, because such matters
were meaningless. It was only when foreign encroachment in the
POST-Japanese war period (i. e. after 1895) carried problems from
the fringes of the Empire into the economic life of the people
that their pride was touched and that in spite of "their lack of
experience and knowledge in political affairs" they suddenly
displayed a remarkable patriotic feeling, the history of China
during the past two decades being only comprehensible when this
capital contention, namely the reality of Chinese patriotism, is
given the central place.
It is useless, however, to pursue the subject: we have said enough
to disclose the utter levity of those who should have realized
from the first that the New China is a matter of life and death to
the people, and that the first business of the foreigner is to
uphold the new beliefs. The Goodnow Memorandum, immediately it was
published, was put to precisely those base uses which any one with
an elementary knowledge of China might have foreseen: it was
simply exploited in an unscrupulous way, its recommendations being
carried out in such a manner as to increase one's contempt for the
men who were pushing the monarchist plot with any means that they
could seize hold of, and who were not averse from making
responsible foreigners their tools.
CHAPTER X
THE MONARCHY MOVEMENT IS OPPOSED
THE APPEAL OF THE SCHOLAR LIANG CH'I-CHAO
We have already referred in several places to the extraordinary
role scholarship and the literary appeal play in the governance of
China.
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