Jan. 25, We have had testimony borne to us during the past week or so of the quite unusual influence exerted on the mind of Chinese students by the Hon. Bertrand Russell while on his visit to this country Jast your. There is no mistaking the fact that he is extraordinarily popular with this section of the Chinese people and it is worth while trying to discover what were the elements in his philosophy which appealed so powerfully to impressionable youth. We think we are right in saying of the two lecturers, who were in China at the same time, that Dr. Dewey made the most powerful impression by his teaching and Mr. Russell by his personality. Mr. Russell's writings are scornful of authority but he is gentle and engaging in his address and is as far removed from the popular conception of a demagogue as it is possible to be. Added to this Mr. Russell is a rebel against all modern conventions and came amongst the Chinese as the avowed antagonist of things as they are. He found his auditors equally chafing against the restraints and limitations which the errors of the past had imposed on them personally and as a nation; thus a sympathetic point of contact was immediately established and a state of mutual sympathy engendered which rendered their intercourse pleasant and agreeable. This happy circumstance had its obvious advantages, but there sre corresponding drawbacks which are not so evident.
Tt is necessary that a teacher should—enuneite i truths as well as express soothing platitudes if he is to be of the utmost possible help to his scholars.
We venture to think that Mr. Russell, when scribing for the of Chin: administered the brimstone with a spoon and the treacle with a ladle and the only way in which he. could have pleased his andience better, would have been by omitting the sulphur altogether from his prescriptions.
One of our contemporaries quotes, at some length, from an article by Mr. Russell in' the "Review of Reviews." Mr.
Russell says, ''T think the Chinese are the only people who quite genuinely believe that
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.