THE EAST ADMONISHES THE WEST
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
Snt,—I am interested to observe that Mr. C. E. M. Joad's encyclopaedic knowledge now extends to China and the Far East, and that he is ready, as usual, to impart it.
May I be permitted, however, as a lifelong student of Chinese history and philosophy, to suggest that several of the opinions expressed in his review of Mr. Lin Yu-tang's book, The Importance of Living, are curiously misleading ? Had Mr. Joad read the recent works of writers who have made a serious
study of the subject, such as'Mr. C. P. Fitzgerald, Sir G. B. Sansom, Mr. Owen Lattimore, or even Mr. Lin Yu-tang, he would surely have refrained from telling us that " the values. of the West are becoming the values of the East," or that " Japan has adopted the civilisation of the West." As a matter of fact, Mr. Lin's book, despite a certain tendency to facetiousness, may be summed up as a vindication of China's traditional conception of life-values, which, complacently disre- garding the thundering legions of the West, persists, century after century, in its disillusioned but cheerful enjoyment of life.
Mr. Joad seems to *attach considerable importance to the statement vouched for by the interesting but inaccurate author of Red Star Over China, that " the cult of the family has been dismissed as feudal," and that " Young Chinese Communists proclaim the rights of Youth, &c., &c." From Mr. Fitzgerald's Son of Heaven he might have learned that a very similar condi- tion of affairs existed in China as far back as the beginning of the seventh century :
" It was," as he says, " an age of Youth. The wars and tumults of the time had weakened the heavy control of the older generation. The Confucian maxims enjoining unquestioned submission of youth to age were but little observed."
The Chinese have always accepted transient variations from the normal of their national life, in the same philosophic spirit as they have accepted periods of alien rule. But that has never altered their deeply rooted philosophy nor their conception of
life's fundamental values.—I am, &c., J. 0. P. BLAND. Brudenell House, Aldeburgh.
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