was announced. Among the organizers of that association are such distinguished men as Premier Tang; minister of navy, Liu; minister of education, Tsai; minister of agriculture and forestry, Sung; and others equally prominent in the political and educational life of the new republic. In an article announcing the formation of the said association, some thirty-six different social problems were given as reforms which, in the opinion of the association, should be vigorously advanced. In Kwangtung and several other provinces, the provincial educational authorities have appointed through competitive examination, a number of lecturers to give popular lectures on topics such as self-government, education, hygiene, and philanthropy. Attention has already been called to the fact that the present ministry of education has a bureau, known as the bureau of social education, the duty of which is to advance the whole movement, namely, to popularize education through quasi-educational institutions.

This treatment of the educational situation created by the revolution is necessarily incomplete. Perhaps enough has been said to indicate the fact that the work of reconstruction in education, as in other phases of China's national life, has already well begun and begun with a great determination to win. The problem of supplying educational facilities to China's millions is so gigantic in its scope and so complicated in its character, that it calls for not only the highest professional skill, but a great deal of enthusiasm, patriotism, and altruism for its successful solution. The system existing today, being still in its infancy, is naturally full of imperfections and has plenty of room for improvement, especially when it is compared with the systems of other enlightened nations, most of which have taken centuries of adjustment and toil before reaching their present stage of excellence, and even they still have some room for improvement. New China, however, is confident that given sufficient time. she will be able to work out her own salvation in spite of the fact that the problem is fraught with difficulties. For the present she needs time to regain her breath from the shock which she experienced in the transition from monarchy

into republic. She needs time to consider what are the best elements in western education which could be utilized to her best interests, and what are the best elements in her own system which have proved best for China through the centuries of her history and which should be preserved with all vigor and tenacity. In short, she needs time to readjust herself to the new conditions which now surround her. Meanwhile, young China believes that help and coöperation from the educators of the West are not only highly desirable but in a way indispensable to a speedy success. For this reason she favors and welcomes every effort put forth by all well-wishers of China toward the solution of the problem and the attainment of the high ideal which she has set before her. From the teachers and educators of the West China expects to find sympathy and encouragement which come with the consciousness of a common purpose, and to gain, in no small measure, the inspiration of their highest ideals.

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