"WILDERNESS WERE PARADISE"

"China", writes Marcel Rouff in an article reprinted in the current "Living Age", "offers the world an unprecedented example of a nation wise enough not to be led astray by our stupidly standardized civilization". The author recalls that this even-tempered nation of the Orient herself represents a mature and wise civilization which has escaped the ruinous fate of Babylon, Greece, and Rome, and the annihilation which we are told awaits the Occident in its headlong flight. And today, M. Rouff adds, China embraces four hundred million peaceful souls, fearless of death and sublimely happy, loyal, content, filled with self-sufficiency and a desire to be left alone. "What can we accomplish" (referring to the burst of international "generosity" toward China concentrated in the Washington conference) "against a social organization so justly equipoised, which has for its foundation this family idea, this spirit of cooperation, this temperamental solidarity?"

A grave problem M. Rouff presents. The nations would extend their hand to the Orient, to draw her from her peaceful worship of the philosophical gods that she may taste of the romance of international commerce. But, M. Rouff says, China will not submit to the proffered modernization. She will not make merchants of her mandarins; she will keep her narrow streets and rickshaws and pagodas while the West goes its way to destruction.

Nevertheless, China must sooner, or later respond to the positive influence of a commercial world which offers itself. The question is, will she gain or suffer thereby? The author barely intimates that commercialism and contact with the West will spell her ruin, even as materialistic progress spelled ruin for the other great civilizations of history. This argument deserves weight, but clearly falls to envisage all the facts. The picture painted of a peaceful country sufficient unto itself falls to show in the background the squalor and poverty of the basic population, the bare existence in normal times and the plagues and famines of the years. China, it is true, has lived for centuries clearly independent of the outer world. But she has been unable to meet the demands of an intensive population, the check has had to come through disease. Whatever its motives, then, the world has much that is good to offer. China must accept the many disadvantages; her mandarins will become merchants and her matrons will vote. But far more important, her population will find the opportunity for adaptation to her geographical advantages and personal capabilities. And the whole world will be her reserve strength in need. After all, with the growth of population and the pressing on existence, contact with the outer world becomes a necessity. The responsibility of saving civilization by other means rests with biologists and sociologists.