and should the sea
and ocean be dried up, our original hearts will not be changed.
We will protect the Republic with our sinews and blood of brass
and iron, we will take the lead of the province, and be their
backbone, and we will not allow the revival of the monarchy and
the suppression of the powers of the people. Let Heaven and
earth be witness to our words. You gentlemen are pillars of the
political parties, or the representatives of the people, and you
should unite together and not become inconsistent. You first
determined that the Loan is necessary, but such opinion is now
changed, and you now reject the Loan. Can the ice be changed
into red coal in your hearts? Thus even those who love and
admire you will not be able to defend your position. However, if
you have any extraordinary plan or suggestion to save the
present situation, you can show it to us."

Some of the strange effect produced by this document is due, no doubt,
to translation. But it, like the many others of the kind I have read,
seems to indicate what is at the root of the Chinese attitude to life--a
belief in the power of reason and persuasion. I have said enough to show
that this attitude does not exclude the use of violence; but I feel sure
that it limits it far more than it has ever been limited in Europe. Even
in time of revolution the Chinese are peaceable and orderly to an extent
unknown and almost unbelievable in the West. And the one thing the West
is teaching them and priding itself on teaching them is the absurdity of
this attitude. Well, one day it is the West that will repent because
China has learnt the lesson too well.

VII

A SACRED MOUNTAIN

It was midnight when the train set us down at Tai-an-fu. The moon was
full. We passed across fields, through deserted alleys where sleepers
lay naked on the ground, under a great gate in a great wall, by halls
and pavilions, by shimmering tree-shadowed spaces, up and down steps,
and into a court where cypresses grew. We set up our beds in a verandah,
and woke to see leaves against the morning sky. We explored the vast
temple and its monuments--iron vessels of the Tang age, a great tablet
of the Sungs, trees said to date from before the Christian era, stones
inscribed with drawings of these by the Emperor Chien Lung, hall after
hall, court after court, ruinous, overgrown, and the great crumbling
walls and gates and towers. Then