China - The Pity of It Book

Text extracted from opening pages of book: CHINA Tltti PITY OF IT J. 0. P. BLAND DOUBl. KPAY, DORAN AND COMPANY, INC. KN CITY, NKW YORK 1932 Printed in Grtat Brfttla CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I Introductory I II The Washington Conference and After 8 III The Influence of the Cantonese 26 IV The Cult and Legend of Sun Yat-sen 43 V The Missionary Factor 69 VI China's Modern Students 113 VII East and West; Can China be Westernised? 137 VIII China in Recent Literature 154 IX The F. O, School of Thought 176 X Kuomintang Propaganda and Geneva 198 XI The Anatomy of Idealism in Politics 217 XII The Question of Manchuria 232 XIII Geneva and the Far East 262 XIV Is there a Red Peril in China? 273 XV A Survey of Realities 285 XVI Conclusion 325 Index 353 I desire to thank the Editors of the English Review for their courtesy m allowing me to reprint certain passages from articles contributed to that journal at various dates since 1925; also for the encouragement which I have continually received at their hands in setting forth views, in regard to the course of events in the Far East, which the exigencies of our political circumstances have com bined to make unfashionable and sometimes un palatable Sn official circles. I have also to thank the Editors of the Literary Supplement of The Times y of the National Review and the Atlantic Monthly , for permission to repro duce certain extracts from articles originally pub lished in their columns, J, 0. P. BLAND, CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY THE purpose of this book is to describe and discuss the forces and tendencies which have chiefly determined the course of events in China since the Washington Con ference of 1921, It is not intended to give any detailed chronological account of these events, but rather to set forth and interpret the dominant causes and results of the anarchical condition of affairs at present existing. In two earlier works, as some of my readers may re collect, I endeavoured to esqplain the permanent causes of unrest which are inseparable from China's deep rooted social system, and my grounds for the belief, which the passing years have fortified, that a democratic or parliamentary form of government is wholly inap plicable to the actual condition of the Chinese people. In the first of those works^ were summarised the causes, economic and political, which had combined to create the situation in which a comparatively insignificant anti dynastic movement succeeded in compelling the abdica tion, of the Manchus and in establishing the Chinese Republic The secondf contained a brief survey of the first ten years of the Republic, tracing the growth of civil war as a profession and the rapid demoralisation of the civil administmtion of the country resulting from the of any effective central authority. The opinions expressed in the second of these attempts * m$ Pmsmt P0lid$$ in China, ( Hememann, 1912.) t CM**, Japan m4 Km^ ( HMnenuwn, 1921.) 1 CHINA: The Pity of It to analyse the forces at work and their probable results were generally regarded at the time of their publication, coincident with the Washington Conference^ as unjusti fiably pessimistic. Belief in the regenerative influence of Western learning was at that time the dominant factor in determining the attitude of the Powers, which found expression in the Washington agreements. The policy of patient conciliation^ thereby inaugurated, was based on the assumption that the new class of Chinese official which had come to the front since the Revolution, the Western-educated Intellectuals, was capable of bringing order out of chaos and giving China, within a compara tively brief space of time, a stable and effective govern ment, organised on Western lines* The widespread acceptance of this assumption was due to the on public opinion of Kuomintang propaganda and to the great influence exercised in political circles, in America and England, by the great missionary and educational organisations. The assumption itself, as events have provRead More