Part 1 (1/2)
Where Half The World Is Waking Up.
by Clarence Poe.
PREFACE
”The human race, to which so many of my readers belong,” as Mr.
Gilbert Chesterton begins one of his books by saying, has half its members in Asia. That Americans should know something about so considerable a portion of our human race is manifestly worth while.
And really to know them at all we must know them as they are to-day.
Vast changes are in progress, and even as I write this, the revolution in China, foreshadowed in the chapters written by me from that country, is remaking the political life of earth's oldest empire. From j.a.pan to India there is industrial, educational, political ferment.
The old order changes, yielding place to the new.
”Where Half the World is Waking Up” is not inappropriate therefore as the t.i.tle of the book now offered to the public. The reader will kindly observe here that I have written of where half the world is waking up and not merely of the waking-up itself. My purpose has been to set forth the old and the new in due proportion; to present the play of new forces against and upon the ancient, the amazingly ancient, forces that have dominated whole races for centuries. In most places, in fact, the ancient force is still clearly the dominant one.
Observe, too, therefore, that I have written not of where half the world has waked up, but only of where it is waking up. The significant thing is that the waking is really taking place at all, and of this there can be no doubt.
It was, in short, with the hope of securing for myself and presenting to others a photograph of the Orient as it is to-day that I made my long trip through j.a.pan, Korea, Manchuria, {viii} China, the Philippines, and India during the past year. It was not a pleasure trip nor yet a hurried ”seaport trip.” I travelled either entirely across or well into the interior of each country visited, and all my time was given to study and research to fit me for the preparation of these articles.
That despite of the care exercised the book contains some errors, is doubtless true. The sources of information in the Orient are not always easy to find, nor always in accord after one finds them.
Consider, for example, the population of Manchuria: it seems a simple enough matter, yet it required the help of consuls of two or three nations to enable me to sift out the truth from the conflicting representations of several writers and so-called authorities.
For my part I can only claim a laborious and painstaking effort to get the facts. Letters of introduction to eminent Englishmen kindly furnished me by Amba.s.sador Bryce opened the doors of British officialdom for me, and the friends.h.i.+p of Mr. Roosevelt and letters from Mr. Bryan and our Department of State proved helpful in other ways. I thus had the good fortune not only to get the ready fraternal a.s.sistance of my brother newspaper men (of all races) everywhere, and the help of English, German, and American consuls, but I was aided by some of the most eminent authorities in each country visited--in China, by H. E. Tang Shao-yi, Wu Ting Fang, Sir Robert Bredon, Dr. C.
D. Tenney, Dr. Timothy Richard; in j.a.pan, by ex-Premier Ok.u.ma, Viscount Kaneko, Baron s.h.i.+busawa, Dr. Juichi Soyeda; in Hong Kong, by Governor-General Sir Frederick Lugard; in Manila by Governor-General Forbes, Vice-Governor Gilbert; in India, the members of the Viceroy's Cabinet, Hon. Krishnaswami Iyer, Dr. J. P. Jones, etc, etc. To all of these and to scores of others, my grateful acknowledgments are tendered. They helped me get information, but of course are in no case to be held responsible for any opinions that I have expressed.
To Mr. G. D. Adams, of Akron, Ohio, and Dr. Arthur {ix} Mez, of Mannheim, Germany, two generous fellow-travellers, my thanks are due for the use of many of their photographs, and I am also indebted to _The World's Work_ and _The Review of Reviews_ for permission to republish articles that have already appeared in these magazines. The larger number of chapters included in this volume, however, were originally prepared with a view to their use in my own paper, The Progressive Farmer. They are, therefore, often more elementary in character, let me say in the outset, than if they had been written exclusively for bookbuyers, but it is my hope that their journalistic flavor, even if it has this disadvantage, will also be found to have certain compensating qualities.
Perhaps just one other thing ought to be said: that practically every article about any country was written while I was still in the country described. In this way I hoped not only to write with greater freshness and vividness, but I was enabled to have my articles revised and criticised by friends well informed concerning the subjects discussed. The reader will please bear in mind, therefore, that a letter about Tokyo is also a letter from Tokyo, a letter about Korea is a letter from Korea, etc., and s.h.i.+ft his viewpoint accordingly. I have also thought it best to be frank with the reader and let the chapters on China remain exactly as they were written--presenting a pen picture of the Dragon Empire as it appeared on the eve of the outbreak, while the revolution was indeed definitely in prospect but not yet a reality.
”Give us as many anecdotes as you can,” was old Samuel Johnson's advice to Boswell, when that worthy proposed to write of Corsica; and this wise suggestion I have sought to keep in mind in all my travel.
Moreover, another saying of the great lexicographer's comes quaintly into my memory as I conclude this Foreword: ”There are two things which I am confident I could do very well,” he once remarked to Sir Joshua Reynolds; ”one is an introduction to any literary work stating {x} what it is to contain, and how it should be executed in the most perfect manner: the other is a conclusion, showing from various causes why the execution has not been equal to what the author promised to himself and to the publick!”
C. P.
Raleigh, N. C.
December 1, 1911.
WHERE HALF THE WORLD IS WAKING UP
I
j.a.pAN: THE LAND OF UPSIDE DOWN
”I cannot help thinking,” said one of my friends to me when I left home, ”that when you get over on the other side of the world, in j.a.pan and China, you will have to walk upside down like the flies on the ceiling!”
While I find that this is not true in a physical sense, it is true, as Mr. Percival Lowell has pointed out, that, with regard to the manners and customs of the people, everything is reversed, and the surest way to go right is to take pains to go dead wrong! ”To speak backward, write backward, read backward, is but the A B C of Oriental contrariety.”