llHIHIIIMtlllil "AS CHARLES -ETHWING H' rte Lff l/iJ-f Book __ Copyright N?._ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/educationinfareaOOthwi fJresitJcnt Cbtoing^ ^Soaks on College Subjects AMERICAN COLLEGES: THEIR STUDENTS AND WORK. WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. THE COLLEGE WOMAN. THE AMERICAN COLLEGE IN AMERICAN LIFE. COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION. IF I WERE A COLLEGE STUDENT. THE CHOICE OF A COLLEGE A LIBERAL EDUCATION AND A LIBERAL FAITH COLLEGE TRAINING AND THE BUSINESS MAN. A HISTORY OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN AMERICA EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST. EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST BY CHARLES F. THWING, LL.D. PRESIDENT OF WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY AND ADELBERT COLLEGE, CLEVELAND BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY (Cfte fiitoertfibe $te#S Cambridge 1909 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY CHARLES F. THWING ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published June iqoq LIBRARY of CONGRESS Two Cooles Received JUN 12 180S L CouyrufM Entry _ CLAS«A AXc Hi COPY ... • To M. D. T. THE COMPANION OF A YEAR'S VOYAGE AND OF THE VOYAGE OF YEARS PREFATORY NOTE This book is not a description. It seeks to be an interpretation : an interpretation of forces, tenden- cies, and movements, in parts of the world which are destined to fill an enlarging place in men's thoughts. The relation of education to these con- ditions is the most important of all relations. I, therefore, shall be glad if the reader is able to think of the book as at once human, and a bit, though I hope not too much, educational. C. F. T. Cleveland, 1st May, 1909. CONTENTS I. The Problem of the East and the Fab East 3 JAPAN II. The Japanese Mind 61 III. Similarities and Contrasts of Japa- nese and American Education 70 IV. Education without Religion and with Ethics 95 V. The Japanese as Administrators 104 VI. Japan as a Colonizing and Expanding Power 112 CHINA VII. Chinese Institutions 123 VIII. The New Education in China 138 IX. The Chinese Menace 158 INDIA X. India's Need of Technical and Indus- trial Education 169 x CONTENTS XI. The Higher Education for Women in India 178 XII. "What Shall I Do?" The Question of the College Man in India 187 XIII. The Future of India 196 AMERICA IN THE PACIFIC XIV. Science as a Nation's Protector 225 XV. Great Men in the Philippines 235 XVI. The American Teacher in the Philip- pines 245 XVII. The Competition of the Races in the Straits Settlements 254 XVIII. Indirect Forces for Civilization in the Far East 263 Index 273 THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST AND THE FAR EAST THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST AND THE FAR EAST IN JAPAN The problem of the East and the Far East relates to five nations, Japan, China, Korea, India, and Egypt. The one problem is of five applications, and the five applications repre- sent one : a force and condition for the solu- tion, — education. Archbishop Tait said, near the close of his long life, that from his youth he had found that the English Church was in a crisis. It is a crisis no less permanent through which Ja- pan is passing ; yet at the present moment and in these years, indeed, the crisis seems pecul- iarly critical. The crisis represents conditions rather than acts, or events, or even movements or forces. It is not a condition, however, aris- ing from wars either waged or won, or to be waged, or even from rumors of war. The crisis 4 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST concerns not the relation of races oriental or occidental, of capital and labor, of socialism, of taxation, or of any economic theory, of de- mocracy and absolutism. These conditions or forces may, in other nations at the present time, represent or create crises; but not in Japan. The critical problem of Japan is, in a word, to continue to keep its life simple, as it takes its place with the other great political powers of the world. Simplicity of life is a state of mind quite as much as a condition of environ- ment. But it is concerned with environment as well as with the mental state. The simple life is the interpretation of life in terms of the spirit, and not of the flesh or of the purse. It stands for the negation of the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes. It knows not pride, and it does know humility, quietness, gentle- ness. It is free from and absolutely above all desire to make display. It represents direct- ness, honesty, decorum. It incarnates the cardi- nal graces quite as well as the cardinal virtues, — and even these virtues it does not neglect. THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 5 Such a life, of quiet and reserved and dig- nified simplicity, the nation and the people of Japan have led. Will they be able to main- tain it ? Several causes are working to do away with such a life among the fifty millions who form this nation. One of these causes lies in the increasing wealth of the country, and especially in the increasing wealth of men who already are rich. In common with most peoples, the Japanese have large eyes for the rich man. In "Who 's Who in Japan " are named several men and families of wealth and of large material power. One of these families, the Mitsui, it is said, in somewhat foreign English, " is one of the oldest millionaire families and the most noted hereditary houses of l business kings ' in Ja- pan, managing the big family concerns some- what after a fashion of constitutional mon- archy, for the eleven heads of the main stock and scions of the family are individually in- significant and only acquire importance as proprietors of different concerns." In the same 6 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST volume the president of the Tokyo Steamship Company is described as laying the founda- tion of his fortune in utilizing the refuse of gas and coal-tar works, and he is commended as being " now an acknowledged power in business world." A certain bank president is described as being " adopted into the present millionaire family as husband of its only daughter " ; and still another is called a one of the new-made millionaires." Such interpre- tations are intimations that wealth has already taken a no small place in the esteem of the Japanese people. It can also without rashness be affirmed that the industrial and commercial develop- ment of Japan in the next decades is certain to increase both the number of rich men and the riches of men already rich. Formerly the merchant was of the lowest social class. He was below the farmer and the mechanic. The Samurai might handle the plough or the hoe, but not the soroban. By this method, power was divided, — the power of wealth was kept apart from the power of the higher social THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 7 order. All this is changed. Men of wealth receive decorations from the hand of the Emperor. The head of the Mitsui family is a baron, and Okura, "one of the new-made millionaires," already referred to, wears the Third Order of the Rising Sun. The presence of great wealth is in every country a menace to simplicity, and especially is it a menace when united with social rank and royal honors. A second force working against simplicity is found in the fact that Japan is taking her place with the world-powers. The world- powers are not, and never have been, accus- tomed to laying emphasis upon the simple life. The ruling classes of these powers stand for material splendor, for impressive environ- ment, for elegance, if not for greatness, of architecture, and for elaborateness in the daily provision for one's personal sustenance and happiness. These classes are lavish in domestic expenditure, profuse in the attention paid to physical comforts, prodigal in getting and using whatever can delight the exterior senses or intoxicate the lower elements of the 8 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST imagination of man. As a world-power Japan feels that she, too, should imitate the material magnificence of other great nations. Royal pal- aces in many parts, some seldom occupied, courtly and splendid ceremonial, large ex- penditures which do not represent efficiency, these are intimations of the temptations which beset the new empire and, in a lessening de- gree, its people. Such temptations the Japa- nese cannot avoid. There is no escape. The condition arises from Japan taking a place among the world-powers ; and such a condi- tion militates mightily against the simple life. This condition is reinforced in at least two ways: by the Japanese who go abroad (and they are not a few), and by the foreigners who come to Japan as visitors or as residents. The Japanese are gifted in the art of imitation (the Chinese call them monkeys). Travelling in either the United States or Western Europe, or living for a time in New York, London, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, they return home bear- ing the assurance that their Tokyo or Yoko- hama or Kyoto cannot be worthy of metro- THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 9 politan rank and prestige, unless these cities too adopt the more dominant customs and cere- monials of the governmental, commercial, and social capitals of the world. The example, too, of liberal or prodigal expenditure set by the foreigner coming to Japan moves toward the same conclusion. The American and the English — and they seem more numerous than other nationalities — lay a tremendous accent upon their mate- rial belongings and comforts. Such an atten- tion is a revelation to the simple and hardy, sandal-footed and lightly clothed folk of the island-kingdom. But other causes, and opposing, there are, which are vigorous in maintaining the general and the pristine simplicity of this people. The first of the six causes which I shall name is industriousness. In Japan everybody works. Japan is a Holland in respect to the commonness of labor and the diligence of the laborer. I am sure the very dogs would work here as they do in Holland, if there were any dogs. But animals of all sorts are few. Man 10 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST is the laborer. Labor arises from both neces- sity and habit. Originally, of course, the habit arose from the necessity. But now both unite in urging all to work. For Japan has received few of those gifts which Nature gives, even to squandering, to the tropics. The Japanese people are of the Northern zones, and like most people of these zones, have to work for what they get. Industriousness, be it said, tends to keep life simple. For industriousness teaches the cost of things, not in dollars do I mean, but in that cost which the toil and weariness of body and of brain represent. In- dustriousness is the enemy of luxuriousness, extravagance, prodigality. So long as the Japanese remain a people of hard and con- stant work, — and apparently the time when they can afford not to be such is far off, — so long will the tendency toward maintaining the simple life remain strong. The people are, furthermore, a people of self-restraint. They are free, by nature, from vaingloriousness. If their triumph within a decade over the two most populous nations has THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 11 given to a few a sense of arrogance, this sense is neither general nor constant. Their walk and conversation is one of quietness and hu- mility. They are unwilling to enter the com- petitive life of social rivalries. A distinguished banker recently built a house. The architect planned a dwelling which he thought became the wealth and station of his client. But the house proved far more elaborate than the owner desired. " I do not think I shall live in it," he said to a friend of mine; "I want a simple house." On the shore at Hayama, near Yokohama, is a royal palace. In the rear is a sloping hill. Few Japanese are building houses on the hillside, because they are un- willing to look down on a prince. They also are unwilling as a people to get credit for themselves through another's discredit. Such self-restraint, self-abnegation, represents a form and a condition making for simplicity. Buddhism, too, has promoted, and will still continue to promote, simplicity of life. The essence of B uddhism is, if I at all understand it, the principle of the mystic, to put one's 12 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST self in harmony with the Absolute : the Ab- solute is the Eternal in time and the Infinite in space. The Absolute is the Buddhist's God. This harmony is intellectual, — achieved by meditation ; it is emotional, — oneness of feel- ing arising from unity of intellectual reflec- tion; it is also volitional, — the resultant of both intellectual and emotional sympathy. That Buddhism is thus comprehended by the great body of the people is not to be expected ; but the presence among the people of such an essential principle cannot but make for the living of the simple life. Social ambitions — the cause of much living which is not simple — vanish in the light of such a fundamental truth. Intense struggle for political or finan- cial power and place ceases before the decla- ration of so sublime a doctrine. The great teaching of Buddhism enforces the lesson of simplicity, as do the face and the form of the great image placed in the Cryptomeria groves at Kamakura. The racial purity of the people also aids in promoting simplicity. The contrast between THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 13 the mixture of races which one finds in most American commonwealths and in most Ameri- can cities, and the unmixed blood of most Japanese provinces and towns is deep and impressive. Of course there are in Japan, as in other parts of eastern Asia, Eurasians (one half of the word, " of Europe " and one half " of Asia ") ; but few are they. The Japanese is Japanese, and Japanese he will on the whole remain. Such purity and oneness of blood tend to give unity to the interpretation of life, of truth, and of duty. Such purity and oneness tend to create and to foster sim- plicity of personal habits and family customs. A certain sea-level of behavior, of convention and conviction is thus maintained. The respect paid to the scholar, and the regard in which scholarship is held, also aid in securing the great result of simplicity. In the Far East the scholar is honored as he is not in the Far West. The professor in the Imperial University in Tokyo has a social standing of the order of that belonging to the members of the Supreme Court of Japan. 14 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST "Teacher" is a word of the utmost respect. In Japan, as in most lands, the scholar has a small purse. His life must be made simple. The community in Japan demands that his life be simple. Even his students would lose respect for him, if he were guilty of any at- tempt to make that life elaborate or splendid. The influence of the scholar, therefore, is in favor of simplicity. This influence is profound and wide. So long as the scholar is honored, and so long as learning commands its present respect, so long there will be serious difficulty in making Japanese life ornate or elaborate. There is one further condition tending to- ward the same conclusion. I refer to the gen- eral teaching of ethics. No subject of the whole course of study, from the primary school to the university, is so commonly taught or is so constantly honored in its teaching, as the science of right living. The ethics of Confucius has for centuries commanded the attention of the Japanese mind and the devo- tion of the Japanese heart. Its fundamental principles are taught, illustrated, impressed THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 15 daily in thousands of schools. It is, too, very good ethics for teaching, learning, obeying. Of the five principles of the noble man which Confucius pointed out, — benevolence, up- rightness, decorum, enlightenment, and sin- cerity, — the Japanese have specially adopted the second and the third, uprightness and decorum. The man of right character and of beautiful conduct represents the Japanese ideal. That ideal is held up in public school and private. It is presented in the text-books issued by the government, and prepared by a graduate of an American college, Professor Nakashima of the University of Tokyo. Such an ideal offers to the Japanese people a life simple without barrenness, and rich without being overwrought. To this problem, therefore, of keeping life simple in an age which is not simple, and in a world of which the stronger nations are giv- ing themselves to a Roman luxuriousness, the Japanese people are addressing themselves. A great, a very great problem, in its serious- ness and fundamental relations, it is. Despite 16 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST opposing forces, there are strong reasons for believing, as I have tried to intimate, that this advancing nation of the Far East may solve the problem more satisfactorily than any world-power has yet solved it. IN CHINA The problem of China is no less than the problem of her civilization. It is not a prob- lem which she interprets for herself. To inti- mate that she is not civilized would seem to her the height of Western arrogance. For to her the rest of the world is sunk in the depths of barbarism, out of which she alone has lifted herself, or in which she was never involved. But according to Western standards, much, very much, remains for China to do before she can take her place with civilized powers and peoples. The biological elements included in this comprehensive problem are of tremendous significance. Only one third or one quarter of the children born in China reach adult life. Such slaughter of the innocents is inevi- THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 17 table. Most hygienic conditions are unsani- tary. Most cities are without water or drainage systems. Peking draws its water from wells, and pours its waste into the streets. Wu- chang's little alleys reek with filth. Such cities, great and small, are only types. The material home, almost everywhere made of hardened mud, is dark, damp, dismal, deso- late. In the biological part of the whole prob- lem belong certain interpretations as well as facts. Disease is thought by Chinese physi- cians to be a conflict between the spirit of light and the spirit of darkness within the man. The thought is strictly mediaeval. The battle of the spirits of many sorts is a usual concep- tion. All of life and of being is filled with their presence. The treatment of disease, too, is quite as irrational as its diagnosis. Ex- orcism and the prescription of nondescript compounds are customary. Ground-up beetles are given in treating scarlet fever, for beetles, too, shed their skins. The razor is the most important instrument in mid-wifery. Such are some of the biological conditions which China 18 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST is obliged to consider in solving the problem of her civilization. But the sociological conditions are yet more impressive. The garment of Chinese life is woven of superstitions. It is impossible to re- count or to indicate their significance. On the wall of a Chinese town, or settlement, may be found painted a red spot. It resembles a hole. The devil trying to enter at night will be de- ceived, supposing that it is a real hole, and will rush up to it, only to crush his skull ! The gateway to every yamen or house opens upon a wall. Evil spirits are supposed to move in straight lines. Therefore, having come through the gateway, they will be met by this brick screen and diverted from their course. The midsummer revolt of 1900 was indeed a mad- ness, inspired in no small part by a belief in evil spirits. As the life of the individual is lived in superstition, so is his death died. The funeral has great sociological as well as reli- gious meaning. The length and the degree of mourning are subjected to well-ordered regu- lations. The completeness of the mortuary THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 19 ceremonies may entail a debt on the family lasting for generations. The whole sociological condition is the type of extreme conservatism. " It has been so " is sufficient reason for the thing being as it is. China is a nation petrified. In her problem of civilization China, o£ course, includes the element of her own gov- ernment. That government is an oriental mon- archy imposed upon a social democracy. It is strong or weak, as the monarchy is strong or weak. It has usually been an effective gov- ernment. It has not counted any life dear in the face of its own wishes. Its monarch, su- preme and absolute, circumscribed by plots and cabals, is a modern counterpart of the Roman emperor after the time of Constantine. In this government are two significant ele- ments: the absence of formal law, and the presence of official dishonesty. China has no Parliament to make laws, no law schools (or only one) to train lawyers, few formal courts which administer laws, and no administration which can be called the administration of jus- tice. The justice administered by the mandarin 20 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST is a travesty. The practice of his court is a practice without those procedures and forms which Western civilization has adopted as nec- essary for the discovery of truth. The first information which one may have of a case brought against him may be the actual exe- cution of the judgment. A citizen of Hankow was informed that within twenty-four hours he must pay a bill of ten thousand taels. The bill was for lumber furnished and work done by a carpenter. He declared that he had bought neither lumber nor labor. But the accounts were apparently right. What was his method of relief ? He went before the court, and ac- knowledged that the bill was correct, that he had received the goods. But at the same time he exhibited receipts in full. The fact was that both sets of statements were forgeries from beginning to end! The carpenter-con- tractor had spent five thousand taels in bribes to secure a decision from the mandarin giving judgment for ten thousand taels. In case the judgment had been executed, he would have made five thousand taels. The man against THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 21 whom the false charge was made had spent two thousand to three thousand taels to secure a judgment in his favor. He himself was sat- isfied, for the money thus spent in bribes was less than a third of the ten thousand taels with which he was charged. The mandarin and his associates were satisfied, for they had received money from both prosecutor and defendant. The prosecutor was probably not satisfied, but then he deserved punishment! This case is only a type of the "grafting" which is a second characteristic of the gov- ernment. I suppose it is impossible to over- estimate its prevalence or to minimize its sig- nificance. It is the force which moves the administrative machinery. Of course the Im- perial Customs, whether under the incom- parable administration of Sir Robert Hart, the great man of China, or under his recently appointed successor, is always to be excepted. But the exception helps to prove the rule. For the Chinese government cannot trust this important matter of collecting customs to its own ofiicers. Every office represents a bargain. 22 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST It has its price. The officer accepting it pays the price and makes himself good, and more than good, by payment from his official sub- ordinates. It may be some great vice-royalty, which represents the payment of three hun- dred thousand taels; but out of the office he may make through farming the taxes six hundred thousand taels a year. It may be a petty gate-keeping office of only a few taels a month. It likewise involves purchase and sale. " Is the Presidency of the Central Board of Education also bought?" I inquired. "Of course; everything is bought." In this financial relationship it may not be unfitting to mention that the Chinese gov- ernment publishes no statement of its income or expenditure, no statement of its debts or pecuniary obligations. The biological, the sociological, and the governmental elements of civilization are the elements which China must consider in any attempt made for her own civilization. To them might be added the religious and the educational. But religion as such plays a very THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 23 insignificant part in the life of the Chinese. Confucianism hardly deserves to be called re- ligion. Confucius had little to say about gods. As a system of ethics, Confucianism had an inexpressible influence, — an influence which has, on the whole, been paralyzing to the intel- lect, not inspiring to the conscience or moving to the will. Outside of Confucianism there is no religious liberty. Education has the highest place among the forces making for China's en- largement. Although I shall write of education in another chapter, yet it is to be said com- prehensively that, though scholarship fulfills a noble function in Chinese thought, and the scholar is greatly honored, yet the educa- tion of the people has not been the thought or the wish of the governing powers. At the present time, the government is establishing schools; but it is greatly limited in the work by the scarcity of teachers. The problem, therefore, which China has set for herself, or rather which the world has set for her, of civilization, is as difficult as it is comprehensive. Can China become civilized 24 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST within a time for which the mind of man properly takes calculations? The answer in- volves many considerations. At best, too, the answer would be remote from conclusiveness. In favor of an affirmative answer several considerations may be intimated : — (1) China has rich natural resources. I have in my journeying just passed one of the richest iron deposits in the world. The natural re- sources in the form of metals are largely un- explored, but exploration has gone far enough to show that these resources are very valu- able. The soil is usually poor ; it is, like sec- tions of Spain, worn out by centuries of cul- tivation. (2) The climate is, on the whole, good, especially in the north. The territory covers many degrees of latitude, and offers a variety of heat and cold, most promotive of good re- sults to humanity. (3) The race is virile. Of good stature, it has good strength. Given a fair chance, it would develop rapidly. (4) The nation has a great literature, the THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 25 gift of many and remote centuries. Such a literature is a noble foundation for humanity's highest achievements. (5) Likewise the nation honors scholarship. The scholarly ideal is vastly more influential than the materialistic. The learned man is more honored than the rich man. (6) Further, the Chinese merchant or man- ufacturer is distinguished for his honesty. Commercial integrity is a cause and safeguard of national honor. (7) China is so situated that the best in- fluences (the worst, too) of the more advanc- ing Western nations are now working upon her provinces and peoples. But there are certain reasons, and strong ones, making for the conclusion that China will not take her place among the great powers. First, China is Asiatic. The division be- tween Asia and Europe in ethnology, in reli- gion, and in civilization is deep and wide. " East is East and West is West." No man of West- ern Europe can quite appreciate the width and 26 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST depth of the chasm separating these two parts of the one great ancient continent. Second, China is not only Asiatic, she is also Chinese. Her civilization is unique. Hu- manity has come forth in the nation in most individualistic, personal, and national forms. Third, China is conservative. Her golden age lies in the past. Her eye is fixed upon the treasures of her history rather than upon the development of her present and future. Fourth, China is not only conservative, she is also the largest nation. She represents more than one fourth of the entire population of the world. Any influence or force to affect her vast and conservative body is, necessarily, of a tremendous impact. It is a difficult thing to think of a force sufficiently moving to make an impression. Fifth, the Chinese government and adminis- tration are intricate and complex. The govern- ment is, as I have said, a union of a political autocracy and a social democracy. The admin- istration is a matter, not of written rule, but THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 27 of personal adjustment and agreement. The method of yesterday is not that of to-day, and the method of to-day is unlike that of to-morrow. Any change, therefore, in the permanent elements of its civilization, gov- ernment, and administration is exceedingly difficult to achieve. Sixth, withal the Chinese mind is astute. Loyal to China and to her history, it easily seeks to circumvent influences opposed to itself, and is quickly and keenly aroused to oppose whatever force may be brought against its national integrity. When one sums up the reasons for and the reasons against the belief that China may take her place among the great and active powers of the world, one feels in great doubt. No one knows what may occur in that country. Dynas- ties rise and fall, and the Manchus still retain their place. An infant emperor seems to be quite as powerful as an empress dowager of threescore years and ten. Present intimations are, on the whole, favorable to the belief that China will still be China, and will be for the 28 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST Chinese a thousand years from this time quite as truly as to-day. IN KOREA The problem of and in Korea is triangu- lar: it may be interpreted from three sides, — -Japan's, Korea's, and the world's. Seen from the side of Japan, the Korean problem should be so solved that the penin- sula shall never become a point of military or governmental peril. The phrase, "A general war in the Far East" may be as indefinite and as frequent as the phrase "a general European war"; but in the event of such a conflict it is of extreme importance that all conditions in Korea — governmental, naval, military, social — should favor Japan. In case of hostility, Fusan and Chemulpho would prove to be excellent ports for assembling forces to descend upon Moji or Nagasaki. Korea must be safe for Japan's interests. Further, Japan desires that Korea be made a favorable territory for the immigration of her rapidly growing population, and for the THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 29 use and increase of her capital. Already Jap- anese farmers are passing over. Already are the numbers of these immigrants so great as to prompt the Japanese churches to send mis- sionaries to evangelize their own countrymen living on this foreign soil. Korea is, also, financially a belated land and nation. Capital, either Japanese or American or English, now properly invested, would return a large income. To this fact Japan is not blind. Moreover, in her desire for national aggran- dizement Japan may worthily regard the Ko- rean peninsula as a proper field for the exten- sion of her power. Upon this critical point only the most general interpretation is per- missible. Japan realizes what is her duty to and in Korea to-day, but what may be her duty to-morrow she knows not. Annexation is sometimes spoken of. But Japan knows that annexation at the present time, under present conditions, is not a duty or even a right, and would now prove most inopportune. There is in Japan a strong pro-Japanese party in relation to Korea; there is also a party be- 30 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST lieving in such a control of the peninsula as should primarily prove to be of benefit to the peninsula itself. The Japanese government, sending its ablest minister as Resident-General, is willing to await the future. Prince Ito has a policy very clear in at least one respect, — he proposes to keep the peace, and he proposes to keep the peace by peaceful measures. In the more or less trou- bled condition of the country, the outlawry element is sure to emerge. " The righteous soldiers," as some of the discharged Korean forces call themselves, create havoc, — guerilla bands attacking villages, destroying railroad stations and tracks, easily mobilized and dis- persing like a morning fog. Conflicts between such bands, when they can be found, and Jap- anese battalions are for a time inevitable. But Ito's policy is plain ; his administration is civil, and not, as he might easily make it, military. He does not seek peace, as the motto of the great Puritan Commonwealth indicates, with the sword. Korea's problem, interpreted by herself, THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 31 is the problem of how she can save herself. Lying in the problem is the question what has she that is worth saving ? For has she not really already lost herself ? She illustrates the remark of Christ, "From him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." Korea has rich resources of nature. But she has no resources in herself. The Anglo-Saxon commonwealths on both sides of the Atlantic have in every emergency found themselves possessed of men who could bring order out of confusion and snatch victory from the jaws of seeming disaster. In her crises Ko- rea for three hundred years has found herself without wise and sacrificing leadership. To- day she is left alone. Keeping herself to her- self, — a hermit nation, — she represents the penalty of selfishness, — poverty and friend- lessness. Her army stood for inefficiency, and it is now disbanded. Her manufactures were and are left untouched by modern discoveries and processes, and they have largely perished. Her people, despite the efforts of missionaries and a few enlightened leaders, are still sub- 32 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST merged in ignorance and in social and reli- gious superstition. The social distinctions of classes are an encumbrance. Offices were in no small degree drafts on the public chest, and not symbols of service. Indolence was and is customary with officials and constitu- tional with the gentry. Truthfulness is for- eign to the Korean's nature. Korea may well ask herself what has she still left worth the saving. The shores of Japan are as rocky as those of Korea, and her soil is no more fer- tile, but she, with her islands, has made her- self one of the great powers. Korea's fault is not with her stars, but with herself, that she is an underling of Japan. She lacks men. Her own men can be her only saviors, and if she calls for them, they do not respond. Indeed, her old deposed Emperor had hardly strength to call. If the new Emperor proves to have strength and knows the needs of his country, it is doubtful whether he can summon asso- ciates able these needs to fill. There is a victory which the conquered may always win over the martial conqueror, THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 33 if he has the strength. It is the victory of language, of social customs and manners, of life itself. Such a victory Italy won over the conquering Northern tribes; such a victory the Saxons won over the Normans. But Korea lacks the power, the acumen, the wisdom, and the superiority of individual and of nation necessary for gaining such a conquest. She has lost herself. Her foe is not Japan, or Western civilization, but herself. The Korean problem is also a question in which the world is interested. The world is daily becoming smaller. Swifter, cheaper, and more frequent inter-communication has made it a little neighborhood of nations. The concerns of each are the concerns of all, and the concerns of all are the concerns of each. The lot of Korea, therefore, has interest for every people, of the Occident as well as of the Orient. The world is watching Korea, to dis- cover the justice or injustice, the wisdom or the foolishness, of the Japanese protectorate. The stronger nations of the earth have come into a period of governing the weaker. Each, there- 34 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST fore, is interested in the success or failure of every attempt at affiliation, colonization, or "protection." The world has peculiar interest in this relationship of Japan to Korea, not only because of Korea, but also and more be- cause of Japan. Will this relationship increase or diminish Japan's prestige as a world-power? In the balance of powers, which may become as important for the Far East as it has been important in Europe, will Japan through this suzerainty be able to secure a weight of in- fluence and of force which may constitute a peril for the peace of the world? Every lover of his race is concerned in the answer. The world is also watching the movement of Japan in Korea because of the growing belief that the process of uniting small nations with or into large has, with such exceptions as South America may offer in her republics, gone as far as it is well for it to go. United Italy, United Germany, have meant much to civili- zation. But the making of Korea into a pro- vince of Japan would represent the blotting out of an ancient people, and the absorption THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 35 of its institutions into the institutions of another and an advancing people. Such an absorption could not prove to be an enrich- ment of the forces of the world's civiliza- tion. Yet one cannot but feel that Korea's doom as a nation is certain. The day of her national fate may be long deferred, but unless causes which have not yet appeared above the horizon emerge, it seems inevitable that she finally must cease to be an independent people even in name. She has sinned away her day of grace. Her little peninsula lies thrust down between Japan and China. Without ruling either, she has been dependent on both. To-day Japan is her master. To-morrow the mightier nation of China may control. I write these paragraphs on a voyage up the western coast of Korea on my way to China. The hills are bare, the rocks precipi- tous, and the islands barren. The scene is desolate and forbidding. The panorama seems to be a figure of the probable future of the hermit kingdom. 36 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST IN INDIA India's problem is the problem of discon- tent. India is becoming discontented with English rale and tired of the Englishman. This condition approaches disaffection, and in some parts borders on sedition. Another "mutiny" is by some prophesied. How deep or how widespread is this discontent is not known, and no system of espionage seems able to discover. This feeling arises from permanent causes. Special causes augment the unrest, and they deserve weighing, yet they are not deeply significant. These special causes are found largely in the last months of Lord Curzon's great administration. That administration was great, great in achieve- ment, greater in promise; and yet its close was marked by some blunders which will for decades seriously impair its beneficence. In these blunders lie the immediate origins of the unrest. The impression was made by Lord Curzon that he desired to limit university privileges, THE PKOBLEM OF THE EAST 37 rights, and opportunities for Indian students. The special point was that the Viceroy wished to curtail the number of men who might re- ceive the first degree of B. A. at the universi- ties of India. The fact that this interpretation was not a correct understanding of the purpose of the Viceroy did not at all serve to lessen its evil influence in stirring the national heart. Curzon's purpose was not to lessen the number of liberally educated and degree-bearing men, but rather to improve the quality of the edu- cation which they were getting, and to increase the value of the degree which they were re- ceiving. But through some unhappiness of statement the impression was made that it was the purpose of the governing powers to limit the opportunities for the higher educa- tion. A second cause lay also in a certain, at least, infelicity of statement (to use a weak word) of the Viceroy. In an address he made at the convocation of the University of Cal- cutta, in 1905, a contrast was drawn between the honesty, truthfulness, and similar virtues 38 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST of the students and peoples of the West and the lack of these same virtues in the peoples of Asia. The intimation thus suggested awakened deep and widespread indignation. Whether the intimation was or is true or false need not be discussed, but its simple making was sufficient to stir the hearts of the academic and general community. A third cause, which was largely or wholly political, as were the first two academic, was the division of the province of Bengal into two provinces for administrative purposes. The Bengalese are a homogeneous people, of the number of the population of the United States. It may have been expedient or neces- sary for governmental reasons to separate a population of eighty millions into two bodies. But the methods which were used in effecting this great division awakened intense and bitter feeling. " Partition Day " is still celebrated as a day of humiliation. These three causes have served to empha- size the permanent conditions which result in political and social discontent. These perma- THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 39 nent conditions are still more significant and impressive. The first and more evident cause lies in the natural desire of a people for self-government. It has been said of the Koreans that they desire to be in subjection to some superior power. The remark is probably false. If at all true, Korea is the first nation of impor- tance which desired to be a subject nation. India, through her hundreds of tribes and clans, desires to rule herself. The desire is hu- man, natural, inevitable. This desire has been increased by the study of English constitu- tional and political history. This study is among the most common subjects of the schools and colleges. England has not been afraid to teach the truth regarding the growth of political freedom to this subject race. I have heard the president of a college in Cal- cutta discuss Burke's Speech on Conciliation with his senior students. Such lessons are as the seeds of democracy. A second cause of unrest lies in the in- creasing ability of the people for governing 40 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST themselves. Of this increasing ability they themselves are conscious, and of the growth of this power there can be no doubt. Whether this power has become sufficiently great to allow self-government is the vital question, about which those who have a right to an opinion differ. But the point of the conten- tion is that this ability, even if still insuf- ficient to permit self-government, is growing, and this simple growth is an ample cause of unrest. India no longer represents a remote paganism. All, or many, of the material forces of civilization move over her plains, through the streets of her cities, and in the homes of her people. Steam railroads, street railroads, telegraphs, telephones, and electric lights are more common than in Spain or even Italy. The intellectual forces, too, are not wanting. Calcutta has more bookshops and larger ones than Boston. Within less than a mile of Col- lege Square, Calcutta, are at least three thou- sand college students. Colleges and schools preparatory to them, established by the gov- ernment, by missionary organization, and by THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 41 private beneficence, are numerous and, be it added, some of them are of an architectural impressiveness — such as Muir College at Al- lahabad and the Martiniere College at Luck- now — which is seldom seen in the United States. All that education represents, England is giving, directly, or indirectly, to India. The gift bears richer knowledge, increased intellectual discipline, enlarged judgment, more facile power of concentration. Keceiving these noblest advantages, the leaders of the people realize their increased ability for self- government, and are restless at the closing of the door of opportunity for exercising it. A still further reason exists, which is, in a way, the very opposite of the cause just named : the general and profound ignorance of the people. How general and how deep this ignorance still is seems incomprehensible. In round numbers, out of India's more than three hundred millions, of the men, not more than ten in a hundred can read and write, and of the women, not more than seven in a thousand. This most significant fact is 42 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST made yet more impressive by a statement of the illiteracy in the several provinces. Province on State. Burma .... Travancore . . Baroda .... Madras .... Bombay . . . Bengal . . . . Mysore .... Berar .... Assam .... Punjab .... Rajputana . . . United Provinces Central India . . Hyderabad . . Central Provinces Kashmir . , . No. of Persons per 1000 ABLE TO READ AND WRITE. Males. Females. 378 45 215 31 163 8 119 9 116 9 104 5 93 8 85 3 67 4 64 3 62 2 57 2 55 3 55 3 54 2 38 1 The simple fact is that India is still a nation of illiterates. Now illiteracy is not in itself so bad a thing as is commonly believed ; but the significance of illiteracy is an even worse thing than is commonly thought. Illiteracy stands for narrowness of intellectual outlook, preju- dice, superstition, unreasonableness. Such con- ditions obtain in India as results of her illiteracy and allied deficiencies. Such results in turn THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 43 become causes of unrest. To illustrate : if there be one thing in which England could justly be happy, it is her endeavor to pro- mote the health of this people. Plagues and "the plague" she has sought to stamp out, and has largely succeeded. In this suppression she has built many hospitals. In one city in which a plague hospital was built, and to which the victims of the disease, to prevent its spreading, were brought, the people got the idea that the English doctors were collect- ing these sick folks as messengers in order to send out the disease all over the country. Concentration, it was thought, meant dissemi- nation of the evil. People thus ignorant, pre- judiced, placed in a community more or less modern, cannot but promote social and other restlessness. A fourth cause of unrest lies in what one may call the lack of sympathy of the English residents of India with the native peoples. I have purposely selected a comprehensive phrase, lack of sympathy, to represent the relation of the governing to the governed 44 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST class. In some cases this lack of sympathy becomes absolute despising, even resulting in physical suffering. From this lowest point it rises, through various degrees of indiffer- ence, to respectful remoteness. But, with few exceptions, the Englishman bears himself to- ward the East Indian as superior to inferior. I am not saying that the Englishman is or is not superior, — of course, as a class he is. But, despite this difference, it would be possible for the superior to have and to show more sympathy for and with the native. This need, be it added, is one to which the Prince of Wales alluded in an address made on his return from his recent visit to India. The substance of all this interpretation is that the East In- dian, finding no sympathy for himself on the part of his governors, is inclined toward dis- satisfaction with their government. Of course, one may say that it is not the function of gov- ernors to show sympathy with their subjects ; of course, also, one may add that it is not the nature of the Englishman to show sympathy. To the first remark one may reply in saying THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 45 that sympathy might possibly add to the justice of the government of Englishmen, through a more complete understanding; and to the second remark it is sufficient to say that the Indian administration of the great Lord Ripon proves both the fact and the value of sympathy in the government of subject peoples. Moreover, beneath this quartet of lasting causes of discontent lies the great sense of national consciousness. This sense increases and deepens. The belief that India ? with her population of three hundred millions, though divided by differences in religion and in lan- guage, is one, — one in place, one in destiny, — is a belief which grows with the growing years. India for the Indians is an increas- ingly potent and persuasive rallying-cry. The cry is heard, with a certain note of shrill insistence, in native newspapers. It is felt in certain Christian missionary movements in which " Indian management, Indian men, and Indian money" represent the method and force of propagandism. It is further heard in private conversation. Nor is this note of 46 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST national emphasis confined to the native people. It belongs to not a few Englishmen whose present home is in Calcutta, Madras, or Delhi. Yet this feeling of national consciousness among the Indians is one over which every great lover of humanity must rejoice. It re- presents life, vision, struggle. It intimates that lethargy, stagnation, is passing. India, like China, awakens. A nation takes a worthier place in the great brotherhood of nations, when the sense of its own integrity and in- dividuality is the keener and more adequate. "India for the Indians" is a method of trans- muting it into India for the world. England has for herself, both consciously and unconsciously, been the cause of this growth of national consciousness. It may be called either blameworthiness or credit, but the fact is clear enough. England has been the schoolmaster of India. She has built the schoolhouse, the college and university hall. She has introduced her own education, for better or for worse, into municipality and vil- THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 47 lage community. In method, in content of instruction, in administration, the education which England has offered India has been largely English education. Now the most fundamental note in such an education on its historical side has been and still is the note of political freedom. The history of England has fittingly formed a part of the course of study. The chief lesson, of many great lessons to be derived from such a study, is the lesson of the origin and growth of the principle of freedom in the state and for its citizens. Can any one for a moment think that such a lesson had no relation to England's Indian subjects ? Minds far less acute than the Hindu intellect could not be deaf or blind or unappreciative of such teaching. That political liberty is a growth, that civil conditions necessary for England might not be at all fitted to India, represent discriminations which might not be apprehended by the Indian mind. But the Indian mind did and still does believe that the liberty which is at once cause and result of England's greatness is also good for England's 48 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST possession in Asia. Such a belief is one of the inevitable results of the education which Eng- land has offered and is offering her Indian subjects ; and such a belief also inevitably tends to deepen and to enlarge the national consciousness. This consciousness is also promoted by the industrial development of the country. The development is still feeble enough. But it is beginning. Its possibilities no one knows. For no proper scientific investigation has been made of the mineral resources. It is thought by some that these resources are exceedingly rich. But the very possibility of great wealth lying beneath the soil, together with the ac- tual establishment of some great iron and steel works, has been sufficient to promote somewhat the sense of the national conscious- ness. One can hardly close this interpretation without alluding to a somewhat singular phe- nomenon which constantly thrusts itself upon the observer. This phenomenon is the mani- festation, on the part of both Englishmen in THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 49 India and the natives, of a keen consciousness of the anomalousness of England being at all in India. England is in India to-day because she was in India yesterday ; she will be in India to-morrow because she is there to-day. To the ordinary Indian or Englishman the historic reasons which have obliged — some would say obliged is too strong a word — England to come and to stay in India are not evident. On the face of the whole condition, both races would affirm that the white man does not belong in the land of the brown man. This self-consciousness is simply an intellec- tual interpretation and an emotional impression of this entire condition. The Indian talks and writes in his many vernacular newspapers regarding the Englishman in India. Appar- ently no phase is omitted. The English pa- pers are almost, if not quite, as free in the same racial, personal, and governmental discus- sion. The discussion seems curiously akin to the editorial writing on slavery printed in the Southern papers of the United States in the decade preceding the Civil War. 50 EDUCATION IN THE FAK EAST IN EGYPT The Egyptian problem is not the problem of political independence, as the Nationalist party declares ; nor is it the problem of unit- ing all religions into one faith, be that faith Protestant, Coptic, or Mohammedan ; neither is it to develop more and other industries, as building railroads or factories to use up Egyp- tian cotton. Each of these purposes represents large and serious undertakings. The compre- hensive problem, however, of Egypt is three- fold: to increase the industrial and agricul- tural efficiency of the people, to ennoble the home, and to promote the confidence of the people in one another. These three elements may be embraced in a single principle, — the enlargement of the worth of every individual of the twelve millions forming the Egyptian nation. This problem, whether considered in its threefold or in its single relation, is the prob- lem of a better and more general education. An education better and more general would THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 51 enlarge the worth of the individual ; it would also increase agricultural and industrial effi- ciency; it would contribute to the ennoble- ment of the family ; and it would, further, pro- mote the sense of mutual confidence. What other is the aim of education than the achieve- ment of such comprehensive and fundamental purposes ? The condition of education in all Moham- medan countries is bad. In both India and Egypt the condition is peculiarly wretched. The Mohammedan people have made their education narrowly religious. The education given by the Egyptian government is not so inefficient as that offered under the directly Mohammedan authorities; but the fact that for one dollar spent on education the govern- ment spends sixteen for other purposes, inti- mates the low estimate in which education languishes. Of eight dollars Prussia spends one for education and seven for all other purposes. Besides the governmental and the Mohammedan schools, are established various mission schools, both English and American. 52 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST Among the American schools those of the United Presbyterian Church are especially vig- orous and useful. The government is aware that it is not doing for and through education what ought to be done. The annual reports of Lord Cro- mer are constantly and movingly filled with the expressions of the educational duties rest- ing on the controlling authorities. There are two points to which education by the gov- ernment is particularly directed, primary and technical. Every child in Egypt should be taught to read, write, and cipher, and all or- dinary boys should be trained to be either good farmers, good carpenters, good black- smiths, or to follow other necessary trades. Some also should be trained as engineers, for the higher relationships of the great business of engineering. The need of engineers in Egypt is not great. Egypt is and must remain primarily an agricultural country. It cannot become primarily an industrial community, despite the claims of the Nationalist party. It lacks coal. A cotton factory has lately been THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 63 torn down and its machinery sent out of the country. Manchester can sell goods in Cairo and Luxor cheaper than Cairo or Luxor can make them. But Egypt, being such an agri- cultural country as it is, and the eternal and omnipresent Nile present serious problems of irrigation. For thousands of years these prob- lems of irrigation have been the principal en- gineering problems, and principal they will continue to be. The Polytechnic School lo- cated halfway between the city of Cairo and the Pyramid of Cheops is, chiefly under Eng- lish supervision, making good engineers. The greatest development on the industrial side of education is found in the trade-schools. These schools are established in Cairo and other centres, and the government is seeking to establish many others. These schools train machinists, carpenters, painters, and workmen of other trades. The boys enter at an early age. As a class they are apt, interested, and fairly efficient. The practical aim dominates, and practical methods prevail. In a school of Cairo, which I found efficiently administered, 54 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST one element seemed to be especially promi- nent : the putting the boys to work in rilling actual orders for goods, — cabinets, saddles, postmen's bags, wagons, and street letter-boxes. The money thus earned, though actually small, seemed to serve to quicken the interest of the boys in their work, and not at all to limit their immediate efficiency or their future worth. In these manual schools and, in fact, in all schools, the government finds difficulty in securing a sufficient number of properly trained teachers. Egypt thus suffers as does China. Normal schools are established, but the number of graduates does not fill the in- creasing needs. The desire for education all over the world, indeed, goes far beyond the means of satisfying it. The need, too, of teachers of large character and of advanced training seems to be quite as urgent as the need of a greater number of teachers. Education in Egypt of every grade labors under the heavy difficulty of the tradition of an evil method. The tradition represents the dominance of the memory. To learn without THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 65 reasoning has long been the popular method. Knowledge, not training, not power, has re- presented, and still represents, the educational ideal. The pupils as the pail, the school as the pump, the teacher at the pump handle, and the water of the well as knowledge, form the correct metaphor. This method has been so long used that the interest of the boy in sci- ences and in scientific reasoning is small. Not for one moment, however, is it to be doubted that the government schools, so far as they are established, are doing much to dethrone this educational idol and ideal of the pump, and are seeking to form, as well as to inform, the mind. The education of girls lags behind the edu- cation of boys in Egypt as in every oriental country, slow as the education of boys is. In Egypt, as in all the lands of Islam, the seclu- sion of women fundamentally interferes with their education. As soon as girls reach the age of ten or twelve, they are shut up in their homes. In the homes of their parents they remain virtual prisoners till they enter the 56 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST homes of their husbands, in which the im- prisonment continues. The condition, both filial and conjugal, is a sad one for the better- ment of civilization. The Mohammedan home is a pretty sorry affair. Polygamy may dese- crate its conjugal sacredness, and the seclu- sion of the purdah, even if there be only one wife, does not well prepare a woman to be- come a mother of sons. Not simply for their own happiness, but also and more for the proper bringing up of children, the education of women should be promoted. The prolonga- tion of the period of that education would be one method of its improvement. Such pro- longation would necessarily result in the ele- vation of the home, and the elevation of the home would necessarily result in the lifting of society in its fundamental relationships. It cannot be doubted, too, that education would increase the confidence of the people of Egypt in one another. For education could not but result in making the people more worthy of confidence. Education promotes intellectual accuracy. Intellectual accuracy THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 57 aids ethical honesty; and ethical honesty fosters general moral integrity. Education en- larges the conception of integrity as the basis of all social and economic concerns. The extension, therefore, and deepening of the ed- ucational movement will vastly aid the Egyp- tian farmer, merchant, and workman to appre- ciate and to practice the cardinal virtues. Lord Cromer adopted finance as the basis for the improvement of Egypt. In the crisis in which he entered upon his great work, a quarter of a century ago, the adoption of that basis was inevitable. But for the future, and as a permanent method for the solution of the great present problems of the land of the Pharaohs, education is the basis. JAPAN II THE JAPANESE MIND The Japanese mind is a mind plus a heart. It is less pure intellect than most minds, it is more emotional. It is less philosophic but more practical than the German ; it is more facile but less profound in its workings than the English; it is less practical but more philosophic than the American mind. Its pro- cesses are rapid and superficial. The results of its operations are best interpreted in terms of sentiment. Of the two comprehensive types of mind, the logical and imaginative, it clearly belongs to the imaginative. It thinks in pic- tures, in individual images rather than in prolonged and closely related reasonings. It prefers concrete to abstract language. Its power of illustration, of individualizing, is superior to its power of generalizing. The Japanese mind, as I have intimated, is not a mind inclined to prolonged logical 62 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST reasonings. It is changeable. The people have been called inconstant, unstable, fickle. The mind I would not call fickle, but it pre- fers much variety of subject for its reflections to a single closely compacted topic of thought. It seems to lack greatness, as the stature of the race lacks size. It is agile, alert. Its agility and alertness arise from what may be called its lightness: the swallow turns where the eagle cannot. It moves rapidly, and hav- ing the defects of its excellences, it does not move profoundly. A professor of one of the great universities, having been for many years a teacher in Japan, has said to me, "No Jap- anese ever really thinks." The remark may be too extreme, but it is significant. Yet it is a mind of the type which the metaphysicians call subjective; it turns in upon itself; it is concerned with its own operations. It is not a scientific mind. It observes the phenomena of nature far less than it studies its own con- stitution. But these studies are of the heart as well as of the intellect. The mind feels for itself ; it sentimentalizes about itself. THE JAPANESE MIND 63 Because of this union of the heart and of the intellect in itself, the mind is a receptive one. All the avenues of its approach are wide open. It desires to take in much, and much it does take in. Facts, truths, ideas are its food, and for such food it is constantly raven- ous. The lectures which the students of the universities and of the higher schools attend every week are many, many even to excess, amounting in most cases to twenty-five, thirty, and even more. Such intellectual extrava- gance arises from the earnestness of the men themselves. They are eager to know; they have not usually come to discriminate between knowledge and power, — between the mind as an intellectual granary and the mind as an intellectual engine. They have not learned that education is really educative, — a drawing out, and not a filling in. They need to learn that re- ceptiveness is by no means reflectiveness, and that memorizing is not necessarily thinking. The Japanese mind is also a mind which likes rules, formulas, precedents. It approves of systems ; and its operations easily become 64 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST systematic. Before a new, a unique crisis, it is in peril of standing blind and deaf and dumb. It fails to appreciate unknown conditions, and it is liable to have no hand to guide or to lift and no will to inspire. When the rulers of the people came to know that the nation had fallen behind advancing nations of the West in the progress of civilization, it turned for light and for strength not to itself, as did Germany at the close of the Napoleonic era, but to America and to Europe. The method was as wise as it was inevitable. The navy is Eng- lish, the army German and French, the edu- cational system German and American. The mind lacks initiative, independence. It is imi- tative. The universities brought in foreign professors ; and as one by one they returned to their homes in America, England, Ger- many, their places were filled by native-born teachers ; the students had learned their les- sons, and were able, becoming teachers them- selves, to follow out the precedents set and the methods prescribed. The Japanese mind has not had the advan- THE JAPANESE MIND 65 tage of receiving what the Anglo-Saxon mind has had for four hundred years, the " Greek bath," as Hegel terms it. In its place it has had the Chinese bath. It has substituted Con- fucius for Plato and Aristotle. It has taken a series of ideographs instead of the most per- fect and scientific language which the world has yet made. In learning this language, in studying this literature, — replete as it is with wise maxims, and interpretative as I know it to be of many of the moods of the human soul, — it has found special exercise for the memory. It has not thus received a training in discrimination, in appreciation. That general enlargement of the mind, that enrichment of the intellect, that cultivation of the whole man, which Greek has given for hundreds of years and to the leaders of the progressive peoples, the Japanese mind has lacked and lacks still. The Japanese mind is, also, at once moral and unmoral. It has a fondness, both intel- lectual and emotional, for moral abstract truth, but it also has not inspired the people to 66 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST moral practice. The Japanese mind likes a dis- cussion, even more indeed than the American, — and that is much, — and it especially likes a discussion about ethical sanctions, defini- tions, discriminations. No subject is so con- stantly taught in all the schools as ethics. Yet the application of ethics to life seems remote. The two great fields for the application of ethical precepts seem peculiarly needy in Ja- pan, — business and the family. That the com- mercial morality of the nation is improving, that sexual morality is becoming more pure, does not prevent one from saying that dis- honesty and trickery are woefully common, and that the family relation commands, on the whole, small respect. The foreign tradesman is obliged to inspect his purchase, whether it be a yard or a bale, with care. The defect may be deftly hidden ; and when discovered and brought to the notice of the seller, it awakens surprise and apology ; a surprise and apology which are apparently conventional. An illustration of the doubt which the Japanese themselves have of the honesty of THE JAPANESE MIND 67 their countrymen has just been told me. An American author, of great distinction, freely gave to an educational association the manu- script of a course of lectures which he had delivered to Japanese teachers, for the pur- pose of publication. This association was un- willing to entrust the publication to any Japanese publisher, for fear that he would not make for copyright purposes a correct state- ment of the number of copies sold. Likewise in the family. The importance of the family to society, and to the whole social order, does not prevent about one half of all the domestic unions of the common people from being not legalized by due process and form, and also does not prevent about one third of all marriages, formal or informal, from resulting in divorce or separation. Ethics has not yet been so impressed upon the people as to prevent or to stop most serious domestic and social evils. Ethics has been deficient in impressing the great formal and social duty of chastity. Sexual purity is a lesson of which the teaching should be made more impressive, 68 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST and of which the learning should be made more constant and thorough. The Japanese mind, therefore, is a mind moral, in its theoretical interpretation of ethical truth, and unmoral in the application of this truth. The nation is really an unmoral nation as compared to the noblest ethical standards of the Christian nations of the West. The Japanese mind, like the nation, is still in the evolutionary process. It needs, what it will receive, growth. The whole intellectual level of the people is not as high as that of the peoples of the West. The intellectual power of the greatest men of Japan is nearer the height of the intellectual attainments of the greatest men of the West than is the in- tellectual level of the Japanese people near the intellectual level of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. But, as the colored boy said to Howard at Atlanta, "We are rising." The struggle of nature for thousands of years has been to make brain. That struggle is most vigorous in Japan ; it needs to be. That THE JAPANESE MIND 69 struggle will go on ; and in the decades and the centuries, it will bring forth, under good conditions, great popular forces both static and dynamic. Ill SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS OF JAPANESE AND AMERICAN EDUCATION Aside from the common and essential ele- ments which belong alike to all systems of education, one element is found in both the American and Japanese system : it is the fun- damental element of profound respect for edu- cation on the part of both nations. In both countries education has come to be regarded as the most important part of the national life. In 1872 a proclamation made by the new Emperor declared : " All knowledge, from that necessary for daily life to that higher know- ledge necessary to prepare officers, farmers, mechanics, artisans, physicians, etc., for their respective vocations, is acquired by learning. It is designed henceforth that education shall be so diffused that there may not be a village with an ignorant family, nor a family with an ignorant member." In the year of 1890, the SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 71 Emperor also issued what is now known as, " The Imperial Kescript on Education." It is so named, although it might also be called a rescript concerning the ethical virtues ; but the spirit of education is the atmosphere which breathes through each sentence. For in "virtue," declares his Majesty, "lies the source of our Education," as well as "the glory of the fundamental character of our Empire." His Majesty also commands that "our subjects" are to "pursue learning and cultivate arts, and thereby develop intellectual faculties and perfect moral powers." These two imperial writings have been and still con- tinue to be an inspiring force in the progress of education. The Emperor, by his personal and royal example in attending the commence- ment exercises at the University of Tokyo and of other schools, and by inviting teachers in the public schools to his palace on special occasions, has proved his great and abiding interest in this form of, and this force for } civilization. These proclamations are akin to the immortal utterances of Washington re- 72 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST garding the importance o£ education in a republic. It should also be said that this interest of both nations comes to its head in the members of the teaching profession themselves. Teachers in both Japan and the United States are deeply absorbed in their work. The members of no profession devote so much at- tention to their professional improvement. The teachers of Japan know that they — like their nation — are new, and they show in many ways the desire to profit from the re- sults secured by peoples of larger and richer experience. These teachers are both men and women. In America more than four fifths of all the teachers in the public schools are women; in Japan more than four fifths are men. The proportion of women teaching in Japan in- creases, as it does in some American states. In the year 1900-01, of 91,798 Japanese pub- lic school-teachers, only 11,910 were women; but in 1904-05, from 101,272 teachers, almost 20,000 — 19,790— were women. The two countries are concerned with opposite sides of SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 73 the same problem: in America the number of men teaching in the schools should be in- creased and the number of women diminished ; in Japan the number of women should be in- creased and the number of men diminished. A contrast which strikes one in the public education, — to proceed from the outer to the inner part, and from the " lower education " to the " higher," is the character of the school- houses themselves. Many of these houses, like most Japanese buildings, are built of wood. Laf cadio Hearn writes of Japanese architecture as being characterized by " impermanence." The Japanese schoolhouse is a frail structure ; its timbers small, its walls, of boards or clap- boards, thin, its floors weak. The construction seems loose. From first floor to the shingled roof of the second story, a general air of in- stability pervades. In the whole building is found no intimation of that strength which belongs to the brick or stone schoolhouse of the American city, large or small. It must also be said that what we like to call " beauty " is quite as lacking as strength. Though Ameri- 74 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST cans overcrowd their houses with " ornaments " and furniture, yet the Japanese walls are bare almost to barrenness, and the benches rough. In one respect, however, and that most im- portant, is a happy element to be found, — the management of the light of each room. The windows are large, set on one wall usually, and the light falls over the left shoulder of the seated pupil. One of the most evident problems which American and Japanese institutions situated in the city — and most Japanese higher insti- tutions are in a city — have in common, is the problem of getting land for buildings. Not long before his death, Provost Pepper, of the University of Pennsylvania, walking over the grounds of Western Reserve Uni- versity, said to me, " Get land." The remark grew out of his own experience. The remark may be made a command for most urban in- stitutions in both Japan and America. The University of Tokyo has about one hundred acres for its fifty and more buildings. The sister university at Kyoto is not cramped. SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 75 The great institution of the Methodist Church at Tokyo has some twenty-four acres. But most colleges and schools are poor in land. The Waseda University at Tokyo, of some eight thousand students, the Doshisha at Ky- oto, of eight hundred, the Japan Women's University, of fourteen hundred, and also the Presbyterian schools, all at Tokyo, and many others, do not have room to grow. What renders the limitations more serious is that the price of land in the great towns has in- creased by such leaps and bounds that to make purchases at present would require twenty or in some cases even fifty times the price originally asked. This problem of the budget has relations also to larger appropriations for libraries, for scientific apparatus, for keeping buildings clean and well repaired and grounds aestheti- cally beautiful. In these several and diverse respects, Japanese universities and colleges are sympathetic with American. But in re- spect to books the Japanese institutions labor under a double disadvantage. For they are 76 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST obliged to buy not only all the proper books of their own writing, but also all those of Eng- lish, German, and French authorship which relate to the great scholastic subjects and movements. The best library, that of the Uni- versity of Tokyo, is as good as the better col- lege libraries of America, but by no means approaches the best, such as those of Har- vard, Columbia, and Yale. The lack of proper appropriations is evident also in the untidi- ness of the academic housekeeping. Build- ings are not clean. " What is your greatest problem?" an American college president was asked. " To get floors washed often enough," was his answer. The same problem exists in the universities of Japan, and it is not an- swered so well as in those of America. Japan's reputation, too, for fine gardens and landscape architecture is depreciated through the lack of plan and of care manifest in most college grounds. The contrast between Tokyo and Kyoto and Oxford and Cambridge is painful ; but the contrast also between the Japanese and many American universities would be alto- SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 77 gether in favor of the American. The reason lies back in the budget. In passing, it may be added that the Jap- anese colleges , like the American, have in the past paid little attention to the counsels of either the landscape or the building architect. The location of buildings has been too much like the location of the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence, haphazard, and the build- ings themselves lack both individual beauty and collective impressiveness. Japan is also struggling with the problem of America in respect to big academic names for small academic institutions. The name " university" is given to an institution which off ers instruction less advanced and of no better quality than the " higher normal school " of Japan gives. Institutions put forth " claims " which represent hopes rather than present values. The traditional self-restraint of the nation is not manifest in its academic am- bition. The salaries of teachers are, also, small, as are the fees of students. In the higher ele- 78 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST mentary schools the largest salaries for men are about ten dollars a month, and for women about seven dollars. In the last four years hese stipends have increased, but only by in- considerable amounts. In Japan, as in the United States, a good carpenter receives a larger wage than a good elementary school- teacher. The professors in both of the Im- perial Universities, as well as the teachers in many higher schools, have spoken freely to me of the hardships arising from their small stipends. These stipends run from five hun- dred to twelve hundred dollars. For foreign- ers the amounts are double or triple these sums. But such salaries are entirely inadequate. The Japanese style of living is simple. But house-rent is seldom less than fifteen dollars a month, and readily becomes thirty or forty dollars. The price of rice has rapidly and greatly advanced. It was never so high as to- day. The Japanese professor is finding his economic burden quite as heavy as is the American. But this low rate of compensation is some- SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 79 ■what relieved, though only in part, by a gov- ernmental pension system. The pension system for public school-teach- ers has gained a more general prevalence in lapan than in the United States. Its progress in the United States, especially in the large cities, in the last ten years has been great ; but the larger part of the half million of teachers in the whole country are not its bene- ficiaries. The Japanese teacher is an official of the government; and as such is entitled to a grant on retirement. Teachers formerly in the elementary and secondary schools, to the number of more than five thousand, are now in receipt of pensions. These benefits are also continued to the families of teachers who have died. The amounts thus granted vary from about one fifth to one third of the sal- ary formerly received. An important element, at once a contrast and a likeness, is found in the studies which are pursued in both lower and higher schools. The same studies are found in the Japanese schools which are set in the corresponding 80 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST American schools, barring certain marked ex- ceptions. Neither Latin nor Greek is studied. The civilization of the Far East is progress- ing without immediate reference to the classi- cal traditions which have mightily influenced Western development. In them is found, of course, the Japanese language and literature, and also, in some, the Chinese language. The study of ethics is pursued also far more con- stantly than in the schools of Western nations. In the teaching of arithmetic the soroban, or abacus, is used. But with these rather impres- sive differences the curricula of the two sys- tems are much alike. The same subjects of study are, moreover, either popular or unpopular in the Japanese in- stitution and in the American. The social sci- ences and history represent the more, and the mathematical sciences the less, popular. The Japanese mind is not a mathematical mind. It is not exact. Mathematics is not taught in any Japanese university to the extent in which it is taught in the best American colleges. There is little or no demand for the higher or the SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 81 newer developments of the great subject. But political economy, sociology, the science of gov- ernment, politics, represent topics in which the Japanese mind has intense interest. The same condition obtains in America. The teachers of Japan are laboring with the question upon which American teachers are working, namely, the question of getting stu- dents to think. There is no difficulty in get- ting Japanese students to learn. The faculty of the memory is strong. The difficulty is to persuade students to learn less and to think more. Many students have not come to dis- tinguish between these important functions. But teachers are becoming aware; for the loss which their students are incurring in sacrific- ing reflectiveness to acquisitiveness is con- stant and serious. The way of meeting this difficulty is still pretty obscure in both Japan and America. But one Japanese professor in- dicated a method which he believed had al- ready proved to be of value. It lay in an ex- amination not upon questions which related to the content of a subject, but which related 82 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST to the consideration of the problems of thaf subject. A student would be tested upon his thinking out and solving the problems which arise in a course of instruction. Such questions I know thousands of teachers in American col- leges prefer to set in an examination paper. Such questions it is hard to formulate; but such questions will become more common in both American and Japanese universities. There is need, however, aside from the method and content of examinations that students should be so impressed with the importance of thinking as compared to learning that they will compel themselves to think. More of the mathematical necessity of thinking should be felt by them. This necessity they will in time come to feel for themselves, as already their teachers are feeling it for them. A farther problem in which Japanese teach- ers as well as American are deeply concerned, is the giving of personal aid to students in the great interests of their lives. It is th( problem by what means and methods the char- acter of the teacher may be brought to bear SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 8? upon the character of the student. The diffi culty in the question arises from the great number of students and also from the work of the teacher in research. When one teacher has two hundred or four hundred students, he is usually prevented from giving much indi- vidual help to each. When, also, a professor is deeply interested in research, as he ought to be, and interested in publishing the results of his investigations, he feels he has little time or strength left for the individual stu- dent. The condition in both Japanese and American institutions is identical. The dor- mitory system, at least indirectly if not directly, allows some teachers opportunities for study- ing the personal life of students. But Tokyo transferred not long ago its few dormitories to the Medical Department for hospital wards. It is now without any. " It was a great mis- take," said a professor to me. Students' hos- tels under the charge of the Young Men'? Christian Association are doing much to meel this condition. The lack of opportunities open to the Japanese professor is greater than to 84 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST the American. For the lecture system is far more common in Japan. The recitation sys- tem does give the teacher some little chance for making an inventory of the mind and heart of the student, and for discovering his point of view. But the Japanese college lec- ture is simply an academic address, in which practically no chance is open for the play and by-play of question and answer. Japanese professors, like the American, lament the con- dition, and are seeking a remedy ; but, so far, likewise, without worthy result. The great questions in Japan, as in Amer- ica, about which students crave counsel from their teachers, are ethical and religious ques- tions. Such questions are most vital, personal, serious. In Japan these questions are tremen- dously significant. For students in lifting their own lives and the lives of their fellow countrymen who are less favored out of moral unworthiness, need all the advice and inspira- tion which their teachers of widest experience and warmest regard can give. A contrast is to be found, and one, too, in SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 85 favor of the Eastern nation, in respect to school attendance. At the present time more than ninety-five per cent of the Japanese children who are of the elementary school-age are attending school. In the United States the proportion differs much for the different commonwealths, from Massachusetts with its high average to the states of the Southwest ; but the national contrast is to the advantage of Japan. The percentage, too, is constantly rising. In the last six years in the elementary schools, it has risen from about eighty-one to more than ninety-five. The increase for girls exceeds that for boys. In 1890-91 about seventy-one per cent of the girls were in school, and ninety per cent of the boys ; in 1905-06 the ratio had so changed that ninety- seven per cent of the boys and ninety-three per cent of the girls were in school. For most of these pupils, education is not free in the sense in which it is in American schools. Above the primary grades a fee is charged. The fee is ridiculously small, meas- ured by Western standards of value; but 86 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST measured by Japanese standards, its aggre- gate represents a large income for the statec The Japanese home, be it said, seems willing to meet this small tax. In the higher primary- school the fee paid for each pupil each month runs from fifteen cents to thirty ; in the mid- dle (or grammar) school the fee is seldom less than fifty cents a month, or more than a dol- lar and twenty cents; in the high school it is ten dollars a year, and in the universities about eighteen dollars. Certain exemptions are made in cases of poverty. Passing from the more ordinary types of public school education to the form of the higher education, the same contrast is noted. Many higher schools are able to receive only a small proportion of the students who desire to enter. In ways either direct or indirect most American colleges seek for students. The higher schools of Japan have no need of conducting such a campaign. For most of them are full, too full, and clamoring appli- cants to the number of thousands find the academic gates shut in their faces. The uni- SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 87 versities and what America would call col leges are few. The two universities of Tokyt and Kyoto are able to receive most appli- cants ; but the provision offered at the normal schools and some technical institutions is utterly inadequate. Of the more than twenty- two thousand applicants at the normal schools last year, less than five thousand were re- ceived. In certain individual schools only one applicant in ten is admitted. In some medical schools a similar proportion of admissions to applications prevails. The Japanese govern- ment has so far been unable to offer sufficient facilities for the higher education of her people ; every year either old institutions are enlarged or new ones founded. In the com- ing year four new scientific schools or col- leges will be opened. Japanese young men look upon education as the ladder leading to the richest opportunities and the highes' achievements. Year after year, only a hun- dred out of a thousand applicants to some schools are received. The test is made by ex- amination. Those who are rejected, it may be 88 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST added, represent in Japan a contingent which proves to be a cause of watchfulness to the police force of Tokyo and other great towns. Unwilling to return to their homes in the country, lean in purse, loath to do the homely work which may offer, they are a pregnant cause of social peril. In Japan, as in America, the student of slender purse, but high ambition, is common. The methods used for aiding him in Japan are unlike those employed in America. In America the college to which he goes aids by grants of money, or by securing oppor- tunities of self- support. The record which almost every college could publish is a noble one. But in Japan the aid is usually given by the locality in which the student lives. There are more than a hundred student aid societies. They are largely maintained by the wealthier people of the province or neighbor- hood. One of these societies, which is prob- ably the best endowed, has a fund of about $350,000. The aid is given usually in the form of loans, running from about $2.50 SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 89 to $5.00 a month. Even the larger amount would not be called extravagant ; but when it is remembered that for one hundred dollars a student can meet all his expenses for a year at one of the higher institutions, the amount may be deemed liberal. For the cost of education seems small, very small. The following is the estimate made by one of the private universities for each year of a course of five years : — Tuition fee $18.00 Room rent (11 mo.) 19.25 Classroom charge 1.50 Physical training 1.50 Board (11 mo.) 33.00 Books, stationery, etc 30.00 $103.25 This estimate, I believe, the catalogue of our American college, in its ordinary state- ment of the different types of students' ex- penses, would describe as " economical ! " For in the American college the corresponding charges which the student would meet would be for tuition from $100 to $150, for board and room from $175 to $400 or more, and for incidentals a sum far in excess of the 90 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST $ 100, which the Japanese student spends for \11 items. The best education, secured under ;he best conditions, would, therefore, cost at least one fourth and probably one tenth as much in Tokyo or Kyoto as in New York, or New Haven, or Cambridge. Of course, the difference could easily be made much greater. The many Japanese men and the few Japa- nese women who have come to American col- leges deeply feel this difference in expense. This difference has a material expression in the rooms of the students. The room of a Japanese student is small, — being seldom more than an eight mat room (each mat is six feet by three) and usually smaller. It is rather unfurnished than furnished. The floor is the bed, and the simple bedding in the daytime is rolled up and tucked away in a drawer. The floor is the chair, too, as well as the bedstead. A small low table is, with a few books, the only piece of furniture. All the belongings of many a student I have seen wrapped together in a blanket. I must say that such a room seems to be almost as lacking in comfort to SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 91 the Japanese student as it is in necessaries to the American. But the Japanese student does, I am sure, find comfort as well as necessaries in this simplest provision. He is the child of such an environment. He does not miss what he never had. And be it ever said that the Japanese student, like the Japanese soldier, can do good work on rice and dried fish, and that, too, with not a large quantity of either. Out of the comparative poverty and, also, out of the ambition of the Japanese student, arises the element of work. On the whole, he takes more lectures in a week than the American in a fortnight or possibly three weeks. But if he studies or listens more, he thinks less ; and no man at any college in the New World thinks too much. If in laborious- ness he be superior to his brother in America, in moral practice he is distinctly inferior. He is far more akin to the French student of the Latin Quarter than to the American. In this respect he is sympathetic with his nation. For to the whole people moral standards are lack- ing ; they are less immoral than unmoral. 92 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST What seems to the occidental conscience wrong may seem to the oriental to have no moral quality at all. But the Christian principles of the West are beginning to affect the Japanese nation ; and in no class have they become so pervasive as among the students. The work of the Young Men's Christian Association, as well as of the churches, merits the warmest commendation. The Japanese student, moreover, like the American, has his undergraduate life. Sports are common, of which archery and baseball are popular. Football is not played to any ex- tent, and probably will not be. It does not seem to partake of that gracious deference which characterizes student life, as all life, in Japan ! There are few clubs and social organizations, but they are more usually formed upon the basis of the province whence came the men to the universities than on the ground of per- sonal likings. The geographical principle pre- vailing at Upsala is followed to a degree in Tokyo. But, in general, the universities man- ifest more of the manners and customs of the SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 93 American professional school than of the un- dergraduate college. The pressure of the forth- coming life is vividly felt. That life is strenu- ous, and the undergraduate sympathizes with its demands. To one more contrast I must refer. It is the greater orderliness of the Japanese student. Academic life in Japan has little of those tomfooleries which are characterized as either delightful, or disgusting, natural to youth, or outrageous, according to preconceived stand- ards. At all events, Japanese students are not much given to play. As citizens of the state they are obedient to its civil officers, so as members of an academic society they con- duct themselves with propriety. They mind their academic business. Any noisy procession of them would probably be at once dispersed by the police, even if it were allowed to form. A theft of a barber's pole would result in ar- rest and punishment. Disturbance at a theatre would not be suffered. The Japanese student by nature seems to lack the enthusiastic spirit of the American. The task of the police force 94 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST is always an easier one than it would be in Cambridge on the occasion of a great football victory over Yale. Whether the American school is more effec- tive for America than the Japanese is for Japan would be hard, very hard, to say. At times we are inclined to laud, and again, we are inclined to depreciate, the efficiency of the American school and college. But on the whole, under existing conditions, sober judgment inclines to the conviction that the American education is giving good service to the American peo- ple. I am confident that a similar condition of efficiency prevails in Japan. The nation is in a sense feeling its way in education. Education has already done much for the people. It has in ten years reduced the number who cannot read and write to a very small percentage. It has quickened every form of endeavor. It has been one of the chief causes contributing to the making of Japan a world-power. Japan's confidence, too, in the value of education was never so great as at this very hour. IV EDUCATION WITHOUT EELIGION AND WITH ETHICS Japan's schools represent the most serious endeavor now being made in the world to give a complete education without instruction in religion, and with instruction in ethics. It might be said that Japan has no religion ; and that, therefore, her schools are necessarily bereft of this instruction. It might also be said that Japan has three religions ; and that, therefore, her schools should include instruc- tion in them, and that in giving this instruction they should treat the three alike by a common inclusion in the curriculum. Whether these opposing inferences be sound or fallacious, there is truth in the double statement that among the Japanese people are found many firm adherents to Christianity, to Buddhism, and to Shintoism, and also that a large pro- portion of this people — possibly the largest 96 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST — are adherents of no faith at all. But what- ever faith be held or not held, the govern- ment does rigorously adopt the method of the exclusion of all dogmatic religious instruction. The history of various religions is taught in the universities, but the teaching is historical. This result of exclusion is apparently in- evitable. The national policy is one quite as liberal as obtains in the United States, of ab- solute freedom in matters religious. Under r such a policy the exclusion of the formal teaching of any religion seems necessary. Primary teacher and university professor, as well as the people, give assent. The private school or university is, of course, free to teach or not to teach. The impossibility of giving religious in- struction is felt by not a few of the people as a lamentable condition. They wish that the inevitable conclusion could in some way be avoided. But be it said, the regret over the condition is not so great as it would be in the United States. For the conception prevailing among these two peoples regarding the rela- EDUCATION WITHOUT RELIGION 97 tion of man and of his duty to the Superior Being, whether that Being be interpreted as personal or impersonal, differs fundamentally. It is customary, or at least not unusual, for the American to say that no one can do his finite duty properly without recognizing the relation of this duty to an ultimate Being; for this finite duty has infinite consequences. But the Japanese say, if one does his finite duty as best he can, he is in that very doing properly relating himself to infinite being. The American method proceeds somewhat from the unknown and remote to the known and the near ; the Japanese from the known and the present to the unknown and remote. The American might be called the more philo- sophic, the Japanese the more scientific. If, however, any system of religion were to be taught in the government schools and col- leges of Japan, that religion would be the Christian. For, though the Court is formally allied with Shintoism, yet the principles of Christianity are the principles which would more readily be accepted by the people. The 98 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST distinction, however, is made between what may be called the Christianity of the Foul Gospels, and the Christianity of America, or of England, or of Germany. National Chris- tianity has, in the opinion of the Japanese, come to be encumbered by either specula- tions or formalisms, which serve to separate it from Christ's Christianity. Christ's Chris- tianity, it is held, represents the two principles of supreme love to God, and a love for one's neighbor as great as the love for one's self. Such a religion, simply conceived and simply stated, would be accepted by the Japanese with probably greater satisfaction than any other. But even so simple a declaration of the faith of Christ could not, under the pres- ent conditions, be taught in the government schools. Yet by some people the failure to give re- ligious tuition is felt as a great defect in the cause of public education. At least, one en- deavor has been attempted to find relief. The author of it is Professor Tanamoto, professor of pedagogy in the University of Kyoto. EDUCATION WITHOUT RELIGION 9f Professor Tanamoto's method includes these elements: observation of and communication with nature, reading of the holy scriptures as found in any literature, including of course the New Testament, the telling of stories regarding religious duty and devotion, and prayer. In these elements and exercises, he believes, all children and their teachers, of whatever denom- inational faith, can unite. Prayer would be an act, or mood, or petition, addressed to the Be- ing whom the petitioner regarded as Supreme. It is, however, to be feared that such an attempt made in Japan is doomed to failure, as it would be in America. Such a method of religious instruction and impressiveness lacks the inspiration of personality and the force of definite conceptions of truth. But Japanese schools are face to face with the problem — as are the institutions of our own country — of finding a religious faith which is so broad that it can be taught in all schools, s< definite that its truths can be apprehended by the minds of children, so forceful, too, that its teaching shall aid in the making of right habits 100 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST of conduct, and in the formation of sound character. In the endeavor to find a solution for this most serious problem of all humanity, a solution which shall be philosophically sound and religiously impressive and formative, the great nation of the West and the most ad- vanced nation of the East should each aid the other. But in the present absence of religious teaching, Japan is emphasizing instruction in ethics. This instruction is a required part of the course in practically every year of the thirteen which precede admission to the uni- versity. No nation is making a more ear- nest, a more constant, or a more consistent endeavor to give ethical instruction. A series of text-books has been prepared by Doctor Nakashima, professor of ethics in the Impe- rial University, himself a graduate of Western Keserve, and a student, under President Por- ter, at Yale, and at Jena. The works and the teaching are graduated to the presumed intel- lectual and moral development of the pupil at the different ages from six up. EDUCATION WITHOUT RELIGION 101 The reason of this extreme devotion to ethics is, like most reasons for the presence of any study in the curriculum, manifold. One such reason may be found in the very absence of religious teaching. Because of this absence, the rebound to ethical instruction may be all the stronger. But there is a further and more impressive cause. The reputation which Japan, as a nation, has is that of the common prevalence of commercial dishonesty. As Professor George Trumbull Ladd — than whom Japan has no truer friend — said in a lecture given in the winter of 1906-07 in Osaka : — The impression is that there is a certain lack of these essential virtues of trueness and justness among a large proportion of your business men. I have been myself, as a friend of Japan, compelled to explain and to apolo- gize for this over and over again, by pointing out the historical conditions under which the nation has come so rapidly forward into the modern business world. I have explained also by affirming that a very considerable part of the impression is due to misapprehension. That Japan feels keenly the evil reputation 102 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST under which many of her commercial and in- dustrial interests labor is clear. To the fact of this reputation the government is not blind. The government seems determined to do whatever can be done to remove this evil name. Instruction in ethics in all public schools is a natural method. With this method of the government the people sympathize. The common idea has been well expressed by Professor Ladd, also, in an address given re- cently before some members of the House of Peers on the future of Japan, published in both Japanese and English : " The element of morality, of ethical education and discipline, must enter into all this training of the younger generation, if the highest successes in the pursuits of peace are to be attained." It is also to be remembered that the fundamental note in the Imperial Rescript of 1890 con- cerning education was the worth of the moral virtues, and the duty of giving and receiving education in morality. Near the beginning of the ninth decade of the last century, Bismarck came to realize that EDUCATION WITHOUT EELIGION 103 Germany was suffering from the reputation of her manufacturers and merchants for dis- honesty and trickery. The manifesto which he put forth in consequence had, it is believed, much influence in removing the condition and its cause. There can be no doubt but that the name of Japanese merchants for honest deal- ing is fairer to-day than at any time in the generation. This improved reputation is based on facts. The teaching of ethics in the schools is the great cause of this improvement. For Japan is determined both to seem honest and, what she is coming to know is more impor- tant, to be honest. THE JAPANESE AS ADMINISTRATORS The history of the Russian-Japanese War has given rise to the impression that the Japanese are great administrators. Did not the methods and results of this war manifest the highest forces of administration, — promptness, fore- thought, regard for sanitation, caution, cour- age, energy, efficiency ? The war did manifest all these elements, but before assuming, there- fore, that they are characteristic of the Japa- nese people, it must be remembered that in this war the old samurai spirit was the rul- ing force. This spirit may well be said to represent the chief qualities which constitute worthy administration. But the samurai spirit, at once less limited than in the feudal period, and less strong, is weakest among the non- military classes, who are engaged in admin- istrative or similar services. Besides the pre- sence of the samurai spirit, it is to be remem- THE JAPANESE AS ADMINISTRATORS 105 bered that the Japanese were preparing for this war for at least ten years. This prepara- tion was made by military and naval experts. Furthermore, it has been said that the Japa- nese did not so much win battles as the Rus- sians lost them. Aside from this questionable evidence pro- vided by the war, why should we expect the Japanese to be gifted with administrative skill? Would not the life and the character of the people for generations lead to the neces- sary conclusion that in such skill and power they would be preeminently deficient? There are, at least, four conditions which intimate that the Japanese as a people could not at the present time be naturally efficient admin- istrators. One condition lies in the lack of knowledge, of observation, and of power of supervision. The Japanese do not know how to do things ; they have seldom seen things done as they ought to be done. Some leaders have seen, and do understand and appreciate. Most, how- ever, live in ignorance of wise administrative 106 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST methods, and are without a conception of the nature of strong administrative force. A pain- ful example of this lack of experience may be found in the hospitals. We have heard much of the splendid field hospitals and excellent sanitary conditions maintained during the war. But these were planned and supervised by military experts, leaders drawn from that small class of those who do understand and appre- ciate. The civil hospitals, although the most important ones are a part of the equipment of the Imperial Universities, have not such effec- tive administration. One of the first — if not the first — of requisites in the administration of a hospital, be it great or small, is cleanliness. So essential is this quality that its presence is not to be commended, but its lack warrants severest condemnation. The simple fact is that the great university hospitals are not clean. The evidence of uncleanness makes its constant appeal to at least two senses. The larger a hospital the greater the need of care in securing cleanliness. The Kyoto hospital has five hundred beds, and treats every year THE JAPANESE AS ADMINISTRATORS 107 more than two hundred thousand out-patients. The Tokyo hospital is still larger, treating three hundred thousand out-patients each year. But lack of system in maintaining the simplest hygienic conditions is painfully evident. In fact, a Tokyo university professor, of Ameri- can education and training, long resident in Japan, has said that there is reason to believe that no public hospital in Japan is clean. Similar evidence, though in some respects less important, is offered by the hotels. Super- vision is usually lacking ; knowledge of what is a good hotel is also lacking; and the result of inefficiency is inevitable. This lack of experience is closely related to a common oriental condition, the lack of the sense of the value of time. The Japanese, like most peoples except those of the farther West, do not usually conceive of events as having a close relation to the category of time. They know the limitations of space far better than those of the other Kantian category of time. What, therefore, should, to the Western mind, be done this morning may be deferred to this 108 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST afternoon ; what should be done to-day may be put off until to-morrow j and what should be done this week or this month, can just as well be done next week or next month. We are told that it is impolite to be prompt in keeping an engagement, — promptness might make the other person hurry. Such an intel- lectual conception of the value of time leads to practical procrastination. The oriental training in the habit of obedi- ence also necessitates inefficiency. This ele- ment of feudalism still abides as a common heritage and condition. The few were and are fitted to command, to direct, to inspire; the many were and are obedient subjects and sub- ordinates. The power of initiative is lacking. In that superb field for the use of administra- tive talent of the highest order, the railroad, this lack of initiative is evident. Many items might be named, but to one or two only do I call attention. Japan is subject to frequent and heavy floods. Every spring or fall the road- beds of the more important railways are washed away. The repairs are restorations merely, not THE JAPANESE AS ADMINISTRATORS 109 improvements, and the next inundation re- peats the disaster. Before such a disaster oc- curring for the tenth or twentieth time, the Japanese mind seems to be as blind, the Jap- anese hand as helpless, as at the first occur- rence. To cite a representative incident: a recent flood was unusually severe, and some of its devastations created problems which il- lustrate the helplessness of the Japanese rail- road manager. At a point some ten miles out- side of Tokyo the tracks became submerged to the depth of several feet, and for a distance of several miles. Trains from the north were run up to the edge of this inland sea ; but for transportation across the water no regular facilities were provided. The Japanese quality of imitation has been magnified perhaps un- duly, but it is safe and just to say that this quality is far more conspicuous than the quality of origination. Japan has been an obedient student rather than a forthputting teacher. India, through China, taught her Buddhism, and China taught her art and literature. She has ever been and still is a 110 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST learner, and in her learning she has had the grace or defect of submissiveness. I also believe that the courtesy of the people is the foe of efficiency in administra- tion. Whether the courtesy be fundamental or superficial, whether the courtesy is more essential to their being than integrity, is not the question; but that the courtesy is unflag- ging and minute is evident. Such courtesy often wars against the policy and the method of doing things. Courtesy has regard for other persons' prejudices, principles, wishes, limitations; administrative efficiency has re- gard for the accomplishment of results. It often overrides. In this accomplishment others' prej- udices, principles, wishes, limitations, may be necessarily despised, neglected, overcome. But many Japanese would be unwilling to achieve such results at such a sacrifice. They prefer courtesy to efficiency. Such a preference is a part of the senti- mentalism which some wise interpreters have thought is the fundamental characteristic of the Japanese people. A few have called them THE JAPANESE AS ADMINISTRATORS 111 speculative, more have called them poetical, but most would agree in saying that senti- mental is an epithet which can be yet more fittingly applied. Their heart reasons, and their intellect feels. That the Japanese may become great ad- ministrators seems to me almost as evident as the truth that they are not now such. For Japan is a nation with a tremendous capacity for doing or for being that which she wills to do or to be. That she possesses such a capacity is one of the greatest lessons of the momen- tous history of the last forty years. YI JAPAN AS A COLONIZING AND EXPANDING POWER Beneath the general and heated discussion regarding the legal or illegal exclusion of the Japanese from the states of the Pacific Coast, beneath, too, the debate respecting the Japa- nese occupancy of Korea or any one of the South Sea Islands, lie two questions : (1) Can the Japanese colonize and expand? and (2) Will they? In answering the first question — Can the Japanese colonize and expand? — several considerations may be presented. (1) The increase of population, — the popu- lation is now increasing at the rate of almost five millions each decade. This increase arises almost wholly from the native race itself. Japan is the paradise of babies, both in numbers and, it may be added, in happiness. (2) This increase, together with the present population of fifty millions and the relatively JAPAN AS A COLONIZING POWER 113 small area of land, represents a strong expulsive force. But to the relatively small area should at once be added the fact that only a small part of this area can be cultivated. I find that econ- omists differ, some saying that this part is only one fifth, and others going so far as to declare that only one thirteenth can produce food for man or beast. But it is at least clear that the means of subsistence for a large and fast growing people is small. (3) The love of the people for themselves is greater than their love for Japan. Their regard for territory is less than their regard for the na- tion. The land is far less sacred than nation- ality. In emigration, therefore, they leave what is less dear, and carry along with them the holi- est symbol of their patriotism, — themselves. (4) A spirit which we call the spirit of pro- gress is mighty. The Japanese propose to make themselves the strongest nation that is possi- ble. This purpose is held by all classes. The coolie who pulls your ricksha is inspired by it as well as the professor in the university. The spirit is at the present time more exten- 114 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST sive than intensive, representing rather breadth than depth. It includes the development of the public school system and the foundation of new universities, but in it is also embraced the expansion of Japanese commerce and the going forth of Japanese people into all parts. Such enlargements give delight and a sense of glory to the Japanese soul. (5) The race is a hardy one. The members are trained to labor, and labor they do, from infancy to age. The older children bear their younger brothers and sisters, strapped to their bending backs. Laborers in mills and clerks in shops have long hours each day, and some of them seven days each week. They bear heat and cold with somewhat of that indifference which Tacitus attributes to the German tribes. Their food is small in quantity, — like their compact bodies, — and simple, and upon it they flourish, and in it are content. Such a race can find a fitting home in the islands of the southern as well as of the northern Pa- cific, and also on the shores of any ocean. (6) The Japanese are an adjustable people. JAPAN AS A COLONIZING POWER 115 They readily fit themselves into any condition. One might, either in commendation or depre- ciation, say that they are the great imitators of the world. But this power of imitation is only the exterior manifestation of a deeper and more serious power of adjustability. In France they adopt the way of Frenchmen, in Germany of Germans, and in the United States of Amer- icans. They are afraid of seeming to be pecul- iar, unusual, extreme. They are especially afraid of ridicule, — they cannot bear to be laughed at. They are never guilty of swagger. They are more obsequious than the Frenchman, and have as warm a desire to please as the Amer- ican. Such a race is not unwelcome in all nor- mal parts of the world, and, once received, its members make themselves at home. (7) In the fact that the nation has great leaders is found an element of its colonizing and expanding power. The leadership is great. In the United States we lament the absence of worthy leaders. Life seems to be getting ahead of itself, — the propelling forces are stronger than the directive. In Japan the forces that 116 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST guide have become far superior to the forces that constitute the body of the people. The leaders are far more superior to the commu- nity than are the leaders of American people superior to that people. The Japanese leaders, like, for instance, Prince Ito, well represent Burke's definition of wisdom. They do apply their knowledge to public affairs. They are far abler, more honest, more unselfish than Chinese statesmen. They are quite as scien- tific statesmen as the world can offer. In them, too, are found those elements of soberness, se- riousness, and far-sightedness, which seem to characterize great statesmen of every age and nation, as Peel, Gladstone, Bismarck. Now, be it said that the leaders of this nation clearly and profoundly recognize that emigration is the most natural method of extending Japa- nese influence, and of giving happy solution to some of the more urgent domestic problems. If Prince Ito could take a million of his fellow countrymen to Korea, he would find his ad- ministrative problems diminished in number and simplified. JAPAN AS A COLONIZING POWER 117 (8) With this element of great leadership should be linked a characteristic of the people, the characteristic of obedience. The origin of this element is variously accounted for, — the relation of dependence of the feudal system, the former ignorance of the people, the racial quality of non-resistance. But, of whatever origin, the Japanese are a people obedient to their superiors. The obedience begins in the home, — to parents ; it is continued in the schoolroom, — to teachers; it becomes a part of life, — to civil authority. It is said that the life of a Japanese woman consists of three obe- diences : to her father, her husband, her mother- in-law. The man's obediences are not quite so constant or close ; but the general atmosphere of inferiority and subjection in which he lives is not unlike. This atmosphere was of peculiar significance in the last great war. The point, therefore, of this interpretation of the obedience of this people is that the wise counsels of statesmen urging emigration will find a quick response in the hearts of those to whom they are given. 118 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST (9) The means and facilities for emigration and for defending her people, when they have gone forth from their native island, Japan possesses. She has two or three great steam- ship lines, which compare well with such fleets as the Hamburg- American and the North Ger- man Lloyd. She can transport her people eas- ily, swiftly, economically, to any shore. There is, too, reason to believe that her own navy could protect them well upon whatever coast they might make their new home. To the second question, Will the Japanese colonize and expand, and especially will they move into the United States in large numbers, — an answer of some degree of worth may be found in the history of recent immigration to the United States and other countries. The whole number of Japanese living in this coun- try at the present time is less than 150,000. About one half of this number, or some 65,000, are living in the Hawaiian Islands ; about 40,000 are in California, and 10,000 in the State of Washington. In all Canada the number is less than 10,000. Certainly the race JAPAN AS A COLONIZING POWER 119 of 50,000,000 has not shown a very strong tendency to immigrate into the New World. To move to other parts of the world, they have manifested a disposition even weaker. All China has hardly 20,000 Japanese ; and till recent movements began, Korea had only 42,- 000. All Europe has hardly even a thousand, and about one half of this number are found in England. It seems evident that less than 300,000 Japanese are living in foreign coun- tries. The number, too, who are going out of the country shows certain signs of decrease. In the year 1900 were issued 40,000 passports for Japanese going abroad ; in 1904 the number had diminished to 27,000; and in 1905 it had fallen to 19,000. Therefore, despite all these reasons which show their capacity for and the probability of their emigration, recent history and present conditions make the conclusion inevitable that the Japanese will not come to America or go to any foreign country in large numbers. In fact, the statical quality in this nation, as in the case of most individuals, is mightier than 120 EDUCATION IN THE FAE EAST the dynamical. No part of the world need fear a tidal wave of people from the Japanese Is- lands. Instead of fearing the presence of a few thousand or tens of thousands more in the United States of this people, the emotion should be one of regret that they will not come. As students and as laborers, they should re- ceive a hearty welcome from both the United States and Canada. But, of course, beneath this question of the colonizing and expanding power of one nation lies the vast and tremendous question of the relations of all nations to one another, — ■ re- lations economic, social, and racial, — appar- ently the great question of the next genera- tions. The present problem is a part of the more and most extensive and complex problem, the problem whether all parts of the world are for all peoples, or whether certain parts are permanently to belong to certain peoples. CHINA VII CHINESE INSTITUTIONS The Middle Ages gave to modern life two institutions of commanding significance, — the church and the university. They represent the noblest results of the struggles of man for a thousand years. Modern life has been largely formed by them. No country can be called civilized till it has developed institutions as exponents of the lasting and fundamental instincts of its people. Some institutions of this permanent character China has already developed; others are still in the process. China may be called a civilized, a semi-civilized, or a barbarous people, according to the value attached to the various institutions already formed or still forming. There are three or four institutions which would, by common agreement, be regarded as already well developed in the Middle Kingdom. The government is the first. In theory an 124 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST absolute monarchy it is, and also at times an absolute monarcby in practice; but it is in some respects an oligarchy, or a constitutional monarchy, without a constitution in either the American or the English sense. But, of what- ever precise nature, — and its precise nature it would be difficult to interpret, — the Chinese government is well established. Whatever may happen in China, and no one knows what will, the people will not dissolve into a condi- tion of unrelated civic units. The government is at the present time reactionary. The con- servative party is controlling. But the liberal party is by no means weak. Its position is somewhat strengthened by an active revolu- tionary party. For China, like her northern neighbor, has internal foes, who are plotting to overthrow the present dynasty. The watch- word of these revolutionists is, " The Manchus must go." For their expulsion a campaign constant and more or less active goes on. It is urged that the government of the Manchus has been ineffective. They have not preserved the integrity of the Chinese Empire. It is CHINESE INSTITUTIONS 125 said — though probably without much truth — that the revolutionary party comprises in sympathy at least no less than one third of all the people. No significant results have emerged upon the death of the Empress Dowager. The belief that the integrity of China will be preserved by the United States and by the governments of western Europe has greatly strengthened in recent years. In such a period of political unrest the posi- tion of the army becomes of great, perhaps of prevailing, importance. What that position would be no one dares to prophesy. The army of a nation like China is liable to be an oppor- tunist army; it wishes to fight on the winning side. A regiment of Chinese troops not long ago was sent into a province to quell a rebellion. "On which side are you going to fight, — of the government or of the rebels? " was asked one of the officers. "I don't know," was his reply; "we shall wait till we get up there before we decide." If it should seem prob- able that the present dynasty will be able to maintain itself, the army will be found on 126 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST the side of the throne, with a fair degree of allegiance; but if the revolutionary party should be able to make a great show of strength and good promise of winning, the army will be divided. A second historic institution China possesses, and in a high degree of development, — the family. Perhaps the degree is too high for the interests of a progressive civilization. In the United States, and to an extent in England, the great growth of the principle of individ- ualism has caused the family to become a social unit of less power than it deserves. In recent years the endeavor has been made to lift and to enlarge the place which the family occupies as a social unit, and to minimize in certain ways excessive individualism. In China the opposite condition prevails, and ought to prevail. The family has become an element in a system of religion. Worship of ancestors has become a duty. To disturb a tomb is one of the most dastardly of sins. The grave is made an altar. The dead hand rules. But before death, the family system prevails as a CHINESE INSTITUTIONS 127 mighty social force. I have just seen a picture of four generations of a family living together, and in quarters too small for the members of a single generation. Such uniting of the family is not good, either for the family, as ■worthily interpreted, or for the individual members thereof, or for the community of which all are a part. We in America who are seeking to enlarge the social place and func- tion of the family, may well observe the con- ditions prevailing in the ancient Middle King- dom. The condition, too, of the Chinese family bears an intimate relation to the holding of property. Property belongs less to the individ- ual and more to the family than prevails in the Occident. The debts of one member may become an obligation of every member of the family. Gains, as well as losses, are commu- nistic. The family probably represents the most con- servative element and institution of Chinese life. Its conservatism approaches petrifaction. It looks to the future, too, as well as to the past. 128 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST Its purpose is to beget sons who shall insure its lasting future. But to attempt to alter these conditions of the past or of the future, would result in evils far more disastrous than any now prevailing. The modern movement should recognize and appreciate its worth, and seek, so far as it may, to lessen the undue social emphasis which is placed upon it. Every student of history knows how impor- tant was the place which the guild filled in the society of the Middle Ages. A function of sim- ilar significance the guild is now fulfilling in China. Whenever and wherever a monarchy is weak, individuals are prone to combine for the protection and promotion of their interests, individual, economic, social. In province and town are found these associations of trades- men, of manufacturers, and of workmen. They are trade unions rather than labor unions. They are commercial organizations rather than social. They are formed to protect their business, as a primary aim. This method of protection lies in laws and rules, in taxes and fines, in sym- pathy and promise of cooperation. Some guilds CHINESE INSTITUTIONS 129 are possessed of large property, and some em- ploy regular officials. Their existence is not observed by the "looker-on in Venice"; but they move through Chinese life a strong, though largely invisible, influence. China also enters into the enlarging life of the world, having the greater of the two influ- ences which represent the gifts of the Middle Ages to modern times : Confucianism has been her ethics ; and by recent edict Confucianism has become her religion. Yet when one has so said, he is inclined at once to modify the re- mark. For, whatever may be the imperial edict, Confucianism is ethical and not religious. Fur- thermore, imperial edict cannot be so impera- tive, or dowager queen or emperor so impe- rious, as to transmute Confucius into a deity. To pay respects to, to bow at the tablet of, Confucius does not constitute an act of wor- ship, unless there be the sense of adoration in the heart of the devotee. The testimony of those teaching in the government colleges is to the effect that " the act of worship " at the tablet of Confucius is not held to be worship. 130 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST " The mood of the student," said a teacher to me, "is quite like the mood of a son con- gratulating his father on a birthday." Religion, too, is not organized, as was the church of the Middle Ages. The temples are vacant. Many of them have become school- houses. Priests have little influence, and this little lessens. Buddhism — an exotic, the gift of India — declines, and it never took firm hold of the Chinese mind. Therefore, though I thus write of religion being an institution which China can use in her struggle for her own civ- ilizing, it is to be remembered that its worth is more atmospheric than institutional, and its place belongs rather to the kingdom of this world of social obligations than to the other and unseen world of the eternities and the infinities. There are other institutions besides these four — government, family, guilds, and re- ligion — which China possesses, but they are in the making. Chief among them are society, laws, the press, and the currency. In one of his letters Matthew Arnold writes CHINESE INSTITUTIONS 131 of the worth of society in forming opinion about public questions. America is coming to appreciate the worth of society in this respect, as she has for a long time understood its value in ephemeral and narrow relations. But China has yet wholly to learn this lesson, which England has learned, and which America is in the process of learning. For it may be said that there is no society in China, in the sense in which the term is understood in Anglo- Saxon countries. There are few or no oppor- tunities for men and women to meet together for the sake of the simple enjoyment of the presence of one another, and for the sake of good talk. The customs of the country forbid such association. The loss to the individual, and to the whole community suffered through such disbarments, is very serious. The weaker and silly side of society in Anglo-Saxon na- tions is liable to blind one to the real, large, and permanent good which is accomplished by it. But when one compares even the less worthy element of society with the condition prevailing in a community in which there is 132 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST no society at all, the great worth of society be- comes at once evident and impressive. There are at least two evil results which either directly proceed from or are fostered by the lack of society. They are gambling and opium smoking. The Chinese are the first of gambling nations as they are also probably the most addicted to the opium pipe, despite recent reforms. Gambling gratifies a somewhat early developed instinct of human- ity, the instinct for speculation and for taking chances. And as a distinguished and much traveled Chinese officer said to me : " What are my countrymen to do ? They — the ordi- nary people — do not read much. They are shut out from the company of women outside of their own home. What is left to them but dice and the games ? " The same remark might be essentially made about opium. The interest which most civilized men find in good talk with good women is denied Chinese gentle- men. They therefore turn for interest to the opium joint. A great movement is now going on in CHINESE INSTITUTIONS 133 China to suppress the use of opium. The attack upon it is made by direct prohibition. That method has, of course, its value. But the opium habit is one of those habits which, like the alcohol habit, should also be attacked by indirection. The appetite out of which the opium habit springs should be attacked. This appetite for excitement, for interest, for get- ting outside of one's self, is one which could and should be ministered unto by the absorp- tions and pleasures of good society. China is also in need of that institution of social democracy known as the press. Some progress has been made both in the freedom granted to it and in the number of its journals. But this progress has been small, by reason of an unreasonable and whimsical censorship. Upon this point, and also upon the whole question of the worth of a free press in China, the ablest newspaper published in China, the "North China Daily News," of Shanghai, said in a recent editorial : — From time immemorial Chinese newspa- pers, if such they may be called, from the 134 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST "Peking Gazette" downwards, have been little more than official publications;, over which the government has always exercised a rigid censorship. It is gratifying to notice, however, that the power of the press is begin- ning to make itself felt even in China, and there can be no doubt that newspapers will become increasingly an important factor in the affairs, moral, religious, and political, of the empire. What has been accomplished through their instrumentality in other lands, we may reasonably expect to see accomplished in this land also. Only a beginning has thus far been made, and the thin edge of the wedge has been inserted. What will be ac- complished when freedom of speech and of the press are fully accorded ! The institution of an influential press is now in the process of formation. The scholarly class will be found among its heartiest sup- porters, and the increasingly powerful mer- cantile class will give to it a pecuniary right which it has not usually had. The press will more speedily come to its own place of power than will the institution of society. A third institution which China needs is a body of laws for the better and best ordering CHINESE INSTITUTIONS 135 of society. It may be said that China has, in a sense, the common law. It has a body of precedents, which are of great value in pres- ent litigation. But all judicial questions are now made to depend upon the mere opinion of the judge, in a way which cannot minis- ter to the administration of justice or to the betterment of humanity. This opinion is so subjected to venal and trivial influences that a proper conclusion is most doubtful. Justice is indeed blind, and it has an empty and itch- ing palm. A body, therefore, of laws is re- quired for aiding the court in the administra- tion of justice. This institution of the law might fittingly carry discussion far afield into the question of the establishment of a parliament, and also of the making of a constitution. For intima- tions of such an establishment and of such a making of a written fundamental law have been heard. But, be it briefly said, the opin- ion is common that China is not yet prepared for either. A constitutional monarchy requires a degree of intelligence and of interest in 136 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST government which the four hundred millions of Chinese do not possess. Education must do its great work for a people, in order to prepare them to administer a great government with effectiveness. There is a fourth institution direfully needed in China, the institution of a stable and uni- form currency. The empire has many cur- rencies, and of diverse value. They are more numerous than the dialects, and even more troublesome. The difficulty of establishing one uniform currency for the whole kingdom is well set forth by Commissioner H. B. Morse, who is just now finishing a great career cov- ering a generation in the Chinese Customs Service. Mr. Morse says : — The tax-collector . . . will fig^ht strenu- ously against any obligation to pay into the Treasury the exact coin which he has received from the taxpayer. The powerful body of Chinese bankers, organized as such when Europe did not yet know the science, will accept the change only if they are shown the possibility of greater profits than under exist- ing conditions. . . . Even the native mer- chants and tradesmen, who will benefit enor- CHINESE INSTITUTIONS 137 mously by the simplification of the currency, will also oppose a change from the present system, in which each man counts confidently on getting the better in the encounter of wits. Ordinarily the proletariat remains neutral in such a question, but in China the merest coolie, earning sixpence by a long day of hard work, will spend an hour of his time to gain an exchange of ten minutes' work. 1 Thus difficult it is to attempt any reform of the money system of this great empire of di- verse and conflicting interests. These four institutions — society, a free press, a proper body of laws, and a uniform currency — are needed in China. The need will finally be filled, but generations will be born and die before the desired consumma- tions will have been reached. For in Cathay the cycles are long, very long. 1 The Trade and Administration of the Chinese Empire, pp. 168, 169. VIII THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA That most popular simile of schoolboy compo- sitions, of Minerva springing full-armed from the head of Jupiter, may be applied to the new education in China. From the Chinese gov- ernment the new education came forth by imperial edict. The edict and the consequent commands and directions present a fully ar- ticulated scheme of education. Four grades, at least, of education are made : (1) The primary school, of five years; (2) the common school, of four years ; (3) the middle school, of five years ; (4) the provincial college, of at least two years, and for some students (5) the Imperial University, at Peking, of such a length as may be desired. Such a course, covering in all from sixteen to twenty years, represents a most impressive endeavor to introduce the Western system of education into the Middle Kingdom. THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 139 The system is indeed Western, but it is West- ern colored by Japanese influences. The mar- tial conqueror of China has become her teacher in things intellectual; and more willing has China become to receive her conqueror as a teacher since this teacher has become the con- queror also of Russia. The rapid advancement of Japan to a place among the great nations gives to her example and teachings a peculiar impressiveness. Japan in turn, it may be added, found in Germany and America her intellec- tual and pedagogical models. The Avon to the Severn flows, the Severn to the sea, And Wycliffe's dust must spread abroad, wide as the waters be. The content of this prolonged course is quite as significant of the modern spirit as is its length. Throughout the nine years of the primary and the common school, Chinese is the chief subject, representing ten hours a week. Writing covers six hours the first year, but diminishes, becoming only two hours in the ninth. Arithmetic begins with three hours, but increases to four at the close of the course. 140 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST History and geography begin in the fourth year, each subject being allowed two years ; but in the sixth year the allowance of time granted to history is increased one hour. In each year of the four of the common school, some science is taught two hours a week, and drawing one. Throughout the whole period two hours are given to ethics, and three hours to physical drill. A similar scheme of equal elaborateness is prescribed in the middle school of five years. In this whole period, Chinese is still studied for six hours. English is introduced, being al- lowed also six hours; mathematics is continued for four hours, including algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, as well as arithmetic. Draw- ing and ethics are also continued, each having one hour, and physical drill still has its for- mer allowance of three hours. Both foreign and Chinese history is studied in the first two years four hours, and in the last three years three hours, a week. Such are the " constants " of this higher school course. In addition, the "variables" are significant. For four years THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 141 geography commands two hours a week. For three years four hours a week are given to sciences, in which chemistry and physics fit- tingly occupy a leading place ; and allied with them are physiology and hygiene, physical geography, geology, and mineralogy. But the sciences are not suffered entirely to exclude literary studies, for political economy and law are studies of two hours a week each for the last year of the long course. The student who has completed these three schools, the primary, the common, and the middle, covering in all no less than fourteen years, has reached the age of at least twenty, — the age of the ordinary sophomore in the American college. On reaching this stage he may pass on to the college of his province. He may enter the normal school, preparing him- self to be a teacher to his countrymen, in a course covering either one year or three years. This school includes such subjects as would be found in a good American normal school. Or, this graduate of a middle school may de- sire, probably does, to become an official. In 142 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST this case he enters a special school. The pro- spectus of one of these schools, that at Ningpo, says : — To teach the modern methods of law and government, especially as they are related to those of China, and laying emphasis on the study of Japanese law and methods of govern- ment. Resident students must, previous to their entrance, have taken a Chinese degree, or be graduates of a middle school. The course extends over two years, and the students who have been successful in their examinations will receive certificates, and will then be recom- mended by the prefect to the governor for official appointment, or for further study in Peking. The course of study includes commercial law, theory of government, international law, penal law, judicial law, army organization, Japanese, and a little English. Such, in bare and bald outline, is the edu- cational system which China has adopted. As a system, comprehending the chief subjects of modern learning, it deserves and receives the highest commendation. The government merits great praise for laying such foundations under most serious difficulties. THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 143 Schools to teach these studies have heen established throughout the empire. Some of the schoolhouses are large and impressive structures. Thousands of these schools are now trying to educate hundreds of thousands of Chinese boys and girls. The spectacle is one of the mightiest triumphs of education and of government ever known, despite all the haltings and failures to which the undertaking is subjected. In carrying out the system, the making of text-books has become an important factor. Text-books have been produced in enormous quantity and of great variety. Many of them are translations of English or Japanese text- books. In some of them the Japanese influence is strong. Of all these books, perhaps none are more important than the Chinese national readers. The series contains readings on sub- jects of all sorts, — scientific, historical, ethical. It may be added that these books frequently argue against superstition and idolatry. One who knows them has said that they contain nothing which opposes Christianity. But be- 144 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST sides this series are numerous others, especially in the sciences. History is also well repre- sented. But more important than the system of edu- cation or the text-hook is the teacher. The old Chinese teacher does not easily lend him- self to the new order. He is by nature conserv- ative. He clings to the old methods. He is himself so wedded to the old that he confesses to a sort of intellectual awkwardness when he tries to use the new learning and the new methods. He keeps himself, in his fear of making mistakes, closely to his text-book. He still emphasizes the value of memory. He him- self is not a thinker, and he is not inclined to adopt methods which quicken thinking in his students. Modern pedagogy is to him so new a science and art that either he has little ap- preciation of its worth, or, if he is able to appreciate, he is not able to use it with facility and efficiency. The teacher, the text-book, and the course of study are all designed for the advantage of the student. The Chinese student has a mind THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 145 strong and virile. The mental quality is akin to the physical. But his mind, like the feet of his sisters, has been fettered by ages of un- reasoning limitations. The education of his forefathers has been either no education at all, or, if it has existed, it has been unreasoning and irrational. He himself in his newly found freedom feels himself strange ; he sees men as trees walking. But gradually he is finding himself. His conception of education is rather of a vocation than of culture. The vocation may take on somewhat of a materialistic basis and color. He desires those physical advan- tages which education is supposed to create. " What are you going to do ?" asked a teacher of a graduate — an able man — of Nang Yang College. " Commerce," was the answer. "And why commerce?" persisted the questioner; " is it for the sake of enriching yourself, or helping your country?" The reply indicated that the purpose was not altogether altruistic. The inspiring motives of the casting off of the old education and the adoption of the new are manifold. The immediate occasion is, un- 146 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST doubtedly, the failure of the Boxer movement of 1900. The entrance of the allied forces into Peking in the summer of that year was the entrance of intellectual light quite as much as of armies. The government became aware, as perhaps never before, that there was a world outside of China, and superior in at least some respects to China. Connected with this occasion is the rise o£ Japan into a place as a world-power. China saw and was moved. She saw, moreover, that the rise of Japan was due, in part at least, to education. China, therefore, determined to adopt similar means and methods. She went about the business of education. Japanese methods and text-books she adopted. She im- ported Japanese teachers. She sent thousands, even tens of thousands, of her young men to Japan, to Tokyo, to Waseda University, and to other schools. Her old rival, and her conqueror, became her teacher, A third cause of the educational advance- ment lies in the force of the progressive men of China. The character of Chang Chih-Tung — THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 147 one of the two greatest Chinese — and his writ- ing, as, for instance, his book, " China's Only Hope," represent a mighty influence. Against hard odds and good fighters do the progressive leaders contend. Chang Chili-Tung himself has described them in his book : — The anti-reformers may be roughly divided into three classes : — First, the conservatives, who are stuck in the mud of antiquity. The mischief wrought by these obstructionists may be readily per- ceived. Second, the slow bellies of Chinese official- dom, who in case of reform would be com- pelled to bestir themselves, and who would be held responsible for the outlay of money and men necessary for the changes* The secret machinations of these befuddled, indolent, slippery nepotists thwart all schemes of re- form. They give out that it is not "conven- ient," and in order to cloak their evil deeds rehearse the old story, the usual evasive drivel about " old custom." And if we attempt to discover what this precious old custom in the matter of education and government is, there will be remonstrances on all sides. Old custom is a bugaboo, a password to lying and deceit. How can any one believe it ? Third, the hypercritics. 1 1 China's Only Hope, p. 123. 148 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST But against such forces the reform party has won, and is still winning ; though no prophet would intimate how long it will prove to be victorious. But, above all, the missionary and Chris- tian forces of the Middle Kingdom represent a permanent cause of her interest in education. Christianity has not been in China for three hundred years, or for a hundred years with special power, for nothing. Christianity is far more than a religion. It is an education. The church and the schoolhouse historically stand side by side. The priest is also a teacher. Protestant Christianity has for the last hun- dred years in its missionary propagandism given special heed to education. Such a force operating for generations, even in a most con- servative society, could not fail to effect results of comprehensive and of definite significance. Under the influence of these four occa- sions and motives, not to mention others, China has entered into the work of educa- tion. She has come to realize that the work is more complex and more difficult than it seemed THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 149 five years ago. She undertook the tremendous task without proper forethought. It was a leap in the dark. But the leap was taken, and the consequences of taking it she must, for better or for worse, endure. One's heart, therefore, goes out in great interest to the educationists of China. For the difficulties which beset them are very serious. I doubt if in the history of the world diffi- culties more serious have beset those whose duty it is to establish and to promote a system of education. One difficulty lies in the necessary doubt regarding the sincerity and earnestness of the Chinese government in its endeavor to foster the education of its people. The government may be honest in the desire to educate : it may not be. Even if the desire be real as far as it goes, doubt also arises respecting the earnestness and fullness of this desire. The edicts abolishing the old system of examina- tions followed not long after the cataclysm of the summer of 1900. This break with the past seemed one of the inevitable results of that 150 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST catastrophe. This and other consequences could not be avoided by the Court, however con- servative were the governmental tendencies. With these results was naturally united the necessity of giving to China such a system o£ education as had seemed to lift the rest of the world into civilization. But into it China did not enter with that spirit which moved the German people, after their Napoleonic distresses, into education, both university and common. The Germans were inspired by most personal and national ambitions; and the re- sult is read in the history of the University of Berlin. The Chinese were primarily moved from without : the degree of cooperation which the outside influence found in the Chinese heart was, and still is, a matter of grave doubt. This element of doubt in the sincerity and earnestness of the Chinese heart in promoting public education is a chief diffi- culty which the educationists meet. It is not a stone wall, which can be struck down : it is a malaria, which represents conditions that can be dealt with only by indirection. THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 151 A second difficulty is the constant change of the educational purposes of "the authori- ties," and also the no less constant change of these authorities themselves. Shall the pro- vincial colleges be literary or scientific institu- tions? If scientific, shall they train agricul- turalists, or mechanical, or civil, or electrical engineers? In the course of a few years these different purposes may be imposed upon the teachers of a college by their official supe- riors, — superiors who are superior in only the official sense. Such changes are disastrous. No less disastrous are the changes wrought in the transfer of governing powers from one official board to another. At one time Nang Yang Col- lege, at Shanghai, for instance, may be under the charge of the Board of Agriculture, and at another under the charge of the Board of Com- munications, Post and Telegraphic. At one time a college may have a president who serves as the source of immediate authority, at an- other it may have no president, but be gov- erned by a council. The changes, too, in the viceroys of the different provinces may fun- 152 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST damentally affect the fortunes of a college. One viceroy esteems education and promotes it ; his successor may despise it, and seek to limit its progress. All these conditions throw doubt into that most important part of college admin- istration, — the budget. Such instability is most trying and perplexing to the heart and the mind of the educationists of China. Another difficulty lies in the divorce which has for many centuries existed in China be- tween the scholar and the man of affairs. The scholar, be it always remembered, has from the early time held a high place in Chinese so- ciety. The learned man has been esteemed, and learning honored. The learning has, however, been an end in itself. The scholar filled his mind with the paragraphs and the sentiments of the old moralists. Such stuffing has given him pleasure. That his knowledge should be of any worth or benefit to humanity has been quite foreign to his thought. Most egoistic has he been ; and the community has been con- tent to let him be egoistic. But modern edu- cation has for its primary note service. It is THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 153 in purpose, method, and content altruistic. If it promotes scholarship and makes scholars, it looks beyond the accumulation of know- ledge to the worth which this wealth may prove to be to humanity. It is the introduction of this altruistic ideal which the teachers of many Chinese schools find of great difficulty. Allied to this specific cause is a general con- dition, out of which, possibly, the cause to a degree springs. I allude to the doubt which pervades, at least, some orders of Chinese so- ciety regarding the real worth of human char- acter. Is man, the ordinary man, worth edu- cating? Is it well for man to seek to lift man by education? Once a coolie, why not always a coolie ? Is not education disquieting to the individual and disturbing to society? Is it not better for man to be half blind and content, than to see plainly and be discontented? Such questioning is in the air at Peking, Wuchang, and Shanghai. It serves, if not to eliminate education, at least to dull its enthusiasms. But the severest difficulty found in the progress of Chinese education lies in the lack 154 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST of a sufficient number of good teachers. The government, provincial and national, went into the work of education as a sort of leap into the dark. It adopted and created the material forms and forces of education, which are evident and impressive enough. It built schoolhouses, large, and of high walls. In not a few capitals the schoolhouses are the most impressive structures. But the government failed to take proper account of the fact that, if it is easy to build a schoolhouse, it is hard to get a teacher. Teachers cannot be made in a year, as can a schoolhouse. The govern- ment did not put the cart of the school before the horse of the teacher, for though there was a cart there was no horse. Teachers in a sense are grown ; and growth, unlike manu- facturing, takes much time. Therefore, while there were and are schoolhouses, and also pupils, in abundance, too great abundance, in a sense, there was and is a dearth of teachers. The gun was made and mounted, but there was no gunner to fire it. In such a dearth in- competency flourishes. But the dearth was THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 155 and is so great that the number of even incom- petent teachers proves to be insufficient. Some schoolhouses are, therefore, houses without schools, and other schoolhouses are only half occupied. In such a condition Japan would even now be plunged, had she not established normal schools — and some excellent ones, too — for training teachers. This need of Japan, President Eliot pointed out a genera- tion ago. China has normal schools, but they are new, and they, too, lack proper teachers. The fact is that China went into this ■ great work of the education of a quarter of the population of the globe without proper pre- vision or provision. The mission schools and colleges, such as St. John's, at Shanghai, and the North China Union College, near Peking, are implored by the government officials to send teachers to the government schools ; but these colleges and others like them, in many cases, cannot, simply because the supply is inadequate. It may be said that the dearth of good teachers in the government schools of China 156 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST should prove to be an impressive fact to the American man who is about graduating at his college. Teachers of English and of the sciences are specially needed. Many motives, selfward and altruistic, would urge him to go to China on graduation. He can earn twice as much money as a teacher in China as he can at home. He can gather up into his man- hood experiences, new, diverse, moving, and enriching. Whether he can do more good than at home is a personal question, in which a stranger should not meddle. But, if meet- ing responsive minds, eager and by nature strong, which are to become makers of other minds, represents an opportunity for doing much good, certainly the Chinese government schools represent a very rich opportunity. These difficulties which I thus outline are general and constant. The teachers now on the ground are dealing with them as best they may. Both foreign teachers and native are laboring together to lessen what obstacles they cannot remove, and to remove all that can be removed. The problem is hard. The THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 157 quantitative relation is significant. To educate four hundred millions is a problem unlike ed- ucating fifty millions, as in Japan. In their endeavors the present teachers of China de- serve sympathy. To condemn the inadequacy of Chinese education — and it is inadequate — means ignorance of the conditions. Sympathy should be given by the teachers of the world to their professional brethren in China, and reinforcements, too. IX THE CHINESE MENACE The Chinese menace, — what is it? It is the peril, says one, that the Chinese army and navy will conquer the armies and navies of the world : it is the menace martial. It is the peril, declares another, that the Chinese race, covering a quarter or a fifth of the entire population of the world, will submerge all other races and peoples : it is the menace eth- nological. It is the peril, affirms a third, that the arts and crafts of Chinese workmen, done at the barest living wage, will supplant the products of the workmen of all other lands : it is the menace industrial. It is the peril, asserts a fourth, that the social and religious institutions of the Chinese people will eventu- ally overcome the institutions of the so-called civilized nations : it is the menace sociological. All these perils, brought together and com- pounded into one great menace, become, be it THE CHINESE MENACE 159 at once said, less menacing when seen and studied in China itself. The danger diminishes in proportion as one comes nearer to the dan- ger itself ; it increases with the square of the distance from it. For, above all other peoples, the Chinese want to be left alone, and they also want to leave other peoples alone. They believe in China for the Chinese. Even at the present time, with liberal policies more or less regnant, and with education an increasing force, the majority of this vast population would prefer to live unto themselves as well as to die unto themselves. They have always been sufficient unto themselves, they feel. Their standard of comfort may not be that of the Occident, but it is their own; and it is for them comfort- able. Why should these unaccountable and uncomfortable foreign devils come in to trou- ble them, and why should they trouble about these foreign devils ? Such is their mood. The Chinese, further, are not fighters. As a matter of fact, they are great cowards. One ought to see charades given at a Japanese 160 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST theatre portraying the cowardice of the Chinese soldiers. Their tactics are good ; but what of tactics when soldiers run at the first discharge of the enemy's rifles? Their navy is no better than the army. Their men-of-war are hardly fitted to render service more efficient than police duty. No. The Chinese are an agricultural people, who want to be left on their ancestral acres, unmolested in their natural timidity. They prefer to keep their iron for pruning hooks and ploughshares rather than turn it into spears and swords. The Chinese menace, also, becomes less menacing when one knows of the prevalence of graft in the equipping of the Chinese army. No general can be assured that the ammuni- tion which he has ordered has been supplied in the amount and of the quality specified. No army can be assured that its officers are honest, able, efficient. Each man has his price, and somebody pays it. The Chinese army is as completely under the dominion of " squeeze " as was the Russian. The Chinese are far more avaricious than patriotic. THE CHINESE MENACE 161 The patriotism of the people is also lacking. Socially the Chinese loves his country, politi- cally he is largely indifferent to her welfare. The contrast between China and Japan is com- plete and absolute. The Japanese prays to die for his country, for his Emperor. The Chinese flees before his foes. The government is not such as to awaken and to nourish the great virtues. It is an alien throne. The government is divided up into many satrapies. The gov- erning powers show little sympathy with the people. Neither are the people united by other great sentiments and passions. Resistance to taxation ? Most hard and long wars have been fought over questions of taxation. Civil wars and revolutions have thus arisen. But China seems willing to tax herself, and no foreign power is venturing at present to lay taxes upon her. Passion for some great leader? The leadership is lacking, and if it were not lacking, the passion probably would be. The great men of China are great men, but they do not call out the devotion which the great 162 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST men of Japan evoke from their countrymen. The geographical expanse and the population are many-fold greater. In China it is difficult to bring a passion to a burning point. Reli- gion ? May not religion quicken the sentiment of this people and cause them to turn against a Christian world? The Boxer movement of nine years ago seems, on its face, to be such a revolution. Was it not a sort of sudden flaming forth as of the missionary zeal of Islamism? But this movement was confined to North China. It was a movement, too, quite as much political as religious. Moreover, it lacked intellectual direction and leadership. It was of the type of the mob. In a word, it would be hard to find any cause which would awaken the enthusiasm or lasting devotion of Chinese and Manchu, of metropolis and pro- vince, of the north, of the south, and of the west of China, of Confucianist and exotic Buddhist. Furthermore, behind the menace with which any nation can threaten the world is a force known as a national will. Two peoples have, THE CHINESE MENACE 163 in the last two thousand years, manifested in a high degree such a will, the Roman and the English. The Roman went on, conquer- ing and to conquer. Defeated he was for the day ; but, not knowing that he was defeated, he was on the following day renewing the fight with vigor unspent and valor untarnished. In the end the Roman won, through the con- stant impact of a mightier will upon the forces of his foes. By much the same process England has become a master of the peoples whom she holds in a subjection more or less willing. No such will, either individual or national, do the Chinese possess. They lack force. A certain passive staying power the race has; but it lacks energy, momentum. The nation illus- trates one of the simplest laws of physics: momentum equals the product of mass and velocity. If either mass or velocity be zero, the product is also zero. China has mass ; it is enormous ; how enormous no one knows. But her velocity, applied to this mass, is nil, and the consequent result is also nil. Great nations, seeming to be on the point 164 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST of conquering the world, have suddenly ceased their conquests. The Persians, the Arabians, the Turks have arisen, and have for a time borne down all opposition. Without sufficient apparent cause they retired from their battle, on sea and land, into their own plains or fast- nesses. Apparently they became exhausted, — they lacked a great and lasting will. Such lack I believe the Chinese would exhibit in spe- cial significance long before they had crossed the Himalayas or the Ural Mountains. What I have so far written has reference, I find, to the menace arising from war. This menace may, therefore, be cast aside. I fear I have considered it too seriously. The other perils are obviously more danger- ous, — ethnological, industrial, sociological ; but I cannot believe they do constitute men- aces. The Chinese have spread over the Straits Settlements. They have come into Canada ; they have come somewhat into the Pacific Coast cities of the United States. But they have not gone into other lands in appreciable numbers. The world is not China. They do THE CHINESE MENACE 165 not show any such tendency to emigrate as the world charges them with possessing. Many nations in fact would be greatly benefited by the gift of a hundred thousand or a million of this hard-working, economical race. There is no danger of submersion. The industrial menace is also quite as re- mote. The American should, of all peoples, have the least fear of this peril. The Ameri- can brain, making the steel to think, can out- distance the manual working Chinese in the world's markets. China will never become a rival in the making of steel or iron. The Chinese farmer prefers cultivating his few an- cestral acres to building and managing large cotton or woolen factories or blast-furnaces. His institutions, too, social and religious, are his institutions, as are his industrial and com- mercial methods: he has no wish to impose them on the world. As I said in the beginning, he wants to be left alone, and he wants to let the world alone. Which desire is the stronger it is impossible to say. But even if the world will not let him alone, — see the American, 166 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST English, German, and other soldiers in Peking, — he is, on the whole, willing to let the world alone. He, to quote a line from Matthew Arnold, " lets the legions thunder past." INDIA INDIA'S NEED OF TECHNICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION The need of technical and industrial education for India is urgent. The urgency arises from several conditions. Practical education in both its higher and lower ranges is required for the development of the country. More roads and better ones, more railroads and better ones, and more general and effective irrigation re- present three of the primary needs of this great empire. At the present moment the field of the needs which irrigation supplies, notwith- standing great works already in operation, is more impressive, and this field is representa- tive of other great wants. Some large areas of India suffer seriously for lack of rain. These paragraphs I write as I travel through one of these districts. As a result of the fail- ure of rains, a failure of crops is occurring. The people are hungry, and soon apparently 170 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST many of them will be starving. This cause and consequence are working more or less regu- larly. The problem is therefore presented, and presented with an urgency which words can only intimate, to the engineer of devising a system of irrigation which shall save every decade millions of lives, and also save the civilized peoples of the world from harrowing tales of human suffering. In brief, the breadth of the opportunity for the work of the civil engineer, and of me- chanical, electrical, mining, and chemical engi- neers, can hardly be overestimated. For its whole material evolution, India calls for the service of such men. Furthermore, India needs technical educa- tion for her educational values. Indian edu- cation lacks directness in method, solidity, energy, definiteness in result. In certain re- spects she has been too liberalizing: she has been inclined to set the mind so far free that it has failed to respect its natural limitations. Technical education is in peril of intellectual and professional narrowness, but this very nar- INDIA'S NEED OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 171 rowness promotes directness, and may create force. It also offers a definite aim and a clearly outlined body of knowledge. Such an educa- tion the men of India greatly need. But it must be said that apparently neither the Indian mind by nature is fitted to receive such an education, nor does the Indian heart want it. The Indian mind prefers metaphysics to physics, logic and grammar to chemistry. It is rather literary than scientific. Teachers in schools and colleges — and many, too, with whom I have talked — seek to divert their students into courses leading to engineering and away from courses leading to the law, but the diversion seems somewhat unnatural and one hard to make. Moreover, in any discussion regarding In- dian education, it is never to be overlooked that the Indian student is poor in purse. The people, indeed, are poor ; and in India, as elsewhere, students as a body seldom come from a wealthy class. Many of them spend no more than fifty cents a day, and not a few less than fifty. Scientific education is the most 172 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST costly of all types of education ; a legal edu- cation is the least expensive. On the simple ground of their costliness, some students turn aside from the technical courses. All India spends about two cents a day for each native. But, despite these difficulties, and under the influence of these motives, India is making progress in technical and industrial education. India has four colleges of engineering. Geographically they are well placed for serving the entire community. One is at Sibpur, near Calcutta ; one at Poona, near Bombay ; one at Madras, and one at Roorke, in the United Provinces. The one at Roorke, Thomason College, founded as early as 1848, was, in its first years, simply a training school for in- ferior officers for the Ganges Canal. With the growth of scientific knowledge, it has en- larged its curriculum as well as its constituency, has between three hundred and four hun- dred students, and the course occupies three years. Each of these colleges is equipped with the usual chemical, physical, and mechanical laboratories, and also with carpentry and INDIA'S NEED OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 173 machine shops. The work in all these colleges represents three orders or grades. The high- est order comprises what would be known in the United States as technical or engineering courses. Students in these courses are trained for the higher range of engineering work. Most of these men enter the great public works department of the government. They become in India, as in America, leaders in in- dustrial enterprises. A second order of train- ing is given in what may be called an ap- prentice department, the purpose of which is to train overseers and mechanical foremen. The work represents the higher grade of a trade - school. The course includes a large amount of mathematics, of physics, and of chemistry. About half the time is given to practical work, and about half to scholastic. In the third and lowest grade, mechanics and artisans are trained. Among the trades that are thus taught are printing, work in wood, metal, stone, and photography in various branches. In addition to these four engineering col- 174 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST leges, there are also about one hundred and fifty industrial schools. These schools are of manifold origin. Some, and the more impor- tant ones, have been established by the gov- ernment; some by the individual towns or cities ; some by the missionary organizations ; and some by private initiative. It should be said that these, like other schools established by commissions and by individuals, are aided by grants made by the government. The sub- jects taught in all these schools are usually the four of carpentry, machine work, shoe- making, and tailoring. Those less generally offered are metal work, masonry, weaving, and carpet-making. The curriculum is determined somewhat by the local demand for men equipped in special trades ; but it would seem that this local demand has, on the whole, not been sufficiently heeded. It is to be said that, notwithstanding the general feeling that India ought to become a great manufacturing nation, it has been found difficult to persuade boys to attend these in- dustrial schools. The reason probably lies both INDIA'S NEED OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 175 in what is the confessed inefficiency of these schools themselves, and also in the reluctance of parents to give up certain financial advan- tages which they receive through their sons becoming apprentices under the old native sys- tem of learning a trade. In any review of the practical education of India, notice should be taken of two other forms of education, the commercial and agri- cultural. The demand for men specially trained for a commercial career is new, but it has recently become urgent. In Bombay, Allaha- bad, and Lucknow, there are schools in which men are specially trained for business careers. The training is designed, on the whole, to pre- pare men for clerical service. Bookkeeping, ste- nography, typewriting, and similar subjects are taught. Agriculture is the occupation of about three quarters of the population of India ; but the training in agriculture is as backward as it is essentially important to the welfare of these three hundred millions of people. Colleges of agriculture have been established at four 176 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST places, and instruction in agriculture is also given in several of the industrial schools ; but these colleges are apparently no more prosper- ous than were the agricultural colleges of the United States in the first years of their exist- ence. They have not yet received the favor of the land-holding class, and they have so far been chiefly used, as formerly were those of the United States, in securing a general train- ing. All classes of the Indian community realize India's need of these four kinds of practical training. Government is willing to put im- mense sums into schools and colleges for pro- viding such training. The missionary boards, now giving a large interpretation to their great work, are eager to promote education of this type. Only yesterday an American missionary at Allahabad said to me that he would next year go home to take a course in agriculture, in order to prepare himself better for his spe- cial duties. The government has lately sent to the United States and to England about one hundred picked students to study engi- INDIA'S NEED OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 177 neering. As a result of these and like efforts engineers are to come to India in large num- bers ; and when they have come to this old country which as regards engineering work is essentially new, they will help to create a New India indeed. In the creation of such a nation lies her salvation. XI THE HIGHEE EDUCATION FOR WOMEN IN INDIA The higher education for women in India is, like the lower education, beset by several and unique difficulties. Perhaps the most evident of these difficul- ties is the seclusion in which girls and women live. This seclusion applies to both Hindus and Mohammedans alike. As a daughter and as a wife, the home is at once woman's throne and prison. She is shielded, guarded, and guided. If she go abroad, she is carefully at- tended. Conversation with men outside the family is, according to some customs, impos- sible, or at least held under the closest super- vision. The whole tendency and all conditions of life in India result in keeping women within the stone walls of a little home and yard. An American teacher in Calcutta tells me that, after many and tactful overtures, she has HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN 179 recently obtained permission to visit a girl of twelve, who, since her marriage at the age of seven, has not left her house. Nor is this case unique. Even the profession of nursing in India is practically impossible for women, be- cause a woman going into a home is regarded as the subject of chaperonage. Early marriage, too, works toward the same result. Girls, who in the United States or Eng- land or Germany would be in the primary school, are either betrothed or married. I have seen many midgets wearing the necklace of black beads indicative of marriage. Marriage in India, as in America, prevents, or shortens the period of, education, of any grade or order. The principle of caste has a similar effect. This principle shuts both man and woman within the circle of certain inherited traditions and usages. It shuts out too as well as shuts in. If to those within it represents kindness and sympathy, toward those without it stands for cruelty. A man fallen from a palm tree is left to suffer for hours, in the fear that he is not of the caste of the passer-by. Even lepers recog- 180 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST nize and practice the custom. At a Christmas feast which the children of a Christian school at Poona gave for the lepers of the city, the lepers of a higher caste obliged their fellow sufferers of a lower caste to eat outside the courtyard of the house while they were en- tertained within. To the requirements of the principle women seem more obedient than men. In the medical and other colleges men of differ- ent castes mingle together with a considerable degree of freedom. Many parents, moreover, are either indiffer- ent or opposed to the education of their daugh- ters. They are willing, in many cases, for them to be educated well enough to become wives. " How well is that ? " I asked a Japanese princess who made a similar remark about her people. " That," was her wise and witty reply, " depends on the husband." In India most husbands prefer a wife whose education is meagre. The reason is perhaps twofold. Most Indian men are ignorant, and do not want a wife who knows more than they. The idea is also common that education leads to inde- HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN 181 pendency; the educated wife is not so servile. Parents, therefore, fear that if they educate their daughters they will not be able to give them in marriage. These four reasons — seclusion, early mar- riage, caste, and the indifference or opposition of parents — are comprehended in the inter- pretation of the place and function of women as being narrowly domestic. In filling this place and performing the functions of the home, it is argued that the higher education is unnecessary, or indeed distinctly obstruc- tive. The objection is akin to that which was heard in the United States sixty or more years ago, although stated in a form less savage and materialistic. Indeed, the objection is one, apparently, almost as ancient as the race. To these difficulties in the way of their education it must also be confessed that the character of Hindu women adds no little force. The typical Hindu woman, from the Afghan- istan border to southern India, is slight in body, small in face, bearing in every line and move- ment the impression of a lack of strength in 182 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST muscle, mind, and will. She is herself, prob- ably, the child of a mere child, and she a child will probably become the mother of other chil- dren also slight, small, and weak. A woman of this type is not fitted to overcome difficulties so tremendous as those she must meet in get- ting an education. Easily she submits to the apparently inevitable. If, however, the woman of India desires a liberal education, the opportunity is open. Col- leges, established by the government or by mis- sionaries, receive her. Most of these colleges were formed primarily for the education of men ; but into many of them women are read- ily admitted. The method represents a limited co-education. The number of women found in any one college is small, and the proportion to young men would be perhaps as one woman to twenty men. In most colleges the instruction is largely or entirely given through lectures, and both women and men are only auditors and note-takers. Some of the objections which have been found to co-education are thus avoided, through the absence of recitations. HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN 183 In India all scholastic degrees are given by five universities, — Calcutta, Allahabad, La- hore, Bombay, and Madras, — and by them alone formal examinations for degrees are set. Women, like men, present themselves in the examination rooms of these universities, and they are as free so to present themselves as are their brothers. If they pass, they also are re- commended to receive the proper degree. The first degree is that of B. A., and the second, like the American and English custom, that of M. A. Degrees in science, in medicine, and in law are also given. The number of women, out of a popula- tion more than threefold that of the United States, who have felt themselves called to en- dure the privations which stand in the way of getting a formal degree is still very small. After a half century of European higher edu- cation in India, that number is considerably less than a thousand. In fact, the proportion of liberally or professionally educated women in the vast empire is infinitesimal. The future which awaits the woman who has 184 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST endured up to the Convocation at which she receives her degree is not unlike the future of the well-educated women of every country. Some, and the larger share of these capped and gowned ones, return to their homes and to their society and community, and seek to adjust themselves to the relations which home, society, and community represent. In India, as in America and England, they perform more efficiently the duties, and accept more graciously the rights belonging to these re- lations, by reason of their liberal education. The field of service and of enjoyment is, how- ever, far less broad and diverse in India than among the Western peoples. The adjustment is more difficult, and the results are in grave peril of being less satisfactory. The contrast between the life which the woman student and the woman graduate has lived and the life and living which are hers in her home may be marked and lamentable. She is in peril of falling back to the level of the en- vironment which was hers before she set out upon her educational career. HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN 185 A few women, however, crown their educa- tional career with the professional degree of Bachelor of Laws, or Bachelor of Teaching, or Doctor of Medicine. Few they are, but among these few are found women who are doing great service for India. The field of the law is the least promising of the three, but even here women are giving a good account of themselves. More, or most, are found in the schoolroom and in the doctor's office. The seclusion of many women from men, and from physicians who are men, opens wide and high the door of opportunity to the woman doctor. The service which is thus given is unspeakably precious. Next to the home, the schoolroom represents the favorite place of work for edu- cated women. Into schools, therefore, — gov- ernmental, private, missionary, — go these lib- erally trained graduates. In India, as in the West, they offer as effective teaching as women have ever given. The cause of the higher education of women in India moves slowly, but it does move. The progress of a year may be invisible; the ad- 186 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST vance of a decade is clear. Even in a decade, however, there may be regress as well as pro- gress. But the movement of the tide is toward freedom and enlarged opportunity, both in se- curing the higher education and in using its personal and scholastic results. India is old, conservative, slow of change; but the future of women's higher education in India is as as- sured to the wise and far-seeing interpreter as the future of the higher education of Ameri- o can women was to Matthew Vassar forty years ago. XII "WHAT SHALL I DO?" THE QUESTION OF THE COLLEGE MAN IN INDIA To the liberally educated man of twenty-one years in India> as to the liberally educated man of the same age in America, the question "What shall I do ? " is of utmost seriousness. To the man of the East the question is at once harder and easier than to the man of the West. The Eastern man may find the prob- lem at least partially solved for him through the law of caste, and also by the custom of inherited vocation. He can hardly consider adopting a calling which should overcome the law of class distinction, upon which Indian society so largely rests. Unless, too, there be reason to the contrary, he follows the calling of his father. The present chief astronomer in Jaipur Province is the son and grandson of an astronomer, and so down, he believes, for generations. 188 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST Few college men of India enter either the native or the Christian priesthood. The can- didates for the Buddhistic priesthood are set apart for their offices at an early age, and we can therefore exclude them from our survey. The priests of the Hindu faith are few in number, and of the Mohammedan still fewer. It must also be said that the proportion of the Christian college men of India who enter into the Christian ministry is very small. One Christian college (of English foundation), founded fifty years ago, has sent only one graduate into the office of the minister. The results in most colleges are not so meagre. But, in general, the number of Christian students who become clergymen or evangelists is much smaller than a priori reasoning would lead one to believe. The causes are manifold, but the reason that is probably uppermost in the mind of the Indians themselves is the lack of responsibility given to the native ministry by the foreign missionaries. In India, as in too many countries, the graduate regards an office under the govern- WHAT SHALL I DO ? 189 ment as the most desirable opportunity for a career. It represents an assured (though sel- dom large) income, permanence, and respect- ability. The difficulty of securing a proper place under the government, however, in- creases. Men of better training and of larger ability are constantly demanded. For most, too, these positions must always be clerical. The law as a possible profession, the Indian, as the American, graduate may consider. The field is great in India, as it is in America. Both peoples are fond of the luxury of litiga- tion. But the Indian finds, as does his Amer- ican brother, the profession much crowded. The remark is made almost as often in India as in the United States that there are too many lawyers. But no country has too many able lawyers. The field of opportunity, both pro- fessional and general, for the well-equipped Indian lawyer is rich. Teaching may attract the new graduate. Despite the astonishing backwardness of the people in education, schools and colleges are increasing in number and in efficiency. If 190 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST altruistic impulses move the graduate, he can find no field more promising. Teaching in India, as everywhere, has philanthropy as its motive power. If pecuniary impulses move him, he may yet select this calling. The salary of a higher teacher usually runs from $400 to $800 a year. Incomes in India are small. The income of a family of eight persons, of the upper-middle class, would frequently not ex- ceed $200. The annual salary, therefore, of a teacher of $400 might become the object of avaricious ambition. Social motives, too, might or might not impel him. The social position of the teacher in India is quite akin to what it is in the United States, — made somewhat by the position, but more by the personality. A larger number of men should, and will in the future, find their career in teaching. Both as cause and result of the deeper interest in education, it is one of the noblest opportunities for human service given to the educated men of the East. In India, as in most countries, the science and art of medicine has made greater ad- WHAT SHALL I DO? 191 van cement than any other profession. The medical schools in India are offering- essen- tially the same training which the English and Scotch schools offer. This training is not so good as that prescribed by the best Ameri- can schools ; but it is good. The graduate, therefore, comes forth well equipped for ser- vice among his countrymen. Among them the opportunity for service is indeed ample. This man, trained in European therapeutics and principles of diagnosis, finds himself brought into professional relationship with the physi- cian trained by native methods and using a native pharmacopoeia. These methods and rem- edies have a certain advantage of long-time prescription. The people, ignorant and super- stitious, may not easily accept the new learning or the new practice. But the conclusion is in- evitable. "The old order changeth," and must change. The new graduate in medicine, going into municipality or village community, finds the people defying most of the laws of good health. To prevent disease, both of the indi- vidual and the community, as well as to cure 192 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST it, he has as rich a field as the most enthusi- astic could desire. The medical profession is the most individ- ualistic of all callings. But certain Hindus, of what might be called the public type of mind, are attracted toward editorship. Editorship is a vocation always open. All one need do is to start a newspaper. This not a few Indians, in these times of unrest, are inclined to do. The attempt usually is short-lived. Printers' bills must be paid. Too many of these sheets have as their chief theme the abuse of the govern- ment. One of the more conspicuous contained, for instance, in a recent issue this tirade : — Gridhra [vultures], jackals, and dogs are tearing away at the heart of your mother [country] : when will you wake if not now ? The Mother is still kind and still enormously rich. These riches you can enjoy. But without courage you won't be able to save the riches from the hands of robbers. Excel in the art of handling weapons, and run riot in the sweets of war ! ... To become the hirelings of for- eign rulers (which is the ways of dogs) is very nasty, and must be put an end to. In penury, rather obtain your livelihood by shopkeeping. WHAT SHALL I DO ? 193 . . . The big palaces, with their worthless tin- selry, have been erected at your expense. They are your handiwork. By the force of your arm, they can be built up or leveled to the earth ! The legitimate field of journalism in India is small. What can be the demand for news- papers in a community in which only ten per cent of the men can read and less than one per cent of the women ? There are two other callings which the re- cent graduate may fittingly consider, engineer- ing and business. Of the need of engineers in India I have written at length in another chapter, and I shall not pause here even to in- timate the richness of the rewards, personal and altruistic, as well as financial, awaiting the engineer. I at once pass on to consider the field of business as a proper field for the choice of the liberally educated man of India. India needs more large-minded merchants. She has millions of small-minded merchants, who well embody the prejudice which Cicero, in one of his philosophical essays, expresses against the retail dealer. The opportunity for the mer- 194 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST chant of large intellectual powers is one of the greatest. The difficulties, however, in the way of the well-educated man becoming a merchant are at least fourfold, — caste, lack of capital, ignorance of the world, and want of endurance. These difficulties are indeed serious. No one outside of India can appreciate how heavy is the weight which caste puts upon society and the individual. Its unreasonable- ness does not at all lessen its fateful inevita- bleness and crushingness. India, furthermore, is poor, though not so poor as is often believed. But large capital is not indigenous. Most of the banks, for instance, are of English origin. The Indian, too, is not a man of the world. He seldom goes beyond Bombay, Lahore, Cal- cutta, or Madras. He also meets few foreign- ers. He is not fitted by environment or train- ing to take his place with the great merchants of London. Further, he has not the enduring power, the virile force, of the Anglo-Saxon. It is, also, ever to be remembered that he lives in a climate in which it is hard to work more than six months of each year. These are some WHAT SHALL I DO ? 195 of the difficulties which the college man must suffer in becoming a merchant. But he also, be it said, has certain advantages : he is indus- trious, he is economical, and he is accustomed to do much on a small income and capital. At the present time, next to the need of engineers, India needs great merchants, men great in their conception of commerce, great in their wisdom of the adjustment of means to ends, and also great in their command of credit and of capital. Such men India needs, in order to lift her from the small retail habit of trade, and also from the small retail habit of mind. This vocation of business, therefore, the large- minded and liberally educated man of India may fittingly consider as a career. XIII THE FUTURE OF INDIA 1 The political future of India will be deter- mined by her present. If in that future one thing be more settled and evident than an- other, it is that England will retain India. Apparently no opponent can arise from without to expel England. If an opponent were to arise, he would come from either the North or the East. But Russia has for a long time, it would now seem, sufficient internal problems to consume her strength. China, too, is concerned with her own development ; and that development must progress with greater swiftness than it has for even the last revolutionary decade to create power enough to attack the Empire of India. China is, in- deed, awakening; but the sleep has been so long and so sound that many years will be re- quired for her to get her eyes clear open ; and 1 Reprinted by permission of The North American Review. THE FUTURE OF INDIA 197 even when the eyes are fully open, other de- cades will be required to create and to organ- ize martial and other forces. No outside power, therefore, can loosen England's hold on India. The peril of an expulsive force arising within India itself is not so slight as the danger of an external foe ; but this peril is still slight. The three hundred millions of India's population are divided between four fifths Hindu and one fifth Mohammedan. These two peoples are enemies. In the recent discontent it was whispered that, after the Hin- dus had driven out the English, they would turn upon the Mohammedans. What one hates the other likes, and what one likes the other hates. In this recent discontent the fol- lowers of the Prophet were found on the side of the government. The disproportion in force between these two great bodies is by no means as great as the disproportion in num- bers. It has been said that the sixty millions of Mohammedans could drive the two hun- dred and fifty millions of Hindus into the Bay of Bengal. In this racial and religious 198 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST antagonism lies much advantage for Eng- land. But the Hindus themselves are divided into many bodies. Languages and dialects are as different as they are among the different provinces of China. Social caste cuts gulfs which are apparently impassable. Sects are as numerous and as separate as are found among the adherents of the Protestant faith. The only method by which these alien units could be joined together into a compact lighting force would be the arising of a masterful leader, whose personality could be felt from Lahore to Tuticorin, from bay to ocean. The prospect of the appearance of such a Mahomet is so slight that it can be neglected in any forecast of the future. But even were such a martial prophet to spring up, he would find these separated hosts composed of men, weak and slight in body (with a few exceptions), without arms, ignorant of military and especially of artillery training, and, above all else, weak in aggres- sive will. The conditions which contributed THE FUTURE OF INDIA 199 to the terrible power of the mutiny of fifty- years ago he would find lacking. No native soldier is to-day enrolled in the artillery. A relatively larger force of English and smaller of Indian troops would meet him. He would find the railroad and the telegraph coming to the aid of his foe, as they did not in Delhi and Agra and Lucknow in the deadly marches of that dreadful summer of '57. No. The out- look for the military triumph of a great native leader is indeed slight. India would be quite as unable as either Russia or China to expel England. The conclusion is, therefore, inevitable that England can stay in India just as long as she wants to. England, moreover, apparently wants to stay. The Englishman measures many values by their place in the budget : India pays her own bills. Indian taxes are sufficient to meet the cost of the English gov- ernment of India. But, more, India repre- sents the empire. The retirement of England would, to many, mean imperial disintegration. India, also, is a proper field for work for 200 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST thousands and tens of thousands of English- men, who could not find in "little England" so fit opportunity for a career. Akin to this fact, it is to be noted that though trade does not necessarily follow the flag, yet the Eng- lish trade more easily and naturally follows the union jack than it does any other stand- ard. The inference, therefore, seems clear enough that England wishes to retain India. But, furthermore, it is best for India her- self that she be retained. India has usually been her own worst enemy. England saves India from herself. The testimony of native scholars and thinkers is conclusive that the re- tirement of England would be followed by civil wars. Mohammedan would rise against Hindu and Hindu against Mohammedan, Hindu sect against Hindu sect, and each cause the other to be put to death. In war, says Cicero, the laws are silent: not only are the laws silent, but also the loom, the potter's wheel, and the harvester's flail. War is the cessation of the industries, as well as of the industrious- ness, of peace. The inevitable civil wars, fol- THE FUTURE OF INDIA 201 lowing England's retirement, would prove to be the worst disaster which ever befell India, and her whole history has not been without severe disasters. It may also be said that it is best for the in- terests of the civilization of the world for Eng- land to retain India. If India be not fitted to govern herself, no other power than England is so well fitted to govern her. To the govern- ment of so-called inferior races England brings qualities which no other nation can bring. Eng- land does not bring sympathy, and is in peril of bringing a semi-contempt for these races. But, what is more important, it does bring a keen and large sense of justice, which is far more precious than either sympathy or per- sonal respect could prove to be. The Indian knows that the low court in his district or the high court at Madras is as sure of giving him his rights as any court that the mind of man could devise. Such an assurance is of the highest value to the Indian himself, and also to the interests of civilization. England, furthermore, governs under the conditions of 202 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST religious freedom. Each man is able to wor- ship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, or not to worship. The right not to worship is, to some minds, made even more evident than the right to worship. For the government is accused of being atheistic and agnostic in its influence and tendency. But it is plain to any large-minded interpreter that an example of such freedom is of great worth to humanity in its struggle for light. Again, too, England makes use of the might- iest force in civilization for the highest advan- tage of India, — education. For fifty years the force has been specially used, and with enlarg- ing relationships and unto richer results. Only five per cent of the population is yet able to read and write ; but to the diminution of illit- eracy and the spread of learning England is devoting funds, and giving wisdom, too, with a fullness which is unique in the history of the government of a people by a foreign power, excepting, be it said, the United States in the Philippines. A large nation uneducated is not only a peril to itself, it is also a menace to all THE FUTURE OF INDIA 203 other nations. In her endeavor, therefore, to educate India England is promoting the high- est welfare of the world. The political future of India, therefore, seems to promise a continuation of her politi- cal present. That political future is, perhaps, the brightest of all the elements that consti- tute India's national power. Life is secure; pro- perty is safe ; taxation is Dot high, and is equi- table. Every Indian knows that he is as sure of receiving justice from English courts and English rule as through any government which the mind or hand of man could establish. The economic future of India, however, opens a prospect less favorable than the polit- ical. About three quarters of the laborers of India are agricultural. These farmers are small holders ; and their farms are cut up into small acreage. After many centuries of crop- pings of a soil, croppings made not once, but three or four times a year, this soil has in many parts become barren. It is said that in two hundred and fifty years the average yield per acre has lessened one half. The manure 204 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST of cattle seldom goes back upon the land. It is collected and dried, and used as fuel. Cot- tonseed, too, an excellent fertilizer, it is found more profitable to export than to feed to cattle ; and the attempt to introduce modern tools of agriculture has largely failed, either because of their cost, or because of the inability of the farmer to use them properly, or to keep them in repair. As one who knows and loves India said to me, " A steel plough is better than a wooden stick, but what can an Indian farmer do when the point of a steel plough breaks ? " The village has no blacksmith who can mend it. The farming class lacks enterprise. Meth- ods are antiquated. Resources are small. A general air of helplessness seems to rest upon the whole farming community. The industrial community exhibits a condi- tion of marked improvements and of marked declines in recent years. In the decade follow- ing 1895 changes have occurred in more than a dozen industries: — 1895 1904 Cotton Mills 148 203 Jute Mills 28 38 THE FUTURE OF INDIA 205 Woolen Mills 5 6 Cotton ginning, cleaning, and Press Mills . 610 951 Flour Mills 72 42 Rice Mills 87 127 Sugar Factories 247 28 Silk Filatures 89 75 Silk Mills 28 11 Tanneries 60 35 Oil Mills 163 112 Lace Factories 138 128 Iron and Brass Foundries 64 89 Indigo Factories * 8225 422 The most significant of all the industrial developments is seen in the cotton industry. The Bombay mills give daily employment to about one hundred thousand factory opera- tives, while as many as thirty thousand more are maintained by the ginning presses. Some forty years ago we had only 13 cot- ton mills in all India. The number rose to 47 in 1876, to 95 in 1886, to 155 in 1895, and to 203 in 1904 ; and to-day the number of our cotton mills is still larger. We had less than 4000 power-looms forty years ago ; the num- ber was over 47,000 in 1904. We had less than 300,000 spindles forty years ago ; the number exceeded five millions in 1904. These are insignificant figures compared with the huge cotton industry of Lancashire ; but they 1 The "Ruling Chiefs of India " Series, No. 1, p. 75. 206 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST show that we have made steady progress, and that we may fairly hope to make greater pro- gress in the future if we are true to our aims and our own interests. Our annual produce of yarn is nearly six hundred million pounds in weight ; and it is interesting to note that out of this total out-turn about 30 per cent is used mostly by our hand-loom weavers. 1 Socially, this change in the cotton and other industries is as evil as industrially it is advan- tageous. For it is important to preserve and to promote the domestic industries of this vast nation. Among all these domestic industries the hand-loom is, perhaps, the most important tool. A hand-loom has recently been invented which gives promise of being a great rival of the power-loom. But India is still importing about two thousand millions of yards of cotton cloth every year, and making only about six hundred million yards. The value of her im- ports of manufactured cotton goods is twice that of her exports of raw cotton. The industrial future of any country de- pends upon the supply of coal and iron. The 1 Baroda, the " Ruling Chiefs of India " Series, No. 1, p. 72. THE FUTURE OF INDIA 207 amount of coal, of iron ore, and other minerals hidden beneath the brown sands of India is still unknown. But it is probably not large. At present the greater share of Indian coal, about seven eighths, is mined in Bengal; but the amount taken out in all India in a year is only four per cent of that produced in Eng- land. India still depends upon England for those iron and steel goods in the making of which coal so largely enters. Indian industries have been and are prima- rily domestic. The question is seriously immi- nent whether the industrial movements of the world, producing goods through large facto- ries in immense quantities, are to overwhelm the home industries. At the Industrial Confer- ence held in Calcutta in December, 1906, the Gaekwar of Baroda said in the inaugural ad- dress : — We know, however, that the laborers who can possibly be employed in mills and factories form only an insignificant proportion of the industrial population of India. Very much the larger portion of that industrial population is engaged in indigenous industries carried on in 208 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST village homes and bazaars. India is, and will always remain, a country of cottage indus- tries. Where hundreds of thousands can work in mills and factories, millions and tens of millions work in their own huts ; and the idea of greatly improving the condition of the laborers of India merely by adding to mills and factories is only possible for those who form their opinion six thousand miles away. No, gentlemen ; any comprehensive plan of im- proving the condition of our industrial classes must seek to help the dwellers in cottages. It is the humble weavers in towns and villages, the poor braziers and coppersmiths working in their sheds, the resourceless potters and iron- smiths and carpenters who follow their ances- tral vocations in their ancestral homes, who form the main portion of the industrial population, and who demand our sympathy and help. It is they (more than the agriculturists, or the mill and factory laborers) that are most impover- ished in these days, and are the first victims to famines ; and if your Swadeshi movement has brought some relief to these obscure and unno- ticed millions and tens of millions in India, as I have reason to believe it has done to a percepti- ble extent, if it has created a larger demand for their manufactures, widened the sphere of their labors, and brought some light to their dark and cheerless homes, then the movement, gen- tlemen, has my cordial sympathy. Help and THE FUTURE OF INDIA 209 encourage the large industries, but foster and help also the humbler industries, in which tens of millions of village artisans are engaged, and the people of India, as well as those who are engaged in the work of administration, will bless your work. 1 Words well spoken are these ; for in most parts of the world the large manufacturer has supplanted or suppressed the small. If this condition shall come to obtain in India, the economic future of the nation is indeed dark. The future of any great people, or small too, is wrapped up largely also in their social system. The social system of India is founded upon caste ; and with the system of caste is specially involved the condition of woman. The evils of caste are so great that no one should presume to interpret them who has not been brought up in their atmosphere. Regarding caste, I venture to quote from the address given at the eighteenth session of the Indian National Social Conference, held at Bombay in December, 1904, by the Gaekwar of Baroda. He says : — 1 The " Ruling Chiefs of India " Series, No. 1, p. 76. 210 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST The evils of caste cover the whole range of social life. It hampers the life of the individual with a vast number of petty rules and observ- ances which have no meaning. It cripples him in his relations with his family, in his marriage, in the education of his children, and espe- cially in his life. It weakens the economic position by attempting to confine him to par- ticular trades, by preventing him from learning the culture of the West, and by giving him an exaggerated view of his knowledge and importance. It cripples his professional life by increasing distrust, treachery, and jealousy, hampering a free use of others' abilities, and ruins his social life by increasing exclusiveness, restricting the opportunities of social inter- course, and preventing that intellectual devel- opment on which the prosperity of any class most depends. In the wider spheres of life, in municipal or local affairs, it destroys all hope of local patriotism, of work for the common good, by thrusting forward the interests of the caste as opposed to those of the community, and by making combined efforts for the com- mon good exceedingly difficult. But its most serious offense is its effect on national life and national unity. It intensifies local dissensions and diverse interests, and obscures great na- tional ideals and interests which should be those of every caste and people, and renders the country disunited and incapable of im- THE FUTURE OF INDIA 211 proving its defects or of availing- itself o£ those advantages which it should gain from contact with the civilization of the West. It robs us of our humanity by insisting on the degradation of some of our fellow men who are separated from us by no more than the accident of birth. It prevents the noble and charitable impulses which have done so much for the improvement and mutual benefit of European society. It prevents our making the most of all the various abilities of our diverse communities. It diminishes all our emotional activities and intellectual resources. Again, it is the most conservative element in our society, and the steady enemy to all re- form. Every reformer who has endeavored to secure the advance of our society has been driven out of it by the operation of caste. By its rigidity, it preserves ignorant superstitions and clings to the past, while it does nothing to make those inevitable changes which na- ture is ever pressing on us more easy and more possible. 1 That caste is still powerful, not only in general society, but even among Indian Chris- tians, is sadly evident. One of the most phil- osophic and eminent of American clergymen living in India, the Reverend Doctor J. P. 1 The "Ruling Chiefs of India" Series, No. l,pp. 52, 53. 212 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST Jones, of Madura, declares that the church in India is "a very much caste-ridden church." He says in detail : — And yet such is the fact. Very few, if any, native Christians free themselves from this bondage when they enter the Christian fold. They still think that their life must be so- cially controlled by the Hindu caste system. They freely shake off the trammels of idol- atry and of Hindu ceremonial. They even learn to forget many of the ancestral super- stitions. But the caste ties remain largely un- relaxed. Their social ties and affinities in the Christian church are largely circumscribed by their Hindu social antecedents. And thus the infant Indian church, save at certain mission centres, is still a very much caste-ridden church. 1. Its local sympathies are aligned along Hindu-made social strata. 2. Marriages are contracted almost invari- ably on strict Hindu caste lines. Mixed or inter-caste marriages are still the exception. 3. Social pleasures are largely confined to those of the same caste. 4. Christian congregations are limited to a considerable extent to members of one caste. Members of other castes have little idea of join- ing them ; nor have the Christians, often, any desire to gather them into their Christian fold. THE FUTURE OF INDIA 213 5. In the choice and employment of cate- chists and pastors for the care of village churches and congregations, their caste ante- cedents can rarely, if ever, be ignored. And thus every missionary is much handicapped in the delicate work of securing the best spirit- ual agency for his field. 1 Woman in India is chiefly or only a wife and a mother. Each condition represents a period of servitude. The servitude of the wife follows the servitude of the daughter, and is in turn succeeded by the servitude of the widow to her son, in case she becomes a widow. She is married early. The nuptials may be made long before she reaches her teens. Her first child is born also early, and is born to her in ignorance so great that it usually dies. But the following multiplication of children is so rapid that each comes into life small and puny, and comes into a home in which food is scarce, work heavy, and comforts few or none. Yet polygamy is not uncommon, and the re- marriage of a widow is prohibited. To the 1 The Indian Church and Caste, by the Rev. J. P. Jones, D. D. p. 2. 214 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST husband is given the right of putting away his wife if she fail to bear children, or even for causes less serious, and possibly not under her immediate control. Purdah secludes women from society. Young do women become old, and young do they die. The religion of a nation is at once a chief cause and result of its civilization. The religion of India is religions. Three fourths of the peo- ple are adherents of Hinduism. The remain- ing quarter is largely composed of Mohamme- dans, with Buddhists, Sikhs, and Christians following in smaller proportions. Hinduism, in its larger relations, is a great system of faith. But in its interpretation by the people it is a conglomeration of irrational beliefs and blind superstitions. It is a sad fact that, in the his- tory of religions, the less worthy elements of belief seem to make the stronger appeal to the great body of people. The esoteric faith ap- pears quite unlike the exoteric, and far supe- rior to it. No one can visit the temples in Benares, in which a sacred bull and sacred cows convert marble halls into filthy stables, THE FUTURE OF INDIA 215 and in which worshipers as devout as they are irrational perform rites which cannot be de- scribed, and no one can sail of a morning along the Ganges and witness the drinking of the filthy water by the pilgrims, without being stirred in heart and mind unto shame and disgust. If, however, one turn to the bet- ter of the sacred books of these same uncon- sciously shameless idolaters, or if he confer in person with the priests of these faiths, he is im- pressed by the nobility of the ethical princi- ples, and by the truth of the theistic beliefs which they profess. It must be said, however, that ninety-nine one hundredths of the Hindu people of India accept a faith without reason- ing, follow its teachings without questioning, and obey its severest commands without flinch- ing. Under such conditions lie no hopes for the upbuilding of a great and strong nation. The force most general of application for the promotion of the highest elements of civ- ilization in India is educational. Education meets with great difficulties, however. Chief is the indifference of the people, and next their 216 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST poverty. Apathy prevents parents from wish- ing to educate their children, and poverty pre- vents their giving them an education. Poverty renders the support of all schools difficult, and prompts parents to put their children to work early in order to increase the small income of the family. The education of girls labors, in addition, under the peculiar difficulties of seclusion, caste, and early marriage. Educa- tion should be made by gradual processes com- pulsory, and also free, despite the heavy ad- dition resulting to the tax budget. As the Gaekwar of Baroda has said : — Great and far-reaching changes might be made in the educational system of the country, and I am of the opinion that no ultimate so- lution of our problem will be reached until schools have been provided in every village, and education is taken to the very thresholds of the people ; until, in fact, education, at least in its primary grades, has been made free and compulsory throughout the land. 1 The manual and technical side of education should receive as great a development as the 1 Baroda, the "Ruling Chiefs of India" Series, No. 1, p. 84. THE FUTURE OF INDIA 217 primary side. The general value of such, an education is hardly less than its industrial worth, for scientific training would give the Indian a discipline in definite and direct pro- cesses of thinking, of which he stands in dire need. However great may be the value at- tached to linguistic and philosophic studies, this value is less great for the Indian youth at the present time than the value of scientific training. Herein lies one hope for India. If technical and scientific education could be pursued by hundreds of thousands instead of by thousands, as it is at present, India would be lifted, enlarged, enriched. To quote again from the Gaekwar of Baroda : — I must confess that it is my recent visit to Europe and to America that has impressed me most with the immense importance of techni- cal education in promoting the industries of nations. I may state without exaggeration that education has undergone a complete revolution in the West within the present generation. The great armaments of the Western nations, their vast armies and navies, do not receive greater attention and greater solicitude in the present day than that education in industrial 218 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST pursuit which befits them for the keener strug- gle, which is continually going on among nations for industrial and manufacturing su- premacy. 1 But the strength or weakness of the people, their prosperity or their failure, lies not so much in conditions as in themselves. In themselves are found the elements of gravest foreboding for their character. They lack strength, — strength of will, strength of reasoning intel- lect. They do not have initiative. They see truth with their feelings, and the emotional vision is stronger than either the reasoned con- clusion of conscience or the act of will. They see truth with greater facility than they follow its duties in unflagging endurance. They do not possess the sense of large and exact truth- fulness. Lord Curzon told them plainly that exaggeration was characteristic of the nation, and they hated him for his frankness. Furthermore, the people of India do not have faith in themselves as individuals. The faith of the nation in itself seems to be strong, 1 The " Ruling Chiefs of India " Series, No. 1, p. 84. THE FUTURE OF INDIA 219 but the faith of each man in and for himself seems to be lacking. The decline of the nation for fourteen hundred years has affected the spirit of the individual quite as much as the spirit of the nation. Upon this important point, as upon others, I quote from an address made by the Gaekwar of Baroda : — From 500 a. d. we find a steady decline in the political and mental condition of the coun- try down to the two centuries of darkness from which we emerge into the periods of Rajput and the Mahomedan conquest. Follow the for- tunes of India down the next eight centuries and note the steady decline in Hindu power both political and mental, till we come to the time when Europeans obtain a firm footing in India, and conquer the country with very slen- der means, meeting and conquering each prob- lem as it arises. For fourteen hundred years the record is one of steady decline in political and mental nationality. 1 The Gaekwar also says : — Our weakness lies in this, that we have for many years lain prostrate under the fictitious sense of our own helplessness and made no adequate attempt to react against our circum- 1 The " Ruling Chiefs of India " Series, No. 1, p. 44. 220 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST stances. We have succumbed where we should have exhausted every possibility of resistance and remedy. Without self-confidence you can never do anything; you will never found an industry or build up a trade, for you have nothing to carry you through the first anxious years when the only dividend is Hope, and the best assets are unfaltering courage and faith in one's self. And without confidence in one another you will never have a credit system, and without a credit system no modern commerce can exist. It is this want of cooperation and mutual dis- trust which paralyze Indian industry, ruin the statesman, and discredit the individual even in his own household. I believe that this trait of our character, though in some cases arising from our obvious defects and instances of actual misconduct among ourselves, is mainly due to the fact that the nation has long been split up into incoherent units, but also to the ignorance and restricted vision which result from our own exclusiveness. We have denied ourselves the illuminating experience of foreign travel, and are too prone to ima- gine that our weaknesses are confined to India. Failures and defalcations are as common in Europe as among ourselves ; and yet we allow ourselves to be too easily discouraged by such incidents. Hence arises a habit of censorious THE FUTURE OF INDIA 221 judgment, a disposition to put the worst con- struction on the conduct of our friends and relatives without trying to find the truth, which destroys all trust and tolerance. Our view of the conduct of friends, of the policy of admin- istrations, of the success and integrity of com- mercial undertakings, are all vitiated by a readi- ness to believe the worst. It is only when we learn to suspend judgment, and know the man and the motive before we criticise, that we shall be able to repose trust where trust is due. We must stiffen our character, and educate ourselves up to a higher moral standard. 1 Not long before his death the late Charles Cuthbert Hall wrote to a friend, saying, " I exult that I received my wound on God's great battlefield." India is a great battlefield of God, and, it may be added, of man. The conflict is to be long and hard. The forces are many, di- verse in character, and diverse also in strength and aggressiveness. The contest will go on for how many generations one knows not, under the English flag. In its waging, Western in dus- tries, Western religion, and Western education have a large part. Through them, and their 1 The " Ruling Chiefs of India " Series, No. 1, pp. 26, 41,42. 222 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST allies, it may be hoped that India will be quick- ened into a finer life, even than that which was hers before her decline of fourteen cen- turies ago. AMERICA IN THE PACIFIC XIV SCIENCE AS A NATION'S PROTECTOR The problem of self-protection is the most important problem of a nation. The term has come to be used in a sense somewhat unlike that in which it is used in the expression "pro- tection and free trade." The larger sense is probably a more important and significant one than can be attached to it in the economic meaning:. As the United States has come to cover tropical territory, self - protection has become one of its problems. This problem is presented in a microcosm in the territory of Hawaii. The problem of self -protection is a negative part or side of the larger problem of greatest productivity ; the problem, to wit, of getting the most from earth and air and sea. It is the problem both of preservation of forests and of the enlargement of forest area. It is the problem of the introduction of new plants 226 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST and fruits and the improvement of old ones. It is the problem, also, which belongs to the increase and improvement of domestic animals. It is a problem which concerns those lands where frosts never fall to purify. It is, in a word, the problem of the efficiency of nature. The problem is essentially a scientific one. It must be interpreted and defined in the terms of science, solved by the processes of science, and its results must be applied under the cate- gories of science. The enemies from which vegetation in the Hawaiian Islands suffers, and from which it must be protected, are of two kinds, but the number of varieties under each of these kinds is great. These two kinds are insects and fungi. Some of these pests are native, others are the result of importation. Perhaps what might be called the most spectacular of all these foes is one known as the cane leaf-hopper. The leaf -hopper came to the islands one hardly knows whence, but probably from either Aus- tralia or China. The exact time of its coming is also unknown, for it may have been here SCIENCE AS A NATION'S PROTECTOR 227 for years before it was recognized as pestifer- ous. But surely it came, this little insect of a quarter of an inch in length. It came, and it spread over the fields of cane to the number of countless millions. It threatened to destroy these vast fields of waving stalks, and it did succeed in lessening the productivity of many a plantation. The problem was to find a de- stroyer for this destroyer. Two scientists took upon themselves to make the discovery. They went to Australia, where it was known that the pest had existed. By living in fields and swamps infested with this insect, by investi- gation, by observation and the application of all scientific methods, they found a parasite for the leaf -hopper. The parasite was brought to the plantations of the islands. A little in- sect it was itself, laying its egg inside the egg of the leaf-hopper, and killing the egg. The parasite was introduced, propagated, and dis- seminated. After half a dozen years the leaf- hopper, which at one time threatened to de- stroy the whole sugar industry, became al- most a curiosity so small was his tribe. 228 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST The problem of self-protection is also seen in the extreme care taken regarding the intro- duction of any plant or animal into the ter- ritory of Hawaii. One might possibly smuggle in a small bug or a garter-snake, but it would be practically impossible to bring in a box of either. Inspectors inspect each landing ; and importations which do not pass may suf- fer either fumigation, return, or destruction. Many instances I might cite, but a few are typical. (1) Sugar cane cuttings came in by mail from Queensland in two packages. In- spection proved that the cane had been at- tacked by a skin fungus, and that "mealy bugs " were hidden at the base of the leaves. (2) Another package of sugar cane was en- tered from the Philippine Islands, which bore evidence of attacks of the cane borer. Both these importations were burned. In the past year more than two hundred thousand pack- ages of fruits and vegetables have been in- spected, of which almost seven hundred have been either returned or destroyed either as be- ing infested with insects or as containing germs SCIENCE AS A NATION'S PROTECTOR 229 of disease. Rice from Japan to the amount of more than twenty thousand sacks was at one time fumigated, to kill out the larvae of a small brown beetle and other pests. Soil, brought as ballast, has been dumped into the ocean out- side the harbor, because it contained vegetable roots or matter which proved pestiferous. As I write I learn of some thousand packages of Japanese rice being fumigated. Fumigation does not seem to hurt the kernel in any way. Perhaps no instance is more picturesquely recognized by the Hawaiian people in the care taken to prevent dangerous introductions than is found in a case of the importation of snakes (designed for exhibition) a few years ago. The story is well told in the second re- port of the Board of Commissioners of Agri- culture and Forestry. The Hawaiian Islands have always been famed for their freedom from snakes. People and animals could wan- der with impunity through valleys and over hills and mountains. An importation arrived on the 2d of June ex S. S. Alameda from California, that might 230 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST have put an end to such delightful serenity. This was the arrival of three flimsy boxes, containing fourteen large, living snakes, five of them the deadly rattler. Under a rule such animals arriving in the territory of Hawaii are ordered to be immediately de- stroyed or deported. "In the destruction of snakes," says the narrator, " we had a sur- prising experience. I placed the boxes of snakes in one of our fumigating chambers and ap- plied a charge of double density of hydro- cyanic acid gas, and the snakes were still alive at the end of fifteen minutes, whereas, if they had been warm-blooded animals they would have succumbed in a less number of seconds. They were again shut up and a quadruple charge of that deadly gas was administered, and at the end of one hour and a half the fumigator was opened and several of the snakes still showed signs of life. We then immersed them in 95% of alcohol, and that soon put an end to their venomous existence. A fitting death, as the same liquid, in a modi- fied form, is considered an antidote to their deadly bite." But many beneficial insects beside the par- asite which killed out the leaf-hopper have been introduced. Among them have been dung beetles, or what are known as "turn- SCIENCE AS A NATION'S PROTECTOR 231 ble-bugs," mosquito minnows, and various families and colonies of the lady-bird. There lies before me a list of no less than twenty- three colonies of beneficial species of insects which have recently been distributed about the islands. The number of these colonies is more than three hundred and fifty, and they aggregate some five thousand specimens. But the scientists of these islands are not content with negative methods or experimen- tation. Endeavors are constantly made to im- prove the forms of vegetation which are most important in these islands. Experimentation with new varieties of sugar cane is constantly going forward. Some of these experiments give promise of securing growths far more heavily laden with sugar juice than are the ordinary types. The process of experimenta- tion includes many elements. The new varie- ties are raised from seedlings. Out of some five thousand seedlings of recent times there emerged only twenty-one varieties that seemed worthy of further study or development. But already, out of these twenty-one, have ap- 232 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST peared one or two varieties which give pres- ent promise of a vast increase in sugar juice. In case any such result should finally emerge, it would increase the productivity of these acres manifold. But though the sugar industry is the chief industry of these islands, and is the one to which scientific methods have been specially applied, it is not the only form of nature's productivity which has scientific relations. The fruits of Hawaii are many, and are pre- cious to the taste of man as well as to his purse. Science is applying herself to scores of these fruits, both for the purpose of secur- ing a richer yield and a better flavor. Sci- ence also is concerned with their marketing as well as their raising. The scientific work touching the various plants and fruits of these islands is done by three institutions. One is the Board of Com- missioners of Agriculture and Forestry of the Territory of Hawaii, one the Federal Experi- ment Station, and one the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association. SCIENCE AS A NATION'S PROTECTOR 233 The first, as the name indicates, is the creation of the Territorial Government; the second is an institution of the General Gov- ernment ; the third is a society, as its title intimates, organized by and among the sugar planters themselves. The first is, of course, supported by the Territorial, the second by the General, government, and the third by the sugar planters. Of the three the Sugar Plant- ers' is the most unique. It is the largest soci- ety organized anywhere for the protection of the sugar industry. It includes a laboratory of chemistry, of pathology, of physiology, and of entomology. It enrolls a score of workers gathered from South America, from the West Indies, and from the Malay Peninsula. Ox- ford, Cambridge, the University of London, as well as several American colleges, are represented among its members. The plant- ers voluntarily give about seventy thousand dollars a year for the support of this work, the amount given by each plantation being in proportion to the amount of sugar pro- duced. 234 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST Hawaii is one of the most impressive illus- trations in the whole world of the worth of science in the promotion of the material wel- fare and happiness of man. XY GEEAT MEN IN THE PHILIPPINES The motives which have led a few thousand Americans to the Philippines in the last years for either a brief or a prolonged stay are as diverse as are the characters of these men them- selves. But more common is the motive pe- cuniary, and also the motive of interest in the great human problem of the civilization of these islands. The motive pecuniary has not proved so conclusive as its promise indicated. Some of the funds put into large undertakings — street railroads and electric power plants — have begun to make returns; but the returns are not worthily remunerative. Some seven hundred miles of steam railroad are now under construction, besides two hundred al- ready built, and give no present income. The merchant is prosperous, but not with a pros- perity which need awaken the jealousy of his American brother. Those who have come to 236 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST the Philippines upon a salary — and they are by far the larger number — find that this sal- ary is considerably larger than they would receive in the States. In some cases it is no less than threefold, and in many twofold. But its purchasing power, its value in utili- ties, is not larger than the ordinary and nor- mal salary received at home. The professor in an American law school in Michigan or Wisconsin receiving three thousand dollars a year, coming to the islands as a member of the Supreme Court is given ten thousand dol- lars as an annual stipend; but in Manila he finds it is quite as necessary to spend ten thousand dollars as to spend three thousand in Ann Arbor or Madison. Prices are high. Entertaining, in particular, is constant and somewhat elaborate. Not a larger but a more important number of Americans have come under the spell of the interest in the foundation and fostering: of American institutions in these islands of the Far East. To establish a political demo- cracy among warring tribes ; to found social - GREAT MEN IN THE PHILIPPINES 237 institutions among men ■whose life is bare and barren ; to promote the element of rea- sonableness among tribes in which supersti- tion has largely ruled; to enrich, if not to establish, civilization, under American influ- ences, in the Philippines ; to have a hand, a heart, and a head in doing these and many- other things, industrial, educational, hygienic, administrative, — has been the motive which has brought men to and has kept and still keeps not a few — jind them of the best — men in these islands./ This human motive rather enlarges in in- terest and forcefulness with the passing years. For the contrast between the English method of governing, as seen in her great and unique field of India, and the American method as manifest in the small field of the Philippines, becomes increasingly evident. England gov- erns India a great deal as Eome governed her provinces, leaving to the subject state the en- joyment of most social and domestic institu- tions, compelling the people to recognize the sovereignty of the conqueror, with little or no 238 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST thought of the coming of the time when the foreign ruler can retire. The United States, on the contrary, is in the Philippines in order to hasten the time when the presence of its soldiers and civilians may become absolutely superfluous, — so complete has become the absorption of the noblest American influ- ences, and so fundamental and thorough has been the acceptance of American institutions. The contrast is deep, very deep. The Ameri- can method in the Philippines cannot, and it does not, fail to move American men of altru- istic temper, of hopeful temperaments, of clear and profound intellectual insight and of great human instincts, to give themselves to service in these far-off parts of the world. The contrast between the conduct of Amer- ica in the Philippines and of Japan in Korea is likewise impressive. The population of Korea is only slightly larger than the popu- lation of the Philippines. Each people might be called a belated nation. Japan is feeling her way somewhat in her administration of Korea. But who doubts that the primary aim GREAT MEN IN THE PHILIPPINES 239 of Japan in Korea is to benefit Japan? But the primary aim at the present time of Amer- ica in the Philippines is to benefit the people themselves. With noble interest will the world watch the methods and the results of the government of two subject provinces by two commanding nations. The men who, under the influence of either the egoistic or the altruistic motive, or both, have come to the Philippines in the decade since ! America has had an interest in them repre-' I sent the noblest elements of American man- hood. I compare these men — judges, commis- sioners, officials of all grades — with similar civilians whom England has sent to India and to many colonies and provinces. I compare them with the foreigners of several nationalities who have taken up residence and work in world- cities like Hong-Kong, Shanghai, Yokohama. The result of the comparison is, on the whole, favorable to the American. In intellectual and moral strength, in insight, comprehensiveness, solidity and sobriety, integrity, efficiency, the American is superior. The more free and em- 240 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST phatic I wish to be in this judgment, for when I set foot in Manila I had no thought I should find men of such greatness. But the conclu- sion was inevitable, — America has given of her best. In this condition are two elements specially significant. One is the lack of home partisan- ship in the making of civil appointments. Of course, the Civil Service rules shut out partisan- ship to a large extent; but in offices which are not under these rules, partisanship plays a very insignificant part. " I don't know," said a conspicuous citizen of Manila, " whether Gov- ernor-General Smith is a Republican or a Dem- ocrat." Happy is it that the home political divisions have not been transported to the is- lands. The good of the service is a rule which has been well followed. Efficiency has been, is, and will be the test. The other element of special worth lies in the fact that so many of the men in the Phil- ] ippines are college men. The men of liberal : education, men of the whole world, represent the great human qualities of sympathy, justice, GREAT MEN IN THE PHILIPPINES 241 culture, noble appreciations. Such men are the most valuable members of any society. These men to the number of several thousand are! giving themselves to this new people of the] Pacific. The college man rather than the mili- tary man is influential. The University Club ; on the Lunetta is more significant than Fort McKinley. These men, engaged either officially or per- sonally in this great work, are as a body filled with the spirit of hopefulness. They believe that great results for humanity and for Amer- ica are to be the final conclusion of this occu- pation. " We are to win " ; " We cannot fail " ; " We must not permit ourselves to think of retirement till this child people has come to mature strength " : such are the common senti- ments. These sentiments have greatly strength- ened in the last twelvemonth. The peace on the whole increasing among all the tribes, the calling and excellent conduct of the first Phil- ippine Assembly, the enlarging establishment of the institutions of the higher civilization, — churches, schools, clubs, — have each made a 242 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST worthy contribution to the optimistic spirit. Moreover, as it has become evident that, de- spite heavy administrative expenditures, the United States will not surrender the islands, a policy of making investments in great utili- ties, and small as well, has been adopted. The spirit of pessimism prevailing a few years ago, as it is said, has passed away. Manila has be- come the city of the optimist. The wise people of the islands, however, as the wise people at home, know well that the solution of the American problem is to take a long time. Civilization demands not years, but decades; not decades, but generations; not generations, but centuries. Yet America is taking over this people at least one generation ahead of the point at which many nations have accepted the guardianship of subject races. The three hundred years of mediaeval civilization and ecclesiasticism which Spain gave the Phil- ippines at once hardened and enriched the native character. With certain evil results were joined beneficent effects. Yet, notwithstanding this temporal advantage, the lifting of a peo- GREAT MEN IN THE PHILIPPINES 243 pie so diverse as to include gentlemen, head- hunters, and naked savages is to take genera- tion after generation. " There is no discharge in this war." But the problem should become more simple with each passing decade, the ex- pense to the home government lessened, the opposing elements minimized, till, with the increasing degree of political and other inde- pendence gradually given this people with each year, America can fittingly retire, her work done, her problem solved, a subject peo- ple lifted into worthy place and power. That happy day is to dawn, but its dawning is far away in the future. This time is made more distant by reason of a simple condition now prevailing, the brief tenure of the residence of most men and fami- lies. Some stay two years, some five, and some — they are few — ten. The climate is enervat- ing, and the distance from home great. Chil- dren here born and bred are in peril of being weak in body. No American can worthily be blamed for his unwillingness to do his perma- nent work in these islands. 244 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST The same condition obtains in India. As Townsend says in his "Asia and Europe": " No ruler stays there to help, or criticise, or moderate his successor. No successful white soldier founds a family. No white man who makes a fortune builds a house or buys an estate for his descendants. The very planter, the very engine-driver, the very foreman of works, departs before he is sixty, leaving no child, or house, or trace of himself behind." l Permanence, however, would vastly promote the worth of the forces making for betterment in both India and the Philippines. Permanence would mean accumulation of thought and of experience. But even with this limitation, the greatness of the results which the great men of the Philippines are winning for America and for the race is assured. 1 Asia and Europe, by Meredith Townsend, p. 86. XYI THE AMERICAN TEACHER IN THE PHILIPPINES Governor - General Smith, of the Philip- pines, concluding a long conversation upon the worthiness and efficiency of the Americans who have come to the islands, said, "But, after all, the best of them all is the American teacher." The American teachers, both men and women, are doing more for the permanent elevation and improvement of the Filipinos than all other forces and personalities. These teachers are of good origin. They are the children of the great body of native American homes. Many of them are graduates of the better colleges, especially of the colleges of the Middle West and of the Pacific Coast. They are possessed of high ideals. They have an instinct for efficiency. They are willing to endure hardships as good soldiers. They unite intellectual insight and comprehension with 246 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST the moral virtues. They are forceful without officiousness, and, while conscious of their power, and watchful for opportunity, are yet not arrogant. Men and women of this noble type have for nine and more years been work- 1 ing as teachers in the Philippines, are still work- ing, and are to continue. There are now eight hundred of them. At the head of this noble force are the Di- rector of Education and his administrative as- sociates. Next to this central body at Manila, stands the officer who is known as the division superintendent. A province represents the field of service of the division superintendent. Upon him rests the responsibility for the effi- ciency of the public school system. He is the immediate head of all school work conducted in his province or division. All teachers and principals report to him, and are immediately subject to his direction. He appoints all muni- cipal teachers. His recommendations are very largely considered in the promotion of Amer- ican teachers and Insular native teachers. He has under his immediate direction in some in- AMERICAN TEACHER IN THE PHILIPPINES 247 stances as many as fifty American teachers and two hundred Filipinos. He is the repre- sentative of the school work before the pro- vincial board, and in cases is a member of the provincial board, — the governing board of the province. All correspondence from or to teachers passes through his office. He distrib- utes school supplies, and is accountable for the school property of the division to the Audi- tor of the Archipelago. He has daily business relations with the provincial boards, the presi- dents, and other municipal officers of the town, with the American teachers, the Filipino teachers, and close personal relations with the entire Filipino population of his province. With him rest to a very large extent the good discipline of the force, the attitude of the teachers toward their duties, and the general efficiency and success of the school work. A large part of his time is spent in travel from town to town, a work not only onerous, but fre- quently accompanied by danger from storms, high water, dangerous seas, ladrones, and epi- demic disease. The work makes demands upon 248 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST every high quality a man may possess. It calls for courage, judgment, tact, and sympathy. It is the opinion of the general superintend- ent that this body of men is to-day one of the most respected and influential forces in the Archipelago. Their qualities — physical, men- tal, and moral — are exceptionally high. Such is the interpretation given in official docu- ments of this important phase of the service. In the graduated systems of administrative supervision, next to the work of the division superintendent of the province falls the work of the superintendent of a small local district. His work is of a kind similar to that of the head of a division. Of this service the direc- tor says : — As supervising teacher he is the representa- tive of the division superintendent in the dis- trict. He must consult, tactfully and helpfully, with the municipal president and council, re- present the school needs of the locality to this body, and obtain the cooperation and financial support. His relationship with the people of the town must be kindly, helpful, intimate, and above reproach. He has under him a corps of native officers of from half a dozen AMERICAN TEACHER IN THE PHILIPPINES 249 to thirty, whose work must be laid out before them each week, or often each day, and who must be constantly visited and assisted in its discharge. He has a further task of organiz- ing new schools, especially in those barrios or hamlets which are far separated from the town centre, and which are frequently densely ig- norant and lawless. The greater part of his time is spent in school visitation, sometimes on foot, sometimes by horse or vehicle, and frequently by canoe on streams that connect the different hamlets of the municipality. This work must be followed throughout the stormy season, is frequently onerous and perilous, and can usually be successfully discharged only by men of strong constitution and more than usual courage and resolution. Except for the fact that the teacher is accorded respect and protection by practically every class of peo- ple in the Archipelago, this work would fre- quently contain a considerable element of danger. By reason of their profession, how- ever, teachers are enabled to visit regularly re- mote hamlets of their districts, even in pro- vinces still disturbed by bandits or ladrones, where a single man in military uniform might not go without personal danger. As a part of their duty, these teachers have to acquaint themselves thoroughly with the geography of their districts. They must know each ham- let and road, and they must thoroughly under- 250 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST stand the social composition of the commu- nity where they are working. To these two forms of supervision, provin- cial and district, many American men are de- voting themselves. The remaining number, both men and women, are giving themselves to the actual work of teaching, in high schools, or in the normal and trade schools in Manila. Engaged in such a service, their work does not differ fundamentally from like work done in the States. But the people of these islands are being educated far more by their own native teach- ers than by the Americans. No less than six thousand Filipinos are now teaching. These six thousand, however, are largely the pro- duct themselves of American teaching. Upon them and their associates and successors does rest, and will come to rest more completely, the actual and broad duty of giving the youth of their own country an education. The testi- mony is strong that they are able, and be- coming yet more able, to undertake this duty. The teaching which I have seen and heard is AMERICAN TEACHER IN THE PHILIPPINES 251 of a high order of excellence. Under them are now enrolled about a half million of Fili- pino boys and girls. The school population of the islands is estimated at twelve hundred thousand. After nine years of educational occupation, almost one half of the children are in school. A great, a very great result it is. The cost, too, is one which represents economy as well as efficiency : it is less, each year, than twenty-five hundred thousand dol- lars, and no small share of the sum — almost a million — is paid by the taxes of the pro- vinces and municipalities themselves. The course of study in these schools is not unlike that found in the American schools of similar grade. Its length, however, is much abridged. Many of the boys and girls have to be content, in all their eagerness for an education, with only three years. But the young Filipino has an active, avaricious mind, and he is able to take in much. In the course, however, more attention is paid to the sciences than at home. This teaching is given for its material benefit. In America it is felt by 252 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST many that the material benefits of education are too strongly emphasized. The cultural studies should receive a larger share of atten- tion. But in our Western Pacific possessions an opposite interpretation and practice should and does prevail. Yet, despite this technical emphasis, intimations of the founding of a uni- versity are heard : and already medical instruc- tion, apparently of a high scientific character, is provided. The world has come to the conclusion that education represents the most efficient and eco- nomical method of civilization. With all of its i forcef ulness and carefulness, it is still open in many respects to the charge of pecuniary ex- travagance and administrative wastefulness. The results, too, at times seem alarmingly slight, superficial, and temporary. The Director of Education in the Philippines has such effects in mind when he writes : — The great mass of public school pupils are children of the poor or lowest classes. What will public instruction do for them? Will it, as we hope, make them independent producers, AMERICAN TEACHER IN THE PHILIPPINES 253 skilled workmen, intelligent citizens of their towns, free them from debts, raise their stand- ard of life, and elevate their moral character ? This is the final test of the service, the stand- ard by which this system of public instruction must in the end be judged. I must admit that whether or not the public schools will do all this, we cannot say. Whether they can make the masses intelligent, industrious, economical, and upright is a question which will take some years of further progress to demonstrate, and argument whether for or against such hopes is at the present time mostly futile. But when all is said, the most satisfactory of all American achievements in the Philip- pines — and many are very satisfactory — is the educational, and in this educational achieve- ment the American teachers deserve the meed of highest praise. XYII THE COMPETITION OF THE EACES IN THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS As the world shrinks, the relationships of the various peoples of the world become closer. The closer relationships represent more intense competitions. In no part is the significance of commercial, industrial, and even personal com- petitions of the races more impressively pre- sented than in the Straits Settlements. The Straits Settlements still represent Brit- ish political power. The century of domi- nance is probably the first of several centuries of control. But British political policy does not forbid the entrance of the commercial and industrial forces of other nations. Of all other nations, Germany is seeking to establish these forces up and down the Malay Peninsula. In Penang, and even in Singapore, and in the smaller cities, is felt the commercial pressure of German manufacturers and merchants. RACES IN THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS 255 The Englishman is, on the whole, retiring, and the Teuton is coming in. The Londoner who now comes to Penang is more eager to get back home than was his elder brother of a genera- tion ago, and instead of staying thirty years, as did the elder brother, is inclined to remain only fifteen. The German consequently profits. The goods, too, which this new German sends into this part of the world make a more effective appeal than do the goods sent out by and to the old Britisher. They are a cheaper sort of goods, cheaper both in price and qual- ity. But it is the articles — personal, domestic, agricultural — of the smaller cost which the Malay desires. His wages are infinitesimal. His scale of living is of the lowest. The well- made, the better made, products of England, he feels he cannot afford. He buys the infe- rior German article, but at a price which his thin purse allows. It is also probable that the German settled in the Straits feels the support of the home government more directly and constantly than does the Britisher. The British government 256 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST gives an open door to its subjects, protection to life and property, but its policy is not the promotion of individual interests. The Ger- man government, however, is so eager to es- tablish a great colonial system that it is will- ing to give not only personal protection, but a certain promotion to individual interests and concerns. In this competition of the white races in the Straits Settlements, other nationalities than the British and the German have small share. The French colonial system has never proved to be successful except at a very high, a too high, cost; and even at such a cost, who would dare to say that it represents a noble type of success? The Hollander has long been engaged in this work of coloniza- tion in this general region of the globe, but his work has been rather that of a farmer than of a merchant. The American, too, be it said, must be counted out. He has not been will- ing, and he apparently is still unwilling, to seek a sale of his goods in the Malay Pen- insula and neighboring parts. A friend of RACES IN THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS 257 mine, an American, a graduate of an Ameri- can college, after trying for some years to sell American iron, steel, and other goods in Siam and Singapore, is giving up the attempt. " We cannot," he declares, " get our home manufacturers to put up the goods in such ways as these people like." In this region of the East, and in other regions, too, are, how- ever, it may be said in passing, two American companies which have succeeded in getting much trade, the Standard Oil Company and the Singer Sewing Machine Company. These organizations have been willing to adjust the goods which they wish to sell to the special demands, or even prejudices, of these peoples. Even if the Malay has not wanted the Standard Oil Company's oil, he has wanted the can. The can serves as a water bucket, a wash- boiler, a rice pot, and, split cornerwise, as a dustpan. This competition is not confined to the white-faced races. It belongs quite as much to the brown and the yellow peoples. In it the Malay is hardly a factor. He is the child of 258 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST contented indolence. Give him a piece of fish and a sand-bank on the seashore where he can bask in the sun, and he is happy. He is un- willing to become a competitor in the world's commercial and other strifes. The Burmese, too, if a higher type, is likewise reluctant. In one month he can earn enough to support himself the other eleven : why should he seek to transmute a land ordained for ease into a country of achievement? The active factor in all commercial and financial competition in the Straits Settle- ments is the Chinese. He is present every- where. In every employment is he found. He pulls your rickshaw; he waits on you at table ; he makes out your draft at the bank- er's ; he sells your ticket at the steamboat of- fice: he compounds your prescription at the druggist's. Laborious, observant, economical, careful, — he is a type of efficiency. If the Britisher wishes to sell his property and re- turn home, the Chinese buys it. If the trav- eler wishes a simple errand done, the Chinese boy is summoned. If one wishes for an impor- RACES IN THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS 259 tant commission to be executed, no one is so certain to carry the " message to Garcia " as this same man. From washing linen to mend- ing coats and building buildings, this same man is working. He has his limitations. He lacks accuracy ; he is not thorough. With all his patience and ploddingness goes along an element of haste and unwillingness to take pains. He is hon- est, yet so avaricious is he that the buyer should be willing to be watchful. He does not readily take the initiative, and, so gifted is he in the imitative arts, that he might not prove to be a worthy master in a new crisis. But subject to all his limitations, the Chi- nese is at present the chief of the competing non-white races of the Malay Peninsula. He — this Chinese man — mingles easily with the other races. He is not a fighter. He goes about his business, and he lets other men go about theirs. He marries the daughters of other colored races, and the children seem — as in the Hawaiian Islands — to be of a race better than either the paternal or the mater- 260 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST nal stock. The Burmese, the whole Malay race, are indolent, easy-going, impassive, as are the Hawaiians, and as are most peoples who live in a permanently high temperature. But such a race united with an active, forth- putting, vigorous race, like the Chinese, brings forth a new people, quiet without lethargy, active without great energy, and efficient. Such a result is found in the Straits Settle- ments and in other tropical parts where the Chinese choose as their wives the daughters of native races. The Chinese are more afraid of the compe- titions — commercial and racial — of the Japa- nese than of any other nation. The Japanese, however, have not yet entered the Straits Settlements in appreciable numbers. Those who leave their native islands prefer to turn their faces either toward America, — a land which they are inclined to think of as an educational and commercial El Dorado, — or toward their own, or half own, possessions of Korea and Manchuria. To the mainland of RACES IN THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS 261 eastern Asia the Japanese are moving, and will move. In Chinese ports they are found as shopkeepers and artisans. Of them as com- mercial competitors, the Chinese are quite as afraid as are the white carpenters of San Francisco afraid of the rivalry of Chinese carpenters. Such racial and industrial fore- bodings! But the Straits Settlements have not yet proved attractive to the people of Tokyo and Kyoto. Of the colored races, the Chinese are still easily the commercial and financial masters. In the future, for any length of time which is worth while for the mind of man to con- sider, it would seem that the political power would necessarily abide with the British ; the commercial and industrial interests will also rest in part with them, but with the German commanding a constantly increasing share. The German, like the Britisher, looks upon the brown and yellow races as distinctly infe- rior to the white, and bound always to occupy a subordinate place. But beneath the domi- 262 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST nant white peoples, the German and British, will be found the Chinese, hewers of wood and drawers of water, yet slowly lifting them- selves into place and power. XVIII INDIRECT FORCES FOR CIVILIZATION IN THE FAR EAST Some of the most efficient forces making for civilization in the Far East are indirect. Such forces have not for their primary or immedi- ate purpose the promoting of civilization ; but though holding other purposes — commercial, scientific, or national — as primary, yet their presence and operation do result in the growth of civilization. Such forces are becoming at once more numerous and more influential. Among these forces are to be named all com- mercial and industrial undertakings. Every railroad or telegraph or telephone line built in China, or Korea, or Japan, serves to intro- duce to the people of these lands most impor- tant symbols, methods, and results of Western civilization. Every steamship entering the har- bor of Nanking or of Hankow carries not only the goods, but at least some of the good of the 264 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST occidental world. Every bridge built by Amer- ican or English engineers serves to unite the peoples of the East and of the West in more intelligent sympathies. It may be added that this condition lays upon the people of the West serious responsibilities. The Japanese mer- chant has a bad reputation for honesty, but the Japanese government is distinguished for its integrity ; the Chinese merchant is distin- guished for his integrity, but his government is likewise as distinguished for its practice of graft, great and small. But the American and the English merchant or engineer hurts the cause of civilization in these two great empires whenever he, directly or indirectly, permits or promotes chicanery in commercial affairs. The higher as well as the lower inter- ests of America in China received a disastrous blow in the Canton and Hankow Railroad un- dertaking. The Chinese do not forget the con- duct of some Americans in the sale of that concession. The traveling, too, of Americans and Eng- lish in the Far East should be counted on the INDIRECT FORCES FOR CIVILIZATION 265 side of the beneficent forces. Most obvious is it to say that the influence of certain travelers is pestiferous ; but, on the whole, each of this vast and constantly increasing throng carries along a glimpse of possibilities of a larger and finer life. The same result is accomplished through the Japanese and Chinese commission- ers, who come to America or England for a stay either brief or prolonged. But especially is the civilization of the Far East helped forward by the Japanese and Chi- nese students who come to America. The influ- ence of the one hundred and twenty Chinese youth who came to America thirty-seven years ago, although called home prematurely, has for a generation been of tremendous worth. Few of them have come to occupy such significant places as Sir Chentung Liang-Cheng, a for- mer Ambassador from China to the United States, has filled ; yet in various administrative offices, as well as in private business, they have done much for the reconstruction of their an- cient and conservative nation. To the Chinese coming to America one peril emerges, — the 266 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST peril of becoming so wedded to Western ways that they, on returning home, find themselves foreigners in their own home land. Their new sympathies are not grateful to their country- men, and the old ways are not pleasant to themselves. They are " betwixt two worlds, one dead, and the other waiting to be born." The Japanese who graduate at American col- leges, returning to their native islands, are free from such untoward conditions. Respon- sive, perhaps too responsive, is the welcome given by their fellow countrymen to the ideas and ideals which they bring out of their West- ern residence. From this international fellowship of col- lege men springs a further indirect force mak- ing for civilization. College men everywhere have a peculiar feeling of camaraderie for one another. This camaraderie is based upon con- ditions more solid than its more obvious and lighter manifestations might lead the careless observer to think. It is based upon a fellow- ship with the higher thoughts, feelings, and relations of humanity. Such a fellowship be- INDIRECT FORCES FOR CIVILIZATION 267 longs to the Chinese no less than to the Japa- nese, and to the Japanese no less than to the American. Baron Kaneko, of Tokyo, speak- ing of the desirability of forming a university club in Tokyo, — a capital where are some fourscore Yale graduates and twoscore Har- vard, — said that the university men of Tokyo could remove any fear of war for unworthy cause between Japan and the United States. The remark was true, and has relations far be- yond Tokyo and even Japan. A further indirect force making for civili- zation is the presence of American teachers in the government schools of Japan and of China. For more than a generation these teachers have been working in Japanese schools. In the last decade a few have entered the government schools of China. These men are usually graduates of American colleges, and in personal character represent the best which the American home or college can give. They may be Christian men, or not ; but if they are they do not use their position to teach the Christian faith, or to impose its principles 268 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST upon those who twice a month are required to worship the tablet of Confucius ; they may teach the English Bible, in informal classes, and to large numbers, but the large attendance arises from the desire to learn English, not to know the Bible. Nevertheless, the presence and the teaching of these men are real, even if indirect, causes of a higher life. They bear the world-sense to a people to many of whom there is no world beyond the great wall or the yellow water. It may be added in passing, that the field for teaching in the government schools of China is one that should appeal to the recent college graduate. The opportunity for human service is rich ; the enlargement of one's conception of life great; and, what the re- cent graduate is commonly obliged to consider, the salary is larger by twofold than he could secure in America. The Young Men's Christian Association is found throughout the Far East. It should, perhaps, be interpreted as a most direct rather than an indirect force for civilization. But, of whatever nature, it represents a mighty power INDIRECT FORCES FOR CIVILIZATION 269 making for human betterment. The organiza- tion is administered in wisdom, inspired by warm personal devotion, and carefully kept free from untoward complications. Its officers in such cities as Tokyo, Kyoto, Peking, and Shanghai represent the best type of young American and oriental manhood. Its buildings already built, or to be built, are centres for the sending forth of the richest forces for preserving men from intellectual disintegration and moral dissipation, and for inspiring them with the highest ideals. To another force allusion should be made. The presence of a simple and noble home in any village or town of the Far East is an ex- ample which represents and helps onward the course of civilization. By those who do not appreciate this fact, the missionary is some- times accused of living in an unfitting luxury. The charge is usually unfounded, and is some- times I fear base. The home of the better people whose life is lived, and whose work is done, in the Far East embodies what the home should embody, — restfulness, happiness, com- 270 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST panionship, recreation, purity, inspiration. It also represents simplicity in furnishing and economy in expenditure ; abundance without wastefulness, carefulness free from penurious- ness. Such a home is a moving example to peoples among whom the idea of the home is lacking, or, if not lacking, takes on unworthy forms. For the home should be made the cen- tre of civilization no less in the Far East than in the Occident. It should be said, in conclusion, that the daily newspaper represents a power promotive of the larger vision and understanding of the nations of the Far East. Only a few years ago all China contained only one daily paper printed in the vernacular, the " Peking Ga- zette." To-day, after thirty years, newspapers are numbered by scores. Japan is richer in daily journals than China. Even if in neither country there is freedom of the press, yet their simple publication enlarges the understanding of all the people. In Peking is a daily news- paper owned and edited by a woman, and a very good paper I know it to be. The papers INDIRECT FORCES FOR CIVILIZATION 271 printed in English help forward the same cause, although somewhat less effectively ; for, with two or three exceptions, they do not represent the best type of journalism. The worth of all these journals as expressing public sentiment constantly increases. INDEX Administrators, Japanese as, 104. Agriculture in India, 203. America in the Pacific, 223. American education vs. Japa- nese, 70. American teacher in the Philip- pines, 245. American teacher in Japan and China, 267. Arnold, Matthew, reference to, 130 ; quotation from, 166. Balance of power in Far East, 34. Baroda, Gaekwar of, quotations from, 205, 207, 210, 216, 217. Barrows, Director, quotations from, 248, 252. Benares, temples in, 214. Bismarck, reference to, 102. Boxer movement, 146, 162. Buddhism, 11. Camaraderie of students, 266. Career of college mau in India, 187. Caste in India, 179; harm of, 209. Chang - Chih - Tung, quotation from, 147. Change of educational purposes of Chinese authorities, 151. Chentung-Liang-Cheng, refer- ence to, 265. China, American teachers in, 267 ; Asiatic, 25 ; climate of, 24 ; Confucianism in, 23 ; con- servatism of, 26 ; for Chinese, 159; gambling in, 132; gov- ernment of, 19, 26; "graft" in, 21 ; grades of education in, 138 ; industrialism in, 165 ; in- fant mortality in, 16 ; lack of society in, 131 ; lack of good teachers in, 54, 154 ; literature of, 24; natural resources of, 24; new education in, 138; opium smoking in, 132 ; prob- lem of, 16. Chinese, army, 125; astuteness of mind of, 27 ; commercial in- tegrity of, 25 ; conception of disease, 17 ; course of study in, schools, 139 ; cowards, 159 currency, 136 ; education, dif- ficulties of, 149 ; family, 126 funerals, 18 ; government, 124 " graft " in, army, 160 ; guilds 128 ; institutions, 123 ; lack of, patriotism, 161 ; laws, 134 menace, 158 ; press, 133 ; pro perty vested in family, 127 scholar, high place of, in so ciety, 152 ; schoolhouses, 143 in Straits Settlements, 258 students, mind of, 144 ; super- stitions, 18 ; teachers, 144 text-books, 143; virility of, 24; worship of Confucius among, 129. Christianity, missionary power of, in education, 148. 274 INDEX Civilization in Philippines de- mands time, 242. Clergymen, small number of, from Indian Christian col- leges, 188. College men in Philippines, 240. Commerce and industry as civil- izers, 263. Commerce as a calling in India, 193. Competition of races in Straits Settlements, 254. Confucius, ethics of, 15, 23 ; wor- ship of, among Chinese, 129. Course of study in Chinese schools, 139. Cromer's Report on Egypt, 52. Curzon's administration in In- dia, 36. Curzon, reference to, 218. Disease, conception of, among Chinese, 17. Education, higher, for women in India, 178 ; Japanese vs. American, 70 ; of girls in Egypt, 55 ; the problem of, in Egypt, 50. Education without religion and with ethics, 95. Educational system in Philip- pines, 246. Egypt, Cromer's Reports on, 52 ; education the problem of, 50 ; education of girls in, 55 ; lack of teachers in, 54 ; Mohamme- dan education in, 51 ; problem of, 50 ; trade schools in, 53. Eliot, President, reference to, 155. England, in India, advantage of rule of, 196 ; in Straits Settle- ments, 254. English colonial government vs. United States government in the Philippines, 237. Ethics, teaching of, in Japan, 14, 66, 100. Eurasians, allusion to, 13. Experimentation, vegetable, in Hawaiian Islands, 231. Filipinos as teachers, 250. Foreign students in America, 265 ; peril of, 266. Gambling in China, 132. Ganges River in religious rites, 215. German goods in the Straits Set- tlements, 255. Germany in the Straits Settle- ments, 254. Government of China, 19. Guilds, Chinese, 128. Hall, Charles Cuthbert, quota- tion from, 221. Hart, Sir Robert, reference to, 21. Hawaiian Islands, inspection of plants and animals in, 22S ; parasites in, 226; vegetable experimentation in, 231. Hindus, division among, 198. Home an aid to civilization, 269. Hospitals, Japanese, 106. India, advantage of English rule in, 196 ; agriculture in, 203 ; anomalousness of England's presence in, 49 ; career of col- lege man in, 187; caste in, INDEX 275 179, 209 ; commercial and ag- ricultural education in, 175 ; Curzon's administration in, 36 ; early marriage in, 179 ; eco- nomic future of, 203; future of, 196; future of women in, 184; higher education for women in, 178; industrialism in, 204 ; lack of sympathy of English residents with natives in, 43 ; national consciousness in, 45 ; need of technical and industrial education in, 169; opposition of parents to edu- cation of daughters in, 180 ; people of, better fitted for self-government, 39 ; people of, ignorance of, 41 ; political freedom in, 47 ; problem of, 36 ; religions in, 214 ; seclusion of women in, 178 ; small num- ber of clergymen from Chris- tian colleges in, 188 ; small salaries of teachers in, 190 ; technical education, value of, in, 170 ; technical schools in, 172 ; universities in, 183 ; un- rest in, temporary causes of, 36 ; unrest in, permanent causes of, 39 ; women as teach- ers in, 185. Indian, commerce as a calling for the, 193 ; journalism as a profession for the, 192 ; law as a profession for the, 189 ; medicine as a profession for the, 191 ; mind, 171 ; students, poverty of, 171 ; teaching as a profession for the, 189. Indirect forces for civilization in the Far East, 263. Ito, policy of, in Korea, 30. Japan, American teachers in, 267 ; as a colonizing and ex- panding power, 112; as a world-power, 8, 146 ; crisis in, 3 ; education without religion and with ethics in, 95; ex- clusion of dogmatic religious instruction in, 98 ; influence of, in China, 146 ; leadership in, 115 ; relation of, to Korea, 28 ; simple life in, 4 ; simple life, forces opposing, 5 ; simple life, forces promoting, 9 ; small area of cultivation in, 113; small number of emigrants from, 118; Tanamoto's method of religious teaching in, 98 J teaching of ethics in, 14; wealth in, 5. Japanese, an adjustable people, 115 ; as administrators, 104 ; budget for education, 75 ; courtesy the foe of efficiency, 110; education vs. American, 70 ; education in ethics of, 66 ; family, 67 ; government in Korea vs. United States gov- ernment in the Philippines, 238 ; greater love of, for na- tion than for territory, 113 ; a hardy race, 114 ; hospitals, 106 ; lack of sense of value of time, 107 ; libraries, 76 ; mind, 61 ; mind, absence of Greek in training of, 65 ; mind in evo- lutionary process, 68 ; obedi- ence of, 117 ; passion for prog- ress, 113 ; racial purity of, 12 ; rescript on education, 70, 71 ; schools, examinations in, 81 ; schools, fees in, 85 ; schools large attendance in, 85; 276 INDEX schools, popularity of subjects, in, 80 ; schoolhouses, 73 ; self- restraint of, 10 ; students, dor- mitories for, 90; students, laboriousness of, 91 ; students, orderliness of, 93 ; students, personal relation of, to teach- ers, 83 ; students, poverty of, 88 ; students, sports of, 92 ; teachers, 72 ; teachers, pension system of, 79; teachers, per- sonal relations to students of, 83 ; teachers, salaries of, 77 ; teachers, -women as, 72 ; uni- versities, expenses of students in, 89. Jones, J. P., quotation from, 212. Journalism, an aid to civilization, 270 ; as a profession in India, 192. Kaneko, Baron, reference to, 267. Korea, a belated nation, 29; doom of, 35 ; lack of leader- ship in, 31 ; problem of, 4 ; relation of, to Japan, 28; world's interest in, 33. Lack of good teachers in China, 154. Ladd, George Trumbull, quota- tions from, 101, 102. Law as a profession for the In- dian, 189. Leaf-hoppers in Hawaiian Is- lands, 226. Malay race, 257. Mandarin, injustice of court of, 20. Manila, cost of living in, 236. Marriage, early, in India, 179. Medicine as a profession for the Indian, 191. Memory, training of, 54. Mitsui family, reference to, 5. Mohammedan education in Egypt, 51. Mohammedan education of girls, 55. Morse, H. B., quotation from 136. Nakashima, text-books of, 15. New education in China, 138. " North China Daily News," quotation from, 133. Okura, allusion to, 7. Opium smoking in China, 132. Pacific, America in the, 223. Peril of foreign students in America, 266. Philippines, American teacher in, 245 ; civilization demands time in, 242 ; college men in, 240 ; educational system in, 246 ; great men in, 235 ; opti- mism of men in, 241. Productivity of nature in tropica, 225. Racial purity of the Japanese, 12. Religions in India, 214. Scholarship, respect for, in Ja- pan, 13. Science as a national protector, 225. INDEX 277 Seclusion of •women in India, 178. Self-restraint of Japanese, 10. Small salaries of teachers in In- dia, 190. Smith, Governor-General, quota- tion from, 245. Straits Settlements, Chinese in, 258 ; competition of races in, 254; England in, 254; Ger- many in, 254 ; German goods in, 255. Students, camaraderie of, 266. Superstition among Chinese, 18. Tait, Archhishop, quotation from, 3. Teachers, American, in Japan and China, 267 ; lack of, in China, 54, 154; lack of, in Egypt, 54 ; women as, in In- dia, 185. Teaching as a profession for the Indian, 189. Technical schools in India, 172. Townsend, Meredith, quotation from, 244. Trade schools in Egypt, 53. United States government in the Philippines vs. English colo- nial government, 237. United States government in the Philippines vs. Japanese gov- ernment in Korea, 238. Universities, expense of Japa- nese students in, 89 ; in India, 183. Unrest in India, causes of, 36. Vassar, Matthew, reference to, 186. World, government of weaker nations of, by stronger, 33. Young Men's Christian Associa- tions in the Far East, 26S. CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A IUN 12 1909 )££&E!. 0F CONGRESS I'uiu^HIIIIIHIIIIIIIIIin n ,0 022 110 981 8