The Far Eastern World
An English Lady in Chinese Turkestan. By Lady Macartney. (Beim. 10s. fid.)
British Far Eastern Policy. By B. Stanley MeCordock, Ph.D. (New York : Columbia -University Press. London : King.
Confucius and- Confucianism. By Richard Wilhelm. (Kegan Japan. By Dr. I. Nitobe. (Bean. --18s.)
Wanderer in Indo-China. By Hermann-Norden. (Witherby.
TILE first, third and fourth hooks tit this-list represent studies of a lifetime : the second is, the outcome of extensive and careful research the last comprises the descriptions and re- flections of an experienced but go-lightly globe-trotter. Is it permissible to deaf Nei* them in a single review ? One may test the question not only by. reference to the conditions of modern book production, which make it impossible to assign space in proportion to labour, but by the presence or absence of some unifying element in the books concerned. As regards the latter point there can be no doubt. The Far Eastern World differs in so many ways from our own that studies of it are unified by that very fact. Each of these books is a pre- sentation of some of the many facets which characterize the fact. Lady Macartney's mode of travel,, for instance, " was just the same as it had been in the days when Marco Polo passed through these parts "—Kashgar—" on his way to the Court of Kublai Khan in the thirteenth century." " Men and boys have their heads. shaved, and they always wear a cap of some description, it being considered rather a disgrace to be seen with the head uncovered : men, women and children and even small babies sleep with their caps on." A girl is married at twelve,- and by the time she is twenty-five she looks an old woman, has probably been married several times and has a large family." To ensure her confinement being easy, as the time draws near, she consults a magician or witch doctor. He makes her whirl round and round a pole in the centre of the room, while he chants incantations to the accom- paniment of a drum beaten by a boy who is his pupil. None of these oddities, it will be agreed, resemble our civilization, though there is one (noted on page 121) which does—namely, that the women's finger nails are coloured scarlet.
In Chinese Turkestan the only other foreigners of political importance besides ourselves have been the Russians, our presence there being largely due to our desire to insulate India from contact with Russia. Lady Macartney brings out this fact, but her entertaining book derives little of its interest from politics. In Professor McCordock's we are steeped in politics. His book, as already indicated, is an elaborate piece of research amongst the documents—only recently made available—of one of the most confused and cynical periods in international history, the period when China was being " opened up." To the specialist the book, with its elaborate footnotes and bibliography, is valuable : the general reader will require courage to read it all, and may, perhaps, be for- given if he feels a certain amount of irritation (as, indeed, the specialist may) at a detachment which insists upon trying to
preserve ethical, balance even during the crisis of 1900, the Siege of Peking and the taking of the Taku Forts (p.. :132). Both general reader and specialist may think, too, that if the author's judiciousness had admitted of eclecticism in quoting authorities, a sharper and, on the whole, a more reliable picture would have resnited. It is certain;for instance, that if the Chinese had been less contemptuous of the West the process of " opening up " would have employed less predatory and less punitiVe methodi. One of the tragedies of history has been that dissimilar civilizations, one calling itself Christian and the other Confucian, should have failed for so long to recognize what is admirable in each. To-day, through books like the late Professor Wilhelm's, they are beginning to. " If we seek," he says in the short one before us, " the central concept which crystallizes the doctrines of Confucius in the oldest sources we find the idea of mankind, humanity, lin- manitarianism, kindness, morality, or however we choose to translate the expression jen." Elsewhere, as the translators of these essays, G. H. and A. P. Daton note, the Professor uses for jen " love." Unfortunately for us this central con- cept has been closely linked with another, that of li, or courtesy, comprising " not merely custom and practice, but the correct expression of a corresponding inner attitude. . . . . For Confucius beautiful manners are the correct ex- pression of beautiful inner impulses. Correct form is, there- fore, something which in its very fundamentals is artistic." In manners makyth man " we have a comparable idea, but one which never acquired comparable scope or influence. It would be an exaggeration to say that in China form is everything, but it is no exaggeration to say that, up to the nineties of last century, it counted for so much as to obscure content, both from Ourselves who were always asking for realities and being, as we thought, humbugged with verisimili-; tude, and from the Chinese; who might have believed in our sincerities if only we could have made them seem less crude.
How the Japanese, helped by being a smaller and more closely knit folk, and (as I think) by the invention of karat -- forty-seven letters which replaced large numbers of Chinese ideograms—effected the compromises and adaptations with which the Chinese are now struggling, Dr. Nitobe shows in his Japan. His admirable book, if to some extent a recapitulation of well-known facts, is a very clear restatement of them ; the later chapters which deal with modern problems, amongst them the vital one of the country's food supply, are par- ticularly helpful. These problems, if in practice difficult, are theoretically straightforward, so that he who runs may read. Yet, closing the book in full appreciation of Japan's approxima- tion to our own ways of life, we remain conscious of the difference which Bushido still represents. Not the least inter- esting of Dr. Nitobe's pages are those in which he explains Bushido (pp. 852-862). In Mr. Norden's book we rush about Indo-China, not unprofitably, in some places exhilaratingly and always with a camera which helps to make our expeditions
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