The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1900-07-22
1OWARDLY, Calious.
- Corrupt. Conceited
Chinese Are Patriotic and Industrious,
bat Not TO Be Reckoned With BY
Western Intelligence.

VA DE know OF no national character
WV about which there is so much
dispute as that OF the Chinese
They have been profoundly stud
led by able men who have given their
lives to the pursuit, but the result Is not
consensus. except upon two points. that
they are incurably conceited and that
even among Asiatics they are excep-
tionally calious. The Chinese are no
more moved by human suffering even
among their own people than the ami
mails are. No Chinaman ever cares II
famine breaks out near him. or IL shock
ed II another Chinaman is tortured, or
will exert himslf against his own inter-
est to prevent suffering 10 any other hui
man being. And no Chinaman ever for
gets or questions that he is member OF
the supreme civilization of the worid-in-
deed. of the only one to which, in his
Judgment that great term in its original
meaning can be fittingly applied.
Upon these two points there is no doubt
among observers, or was none until the
Japanese war shook even Chinese self.
confidence. but upon every other there Is
violent conflict of opinion. Some.
peciaily those who Judge solely from liv-
ing among them. hold the Chinese to be
decidedly inferior people with a low and
cumhrous civilization. wholly unable to
improve. and enduring distinctly evil
rule because they are too imbecile TO
make Il better. The same men, with few
exceptions, consider the Chinese towards.
believe them to be slaves to singularly
feeble supersttions, and think they would
be immensely. benefited by even inferio:
European rule. They describe them as
vicious in all ways to a degree which in
Europe would dissolve society, corrupt in
the matter of bribes beyond anything of
which the modern world has experience,
and. owing TO their devotion to personal
interests, incapable of large combinations.
The same observers, when Inferior per-
sons. are universally struck with some
thing comic I'm China and Its people
they have the same feeling about animals.
the cause in both cases being that there
is always something understandable I'm
their ways-and this feeling has difrused
itself In Europe. producing contempt
which, though sometimes kindly. Is never
tolerant. In England especially the idea
of Chinaman is that of a bufroon In
"A pigtail who dances, as in Tenniefs car
toon. because he has cheated an European
ambassador.
These, however, are not the views OF
those who used "A few years ago TO be
called "Sinologues. the cultivated ex-
perts in Chinese literature. history and
politics. These men maintain almost with
one voice that the Chinese are "A great
people with civilization which was once
energetically progressive though II is
now arrested, and which still holds a
fourth of the human race In an orderly
contcntment; that they possess phil
osophy of their own which. though
strangely secularist. sets before them
ideal rules OF conduct. and which has
penetrated deeper than any philosophy
has penetrated into any other race. and
that the extraordinary difference which
Europeans perceive between them and
every other people is in part a fancy. IN