The Washington herald., 1913-05-14
Court Gossip of Interesting
Events on THO Continents
tcopyrisht, 1913, b. A. d. Jacoa.on.)

Copyright. 1873 By A. d. Jacosson-)
China will have to start on kind OF
standardization of her language, such as
Britain undertook In the fourteenth CEN
fury. 1t isn't only matter OF words
and grammar; more important are con-
struction and pronunciation. The English
dialects probably are as diversified az
any. Put Cornish miner and North
cumberland miner together for the first
glimmering Of the meaning of the others
speech. What would the Cornishman
think of What mako yam is sha?" He
would express the same meaning In
What be her like them" (The plain
English Is what Is she likeTo Lon
doser, for the first time hearing the
Dorset dialect, would be bewiidered by
a farm laborer's talk; he could only get
q CLINT of meaning here and there.
Pidgin-English has long been the Es-
peranto of China. Men from Canton and
a native Of Tientsin resort to 1t as the
only possible medium for mutual under
standing. But here Is another device for
the Chinese Parliament: Why not write
the speeches. instead of speaking them!
Not only are the written characters the
same throughout China, but they are al
most identical in China, Japan. and
Korea, however widely the spoken
words differ. Business men in these
countries, who could not converse, can
communicate easily by letter. and in the
Chinese-Japanese war japanese ana
others could always make Chinese ma
tives understand their wants by scratch
| ing the characters in snow or sand with
their bayonets.
Judging from what has appeared in
more than one prominent organ of the
British press upon questions vital to the
Chinese people, ii would seem that one
would have to return to such hackneyed
queries as Has China Any Hope?
The picture is dark. We are told that
| the Chinese have now no hope: that.
having dispossessed themselves OF what
| civilization centuries of Confucianism
gave to them, they have not a 1.-THE OF
national stamina, nothing either Eastern
or Western to hold on to. The classic"
age, we are told, has been superseded
| by the age Of the bowler hat and the
| ill-ftting frockcoat; law and order are
zone; hooligans and the ''Kaolao-
huei'' reign; the government is without
prestige, policy o. power. Thus do close
observers. write today upon current
Chimes topics. Those who see no good
either in Young China, or that part OF
| Old China that is left. declare that the
pendulum has swung over so far that
| the Chinese people never again will fill
| the position in the family of nations that
| they occupied at the time of the passing
Of Manchu dynasty.
1 1t makes sad reading And it is all
| the more sad because, looking over the
| surface Of the nation, one sees really
| many lamentable signs of disruption and
discord. The whole nation seems to be
divided into two parts: political and non
political. The man who is occupied with
L. thA ~
| subsistence remains contented within
| that limit prescribed to him by his wants
and necessities. he, together with the
| famine-stricken. the halt, the blind, the
| manned, is of the nonpolitical class. And
! in China there are millions of this class.
men who probably have not yet heard
that the Manchus have been deposed,
or who, having heard. regard Yuan
, shih-kai as the heaven-sent Messiah to
| carry on the great Celestial mandate
In due accord with universal belief among
| the common people.
Then there is in China for the moment
another class, the political. This is
composed of Young China and the very
young China, whose chief faculty seems
| to be to swing from one extreme to the
other. The pessimistic would compare
| the affairs of this class to a pendulum
| that vibrates continually from one side
| to another without making progress in
| any direction. Some of this party, hav-
ing found that they have gone too far
| in one direction, have speedily recur-
red and now have reached the golden
mean, settling down to solid work. But
there are so many other factions, that
one finds difficulty in condensation of
the national affairs. This. however. does
not refer to the governmental party
such men as Yuan Kai, Ii Yuan Hung.