conservative country in the world, she has become a country in which there is rapid change. The whole civilisation of this vast country of 400,000,000 is becoming fundamentally altered by the importation into it of ideas and thoughts which are not native to her, and which have been created by a system of religion and by a history belonging to nations very different to herself. The full difficulty does not present itself till after some thought. The problem is quite different from that which has been before mankind in other parts of the world. China is trying to accept Western civilisation, but there is a danger that it will be without Christianity. I know that many Europeans living in Tientsin and Shanghai, who give but little thought to the problems before them, somewhat vaguely hope that in the near future China will become a European nation; but a little consideration must convince everybody that this is impossible. We have also already shown that China is quite determined—in fact, she has no alternative—not to remain the old conservative country that lives on ancient traditions, that looks back two thousand years for all teaching in the arts of government.

If China, therefore, is neither to become Western nor to remain what she is, of necessity she will have to blend the two civilisations together and to take a part from each. The Chinese themselves, with a sanguineness for which they have no warrant, are quite certain that this is an easy matter. They tell the inquirer that they have considered it well, and that they see their way completely through it. They intend to select from Europe only those things that are advantageous to the race, and they expect to have no difficulty in weaving these incongruous elements into their own very complete system of thought. Statesmen seriously say that three or four months' extra study will enable the educated Chinaman to learn all that is necessary of Western civilisation, and then those who have acquired this knowledge can return to China and teach their fellow-countrymen; and it is impossible to convince the Chinese that the uniting together of two different webs of thought is a matter of extreme difficulty, and, it may be added, of extreme risk. The pleasing dream that you can arbitrarily select the good points of West and East and weave them into one is the very reverse of the truth. What naturally happens is the very opposite. There is a tendency to preserve that which is bad and not that which is good in two different systems of thought when they are united into one. The reason probably is that as the bad has its common origin in the wickedness of human nature, it belongs to both systems of thought, and therefore both the Chinaman and the Western meet on common ground when they meet in vice or vileness. On the other hand, the virtues of both are the result of moral cultivation resting on authorities which are not recognised by either. Therefore the tendency is to waive all moral obligations as resting on controverted grounds. Whatever may be the cause, the result is obvious—the Westernised Oriental, unless a Christian, is as a rule only one shade better than the Orientalised Western.

While the careless thinker hopes generally that good will come out of the union of the two, he is as a rule terrified lest there should be any tendency to mingle Western with Eastern thought in any one of whom he is fond. A leading man at Tientsin, extolling the healthy climate of the place, related how he had kept his children there ever since they were born. His friend from home, ignorant of life in a Chinese port, said in an appreciative way, "How nice it must be for your children to be able to speak Chinese; I suppose you encourage them to learn it?" The dweller in China turned on him in anger and said, "Thank God, my children do not know one word of Chinese; I would send them home to-morrow if I caught them learning a single sentence." This enthusiasm for ignorance of the language of a great nation is extraordinarily difficult to understand until the danger of the mixture of Eastern and Western thought is realised. Experience has taught those who have lived in China that it is only a few that can come unscathed through the terrible trial of having to live in two moral atmospheres.

One of the most striking books that has ever been written is "Indiscreet Letters from Peking." The book is marvellous in the power it has of bringing before the eyes of its reader those awful scenes during the siege of Peking, but it is far more wonderful in the character that it imputes to the hypothetical narrator—a character typical of a man who is equally at home in England and in China; and in that character is portrayed a true but curiously unpleasant picture of the characteristics of both races. The narrator has the courage of a lion; he is absolutely without any sense of honour. He fires at an adversary under the flag of truce. He misuses a Manchu woman who in the horrors of the sack throws herself on his mercy. He connives at the breaking of a solemnly pledged word of honour by a soldier. The character is not overdrawn; characters such as these are common in a mixed world, and it is natural that English people should fear that their children should grow up so unutterably vile. But if the Englishman fears for his child, ought he to ignore the welfare of the country in which he lives, and can we pass over this whole problem as something that does not concern us; for what he fears for his child will happen to the whole Chinese nation.

The blending together of the East and the West may be accomplished with the ease which the Chinaman expects—but not in the way in which he or anybody else could wish—it may be accomplished by the eradication of all that is good in either race, on the common ground of vice and sin and evil and cruelty; unless, indeed, the efforts of those who are now labouring to weave together that which is good in both civilisations are supported. The difficulty of preserving the good points and high qualities of Chinese thought is only equalled by the difficulty of introducing the splendid traditions of the West and grafting them on to the Chinese stock. What success has followed the efforts of those who are thus labouring is rather to be credited to the intensity of their efforts, to their single-hearted purpose, to their ready self-denial, than to the ease or simplicity of their task.

No man of any feeling or any conscience could pass indifferently by a single individual eating the berries of a deadly plant, unconscious that they were poison. What shall be said, then, if we allow, not only one individual but a fourth of the population of the world, to eat of a deadly poison which must deprive them of all happiness and of life, which must condemn them by millions to the misery of the very blackest darkness, where the only motives known are selfishness, lust, pride, and cruelty, for this is what certainly will happen to China if she accepts the materialism of the West.

Western thought is very powerful. The way it has dominated the forces of nature gives it a great prestige. As the Chinaman learns about steam and electricity, about the telephone, the flying machine, radium, and a thousand more Western inventions, he cannot fail to be impressed, he must admit that these people have knowledge. Do not for a moment imagine that, after such an illumination, he will be able to go back to the works of Confucius and learn again the old maxims, many of which are antipathetic to Western thought—yes, even more incongruous to Western than they are to Christian thought. How will he, for instance, read Confucius' condemnation of war when the Japanese and Germans and Russians are shouting into his ears, "By war ye shall live and by war alone."

In an interview I had with that great