vinism without in the least understanding what these words really mean. People say that Prussian Militarism is a danger to civilisation. But to me it seems, the half educated man, the mob of half educated men in the world to-day, is the real danger to civilisation. But that is neither here nor there.
Now to come to the question: is Chinese a difficult language? My answer is, yes and no. Let us first take the spoken language. The Chinese spoken language, I say, is not only not difficult, but as compared with the half dozen languages that I know,—the easiest language in the world except, Malay. Spoken Chinese is easy because it is an extremely simple language. It is a language without case, without tense, without regular and irregular verbs; in fact without grammar, or any rule whatever. But people have said to me that Chinese is difficult even because of its simplicity; even because it has no rule or grammar. That, however, cannot be true. Malay like Chinese, is also a simple language without grammar or rules; and yet Europeans who learn it, do not find it difficult. Thus in itself and for the Chinese colloquial or spoken Chinese at least is not a difficult language. But for educated Europeans and expecially for half educated Europeans who come to China, even colloquial or spoken Chinese is a very difficult language: and why? Because spoken or colloquial Chinese is, as I said, the language of uneducated men, of thoroughly uneducated men; in fact the language of a child. Now as a proof of this, we all know how easily European children
