What Do We Know Of China?

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 39, 5 April 1935, Page 16

What Do We Know Of China?

Maurice Dekobra Presents Some Fresh Material "(CONFUCIUS IN A TAIL COAT" is a bright and entertaining volume which etches in ‘the detail of. the author’s main contention that, with all our study and attempt to "understand" China, we cannot "understand" her at all. This well-known writer of intriguing novels (of which 4,000,000 copies translated into 23 lauguages have been sold) in his steady search for fresh material visited the Bast. Claiming no . qualifications for this particular work of explaining China, other than that of a skilled high-speed investigator, hevisited the main ¢ities and established . interesting contacts. Running through the various chapters is a thread of actual romance-in-the-making in the experiences of a Russian exile Serge in selling contraband to "the highest bidder whose money is good," a very important qualification, aided and abetted ~ by two lady friends, one his mistress and the other her rival. That, however, is but the seasoning to the work which is, in its field, quite definitely an able etching of Chinese life and point of view. Prophesy regarding Ohina is vain. Here are 400,000,000 people, backed by 5000 years of a civilisation which in its high morality, attainment and comfort, is at least the equal of our own. Of that mass of people barely a tnillion are as yet really conscious of Western effort and power. With that the outcome of 100 years of missionising penetration who can prophesy the rate of progress, if progress it be? The author achieves his aim of giving us something of China’s point of view. By analogy he places her in the position of France in the middle ages. What right had her neighbours, then, to presume to dictate phases of her internal development? So with China. She has her problem. She will solve it for herself. But the first problem to be met will be the conflict in the near future on Chinese soil of Russia and Japan, which once begun will lead, says he, to a4 general conflagration in the Bast. The book is well illustrated with a number of magnificent plates of recent date. "Confucius in a Tailcoat." Maurice Dekobra. T. Werner ‘Laurie. Our co: from the publishers, _