Great Possibilities Lie Ahead for Us if
We Take the Lead in Teaching the
Chinese Western Ways.
Dr. Edmund J. James, president of the University of Illinois, favors the
appointment of an educational commission for the study of the social,
intellectual, and industrial situation in China. The reasons for his
suggestion are contained in a memorandum which he recently submitted to
President Roosevelt, and may be briefly stated as follows:
A great service would be done to both countries if the
government of the United States would at the present
juncture send an educational commission to China, whose
chief function should be to visit the imperial government,
and, with its consent, each of the provincial governments of
the empire, for the purpose of extending through the
authorities of these provinces to the young Chinese who may
desire to go abroad to study a formal invitation on the part
of our American institutions of learning to avail themselves
of the facilities of such institutions.
China is upon the verge of a revolution. Every great nation
of the world will inevitably be drawn into more or less
intimate relations with this gigantic development. It is for
them to determine, each for itself, what these relations
shall be--whether those of amity and friendship and kindness
or those of brute force and the mailed fist. The United
States ought not to hesitate as to its choice in this
matter.
The nation which succeeds in educating the young Chinese of
the present generation will be the nation which, for a given
expenditure of effort, will reap the largest possible
returns in moral, intellectual, and commercial influence.