It would have been little less than a social miracle if the representative system had succeeded in China within these 10 years. The Chinese are such adaptable people, and a people so full of surprises that many, even of those who knew the difficulties in the way of representative democracy, hoped for a miracle. It has not verne and there is no prospect of it, particularly since all elements in China which might contribute to the performance of a miracle have pronounced it hopeless anti are looking for something else. The sensible thing to do in the present emergency is not to experiment with a new importation less adapted to Chinese traditions than the last importation, but to try to modernize Chinese traditions and adapt them to the more complex conditions which foreign intercourse has created in China. The only peoples in the Occident which are not enjoying governments that have not grown out of their traditions are subject nations. The only great nations in the world with arbitrarily created and—imported governments, having little to do with national traditions, are Russia and China. Tf China wants} to get out of Russia's class she has not to do it by imitating: Russia, but by consulting the tastes, prejudices and wishes of her own people and by giving them something in conformity with their traditions and therefore understandable, and at the same time something efficient enough in the modern sense to command international respect.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.