Sir:
I read with great interest the letter from "A Friend of China", published in your Journal for February the sixth. I heartily share his optimism that "the situation now developing may be of decided advantage to all concerned", but I entirely disagree with him in his notion of the ways in which his optimistic dreams are to be realized. He seems to hold that the solution of the Far Eastern question lies in Japan's taking a "responsible and effective direction of China's affairs". That, in my humble judgment, can never be the real solution of the problem.
"A Friend of China" seems to have ignored the important fact that we are now living in an age of national consciousness. He forgets that even the Philippines can not rest contented under the apparently "beneficial" rule of the United States. In this twentieth century no nation can ever hope peacefully to rule over or to interfere with the internal administrative affairs of another nation, however beneficial that rule or that interference may be. The Chinese rational consciousness has exterminated the Manchu rule, and, I am sure, will always resent any foreign rule or "direction".
Moreover, your correspondent has been too drastic in his estimation of the capacity of the Chinese people for self-government and self-development. "The Republic," says he, "held up to the world as evidencing the regeneration of the East has proved, as was bound to be the case, a dismal failure…China as a progressive state has been tried and found wanting. She is incapable of developing herself." So runs his accusation. But let me remind him that the transformation of a vast nation like China cannot be accomplished in a day. Read such books as John Fiske's "The Critical Period of American History", and it will be clear that even the establishment of the American Republic was not achieved by a sudden and miraculous fiat. The Chinese republic has been no more a failure than the American Republic was a failure in those dismal days under th
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