To the Editor of the "Norra-Cuina Datty News."
Sir,—Apropos of Mr. Warren's very able articles in favour of British education (never too late to mend), I came across the following interesting side-light in one of the numbers of the principal Organ of the New Thought Movement in China,—
"The fourth cause of the New Flood in China is the spread of knowledge by better communications and increase of students who have studied abroad, and have returned to their native land. The old dogma, 'The B. A. knows everything without leaving his own doorstep,' is now derided as a disgraceful Environment has a__ powerfal effect on thought. When the scholars of Constantinople fled to the free City of Florence, they caused the Renaissance. The philosopher, Descartes. said that travel was a powerful educator because one saw the different values placed on things by different countries, and could, therefore, compare the new ideas with his own. Thus the spirit "f criticism was born. Not all returned students amount to anything; still there are some who have made Those who return from France chiefly import social ideas, while those who come back from America chiefly contribute scientific thought. It is the outcome of these two influences that is at the bottom of the present intellectual move ment."
_Notice particularly the last few lines of the quotation. The absence of a certain country from Mr. Lo Chia-lan's essay should cause our nationals "'furiously to think."
I am, etc., D. MacG. Shanghai, May 7.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.