There was a clash with the soldiers and
police, and many teachers and students were more or less severely
wounded. This led to a terrific outcry, because the love of education in
China is profound and widespread. The newspapers clamoured for
revolution. The Government had just spent nine million dollars in
corrupt payments to three Tuchuns who had descended upon the capital to
extort blackmail. It could not find any colourable pretext for refusing
the few hundred thousands required by the teachers, and it capitulated
in panic. I do not think there is any Anglo-Saxon country where the
interests of teachers would have roused the same degree of public
feeling.
Nothing astonishes a European more in the Chinese than their patience.
The educated Chinese are well aware of the foreign menace. They realize
acutely what the Japanese have done in Manchuria and Shantung. They are
aware that the English in Hong-Kong are doing their utmost to bring to
naught the Canton attempt to introduce good government in the South.
They know that all the Great Powers, without exception, look with greedy
eyes upon the undeveloped resources of their country, especially its
coal and iron. They have before them the example of Japan, which, by
developing a brutal militarism, a cast-iron discipline, and a new
reactionary religion, has succeeded in holding at bay the fierce lusts
of "civilized" industrialists.
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