ILLUSTRATIONS MESSER MARCO POLO, WITH MESSER NICOLO AND CONFUCIUS MENCIUS Frontispiece 46 46 THE GREAT FIRST EMPEROR ON HIS WAY TO CONSULT GROWTH OF CHINESE EMPIRE (MAP) T'ANG, THE COMPLETER, OFFERS HIMSELF A SACRIFICE FOR THE CHINESE EMPIRE THE MECCA CERTIFICATE Portion showing the Kaaba THE MONGOL Empire in the Thirteenth Century (MAP) 48 50 84 THE GREAT MOGHUL, BABAR, ON HIS WAY to Battle 100 CRUCIFIXION OF THE TWENTY-THREE PROTOMARTYRS OF JAPAN, 1597 124 ASIA IN THE MID-EIGHTEENTH CENTURY (MAP) TZU-HSI, "THE ONLY MAN IN CHINA". From a photograph in the office of the Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs at the State Department, Washington ITO, MAKER And Interpreter OF THE JAPANESE CON STITUTION Photograph by the Keystone View Company of New York GANDHI, APOSTLE OF NON-COÖPERATION Photograph by the Keystone View Company of New York SUN YAT-SEN, FIRST PROVISIONAL PRESIDENT OF THE CHINESE REPUBLIC. Photograph by the Keystone View Company of New York GENERAL MAP OF ASIA. 202 254 356 436 CHAPTER I UHKARY INTRODUCTORY We are just beginning to realize in America, says Mr. H. G. Wells, "that quite a lot of things happened between Adam and the Mayflower that we ought to be told about. . . . The United States has been like one of those men we read about in the papers, who go away from home and turn up in some distant place with their memories gone. They've forgotten what their names were, or where they lived, or what they did for a living. They've forgotten everything that matters." If such an indictment be true, the forgetfulness has been up to the present neither unnatural nor unuseful. For every nation whose national quality is destined to prove of lasting value to civilization, it is necessary that there be two periods of experience. First, there must be the period of relative segregation. This is the time for the national quality to be developed by the welding together of its constituent parts. At this stage, nationalism, as in the case of the Jews, may exhibit the fiercest kind of tenacity. It may be jealous with the kind of national jealousy we call chauvinism. It may be so conscious of the worth of what it has to guard that it regards any dilution of national spirit by foreign contacts as a contamination of the wellsprings of life. But to such a people — again, as in the case of the Jews there comes a second period when, under penalty of stagnating, it becomes essential to put forth the achievements of national character to service on behalf of all mankind. After this the centrifugal conception of political life 1 The Secret Places of the Heart, p. 155. |