Viewing page 11 of 28

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Friday, August 13, 1943   THE SHANG

The Post Reviews
Far East Books

BETWEEN TEARS AND LAUGHTER 
by Lin Yutang. John Day 
& Co., New York. $2.50.

From his ivory pagoda where 
once he communed with the spirits 
of Confucius, Mencius and Lao Tze, 
Dr. Lin Yutang has descended to 
the streets and gutters to battle 
the western barbarians with their 
own weapons, the blackjack and 
brass knuckles. 

The irascible, petulant, abusive, 
anti-foreign little Ph.D. we see 
flailing his unfamiliar weapons 
down among us ordinary mortals 
is hardly recognizable as the lovable 
humorist-philosopher, the 
amiable armchair critic, the good-will 
ambassador and the gracious 
interpreter of the Orient that we 
once knew and loved. 

All the wisdom and philosophy 
that Dr. Lin acquired from China's 
immortal sages and poets and 
passed on to us through his own 
genius for expression and interpretation 
apparently could not 
stand the acid test of daily reality 
in this mundane world where, 
perforce, we must live and carry on. 

Confronted now with what is possibly 
his first real emotional crisis 
in life, Dr. Lin draws not upon the 
distilled wisdom from China's antiquity 
and her ideal of courteous 
self-control for a course of action 
but upon the West's proverbial 
ugly impatience and even the noisy 
bad manners so characteristic of 
the now broken Axis. 

Lin Yutang is angry. He is 
aflame with righteous wrath against 
the Allied leaders, especially Winston 
Churchill. His adrenal glands 
are working overtime pumping despair 
and bitterness into his bloodstream. 
As a consequence thereof, 
"Between Tears and Laughter" is 
the kind of book that might have 
been written by any ordinary kind 
of person who had never been exposed
to the Great Learning, the 
Analects, the Doctrine of the Mean
of Li Po's exquisite word-music.

As we read this strange book we
began to wonder if the estimable
Doctor hasn't become more Occidental
than Oriental. Perhaps he
has lived in this country for so 
long, with one brief trip to China
since the war began, that he has 
unconsciously adopted the long despised
ways of the West including 
the old American custom of griping
at the Government. Frequently in 
his book he forgets his own nationality
and refers to "we" and 
"us" as if he were an American
citizen.

Dr. Lin doesn't like the way Britain
and the United States are running
the war. He is telling the
Allied leaders how the war must
be fought and the peace won. It
is written that "A bull-frog once
rent his throat in a well-meant effort
to advise an eagle in the art
of flying." Dr. Lin takes the typewriter
to tell us civilization is
doomed if we don't operate this war
the way he advises.

Premise of the book assumes that
England and America intend to
keep China weak and disunited for
ulterior motives, that crackpot
American "geopoliticians" speak on
behalf of the U.S. Government and
people, that World War III is inevitable
anyhow and that the World
Powers are involved in a vast conspiracy
to strangle China's lawful 
and rightful ambitions.

He has no faith in and gives no 
credence to the honor, integrity,
fairness, nobility or idealism of
China's allies for, if he did, he
would remember the sage's advice 
that "When the root is deep, there
is no need to fear the wind; when
the tree is straight, why trouble if
the moon gives slanting shadows."
Dr. Lin is fighting the wind and
castigating the slanting shadow.

Much that Dr. Lin has said in his
book is truthful and factual. Good
friends of China are not going to 
tangle bludgeons with him about it.
The trouble is not with what he 
says, but the way he says it. He
says his purpose in writing this 
kind of a book is to play the role 
of gadfy to sting the Allied leaders
and peoples. It may be a laudable
purpose but it misfired. All he does
is disillusion his disciples and irritate
everyone.

As the N.Y. Times reviewer said:
"Something has happened to Lin
Yutang...He has lost both his
temper and his sense of values...
The new book, should it regrettably
win a large public, could conceivably
do nearly as much to destroy
Chinese-American goodwill as his 
other books did to create it.

"Quite Chinese-like, the Doctor
can carry water on both shoulders 
while he balances Confucius on his 
head," writes Benjamin De Casseres
in the N.Y. Journal-American.
"On the whole this is a book
of great foolishness and some wisdom-
and I regret to say it again,
subtle but harmless sabotage
against the Western white world-
harmless because Dr. Lin's sense
of humor alone saves him from being
dangerous."

Dr. Lin begins the book by retelling
China's long list of grievances
against Britain and the 
United States: (1) American shipment
of U.S. war supplies to Japan
and President Roosevelt's description
of this policy as a "success";
(2) British closure of the Burma 
Road under Japanese pressure; (3)
Wavell's "confiscation" of China's 
lend-lease supplies arriving in India
and Burma; (4) failure of America
to relieve the blockade of China;
(5) "shabby" treatment of the Chinese
Military Mission in Washington;
(6) the "smear" campaign
against China's "fascism" and "imperialism"
and "hoarding of supplies"
and justification for not giving
military aid to China; (7) President
Roosevelt's statement about 
"a perfect state of things" regarding
air transport to China "when
it was actually scandalous and unprintable";
(8) "lies" about Stalin 
objecting to Chiang being invited
to the Casablanca conference.

Now indeed that is a long list
of complaints and had Dr. Lin
stuck to those there would be a 
basis for intelligent debate and
careful soul-searching. Unfortunately
he meanders far off the trail
and tangles in the brambles with
a covey of crackpots he has flushed
up from near oblivion.

Somewhere he picked up a book
by Prof. Nicholas John Spykman
of Yale, "America's Strategy and
World Politics," which bothered 
him no end. Much of Lin Yutang's 
book, one gathers, is an answer to
Dr. Spykman's, under some delusion 
that the Yale pedant is deciding
Allied policy. As we watched 
Lin and Spykman spar we wondered 
like the Irishman, if it was
a private fight or could anybody
get in it.

Dr. Lin believes in "government
by music and courtesy," and writes
a delightful chapter or two on this 
subject, adding the very unmusical
comment that "China must quickly
shed her good manners and give
somebody a black eye before she
can be understood and gain the
genuine respect of the fellow members
of this strange fraternity,"
meaning the nations of the world.

He execrates fretful souls who 
want to download China for fear of 
a future aggressive and belligerent 
China, and promptly provides them 
with more ammunition for their 
arguments by such ill-advised depositions
as these:

"I see nothing but starvation and
chaos and bloodshed in Asia. I 
know our policy in Asia will grow
into disaster, with mounting confusion 
before the war is over."
(The italics are ours. Doubtless he
means American policy, not Chinese.)

"I know that the Chinese people 
are willing to go to war with England
over Hongkong, even, if the
Chinese Government won't."

"I know that this nation of 450,000,000
people united and awakened
and purged by the war-fire, is coming
up; that strength lies in her
and nothing the western nations
can do can stop her or keep her
down."

"As a matter of fact, China and 
England are already headed for 
conflict."

These are harsh, bitter, bellicose
words from the once gentle savant
of Shanghai. Frankly we think Dr.
Lin Yutang is making a hash of 
things down here among the hoipoloi
where he is distinctly out of
his element. We hope that some day
soon he will return to his proper
niche in literature. He can do his 
country more good there. Maybe he
won't take our advice but it is 
written that "Even a mole may instruct
a philosopher in the art of
digging."-EARL H. LEAF.
• • •
"My Twenty-five Years in China,"
by J.B. Powell, the Shanghai editor
who lost his toes by gangrene
in a Japanese prison cell, has been
postponed from its original schedule
for publication this autumn to 
early 1944. It will be a Macmillan 
book.
• • •
In pursuit of material for a book 
on Free China which Lippincott 
will publish when it is ready, Ernest
O. Hauser has traveled by air,
truck, river boat, sedan chair and 
horseback, across unoccupied China
from Kokonor in the far Northwest
to Kwangtung Province in the
Southeast. He expects to finish his
manuscript this summer in Yunnan 
Province.  

--ND Mercury

Transcription Notes:
I wrote the handwritten part at the bottom.