It is exceedingly wholesome for those of us who live in Peking, and wha are subjected to the city's influences for months and years at a time, to get away occasionally and look back at the old Tartar capital through the eyes of Chinese other than Pekingese. Who soon come to understand that not all of the sons of Han, and a very few of the sons of Tang, are convinced that all things Pekingese are best. Once south of the Yangtzckiang it is evident that if the North is China, the South is not; and that if both the North and South have an equally good claim to being Chinese, we must first of all make up our minds to allow for wide ditferences of temperament, of standards, of ways of thinking, and to) abandon the usual foreign practice of measuring the Chinese people and Chinese affairs by a common tule, if we are to have any understanding of their inter-relations.
Tas Picrers ano Tar.
For a week in Canton I have been talking to people who are convinced that Peking is nothing but a ruinous Manchu fortress, the last stronghold of conservatism, and corruption, retained and defended by the conservative and corrupt through the support of a Diplomatic Body nearly as moss-grown as the city walls. In Peking for many mouths I have talked with people who regard Canton as the home of all that is radical and irregular, the breeding ground of political ftlippancies. In Peking one sees Canton as the Pekingese see it. In Canton the Cantonese perspective upon the Northern metropolis naturally becomes the visitor's " perspective.—Having gained both points of view and having escaped from both for a moment, the student of Chinese affairs is inclined to believe that both attitudes are slightly unjust and that the outsider's chief responsibility in this land is to be exceedingly charitable to the man ay the community whose point of In Peking, where every one interested in Chinese affairs had been suffering severely from ennui for many weeks prior to my departure, the prospects of witnessing something violent in Canton seemed very bright. The Cantonese in the North promised a genuine upheaval. In Shanghai the pro-phossies of impending trouble were even more insistent, and Hongkong was all agog over the Customs questions.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.