On reaching Shanghai I had to part with my travelling companion and start the journey home alone, but as events proved my steamer was delayed, and I had several weeks in which to visit the coastal provinces of Chekiang, Fukien and Kwantung, and to study the student movement, as described in the concluding chapters of this book.
Chapter II
The Model Governor—Yen Hsi-Shan
“Who is the true and who is the false statesman?
“The true statesman is he who brings order out of disorder; who first organizes and then administers the government of his own country; and having made a nation, seeks to reconcile the national interest with those of Europe and of mankind. He is not a mere theorist, nor yet a dealer in expedients; the whole and the parts grow together in his mind; while the head is conceiving, the hand is executing. Although obliged to descend to the world, he is not of the world. His thoughts are fixed not on power, or riches, or extension of territory, but on an ideal state, in which all the citizens have an equal chance of health and life, and the highest education is within the reach of all, and the moral and intellectual qualities of every individual are freely developed, and ‘the idea of good’ is the animating principle of the whole. Not the attainment of freedom alone, or of order alone, but how to unite freedom with order is the problem which he has to solve.
“The statesman who places before himself these lofty aims has undertaken a task which will call forth all his powers.”—Benjamin Jowett.