This
document is so remarkable as an illustration of the working of
that type of Chinese mind which has assimilated some portion of
the facts of the modern world and yet remains thoroughly
reactionary and illogical, that special attention must be directed
to it. Couched in the form of an argument between two individuals
--one the inquirer, the other the expounder--it has something of
the old Testament about it both in its blind faith and in its
insistence on a few simple essentials. It embodies everything
essential to an understanding of the old mentality of China which
has not yet been completely destroyed. From a literary standpoint
it has also much that is valuable because it is so naive; and
although it is concerned with such a distant region of the world
as China its treatment of modern political ideas is so bizarre and
yet so acute that it will repay study.
It was not, however, for some time, that the significance of this
pamphlet was generally understood. It was such an amazing
departure from old precedents for the Peking Government to lend
itself to public propaganda as a revolutionary weapon that the
mind of the people refused to credit the fatal turn things were
taking. But presently when it became known that the "Society for
the Preservation of Peace" was actually housed in the Imperial
City and in daily relations with the President's Palace; and that
furthermore the Procurator-General of Peking, in response to
innumerable memorials of denunciation, having attempted to proceed
against the author and publishers of the pamphlet, as well as
against the Society, had been forced to leave the capital under
threats against his life, the document was accepted at its face-
value.
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