Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/122

118, as this sum was paid by a clique of wealthy gentry for the monopoly of conducting the Weising Lottery in connection with the examinations. It is reported that this serious deficit is to be met by arranging a domestic loan of three million taels at seven per cent. repayable in instalments within ten years, and that Viceroy Tsên has already received the imperial sanction to float this loan, which will be secured by other gambling monopolies, and has promised that the money thus obtained will be used only for local public works and for schools. The provincial government over a year ago opened a modern normal school in the ancient Examination Halls of Canton, under Japanese direction, and there are some 120 men over twenty years of age studying there, and also some 60 boys enrolled in a practise school.

To what extent existing government, privately endowed, and christian mission schools are prepared to meet the increased demand for modern education which these recent decrees will undoubtedly create might well form the subject of another paper. Suffice it here to point out the tremendous opportunity and responsibility thus presented to christian educational missions. The extent and geographical character of China and its division into provinces under viceroys makes China resemble America more closely than any other country, and we believe that the kind of informal, yet none the less real, national system of educational work in the United States is what China needs. America's merchants are invading the east with marked success, and her diplomacy is affecting the right course of political events. American educators should aid in the educational conquest just as fully. There could be no better way of showing our true friendship, in spite of recent events in connection with our enforcement of the Exclusion Treaty and China's boycott of American products, than thus to aid in the true enlightenment of China's millions. Aside from the motive of christian missions, our prestige in the east demands such altruistic effort.