Cowardice is prima facie a fault of the Chinese; but I am not sure that they are really lacking in courage.  It is true that, in battles between rival tuchuns, both sides run away, and victory rests with the side that first discovers the flight of the other.  But this proves only that the Chinese soldier is a rational man.  No cause of any importance is involved, and the armies consist of mere mercenaries.  When there is a serious issue, as, for instance, in the Tai-Ping rebellion, the Chinese are said to fight well, particularly if they have good officers.  Nevertheless, I do not think that, in comparison with the Anglo-Saxons, the French, or the Germans, the Chinese can be considered a courageous people, except in the matter of passive endurance.  They will endure torture, and even death, for motives which men of more pugnacious races would find insufficient—­for example, to conceal the hiding-place of stolen plunder.  In spite of their comparative lack of active courage, they have less fear of death than we have, as is shown by their readiness to commit suicide.

Avarice is, I should say, the gravest defect of the Chinese.  Life is hard, and money is not easily obtained.  For the sake of money, all except a very few foreign-educated Chinese will be guilty of corruption.  For the sake of a few pence, almost any coolie will run an imminent risk of death.  The difficulty of combating Japan has arisen mainly from the fact that hardly any Chinese politician can resist Japanese bribes.  I think this defect is probably due to the fact that, for many ages, an honest living has been hard to get; in which case it will be lessened as economic conditions improve.  I doubt if it is any worse now in China than it was in Europe in the eighteenth century.  I have not heard of any Chinese general more corrupt than Marlborough, or of any politician more corrupt than Cardinal Dubois.  It is, therefore, quite likely that changed industrial conditions will make the Chinese as honest as we are—­which is not saying much.

I have been speaking of the Chinese as they are in ordinary life, when they appear as men of active and sceptical intelligence, but of somewhat sluggish passions.  There is, however, another side to them:  they are capable of wild excitement, often of a collective kind.  I saw little of this myself, but there can be no doubt of the fact.  The Boxer rising was a case in point, and one which particularly affected Europeans.  But their history is full of more or less analogous disturbances.  It is this element in their character that makes them incalculable, and makes it impossible even to guess at their future.  One can imagine a section of them becoming fanatically Bolshevist, or anti-Japanese, or Christian, or devoted to some leader who would ultimately declare himself Emperor.  I suppose it is this element in their character that makes them, in spite of their habitual caution, the most reckless gamblers in the world.  And many emperors have lost their thrones through the force of romantic love, although romantic love is far more despised than it is in the West.