republican government has been established and news from our fellow students, brothers and friends who are in the midst of the struggle, elucidate the actual conditions in China. Knowing them, we publicly announce the definite stand that the students are willing to make for the republic, the establishment of which will go down into history as the greatest event of the twentieth century-the political emancipation of 400,000,000 souls. New occasions teach new duties, -Lowell. Again, it was estimated that no less than 75 per cent of the provisional Republican Cabinet of Dr. Sun consisted of returned students from Europe and America, while even the coalition provisional cabinet of President Yuan Shih Kai had 50 per cent of them with Tang Shao Yi as the first premier. To say that returned students from America and Europe would not entertain revolutionary ideas on account of materialistic and selfish ambitions would be a charge too extravagant and the contention would fall by its own weight of exaggeration. For did not Dr. Yung Wing, the first student graduated in America, stake his whole life in a revolutionary attempt after four great constructive institutions, namely, the Kiangnan Arsenal, the China Merchants' Steamship Navigation Company, the National Telegraph System and the Educational Mission of the seventies. It was indeed an inspiring experience when the speaker called on this "Father of Modern Education in China" to discuss for two hours upon the comprehensive plan he was laying for the educational, industrial and military reorganization of China, when he was invited by his friend, Dr. Sun Yat Sen to give his advice after the establishment of the republic. The ideal returned student from America is therefore not a destructive but a constructive man, and it was only when repeatedly defeated that he will adopt destructive measures as proved by Dr. Yung Wing and Dr. Sun Yat Sen, both of whom received the American and European influence of living a broader and deeper life. Nevertheless, we must give all credit to our fellow students from Japan from their intense enthusiasm and patriotism and to the many earnest reformers among the people at home that gave such an impetus to the Revolution from the very start. THE TASK OF RECONSTRUCTION A cowl does not make a monk and the name alone cannot transform China into a real republic. Reality and not idealism is the sure basis of a modern state. Rabid emotion has played its part, and a mighty important part, in stirring up enthusiasm and devotion, but any continued indulgence in it, would sweep an individual or a community off its own feet, as history has proved time and again. China is no exception, and as the republic is established, it is time that enthusiasm should be superseded by discerning foresight and cool judgement, so that a strong, prosperous and centralized republic might be insured for the generations to come, as the problems yet to be surmounted are stupendous. During the revolution, the public sentiment in China demanded the adoption of the American government as the model and since the number of students in Japan is rapidly diminishing and as more students are coming to America, the responsibility resting upon their shoulders to develop China along republican ideals is consequently increased. If they are true to their training as was Dr. Yung Wing, the first student, then "there is also a hope and promise that God means to build up in that land some strong, free and characteristic manhood which shall help the world to its completeness." MORAL AND SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS IN THE CHINESE REVOLUTION AND IN THE PRESENT OUTLOOK By Rev. Charles L. Storrs, Shaowu, China, Foochow Mission Two or three years before the outbreak of the Revolution, a non-Christian editor in one of his leaders on "China's Needs" in the Chung Wai Jih Pao wrote: "Many are talking of revolution Has it been considered that we in China have had far more revolutions than they in Europe? Europe has always gained by its revolutions, but we have gained no national uplift from ours. Why? Because of the absence of what has characterized European revolutions-moral and spiritual forces." It is the object of this address to show that such elements have not been absent from the overturning of the past twelvemonth among that remarkable people. If what this Chinese editor says is true, then the events of 1911 and 1912 stand out unique not only among the fifty-three attempts which since the first in 1646 engineered by the "Heaven and Earth Society" have aimed to depose the now abdicated Ta Ching dynasty, but unique in the long history of 4906 years—the date under which the republicans in their enthusiams issued their first proclamations. There will be no attempt to separate moral from spiritual forces. Indeed spiritual or religious elements as such do not seem to have entered into the stream of events. Neither is it thought to show how the whole movement has been undergirt with certain great moral laws and that the outcome has been a logical consequence of them. Sufficient for our purpose if from the keleidoscopic rush of events, we can seize hold here and there of a few of those golden strands of human activity that give life its true significance, untwist some of the more important ones to reveal more clearly their component ethical threads, and so come to realize that it is these that have held the whole together. In this way the conviction will come to us that the significance of the Revolution in China lies not in the immense number of people involved, not in the magnitude nor richness of the territory, not in the uniqueness nor swiftness of its outward accomplishment, but in the coming into this great complex world of men and things in which we live of a new factor, the greatest, the most bewildering of any that have yet entered in. That factor is the Chinese people setting their feet in the paths that the eternal laws of moral development have laid down for human destiny. 1. First then among the more apparent moral and spiritual elements of the Chinese Revolution must be mentioned enlightenment, coming primarily through western education. Diplomacy and trade would claim but a small share in this contribution. The part that western education has played fostered first and foremost by Christian missions, and since 1905 an objective to which both government and people have given themselves unstintedly, will be adequately treated in other addresses of this conference. It needs to be · given a logical and strong emphasis here because, just as the conscience and personality of an individual can receive no large or true development aside from increasing intelligence, no more the ethical and national ideals of a people. Yet fascinating as is the theme, I yield it the more readily remembering that enlightenment as the equipment of the young Turk party seems not to have fulfilled the promise of their brilliant constitutional movement, and Japan, with an average of school attendance that outdoes some states of our own loved America, felt constrained by the ethical wabbliness of its modern society last February to call a meeting of the leaders of its three great religions to see if the moral foundations might not be made more secure. Still it is not without significance that the overturning in China is often spoken of as a students' revolution. Aside from the part that modern education has played in thus enlightening the Chinese people there ought to be mentioned right here the tremendous influence of the periodicals and books of the Christian Literature Society and in a lesser measure the various tract societies. Put with these the hundreds of Chinese newspapers, good and bad, and it becomes less difficult to understand how new ideas permeated the whole country. Kang Yy Wei, who after the imprisonment of his master, the former emperor, Kuang Hsu, from Japan directed the fortunes of the so-called "Reform" party, had newspapers in nearly every treaty port and although harried by the officials, found haven in the foreign concessions or in Hongkong and continued his propaganda, almost as revolutionary as that of the republicans themselves, up to the commencement of the struggle. The revolutionaries had the keenest appreciation of the moral value of publicity. From the first they took not only the people but foreign powers into their confidence. A first move of their provisional government was to appoint one of their cleverest, best informed men, Wu Ting Fang, former minister at Washington, as their minister of foreign affairs. To him and another of their best leaders, Wen Tsung Iao, they gave the task of keeping the outside world informed as to the inwardness from the revolutionary view point of each event or complication. In the most critical hour of the struggle when, with the utmost good will for Yuan Shi Kai and his cause, the powers hesitated to let him receive any financial backing, these men checkmated every move that Peking made by the sympathy for their cause in the world at large, and by showing the courts and cabinets abroad just what grip they had on the south and the Yantse valley with all the commerical interest of foreigners involved. A little of it may have been what Americans call "bluff,” but the game was not played in the dark, so far as they were concerned, and the forces of light with their concomitants of sympathy and trust seemed predestined to win. 2. After enlightenment as a moral element in the Chinese Revolution must be mentioned a new stirring and vigor of moral conscience. It is rather startling to find that of the ten shortcomings for which Dr. Sun Yat Sen specifically arraigned the Ta Ching dynasty eight are distinct charges of moral failure. Even the other two the second,-"they have opposed our |