I know my critics will say that the matter now begins to sound difficult. I do not hesitate to admit it. If it had not been difficult, it would not have been worth doing. If someone wants to go a-voyaging on a petition-paper boat in quest of the golden fleece, a certain class of patriots may be attracted by this fairy-tale proposition, but I would not recommend anyone to risk real national Capital in the venture. It is difficult to build a dike, and easy to get up a constitutional agitation asking the waters to recede,—but the latter is not a way out of the difficulty. To get something ultra cheap makes one feel extra clever, and when the cheap thing collapses under the strain of work, it is comforting to put the blame on some one else, but in spite of all these consolations the fact remains that the work fails to get done.
To consider all responsibilities as being light in one’s own case and heavy in the case of others, is not a good moral code. When sitting in judgment on the behaviour of the British towards ourselves, it is well to take note of the difficulties in their way and their human weaknesses. But when searching out our own lapses, there must be no invention of excuses or palliations, no lowering of the standard on grounds of expediency. And so I say, the rousing of indignation against the British Government may be an easy political method, but it will not serve to lead us to our goal. Rather, the cheap pleasure of giving tit for tat, of dealing shrewd blows, will detract from the efficient pursuit of our own path of duty. When a litigant is worked up into a state of frenzy, he thinks nothing of staking and losing his all. If anger be the basis of our political activities, the excitement itself tends to become the end in view, rather than the object to be achieved. Side issues assume an exaggerated importance, and all gravity of thought and action is lost. Such excitement is not an exercise of strength, but a display of weakness.
We must give up all such pettiness and found our political work on the broad basis of love of country,—not on dislike of, or dependence upon others. This dislike and this dependence may seem to be opposite states of mind, but they are really twin branches of the same tree of impotence. Because we decided that our salvation lay in making demands, dislike was born of our disappointment. We then jumped to the conclusion that this feeling of ours was Patriotism,—gaining at one stroke profound consolation and an elevating pride!
Just think for a moment of the mother from whom the care of her child is taken away and entrusted to another? Why is she inconsolable? Because of her exceeding love. The same anxiety to do our best for our country by our own efforts may alone be called Patriotism,—not the cleverness of shifting that duty on to the foreigner, which is not true cleverness either, for the duty does not get done.
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A GLIMPSE OF SCHOOL LIFE IN CHINA
It is opening day at Liu Mei School, the school which prepares Chinese boys for study in Europe and America. In the entrance hall of the Teachers’ Court, the doors at the north have been closed to form a background, and on a table placed against them, a red tablet to Confucius has been set up, with a bronze incense jar filled with incense sticks before it, and two red candles on either side.
At about eight o’clock in the morning, the bell ringer, whose duty it is to usher in and bring to a close the classes by pacing up and down the various courts
