Although we may regret the passing of so comely a
spring festival, although we may feel sad that the word " Valentine " should now suggest to us a tank rather than a nosegay ; yet it must be admitted that the British public show good sense in discarding superstitions which have become expensive and have lost their glamour. It may be even that what we call our political genius is little more than a capacity. for discarding useless forms, as a snake casts its slough, with no more than 3 faint rustle of regret. I have been reading this week two remarkable books which serve as a warning of what happens to nations who allow the forms of their civilisation to diverge too markedly from its spirit. The first is Maurice Collis's The Great Within, which is a fascinating description of the disasters which came to China once she allowed the Confucian standards of conduct to become formal rather than operative. The later Hinz Emperors had found it more convenient to conduct their administration through the court eunuchs than to cope with the obstructive traditionalism of the Mandarins. Within the wall, of the Forbidden City, within the innermost precincts of the Great Within, they organised a cohort of private secretaries who grew to constitute an alternative, and far more complacent, civil ,ervice. The palace eunuchs had one great advantage over the :,lanclarins, in that whereas they had constant access to the Son of Heaven, the civil servants had not. The memorials addr,ssed to the dragon throne by the officials, or, even by the Cen, Jr's, were cumbrous, intricate, pessimistic and difficult to read. The Emperor was much burdened by the cares of Empire, and he reports which reached him daily froth distant Viceroys
showed small sense of the proportions between their own require- ments and the needs, resources or convenience of the Central Government. It was much more effective, it was infinitely less unpleasant, to rely in such matters upon the palace eunuchs, whose respect for the rapidity and depth of their master's judge- ment could always be relied upon, and who shared with the Son of Heaven a dislike for blimps, red-tape and old school-ties.
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