"Wermme rae WALLS oP Naxxmno"—Alice, "Tisdale Hobart; Land e'Waish, Price, $40.
Only a deeply emotional friend of the Chinese people could have ie written the vivid diary of events in Changsha and Nanking, which Mrs. Hobart includes in this important documentation of Kuomintang history. The American State Department has stupidly suppressed the affidavits and statements of the Americans who have suffered in those days; but Mrs. Hobart's book, which will be read by a far vaster audience than a Governmental paper might have been, provides an unmistakeably accurate and faithful account, which no government officials, chary of the polities of the situation, can gainsay or suppress.
'Many Chinese, particularly those it] younger adjuncts of Chinese' nationalism, the propagandists in foreign lands, will resent Mrs. Hobart's account, because it is 20 faithfully trae, But they are themselves the enemies of their country, while such women as Mrs. Hobart are decidedly good friends of the For the ultimo as at Changs! of villages and towns throughout China, are the Chinese people, the peasant und the artisan, the peaceful, simple soul, honest and unknowing, the father of her bey in, this book, who pay for every military rad, who are destroyed economically and physically by the marching soldiers, whose crops are annually ruined by the mighty despots who arrogate to themselves the task -of government and who perform not a single constructive service to the nation.
These propagandists will describe Mrs, Hobart's book as not. being constructively critical, but are they constructively critical! Aside from constant fire on China's international relations, have they done a single thing to end the shame of a nation blessed with such man-power and such natural re-other country enjoy, being garded by all_men ful hardly sion ino the standards of the nineteenth century! Let stich men read Mrs. Hobart's book fand blush with shame that such.an account -of their country can be written in 1928!
Mrs. Hobart is apparently an English woman married American, employed by the Standard Oil Company. From the contents of her book, it is evident that she has been everywhere in China, but especially has she experienced life in the Yangtze Valley. She has learned to know and to love the simple Chinese people. She has learned to have the deepest contempt for China's principal enemies, the militarists. In Changsha, she experienced the horrors of flood and warfare. She describes vividly the callous disregard of the people by General Tang Song-chi, who only waited for the floods to subside before fighting recommenced. Not. even a day to bury the dead!
From Changsha she came to Nanking. a city of culture and quiet. But here, soon, the blight of militarism brought its fears and curses upon a peaceful people. Vividly, brilliantly, Mrs. Hobert reproduces the fear psychology of the Chinese people, their dread of their own rulers' and then March 23! T do, not wish to spoil the story for the reader by quotation, Every foreigner and every Chinese who has any regard for the standing of his country in the family of nations, should read this book and then, instead of denouncing Mrs. Hobart for her paifistaking truthfulness, there shoud be a protest against the militarists, without partisanship, without regard to personalities For without exception the militarists of China are the murderers of the Chinese people. The time has come to state this unequivocally, Mrs. Florence Ayscough adds to the book an interesting. study of the essential - characteristics of the various classes of the Chinese people. Her study is an.interesting comment on Chinese history since the: advent of Yuan Shih-kai. Ib opens.a new problem, which one: might pursue genealogically. The "perfect gentle- al man". in China the product of the Civil Service Examination, the Mandarin, as we have learned to call him, is rapidly disappearing, In his place, a new generation of rulers is coming to the fore, In many startling~ instances, these rulers. are one generation removed from illiterate coolies. Their childhood was spent in, an environment. which cannot be productive of the finest type of manhood. What if someone should write a book on the new leadership of China! What if someone should make a study of the heredity of these new rulers! Who were their fathers. and grandfathers. on both sides? How did they. spend, say the first 15 years of their lives? What were the character forming processes which were employed in the making of their manhood? What educational facilities did they enjoy? Suppose fa list were. made of the hundred Principal names in China at the resent time and these names were subjected to such a scrutiny as I suggest, what would be the result? Tt would be as startlingly" surprising as anything that has yet happened in this land of kind) good peasants and brutal, murderous militarists—o..s.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.