Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Jun 22, 1905

The wonderful developments among the peoples of the far East may well bring to mind Joel's prophecy of the last days which speaks of the wakening of the heathen, preparatory to the great final gathering of the nations in the valley of Jehoshaphat. Japan, as the world knows, has become fully awakened, insomuch that that nation of Asiatics now stands prominent among the world powers. And now the long-talked-of “awakening of China” seems fairly begun. On this point the following testimony from a man of long experience in the Orient is quoted in the Literary Digest:—

China has been slowly awakening.

With haughty pride she refused the culture of the West during a whole century of incessant and increasingly persistent contact, until aroused by the blows of the Japanese army and navy. . . . Now an edict, for some time in force, has been filling the land with schools in every province, culminating in an immense imperial university, in all of which Western knowledge and culture will be taught. . . . A revolution, simply beyond the power of description, has already begun. What has occurred in Japan on a small scale during the last forty years is being re-enacted in China on a scale colossal and portentous.