Brown, Arthur Judson, 1856-1963 / 2008-09-06 00:00:00

'' The author insists that Anglo-Saxon
institutions are far inferior to the institutions of China. He
declares that ``our religion (Chinese) is more rational than
yours, our morality higher and our institutions more perfect,''
and that there is less real happiness in Europe and America
than in China. As for Christianity, he regards it as quite
impracticable. He holds that Confucianism is feasible and that
Christianity is not, and much more to the same effect. There
is strong internal evidence that the author is not a Chinese at all,
but a cynical European. At any rate, the book is an ex parte
statement of the most glaring kind, omitting the good in
Europe and America and the bad in China. One who has
visited the Celestial Empire gasps when he reads that the
Chinese houses are ``cheerful and clean,'' that the Chinese live the
life of the mind and the spirit to a far higher degree than the
Christian peoples of the West, and that Chinese life has a
dignity and peace and beauty which Europe cannot equal. ``Such
silence! Such sounds! Such perfume! Such colour!''
the author rhapsodizes. Bishop Graves, of Shanghai, who has
spent a quarter of a century in China and who is therefore
presumably competent to speak, declares:

``Far be it from me to belittle the beauty of the Chinese landscape;
but why did he not leave out that about the perfume? Why, you can
smell China out at sea! However, it is just as easy to imagine the
perfume as the rest of it, while you are writing.
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