Thus reflecting, I began to be alarmed in the year 1941, for the future of Americans. I knew very well that at the end of the war we would be the ones on the victorious side, and undoubtedly, too, the strongest among the victors, and therefore the peoples of Asia would be expecting a leadership from us which we would be unable to give, mainly because of our own instability but also because of our ignorance of Asian peoples, their history and their importance in the postwar world. When I say importance I mean not only in potentiality but also in the ferment and trouble and struggle in which we would inevitably be involved in the whole world, but centering this time in Asia because of the coincidence of the Second World War with Asian determination for independent modern life. Try as we might we could not again escape as we did after the First World War, by withdrawal. Asia this time must be reckoned with. Yet how could our people meet such a future with these peoples when we knew nothing about their past? I grew wretched with continual pondering upon such matters, aware as I was of the deep hostilities of Asia against the white man. Could Americans escape those whirlwinds of history? The only hope, I came to see, lay in the possibility that we could establish ourselves as a separate people, a new people, not to be allied even in thought with old empires and colonialisms. We must deal with the Asians as Americans not involved with the past, and we were fortunate in the possibility, since we had indeed waged no active wars for colonial purposes nor established any real colonies, and since our regime in the Philippines had been relatively enlightened, and it was clear that we had no wish even to stay there. We were lucky enough, that is, to have already a great fund of good will in Asia, and especially in China, upon which to draw for the future. Only new and reckless action could forfeit it. This was always possible in a war, when many young men are shipped willy-nilly and without real preparation into a foreign country. We had experienced that in Europe in the First World War.
I have never been an evangelical missionary, and indeed abhor the general notion, and yet I know very well that my missionary beginnings have shaped me to the extent of feeling responsible at least for what I can personally do about a given situation which needs mending. What then could I do, I asked myself, to help my countrymen, even a few of them and even on a small scale, to know something of the lives and thoughts of the peoples with whom they must inevitably deal, either as friends or enemies, in the future and that very near? The one gift I had brought with me to my own country was the knowledge of Asia and especially of China and Japan, gained not only through years of living there but through years of concentrated study, travel and observation. True, I wrote books. But books, even best sellers, reach only a small number of the total population of our country. Do they not reach the leading minds? Yes, but in a democracy such as ours the leading minds seldom achieve a place of permanent influence. And the men who sit in Congress or even in the White House are usually not our leading minds. They are not the thinkers. Still less have they time for reflection, or even for thoughtful travel. In a democracy, I reasoned, it is the people who must be informed.
But how?
For a number of years my husband had been editor of Asia Magazine, a monthly started in 1917 by Willard Straight, then American Consul in Peking. Impressed by the fabulously interesting scene in which he worked, Willard Straight put a portion of his wealth into a magazine designed to inform and amuse and interest the American public by describing in authentic prose and pictures the colorful and powerful Asian peoples. I had a sentimental interest in the magazine because some of my own first writing had been published there, and I had continued to write for it occasionally. Yet it had never been able to find the number of readers it deserved. Americans could not be interested in Asia, it seemed. The magazine, maintaining high standards of excellence, had through the years lost much money annually and only a wealthy family could have continued it, as Mrs. Straight did continue it after Mr. Straight’s death, and after her marriage to Leonard Elmhirst. My husband had steadfastly reduced the loss over the years of his editorship, maintaining authenticity above all, but the number of readers did not greatly increase. There were, it seemed, only about fifteen thousand or at most twenty thousand Americans who were interested in Asian peoples, in spite of the inevitable future looming ahead.
Could this be true? It seemed impossible to me, and in 1941 when Mrs. Elmhirst decided to close the magazine, my husband and I wished to continue it for a while to see whether this small interest could be increased. There was no other magazine in the United States which carried full and authentic information about Asian life. At that moment it seemed folly to end the last means of informing our people and providing the knowledge essential to their own safety and welfare. It was as near a missionary impulse as I ever had, and my husband shared it. We were given the magazine and all its assets in the hope, encouraged by Mrs. Elmhirst, that it could be saved. Suffice it to say that we did keep it going for another five years, until events after the end of the war made it impossible. There was, as a matter of fact, an increase in American interest in Asia during the war years, and had there been enough paper available, the magazine might have become self-supporting.
In those ten years, too, I founded The East and West Association and from it learned enough for many books. Even a magazine, I could see, did not educate our people. They learned better from hearing than reading, and best of all from seeing. Why not then, I thought, bring to them men and women of Asia who could speak for themselves, show what they were, explain their own history and civilization? Why not devise a sort of Asian adult education for American communities? In this way our people could get firsthand, from Asian citizens, the story of Asia, without bias and without persuasion. The idea was very simple. In the United States were many pleasant and learned visitors from various countries. I was interested especially in Asians, but if there were such visitors also from Europe why not include them, as well? The world of peoples, I had early learned from Mr. Kung, was indeed one family under heaven. If average Americans could see themselves as part of the human race, they might be stimulated to curiosity and thus to interest and thus to understanding. It was the usual technique of learning.