It is a pity some native
officials have to learn the same lesson.
In several years of residence in the Far East I have noticed respect
for the foreigner unhappily diminishing. The root of the evil is in the
mistaken idea that high station exempts him who holds it from observing
the common obligations of life. It comes about--so often have I seen it
in the Straits Settlements and in various parts of India--that those who
demand the most homage make the least effort to merit that homage they
demand. That is chiefly why respect for the foreigner in the Orient is
diminishing, and I have no hesitancy in asserting that the average
European in the East and Far East does not treat the Oriental with
respect. He considers that the Chinese, the Malay, the Burman, the
Indian is there to do the donkey work only. The newcomer generally
discovers in himself an astounding personal omnipotence, and even before
he can talk the language is so obsessed with it that as he grows older,
his sense of it broadens and deepens. And in China--of the Chinese this
is true to-day as in other spheres of the Far East--the native is there
to do the donkey work, and does it contentedly and for the most part
cheerfully.
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