Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/582

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THE PASSING OF KOREA

What is needed is a wide-spread and thorough canvass of the entire empire for the purpose of getting the subject rightly before the Korean people. There would be nothing in this suggestive of opposition to Japan. On the contrary, every effort should be expended with special reference to cooperation with whatever plans the dominant power may have formed for common school education. Korea can gain nothing by holding back and offering to the plans of Japan a sulky resistance. They are face to face with a definite condition, and theories as to the morality of the forces which brought about the condition are wholly academic.

My discussion of these forces in the foregoing pages is partly by way of record and partly to awaken the American people to the duty which lies upon them. The Koreans need help in establishing such a system as I have hinted at above. They will do all they can, but the question arises whether generous-minded people in America will come to the aid of the Koreans and give their personal services or financial support to such a movement. Is there any man or body of men in this country who will seize the opportunity to found in the city of Seoul an institution of learning which shall be the nucleus, the rallying-ground, of a great national movement? It is the opinion of those most conversant with the feeling of the Korean people that there is no other place in the world where money invested in education will bring larger, surer or more beneficent results.