in
history--airplanes and motion pictures had recently been invented, (and
his expectations for both these inventions have proven correct), and
while he did not know it, a tremendous cultural shift was about to take
place in the West due to the First World War and other factors. I will
leave it to the reader to see which ideas have caught on and which have
not. The topics include:

Immigration; the Arms Race and changes in technology;
one-time six year terms for the office of President;
religion and/or ethics in the classroom; women's equality;
fashion; violence in the theatre (violence on television);
vegetarianism; and, cruelty to animals.

I will also note that a few passages seem satiric in nature, though I
am not certain that it isn't merely a clash of cultures.

Alan R. Light. Birmingham, Alabama. May, 1996.

AMERICA

Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat

by Wu Tingfang, LL.D.

Late Chinese Minister to the United States of America, Spain, Peru,
Mexico and Cuba; recently Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister
of Justice for the Provincial Government of the Republic of China, etc.

Preface

Of all nations in the world, America is the most interesting to the
Chinese. A handful of people left England to explore this country:
gradually their number increased, and, in course of time, emigrants
from other lands swelled the population. They were governed by
officials from the home of the first settlers, but when it appeared to
them that they were being treated unjustly, they rebelled and declared
war against their rulers, the strongest nation on the face of the
earth. After seven years of strenuous, perilous, and bloody warfare,
during which thousands of lives were sacrificed on both sides, the
younger race shook off the yoke of the older, and England was compelled
to recognize the independence of the American States. Since then, in
the comparatively short space of one hundred and thirty years, those
revolutionists and their descendants, have not only made the
commonwealth the richest in the world, but have founded a nation whose
word now carries weight with all the other great powers.

The territory at first occupied was not larger than one or two
provinces of China, but by purchase, and in other ways, the
commonwealth has gradually grown till now it extends from the Atlantic
to the Pacific Ocean, from the north where ice is perpet