They Wouldn't Take It"; Some Plain Talk to Misguided People: The Wrong Missionary View Addressing a meeting of the "Lions" at Tsingtao, Mr. F. W. Moore said, in part:—
For the past 25 or 30 years the Policy of the American Government fand the sentiment of the American people towards China have been marked by a very definite sympathy, which, I am sorry to say, has Deceme; in later years, a vice in various to the Chinese rather than virtue beneficial to them. To o] pose morally and politically the Partitioning of China into spheres of Influence, as we did at the beginning of this century,—wgs a wise policy, beneficial to other nations, but to lend sympathy to the Nation. alist Government, whose policy wat] fand is destructive to the best inter-fests of the Chinese, as we were doing popularly though not politiically up toa few months ago, is evidence of our ignorant senti mentality.
We have had, however, a rude awakening, 2 genuine shock, in find ing ourselves classed with Britain Jand Japan as despised imperialists; fand I'am of the impression that the Chinese students and their American supporters will not again sus-ceed in doping us.
Some years ago, our church-going people, inspired by a desize to: con Yvert this oldest of the nations Christianity, concentrated their prin-lo effort at proselytizat upon this country. The work that our religious and philanthropic. institute {Hons and individuals have done in China is worthy of the highest raises it has been. extraordinary and will go down to history as one of the greatest efforts of dis: interested altruism that modern times can show, "To-day we find that the only higher education that fs being given to the Chinese in their country is by the missionaries, primarily American and British, the only medical teaching and charity hospital work is by foreigners, primarily Americans and British.
Moscow's Madness, Now, to be told, as the Nation-lists have told us—both the Hankow and the Nanking groups—that this is Imperialism has caused most of us to see at last that Moscow's madness is a thing of reality in China. None but deluded or dishonest people would make such a charge, but, unfortunately, many of the missionaries, as well as the students and Chinese teachers (whose minds the Bolsheviki set out deliberately to capture) were ceived by the trick of slogans anc jmisinterpretation of facts, which are the weapons of the Soviets employ among the ignorant and those Prone to prejudice.
I speak as a supporter of missions. My mother taught me in early childhood to contribute to missions and I in turn have taught my children to do so. I do not! speak as an opponent but as a friend and supporter of mission: For that reason I feel free to speak of things as I know them to be. T have watched the missions inti mately, in other countries as well jas this, in the Balkan States and Turkey, and in Korea and Japan, and I have long regretted the exist. fence of a pernicious by-product of missionary work, the influence of the American people to undue sympathies for those among whom the missionaries work and the development of unfair hostility to advanced mations like Japan and Great Britain. In recent years the United States has spent hundreds of mil-Vions of dollars in naval preparation, our only possible enemies being Great Britain or Japan, and the missionaries from China have been' important instruments in support of the navalists and the sensational newspaper men, some of them employed by the Chinese, to create [suspicion among us Americans, Recently a sentimental American lady to whom I was speaking on the subject of opium-growing in China, asked me indignantly it I would' hand this country over ta the British, That, I was sorry to say, I told her, was impossible; the British wouldn't take it. But they should, I said, I would exclaim, "Thank God!" hot because I iwas "interested in the aggrandisement of the British Empire but for the blessing British government would bring to the Chinese people, who are living under conditions that, existed in Europe back in the dark ages.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.