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THE FLIGHT OF THE DRAGON 145
jobber, the stockjobber and his friends, Mr.
Okio, the delineator, and the philophotographic
Mr. Kokan, are blind to anything that is not
on the surface. Japan, we are told, is to
shape the future of the Eastern hemisphere.
she has
Japan is " forging ahead." Already
set her hand to the task of
civilizing, that is
to say Europeanizing, China just at the
moment when is Europe coming to loathe
her own grossness. Time is the master of
paradox. Who shall say what surprises are
too fantastic for his contriving ? Can the
classic distinction between East and West,
that venerable mother of trite reflections and
bad arguments, be, after all, mutable ? Is
the unchanging East changeable ? Is Mr.
Kipling's thrilling
line no more than the
statement of a geographical truism ? England
they tell us was once a tropical forest ;
London may yet be the spiritual capital of
the world, while Asia rich in all that gold
can buy and guns can give, lord of lands and
bodies, builder of railways and promulgator of
police
glories
regulations, glorious in
postures, complacent
all material
and obtuse,
before a Europe content in the possession
of
all that matters.