Читать книгу China's Revolution, 1911-1912: A Historical and Political Record of the Civil War онлайн

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We are indeed, during our generation, watching the making of history wonderful in its possibilities. The following quotation from the writer quoted may be intensely prophetic:—

"We are opening a new volume in the history of the world—a volume in which strange and terrible things may be written; a volume which, on the other hand, may contain a brighter story than any of us conceive to be possible. How one longs to read that volume as it will be written by the historian a hundred or two hundred years hence! Will it run thus: 'From this time the condition of the working class of Europe began steadily to deteriorate, and though the short-sighted statesmen of the twentieth century failed to appreciate it, this was the inevitable result of adding to the working men of the world a population remarkable for its industry and so inured to poverty that its workers gladly submitted to conditions which the Western workmen naturally and with justice refused'? Or will it run thus: 'The decadent Christianity of the West, corrupted by luxury, divided by sectional strife, received new life under the influence of the more sincere Chinese Christianity, purified in the harsh school of persecution and stimulated by the great political upheaval which caused the deposition of the Manchu Emperor'?"