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Desperate Conditions. Some of you have traveled in the Orient and you remember your first glimpse of it. The poverty, the overcrowding, the dirt, the squalor, the disease were all right out there in full view; and your first reaction was: "Why, these people are living almost like animals. Their condition is hopeless." It was just about all you could take under ordinary circumstances, wasn't it? How much worse after almost eight years of war and invasion ?
In former years most reports on China came from Americans who went out as missionaries, or as teachers, or as businessmen, or as long-term reporters or students. They soon observed also the tapestries and cloisonnés, and porcelains, the literary achievements, the mature wisdom, the basic goodness and friendliness of the people. They wanted to live their lives happily there, so they looked for and found the best. They learned what the Chinese have long known, that the loveliest flower of all, the lotus, frequently grows in the most uninviting surroundings.
But thousands of Americans are there today who are not interested in China's culture. They did not go because they wanted to go. They went because they were sent, by their newspaper or by Uncle Sam. They frequently see only the external things, almost all unprepossessing, and they do not like it. I find our boys abroad do not like any country except one, and that is the United States of America. They want only to get back to it. They write home to their families about the filth and the cruelties and the antiquated methods and what seem to be lackadaisical attitudes and all the rest. The fathers and mothers read it, and then they know all about China because their boy, John, well, he is there and he saw and he knows.
Likewise most reporters—they do not want to be sent to that assignment and they do not like it. Understandably, these Americans tend to judge China, not in terms of China's own past but in terms of the West. They assume the bad conditions are the result of the present Government's failures, when in reality conditions became not worse, but very much better under that Government in the years prior to the war.
The second fact which many fail to appreciate fully is that China was still in the midst of a great revolution when she was plunged into this war against her wishes. Revolutions are almost always disorderly and long-drawn-out affairs. It took the French 80 years to get through their revolution. It took us 90 years, including a great Civil War, before we got straightened out after our revolution. You will remember that when our Republic was older than China's is, conditions in this country in the latter part of the War of 1812 were so bad, the corruption and factionalism were so rampant in the Government, inefficiencies in the Army were so notorious, and the administration of affairs was so bad that representatives of the people of New England met in Hartford, Conn, and solemnly voted to secede. They were giving up as hopeless the attempt to get internal unity and stability in