CHINA: Cocky Chinamen

Tall, well set up, grave-faced and pleasant of voice, William Philip (“Phil”) Simms, able Foreign Editor of the U.S. Scripps-Howard Newspapers, would make an impressive character witness. Last week he was back at his Washington desk from China. Eager to testify that in his opinion all is substantially well with Chinamen, he was soon tapping at his typewriter. Pungently he wrote:

“The Chinese are getting more and more cocky with each passing year, but to my mind that is the most hopeful sign visible in that country. No race is worth its salt that isn’t cocky. Americans are cocky. The British are cocky. The French, Germans, Italians and other leading peoples of the earth are cocky, and it was precisely this trait that put them where they are.

“Eight years ago when I visited China I felt rather hopeless for the Chinese because I observed no cockiness. On the contrary I saw 400,000,000 people floundering around, most of them absolutely illiterate and nobody doing anything to speak of to teach them to read and write. Two or three mercenary revolutions were in full swing and everybody seemed to be taking a fatalistic view of the chaotic situation. The few educated Chinese I talked with complained bitterly of what was going on, but when they were asked why they themselves did not plunge in and do their bit to bring China out of it they shrugged and asked, in reply, what could one man do.

“Today the whole aspect has changed. A tremendous movement to educate the people is in full swing. Every educated man in China-and the number of these men is becoming legion-is feverishly doing his utmost to make his country into a great, modern world Power. . . .

“The seizure [by China from Russia-(TIME, July 22)] of the Chinese Eastern Railway simply means that the Chinese no longer will stand for anything and everything foreigners may try to put over on them. There is little doubt that Soviet Russia was using the railway as a political instrument to China’s detriment, and that Soviet officials of the railway were utilizing their offices as headquarters for Communist propaganda tending to undermine the authority of the Nationalist government. Documentary evidence exists to prove this. And it has not been so very long since the United States, on less provocation, engaged in a nationwide round-up of Reds, real or alleged, and deported those they did not put in jail.”