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Orient, names that stand out above all others are the names of missionaries, but there are missionaries in the Far East who should not have been sent there, or, at least, not before they had been properly tested, trained and disciplined. The average missionary is a victim of environment. He is usually a man with an intense conviction and a great desire to serve. His convictions are first formed in Sunday School, and they develop along the lines of the hymn:

"Far, far away, in heathen darkness dwelling,

Millions of souls forever may be lost,

Who, who will go, Salvation's story telling,

Who, who will go, counting not the cost."

This is hardly a song that a diplomat would sing, and yet every missionary to the Far East must be a diplomat. Even if he thinks they dwell in heathen darkness out there, he should not allow this thought to govern his attitude toward them.

When the missionary leaves his native land, a pure-blooded provincial both in national patriotism and in religion, knowing nothing of international questions and racial aspirations, he is likely to make some very grave mistakes, especially in the Orient. His chief desire is to make Christians, and to make as good a showing as possible. When the missionary reaches his chosen field he is immediately shut up with a particular people. He usually becomes one of this particular people. He absorbs their prejudices and takes sides with them in their resentment of real or imaginary wrongs done to them by other nations. Quite often, sometimes openly, he sides with them in revolution and rebellion. It is very natural that he should do so, because his desire is to make them feel that he is their big brother. In this way he often gets outside of his sphere and becomes a troublesome factor in international relations.

It is very noticeable that the missionary who goes to Korea becomes Korean in his sympathies, and so likewise, the

Japanese missionary takes the point of view of the Nipponese and the missionary to China sympathizes with the Chinese. Before any man or woman is sent to the Orient as a messenger of Christianity he should become thoroughly acquainted with the history of Oriental affairs in order that he might safeguard himself against accepting without question the prejudices of the particular people to whom he is sent. He should be trained to the point where he cannot be governed just by what he sees and hears.

We all agree that a certain party in Japan must change its tactics in the Far East, but we also agree that missionaries and missionary societies should not take part in the anti-Japanese propaganda that is sweeping America with an ever increasing bitterness. We all regretted the recent action of the Presbyterian Church at its national assembly when it took the word of a few missionaries, and, without weighing the facts, passed sweeping resolutions condemning Japan. This action was taken up by the yellow press and did a lot to weaken and retard the cause of a constructive peace. In passing the resolution the assembly regarded itself as working in the interests of righteousness and peace. Strange to say, a few months later, a body in the same church passed resolutions condemning the Irish revolutionists and accusing the Roman Catholic Church of trying to retain Dublin for the Papal headquarters in case Rome deposed the Pope.

The growing tendency of many missionaries in the Orient to take sides against Japan is the logical outcome of the historical attitude of missionaries toward unchristian nations. This attitude has always been a patronizing one. They regarded themselves as the envoys of a higher civilization and unconsciously expected a certain form of homage from the poor heathen to whom they were sent. When Japan shook off its long sleep, and with astonishing rapidity, took its place alongside the great powers of the earth, and became one of the five great powers, the ideas of many missionaries became bewildered. Suddenly they

DEPARTMENT ON ORIENTAL AFFAIRS

were surrounded by the things of Western civilization. What they formerly regarded as one of the nations in "heathen darkness dwelling" had become a nation of science, of art, of literature, of statesmen-with a navy and an army equal in training and efficiency with the navies and armies of the Occident. Along with this advancement Christianity came to be recognized as a religion but not as the only true religion. A fine national consciousness was developed. The missionary found himself face to face with new conditions. He had to come down from his high place and the direction of his religious appeal had to be on a

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level and not down to the lost heathen below. Of course he didn't like this, and could not adjust himself to the new situation. The result is that our missionaries would now sooner go to central Africa or to inland China than to Japan. They are afraid they will not be treated with that spirit of deference and respect that should rightfully be accorded people of a higher order of civilization. To the biased judgment of many missionaries and missionary societies, whose principal purpose is to save the heathen from eternal damnation, the Japanese have become altogether too self-assured for heathens. -C. H. F.

SIDELIGHTS

great many men who pose as ex

Aperts on Oriental matters spend

most of their time backing up their pet ideas with carefully chosen evidence. It is very rare, in this particular field to find a man who considers all the evidence before he comes to his conclusions. I think there is a term in logic to describe such a common method of reasoning but I cannot recall it just now. It should be the very serious duty of every student of the Orient to start out with an unbiased, neutral attitude of mind.

We naturally look for sound leadership to the men in our midst who have lived in the Orient, but we are beginning to learn that such men are the poorest leaders. They generally follow the bent that their own particular experiences in the Far East have given them. It is very easy to visit the Orient and come back knowing less than you did before you went.

In the State Department the other day I remarked to an official in The Division of Far Eastern Affairs, that the only way to learn the truth was to visit the Orient. He laughingly remarked that that is just the way for the average Ameri

can NOT to learn the truth. Most Americans who live in the Orient get the fault of becoming one-sided. They are governed by their first impressions. If they do not have a pet slant before they sail, they soon get one, and generally a very crooked one shortly after they arrive at their destination.

I learned the other day of a certain rich American, who, when traveling in the Far East, was given a dinner in Tokio. Не had just arrived from Korea. At this function, a prominent Japanese, for whom many of us have a great deal of respect, made a speech, expressing some excellent sentiments regarding co-operation between Japan and America. The honored American guest, in a report of the dinner to some Americans who were interested in the Orient, made the following fair and statesmanlike (?) remarks:

"When you come to Japan you will hear similar sentiments expressed. Mr. made a fine speech, full of good sentiments, and it sounded very well but that is all there was to it-sound! A lot of such talk is heard in the Orient, but it is only polite bluff."

-C. H. F.

China's New Era

By Charles T. Paul

(Mr. Paul is the president of the College of Missions, Indianapolis, Indiana. He is one of those far-seeing men who regard the force of foreign missionary enterprise as a builder of a finer Christian internationalism. All who wish to learn about the effect of missions on the life of China would find it profitable to read his pamphlet on China recently published by the college above mentioned.)

"The Chinese question is the world question of the twentieth century." "China, not Christianized, will be civilization's greatest menace."

"The common mind of China was never so accessible as it is today."

"If we give our best, the 'Yellow Peril' will become the world's golden hope."

T

HE great war has subsided, but China remains-the political colossus of Asia, the crux of the non-Christian world. Embracing almost a fourth of the human race, she is still what she has been for centuries, potentially the mightiest of peoples. Her conscious magnitude confronts alike the lately victorious and vanquished nations. She endures supreme among them all in population, in historical continuity, and in the bigness of her undetermined destiny.

As China survived the passing of the great empires of antiquity-Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome-so now she witnesses the downfall of powerful modern dynasties. The collapse of European powers has provoked in her a new realization of her unspent vital forces; of her age-long solidarity, though often menaced, yet unbroken; of her national spirit awaiting to the call of a new world order.

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and hope of what China might become, or might do, if she should arise in her strength with the tides of modern reform.

At the very moment when the peace of Paris is stilling the Teuton storm in Europe, China looms larger than ever on the horizon of the Orient. How can her immense population be integrated into a scheme of world democracy and brotherhood? That is the problem of the future, which far from solving, or even mitigating, the war has only il lumined with vaster meanings than even the clearest-eyed discerned. With Germany subdued, Bolshevism checked, and Russia working out her own destiny, the biggest remaining question of the world is this: What is to become of China, the most numerous and most virile nation on earth? Careful students are declaring that what happens within the next ten years among China's 400,000,000 people will, more than any other factor, determine the whole course of interracial and international relations, not only in Asia but between East and West. Shall China become militaristic and Materialistic, or democratic and Christian?

Old China formerly broke with the past in the revolution of 1911-1912 when she dethroned the Manchus and began her struggle to rise from a medieval empire to a modern republic. She is still in the throes of that struggle, which, during the world conflict, has been aggravated by widespread outbreaks of banditry and revolt, by the presumptious immergence of independent provincial governments, and, more serious still, the disseverance of the North and South, due to dissensions among political leadYet these movements are regarded

ers.

CHINA'S NEW ERA

by those who know China best as temporary disturbances, which will not essentially effect the national unity.

It can be truthfully said that China has a forward look. That in itself is a significant victory for Oriental eyes. This great nation no longer locates its golden age in the unmeasured æons of a fabulous antiquity under the tutelage of mythical heroes, and gods, but in the new order which is coming, which the people themselves must help to create, by the adoption and adaptation of the new forces of civilization. The whole country is indeed in the crucible, undergoing the agonies of transformation.

There can be no doubt that Christianity brought democracy to China. It is because the present upheaval and reformation are so largely the result of Christian impact, that the Christian Church has incurred toward China a special obligation, which cannot be evaded without violating the fundamental principle of Christianity. To create a desire for a new life without making any attempt to satisfy it, is like refusing food to hungry children. be instrumental in swinging a great nation loose from its moorings, and not to provide it with continued guidance, leadership and co-operation, to the utmost limit of the nation's need and the Church's possibility, is to betray a divine trust.

To

China needs help because the restraints and sanctions of her ancestral religions have been relaxed. There is an alarming drift toward moral chaos, religious indifference, atheism and materialism. In hundreds of cities Buddhist pagodas are smitten with decay. The taoist priest and his magic is by the new learning being laughed out of court. The fettering forms of the prudential ethics of Confucianism have been shattered be

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yond repair and beyond regret. These destructive processes leave but an aching void unless they can be followed by constructive spiritual and moral rehabilitation. What force other than the Christian dynamic will meet China's need? Wise Christian leaders must be raised up to guide the nation through the present social chaos. Christian churches must take the place of deserted temples.

Though the new China is only eight years old it has already entered into a new era of republican history. That be gan August the Fourteenth, 1917, when the republic entered the war on the side of the Allies. Then, "for the first time since treaty relations with the powers had been established, Chinese diplomatic action swung beyond the walls of Peking and embraced the whole world with its scope." Ranging herself with the defenders of freedom, China helped to crush autocracy by sending to Europe a quarter of a million of her stalwart sons-the great labor battalions that toiled behind the lines, putting their magnificent strength under the heaviest burdens of the war. A new era is signalled by the fact that China has now taken an honorable place in the family of nations. At the Peace Conference her plenipotentiaries have ably pleaded for their country's sake. "The magnificent fact in the situation," a recent writer observes, "is that China came into the conference on her own feet. She was not barred as a vassal state, or received as in any way subordinate to any of the Great Powers."

It is at the dawn of this new era, at the entrance of the greatest of nonChristian lands into a league of nations founded on Christian principles, that the call comes for a vast increase of Christian forces within her borders.

The Unity of Asia

By Tyler Dennett

(We were glad to receive this very interesting and unusual article from Mr. Dennett, and de commend it to our readers, especially to Californians who_wish to form an intelligent_conception of conditions in Asia. Mr. Dennett, who has lived in the Far East, is a recognized student of the things about which he writes in this article.)

A

T first glance it will appear that there is no unity in Asia. The Chinese and the Koreans are arrayed against Japan. The Filipinos shiver a little when they are classed with the other races of Asia as Orientals. The Malay are Mohammedan and were inclined to seek affiliation with the Near East rather than with that part of the world which the American usually thinks of as Asia. India appears to be standing alone, bound not at all to China or to Japan.

Just after Japan defeated Russia, the former had it in her power to become the leader of the tinted races. Or rather, she had it in her power to secure the acknowledgement of this leadership from the Asiatics as well as from the Occidentals. She forfeited the opportunity by her treatment of Korea, and has again alienated the other yellow races by her actions in China. To point out this fact, however, leads us also to recognize that Japan could bring about the unity of Asia almost over night if she were to reverse her present imperialistic policy toward the other Oriental nations. The unity already exists; it is merely in partial eclipse.

Asia is already a unity in at least three respects. The Asiatic races are as much a unity as are the Anglo-Saxon peoples, for they have at least as much a common source for their culture as the Anglo-Saxons. There is a partial unity of religion, and there is the third unity created by the fact that the white races have clearly drawn the color line and, by a process of exclusion, are forcing the yellow races to regard themselves as objects of a common injustice, oppression and greed.

The cultural unity of Asia is most

marked in Japan, Korea and China, which have a common heritage of tradition, literature and art. The spread of Buddhism from its home in India through Malaysia to Siam, China and Japan, has affected a spiritual unity which even the traveler does not fail to recognize. The steady encroachments of the European powers upon these people have given Asia a common cause which is recognized far more widely than the Western world comprehends. Many a

time have I heard members of the Asiatic races assert their conviction that the time is not far distant when the Asiatic races will have to stand together to defend their common rights against the exploitation of the white races.

The

At the present moment it appears as though China were hopelessly alienated from Japan, but one must not overlook the fact that since the death of Yuan Shi Kai, China has been continuously under a government which officially, at least, has inclined toward Japan. so-called "Northern" government, which is largely composed of the military clique, has walked hand in hand with Japan throughout the war, and for the most part willingly. There are also the beginnings of an approachment tween Japan and India. There is no inconsiderable amount of Bombay capital invested in Japan, and in the last five years Japanese products have practically captured the bazaar trade of India which was formerly held by Germany. There has also been an active propaganda in Shanghai, in which representatives of all three races have joined, to effect an understanding between Japan, China and

India.

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Asia has obviously reached the crossroads in her development. She prefers

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