i. US. AND CHINA
Transpacific Comparisons:
{Changes that have Come to China: What of 19277
Siar oe pga Saati fea Bon Frenchy, Det If I know Shanghai and the Trenty Ports of China, the holiday spirit still will be prevailing by the time this sees the light of print. It is good that the holiday season, and the spirit that marks this great event in Christendom, are being extended over longer stretches both before and after the actual natal day of the Christ. At such times, people who naturally are inclined to no keen demonstration of good feeling towards their fellows get beyond themselves. Men seem to be whipped into their true jndividuality at Christmas and New Year time, Around the world there woes the cordon of good-will, of which people are more conscious at Christmas than at any other time. We come out of our shells, so to peak, wishing each other well and hoping that the past has buried animodities, building our pictures of the future on hope, At Christmas, 1926, men who think look out on " world of human affairs in which they ale increasing wigns that man truly is the arbiter of his destiny. Compare the world in 1926, in all its" multitudinous ramifications of progress along elentife lines, with the year 1826, you are bound to come to the inclusion that man rapidly is proaching the very conquest of the earth on which he lives. The human span is becoming extended. The human well-being in all countries, even in, cantankerous China, is higher than ever it was. Human power is exemplified in a million ways which to our great-grand. fathers were merely n multitude of dreams. No man can visualize the future, but at this holiday season all men who live in any way above the physical sphere of their being tone and all acclaim that the beat is yet to be, It Is perhaps not usual for a forspondent to write of any wor than' those pertain ing to things immediately under his nose, but this morning, with ti 'Exditor's' permission, this correspondent of the "Old Grandmother," who has derived great, pleasure during the past year in adding his quota to hor columns, begs leave ta, extend his heartiest greetings to her star and all her readers, hoping (but, Tam afraid, against hope) that 1927 for Chitia may prove to be more prosperous and peaceful year than its predeces:
A happy and prosperous year, with growing knowledge of all men and thingy, with 1. deeper sense of gratitude for all that has be anc 4s, and all that ever will be, China is Makirg History 'Though probably they do not consider the spectacle outrageously interesting, foreigners in Chit witnessing' the making of histor Yes, they will say, but how f ful and "slow and indefinite is Process. With which we must all agree, We older hands cannot retrain' from making—comprison: Flow (diferent is the life of the foreigner in ill-fated China to-day compared with what it was 20 years ago, when, as a young man, this writer wandered, unafraid and, with a sense of deep respect for the people, through many of the far interior provinces! In the: days, not long after the Boxer troubles, China indeed was a happy land, Living was cheap, even in Shanghai and the Treaty Ports, We did not possess our cars, but We had our ricshas and our clumsy waggons akin to the present-day contraptions of the brokers, We yede in the morning, and knew that, 'We could keep an animal with a to tend it for a mere song, Ser-view everywhere was unexcelled. Club fees were low, a whiskey-sod: east about 10 cents, everyone knew everyone else, social life was all that could be desired, and in every' sense life was life,' The Chinese respected us, and ie were inpelin their daily life and habitacle the to respect them for portraying
cardinal theories which, regretful-to those who knew those older days, are fast being thrown to the Timbo of forgotten things.
China was, indeed, a most desirable country to live in, from the foreigner's point of view, 20 or so years ago, but, in the words' of a Popular Sunday comic-page, "them days is gone for ever." Despite many significant evidences on the surface of the national life,' however, that look distinctly as'if the contrary were true, I think foreign. era generally still believe in the real Chinese people, By this I mean the unconscious, incongruous, lovable masses of the Chinese, If can put our hands upon the firebrands, there we discover' the danger spots. These firebrands, unfortunately, are on the increase and their power apparently is in the ascendant, Indeed, they yet may plunge their country into rivers of human blood. Before 1927 parsed over our heads, the toll of human life may be greater than it has been for many a decade.
Still, Chinese history, if it teaches anything at all, tells us that, even among the long-suffering masses, there is a limit to human endurance. When that limit has been reached, they unerringly have risen to quell the tyranny of their intolerable ruler. One inclines to think that this present lack of any sort of. government worthy the name surely is sufficiently intolerable a ruler,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.