So far, I have spoken chiefly of the good sides of the Chinese character; but of course China, like every other nation, has its bad sides also.  It is disagreeable to me to speak of these, as I experienced so much courtesy and real kindness from the Chinese, that I should prefer to say only nice things about them.  But for the sake of China, as well as for the sake of truth, it would be a mistake to conceal what is less admirable.  I will only ask the reader to remember that, on the balance, I think the Chinese one of the best nations I have come across, and am prepared to draw up a graver indictment against every one of the Great Powers.  Shortly before I left China, an eminent Chinese writer pressed me to say what I considered the chief defects of the Chinese.  With some reluctance, I mentioned three:  avarice, cowardice and callousness.  Strange to say, my interlocutor, instead of getting angry, admitted the justice of my criticism, and proceeded to discuss possible remedies.  This is a sample of the intellectual integrity which is one of China’s greatest virtues.

The callousness of the Chinese is bound to strike every Anglo-Saxon.  They have none of that humanitarian impulse which leads us to devote one per cent. of our energy to mitigating the evils wrought by the other ninety-nine per cent.  For instance, we have been forbidding the Austrians to join with Germany, to emigrate, or to obtain the raw materials of industry.  Therefore the Viennese have starved, except those whom it has pleased us to keep alive from philanthropy.  The Chinese would not have had the energy to starve the Viennese, or the philanthropy to keep some of them alive.  While I was in China, millions were dying of famine; men sold their children into slavery for a few dollars, and killed them if this sum was unobtainable.  Much was done by white men to relieve the famine, but very little by the Chinese, and that little vitiated by corruption.  It must be said, however, that the efforts of the white men were more effective in soothing their own consciences than in helping the Chinese.  So long as the present birth-rate and the present methods of agriculture persist, famines are bound to occur periodically; and those whom philanthropy keeps alive through one famine are only too likely to perish in the next.

Famines in China can be permanently cured only by better methods of agriculture combined with emigration or birth-control on a large scale.  Educated Chinese realize this, and it makes them indifferent to efforts to keep the present victims alive.  A great deal of Chinese callousness has a similar explanation, and is due to perception of the vastness of the problems involved.  But there remains a residue which cannot be so explained.  If a dog is run over by an automobile and seriously hurt, nine out of ten passers-by will stop to laugh at the poor brute’s howls.  The spectacle of suffering does not of itself rouse any sympathetic pain in the average Chinaman; in fact, he seems to find it mildly agreeable.  Their history, and their penal code before the revolution of 1911, show that they are by no means destitute of the impulse of active cruelty; but of this I did not myself come across any instances.  And it must be said that active cruelty is practised by all the great nations, to an extent concealed from us only by our hypocrisy.