``I would be almost willing to assert that it is impossible for a man, brought up in China, then spending many years abroad, to return to China and write such a book in honesty and sincerity of heart. He could not possibly help knowing that nine-tenths of what he was writing about China was absolutely untrue, that her political, legal, social, domestic and personal life are rotten to the core, and that only in a few exceptional cases is any pretence even made of living according to the ethics of Confucius. It might be possible for an educated man, whose surroundings had always been of an exceptionally good character, and who had never gone outside of his own province or studied foreign books, to write with some enthusiasm of the beauties of Chinese life, but not for any one else.'' Still, at a time when the Chinese are being vociferously abused, it is only fair that we should give them credit for the good qualities which they do possess. I ask with Dr. William Elliott Griffis: ``In talking of our brother men, what shall be our general principle, detraction or fair play? Because lackadaisical writers picture the Christless nations as in the innocence of Eden, shall we, at the antipodes of fact and truth, proceed to blacken their characters? Shall we compare the worst in Canton, Benares or Zululand, with the best in London, Berlin or Philadelphia? Surely God cannot look with complacency or hear with delight much of the practical slander spoken among white folks and Anglo-Saxons of His children and our brothers.''