In an interview I had with that great statesman, Tong-Shao-Yi, he said, "We respect Confucius because he has never taught any man to err." Unlike the teaching of Christianity, Confucius preaches that the test of truth is worldly success, and therefore by that test his preaching will be tried and found wanting by the materialist. The materialist will say, if Confucius never taught men to err, how is it that the Western nations who are ignorant of his teaching have succeeded, and that China, who outnumbers them greatly, and who after years of education and training and of following faithfully his teaching, has failed? How is it, they will ask, that she is so powerless, that were it not for European jealousies she could not stand a day before the least warlike of these Western nations? The Confucian {42} will answer, "He taught us to despise war, and that is why we are weak." The materialist will certainly retort, "So he has taught you to err." Confucianism must fall before Western materialism. I do not speak of Buddhism, for that is falling so quickly that its influence may be said to be almost gone. China will be left stripped of religion, robbed of her old ideas, and not clothed with new ones, wandering into all the misery and humiliation that vice and sin can bring upon mankind, till the curse of her millions in misery will go out against the harsh unfeeling West, who could leave her thus blind and helpless without a guide. The call is great. Those who have knowledge have no right to keep it to themselves. The Christian and the Confucian agree in this, as they do in much else, that all knowledge must be shared. One of the purposes of this book is to arouse my readers to the importance of taking some action. Had they had an opportunity of going to China and seeing things for themselves, I would only have asked them to think; but as there are many who have not had that opportunity, I would try and show them the transitional condition through which China is passing, the danger of that condition ending in disaster, a disaster wide as the world itself. I hope to show them what is being done at the present time to lead the Chinese empire into safe paths, and to illuminate her with the highest knowledge of the West. Many efforts have been made, and there has been much success. I {43} am glad to testify publicly to the heroic and self-denying character of the missions, but those who are most successful are those who frankly say China can never be led by aliens.