There is much less desire than among the white races to
tyrannize over other people. The weakness of China internationally is
quite as much due to this virtue as to the vices of corruption and so on
which are usually assigned as the sole reason. If any nation in the
world could ever be "too proud to fight," that nation would be China.
The natural Chinese attitude is one of tolerance and friendliness,
showing courtesy and expecting it in return. If the Chinese chose, they
could be the most powerful nation in the world. But they only desire
freedom, not domination. It is not improbable that other nations may
compel them to fight for their freedom, and if so, they may lose their
virtues and acquire a taste for empire. But at present, though they have
been an imperial race for 2,000 years, their love of empire is
extraordinarily slight.
Although there have been many wars in China, the natural outlook of the
Chinese is very pacifistic. I do not know of any other country where a
poet would have chosen, as Po-Chui did in one of the poems translated by
Mr. Waley, called by him _The Old Man with the Broken Arm_, to make a
hero of a recruit who maimed himself to escape military service. Their
pacifism is rooted in their contemplative outlook, and in the fact that
they do not desire to change whatever they see. They take a pleasure--as
their pictures show--in observing characteristic manifestations of
different kinds of life, and they have no wish to reduce everything to a
preconceived pattern.
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