out.''

Those who are wont to refer so contemptuously to the Chinese might profitably recall that when, in Dickens' ``Christmas Carol,'' the misanthropic Scrooge says of the poor and suffering: ``If he be like to die, he had better do it and decrease the surplus population,''—the Ghost sternly replies:—

``Man, if man you be at heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered what the surplus is and where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that in the sight of heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Ah, God! to hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!''

III

ATTITUDE TOWARDS FOREIGNERS—CHARACTER AND ACHIEVEMENTS

TO understand China's attitude towards foreigners, the following considerations must be borne in mind:—

First, the conservative temperament of the Chinese. It is true but misleading, to say that they have ``no word or written character for patriotism, but 150 ways of writing the characters for good luck and longlife.'' For while the Chinese may have little love for country, they have an intense devotion to their own customs. For nearly 5,000 years, while other empires have risen, flourished and fallen, they have lived apart, sufficient unto themselves, cherishing their own ideals, plodding along their well-worn paths, ignorant of or indifferent to the progress of the Western world, mechanically memorizing dead classics, and standing still comparatively amid the tremendous onrush of modern civilization. I say comparatively still, for if we carefully study Chinese history, we shall find that this vast nation has not been so inert as we have long supposed. The very revolutions and internal commotions of all kinds through which China has passed would have prevented mere inertia. But when we compare these movements and the changes that they have wrought with the kaleidoscopic transformations in Europe and America, China appears the most stationary of nations. She has moved less in centuries than western peoples have in decades. The restless Anglo-Saxon is alternately irritated and awed by this massive solidity, not to say stolidity. There is, after all, something impressive about it, the impressiveness of a mighty glacier which moves, indeed, but so slowly and majestically that the duration of an ordinary nation's life appears insignificant as compared with the almost timeless majesty of the Chinese Empire.

Second, the vastness of China. Her territory and population are so enormous that her people found sufficient scope for their energies within their own borders. They therefore felt independent of outsiders. The typical European nation is so limited in area and is so near to equally civilized and powerful peoples that it could not if it would live unto itself. The situation of most nations forces them into relations with others. But China had a third of the human race and a tenth of the habitable globe entirely to herself, with no neighbours who had anything that she really cared for. It was inevitable, therefore, that a naturally conservative people should become a self- centred and self-satisfied people.

Third, the character of adjacent nations. None of them were equal to the Chinese in civilization and learning, while in territory and population, they were relatively insignificant. Even Japan, by far the most powerful of them, has only a tenth of China's population, while her remarkable progress in intelligence and power is a matter of less than a couple generations. Until recently, indeed, Japan was as backward as China and was not ashamed to receive many of her ideas from her larger neighbour, as the number of Chinese characters in the Japanese language plainly show. As for China's other neighbours, who were they? Weak nations which abjectly sent tribute by commissioners who grovelled before the august Emperor of the Middle Kingdom, or barbarous tribes which the Chinese regarded about as Americans regard the aboriginal Indians. Gibson translates the following passage from a Chinese historian as illustrative at once of China's haughty contempt of outsiders and of her reasons for it:

``The former kings in measuring out the land put the Imperial territory in the centre. Inside was the Chinese Empire, and outside were the barbarous nations. The barbarians are covetous and greedy of gain. Their hair hangs down over their bodies, and their coats are buttoned on the left side. They have human faces, but the hearts of beasts. They are distinguished from the natives of the Empire both by their manners and their dress. They differ both in their customs and their food, and in language they are utterly unintelligible. . . . On this account the ancient sage kings treated them like birds and beasts. They did not contract treaties, nor did they attack them. To form a treaty is simply to spend treasure and to be deceived; to attack them is simply to wear out the troops and provoke raids. . . . Thus the outer are not to be brought inside. They must be held at a distance, avoiding familiarity. . . . If they show a leaning towards right principles and present tributary offerings, they should be treated with a yielding etiquette; but bridling and repression must never be relaxed for conforming to circumstance. Such was the constant principle of the sage monarchs in ruling and controlling the barbarian tribes.''

It is not surprising, therefore, that when foreigners from the distant West sought to force their way into China, the Chinese, knowing nothing of the countries from which they came, should have regarded them in accordance with their traditional belief and policy regarding the inferiority of all outsiders.

The resultant difficulty was intensified by the indifference, to use no harsher term, of the foreigner to the fact that the Chinese are a very ceremonious people, extremely punctilious in all social relations and disposed to regard a breach of etiquette as a cardinal sin. ``Face'' is a national institution which must be preserved at all hazards. No one can get along with the Chinese who does not respect it.

``It is an integral part of both Chinese theory and practice that realities are of much less importance than appearances. If the latter can be saved, the former may be altogether surrendered. This is the essence of that mysterious `face' of which we are never done hearing in China. The line of Pope might be the Chinese national motto: `Act well your part, there all the honour lies'; not, be it observed, doing well what is to be done, but consummate acting, contriving to convey the appearance of a thing or a fact, whatever the realities may be. This is Chinese high art; this is success. It is self-respect, and it involves and implies the respect of others. It is, in a word, `face.' The preservation of `face' frequently requires that one should behave in an arbitrary and violent manner merely to emphasize his protests against the course of current events. He or she must fly into a violent rage, he or she must use reviling and perhaps imprecatory language, else it will not be evident to the spectators of the drama, in which he is at the moment acting, that he is aware just what ought to be done by a person in his precise situation; and then he will have `no way to descend from the stage,' or in other words, he will have lost `face.' ''[10]

[10] Smith, ``Rex Christus,'' pp. 107, 108.

Even in death this remains the ruling passion. Chinese coffins require much wood and are an expensive burden in this land where timber is scarce, for Confucius said that a coffin should be five inches thick. So the poorer Chinese thriftily meet