if
you are not to outrage the Chinese ethical code. If you speak to a
Chinaman in a way that transgresses the code, he will laugh, because
your words must be taken as spoken in jest if they are not to constitute
an offence.

Once I thought that the students to whom I was lecturing were not as
industrious as they might be, and I told them so in just the same words
that I should have used to English students in the same circumstances.
But I soon found I was making a mistake. They all laughed uneasily,
which surprised me until I saw the reason. Chinese life, even among the
most modernized, is far more polite than anything to which we are
accustomed. This, of course, interferes with efficiency, and also (what
is more serious) with sincerity and truth in personal relations. If I
were Chinese, I should wish to see it mitigated. But to those who suffer
from the brutalities of the West, Chinese urbanity is very restful.
Whether on the balance it is better or worse than our frankness, I shall
not venture to decide.

The Chinese remind one of the English in their love of compromise and in
their habit of bowing to public opinion. Seldom is a conflict pushed to
its ultimate brutal issue. The treatment of the Manchu Emperor may be
taken as a case in point. When a Western country becomes a Republic, it
is customary to cut off the head of the deposed monarch, or at least to
cause him to fly the country. But the Chinese have left the Emperor his
title, his beautiful palace, his troops of eunuchs, and an income of
several million dollars a year. He is a boy of sixteen, living peaceably
in the Forbidden City. Once, in the course of a civil war, he was
nominally restored to power for a few days; but he was deposed again,
without being in any way punished for the use to which he had been put.

Public opinion is a very real force in China, when it can be roused. It
was, by all accounts, mainly responsible for the downfall of the An Fu
party in the summer of 1920. This party was pro-Japanese and was
accepting loans from Japan. Hatred of Japan is the strongest and most
widespread of political passions in China, and it was stirred up by the
students in fiery orations. The An Fu party had, at first, a great
preponderance of military strength; but their soldiers melted away when
they came to understand the cause for which they were expected to fight.
In the end, the opponents of the An Fu party were able to enter Peking
and change the Governm