China under the Search-Light. By Wu. Arthur Cornaby. In cloth, 8y0., 250 pp.
1 'T. Fisher Unwin, Shanghai Kelly & Walsh, La, 1901 (6s.).
Books that deal with the Far Eastern Question and which, at the same time, introduce the reader to the life and habits of the Chinese, multiply thick and fast. Before we have quite made up our minds as to the reliability of the inferences which one writer draws from his data, we are asked to entertain the opinions of second and a third. It is gratifying to know that most of those who ask us to read their books are not unfamiliar with the subjects they have undertaken to discuss, for their authors have lived many years in China and have enjoyed every facility for acquainting themselves with the facts they relate, and for studying the problems they discuss, To mention no others, three well-known gentlemen have thought fit, and have therefore deemed it necessary to record the tragedy of last ear, The title of the last of these books, written by Mr. Cornaby—the latest writer of the three—is somewhat ambitious. China under the Search-light" suggests that a very clear light has been thrown upon China and all her works, aad by inference—though this may be repudiated—that the hook under review is the searchlight which reveals China to us. That this is so every reader who is more or less familiar with the facts will himself decide.
One fault—and not a little one—which we have to find with the books that have been placed before us lately is that they are without an index. Mr. Selby's "As the Chinese See Us" is also without an index. We may assume that the authors are eager to get their books into the market, to seize on "the psychological moment," so to speak, in order that their books may sell, whilst the interest is alive, which is itself a perfectly laudable motive. But by so doing the writers seem to assume
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.