The Preponderance of historical evidence now available provides a sound underpinning for the general thesis that throughout his struggle for power, Mao Tse-tung has always worked within a Marxist-Leninist framework; that he, like other Communist leaders before him, has not hesitated to improvise within that framework; and that the success of his greatest improvisation—the use of Chinese peasants as the main force in the revolutionary struggle—is actually a negation of fundamental Marxist-Leninist tenets. This analysis has been thoroughly and ably developed by Benjamin Schwartz and needs no elaboration.

After her disastrous defeat by Japan in the war 1894–95, China turned tardily to introduce such economic reforms as would facilitate her defense. She was pressed by concession hunters of many nationalities, who desired economic and political advantages which she was nearly helpless to withhold. Obliged to look abroad for capital to finance needed railway construction, Chinese leaders at the same time saw their empire's dominions threatened by their potential creditors: by Russia in Manchuria, by France in the South, by Germany in Shantung, by Japan in Fukien, and by England in the Yangtze Valley. That Americans claimed no political accommodations in return for monetary advances was an inducement to the Chinese to seek money in the United States. Furthermore, in the railway field, Americans had gained valuable experience through the construction of their own great transcontinental lines.

The Grand Council, Chün-chi-ch'u, which functioned mainly as a secretarial and consultative agency to the Emperor, was the most important institution of the Ch'ing Dynasty. The Grand Councilors, Chün-chi Ta-chen, had daily audience with the Emperor to assist him in making decisions on important government policies and administrative matters and in drafting and despatching edicts. From time to time the Grand Councilors were sent by the Emperor to the provinces as trouble shooters to deal with urgent matters such as war operations, flood control or investigation of provincial officials.

Collaboration, that is, the full cooperation of a subjected people with an enemy occupying power, may easily be misjudged. On the one hand the judge, holding in advance that the people under consideration are non-collaborators, may dismiss evidence which seems to confirm collaboration. On the other hand the judge may interpret the people's non-resistance to the invader's rule as endorsement and hence collaboration. In both cases analysis of collaboration rests upon value judgments and substitutes inference from abstraction for empirical investigation.

In an earlier publication I reported briefly on the irreparable damage caused to the Hōryūji Kondō by the fire of January, 1949. After the almost total destruction of the great series of mural paintings that had been preserved there since the eighth century, there is a melancholy timeliness in collecting the last studies made by Japanese on their once priceless National Treasure. I continue, therefore, with a summary of several publications on the Hōryūji frescoes that have appeared in Japan since the beginning of the war: three articles by Tanaka, Kobayashi, and Sawa, and a book by Haruyama. Since the last, published in 1947, has not been long in my possession, I have not attempted so far to read more than the author's final chapter of “conclusions,” and to check his identifications of the controversial subjects of the Kondō panels. The book has been praised by Sawa as epoch-making because of the exceptionally fine illumination under which the author's study of the paintings was made. It seems a work as comprehensive in purpose as the fine monograph published in 1932 by Naitō, for acquaintance with which Western readers owe so much to the expert translation by Acker and Rowland.

John Embree had less than two decades in which to work. Yet within that time he gained both some public name and the lasting regard of his fellow professionals. One of the most competent contemporary observers of social life and of the Far East, he was also one of the most versatile. He bridged anthropology and Far Eastern studies; at the time of his death he was a specialist on two areas of Asia; and as an anthropologist he was both scholar and actor in public affairs. The historians of his fields will no doubt remember him primarily for these accomplishments. His contemporaries, however, will recall him as readily for his personal attainments. Of sensitive moral fibre, he was by character and conviction animated by an extraordinary and classic sense of pity. This quality of course won him the respect and admiration of his colleagues. It also opened to him the hearts of those less fortunate than himself, and of the people among whom he worked. In the post-war years he was still remembered with neighborly affection and with pride as in a native son by the people of Suye Mura. In southeast Asia, though his situation was often less conducive to easy personal relationships, he acquired by his deep sympathy a host of devoted friends.