Students Lead

In 1927 the students of China made a public pronouncement, a confession of past arrogance, and a resolve to work for and with the people in the future. To this the cohesion of China to-day is largely due, and for this reason, at the beginning of the Chine-Japanese war, Japan singled out the universities as the first objects for destruction. In the first five months of the war 65 out of 115 universities were destroyed, and 35,000 students were without a college. Chiang Kaishek called these students and professors together and told them that their numbers would make no calculable difference to the army, and their task lay in continuing their education and teaching.

In small groups they began a trek on foot from the east coast to the western border, the nearest point of which is a thousand miles away over the roughest kind of tracks, and partly through enemy-occupied territory. It took Dr. Koo's own daughter two months to make this journey.

The new Refugee Universities, as they are called, are made of mud and straw. The students show their spirit by the way they carry on in the face of great difficulties.

But for China the swing towards the scientific and technical is too great; she must strike a balance or possibly perish. Indeed, unless this balance is struck in other countries too, the whole future of the world is a risky one.

Dr. Koo answered the few questions put to him with a clear insight, showing a broadness of outlook that made one feel he had achieved that balance of which he spoke, a balance which is the secret of harmony in the individual, as well as the only hope for the world. One felt, too, that Dr. Koo saw into the future of the West and the East, saw, perhaps, many things profoundly disturbing to the West.

If there are many in China like Dr. Koo, it is possible to visualise China picking the best from Western civilization; and who knows but that one day a war-devastated West may turn for revival to the age-old culture of the East.

Probably the whole audience breathed gratitude to the man who asked Dr. Koo if he had brought his flute. When he said, in answer to a question that Chinese music is in a transitional stage between the classical forms of old China and modern forms from the West, he began to, play Chinese [unclear: folk] music that filled the soundless room with frail beauty. Afterwards at least one of the audience, thanking of 1840 and the years that followed, became unbearably ashamed.

R.A.G.

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