"We asked a leading Revolutionist the other day," said the writer quoted, "where the new men who are being sent to all the inland cities as magistrates came from. We supposed they were mostly men of the old magistrate class who were being reappointed, but he said 'no.' The bulk of them were young men who had received a modern education and who on examination proved themselves most fit. But for them, he said, there would have been no Revolution. Some had been educated at the expense of the Central Government, some by the provinces, and many at their own expense, but all with a view to obtaining official employment afterwards. This they failed to get, as the offices were only open to those who could afford to purchase them, so they determined to take them, and they have done it. It was not that they desired the spoils of office, but, like Napoleon, they felt that the tools should go to the workmen, and that they could serve their country better than the Manchus and Money Bags whom they wished to supersede."
Education has thus proved in China to be another name for revolution, and revolution means reform. The chance of the reformers has now come: we must wait for their reforms. Now is not the time to tell each other whether we shall see all that we may expect to see—that time will come in due course. But we know that whilst they have had their lights under this national bushel, the real reformers have succeeded in bringing the word "reform" to every one's lips in China. The assertion is made in a broad sense. During the past decade and a half every one has been adjuring some one else to reform, and each seemed to be pointing out the true way. This was the result of the working of the reformers, who were there toiling away under greatest odds and at some risk to their own lives, but who now have full power in the land. But what is the genius of any reform, and what are the elements which ensure its success? The celebrated German philosopher, winner of the Nobel prize, Professor Eucken, writes: "The kernel of reform usually consists in the establishment of an essential, original and natural foundation, entailing the elimination of a network of artificialities, superfluities, and complications." This is true when we glance at the reformers of olden times who in turn harked back to a simpler state when elemental principles stood out more distinctly. Confucius and Mencius, as all Chinese students are aware, referred constantly to the three great kings when the rulers desired only the good of the people. The American people, when rebelling against the oppression of Great Britain, sought to restore the status of citizenship as it was supposed to be in the Mother Country. They fought for old-time Saxon freedom. Then came their reforms.
And so with the Chinese now. First, they must get the essential, original, and natural foundations—of liberty and justice. To plant in China ideas and manners and customs and things, however, which for centuries have held good in the West will not make in China for the best the people are capable of. They will be alien. To give to the Chinese an education only along lines laid down in the West as the best for men in the West would not guarantee the best being drawn out of the Chinese. There must be a commingling of the best the West has to offer with that which has been proved best for China unquestioned through the centuries of her wonderful history. It may or may not be a mistake of modern educationists to pound away only with Western subjects in educating the Chinese, not only not giving any heed to the preservation of the good in Chinese education, but openly dissuading its continuance. This I consider to be one of the weak points in the Republican propaganda—the excessive out-reaching for Western education at the expense of all that really matters in the Chinese national life. The Republican outlook is everywhere filled with all things foreign. Every Revolutionist had shown that he must have a foreign outlook—and that, perhaps, in time to come may develop to be an outlook totally unsuited to China's teeming millions.
So far as the leaders have gone, however, they have made no great mistakes. The reformers, at all events, are now given the chance to show what they can do. If they are earnest in the declaration in favour of a Republic, the United States would seem the proper model, mutatis mutandis, to be copied. As the Emperor has been proved powerless to hold in subjection the provinces of the Empire, there is a similarity between them and the American colonies when the latter separated from the British Government to establish one of their own.
But whatever their pattern, it will be no easy matter practically to work out immediate reforms in this country—that they will be able to keep to any one plan, however, seems hardly possible.
CHAPTER XX
THE OUTLOOK FOR REFORM
And in the political whirl at present it is impossible to foretell what will be the aim of the Republican party.
As it stands now, however, their aim is not merely to overthrow the despised Manchu Dynasty and to restore China's former glory. It may be said, in a word, that the republican ideal of China is the right of world citizenship for the nation. Dr. Wu Ting Fang, in his masterly address to foreigners, said: "We are fighting to be men in the world; we are fighting to pass off an oppressive, officious, and tyrannous rule that has beggared and disgraced China, obstructed and defied the foreign nations, and set back the hands of the clock of the world."