Apr, 16, Some years ago Dr, Henry Churchill King, President of Oberlin College, visited China and delivered a series of lectures. In. one of his address he advised his hearers to read the books with which they disagreed, His point, a very good tone, wus that, if we only read the' books that backed up our own pre-conceived ideas, we should make no progress, If we read those to which we were antipathetic, we had either to adopt a new point of view or justify to ourselves our reasons for adhering to our own opinions. We have been following Dr. King's advice and reading book on "Imperialism and Civilization" with which we heartily disagree. It is written by Leon ard Woolf and published in London, There are two kinds of men that we very much dislike. One is the man who says, "My country right or wrong", and the other the man who says "My country never right." Mr. Woolf belongs to the latter class, He sees Europe "forcing its civilization on the rest of the world and there is no civilization that is, to him, so distasteful. He says, "The conflict is not racial, it is n conflict of civilizations." He believes that, file there have been such conin ancient times, the wars of those days were not so ruth-Jess as they have been in. these. "Extermination on a large neale," he says "was seldom if ever possible when killing had to be done, literally, by hand and before modern inventions made it a part of wholesale business and large scale industry", This is simply not true, The conquests. of Genghiz Khan and Tamerlane in Asia left behind them a devastation from which the countries they passed through have not recovered even to this day. There has been nothing like it in any of our modern wars; nothing in the Toast comparable to their savage ery or contempt of human life, The same is true of the Baby Jonian subjugations. Mr. Woolf's ancestors were carried away from their own land and only moiety of the people returned under the more liberal rule of Cyrus the Persian. This was not a solitary incident; the transplant tation of conquered peoples was the ruling policy of the Baby-fenian kings and it was carried out with a pitilessness for which again there is no parallel in modern times.
Another instance of inaccuracy of reasoning is found in his description of what took place under the Romans in ain, The Romans brought thei ization to Britain, but they did not impose it on the inhabitants. The Roman occupation of Britain consisted of a few roads, a few camps or settlements, a certain amount of trade." This, agai not true. The Roman occupation of Britain left an impress 80 deep on the country that, $0 this day, the influence of Roman law is perceptible in our code and is still more evident in the Jaws of the Latin kingdoms. A writer must be hard put to it maintain his thesis when he misrepresents facts to support his argument.
The truth is that it is not possible to "force" an alien civilization on any- people. Europe is not foreing her civilization on China. The Chinese are adopting that civilization in the form of railways, steamers, telegraphs, aeroplanes, teleyraphy, sports, cinemas, pocket-handkerchiefs, frock coats and bowler hats. No one compels them to do so, but the ambition of every Chinese student is to go abroad and see for himself what is worthy of imitation in the wide world overseas. The same is true of Africa. Where once the highest form of science known to the native was the medicine man with his bloodstained Mumbo-jumbo, the print ing-press has been set up and foreign doctors are grappling with the diseases that, once decimated the population. It is true that our civilization has its blots. No civilization that ever existed had none and in every preceding civilization, of which we have any record, the blots were deeper and darker than they are in ours, We can think of only two instances in which civilization was forced on an unwilling people. When Brit ish rule was established in India the practice of Suttee was universal, It is now prohibited by law, but is not. yet utterly stamped out, A recent writer on this terrible practice has dispelled the current notion that sacrifices of this nature occurred but rarely or that they were consummated in the spirit of high devotion. "Girl widows were flung into the flames in greater numbers and with no more voli= tion than the children offered to Moloch." Does Mr. Woolf think that it would have been more humane in us to have turned'a blind eye to this degrade ing superstition rather than brave the wrath of so many of our fellow subjects by decreeing {ts abolition? The second instance was when a clause was incorporated in one of the "unequal treaties" giving religious liberty to Christians in China. That was more than eighty years ago and the rulers of this country have not yet grasped the full significance of this element tary right. It is the right to be non-conformists, not only to the customs of our neighbours but even to the law of the land, when that law transgresses the dictates of conscience. Such liberty exists only in the civilization which Mr, Woolf decries, and has never existed in any other.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.