Scum!

Often called "the foremost Chinese thinker of today" is Hu Shih, for nine years Professor of Philosophy at Peking University, and later Dean of the English Department, the first Chinese to write poetry in the spoken vernacular, vigorous editor for many a moon of the slightly radical Chinese weekly Endeavor, and frequently mentioned as likely to accept this portfolio or that in the Chinese Nationalist Government.

From the forthright pen of Professor Hu leaped, last week, a scorching, staggering indictment of China 1929:

"We must know ourselves! We must confess that we are terribly poor and that our people are suffering miseries which justly horrify the civilized peoples. We must confess that our political life is corrupt to the core, and that most of our homes are nests of crime, of injustice, oppression, lynching and suicide.

"We must see with open eyes that we are ruled by militarists who arose from banditry and from the scum of society, and whose education and training never qualified them to rule.

"Dr. Sun Yat-sen's philosophy aims at instructing the people to obey leaders who have intelligence to guide them. But this philosophy will fail in a situation where the blind are leading the blind and know not where they are going.

"What is needed today, it seems to me, is a deep conviction, which should amount almost to a religious repentance, that we Chinese are backward in everything and that every other modern nation in the world is much better off than we are. For all this we have ourselves to blame! Let us no longer deceive ourselves with self-complacent talks about imperialistic powers hampering our national progress and prosperity. Let us read the recent history of Japan and bury our conceit and self-deception once for all in shame and repentance."