habits of thought and language, products which have been borne down the
ages since a time contemporary with that of Solomon. No fair-minded man
would wish it. And it is at once impossible.

The language, for instance. Who is there, who knows anything about it,
who would wish to see the Chinese character drop out of the national
life? Yet it is bound to come to some extent, and in future ages the
written language will develop into pretty well the same as Latin among
ourselves. Romanization, although as yet far from being accomplished,
must sooner or later come into vogue, as is patent at the first glance
at business. If commerce in the Interior is to grow to any great extent
in succeeding generations, warranting direct correspondence with the
ports at the coast and with the outside world, the Chinese hieroglyph
will not continue to suffice as a satisfactory means of communication.
No correspondence in Chinese will ever be written on a machine such as I
am now using to type this manuscript, and this valuable adjunct of the
office must surely force its way into Chinese commercial life. But only
when Romanization becomes more or less universal.

This, however, by the way.

My point is, that no matter how Occidentalized he may become, the
Chinese will never lose his national characteristics--not so much
probably as the Japanese has done. What the youth has been at home, in
his habits of thought, in his purpose and spirit, in his manifestation
of action, will largely determine his after life. Chinese mental and
moral history has so stamped certain ineffaceable marks on the language,
and the thought and character of her people, that China will never--even
were she so inclined--obliterate her Oriental features, and must always
and inevitably remain Chinese. The conflict, however, is not racial, it
is a question of civilization. Were it racial only, to my way of
thinking we should be beaten hopelessly.

And as I write this in a Chinese inn, in the heart of Yuen-nan--the
"backward province"--surrounded by the common people in their common,
dirty, daily doings, a far stretch of vivid imagining is needed to see
these people in any way approaching the Westernization already current
in eastern provinces of this dark Empire.

This is what I wrote sitting on the top of a mountain during my tour
across China. But it will be seen in other parts of this book that
Western ideas and methods of progress in accord more with European
sta