Revolt Against China's Failure and Decay: In What Way It is Anti-foreign: At Bottom Truly Patriotic But Still Unmoulded By Gronce In 1919 when the Student Movement was organized, I had the un- hay usual opportunity of being close to its executives, to watch the development of the thought and the tactics of the students, to realize their aspirations and to sympathize with their successes and failures. What hopeful days were those!' Word had come from Paris that China had been betrayed and the youth Jof the country responded with an ardour never before released in this country. Bor a fortnight the struggle between youth and the Government continued, a struggle which the issue was clear, the lofty, the ideal, patriotism In the end, the students achieved their goal:' the Versailles Treaty was not signed. China had not Jeonsented to the exclusion of the Shantung settlement from the treaty.
The Chance of Service At the last moment of the Student Strike of those days, youth in China saw a possibility of service Perhaps at no other time opened to it. The young men and women were stirred by the hope that their ixeneration might undo the errors of the Republic, that their generation would establish an honourable:
Government, win international equality and respect. I remember young men and women in those days who would not study abroad because they could not leave the country during the stirring period construction. They would in China to work out its Ilere they watched with the keenest interest the careers of Persia, of Turkey, of Russia, of those states' which were struggling with revolution and transition and which which proven futile and which per-accomplished, might have done! more mischief ' than good, Youth became disillusioned and resentful. It found solace in fantiful theories from the west. Free' love among the students seemed to coincide with a desire to be unfettered. A morbid search for individuality followed this tremendous enthusiasm for social action, Men like Bertram Russell and John, Dewey came to China with new doctrines, pleasing to the ear and. plausible' to youth disgusted with the ways of the world. The Rus-ians filled the land with their literature and their economic and social panaceas. During the days of Jenthusinsm, Christianity seemed to be a hope in the darkness and thousands of students turned toward with joy. But in the ensuing days of bitterness, it seemed to be religion of hypocrisy and falsehood, a religion which had no effect upon the realities of life, It is only in youth that one can reach such heights of spiritual exfal tation and such depths of bitterness and misery. Shame played its part. The foreigners criticized, China and each youthful Chinese read the criticism as a reflection on is_mother. The outery against Lincheng oily brought from the Chinese a sense of covering the body of the drunken father whose nakedness they wished not to see. Much that angered foreigners. in those days, the petty interference officials, the vexatious colouring of the truth, is so clear now when one reviews the spiritual sufferings of the youth of a nation which sees: no way out of the chaos which besets their land. were finding a solution.
Misunderstood No question of Bolshevism was even mooted then except by those too ignorant to understand the full meaning of the 1919 movement. It was Chinese, so Chinese that even returned students played no part in it Itswas the youth of the country, the natively-educated youth, finding hope for the future in single political success. They had gone through an ordeal and were ready to meet all the dragons which beset their land. They were imbued with the spirit, not of the Kuorintang revolution but of the literary revolution. They would not_unmake China but remake her. They would not destroy the old, but adapt the old to a rejuvenated nation. They would not ape the ways of the west but rather utilize the fruits of western culture for the benefit of a revivified Middle Kingdom,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.