CHINESE STUDENTS IN ENGLAND.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIS,—To isolated Britishers nothing in the mail-bag is more welcome than the Spectator, representing as it does so ably all that is best in our national life. The great unshapen Empire from the heart of which I write is seeking reform. Everybody knows, however, that China needs social and moral regeneration even more urgently than political reform. Few perhaps of the many Chinese now visiting Christian lands in quest of ideals may turn their attention to the importance of the national home life, and in England is not the mainspring of our happiness and prosperity centred in pure home circles ? Knowledge of domestic life in England is not to be gained in College classrooms, nor by lonely wanderers in our city streets, and it may be caricatured in second-rate lodging. houses.
Hence may I suggest to your readers that acts of kind- ness and hospitality to any Chinese students they may come across may have far-reaching results in this land ? The kind influence of a disinterested merchant at Hampstead on a forlorn Japanese youth has borne fruit in the life of Marquis Ito ; lack of such help has already been noticed by the Chinese student failures in Japan. The makers of the future Empire of the East are to-day bashful lads, probably homesick, in our big cities and educational centres. It is for those who may be living near them, or who may meet them in travelling, to decide whether these Chinese return to China to represent us as correctly termed "foreign devils," or return brimful of admiration of our ethical standards and attainments in the ideals of Christian social life.—I am,
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