100 years ago--Harry F. Ward condemns Western attitude toward China

The following article was published more than eight months after the death of Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China and Premier of its governing party, the Kuomintang (KMT). China was ruled by the collective leadership of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang from March 1925-May 1926, before Chiang Kai-shek won a power struggle for party and national leadership in 1927. As published in the Montreal Gazette, November 30, 1925 (bold in original):

TRY DOING RIGHT INSTEAD OF GOOD

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Pharisaical Attitude of Western World to China Condemned by Prof. H.F. Ward

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MILITARISTIC SPIRIT

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Chinese Students Coming Over to Study Arts of War, Is Warning Given

-------- "If people of today do not understand what is now going on in and concerning China, there is likely to be a much heavier price paid for that ignorance in the future than was paid for the ignorance of this generation concerning affairs in Europe."

This was the message brought to the members of the People's Forum and the public last night by Professor Harry F. Ward, of New York. Professor Ward is a student of international politics, who has devoted a great deal of time to study of the problems of the East, from where he has recently returned...

...The address...[was] broadcast by the Northern Electric Company.

Professor Ward's contention was that China, always a pacifist sort of nation, was being driven to the use of force through not being given fair play by the Western powers.

"What is passing in China at the present moment," he said, "is that the young China is trained in the knowledge of the West as well as in the ancient law of the East and is writing her declaration of independence. That is likely to be an even more significant event for history than the writing of a similar declaration upon this continent during last century.

"Consider what it means that the oldest and largest unit of the world's population, people with the largest potentialities because of the vigor of their racial stock and long experience of life, should form for the first time a nation in the Western sense of the word."

Always a national unit because of her culture, customs, philosophy and practice of life, China now becomes organized and throws into the conflicting issues of the competing nationalities of the world, the weight of her demand and the strength of her power.

Professor Ward said the great question is whether she can attain her demand by her ancient method of reason or whether she will have to resort to force.

They have always been pacifists, he said: their pacifism being the result of their practical experience of life. China has lived by an appeal to reason, not that there have not been wars, but war has never been the recognized way to do things. A proof of it he cited was the soldier, in past days, having been the lowest member of the social scale.

STUDYING WAR.

Now all that is changing. The Chinese people think they will not get what they want unless they have behind them the military and naval forces that Western countries have. Chinese students are not now coming over to the United States to study in the colleges, but are coming to get to know something of military matters.

"The West may move forces she cannot overcome," he remarked. "Yet the question is very much deeper than that. If the West cannot gi

ve China justice it means that the West is destroying a spiritual contribution which China has made to the world, a contribution which, joined with similar elements in the West, might prove to be the salvation of mankind." Outlining the forces and causes at work which are bringing about this change, Professor Ward stated that firstly there have been treaties which have been secured by force which have deprived China of very vital parts of her territory.

Another grudge the Chinese have is that at a tariff convention at Peking the Western powers did things they had no right to do. The duty on cigarettes, oil and steel going into China was fixed at 5 per cent. Chinese silk coming into the United States is charged 54 per cent.

Professor Ward condemned the settlement system which is in vogue in China. By this system, foreign residents are able to live there without being under the control of Chinese law, a situation which exists nowhere else in the world.

Certainly the Chinese residents in these cities have benefitted by the sanitary methods and municipal administration introduced, but these things count as nothing beside the basic fact of foreign control and he contended no further good of any sort to China or the West can be attained by perpetuating this foreign control.

The speake gave several instances of the misuse of this system, one of which is in Shanghai where, in the foreign settlement, 80 per cent of the taxes are paid by Chinese residents and they are not pemitted a vote or a voice in the administration. Moreover, there is more money spent on the upkeep of two parks, to which the Chinese with few exceptions, are admitted than there is spent on the education of the Chinese children.

Professor Ward designated the Western attitude to China as an unjustifiable assumption of superiority.

"If the West would stop trying to do good and try to do right for a few years, it would be more advantageous," he said. "We have almost come to the attitude of the Pharisee."

When I saw the name Harry F. Ward, I immediately recognized him as the man who devised the Methodist Social Creed, which served as the basis for the Social Creed of the National Council of Churches, and a man who was identified under oath by several witnesses before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1950s as a member of the Communist Party. For more on Harry F. Ward, see the books Collectivism in the Churches (1958) by Edgar C. Bundy and Outside the Gate (1967) by Carl McIntire.