Mr. Maurice Collis shares with the philosophers of the eighteenth
century a warm admiration for the principles of gentlemanlike conduct which Confucius had for two thousand years and more been able to impose. Yet he regrets bitterly that, owing to her adherence to ancient forms, China was unable to adapt herself to Western ingenuity while there still was time. The theory that the Son of Heaven, hidden in the Great Within, was, in fact, the ruler of the world, to whom all other nations were tributary, much impeded the reasonable working of Chinese diplomacy and provoked a conflict with the Western Powers which with a little less obstinacy might still have been avoided. The story which Mr. Collis tells so admirably is the story of a nation which persisted obstinately in believing that means and formulas which had for so long been valid would remain valid to the end of time. The Chinese believed that geography even was immutable, and did not realise, until it was far too late, that alterations in transport and methods of combat could alter the facts of geography itself.
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