rent
compunction. One of the men in the above-mentioned dispute had an
irrepressible volubility of assertion. He at once flew into a temper,
adopting the style of the stage actor, proclaiming his virtue so that it
might have been heard at Yuen-nan-fu. He was preserving his "face." For
in this country temper is often, what it is not in the West, a test of
truth. Among Westerners nothing is more insulting sometimes than a
philosophic temper; but in China you must, as a first law unto yourself,
protect yourself at all costs and against all comers, and it generally
requires a good deal of noise. Here the bully is not the coward. In
respect of prevarication, it seems to be absolutely universal; the poor
copy the vice from the rich. It seems to be in the very nature of the
people, and although it is hard to write, my experience convinces me
that my statement is not exaggeration. I have found the Chinese--I speak
of the common people, for in my travels I have not mixed much with the
rich--the greatest romancer on earth. I question whether the great
preponderance of the Chinese people speak six consecutive sentences
without misrepresentation or exaggeration, tantamount to prevarication.
Regretting that I have to write it, I give it as my opinion that the
Chinese is a liar by nature. And when he is confronted with the charge
of lying, the culprit seems seldom to feel any sense of guilt.

And yet in business--above the petty bargaining business--we have as the
antithesis that the spoken word is his bond. I would rather trust the
Chinese merely on his word than the Jap with a signed contract.

The Chinese knows that the Englishman is not a liar, and he respects him
for it; and it is to be hoped that in Yuen-nan there will soon be seen
the two streams of civilization which now flow in comparative harmony in
other more enlightened provinces flowing here also in a single channel.
These two streams--of the East and the West--represent ideas in social
structure, in Government, in standards of morality, in religion and in
almost every human conception as diverse as the peoples are racially
apart. They cannot, it is evident, live together. The one is bound to
drive out the other, or there must be such a modification of both as
will allow them to live together, and be linked in sympathies which go
farther than exploiting the country for initial greed. The Chinese will
never lose all the traces of their inherited customs of daily life, of