part in obedience to one central will, not for its
individual advantage, but in order to make a beautiful whole. 'So it is
with our games,' he said, 'every man plays his part not for the sake of
personal advantage, but so that his side may win; and thus the citizen
is taught to sink his own interests in those of the community.' I
told him the Chinese did not like symphonies, and Western music was
intolerable to them for this very reason. Western musicians seem to
us to take a musical idea which is only worthy of a penny whistle (and
would be very good indeed if played on a penny whistle!); and they
sit down and make a score of it twenty yards broad, and set a hundred
highly-trained and highly-paid musicians to play it. It is the contrast
between the tremendous apparatus and waste of energy on one side, and
the light and playful character of the business itself on the
other which makes me, a Chinaman, as incapable of appreciating your
complicated games as I am of appreciating the complicated symphonies of
the Germans or the elaborate rules which their students make with
regard to the drinking of beer. We like a man for taking his fun and
not missing a joke when he finds it by chance on his way, but we cannot
understand his going out of his way to prepare a joke and to make
arrangements for having some fun at a certain fixed date. This is why
we consider a wayside song, a tune that is heard wandering in the summer
darkness, to be better than twenty concerts."

"What did that professor say?" I asked.

"He said that if I were to stay long enough in England and go to a
course of concerts at the Chelsea Town Hall, I would soon learn to
think differently. And that if cricket and football were introduced
into China, the Chinese would soon emerge out of their backwardness and
barbarism and take a high place among the enlightened nations of the
world. I thought to myself as he said this that your games are no
doubt an excellent substitute for drill, but if we were to submit to so
complicated an organisation it would be with a purpose: in order to turn
the Europeans out of China, for instance; but that organisation without
a purpose would always seem to us to be stupid, and we should no more
dream of organising our play than of organising a stroll in the twilight
to see the Evening Star, or the chase of a butterfly in the spring. If
we were to decide on drill it would be drill with a vengeance and with a
definite aim; but we sho