The awakening of Japan's huge neighbour promises to yield results
equally startling and on a vastly extended scale.

Political agitation, whether periodic like the tides or unforeseen
like the hurricane, is in general superficial and temporary; but
the social movement in China has its origin in subterranean forces
such as raise continents from the bosom of the deep. To explain
those forces is the object of the present work.

It is the fascination of this grand spectacle that has
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brought me back to China, after a short visit to my native land--and
to this capital, after a sojourn of some years in the central provinces.
Had the people continued to be as inert and immobile as they appeared
to be half a century ago, I might have been tempted to despair
of their future. But when I see them, as they are to-day, united
in a firm resolve to break with the past, and to seek new life
by adopting the essentials of Western civilisation, I feel that
my hopes as to their future are more than half realised; and I
rejoice to help their cause with voice and pen.

Their patriotism may indeed be tinged with hostility to foreigners;
but will it not gain in breadth with growing intelligence, and will
they not come to perceive that their interests are inseparable from
those of the great family into which they are seeking admission?

Every day adds its testimony to the depth and genuineness of the
movement in the direction of reform. Yesterday the autumn
manoeuvres of the grand army came to a close. They have shown
that by the aid of her railways China is able to assemble a body