Tired Radicals, and Other Papers

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ... sent of the Powers, and once her armies were in China it would be hard to dislodge them. All this he told me without any display of agitation. His voice was almost uninflected and his speech gestureless. As he sat at his desk with his long, fine hands hidden in the sleeves of his black silk Chinese coat, he seemed the incarnation of passivity. It required a violent effort to realize that this immobile and imperturbable Chinese had spent four years in an American university, perhaps had rowed with the crew or played on the baseball team. The idea seemed incongruous. Despite his Western knowledge, his mind was tenaciously Chinese. He was detached, impersonal, with a patient, unhurried mental attitude, as though the noisy turmoil of centuries did not count in a nation's destiny. "If the worst comes to the worst," he concluded, "we shall invite Japan to conquer us." I stared. "Invite Japan? That would be the end of China." He smiled indulgently. "You people of the West are so impatient, so--may I say?--immediate. You think in years instead of in centuries. There can be no end of China. "What can the conqueror, as we call him, do? He can make money out of us and for us, and he can rule us--for a time; but he cannot absorb us and we can and will absorb him. I would give the Japanese just fifty years of control; then they would go the way of the Manchus." He went into details. He portrayed a new China growing up vigorously under its supposed Japanese masters. He assumed that under the foreign rule the Chinese would get railroads, telegraphs, factories, schools, and universities, and would become a wealthy and intelligent nation. Every effort of Japan to exploit China would aid China, and though the seat of empire might be at Tokio, the real...