Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston

“ Yet when in some parts of south-eastern Asia we have once breathed that Nirvana-like spirit of restfulness and peace, may we not be pardoned if we find there a strange and magical beauty that all the wisdom of the West can never yield us? It may be, indeed, that our complex Western civilisation, in spite of its materialism and its grossness, contains germs of a higher perfection than ever Burma or Indo-China dreamed of. ”

“ It should never be forgotten that the true Oriental—even more than the Englishman bred at Winchester and New College—is a firm believer in the truth embodied in William of Wykeham's old motto, Manners makyth man; and nothing is more certain than that if we want China to welcome us as teachers, as engineers, as builders of railways, as merchants, as missionaries or as capitalists we must approach her with frankness and courtesy, not with professions of altruism covering only greedy selfishness, not with the sinister motives of Chaucer's "smyler with the knyf under the cloke." ”

“ No doubt one of the greatest achievements of a civilisation such as that of Laos or Burma consists in the spirit of peace and restfulness that it seems to embody. There is, of course, a fallacy in supposing that a contented feeling of "having arrived" is to be expected at all in this human life. Whether we believe in an existence beyond the grave or not, few of us dare to be so optimistic as to suppose that perfection in any form can be realised on earth, although we instinctively feel that we must not be satisfied with anything less. ”

“ Do the gentleness, the patience, the humanity, the kindness to animals, the winning manners and the limitless charity and generosity of the Burmese owe nothing to Buddhism? If Buddhism has had even a minor share in the shaping of the character of the modern Burman we dare not call it a mere bloom or varnish. That there is, however, a very broad stratum of animism in the various deposits that have helped through the shadowy centuries of an unrecorded past to build up the religious mind of Burma may be granted without dispute. ”

“ The Burman who has not become half-occidentalised does not aim at wealth for its own sake: he does not bow down and worship people who have money: Mammon has not yet secured a niche in his pantheon. He only wants enough to feed his relations and himself, to bring up his children in health and strength, and to clothe them with garments that are not only comfortable to wear but pleasant to the eye. If his fields produce more food than he needs, he sells the surplus, and spends the money in works of charity and religion and in graceful hospitalities. ”

“ The loneliness of the individual human soul is one of the saddest facts of human experience, but there are divine moments in the lives at least of some of us when by the contemplation of the supremely beautiful in Nature or in Art, or by the stirring of some profound emotion, we feel that our loneliness is a mere appearance that will pass away: moments in which we feel that we are in communion and fellowship with the perfect beauty and white truth that lie beyond the fleeting shadowland in which we daily move. ”

“ The wonders of mountain and snow, ocean and sky, need not the explanatory or descriptive notes of any commentator when we have the reality before our own eyes. The man to whose deeper nature they do not at once appeal will not learn their secrets any the better for listening to the ecstatic ejaculations of the noisy friend who is for ever at his elbow telling him how lovely are those purple mountains, or how rich the colours of that splendid sunset. ”

“ So long as the Buddhist faith is a living force in Burma, there will never be wanting eager hands to dress the altars and lay gold-leaf on the dome of that splendid fane, and never will the grand and passionless face of the Lord Buddha be averted from the little Burmese children who with their fathers and mothers come to lay their gifts of flowers at the Master's feet. If Buddhism dies out of Burma the country will lose the most precious of all its possessions ”

“ On the morning of the 18th I started for Mandalay on one of the fine steamers belonging to the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, and spent the next two days in a complete idleness, which, after months of arduous travelling, I found thoroughly enjoyable. The scenery of this part of the Irrawaddy is not as a rule very striking compared with the magnificence of some of the Chinese rivers, but its placid waters and the rich vegetation of its banks have a tranquil beauty of their own which is quite unique. ”

“ It was a Russian statesman, of course, who said so: and the Englishman or the American may smile at the self-assurance of this or any other nation that arrogates to itself the rôle which, as he has always been convinced, exclusively belongs to the Anglo-Saxon. Yet this kind of national partiality—provided it is accompanied by a belief in the principle of noblesse oblige—is by no means to be sneered at or despised. "The sense of greatness keeps a nation great," and an honest belief in our own lofty destiny will stand us in good stead in the day of trial. ”

“ There are enormous areas in that country covered with primeval forests in which man's foot has never trod, lofty mountains whose peaks are crowned with sparkling diadems of eternal snow, grand and savage gorges in which Nature has carved for herself in indelible letters the story of the world's youth, and gloomy chasms through which rush the mighty rivers that carry to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific snows that melted on the white roof of the world. ”

“ It is to be hoped for China's sake that the statesmen who are to guide her fortunes during the next few years—which will too probably be years of strife and bloodshed—will not attempt to compress the work of a century into a year; and it is to be hoped that the great Western Powers for their own sakes will show reasonable patience in dealing with the blunders which in the course of so vast a work as the readjustment of the social and political forces of China must from time to time be committed by her responsible leaders. ”

“ We have recently become so much accustomed to hear of the antagonism and rivalry of interests between East and West—as if all Eastern countries represented one set of immutable ideals and all Western countries another—that we are apt to lose ourselves in a mist of generalities. The East has problems of its own to solve, some of which reproduce in a more restricted area the racial problems that are beginning at a late hour to agitate the minds of statesmen in Europe and America. ”

“ All I will venture to say myself—though I have already paid my fine—is that no description of the scenery of the gorges can do justice to the reality. For though I have beheld scenery more beautiful and quite as grand, I never saw anything in my travels that filled me with a deeper sense of awe. Perhaps one of the secrets of the fascination of the gorges is the ever-present contrast between the dumb forces of nature and evanescent humanity. For ages past human muscle has matched itself in a brave struggle with those titanic forces. ”

“ When we consider how seldom the memory even of our own dead ancestors touches our sympathies or prompts an affectionate thought it will not seem strange that in the days to come the victorious Yellow man may regard the extinct White man with no more emotion than the visitor to a museum now regards the wire-linked bones of a prehistoric monster. No creature that is doomed to failure in the struggle for existence need look to the conquerors for the least sign of pity or sympathy. ”

“ ARRIVAL AT LI-CHIANG
An excellent broad road—one of the very best I have seen in China—traverses the greater part of the cultivated portion of the valley. A dogcart might be driven over it with perfect safety, and in many places it is broader than a good English country road. It is lined on both sides with luxuriant untrimmed hedges, beyond which lie beautiful Gardens of Sleep—acres of white poppy. Villages are numerous in the plain, but our road did not take us through many of them. ”

“ But, as a matter of fact, the Burman is not so idle as he is believed to be. "Do not suppose," says the eloquent writer from whom I have quoted, "that the Burmese are idle. Such a nation of workers was never known. Every man works, every woman works, every child works. Life is not an easy thing, but a hard, and there is a great deal of work to be done. There is not an idle man or woman in all Burma."378 In the face of a statement so emphatic as this, how is it that the vice of laziness is so often attributed to the Burman? ”

“ The mountain, if it could think and feel, might perhaps console itself for the contempt shown to its corner-stones with the reflection that since its history began nations have grown up and passed away like the wild-flowers that live and die on its green slopes, and that the great thrones and dynasties of to-day will have become empty names, signifying nothing, long before its jewelled fingers cease to traffic with the eternal stars, or to duplicate themselves in the still waters of the Tali lake. ”

“ The coolies who wilfully jostle Europeans in Queen's and Des Vœux Roads, and snatch watches and purses from ladies and children, the house-servants who are impertinent to their European mistresses in their masters' absence, and the shopkeepers who blink rudely at their foreign customers and remain seated, sleepily fanning their paunches, when according to their own canons of good manners they should be on their feet murmuring polite salutations—all these are persons to whom a glimpse of Western civilisation seems to have done nothing but harm. ”

“ How can we expect our mistress Nature to be gracious to us if we, with our unholy inventions, woo her so much more rudely and roughly than did her lovers of the golden time when the earth was young? For my own part I rejoice that a wireless-telegraphy apparatus has not yet become an indispensable item in every traveller's equipment, and that no law has yet been enacted penalising any individual who presumes to sever himself from communication with his fellows. ”

“ Every exiled Englishman who as a Government official is brought into direct contact with a large population of Asiatics is well aware that if his object is to win a certain kind of precarious popularity among those whom he assists in ruling, there is ready to his hand a cheap and nasty way of attaining his ambition. Fortunately for the honour of England and the stability of the Empire, he is generally content with the less dazzling rewards that come from the honest performance of duty. ”

“ There are certainly many worse places in the East than Bhamo. It is within easy reach of Mandalay and Rangoon by steamer and train, and is therefore by no means so isolated as its position on the map might lead one to suppose. Its neighbourhood is picturesque; it has clubs and lawn-tennis courts; roads are good; there are many open spaces suitable for polo and the other games that the exiled Englishman loves, and its European houses are roomy bungalows surrounded by delightful gardens full of the glories of tropical vegetation. For part of the year the climate is no doubt trying. ”

“ A full realisation of human capacities, to use the phrase of T. H. Green, can hardly be expected in a simple form of society which calls for no great effort and in which there is no great temptation to deviate from the normal in either an upward or a downward direction. Our strenuous Western life, ugly and brutal as much of it is, and besmirched with the stains of blood and toil, may yet give birth to ideals nobler than ever stirred the imagination of southern Asia. ”