Im spite of civil wars, bandit out-vages, lack of finances, educationa! activities continue in China. Foreigners generally have an appreciation of the value of the educational efforts of the missionary organizations: But of the work of the Chinese themselves little is known, except that students strike for political reasons and thay teachers occasionally weary of re maining unpaid.
This, however, is only the unpleasant side of the story. There ig another side. It is outlined in a statistical pamphlet published by the @hinese National Association for the Advancement of Learning. Those who watch Chinese affair closely know that this modest recital in cold figures of educational activities on the part of self-sacrifice ing men is only part of the star; Greater, although tragic, is the tale of the National University in Peking, the centre of learning in China, going to ruin for want of funds, losing some of its best professors because the Government insists upon playing. politics with it, or the story of provincial schools closed because the local militarists absorb all possible revenue from the province and nothing is left for learning; or still worse, the story of teachers who have trained themselves in particular fields and who cannot find work and have te resort to hack journalism for a live li hood.
To return, however, to our pamphlet. The total number of students in all grades of schools for the whole country is put at the modest figure of 6,816,486. To this figure must be added 139,960 for the Roman Catholic Schools. Although the first figure included Protestant-missionary schools, it i3 not clear whether students in Y. M. C. A. schools are also included: the number for them, however', is separately given as 20,202. [t hag been stated freely that the evil of the Chinese system of education) is that it is top-heavy, there being too many advanced schools and too few school of elementary grades, This, however, is disprove ed by the following figures Elementary students 6,601, S02 Secondary students 182,894 College students 34,880
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.