May 15.
Donna the troublous years that have elapsed since the inauguration of the Republic the opinion has often been expressed that China needed beyond all else a strong man to guide the barque of state through the stormy sea of her transition period. This idea is familiar to those who have studied their Carlyle. The one thought that dominated the mind of the Sage of Chelsea was that the world's progress depended on the leaders of thought in every age and so he wrote his prose poems on the hero as a king, as prophet and asa poet. Unfortunately he did not write of the hero as President of a Republic or we might have been able to point our Chinese friends to the. dictum of a modern sage to eke out the hiatus in the analects of their own ancient teacher. For on this point Confucius, too, was silent. It is perhaps because of this that young China has little interest in the classics. The classies, like the Bible, are not scientific text-books.. Their references to theology are only in the nature of by-products, but the main lessons contained in these venerable records have to do with the science of government. It is therefore only natural that when it is demonstrated that the theory of administration suited to the China of 500 B.C. is inapplicable to the problems of a twentieth century Republic the uncrowned king of China should be dethrone ed and his profound platitudes relegated to the dusty shelves of the unfrequented library. For the burden of Confucius' teaching, like that of Carlyle, was that the country's need is a man. Given the right man and to that man his opportunity, everything else is negligible.
China has got her strong man. Nay, she has got two strong men for she has Wu Pei-fu and he is backed by the "Christian General'' Feng Vu-hsiang. And the hour of opportunity has tolled on the ''clanging bells of time." China lies like an amorphous lump of clay at the feet of Chang T'so-lin's conqueror and he may mould it into any shape he likes. Wu has demonstrated his valour in the field, he has now to show his wisdom in the senate. Chinese history, doubtless, can show many shining examples, of men who triumphed on the battlefield and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.