less Anglicized than those returning from the United States are Americanized.  To the Chinaman who wishes to be modern and up-to-date, skyscrapers and hustle seem romantic, because they are so unlike his home.  The old traditions which conservative Europeans value are such a mushroom growth compared to those of China (where authentic descendants of Confucius abound) that it is useless to attempt that way of impressing the Chinese.  One is reminded of the conversation in Eothen between the English country gentleman and the Pasha, in which the Pasha praises England to the refrain:  “Buzz, buzz, all by steam; whir, whir, all on wheels,” while the Englishman keeps saying:  “Tell the Pasha that the British yeoman is still, thank God, the British yeoman.”

Although the educational work of the Americans in China is on the whole admirable, nothing directed by foreigners can adequately satisfy the needs of the country.  The Chinese have a civilization and a national temperament in many ways superior to those of white men.  A few Europeans ultimately discover this, but Americans never do.  They remain always missionaries—­not of Christianity, though they often think that is what they are preaching, but of Americanism.  What is Americanism?  “Clean living, clean thinking, and pep,” I think an American would reply.  This means, in practice, the substitution of tidiness for art, cleanliness for beauty, moralizing for philosophy, prostitutes for concubines (as being easier to conceal), and a general air of being fearfully busy for the leisurely calm of the traditional Chinese.  Voltaire—­that hardened old cynic—­laid it down that the true ends of life are “aimer et penser.”  Both are common in China, but neither is compatible with “pep.”  The American influence, therefore, inevitably tends to eliminate both.  If it prevailed it would, no doubt, by means of hygiene, save the lives of many Chinamen, but would at the same time make them not worth saving.  It cannot therefore be regarded as wholly and altogether satisfactory.

The best Chinese educationists are aware of this, and have established schools and universities which are modern but under Chinese direction.  In these, a certain proportion of the teachers are European or American, but the spirit of the teaching is not that of the Y.M.C.A.  One can never rid oneself of the feeling that the education controlled by white men is not disinterested; it seems always designed, unconsciously in the main, to produce convenient tools for the capitalist penetration of China by the merchants and manufacturers of the nation concerned.  Modern Chinese schools and universities are singularly different:  they are not hotbeds of rabid nationalism as they would be in any other country, but institutions where the student is taught to think freely, and his thoughts are judged by their intelligence, not by their utility to exploiters.  The outcome, among the best young men, is a really beautiful intellectual disinterestedness.