While much is known here of the divided political condition of China, but little is heard of this important solidarity. The importance of such occurrences lies mainly in the fact that these are the outward signs of a “Tide of New Thought,” as it has been called in Chinese. This new vitality is pulsating more or less through the people of the whole empire, but especially and with intense vigour in the student world. It has driven them to violent and undisciplined action, so that many people see in it the germs of revolution. But one must not forget that the political Revolution has already become an accomplished fact, and that the new movement is mainly one of educational and social reform, and that the political faith of students is Republicanism. The anti-Japanese feeling is due to the determined infiltration of the Japanese into the country, and more especially their action with regard to Shantung. Japan lost a priceless opportunity of making alliance with China and vindicating herself before the world, when she broke faith with regard to giving back Tsingtau to China at the end of the war. This has had important results on the student movement by leading the students to rapid concerted action and showing them their power to control the action of Government. However, this is but a temporary matter, while the recent literary and social renaissance is likely to have a permanent influence on the national life. The effect of the new movement on literature of all kinds is particularly interesting. The daily press and the reviews and magazines are full of new thoughts and reflect all the currents of opinion of the Western world. The critical spirit leaves no problem unstudied; the political agitation in India, the Sinn Fein outrages in Ireland, the labour troubles in England are accurately reported in the Chinese daily press. Judgment is being passed on the results of our civilization, and the future shaping of China’s destiny depends largely on that judgment. One of the most momentous days in all the history of the race was when the Dowager Empress decided to sweep away the old system of education after her great defeat by the Western Powers in 1900. It was an amazing _volte-face_ on the part of one of the most bigoted autocrats that the world has seen. She saw that the root of all her difficulties in finding the right kind of officials was lack of well-educated persons in the social class from which such officials are chosen, so she issued an edict in 1904 which bore the stamp of Yüan Shih-k’ai and Chang Chih-tung, destroying at one blow the old educational system. The document is curious and even a little pathetic. She ordained that graduation in the new colleges should be the only way to official position, pointing out that colleges had been in existence more than two thousand five hundred years ago, and that the classical essay system was quite modern—only having existed about five hundred years.