Of course, to the man in China this seems utterly ridiculous, and and readers perhaps may think that 1 should not fill this letter with such men as this, stepping in where angels fear to tread, loftily air] their false opinions, write fiery Jet-of Chint to get a correct viewpoint upon'Chinese matters. Most of tie information comes in dangerous condensed form—newspaper ead-lines and so forth, It is natural that the American will listen more readily, and with some unconscious Pride, to the young Chinese student who has passed through Yale or Harvard than he would to a man ike myself who has spent 20 years all over China, and whose business during most of that time took him into many parts of the country ani compelled him to become a clos observer of the trend of China from 4 political and eronomie angle. Mf, for example, a man of the type of old Capt, Robert Dollar and a young Chinese after the type of the many Whom you now have in China were to meet on the same platform, to talk upon the same subject, the audichee would consider that the opinion which Capt. Robert Dollar would express out of his long practical experience with the Chinese People would be mere bias; whereas they would delight to revel in the fairy tales of the young Chinese student, The World's Greatest Experiment 'The American public, likes to be told, not the stern truth, but wha: it wants to hear, what it likes to, believe. It is but natural, too, that. the American people, of all peoples in the West, should like to see "the other great' republic" (as I heard man say a few days ago) "break away from the fetters of the past, but it is an exasperating thing that Americans—who may know nothing whatever about China's history, her People or their civilization—fancy that it merely requires a mandate to bring a thing into being. They think that you can uproot a system that has been a cure guide for many centuries and substitute some high-risky experiment and expect forthwith to see its mechanism working perfectly. Indeed, I would 0 80 far as to say that Americans have done more to undermine dominating principle of China's venerable system of civilization than any other Western people. This is natural. In this country everything is new. Daily life is largely made of experimenting. Ina very real sense America, hough now ceased to be so, was the greatest experiment that the world had ever known. Everything had to be tried out, and the very nature of the American people leans towards ex: perimontation in countless forms. It cannot be otherwise. It is a new country, and the population is made up of all classes of people from all nations. In the nature of the ease, most of the population were originally experimenters, for they were men and women who wer: tired of conditions in the countries from which they came, and so were happy to try the experiment of life in America und trying their hand at fitting into American eiviliz Amer believe that, as they Small wonder, then, that typical have been great experiments, and have largely succeeded, 20 the Chin: ese people can follow, suit and experiment in running the Customs, in administering laws as they understand them to foreigners who find themselves within the ancient gates, in doing direct business with all arts of the earth, in breaking away from the past—which the Chinese have almost deified—in a thousand and one ways. It is also small wonder that older nations are less anxious to see China carry on this dangerous experimenting. They prefer to see a gradual growth towards the state steadily aimed at than to run the risk of a miracle falling flat.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.