(This collection of literature attempts to compile many of...)
This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.
(This collection of literature attempts to compile many of...)
This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.
(On the 8th of February, 1904, Japan crossed swords with a...)
On the 8th of February, 1904, Japan crossed swords with a European people. And from the destruction of the Variag on that day until the fall of Port Arthur on the 1st of January, 1905, nothing but failure has been Russia's fate, nothing but success Japan's fortune. For the first time in history has an Asiatic people successfully faced a white foe. The Russo-Japanese war marks an era, therefore, in the history of the Far East, and of the world, for now begins a readjustment of the balance of power among the nations, a readjustment which promises to halt the territorial expansion of white races and to check their racial pride.
Sidney Lewis Gulick was an American educator, author, and missionary.
Background
Gulick was born on April 10, 1860, in Ebon Atoll, Marshall Islands, the third of seven children and first son of missionary parents, Luther Halsey Gulick (1828-1891) and Louisa (Lewis) Gulick. His grandfather Peter Johnson Gulick, a descendant of Hendrick and Geertruyt (Willekens) Gulick, who had emigrated from Holland to New Amsterdam in 1653, had come to the Sandwich Islands in 1827 as a missionary, and several of Sidney's uncles and cousins were active in mission work in Micronesia and in Asian countries.
Education
Gulick's childhood was spent primarily in Hawaii and in Europe, but when his father accepted an appointment in 1875 as representative of the American Bible Society in Japan and China, Sidney remained with his mother in California for schooling. After taking his A. B. at Dartmouth in 1883, Gulick attended the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. His talents were early recognized by honorary doctorates of divinity conferred by Dartmouth in 1905 and by Yale and Oberlin in 1914.
Career
In 1886 Gulick was ordained a Congregational minister. A short period of supply work at the Willoughby Avenue Mission in Brooklyn followed. He was then accepted by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. For more than a decade Gulick worked in southern Japan in the provincial centers of Kumamoto and Matsuyama. His reputation as an author was first established by a thoughtful study of Japanese national character entitled Evolution of the Japanese, Social and Psychic (1903). He was appointed professor of theology at the Doshisha University in Kyoto in 1906, and in this post continued to do much writing in both English and Japanese, especially on evolution and other scientific subjects as related to Christianity. He served also as lecturer on comparative religion at Kyoto Imperial University. In the Association Concordia and the Peace Society of Japan he became associated with some of Japan's most progressive political leaders; he was also an organizer and vice-president of the American Peace Society of Japan. Through these organizations he became concerned with the issues of immigration and race relations that were arising between Americans and Japanese, particularly on the West Coast of the United States. When Gulick returned home on furlough in June 1913, American Board missionaries in Japan urged him to present a memorial asking the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America to appoint a commission to study the problems of relations with Oriental races from the standpoint of Christian statesmanship. As a result of several months of firsthand study of the situation in California, Gulick prepared an authoritative book, The American Japanese Problem (1914), in which he proposed that any quota system for immigration restriction be racially nondiscriminatory. In 1914 he accepted the Federal Council's request that he enter its service as secretary of a new Commission on Relations with Japan. Early the next year he was sent with Shailer Mathews, then president of the Council, as a "Christian embassy" to Japan; they spent several months consulting with Japanese leaders and making speeches throughout the country. During the next two decades Gulick's tireless efforts in writing, speaking, and lobbying in Washington made him one of the leading public figures concerned with Japanese-American relations. Inevitably he became involved in controversy; several times anti-Japanese elements charged that he was an agent in the pay of the Japanese. From 1921 to 1934 he was secretary of a National Committee on American-Japanese Relations headed first by Jacob Gould Schurman and then by George W. Wickersham. As secretary (1919-1934) of the National Committee for Constructive Immigration Legislation, Gulick formulated proposals for national origins quotas that had a direct influence on subsequent legislation. Gulick recognized the practical necessity for limiting the numbers of Japanese immigrants, but wanted this done through a system that would give them full legal equality. The act of 1924 excluding Japanese entirely was, therefore, a great disappointment. Thereafter he worked for good relations directly between the peoples of the two countries through such means as the Federal Council's project for sending nearly 13, 000 "doll messengers of goodwill" to Japan. Gulick's functions within the Federal Council's Commission on Relations with the Orient and its Commission on International Justice and Goodwill gradually involved him in a wider range of Asian problems. His trip abroad of 1922-1923, which he described in The Winning of the Far East (1923), took him to China, Korea, and the Philippines as well as to Japan. From 1928 to 1930 he gave much time and energy to organization of China Famine Relief. Although Gulick was recognized as the Federal Council's Asian specialist, his work for the churches was international in scope and ecumenical in spirit. He was present at the meeting in Constance, Germany, in early August 1914 at which the World Alliance for International Friendship through the Churches was formed just as war was breaking out, and he took the lead in organizing an American Council of the Alliance, an interest reflected also in his book The Fight for Peace (1915). From 1917 to 1920 he served as the Alliance's representative on the National Committee on the Churches and the Moral Aims of the War. He actively urged American ratification of the Treaty of Versailles embodying the League of Nations Covenant and, later, American adherence to the Permanent Court of International Justice. At the Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work held in Stockholm in the summer of 1925, Gulick was made secretary of a special commission on the church and race relations and formulated its report. He played a leading part during 1928 in collecting and presenting in Washington petitions from more than 185, 000 members of some thirty denominations urging the ratification of the Kellogg-Briand Pact for the renunciation of war. Working in these endeavors with many of the clerical and lay leaders of his time, Gulick made distinctive contributions as organizer, drafter, and publicist. Gulick retired from his multiple duties in the Federal Council in mid-1934 and went to live in Honolulu. There he made a sociological study, Mixing the Races in Hawaii (1937). Much of his time in his last years was devoted to extensive studies of oriental philosophies and religions, parts of which were published posthumously in The East and the West: A Study of Their Psychic and Cultural Characteristics (1963). He died of cancer at Boise, Idaho, in 1945 while visiting a daughter there. His remains were cremated.