he West. That as
a preliminary correction. I say nothing yet about Japan. But I shall
have more to say, I hope, about China.

II

NANKING

The Chinese, one is still told, cannot and will not change. On the other
hand, Professor Ross writes a book entitled _The Changing Chinese_. And
anyone may see that the Chinese educated abroad are transformed, at any
rate externally, out of all recognition. In Canton I met some of the
officials of the new Government; and found them, to the outward sense,
pure Americans. The dress, the manners, the accent, the intellectual
outfit--all complete! Whether, in some mysterious sense, they remain
Chinese at the core I do not presume to affirm or deny. But an external
transformation so complete must imply _some_ inward change. Foreign
residents in China deplore the foreign-educated product. I have met some
who almost gnash their teeth at "young China." But this seems rather
hard on China. For nearly a century foreigners have been exhorting her,
at the point of the bayonet, to adopt Western ways and Western ideas.
And when she begins to do so, the same people turn round and accuse her
of unpardonable levity, and treachery to her own traditions. What _do_
foreigners want? the Chinese may well ask. I am afraid the true answer
is, that they want nothing but concessions, interest on loans, and trade
profits, at all and every cost to China.

But I must not deviate into politics. What suggested this train of
thought was the student-guide supplied me at Nanking by the American
missionary college. There he was, complete American; and, I fear I must
add, boring as only Americans can bore. Still, he showed me Nanking, and
Nanking is worth seeing, though the interest of it is somewhat tragic. A
wall 20 to 40 feet thick, 40 to 90 feet high, and 22 miles in circuit (I
take these figures on trust) encloses an area larger than that of any
other Chinese city. But the greater part of this area is fields and
ruins. You pass through the city gate in the train, and find yourself in
the country. You alight, and you are still in the country. A carriage
takes you, in time, to the squalid village, or series of villages, where
are housed the 350,000 inhabitants of modern Nanking. Among them are
quartered the khaki-clad soldiers of new China, the new national flag
draped at the gate of their barracks. Meantime old China swarms,
unregenerate, in the narrow little streets, chaffering, chattering,
laughing i