A year of prophesyingWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
A year of prophesying
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Civilization, Modern -- 20th century; Europe -- History -- 20th century; Great Britain -- History -- 20th century
It is not that Britain has not a profound interest in the future
development of China. All the English-speaking peoples, all the
other peoples in the world, have a great and increasing interest in
Chinese affairs. As the world is drawn together into a political
unity, the Chinaman becomes the most important neighbour of everyone.
But the method of expressing an interest by grabbing and fortifying
settlements, threatening coasts with warships, levying tribute and
imposing iniquitous trade arrangements, is now manifestly old-fashioned
and barbaric, and a new line of activities has to replace these outworn
puerilities.
The English-speaking communities have to work out, and do seem to
be beginning to work out, a common conception of a world order, and
of their common share in it. Regarded as a point of departure, as a
new turn in international thought, the League of Nations movement
marks an epoch in world history. That sort of thought is still most
extensively carried by the English language; shallow and weak to-day,
it may become deeper and more effective as time goes on. It is in the
character of the English-speaking communities. It is manifestly of
primary importance that so far as possible this thinking-out of the
organised peace of the world by the English-speaking communities should
go on parallel with, and in touch with, the similar thinking-out of
the other great communities of the world. And with no other great
community is it more possible and desirable to develop a joint system
of ideas and a common political and social aim, than with the great
Chinese mass. It is possible, because China is to an extraordinary
extent renascent and blank and ready to consider and accept points of
view and constructive conceptions. China is remaking her education
from the foundation. The four hundred million mass of China is at
present intellectually far more plastic than the forty million mass
of France, and the thirty million mass of Italy. And it is desirable
as well as possible, because a successful effort to bring modern
Chinese and American and British thought about the world’s affairs into
co-operative understanding would add the weight of four hundred million
to the five hundred million of the American and British systems.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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