I liked that. In all my
journeyings in Yuen-nan I was increasingly impressed with the value of
the missionary, that man who of all men in the Far East is the most
subject to malicious criticism, and generally, be it said, from those
persons who know little or nothing about his work. You cannot measure
the missionary's work by conversions, by mere statistics. I venture to
assert that it is through the missionary that the West applied pressure
and supplied China with political ideas, and put within her reach the
material and instruments which would enable her to carry such ideas into
practice--this apart from religious teaching. More particularly is this
the case in respect to popular education, perhaps, by means of which the
transformation of Old China into New China will be a less long and
difficult process. The people may not want the missionary--I do not for
a moment say that they do--but they need to know the secret of his power
and the power of his kind, and they must study his language, his
science, his machinery, his steamboats, his army, his _Dreadnaughts_.
They realize that the foreigner is useful not for what he can do, but
for what he can teach--therefore they tolerate the missionary.
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