which have backed them.

There is much in the Chinese that is worthy of our respectful
recognition. Multitudes are indeed, stolid and ignorant,
but multitudes, too, have strong, intelligent features. Thousands
of children have faces as bright and winning as those of
American children. More strongly than ever do I feel that
Europe and America have not done justice to the character of
the Chinese. I do not refer to the bigoted and corrupt Manchu
officials, or to the lawless barbarians who, like the ``lewd fellows
of the baser sort'' in other lands, are ever ready to follow the
leadership of a demagogue. But I refer to the Chinese people
as a whole. Their view-point is so radically different from
ours that we have often harshly misjudged them, when the real
trouble has lain in our failure to understand them.

Let us be free enough from prejudice and passion to respect
a people whose national existence has survived the mutations
of a definitely known historic period of thirty-seven centuries
and of an additional legendary period that runs back no man
knows how far into the haze of a hoary antiquity; who are
frugal, patient, industrious and respectful to parents, as we are
not; whose astronomers made accurate recorded observations
200 years before Abraham left Ur; who used firearms at the
beginning of the Christian era; who first grew tea, manufactured
gunpowder, made pottery, glue and gelatine; who wore
silk and lived in houses when our ancestors wore the undressed
skins of wild animals and slept in caves; who invented printing
by movable types 500 years before that art was known in
Europe; who discovered the principles of the mariner's compass