In concluding this introduction to Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, I wish to say that this splendid work has been made possible only by the co-operative effort of some fifty scholars of the Orient and the Occident and in particular by the nine years of patient and untiring labor of the editor, Mr. Arthur W. Hummel, and his chief assistants, Mr. and Mrs. Fang Chao-ying. As my friend Mr. Wang Chung-min once said to me, "Mr. Hummel, Mr. and Mrs. Fang and Miss Marybelle Bouchard, these four persons alone, have together devoted more than thirty years of their lives to it." As a firm believer in the Baconian ideal of corporate and co-operative research, I sincerely congratulate the editor and his fifty associates on the signal success of this first great undertaking of international co-operative research in Chinese history and biography. Under similarly propitious conditions, the undertaking is well worth repeating.
New York City,
May 25, 1943.
