United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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ASIA, Continent with a Past... and a Future PETER GORDON WHITE Illustrated By Ann Phalps OTRETCHING from the frozen plains of the Arctic Circle to the tropical forests of the Malay Peninsula, and from Europe and Africa to within 36 miles of North America, lies Asia, almost one-third of the dry-land mass of the entire globe. We have a fair idea of distances here in North America; we can compare them all in multiples of the mileage from Winnipeg to St. Paul. We even have some idea of the extent of Europe as measured in bomber-time from London to Berlin or Cologne or Essen. But with Asia it is different; we don’t have much point of reference. There is a little literary device that authors turn to in over¬ coming such a dilemma, it goes something like this: if all the mountains in Asia were placed on top of one another (this is a purely imagin¬ ary example) they would more than equal the height of the Empire State building multiplied by the number of letters in the New Deal alphabet, or, if all the dust of Calcutta was gathered up and placed in boxes 6 feet long by 17% inches wide placed end to end . . Calcutta would be a much cleaner place than it is. All right then; to gain some idea of the size of the great Asiatic Continent, consider that we could put all of Europe and Africa on it and still have two million square miles to spare. If you have any idea of how much two million square miles is you can see what I mean. If two million is beyond your comprehension, you make take both North and South America, put them on Asia, and have only 500,000 miles left over. Now you know the size of Asia. But the Orient not only gives us extremes in area, it sets other records too. Within its bounds is the highest point on the globe: Mount Everest, on the borders of Nepal and Tibet, rises 29,000 ft. above the sea (that’s some three hundred United Colleges piled on top of one another). Asia contains the lowest point in the world: the Dead Sea lies in the deepest hollow of the earth, 1,300 ft. below sea level, in south¬ ern Palestine. Asia presents the most desolate scenes of scorching desolation in the Gobi Desert, and contrasts that arid spot with the wettest region in the world: the lands of the monsoons in India. It contains the hottest and the coldest places in the world (excluding Winnipeg). More than half the population of the whole world is there. The cradle of the human race, of all religion, wisdom, and civil¬ ization is there. Shangri-la, well known to the Japanese as the base of the famous American Flying Fortresses, is there. Vast, scarcely- tapped resources, all the past, and perhaps the future, of civilization is there. The Place and the People Because of our very profound ignorance of even the physical aspects of the Far East it would be possible, and no doubt valuable, to continue with further factual and somewhat sensational information on this section of the globe. However, as students of history, we must see the people of any land we study, for it is the people, not the places, that make his¬ tory. And yet, the inter-relation of the peoples and their environment is so great that it is impossible to study the one without the other, and so in our consideration of population the geographical determinents will be carried along in the thread of the discussion. In Asia there are some 900,000,000 more people than there are in all the rest of the world, even including the 5 o’clock crowd on the Winnipeg street-cars. Two-thirds of them (i.e., the Asiatics) are yellow people, and al¬ most all the rest are white, with a scattering of black people in India, and a brown race in the Malay Peninsula which has no well-defined relation to the others. 8

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TT IS my task to deliver the farewell address to the class of ’43. I have a special affection for the class of ’43 because we both started our academic careers at United College at the same time. The first lecture which I ever delivered in the College was given to the class of ’43. In spite of that our relations have always been happy. I have always enjoyed the class parties given by the class of ’43. One which occurred in October of last year will be one of the happiest mem¬ ories of my career at United College. It is customary for student speakers at this dinner each year to pay tribute to the faculty. At the best they speak of our wisdom and beneficent influence upon our students. At the unsettle the most conscientious of students and make concentration upon study of any kind impossible. Yet in this difficult situation the class of ’43 have shown a very remarkable steadiness and devotion to work. I wish to pay to them a very special compliment on account of it. It is customary in these farewell addresses to give some words of advice about the future. I approach this part of my task very humbly. I know no more about the future than you do yourselves. As a historian I would natur¬ ally direct your attention to the past in order to throw light upon the future. Do not be alarmed. I do not intend to take you back to the Holy Roman Empire or to the French Farewell Address Delivered at the annual Grads Farewell, February 16, 1943, at the Royal Alexandra Hotel DR. D. C. MASTERS Honorary President, Class ’43 worst they say we are harmless, but nice. To¬ night we have come off very well. But I should like to return the compliment by paying a tribute to the class of ’43. Students may profit by contact with the faculty. It is sometimes forgotten that the faculty also profit from the relationship with their students. It is a pleasure to be treated with that politeness and respect which the students of United College invari¬ ably accord to their instructors. It is always a pleasure, moreover, for the teacher to explore a field which he knows well with minds which are coming fresh to the subject. Sometimes, of course, the minds are so fresh as to know nothing whatever about the subject. But it gives one a real satisfaction to share the joy of discovery with the student who is interested and prepared to work. Occasionally also the student provides the teacher with an idea or line of approach which has not previously oc¬ curred to him. I should like to comment upon one parti¬ cular quality which has been shown by our student body in general and by the class of ’43 in particular. We live in difficult times. No one can foretell his or her immediate future. The prospect of what lies ahead might very easily Revolution. I simply wish to speak about the four-year period which you are about to con¬ clude. By suggesting some of the principles upon which our College stands I may perhaps indicate some guides for action in the future. First, we stand for a liberal attitude towards education. A great deal has been said about liberalism this evening, political liberalism in particular. Liberalism, as we interpret it in the field of education, promises a dispassionate consideration of all the available evidence in relation to a given problem. It promises fur¬ ther the adoption of whatever conclusions the evidence suggests to be sound. We supplement the principle of liberalism in education with a second one equally im¬ portant to our academic way of life. It is a belief in the value of what, for lack of a trite expression, I term mental discipline. By the regular and systematic performance of tasks— essays, class assignments, examinations—the student develops an ability to organize his knowledge and to make critical use of it. The difference between the university man and the non-university man is not that the former has necessarily a greater supply of acquired know- (Continued on page 45) 7

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Upon our first look at the map it seems strange that Asia should support so large a population. Most of the continent consists of places where people can only hunt or graze sheep or reindeer. Even in China, which con¬ tains more people than any other country in the world, there are vast tracts of waste coun¬ try. Most of Mongolia consists of the already referred to Gobi Desert, the most desolate re¬ gion in the world. It is so little known that story writers feel safe in making it the scene of amazing adventures along the route of the camel trains that brave the stinging sand and dust storms to trade between China and Siberia. The sands are now covering the countries about the Gobi. In the Lob Nor (“Nor” means lake) sand has choked up a whole inland sea until it is now merely a series of mashy lakes in which the once great river Tarim loses itself. Dunes as high as hills are threatening the river, and explorers have found in the region known as the Takla Makan desert, ruins of great old cities buried in the sand. On and on, right across the great continent, sweep the desert sands, creeping down to that ancient seat of civilization, Persia. Whole cities have been doomed as the sand, over the course of the centuries, has advanced upon them. The once-great river systems are now a network of watercourses running nowhere, no longer making fertile a land that once blos¬ somed like the rose. Even the Tigris-Euphrates valley is not the fertile land it once was. To the desert regions must be added the other low population areas: the great cold stretches of the Siberian forest; the hot jungles of the Ganges valley in India; and the dense tropical forests of the Malay Peninsula. What, then, is the secret of the vast popu¬ lation of Asia when so large a part of the land is desert, grassland, forests, and mountain peaks? For the answer we must look to the great river valleys of China and India. In the one are found half of all the people of Asia, 25 million more than Europe, and in the other as many people as are in North Amer ica, South America, and Africa combined. The Yangtze in China is the most densely populated river valley in the world. The river is navigable for 2,000 miles and along its banks are little farms hardly bigger than a pocket handkerchief. Here for thousands of years people have grown crops and kept their soil fresh by the use of river mud and fertilizers. People live even on the river itself, in little boats called sampans, whose matting roofs are the shape of half a barrel. In the valley of the Amur to the north there is a smaller population, but people fairly swarm along the fertile banks of the Hwang River. Before the Christian era, China began the building of what is practically a fourth great river: the Grand Canal, 850 miles long. Fol¬ lowing this and countless smaller canals are more of the tiny close-packed farms and flooded rice fields, where mulberry groves are planted for the silkworm, and crops are grown between the rows of trees, for not an inch of soil must be wasted. In India, too, there are swarming river val¬ leys, particularly the Ganges, and the fertile valley between the Ganges and the Brama- putra. The Indus valley is less productive owing to the Indian desert just west of it, but the fertile soil is now being reclaimed by irriga¬ tion. In all, India has a population three times as great as that of the United States. The three chief rivers of Siberia, the Ob, the Yenisei, and the Lena, of course do not sup¬ port such great populations. They are broad and deep enough to be navigable and the soil is fertile, but they are frozen too much of the year. The great rivers of western Asia, the Tigris and the Euphrates, water a valley which was of the greatest productiveness 5,000 years ago, but today is little developed. Other countries where a great many people live are those which are blessed by rain-laden ocean winds breaking against mountains. Thus the Empire of Japan, which for all its hundreds 9