Foreign News: Four Virtues

For ten months Nationalist Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek has fought the fire of Communismin China by wetting down the ground with his New Life Movement. “Water,” he quotes, “always flows over a wet surface; while fire goes wherever it is dry.” Last week westerners were reading the free English translation of his Outline of The New Life Movement made by his U. S.-educated, banged-browed wife, youngest daughter of China’s famed Soong family.

Painstaking as a primer, the Outline runs to questions and answers. Examples:

What is Life?

Nothing more than the continuation of activities.

What is New Life?

Change and readaptation.

What is the New Life Movement?

To teach the people to adapt themselves to new conditions.

To sweep away the anarchy and “spiritlessness” of Chinese who “lack proper guidance for taking and giving,” the Outline proposes ”a wild storm”; to give China the new “right spirit,” it proposes “a gentle breeze. . . .”

Chinese must relearn, says Chiang, one by one and all together, the breeze’s four virtues: li, i, lien and ch’ih.

Ch’ih, meaning “consciousness,” must govern the motive of action through the sense of duty.

Lien, meaning “clear” supplies a choice between right & wrong actions.

I, meaning “proper” carries out the action in accordance with social order.

Li, meaning “reason” “regulates the outward form of that particular action.”

From Chiang’s point of view, however, the four ancient virtues mean even more: ch’ih, patriotism; lien, morality; i, social sense or the exact opposite of its English meaning, and li, discipline—the four cardinal virtues of any nationalistic State. Says Chiang:

“The four are interrelated. Otherwise li without i becomes dishonest; without lien becomes extravagant; without ch’ih becomes flattering. All these may appear like li but really they are not. … In like manner, ch’ih without li will be chaotic; without i, violent; without lien, ugly. They are no longer ch’ih.”

In spreading the New Life Movement, the Outline lays down the rule that “no contribution shall be raised from the public.” Instead, working down from Generalissimo Chiang himself, “the movement should be started first from oneself and gradually be extended to others. It should be started with simple matters (good manners and cleanliness) and gradually extended. . . . [Thus] it is hoped that rudeness and vulgarity will be got rid of.”