Meantime the Protestant missionaries, nine-tenths of whom were and are British and American had taken the education of the Chinese in hand; and for ever 50 years gave to China all she had of instruction outside the Chinese classics. They established schools in nearly all of the treaty ports and in some large cities not open to foreign trade or, except for missionaries, to foreign residents. The first intention was mainly philanthtopic; gradually came the idea that a widened outlook must inevitably Jead to Christianity; but ultimately any intention of proselytizing was abandoned, and the missionary teachers were content to take the children of their friends and neighbours among the Chinese, and to teach them to think as Chinese never had been taught, to train their bodies as Chinese never had been trained, and to make men and women of them. Their success has been marked, and even in their mission work their influence has been the greater in proportion as they have taught more and preached less. Their schools are open to all, and no missionary propaganda is permitted in them:
this- educational work the Americans were more active than the English, both in the support given by the home Societies, and in the number of volunteers for mission teaching—i.e. men and women going to teach the Chinese on lower salaries than they were capable of earning at home. By the statistics compiled for 1907, the centenary of Protestant missions in China, the numbers of peoples in elementary schools were about the same for the American as for the English; but in secondary schools the Americans had twice as many as the English, and in colleges five times as many At Hongkong the colonial Government provided ample facilities for giving to Chinese an education in English studies with about 5,000 pupils, half in the Government schools, half in the "grant-in-aid" schools. Of late years the Hongkong University has taken a high-place in the education of the Chinese of Hongkong and of Canton.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.