. Tuckori will come for their daily ablution. They have all left their clothing in the dressing room and they salute each other respectfully and proceed with their bathing. The attendant brings the hot water in little wooden tubs, gives each bather a vegetable sponge and will assist him or her to bathe the back or pour water over the body in order that it may be thoroughly cleansed of soap before entering the tub. It would not be polite for Mr. Okura to enter the tub if a lady was seated in it, but if she knew the 280 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT ordinary rules of politeness, she would not linger longer than five minutes in its warm embrace. After a turn in the hot water each guest again is washed carefully and again sits in the water, which is ex tremely hot, for a few minutes, and then is cooled off by having the attendant pour cooler water over him. There are no towelsr each person bringing his own small cloth which is used for both towel and wash cloth. After the bather feels that he is thor oughly clean he politely bids the other guests good- day and leaves the room to don his kimono. It is all accomplished most naturally with no thought of immodesty on the part of either men or women. The same lady who would join the guests of the hotel in the bathroom in a state of complete nudity, would be very much shocked if one of the guests saw her dressed without her obi, the great sash which disguises the lines of her figure from the back. Japan is trying to abandon some of those customs that have caused her to be criticized by visitors from lands who have a different standard of mod esty. In one of the inland cities a law was passed that a division should be made between the men and women's quarters in the public baths. The Japa nese, most obediently, stretched a rope partition. In another town when this same order was given, a three quarter partition was erected to comply with the law, but in the large room outside the men and women congregated around their baskets of cloth ing, smoked little pipes, drank cups of tea, and fanned themselves to get the proper degree of cool ness before dressing and exposing themselves to the frosty air of the northern country. I was at one IN THE REAL JAPAN 281 time at a famous seaside resort where men, women and children came from all parts of Japan to indulge in sea bathing. An order came that all bathers should wear at least one article of clothing. They were perfectly willing to comply with the law — they wrapped a towel around their heads. The lack of modesty, from a Westerner's point of view, often leads to most embarrassing complica tions. On one of our many peregrinations around one city, we made the acquaintance of a famous English traveler, a most dignified man, who had been honored by many countries and could write a various assortment of letters after his name. He was interested in our life in the Japanese hotel, and we asked him to dinner a la Japonaise. He came very early and as it was rather hard to entertain him, the luxury of the Japanese bath was offered as a means of amusement. He was delighted and I con ducted him to the bathroom which happened to be empty. He was enjoying the rubbing and massag ing of the attendant when the door opened and two Japanese ladies entered. They bowed to him politely but he became panic stricken and looked around madly for a place in which to hide his six feet two of body. The nearest place was the big tub filled with hot water into which he plunged not realizing its heat, which made him gasp. He did not dare to leave the tub although he felt he was slowly being cooked, but the ladies only looked at him wonder ingly when he made gestures indicative of his desire that they should leave the room before he expired. At last he fainted. The water was too hot for one not used to the Japanese bath, and the world nearly lost a famous traveler, who decided after he had 282 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT been revived, that he would stick to beaten tracks, and not experiment in native ways unknown to him. Breakfast in a Japanese inn could not be distin guished from dinner except that more courses are served at the latter meal, which is the principal meal of the day for the Japanese. Rice is the main arti cle of food and fish is used almost exclusively. It is said that there are six hundred kinds of fish in the waters around Japan, and it is served in many ways. The food to foreign taste is rather insipid and must be dipped into a dish of brown sauce that acts as salt and flavoring. Beef and pork and fowl are eaten but their consumption is insignificant com pared with the part fish and vegetables play in a Japanese menu. Dinner is served in a most dainty manner. Each guest is brought a small tray with tiny legs about three inches high and on this tray for an ordinary meal would be a bowl for the rice, a covered wooden bowl containing soup made of fish and vegetables, a small dish of pickled turnips or cabbage sliced very fine, a dish of fish or prawns or eels, or what ever happens to be the piece de resistance of the day. Raw fish is eaten and it is not so shocking as it sounds when it has been well soaked in the sauce to give it flavor. There are no desserts with a Japanese meal. Fruits and cakes are eaten at all times. They have an enormous variety of sweet meats and confectionary. One of the reasons for the enormous number of sweet and cake shops that flourish to such a great extent in Japan, is to be found in the fact that the Japanese are always send ing presents of cakes to one another, at births, deaths, birthdays, and at any event of importance IN THE REAL JAPAN 283 that occurs in the family. The second reason for the variety of confectionary shops lies in the cus tom of setting cakes before a visitor when tea is served. The tea is drunk, but frequently the cakes are left untouched, when the host, if loyal to the customs of Old Japan, wraps the cakes in paper and gives them to the guest. Such a great quantity of cakes are sent to friends at New Years and on occasions of special festivi ties, that the receiver often sends the gifts to another friend, who in turn passes them on to another, often their journey ending at the home of the original donor. This custom being well known in Tokyo, many of the best confectioners now put on the box of cake the date of sale that their reputation may not suffer if, at the end of its travels, the cake is in bad condition. Children are a great asset to the merchants of Japan, as no one thinks of making a call at a house where there are children without tak ing either sweets or toys. The sale of candies is not confined to shops, for one sees in all the side streets little barrows around which the children cluster, watching the man make with quick, nimble fingers, dolls and horses and tiny gods from the colored sugar. These cakes and tidbits so loved by the Jap anese babies, are not very palatable to foreign taste as they are very insipid, neither sweet nor sour. In fact all food seems to lack something, seems to just miss the right flavoring, as if the cook had for gotten the salt or mislaid the red pepper. There are gardens filled with azaleas and wisteria and cherry trees which so delight the eyes of the beauty-loving Japanese in their springtime, and groves of maple trees whose leaves turn a deep, dark 284 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT crimson in the fall. In a few minutes from your rural inn, one can wander over tiny bridges, past great stone lanterns, look into the depths of a grotto into which falls a miniature waterfall, then, by wind ing paths climb the little hillocks past a torii, to a tea house where one may sit on the mat and drink his tea and watch the happy people on their holiday. There are women in gray silken kimonos with obis of mauve and gold, chatting with their mothers who are modestly dressed in black. The young girls pass, clothed in reds and yellows, leading tiny chil dren that rival the birds in the colors of their plumage. They look like butterflies with their long- sleeved bright colored kimonos, their black hair cut straight across the neck, their pretty sashes and their faces alight with laughter as they skip along in their lacquered clogs. When we tire of gardens and scenery, we go to the Japanese theater to see some famous actor. We leave our shoes outside in charge of the doorman, and go into a great room filled with people who have been there since five o'clock in the afternoon and who will, quite likely, sit patiently until ten-thirty when the play will be finished. We sit in the en closed square on the floor and watch the actors upon the stage who enter from the back of the audience hall upon a raised wooden walk which is on a level with our heads. In many of the theaters there is a revolving stage. A scene is set upon the front half of a turntable, and while that scene is being acted, the carpenters are putting up the next scene in the rear half. When the first act is over, the table re volves and brings the second to view, allowing the play to be continued without interruption. IN THE REAL JAPAN 285 Another peculiarity is the presence on the stage of black dressed men who are supposed to be invisi ble. They prompt the actors, remove from the stage any articles that cease to be of use, push a cushion to an actor when he is about to sit down, and re move the dead. There is no orchestra, but on either side of the stage in a kind of balcony is the chorus, which, as in the old Greek theater, makes a kind of running accompaniment, instrumental and vocal, to the play being enacted, serving to point the moral and to adorn the tale. In the old classical dramas, which are still the most popular, all the parts are taken by men, and a matinee hero in America is never more of a demagogue than are the great actors of Japan. We never hear, in Japan of a scion of a noble house eloping with the lady of the chorus, but we often hear of a Japanese lady sighing out her heart for a popular actor. Between acts the actor has several curtains bear ing his name and crest drawn across the stage show ing the esteem in which he is held by the friends who gave him the curtains. I have seen as many as a dozen of these, beautifully embroidered, expensive, advertising mediums slowly shown to the admiring audience. In the lobbies the photographs of the famous one are sold, and here young girls shyly ad mire their favorite hero, photographed either in his ordinary dress, or picturesquely garbed in the costume of some part in which he had made a suc cess. One can also buy in gold, silver or lacquer, tiny pins carrying the actor's picture or his crest. At the Imperial theater in Tokyo one sees nothing but modem Japan, and on the stage, women actresses have their place and play important parts. 286 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT The playhouse is almost exactly what one might ex pect to see in any great city of Europe. The roomy, comfortable seats are covered with satin, and there are boxes, stalls, first and second balconies and a gallery. The plays given are generally three in number, the first a Japanese play of the olden time, the second a modern farce where the actors are dressed in European clothing, and the last is often a spectacular drama. The staging is most exqui site, done almost as well as a Belasco or a Beer- bohm Tree would do it. The dresses of the actors are magnificent gold and brocades, with their gor geous colorings beautifully blended by the hands of an artist. There is a restaurant in the theater where din ner may be obtained, and where afternoon tea is served. In this twentieth century playhouse one sees new Japan taking tea with milk and sugar instead of drinking clear tea, as I am sure he does at home, and eats the European food sitting at a table as if he had been accustomed to it all his life. In fact judging by the foreign restaurants that are springing up everywhere in Tokyo, the Japanese are beginning to care for the food of other lands. A teacher in a girl's school told me that she found it necessary to add the cooking of foreign food to her curriculum in the domestic science department. She added that many married women applied for this course in order to entertain the progressive friends of their husbands, who preferred the European dishes to those of the Japanese. A great many entertainments are given now in the city in European restaurants because it is much cheaper than dining friends at a tea house or at IN THE REAL JAPAN 287 home, because of the Japanese custom of sending the remaining food to the homes of the guest. Even when Japanese have grown away from the cus toms of their fathers in so far as not to give the food, it is hard for them to leave old traditions so far behind them that the guests on returning home will not find enclosed within a fancy box a beautifully decorated fish, a cake, or some such practical memento of the evening's entertainment. It is all a strange world,, and in a sense an in tricate one, this rural, real Japan which one finds beneath the sun and the rain, among the country folk of the island Empire. Indeed, you cannot help feeling how truly these people's characteristics fit the natural scenery of picturesque, verdant hill, of flowering valley and the ever-present sea. There are some things, however, of which we be come more or less sure; among these are the sim plicity of life, contentment, neatness, comfort and order, which one finds as common in the city as in the country. In the smallest, obscure, thatched cot tage, the artistic connoisseur sits cross-legged and content, producing handiwork that will adorn the palaces of kings, satisfied and happy with his mod est rice bowl and his raw fish. For three yen, or $1.50 a day for two, we live here in this Japanese inn, losing the terror of the American or European hotel bill which casts its dubious shadow across so many pleasures. For a single yen, a Japanese or even an American can enjoy a wonderful holiday, and eat of the fat of the land. A Japanese coolie who could receive $1.50 a day in Tokyo, a modest wage for our Western workingman, could live here like a king. 288 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT In a certain Shinto shrine in Japan, I saw one day a plain mirror, which according to these peo ple 's ideas, represents the human heart which when perfectly placid and clear reflects the very image of deity. The real Japanese whom we find outside of the tides and change of the big cities, like the rural Easterner everywhere, is perhaps more nearly sat isfied and contented than any other national person age with whom I am familiar. As one of the Eastern proverbs goes; they, "wet their sleeves with the tears of glad content." It is a smiling race that greets you in the moist lanes of their trim vil lages and in the even rice furrows of their pros perous looking fields, a race taught from childhood to smile regardless of whether they feel like doing it or not. Their joys are simple joys, and their prayers are simple prayers. Industry and the sound of the soroban, their counting machine, are everywhere present. Filial devotion is almost as much a religion as it is in China, from which country its influence came to these islands. But with all their simplicity, one feels, even in the remote sections of the Empire, that he is dealing with a gifted and resolute people, who have never "undone their helmet strings." Their loyalty to the Emperor and things Japanese is as beautiful as it is thought-provoking. It is like our devotion to the Stars and Stripes, but in a way more intangibly sentimental. The Divine Right of Kings, new con stitutionalism, the Imperial diet, the ever-present tendency to bureaucracy and the sword which was the soul of the Samurai, are all mingled inextri cably in the race nationality of every son of the soil. IN THE REAL JAPAN 289 This national life, so truly one of inveterate toil, and of innocent joys, is also one of irresistible pride and patriotism; it is on occasion "built of tears and sacred flames." The Japanese can be as terrible when aroused as they are attractive in peace. The tale of the Forty-seven Ronins, with its hara-kiri, tragic accompaniments, has been listened to with rapt attention since early in the eighteenth century, and it is still the most popular story told to Japa nese children. It is significant that the graves of Japan's martial heroes are always thick with flow ers. Japan has never known the yoke of a conqueror. This may account in part for her self-confident pro gressiveness. Yet she has the patience of the East, and she is acquiring the discipline of the West. It is also to be noted that she is not adopting, but adapting her modernization. Her government is not yet settled, but her na tional and racial loyalties, the forces out of which modern states draw their impulse and power, have always been found adequate for emergencies. She is still worshiping personalities rather than princi ples. She is learning slowly the way out of her hereditary, commercial dishonesties, and is gradu ally discovering that her ethical code, which has al ways been that of a soldier, partaking of his virtues as well as of his vices, must be exchanged or mod ified by the ethical code of honest business method, man to man. A nation whose laws for generations were "silent amid arms," accounting that loyalty excused a multitude of sins, does not come, all at once, into the atmosphere of modern commercial methods and principles. Japan is also struggling 290 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT under an enormous burden of debt, though rarely do you hear complaints regarding a weight of tax ation that would stir a Western nation to anarchy. Like China, she has been a nation of small shop keepers, but now the air of her cities is becoming black with the coal smoke of a new industrial day. The end of the great Japanese task of moderni zation and renewal is not yet in sight. All the fierce struggles of labor and capital, the problems of child labor, monopoly, sexual ethics, and the shifty officialdom of the nations of the West, are waiting in advance of her present regeneration. Her edu cation and her ethics are still in the half-light of the older Asiatic day. She has not yet exchanged her worship of the wonderful and the beautiful for the veneration of the God of Righteousness and per sonal soul satisfactions. But I, for one, am confident, that as Japan took her early civilization from China and made it Jap anese, she will also find the way of taking moderni zation from the West, and without destroying her own individualism, weave it into the stronger strands of her expanding present and her mighty future. But these complexities and problems are not for the scenes and the thoughts of the sturdy peasants, and the rosy women who, as I write these words from a Japanese hilltop, are trudging homeward singing and laughing away their weariness like real children of nature, which they are. And now, as the sun on Fuji brightens and glows with the parting day, the winding streets of the lit tle town begin to darken. We climb into our rick- IN THE REAL JAPAN 291 shaws, and with no sound save the patter of the kurama's feet, swing down the tiny passageways, passing the rows of silent gateways where only a lighted lantern, and the sound within of merry voices, tells that life with all it has of weal and woe, lives behind the enclosing wall, until we are halted before our temporary home, the inn of a rural village. We are met at the entrance by the little maids who never seem to sleep, and who al ways greet us with a smile, no matter how late we return. Our room with its softly shaded light, the mattresses lying side by side upon the floor, the neatly folded kimonos, the smell of the tea on the cozy brazier; it is all free and innocent and whole some as the round fair faces of the Nasans, speak ing to us of peace and quiet rest. The little garden with its pine tree, its torii, its great stone lantern and its figure of the calm Buddha, dimly outlined in the moonlight, seem to say with the little maid: "0 Yasumai Nasai!" "Honorable Ones, Sleep well!" XX The Spirit op Education in the Stjnkise Kingdom THIRTY years ago a Japanese student apply ing for admission at the Imperial Univer sity at Tokyo selected as his major study a course in economics, and as his minor study, English lit erature. The Dean of the department of literature questioned him as to his motive for combining these two somewhat unrelated branches of learning. The student replied, "I wish, sir, to be a bridge across the Pacific." This same student grown to manhood and occu pying the Presidency of the first National College in Tokyo, as well as a professorship in the Imperial University, has recently returned to Japan after spending a year in America, lecturing at six Amer ican Universities under the auspices of the Carnegie Peace Endowment, contributing in no small way to his boyhood dream of interpreting the East to the West, and being as he expressed it, a "convoy of warm human feeling" between the lands of the ris ing and setting sun. No one could be long resident in present day Japan, especially during the discussions interna tional that are now rife, relative to the status of Japanese in America, without appreciating the value and the necessity of such broad minded and sympathetic educated ambassadorship. In speak- 292 THE SPIRIT OF EDUCATION 293 ing with the men of education who have been trained in America or Europe, I have continually heard the remark, "We of course understand this California matter, for we have learned to know Americans and have become acquainted with Amer ican ideals of government and society, but the peo ple of Japan, these are the factors of alarm. The people do not know and cannot comprehend the spirit of American institutions." If this is true on this side of the Pacific, I believe it is more or less true in America that sympathy is limited by comprehension. Even as tourists, we are usually so engrossed with the strangeness and the scenic beauty of this wonderful picture-land that we find ourselves facing homeward without having grasped in any real way the nature and the spirit actuating fifty-two millions of Oriental peo ples, who during the past half century have ex hibited before the eyes of the world the most in credible spectacle of transitional progress ever wit nessed in the rise of nations. Although the present spirit, controlling the impulses and actions of Japan, defies accurate analysis even by the Japanese them selves, it is doubtless true that one comes nearer to discovering it through the medium of Japan's edu cated sons than in any other way, and I have chosen these men of education as a glass through which to look in order to see reflected the life and thought of the Japan of to-day. The thinking men of Japan have passed through a three-fold evolution in their school life during the last forty years of educational modernization. A teacher who has been training Japanese youth for twenty-five years has described the change as 294 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT something revolutionary, as contrasted with the time when he first faced a class of undergraduates, "a motley crowd of young ruffians, unkempt, un shaven, with bare legs and short gowns," reading in loud and harsh voices a part of Guizot's "His tory of Civilization," tearing without ceremony their note paper from the paper doors which gave light to the room, and expressing the vulgar curi osity of common street boys with their questions regarding the foreigner's age, clothes, birthplace, and personal habits. Although it is true that the Japanese are said to have inaugurated an early system of education in the eighth century, ante dating the founding of Oxford by two hundred years, these early educational foundations of the Nara period were often entirely lost sight of in their checkered career, existing at times only in the monasteries of Japan's late medievalism. The contrast between this rude condition of education of a quarter of a century ago and that of the present is striking; even more striking than to try to im agine what it would mean for the students of El Azhar, for example, the great Mohammedan Uni versity of Cairo, 12,000 strong, now bending super- stitiously over the Koran and its interpretations through twelve precious years, to suddenly depart from the method and the material of thirteenth cen tury education and in a few short years to take on both the form and the reality of virtually every branch of modern learning! At the restoration of Peace under the Tokogawas, education came to the front with the patronage of the old Daimyos. It consisted of Chinese litera ture and history, its aim was cultural and literary, THE SPIRIT OF EDUCATION 295 its method was memorizing and by "disputations," being confined largely to the higher classes, its ob ject to train men to the service of the State. The old Samurai became teachers and opened schools, proving in many cases that the pen in their hands was mightier than the sword. A prominent Japa nese professor has given the following account of his attendance at one of these early educational cen ters: It consisted of a couple of rooms where some twenty or thirty boys (and a very few girls) ranging in age from seven to fourteen, spent the forenoon, each reading in turn with the teacher for half an hour, some paragraphs from Confucius and Mencius, and devoting the rest of the time to caligraphy. Of the three R's 'Biting demanded most time and reading but little, 'Rithmetic scarcely any, except in a school attended by children of the common people as distinct from those of the Samurai. Sons of the Samurai began fencing, jiu jitsu, and spear lessons in the early morn ing. As a child of seven, I remember being roused by my mother before dawn in the winter, and reluctantly, often in positively bad humor, picking my way barefooted through the snow. The idea was to accustom children to hardihood and endurance. There was little fun in the school-room, except as our ingenious minds devised it be hind our teacher's back. With Puritanic austerity we were treated — not like children but like men. How could they be expected to grasp the Confucian category of virtues? They just read and recited by rote — with less comprehen sion than boys and girls who learn Biblical texts in Amer ica. We grew up with no idea of physical or natural sci ence, no idea of mathematics except the first few rules, no idea of Geography. If I were to go on enumerating what nowadays in elementary schools we did not learn, I would have to give the entire list. 296 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT The second stage of modern Japanese education came with the introduction of Western science in which the "Dutch students" as the young Japanese were called, labored at the peril of their lives to ob tain the language of the traders from Holland that they might, through these Dutch books, discover the wonderful secrets of Western civilization. These students, who at that time were thought of as Revo lutionists, united with the Imperialists to inaugu rate the great educational revolution which has brought about the new system of Japanese learn ing. As Count Okuma said to me in regard to this period, "It is usually true that in revolutions men go to extremes." This was chauvinism truly of the young Japanese who looked upon everything at home as barbarian during these days, and every thing Western as civilized and to be absorbed un thinkingly at whatever price. The teachers from the West were continually bored by questions about their "civilization." Everything Western was imi tated. The fever was severe. To counteract this tendency, wiser minds began to emphasize the spirit of Old Japan and to suggest that "Bushido" should be revived and expanded to become the dominant principle of the Nation's morals. It is out of this combination of extreme radicalism and the ancient Bushido that there has been evolved the third phase of Japanese education, the phase in which German and American models have been adapted to Japanese life and require ments and a distmctly Japanese brand of training evolved. This is so truly the case that at present, I am told, it is very difficult for other than home trained students, at least as far as the body of THE SPIRIT OF EDUCATION 297 training is concerned, to readily obtain recogni tion. While ten or fifteen years ago students were sent abroad for a long period of study, it is now customary to send students only for one or two years after graduation from the Japanese Univer sities, and that for specialized training in Europe or America. The characteristics of this new, indige nous educational regime are evinced in a thorough going system of education, which takes the Japa nese boy from the elementary school of eight years' duration through the secondary school which he ac complishes in four years, thence to the National colleges which demand another three years of his life before he is ready for the altitude of his edu cational career, the Imperial University, where he remains from three to four years longer, according to his course, graduating at the average age of twenty-five. In going through the various grades of Japanese schools with the present day school boy, one is filled, with wonder at the marvelous educational accom plishment of this nation. The elementary schools with their 144,000 teachers (40,000 being women) and six million pupils, where all the instruction is in Japanese, and where attendance is compulsory and as a rule, with no fees, are undoubtedly among the best institutions for early training to be found anywhere in the world. The proportion of chil dren in these schools in contrast to the children of school going age in the Empire, is 98.8 per cent, for boys and 97.2 per cent, for girls. These schools are organized largely upon American and Belgian pat terns. The teachers get a pittance of 16 yen ($8.00) a month and yet they find opportunity to 298 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT invigorate their minds by attendance upon summer schools which are held widely through the country as well as by membership in various educational societies. The chief weakness discovered in these institutions lies in the fact that the youngsters are expected to learn some 2,000 Chinese characters, the majority of which are never used. The baneful disadvantages are not simply in the subject matter but consist in the fact that the young Japanese in these susceptible years acquires the memory habit which is the arch enemy of independent thoughtful- ness in every Oriental nation. The secondary or middle schools of which there are 300 for boys with 118,000 students and 180 for girls with 52,000 students, cannot be so highly com mended as the remarkably efficient elementary insti tutions. This type of education is especially in adequate for the higher education of Japanese women. Coeducation has no place in Japan and there seems to be a wide spread reluctance in en larging the higher educational facilities for women, which seems ingratitude in a nation industrially dependent upon its women and where there are twice as many women as men in the employ of the government. Yet one finds normal schools and cer tain private institutions and seminaries for women usually under missionary management, which can be highly commended. The fees in the secondary schools are three yen a month and six to eight yen include rooms and board. The curriculum in these schools gives spe cial emphasis to Chinese and Yamato, or old Japa nese, which languages take the place of Latin and Greek of our Western high school. Leibnitz di- THE SPIRIT OF EDUCATION 299 vided the world into two parts — those who could read Latin and those who could not. Substitute "English" for Latin and you will have the stand ard of division in Japan to-day according to stu dents. English is the study of first importance, six hours a week being given to this study for five years. At the end of the middle school period the student should have a reading knowledge of Eng lish, having read such books as Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities," "The Christmas Carol," Irving's "Sketch Book" and Franklin's "Autobiography." This English is for reading purposes rather than for colloquial uses and the pride of the young Japa nese student in his English acquirements is intense. The National colleges, "Koto Gakko," are the goal of the middle school student. There are eight of these, supported by the Government and they com prise the sole avenues of entrance to the four Im perial Universities. These collegiate institutions compare in training with the usual American col lege or a first-class English public school or a Ger man gymnasium. The ages of the students range from eighteen to twenty, and a rigorous entrance examination is held, since there is room in these high-class government institutions for only a small percentage of the applicants. The government col lege in Tokyo which is the oldest and the most pop ular, with an enrolment of 1,000 students, is able to admit each year but three hundred freshmen though its applications exceed this number seven or eight times. I shall never forget the look of anx iety upon the faces of these candidates who come up to the Government colleges for their examinations. One can well imagine the reasons for the student- 300 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT suicide which a few years ago alarmed Japan when one hears the pitiful tales that are told regarding the result of failure on the part of the Japanese student to secure a coveted place in the national col leges. It is a very touching sight to watch some 2,000 boys," said a college President, "the pick of our youth from all parts of the Empire, flocking to the college for examination — to watch them at their heavy task, all the time knowing that seven out of every eight will be disappointed. Those who fail one year can try again ; and a great many do try three or four times, and in exceptional cases, seven or eight times, one instance of perseverance being on record where success crowned the fourteenth attempt. Examination times are tragic and pathologically pitiful periods in educational circles in this country. Out of 2,000 students, perhaps sixty succeed, leav ing many disappointed, discouraged ones for a year. Three doctors are constantly in attendance to min ister to students. Deaf students come at 6 a. m. for front seats in the examination hall. The wife of a Professor in speaking of the matter said that her husband was a complete wreck after the days of examination. "What is the remedy for this tragic condition?" I asked. The teacher answered, "Convince Japan to build fewer warships that she may have sufficient money to educate her Nation's youth!" A signifi cant answer when it is realized that army and navy expenditure now absorbs one-half of the national revenue. At the apex of the Japanese educational system are the four Imperial Universities, a diploma from one of which' is considered the highest honor for Japa- THE SPIRIT OF EDUCATION 301 nese youth. The Imperial University at Tokyo with its six faculties and its 6,000 students is the oldest, the most complete and the most honorary of these institutions of higher learning. The lectures are given in Japanese though there are about one- half dozen foreign professors who lecture in Eng lish, French and German. The curriculum com pares favorably with that of other first-class Uni versities and its high quality has been the means of attracting to Tokyo probably the largest number of students at present to be found in any city of the world. The expenses of student life in this Uni versity are approximately 400 yen ($200) for the whole year, which amount includes tuition, board, room, and books. I was especially struck with the comradeship amongst the members of the faculty who take their lunches in a kind of faculty club, as I was also impressed with the lack of exhibition of student life and student organization. I do not recall visiting any institution of such size and im portance where so little evidence of social and fra ternal life is to be found. No clubs, no literary so cieties, no student journalism to speak of, few dra matics, and very little of that esprit de corps which is so commonly found in Europe and America about athletic and purely college activities. In addition to this line of Government institu tions, there are also to be found in Tokyo several other centers of learning, also supported by the State for specialistic study. The Higher Normal College where so many teachers are trained for sec ondary educational work, the Higher Commercial College with several thousand students, the naval and military school and the college for Law. While 302 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT outside of these institutions and not supported by Government, there are to be found some excellent private institutions of which are to be noted Keio University founded by Fukazawa, one of the makers of new Japan, Doshisha University which is con nected with the name of the renowned Christian, Joseph Neeshima, Waseda University founded and guided by the revered statesman, Count Okuma, to gether with a considerable number of Christian schools not far from the college grade of which Aoyama Gakuin of Tokyo is a fitting example. With such a variety and grade of higher educa tion it is not strange that Tokyo has become the student Mecca of Oriental learning. Here are to be found the speculative students from India, and fhe practical Chinese, looking for Western scien tific education, and also a goodly number of Corean students, the Cecil Rhodes scholars of the East. The Chinese students assume the regulation dress of the various colleges, and, but for their walk and the peculiar bland smile of the celestial, one would hardly distinguish them from the native born Japa nese. The Chinese revolution, however, called home thousands of these students and while ten years ago there were at least twelve thousand stu dents of the Middle Kingdom in Tokyo, it would be difficult at present to find three thousand Chinese students in the Japanese capital. The widespread and deep influence which the presence of the Chi nese students in Tokyo has exerted upon the recent changes in China is immeasurable. These young men coming frequently from the best Chinese fami lies, for the last ten or twelve years have been streaming back into the remote parts of China to THE SPIRIT OF EDUCATION 303 carry the leaven of Western ideas and becoming the real forerunners of the new Chinese order. Al though the tide of Chinese student emigration is at present strongly toward America, due largely to the use of the returned indemnity fund, now being used to support students in the States, there are recent signs of Chinese youth coming in increasing num bers to avail themselves of the excellent University privileges found here in Tokyo, nearer home and at much less expense. XXI Chakactebistics op Young Japan NO account of systems of education adequately expresses what is happening in the present-day Japan relative to the training of the Nation 's youth. It is needful to come into intimate contact with the student himself in his lecture room, in his home, in his Jeudo halls and upon his long walks, to study something of the ideals of the teachers, to ask what all of this education is about, to try to discover the real spirit of Japan which is breathed through these new and rapidly expanding institutions, to seek to know in what manner all this activity engaging thousands of the most talented youth, is brought to bear upon the politics, commerce, the social, and the intellectual life of the Empire. Some years ago I was told that upon a bulletin board at the Imperial University in Tokyo some one wrote the phrase "Japan Leading the Orient." Later a thoughtful student passing, added to the phrase the significant word, "Whither?" It is this query which has been constantly in my mind as I have tried to study the characteristics of the Japanese undergraduate, what are his hopes, his ambitions, and his fears ? Of what stuff is he made and how is he differentiated from his Western student brother? An early impression reached by the foreigner as he mixes with various kinds of students from the Sunrise Kingdom is to the effect that the Japanese 304 CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG JAPAN 305 collegian is a far more teachable and more easily ruled creature than the University student of the West. He has far more respect for his professors, especially in the Government institutions where the professor is a regularly appointed officer of the Empire and holds a position of official honor not un like that of a justice of the Supreme Court in Amer ica. In short no student of any land surpasses him in courtesy and deference. A young man who had been studying abroad and had returned fo Japan with high honors and a foreign degree, visited his college town, and meeting the professor who trained him, gave to those who were looking on the evidence of the finest reverence one could imagine passing between men; his bows were profound and almost unceasing; there was none of the self-sufficient ar rogance which is too often evidenced among West ern students who return to their native environ ment after successful contact with the outside world. The inherent respect for the teacher is con nected in Japan with the old Samurai, who them selves were closely associated with the learned pro fessions. I heard of only two instances in all Ja pan of insubordination among students, one, against a cook in a college boarding house, — a strike among students over bad cooking in a secondary school and, as the narrator said to me, "The cook who was carried bodily to a small lake nearby, and forcibly submerged, deserved his punishment." In what nation under the sun have students been brought together in boarding houses and failed to make regular and constant complaint concerning "prunes"? The other was a somewhat more seri ous protest from faculty authority which ended in 306 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT a kind of love feast between students and profes sors — a real educational cordiale. The Japanese student, however, has learned be fore college days the ways of discipline and strict obedience. His attitude is one of true and national discipleship. While here, as in all countries, the teacher is inclined to be interested in his subject rather than his student, and while the official char acter of the instructor forms an added barrier to intimate relationship between the professor and his pupil, I have discovered instances of devotion and friendship which are convincing proofs of the deep seated heart quality of the student of Japan. No more significant student incident has been brought to my notice during the entire tour than that which recently occurred in Tokyo when Profes sor Inazo Nitobe, the former head of the first Na tional College, found it necessary to resign his post. Prof. Nitobe' had been for years one of the few men to whom students voluntarily come with their prob lems and perplexities, much as they would come to an intimate confident and friend. His home had been open to them at all hours and nothing has been too trivial or unimportant for this real lover of stu dents to take up with the boys of his large college. The news of his resignation came to the students as a personal and calamitous shock. They besieged the offices of the Government, demanding that he should be retained. Student meetings were held and there was so much excitement and feeling con cerning the matter, that the Government officials asked Dr. Nitobe to maintain silence in relation to the matter until proper announcements could be made or until the student excitement subsided. CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG JAPAN 307 When the news of his retiring from the college was made publicly in the newspapers, I am told that the sorrow of the students was extraordinary. Four hundred gathered one night at the Profes sor's home standing outside the house in reverent silence with bared heads. Almost as far as one could see, there were crowds of students. One of the spectators said to me that he feared that when certain words of appreciation were being given the noise in the street would interrupt the speaker who was reading an appreciation of this beloved teacher, but upon inquiry he found that the streets for blocks were filled with people of the city who had been affected by the unusualness of the scene and who, also with sober faces, were joining in the com mon sentiment of the students. In spite of the tra ditional training of the young men never to show emotion in public, sobs were heard coming from this closely packed band of youth, and after Dr. Nitobe had appeared and spoken a few simple and loving words to his boys, silently, without cheers or any demonstration whatever, the great crowd moved away to their homes. Upon many a student's wet face there was pictured the sentiment which, on oc casion, has always been called forth from the Japa nese heart for the ideal or the person of their de votion. It was not unlike the kind of patriotism which the Scotch students used to evince towards Henry Drummond, who as George Adam Smith, his biographer, expressed it, furnished to students a "healing confessional" into which many a tired and disappointed boy had crept to speak out the great and almost inexpressibly difficult things of his spirit, then to go quietly away, but not to forget. 308 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT The value of that kind of education which forms through friendship the character, quite as truly as books and thoughts form the intellect, is as neces sary as it is opportune at present in Japan. The strenuousness of his studies has left the student lit tle opportunity for the cementing of friendships in college associations. There is much need of a pro vision well considered, by which the young collegi ans shall be able to express themselves in some kind of friendly relation to their teachers and to their classmates ; especially since the student of the higher education finds no such confident or opportunity of friendship in his home. In most cases, he has entered through University doors into a world un known to his parents. In a certain lecture room in Japan I was asked to speak to the students and I took occasion to ask a few questions. I could hardly understand the hesitation with, which the questions were answered until the professor explained by saying, "Japanese students are never asked questions in lectures. They are only required to take notes of the teacher, therefore, their lack of readiness in reply." This baneful absence of student co-operation runs through the whole instructional life of Japan, and has eventuated from the endless overload of lectures given by professors whose chief object seems to be to take the whole time themselves, in presenting endless evidences of their erudition. The Japanese student is not only beset by examina tions, but these examinations have made necessary an abject slavery to the note book. "What do your students read?" I asked a company of Imperial University students. "Our note books," answered CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG JAPAN 309 a son of one of Japan's leading barons. He spoke the truth. Only two books were mentioned, one was Kipling's "Jungle Book," the other "John Halifax, Gentleman." Knowledge may come but wisdom will linger in every such process of training. Bacon sagely remarks, "Knowledge dwells in heads re plete with thoughts of other men ; wisdom in minds attentive to their own." Emd§son said that great genial power consists in not being confined at all but rather in things receptive.* Much of the subject matter of higher instruction does not appear in text books but must be copied from the professors' lectures. As a result, you will see crowds of students remaining after the lectures correcting their notes from each other, while in pub lic conveyances, in the homes and even in the streets you will find boys with their bags of note books to which they cling as to their most precious posses sion. I should say that the student in Japan comes nearer being lectured to death than any other stu dent with whom I am acquainted. He usually is obliged to spend from twenty-eight to thirty-four hours a week in the lecture room, all this time re ceiving, rarely being called upon for any thought ful or active co-operative response to this great mass of dictated knowledge, whibh the professors are pouring into his already crowded mind. He is made a veritable cistern for the deposit of undi gested information. He gives no evidence of a "stream of consciousness," such'as Professor James talked about. It is no wonder Jie ,is suffering from mental dyspepsia. He does nojrlove his note books and his examinations as perhaps the Indian student does, but there is no recourse. The Japanese 310 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT method of education has insisted upon giving the student youth quite twice as much work in the higher grades as he can or ought to master, and still have time for exercising his own mental independ ence, not to speak of having an opportunity for proper recreation, exercise and social development. As I was coming out of the higher Normal College with Baron Kanda, I said to him, "What proportion of time is given to lectures by these students who are rushing in to answer the stroke of the bell, in contrast to the number of hours you gave as a stu dent at Amherst?" He answered, "I gave eighteen hours a week to lectures, and these students are giv ing thirty-four." To be sure, it may be said in compensation, that the Japanese student is saved from the dangers of ultra-athleticism, as well as from certain immoral tendencies which tempt the leisure hours of West ern collegians. He is excluded from such tempta tions by sheer lack of time and opportunity. His college days are not a wild joy of living. You feel nothing of the rollicking, easy-going air of the American college here in Japan. There are no col lege celebrities and no great athletic heroes to dis tract the attention of the Japanese youth. It is a period of severe and anxious servitude. Many a student goes down before the end through over work. Not a few of the suicides of recent years in Japan are due to this execrable system. It is a survival of the fittest, and health, culture, and social enlargement are placed in the scale against an ed ucation. The teachers are usually conscious of the iniquity of this system and would change it, but they, with the students, are swept into a national CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG JAPAN 311 system of cramming, which not only stultifies the mind, but cramps the character of the nation's youth. It is imitation, receptiveness, and respon siveness running riot and taken advantage of. It leaves no free period when the imaginative faculty can rise to the surface. This double bane of ex amination and lecture plan takes children at twelve years old on examination and from that point on ward until the youth is twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, there swings above his head, like a Damoclean sword, the ominous necessity of note taking, marks, and examination machinery. While there is nothing like the opportunities for self-support among Japanese students as is to be found in America or Europe, one finds, neverthe less, that many young men "work their way" through college. The old time custom of a patron or teacher or some person of rank and prominence assisting students through school is yet prevalent. There is also the custom which is generally known in Japan as jiuku whereby two or more students are invited to be the guests of a professor during their college course. They become regular mem bers of the household. These students often help the professor in various ways, giving him clerical assistance, tutoring his children or assisting by certain manual work or errands in the home. They are closely allied to the professor and the relation ships are often exceedingly valuable and intimate. I was the guest in one home where three such stu dents were receiving their board and room for four years at nominal cost. In addition to such benevolences given to students, there is, especially in larger cities, varying kinds of 312 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT self-supporting labor on the part of young men seek ing an education. In Tokyo there is an organiza tion of students whose purpose it is to assist one another in securing positions. One will find here young men engaging in all kinds of self-supporting labor, ranging from the teaching of English to the selling of papers and the cleaning of boots. If a young man can secure 15 yen ($7.50) per month, he will have a sufficiency to supply his bodily wants. In a country where the average wage is $.50 a day without food, when a family of four persons can live on $12 a month, rice, a sleeping mat, and a hot bath compensate him for a thousand Western accessories to comfort. One teacher told me that among his University students one boy supports himself by working for an American insurance company, an other adapts plays for a theater ; a number are edi tors and sub-editors of magazines and periodicals; while still others teach English in night schools. I have been told of students who even drew jin- rikishas at night, hard and humiliating as the work may be, while others sweep gardens, do copying and run errands for offices as well as picking up a few yen by washing, mending and darning. Much of the same independence and power of self-support found among certain students of the Western states, is evident among the industrious youth of Japan. I know of a young man who was obliged to borrow his passage money to get to America and who ex pected to land in Seattle, virtually without money and without friends, to work his way across the con tinent to a technical school in the East, where he had determined to finish his scientific education. When I expressed my surprise that he should at- CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG JAPAN 313 tempt, particularly in a foreign land, so difficult an undertaking of mingled self-support and study, the student said: "Oh, I can do anything, you know. I shall surely get on." The brand of Japanese athleticism is a twofold composite of old Samurai and American. Jiu-jitsu and fencing are taken for granted as the hereditary accomplishments of a thoroughly educated gentle man, while baseball and lawn tennis represent the "modern side" in the physical education of the youth of Nippon. The foreigner visits the large, finely appointed Jeudo halls of the government institutions with the keenest interest. There is nothing like them in the world outside of Japan. The floors are thickly cov ered with fine straw matting, with springs under neath to ease the fall. The contestants for Jeudo, as it is popularly called in modern parlance, are dressed in a special costume of thick, white material that furnishes a firm handhold without tearing. Over many of the halls I found the motto, which translated, signifies "freedom of movement"; the idea of the sport being the power to fall in such an easy and relaxed way as to be immune to injury. Virtually all Japanese students take part in Jeudo. It is a sight of rare uniqueness to see a hundred or more youth, first bumping their heads upon the mat ting to each other in sportsmanlike introduction to their contest, and then starting in like mad upon the national Japanese exercise. It is a veritable pano rama of flying schoolboys, of brown heels in the air, heads and legs banging on the matting, rolling bod ies and smiling faces. It is all carried on in com parative silence save for the resounding thuds made 314 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT by the bodies of the students alighting upon the floor space, and curling up very much in the shape of round balls. I am told that one needs to begin very young in order to become at all expert in this vig orous sport. It is so universal, however, that one sees commonly the Japanese student carrying in one hand his bag of books and in the other his little kit of clothing and sticks used for Jeudo and fencing. Student fencing is quite another thing than the word connotes in the West. There is no slashing of faces as at Heidelberg, none of the "touche" at mosphere of the French fencing-master. The "foil" here is a formidable thick club, something like a single stick only longer and much larger in circumference and made of bamboo rods bound closely together to prevent breaking. The contest ants are clothed in heavy canvas suits, their sides protected by thick leather paddings. They wear large wire protected helmets, resembling somewhat the American baseball-catcher's mask. The signal is given and the combatants fall lengthwise upon the mattings facing each other upon their stomachs, this is for courtesy sake (and the Japanese are equaled by no people in courtesy), and this is their manner of exchanging compliments previous to the battle. They then rise and with a savage yell which might come out of any jungle, begin to brandish their clubs, beating each other in the side, over the head or thrusting for the throat. A strike upon the wrist is considered the blow par excellence. It is truly the din of battle. No "fighting-knight- wise" of old Bushido days could give the impression of greater rudeness, wildness, and barbarity in both sound and strength expended. Exchange the bam- CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG JAPAN 315 boo clubs for the short swords and you have a well preserved relic of Jhe days of feudal chivalry. There is probably no more exhausting sport extant, for the contestant puts out his entire strength, the result being an exercise well intended to strike ter ror to the heart of the uninitiated. Mass football in America is a parlor pastime in impression as compared with this fencing. The whole Japanese power of alertness and agility, rapidity, and watch fulness is at its maximum. While witnessing some of the larger student clubs of fencing in the Imperial Universities, where the resounding knocks upon the heads of the students seemed to me to be a sure means of annihilation, my feelings were much like those expressed by a Chinese Minister to Washing ton, Mr. Wu Ting Fang, who witnessed his first foot ball game at Harvard. After noticing a dozen or more men piled seemingly with deadly purpose upon one poor student at the bottom of the heap, he in quired solicitously, "Is he dead yet?" But the students of this land, which has borrowed Buddhism from India, Confucianism from China, military methods from Germany, naval arrange ment from England, and modern educational proce dure from the entire world, find no difficulty in revealing further their selective proclivity by choosing American baseball and making it the most popular present-day Japanese sport. Lawn tennis has also a considerable vogue, but cricket has failed to find a congenial soil among the athletes of the Island Empire. Americans have already had an opportunity to see the readiness with which the Japa nese students have adjusted themselves to the Amer ican national sport in several baseball teams sent 316 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT to the States, teams that have acquitted themselves with no little favor. In this, as in so many cases in other departments of life, Japanese intelligence has proved its elasticity, its quick discernment, its rapid accomplishment. Japan's motto, made evi dent in many ways, is "To polish our gems with stones quarried in other lands. ' ' While I was in Japan a baseball team from Stan ford University visited Tokyo, and found the Japa nese students opponents worthy of their best skill. One of the games which created considerable notice brought out the fact that it is possible to copy a method without reproducing the spirit thereof ; that it takes generations to make good sportsmen, as it does to bring breadth and perspective in other realms of activity. In a closely contested game the decision of the umpire was manifestly unjust and decidedly in favor of the Japanese team. The for eigners, with many of the Japanese spectators, re vealed their disapprobation, as did several of the newspapers the following day. The Stanford boys, however, uttered no protest, and, which is the disap pointing part, the Japanese students did not accept their opportunity to refuse in a high-minded fash ion, a victory gained by manifestly unjust decisions : the result being that in an eleven inning game the students from Keio University won, according to the umpire, but the defeat of the Stanford men, in the minds of the majority of the spectators, counted for more than their victory might have done. Another feature of the game which revealed in an amusing way the devoted loyalty of the Japanese for the Japanese, was evident when, in order to even up the cheering, some of the younger Japanese stu- CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG JAPAN 317 dents were placed with the Stanford sympathizers with American flags in their hands, and instructed to cheer for the visitors. This they did, somewhat reluctantly, before the game began, but as soon as the contest became exciting, the youngsters quite forgot their instruction to be courteous to the for eigners, and joined lustily in cheers and yells, not for Stanford, but for their Japanese college mates. American and European students must needs have advanced farther than at present in clear-eyed un professional impartiality in games before they can become too harsh censors of these learners of mod ern sports, who have had two dozen years to rise to the high level of fair play in college athleticism. In one respect too, Japan may well point a lesson to Western, and especially American college men, for in spite of their great love for baseball and out-of- door sports, they have not allowed these exercises to encroach upon their serious intellectual interests. There is no sense in which the athletic side shows "have swallowed up the circus" in Japan. The great distinction and in fact the only distinc tion to be gained in a Japanese University is the distinction of brains and mental accomplishment. Japanese students undoubtedly are the losers in cer tain lines of all-round development, in personal responsibility, and in leadership training, because of the absence of almost every kind of student organ ization known in the West; but they recognize cer tain compensations in the reduction of excesses, moral and physical, which surround too many of our own college holiday bacchanalian orgies. If Japan preserves her present balance of mind and the habit of "proving all things and holding to that 318 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT which is good," profiting by her close scrutiny of student values and student failures in her world wide commissions of critical investigation, she will doubtless suffer no loss in not being counted first in international athletics. In the last analysis a na tion is not judged by the strength of its body so much as by the sovereignty of its ideas. But the secret of Japanese education is not fully solved through the study of either educational meth ods or athletic exercises, neither does it exist in the material display of military or commercial power, but, for Japan at least, it lies in larger measure than outsiders sometimes suppose, in what Lafcadio Hearn styles, her "Race Ghost" — in the genius and spirit of "Bushido," a word bearing a national timbre, the Soul of her hereditary Past. It must be with a feeling of trepidation that a foreigner makes any attempt at analysis of that pe culiar and well-nigh indefinable force which the most discerning Japanese will tell you, they them selves cannot accurately define. One can at best only discern flashes and stray glimpses of this spirit by way of incidents or expressions caught in uncon scious moments from this highly sensitive and com posite people. To be sure the days of chain armor and catapults are past — Feudalism and the old Samurai with his two swords, one for defense, the other for himself if honor demand, are no more. But in the trail of these far-reaching ancient forces, there is to be found a peculiar spirit, a kind of deep-seated sentimental- ism, which at times seems definable as sacrifice, self- abnegation or a sort of semi-religious patriotism, making it possible for the Japanese, on occasion, to CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG JAPAN 319 rise to the very summit of a wave of mighty emotion and self-sacrificing activity. It was something of this mingled reserve and inertia that caused four hundred Samurai, whose swords were their souls, to carry their daggers sheathed for 250 years while Japan went to school to Chinese history and Chinese ethics. And then, as occasion offered, to draw these blades with all the nervous excitability of an impas sioned and sentimental people, counting not their lives dear in their relentless and irresistible strug gles with their neighbors, China and Russia. One finds this peculiar force on many a Japanese occa sion. In the war with Russia, Admiral Togo called his officers to his cabin and said simply, "We sail to-night and our enemy flies the Russian flag. ' ' On a tray before him lay a short dagger used to commit "Sappuka" (self-despatch). The officers under stood his meaning. The students of Japan have not only inherited this genius of their Samurai ancestors (men are but chil dren of larger growth), but this peculiar quality is always to be reckoned upon in dealing with the tens of thousands of young men who, with high am bitions are spending laborious days and nights in fitting themselves for Japan's new reforms. When one least expects sentiment and the breaking out of this slumbering race spirit, a trivial incident brings it to attention. On Degree Day, the scene is one of high color and charm ; the Great Red Gate of the Imperial Univer sity, famous in Japanese story, is to-day virtually covered by flags and streamers. Within the gates, in long orderly rows, stand officials high in rank, members of cabinets, professors who are also Gov- 320 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT ernment officials, honorable personages, barons, counts, and students. Presently an outrider ap pears announcing the approach of His Majesty. Expectancy is in the air. As the Emperor arrives he is greeted with august silence. All heads are bowed, there is no beat of drums, no guns, no accla mations, no wild huzzas, no motion of the vast as semblage. The Emperor of Japan by Divine right, drives slowly along in the dead silence of a worship ful populace. Of what are these people thinking as this personification of Nippon's ancient line of Sovereigns passes ? It is a strange scene, an unintel ligible sentiment to Westerners who demand action for the expression of their innermost feelings. After the Emperor has passed, the long line forms and marches into the Great Hall where the speeches are made and the diplomas and prizes are handed in silence to the winners, the whole audience standing meanwhile. Here also there is no applause, no music, no sound save the voices of the Deans calling the students' names. It resembles more a great memorial meeting than anything to which the West erner can liken it. There is no touch of our Euro pean or American joy or joke making, no class spirit evincing itself, no cheering of successful com petitors. All is order and a reverent air pervades the entire ceremony. In the midst of this unique occasion, one has pictured a thoughtful student. He is clad in the uniform of the University, and suddenly while the diplomas are in process of dis tribution he rises abruptly and walks out of the building with a dejected and melancholy air, strid ing out towards the Red Gate as one who has fought and lost. But it is not because he has failed. CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG JAPAN 321 This student is a Tutosei, graduate of law, who has also won the Emperor's prize. He has obtained the highest degree the University of Tokyo can be stow. His dejection has arisen from another cause, even from that which the narrator describes as the Jap anese idealism, the sentiment of unfulfilled longings which must break through at times the repressive reserve of hereditary restraint. The student as he reveals himself to us feels crowding upon him the responsibilities of the future, he is filled with emo tion as he thinks of the ending of these twenty years or more of student associations. The ambition to accomplish a destiny worthy of his ancestors, the burden of tasks just ahead of him in the world which will be difficult of performance. He rushes away to his lodgings and will not be comforted. He is struck with that strange melancholy that lies imbedded in the heart of the nation, the melancholy whose seeds when brought to fruition often eventuate incongru ously in despair or suicide; it is the quality of a high-spirited ancestry, hard and stern as steel, while the task is on, but repressed and subdued, and often poignantly self-conscious in its reactions and relaxa tions. It is this sentimental side of the Japanese nature that so perplexes the foreigner. Repeatedly I have been told in Japan by Japanese as well as foreign ers, that the cause for protest in the California mis understanding is a matter of hurt feelings, a wounded racial pride rather than any economic or political disadvantage. The Japanese youth has in herited a twofold and incongruous past, part stern ness, part sentiment; Spartan disregard of danger 322 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT and pain goes hand in hand with true Eastern devo tion to feeling and duty. It is like the ocean stream that washes the shore of these islands — one part is cold, and the other warm. The Japanese has fitly been called the child of his mother, trained in the school of his father. He thinks like a man, but he feels like a woman. He possesses what Lotze calls "the sentimental temperament." He has, with all his firmness and strict discipline, a feminine trait. Certain fathers recognize this and they send their boys to special boarding houses where they live during their college course with a certain austerity far from the caressing care of their mothers and grandmothers. But this high feeling, this spirit of honor as difficult to understand as is the caste of India or the "face" of China, is always present, ready to rise to the surface as a kind of perennial touchiness, a high honor-sense, looking, at times, for offense in trivial matters, and, as the teachers of Japan will tell you, is evident in the film that passes over the eyes of the students in the classroom when incidents of deep significance or feeling are read or narrated. It is akin to religion. What is to be the future religion of Japan? I asked of statesmen, business and professional men and Government officials. The answers were some what diverse. Among the replies are the follow ing: "There is no religion in Japan among educated men," said a Professor of the Imperial University. "The future religion will be Christianity with modifications," said a Christian missionary. "It is a big question," answered Count Okuma, who is supposed to be a kind of Japanese Unitarian, CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG JAPAN 323 "but it will not be Christianity as the West now knows it, not the Christianity of theology and creed. " "Pantheism," said a Japanese Buddhist, "with a decided tendency toward Buddhism, providing our priests reform." "The religion of the future," said a keen foreign observer, a lawyer who had lived in Japan for a quarter of a century, "will be an amalgam of an cestor worship, Buddhism, Shinto as applied to Im perial loyalty, and Christian social service." After making two visits to Japan and conversing with a very large number of educated men, I am inclined to think that the opinion expressed by the foreign lawyer, represents the future development of Japanese religion. The tendency is toward a composite of East and West rather than in the di rection of a clear-cut Western faith, and such a reli gion will not be the work of a day or a generation, for great religions amongst a great people are products of growth and are not cataclysmic. "Seek knowledge throughout the world," was the Imperial Edict, which made religious faith free in Japan. A state religion like that of Germany or England is scarcely a future possibility. Confucian influences which were introduced into Japan 1,500 years ago became the foundation of Japanese education and ethics, much as Greek and Roman culture formed the background of Euro pean learning. Confucianism, which gave Japan three hundred rules for courtesy and three thou sand rules for conduct, has done too much for the Sunrise Kingdom, and is too firmly woven into the warp and woof of her life and thought, to cease to form a strong strand in the texture of her future 324 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT faith. Indeed, had this old ethical culture been em phasized more strongly, and Confucian history and politics less, it would have been better for the mod ern nation. Visitors to Tokyo journey over the Kudan Hill to see a shrine dedicated to those "immortal dead" who have given themselves freely on the fields of war and whose names now appear in living char acters and are read by the Nation's youth with a veneration not known to the Western boys and girls, to whom a monument is a dismal and minatory spectacle. To the tourist, indeed, such shrines are like a hundred other "sights" meaningless and com monplace; one American tourist was heard to re mark at Ise ; ' ' There is nothing to see in Yamada, and what there is to see is not to be seen." But many thousand students of the new Japan have been brought in boyhood to these places as to the places of the canonized and deified dead, and told in the hush of religious feeling, that their fa ther's spirit lingers invisibly about this spot; they may not talk of religion, but these things they re member and understand. The head of a large col lege said that he had seen a widow leading her child to the Shrine at Kudan Hill, and had heard her saying, "Look well! He is there, do you not see him?" An Imperial decree was sent abroad in 1881 stat ing that to bow or not to bow before a Shrine is a matter of indifference as regards religious faith; it does not commit one to any religion — but out of the mingled idea of ancestor worship and Shinto devotion instilled in childhood there comes a voice to the modern Japanese undergraduate that rings A room in an inn at Nara, showing the scroll of Good Luck, the charcoal brazier, and of course, the ubiquitous nasan or serving-maid (C) Stereo-Travel Co. Tea can be had at any time and at any place in Japan, al though the ancient ceremony which once accompanied the drinking of tea is now obsolete CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG JAPAN 325 through the corridors of his man's memory, careless and agnostic as he may claim to be, regarding things spiritual. This mosaic of religion seems to be based upon nature rather than upon revelation. I said to a thoughtful University boy whose father had lived for years in England and who was quite accus tomed to Westernized homes and modern scien tific invention, "What is your chief pleasure during your vacation hours ? " I expected he would answer as the Egyptian schoolboys answered the question, "Automobiles, aeroplanes, out-of-door athletics," but he answered thoughtfully, "to take long walks with my college friend in the woods and by the little inland waterfalls, where we talk and think of what we will do worthy of our country." I remem bered the Shinto oracle that the Japanese are fond of repeating. "When the sky is clear and the wind hums in the fir trees, 'tis the heart of a god who thus reveals himself." This may be Shinto, that ethnological religious patriotism, which at present supports 16,000 Shrines and 15,000 ministrants in Japan — it may be pantheism more or less prevalent in the mental make-up of every Oriental — it may be sentiment, Japanese sentiment, which is half mysticism and half will ; it is, however, not the senti ment that looks dream-like and sighs for the moon (this boy was headed for military service), it is a sentiment that lives near those mighty impulses that teach the Japanese how to die for a principle, and James Russell Lowell once said that such death was the chief test of religious sincerity. An educated Japanese will quote to you Schil ler's monistic idea of the Universe : 326 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT There are moments in life when we feel like pressing to our bosom every stone, every far off distant star, every worm and every conceivable higher spirit — to embrace the entire Universe like our loved one. . . . Then does the whole creation melt into a personality. and he will add that in such high spiritual mood, Schiller is a Shintoist at his best. Such combination of religions is constantly being exhibited in present day Japan. I was told by Baron Sakatani, Mayor of Tokyo, of a "Concordia" recently formed in that city composed of Shintoists, Confucianists, Buddhists and Christians, a meeting- place of religions, a center for discussion, for mu tual planning regarding the best things, moral, and religious for the country; but when I asked him which men were Shintoists, which Confucianists, etc., I found that he hesitated and had considerable difficulty in separating the men according to reli gions, so interwoven had the ideas of the four reli gious doctrines become in the consciousness of the educated man. I lived in many Japanese homes and hotels during my visits to this country and found frequently, near by the Buddhist Shrines, a shelf which contained the objects of the Shinto cult. Into all this mingled religious current, Christian ity is free as never before to pour its life giving forces. Since the important religious conference called by Government a few years ago, when, by Im perial order, Buddhists, Shintoists and Christians were brought together to discuss the moral and re ligious needs of the nation, Christianity has been on a different basis, as far as the attitude of many Japanese is concerned. The Western faith has been CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG JAPAN 327 dignified, imperialized so to speak, and in a country where the sanction of the Emperor reaches so far and is so compelling, this has meant much for the Christian workers. I find a far more cordial atti tude toward Christianity at present than existed in Japan five years ago. There is, to be sure, just as strong insistence that Christianity or any other re ligion here must be Japanised, if it is to take root. "We are against your organized Christianity, your doctrinal and dogmatic theology about which you yourselves are unable to agree," is the common re mark of thoughtful Japanese. I found the Japa nese students spending very little time in speculative religious discussion in which the Indian undergrad uate so greatly delights. But these men do want (and I believe the men of mind are most solicitous over this point) the vital conviction, the impelling impulsive enthusiasm, the 'morality touched with emotion' that Western religion evinces, despite all of its weaknesses and dismal failures. ' ' We want, ' ' said Count Okuma, "a life force, we have not yet found it religiously." Strong bodies, Christian and religious, are work ing toward this end for Japan. The Christian mis sionaries are laboring with extraordinary wisdom and intelligence, with a breadth of mind and humil ity not excelled elsewhere in the East. The Japan Peace Society, embracing some of the best Christian Japanese as well as many of the leading statesmen, now numbers one thousand members and its socie ties are rapidly increasing. The Christians, foreign and native, are planning the foundation of a great Christian University for the country which will in- 328 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT terpret modern Christianity in the terms of the needs of modern Japan. The student Christian As sociations are justly gaining in influence and pres tige through the personnel of their workers and the practical unsectarian character of their activities. Largely through the influence of the efficient sec retaries and the fine building equipment of this order, I am told that at least 2,500 Japanese stu dent youth are studying the Bible in English. A significant event occurred recently upon the campus of Waseda University, when 1,200 English Bibles were purchased by the students. It is strategic statesmanship to thus study and to serve with religious zeal the student life of Japan, for in this country, forces and authority begin at the top and filter down to the people, and not as in the West, working as leaven in the masses. To say that this Christian "life force" in some properly and sensibly adapted form is needed by the Japa nese students, especially needed by those thirty thou sand undergraduates, scattered without surveillance among the cheap boarding houses of Tokyo, is a truism; a fact that I have not yet found Japanese of any or no faith denying. A body of youth, im pressionable to a marvelous degree, who have not been taught the sense of sin, or that the sharing of the multitudinous vice of the Yoshiwara was incon sistent with uprightness of character; whose teach ers, and even indeed whose fathers have frequently opened the doors to practises that Christian princi ples forbid its adherents ; a body of young men en dowed with such magnificent promise, laden with such inevitable future responsibilities for national leadership, and environed by such subtle moral dis- CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG JAPAN 329 tractions, require indeed, a life force, a something "eternally worth while," stronger to guide and to hold than the combined Eastern religions have as yet shown themselves capable of furnishing. XXII Can the Oeient Be Modebnized THE majority of the human race dwells in Asia, the largest of the continents. Asia is numer ically tremendous with her nine hundred millions of population, four times the population of Europe, forty-one times the size of France and the sphere of activity of more than half the population of the globe. Although Asia has never been known as con taining warrior races, it is conservatively estimated that she can muster one hundred millions of fighting men, while the warrior nations of India alone out number those of the combined nations who speak English. The strategic significance in the history and trade of nations of the Asiatic races, is not generally real ized. Asia's struggle with Europe has lasted two thousand years and has been the binding thread of history ; her trade with Europe has been the founda tion of commerce ; her philosophic thought has been the basis of all Western religion, and the charm and the spell of her antipodal customs have been the wonder of every Occidental student or traveler. In spite of these facts, it is notable that the fusion of races, Asiatic and European, has never occurred ; the great continent of Asia has never vitally asso ciated its creeds and customs with those of the West ; its currents of thought, like its streams of blood, have not flowed together to any considerable extent 330 CAN THE ORIENT BE MODERNIZED 331 in a common consanguinity with those of the Occi dent, and many of the most profound students of the Orient believe, that in the deepest sense, there never will exist absolute comity between the Asiatic and the European or American. Meredith Town- send in presenting conclusions derived from a long life devoted to the study of relationships between Asia and Europe says : Asia, though it yields from time to time to the sudden im pact from Europe as water yields to a ship, always flows back after a ripple more or less drawn out, without having been apparently affected. As one travels from country to country among those people who profess as religions the creed of Islam, of Buddha, Brahma, Confucius, Zoroaster or Shinto, realizing meanwhile the seemingly inex haustible force of these faiths to grip and control Orientals, he also realizes how little these vast reli gions appeal to the Western mind, and how they seem to be at home in the tropical rather than in the temperate zones. Let the foreigner come into contact with the East ern mind in matters of trade, let him try to match his intuitive processes in diplomacy or politics with those of the sons of the Orient, and he very soon becomes conscious of certain inherent and incurable differences, inevitably separating him mentally from his Eastern neighbor. During my first tour in the Orient seven years ago, I met Occidentals who seemed to be well-nigh certain that they had reached the solution of certain racial and international prob lems vexing the best minds of Western aliens in Oriental lands. During my recent tour through 332 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT Asia, I have met again some of these same persons who tell me that their former certainty has been dissipated and destroyed with further years of con tact with Asiatics. As one of these persons sug gested, a Westerner can only be sure of the conclusions of to-day; to-morrow is likely to bring him a new set of strange and contradictory experi ences throwing all of yesterday's conclusions out of balance. It is not merely a kindergarten fancy to state that Oriental populations, from the point of view of the Occidental at least, are walking on their heads. In almost everything, Asiatics are our opposites. Whatever you say about anything Eastern, remem ber that from some other angle of vision the con trary could be truthfully stated. A former British Ambassador to Constantinople wrote : When you wish to know what a Turkish official is likely to do, first consider what it would be to his interest to do, next what any other man would do under similar circum stances, and thirdly, what every one expects him to do. When you have ascertained these, you are so far advanced in your road that you may be perfectly certain that he will not adopt any of these courses. One soon discovers that his Asiatic impressions depend largely upon the people whom he meets. I made one trip around the world in which I met largely Protestant and Catholic missionaries, Eu ropean and American, and talked and lived with Eu ropean officials and Western men of business. As my conclusions, drawn from this experience, coin cided in general with many books which I had read CAN THE ORIENT BE MODERNIZED 333 upon travel and official history written by Europe ans, and the treatises and reports of missionaries, I somewhat naturally decided that my point of view was in general a correct one, relative to the character and progress of Asiatic peoples. As a balance to these impressions during the last year and a half, I have traveled and lived almost exclusively with the native peoples of North Africa, Egypt (and Egypt is peculiarly Oriental), India, Burma, the Malay States, China, Japan, and have had also some intimate associations with the inhabit ants of the Philippines and the islands of the south ern seas. To my surprise and often to my puzzled bewilderment, I found myself inevitably drawn to conclusions quite different from those I had previ ously formed. While I have never met with more lavish hospital ity or more intelligent penetration or more decided tendencies of social, religious, and political convic tions than those encountered among these Asiatic folk, I have been repeatedly and constantly aware of something radically distinct, something intangibly and irremediably different from that which my Western birth, education, and environment have given me. I have felt that, even if I had accepted the creed of the Moslem or the Hindu or the Confu- cianist, this barrier would not have been removed. The sense has not always been present, to be sure. At times one seems to forget entirely his geograph ical and racial partitions in converse with men of light and leading who are as fully acquainted with the history and movements of nations, as those of the highly educated classes of the West. But when one follows these same congenial and seemingly 334 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT modern Asiatics into their homes or to their places of worship, or comes upon them suddenly when they are off guard, surrounded by their own people or friends, this mysterious lack of comity again arises. One finds himself asking : Can Asia ever become really modernized? Is there not some inherent dis similarity between the West and the East which for ever forbids the one permanently to mix with or to conquer the other? Can the training in the arts and the sciences of the West cure these prejudices of color and creed, these natural and temperamental incongruities ; or has Providence rooted deeply and inextricably distinct laws of the mind and the spirit in these truly distinct continents, so deeply, so in extricably that all human effort will appeal in vain for their real union? National and racial contrasts are among the most real things one feels as he delves into the life and history of the Asiatics. The artistic ability of the Oriental is unques tioned. Asiatics have built the Taj and the Alham- bra, they have constructed the marvelous temples of Buddhism, and they have built the graceful tow ers and the temples and mosques of Cairo and Benares ; they are responsible for the towers of Nan king and the palaces of the Shoguns. Chinese por celain is the best of its kind in the world, and the literary and the artistic ability of the Tagores of India can be duplicated in many a circle of India and Japan. One will not find in Western lands the equal of such work as the Damascus blade, the gold chains of Trichinopoly, or the black-wood carving of the Middle Kingdom. Yet in the conquest of nature, Asia is behind Eu- CAN THE ORIENT BE MODERNIZED 335 rope and Western nations. Living for centuries above great mines of iron, coal, tin, and platinum, she has been content to shiver about her tiny braziers or her fires of cowdung, to plow with crooked sticks, to use gourds for carrying recep tacles and to make her homes in temporary dwellings of mud and straw. In the science of medicine, in machinery, in scientific discovery, and in the con quering of natural resources generally, Asia for gen erations has been tried in the balance and has been found wanting. From the point of view of morals also, the Asiatic is different from the European and, from the latter 's point of view, is unadvanced. He is a creature of superstition. The "evil eye" of Egypt has a thou sand counterparts in a thousand Asiatic com munities. The Oriental is not moral in the sense known in the West. He practises falsehood, and often sees no evil in so doing, save as falsehood is objectless or unsuccessful. He is more truly a hero worshiper than the West erner. Confucius, who did not claim to be a prophet, has molded the thought of vaster popula tions than any other, save that of the Oriental, Jesus of Nazareth, while the name of Mahomet is a com pelling idea to two hundred and twenty millions of the earth's inhabitants. Asia, moreover, differs from Europe in being a land of contented acquiescence rather than one of aggressive acquisition. Despite hunger and famine and pestilence and sword, Asia has pursued her way unchangingly until the present, indifferent alike to misfortune, wars, and death. Save in astronomy, the East has made small con- 336 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT tribution to science. She has produced no great his torians, and she has few great travelers and investigators, and is accustomed to give small cre dence to the accounts of tourists relative to condi tions in foreign lands. But as the originators of philosophy regarding relations between the seen and the unseen world, the whole earth has gone to school to Asia. Whence? Whither? Why? These are the questions which have been the subject matter of Asia's deepest thought. She has rested her great religions like Hinduism and Buddhism upon the deep philosophies of the mind and spirit. In the doctrine of reincarnation, Asiatic religion has attacked and solved for itself, at least, the most vexing problem of the world, the problem of the origin and reason of evil, and the apparent uneven justice in the world presided over by a just God, the problem that no Western race has satisfactorily settled for the majority of its adherents. To the Westerner, this doctrine is faulty in many of its phases; it is difficult to secure adequate evi dence and the man of the West demands objective as well as subjective evidence for his truth. Never theless, the faith has been the means of saving mil lions of Asiatics from irreligion and the atheism which at various times has spread over Europe. Who can, with honesty, utterly deride a creed that acts as a bridge from doubt to faith for millions, even though the creed may seem at times a tissue of superstitions and far from perfect in its working? The Moslem, while he does not accept the theory of incarnation, finds for himself an adequate expla nation of the evil of the universe in the idea that CAN THE ORIENT BE MODERNIZED 337 "Allah wills." Fatalistic it may seem, but it has held the faithful with a mighty grip, defying all at tempts at conversion, and has made Islam the "mis sionaries' despair." The weakness of the Asiatic's religion, lies in his lack of emphasis upon ethics and social responsibil ity. He cares little, in fact, for the great thought of the brotherhood of man. He is strictly a reli gious individualist. Outside of his family or clan or caste into which he is religiously bound, he has little appreciation of an obligation to his neighbor. It is the absence of good Samaritanism that has caused Asia untold conflicts, murders, wars, and turmoil. Although we may say that the West has not lived up to the second great commandment, we must also add that the West believes that it ought to live up to it, while the East disregards it or treats it with contempt. The fifth commandment, however, is obeyed in Asia as in no other part of the earth, the devotion of son to father being a kind of unwritten law in stinctive in the Oriental's thought and heredity. Polygamy, on the other hand, is not considered adultery, the Moslem sanctioning it and the Hindu allowing it in cases when the first wife is childless. Asiatics are also free from that gnawing and baneful covetousness of the West through their beliefs in the adjustments of society by a wise Providence. Although the Asiatic is accustomed to absolute authority and bows to the will of a sovereign, as to a divine mandate, who may with impunity inflict death upon him, he has resisted for centuries the encroachments of the West. Without being re nowned as a marshaler of armies, Asia drove Uome 338 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT from her Persian borders, and Alexander with his matchless political insight, coveting the disintegra tion of the Asiatic peoples, only succeeded in found ing a few Greek dynasties within Asiatic limits, and one will search in vain in Asia to-day for any con siderable Greek influence. England has made deeper impress in Oriental Egypt and in India, the flower of the British Em pire, than has any other European nation. But if England should leave the East to-morrow, her im pression of twenty-five colonizing years would hardly be deeper than the externals of modern civil ization. In that part of Oriental thought and life, which to the Easterner is really the life — Religion — England has said: "Hands off!" and in this real life of Asia, she has attempted and has accomplished little or no change. Asia is not an aggressive con queror, but by her power of passive resistance, springing out of her conviction of the difference of permanent ideals between herself and the West, she has proved a tremendous ability to reject her con querors and to survive them. Her spirit has been not unlike that of Socrates who could drink the hem lock which would destroy his body and murmur triumphantly: "You can have my soul if you can catch me." The West has never captured the soul of the East, and one doubts that she ever will. From 700 to 1757, a thousand years and more, Asia was supremely Asiatic save for a small raid upon her borders by the Crusaders. Although it would seem that Great Britain and Russia are forming new precedents of control in Asia, a close scrutiny of the facts reveal with what difficulty this control is being preserved. Lord Kitchener was rushed to CAN THE ORIENT BE MODERNIZED 339 Egypt to prevent imminent disaffection and dis aster, and it is generally believed that only the pres ence of this modern Pharaoh with his soldier's hand of iron, is to-day preserving anything like quiet in the land of the Nile. The frequent recurrence of bomb throwing and assassinations in India, give an inkling of what is seething below the surface where people are being ruled by an alien race. I was re peatedly told by English officials that a more exten sive and careful secret service was now in vogue than ever before had been known in this land. "You never know what is going to happen here," said a keen Deputy Commissioner in the Central Provinces, a man who mixed with thousands of natives every month. The Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 is always a shadow in the back of the Tommy Atkins' mind, and its renewal is by no means a fanciful possibility. "All is quiet," says the home Government — but let a dis interested investigator travel and live in the native states of India, which compose such an influential part of India, that in the Sepoy Rebellion the loyalty of one State alone, Hyderabad, saved India for Brit ain, and what does he find? To be sure, outwardly all is calm and you will frequently find all kinds of meetings of memorial and appreciation to His Ex cellency, the Viceroy, and in public a marked rev erence on the part of the Indian towards his British Raj. But when you meet the native in the privacy of his own home, if you are fortunate enough to induce him to break through the barrier of language and nationality, you will find, almost invariably, something more akin to hate than to love for his British overlords. "Do you know, I can hardly buy 340 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT a pen or a sword for myself," said a vexed native Prince, "without asking the Resident for permis sion. ' ' The attitude of mind is not unlike that of Tewfik Pasha, who, in the early days of the English occu pation of Egypt, while watching a review of British troops said to one of his ministers: "Do you sup pose I like this ? I tell you I never see an English sentinel In my streets without longing to jump out of my carriage and strangle him with my own hands." England has indeed been engaged in a great un dertaking, and the result is becoming evident in a new material India and Egypt. But a people is not changed at heart by means of mechanical devices, whether they are railroads or irrigation or Western buildings. As a nation thinketh in its heart, so is that nation. As Matthew Arnold accurately has said: By the soul only The nation shall be great and free. For the last year or two, we have been optimistic ally stating our beliefs in a new China. Behold a new Republic in an old Empire ! Sweeping changes in every department of her life, young men in Eu ropean bowlers and frock coats, Chinese women with unbound feet becoming interested in Western dressmaking and society, a new constitution and a new set of politicians, closely resembling those made in America! In place of the old Literati examina tion stalls, modern school buildings, like those found in Europe and the United States, and the new President of the Republic himself, although a Con- CAN THE ORIENT BE MODERNIZED 341 fucianist, appointing a day of prayer for China, asking especially the supplications of the Christians for the new Republic. We read articles and hear speeches in adoration of H. E. Sun Yat Sen, the Cantonese Doctor and provisional President and arch-theorist. We hear him called a voice in the heathen wilderness and heralded, especially in the West, as a kind of John the Baptist in the new China. I was in China shortly after Doctor Sun stated, "that the new Republic is the formal decla ration of the will of the Chinese people." He told me of his plans for trunk line railroads, bringing to gether the vast areas of this old awakened land. The dragon throne seemed rocking to its fall, the collapse of Manchu and Literati, the dissolving of Confucianism and the customs of centuries all pass ing as in the twinkling of an eye. Yet those who knew China and who were ac quainted with the treachery, the rapine, the piracy on the Kwang Tung coast, the assassinations and ineffectual delays of the new Parliament, those who came in daily contact with these half Occidentalized young politicians, realized the artificiality of such conquests of the East by the West. They knew that China had been accustomed to upheavals, political as well as social, and that China regarded not the change of clothes nor the vicissitudes of rulers, as she went on unheedingly throughout her vast se cluded provinces, engrossed with the all-important and eternal question of daily rice. He who knows China appreciates that a nation, which has seen, unmoved, a Taiping Rebellion, devastating nine provinces and destroying forty millions of lives, a country which underwent four famines in the first 342 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT half of the nineteenth century, costing the life of forty-five millions of Chinese, is not easily and rapidly to be stirred out of its age-long placidity of habit and temper. One keen discerner of Chinese life has said that "the problem of China is one of economics, incur able either by religious teaching or by legislative formula." In the shadow of all this uprising and seeming renaissance, the ground-work of rural, an cestor-worshiping Chinese millions is inherently the same, as it would seem, yesterday, to-day and forever. The fact is becoming more and more evi dent now that Yuan Shi Kai has dismissed many of his self-governing Republicans, ignored his foreign Advisors and is rapidly becoming everything, save in name, that age-long China has expected of her rulers. In the very midst of the most optimistic signs of modernization, I attended reactionary meet ings of the Confucianist societies in which far-reach ing plans were being made for the rehabilitation of the national faith. Here, as in India and Egypt, one finds increas ingly encouraging signs of new and better condi tions wrought by modern processes of thought and scientific and social machinery. But new constitu tions and new buildings crumble beneath the steady and regular motions of centuries of habits and hereditary thought. China may take on the glad garments of the West, she may assume the language of the present, but her thought and her motives rise out of a vast repressive past. The real change is amazingly slow. One then is driven repeatedly to the query, what CAN THE ORIENT BE MODERNIZED 343 does it mean to modernize Asia and who is capable for so gigantic a task? Is America with our halting attempts at repre sentative government, with our pipings of peace advocates, drowned by the roar of guns and armed conflicts with our neighbors? Torn by civil strife between employers and employed, our municipal governments distracted between the crimes of offi cials and the threats of anarchism, can we consis tently elevate the Republican idea in behalf of the Oriental? While over all our life in the West is the trail of luxury, of pleasure-seeking and utilita rian self -hood, shall we go to China or to India and have compelling power with a new social gospel? Shall Europe bathed in the blood of her brother nations, with her continental agnosticism and socialism, or England with her civil strifes and wars with her own women, teach the Asiatic peace and the sebrets of higher powers, individual or na tional? We cannot but ask at times as to how effective our religious message may be to Asia, the mother of our Western spiritual creeds. When the keen Oriental tells us that our religion has lost the spontaneous loyalty and glad devotion of our thinking classes, that our forms and rituals of pro fessional religion are being upheld principally by women, that we are divided into a hundred camps and orders of faith, while outside the church, men are crowding our new civilization with multifold movements for uplift, social, charitable, and phil anthropic, with all their evident duplication and often with the lack of a deep religious purpose — 344 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT when the Oriental points out in answer to our deri sion of his Ganges worship, his lepers and his pov erty, that all these efforts at reform in America are the symptoms of distress and moral and physical failure that ought to have been prevented by the essential religion we claim to represent, what an swer shall we give? Do we expect the keen-eyed scrutiny of the Ori ental to overlook the real results of a Christian civ ilization as these results pass through his domains and are hurled before his eyes in unscrupulous for eign traders who laugh at his sacred things? A member of a high gentry family in China spent an afternoon in telling me of the Bacchanalian orgies of Europeans and Americans in the port cities, the trivial example of tourists, the bickerings and di visions of rival Western faiths and the restricted laws of immigration, which excluded his people from America, through what he called the economic greed of the United States. Let us not blame our missionaries, if we, by our works make it too hard for them to influence the educated Easterner to accept our faith. Let us not wonder that Asia hesitates to displace the gods whose protection she knows, for those she knows not of, especially when those who worship them seem to deal in terms of gold and "things" rather than in the "fruits of the spirit." When we appreciate that no American can hold land in Japan, and that foreign missionaries have been obliged to retire into honorary and advisory relation to the new self-guiding and new self-sup porting churches, we are reminded of the fact that the most advanced portions of the Orient have not CAN THE ORIENT BE MODERNIZED 345 learned to trust the Occident. Indeed the distrust of anything in method or practise eminating from America, is so pronounced and general in Japan that speakers and writers on education, politics, and religion are warned to eliminate illustrations referring to Western and American ways of doing things, if they would have influence with their hear ers. There was a time when it was said in England that no Britisher reads an American book ; it is now a time in the Flowery Kingdom when one might say that no one follows an American method, at least not without rigid, native modifications. And yet the Orient, in self-preservation must be modernized, even Westernized to a degree at least. For her, the future must be the open not the closed door to the Occident in trade,. in education, in so cial, and religious influence. The next quarter of a century promises changes and advances, eco nomically, scientifically and politically, that may again change the balance of commercial and per haps territorial conditions. Modernity has already passed through the portals of the East into the great Oriental cities. Although this present day leaven of Westernization has as yet worked but a small way into Asia — as the political unrest of Japan, the most advanced Eastern government is demon strating — it will most surely continue to penetrate these vast continents until even the remotest fel laheen and Thibetan lama shall feel its irresist ible impulse— and the Orient will be changed— not suddenly— -not in a generation— not by something revolutionary— nor finally by the aggressive forces of the Westerner, but rather by the rising up of the awakened Orient herself to comprehend, to choose 346 THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT or to reject, as Japan and China and India have al ready begun to do. "When India accepts Christianity," said an as tute American missionary educator, "as I believe she will accept it one day, it will be a Christianity with Hinduism, not Judaism, for her Old Testa ment. ' ' In other words, in faith, as in everything else, permanent Oriental modernization will be funda mentally East not West. The renewal of the Or ient, for her own good and for the health of the nations, will grow out of the awakened, active brain and heart and hand of her own sons and daughters, and its roots will cling about the rock foundation 3f her own traditions, her own timelessness, her own temperament, and her own religion. The Oc cident can help, though she can never truly mod ernize the Orient — but the Orient can and will modernize herself. INDEX INDEX Algeria. Hill Men of Kabylia, 14; French Colonization, 15; Scen ery and Inhabitants, 15; Kabyle Life and Characteris tics, 17-23; Missions in Ka bylia, 19-22; Triple Divorce, 18; Kous-kous, 17. Ambassador, British to Constan tinople, 332. Asia. Extent, influence, trade, 330; Possibility of Occidental Modernization, 330-346. Abbe Hue, 237. Arab vs. Kabyle, 21. Arnold at Rugby, 63. Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 63, 340. Athletics among Indian Stu dents, 146. Afghan Money Lender, 171. Arya Samaj, 135, 144-145. Arabic Language, a veil, 61. Bedouin. Hospitality, 70; Kitchener's Strategy, 71; Business men, 72; Blood feuds, 73; Religion, 73, 74; Modernizing, 75. Brahmo Samaj, 99. Bilibid Prison, Manila, 150. Bengali Described, 185. Bargaining in Asia, 181, 182. Bergson, Prof. Henri, 153. Borden, William A., Librarian Baroda, 128. Benson, Arthur, 60. Baroda Gaekwar, 93, 122. Besant, Anna, 200. Buddhism. In. first century, 81 ; In In- 349 dia, 189; In Burmah, 213; In Japan, 323 ; Buddhism and the Priests, 216; Buddhist Kind ness and Beauty, 217; Com plexity of Theology, 218; Buddhism vs. Christianity, 219. Burmah. Romantic and Buddhist, 206; Patriotism, 207; Area, population, 211; Judson, Mis sionary, 206; Labor Problems, 212; King Bagyidaw, 207; Thebaw, King, 212; Muzzling the Press, 208; Rangoon, 212; King Mindon, 208; Lord Dal- housie and Burman Treaty, 208; Visit to Burmese Roy alty, 209; Shway Yoe, 209; Freedom of Women, 211; Cen tennial Yankee, 210; Bud dhism and Reform, 213; Min erals and Petroleum, 211; Burmah Awakening, 210; The Monastery Schools, 214- 215; Pongyis, 214; Every Man a Priest, 214. China. Consular attitude, 228 Christian Day of Prayer, 228 China and Education, 247 Village Life, 243; Canals and Houseboats, 232-234; Foo chow, 233; Canal Thieves, 233; Soochoo, 235; Shops, 235; Colquhoun on Shopkeep ers, 236; Rural Life, 241, 246; Nightfall on a Houseboat, 245; China in the Crucible, 225. 350 INDEX Copts, 36. Coleridge on Education, 53. Commons, Prof. John R., 56. Commerce, England with India, 7. Dunlop, Douglas, 30. Education. In Kabylia, difficulty of, 20- 21; Egyptian vs. European stu dents, 26, 27; Agricultural, 30-56; Education, Growth in Egypt, 31; Egyptian Girls, 47; British influence upon, 49-50; Utilitarian 51, 154; Handicap of English Language, 52; Bedouin "Kuttabs," 74; Text Books, 61; Training Schools, 61; Education vs. Armament, 62; Personal Contact, 64; Ed ucation in Old Hyderabad, 110; Nizam College, 118; Bribery of Officials, 118; Gaekwar of Baroda's Com pulsory Education, 125; Ob stacles in India Training, 127; Library Work, 128; Gurukula, and Religious Education, 135; Married Students, 142; Gov ernment Universities of In dia, 143; Chinese Education, 247; Japanese Policies, 249; Influence of United States in China, 250-252; Filipino Edu cation, 262; Examinations in Japan, 300, 10; Japanese Stu dent Characteristics, 304 ; Note Books, 309; Japanese Teachers, 297, 298; Teach ableness of Japanese students, 305; Agricultural Schools of India, 162; Athletics in Japan, 312; Christian Uni versity projected, Japan, 327; Self Support of Students, 311, 312; Colquhoun's Criticism of Chinese Education, 252; Edu cation and Marriage, 155; Bergson's Definition, 153; El Azhar University, 8; Battle ships and Education, 11; Craze to learn English, 1, 8. Egypt. English Occupation, 29 ; Government Difficulties, 33 ; Egyptian Honesty, 33-34; Old Egypt in Training, 24; Re forms in Egyptian Education, 44; Under a Modern Bedouin Tent, 65; Utilitarian Egypt, 5, 6, 85. Emerson, 121. El Basel, Chief of Bedouins, 66. English. Attitude toward Egyptians, 63; English Occupation, 76; England's Task, 64; Attitude towards Caste, 92; Troops and Civil Service, in India, 109; Rule in Burmah, 212; Influ ence in Asia, ,338; Attitude of Asiatics, 339, 340. Fellaheen, 73. French Colonization, 15-23. Ferguson, Rev. W. L., Madras, 170. Fitzgerald of Carlyle, 44. Farid Bey, Egyptian National ist, 63. Ganges "Mother," 134. Ganges, fording of, 141. Graft, Indian, 140. Gurukula, Regulations of, 145- 146. Gokhale, Krishna, 93. Gordon, Lady Duff, 74. Gorky, Maxim, 169. Hinduism. Dependence on Caste, 94; Growth of Missions, 95; Brahmins and Caste, incident, 97; Students breaking Caste, 98; Reform Societies, 99; So cial Classes Described, 101; INDEX 351 Ceremonials at Hardwar, 135; Arya Samaj, 135; Asceticism, 197-199 ; Universal receptiv ity, 188; Mahabharata, 198; Ramayana, 198; Hindu Pan theon, 188; Attitude of Edu cated Men, 200; Hindu Priests, 189; Hinduism vs. Christianity, 190; Lack of Moral Sensitiveness, 192; Vishnu, 194; Hindu Panthe ism, 195; Nirvana, 195; Atti tude toward World, 196; Kal- pas, 196; Yogis, 197; Upan ishads, 198; Benares, Temples, Priests, 200; "Time Spirit," influence of, 201. Harem. Influence on Egypt, 48; Strictness of Bedouin, inci dent, 68; In Old Hyderabad, incident, 112. Hydari, A., Home-Secretary, Hy derabad, 118. Huxley, Defines Education, 192. Hearn, Lafcadio, 318. Hare's "Walks in Rome," 220. Hyderabad, 106. Hardwar, 133. India. Indelible impression, 106 ; Modern Tendencies, 6, 7; An tiquity, 88; Ignorance, 105; Changing Social Order, 91; Castes defined and described, 91-103; Missionaries' view, 91; Attitude of English, 92; Indian Attitude toward Eng land, 92; Hindu Students, 94- 98; Moral Restraint, 99; Population and Trade, 108; Reform Sects, 99; Untouch ables, 103; Moving Pictures at Baroda, 128; Intellectual Curiosity, 129; The Muzzein Call to Prayer, 119; Hardwar, 133; Sanskrit taught, 143; Student Life, 150; Education in Foreign Tongue, 150; So cial difficulties, 151; Lack of Initiative, 152 ; Student's Homes, 157; Handicaps of In dian Youth, 158, 159 ; Modern ization in Agriculture, 160; English Gold converted into ornaments, 139; Suttee prac tice of, 137; Life in the jungle, 133-139; Savings Banks, 172. Japan. Characteristics of Young Japan, 304; Tokyo, Student Mecca, 302; California Dis cussion, 293, 321; In the Real Japan, 269; Rural Life, 270- 271; Chinese Students in Tokyo, inns, 271-273; Imper ial University, 297, 300-301; Street Scenes, 273; Education, spirit of, 292-297; Fairs, 273-276; Feast of Dolls, 274- 275; Modern Accomplishments in Education, 297-298; Mod ern Education for Women, 298; Christianity and its In fluence, 322-323 ; College Friendships, 306; Bathing an Institution, 279, 282; Fencing, 314-315; Japanese Food, 282; Theaters, 284-286 ; Baseball, 315-316; Simplicity of Life, 287; Patriotism, 288-289; Religion, 322-329; Progress in Modernization, 289-290; Jeudo, 313; "The Race Ghost," 318; Degree Day, 319; Peace Societies, 327; Yoshiwari, 328; Kudan Hill, 324. Jews in Egypt, 36. Jowett of Baliol, 63. Jones, Rev. John P., on Caste System, 187. Kitchener, 5, 338; 55, 63, 83, 71. Koran, 74. Kanda, Baron, 310. Kipling, Rudyard, 178, 212, 260. 352 INDEX Khamseen, 71. Kai, Ho-kai, Sir, Founder Uni versity Hongkong, 249. Literacy in Egypt, 72. Lee, C. H., on Chinese Revolu tion, 236. Li Hung Chang, Love of Bargain, 238. Lowell, J. R., Advice to Ameri cans, 230, 263. Leibnitz, 299. Longfellow, quoted, 44. Locke, John, 54. Lotze, 322. Missions and Missionaries. In Kabylia, 19-22; Their Work and Influence, 202-203; Difficulties, 203; Influence of Christianity, 22, 120; Moslem Girls in Mission Schools in Egypt, 46; Secret of Mission ary Success, 223; Missionary Education in China, 247; Uni versity Missions, 252; Mis sionaries in Japan, 327. Micah, quoted, 94. Mysore, Advances in Education, 127. Maharatta, 102 Miiller, Prof. Max., On Indian Religion, 189. Mann, Dr. H. H, of Poona, 162. Moody, D. L., on Character, 184. Macaulay, Lord, 9. Mohammedanism. Numbers, 73; Among Be douins, 74 ; Modernizing of, 75- 76; Prayers in a Business Of fice, 11; In Egypt, 36; Prom inent Characteristics, 37; Ko ranic vs. Bible Study, 37; In India, 186; Devoutness, 119. Moguls, 109. Mosque Customs, 114. Native States of India, 107. Nizam. Mohammedan Ruler, 107; His Privacy, 110; Domestio Affairs a Handicap to Educa tion, 110; A Feudal Overlord, 111. Naidu Sarojini, Indian Poetess, 179. Napoleon, Louis, 226. Nitobe, Inazo, 306. Napoleon, 122. Orient vs. Occident. General Tendencies, Chapter I; Vastness, 78; Fascination of Orient, 88; Intrigue and Diplomacy, 114; East vs. West, 77; Dividing Factors, 81-84; Oriental vs. Occidental Rule, 130; East still East, 138; Indian Attitude, 143- 144; Pivotal Questions, 147- 148 ; Utilitarian Tendencies, 149; Human Reality in China, 242; Japan Contrasts, 270; Europe vs. Asia, 79; Modern izing of Orient, 330; Two Points of view, 331-334; Na tional and Racial Contrasts, 334-336; Acquiescence vs. Ac quisition, 235 ; Philosophy, 336; China Modernized, 340. Okuma, Count, 296, 322, 327, 12. Philippines. Colonization, 261; American Dilemma, 268 ; Copying Ameri can Vices, 256; Colonist's Opinion, 266; Country Life, 258-260; Dewey, Admiral, 257; Education, 262; Filipino Expectations, 265, 266; Indian vs. Filipino, 267;' Invest ments, 263, 264; Jones Bill, 256, 266; Labor Problems, 254; Manila Described, 258; Modernizing Filipinos, 254 ; Moros, 260; Political Difficul ties, 265, 267 ; Population- and INDEX 353 Area, 256-257; Y. M. C. A., 262. Port Said, 84. Police System in India, 136. Politics in Asia, 116, 130. Petroleum in Burmah, 211. Religion. Tendencies, 11, 12; Char acteristics of Eastern, 187; Indian Conceptions of God, Personality, 82, 83; Ascetics, 168; Sannyasis, 168; Reli gious Transformation in In dia, 186; Tendencies, Japanese, 322, 329; Shintoism, 225; Con cordia of Religions, 326; Re incarnation, 336; Asiatic Reli gions, strength and weakness, 336-337; Christianity for In dia, 346; Confucianism, 323; Theory vs. Practice, 213; Reli gion in Burmah, 214. Ramabai, Pundita, 95. Ruskin, on Bible, 41. Socrates, 338. St. Mark's Square, Venice, 80. Suffi Proverb, 119. Sakatani, Baron, Mayor of Tokyo, 326. Sladen, Douglas, 58. Schiller, 326. Sun Yat Sen, 341, 225, 230. Shanghai, 226. Superstitions, 182. Street Scenes in China, 238-241. Twefyk, Pasha, 177, 340. Tennyson, 84, 92. Togo, Admiral, 319. Twain, Mark, 204, 219. Tokyo Imperial University, 11. Taiping Rebellion, 341. Teachers Needed, 58. Text Books, Arabic, 62. Women. In Kabylia, 20; Influence of, 22; Moslem Girls in Mission Schools, Egypt, 46; Disregard of Girl Children, 127; Egyp tian Women, 44; Purdah Women, 115, 117; Mohamme dan Women, Hyderabad, 111; Moslem Widows, 113; Hindu Women and Caste, 99 ; Women Students, China, 248. Wu Ting Fang, 226. White, Frank R., late Director Ed. Philippines, 262. Wells, Sydney, Egypt, 30. Watson, William, 151. Wiley, Harvey W., 56. Y. M. C. A., 328, 263. Yuan, Shi-kai, 342, 225, 230. YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 08837 2116 YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY From the Library of PROFESSOR F. WELLS WILLIAMS Yak 1870 Permanently deposited by Yale-in-China