It is a platitude to say that China is an ancient country. Everyone knows that her history goes back some four or five thousand years. Yet few realize how closely her present is linked with her past. We all know the modern China—a seething, discontented, disorganized nation, struggling to fling off the shackles of the past which have bound her for centuries and to find self-expression in the n.odern world-order, but it is forgotten how much those very shackles have meant to her in the past, and; how much influence, good as well as bad, they still hold over the masses of her people.
Judged from a Western standpoint, the Chinese do not appear to be a patriotic people, yet there are no people under heaven more passionately proud of their long history and ancient civilization. Their temples are neglected and their idols are covered with cobwebs, yet year by year, on certain days, those filthy temples are crowded, incense is burned without stint in front of those hideous idols, and eager crowds throng to hear the oft-repeated stories of sages and heroes of the past, their wisdom and their deeds, many of whose names and memories are embody in deified form in those very idols which they alternately neglect and worship. The Chinese are largely an illiterate nation, the great masses of whose people are unable to read, but her ancient wisdom is enshrined in songs and proverbs and classical quotations, handed down from an immemorial past and known to every coolie, plough-boy and pedlar among the numbarless millions of her provinces. Her educated classes are clamouring for Western learning, and the study of science, history and foreign long-} nages is Jargely thrusting out the old classical education.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.