Far Eastern Studies in the United States: Retrospect and Prospect

Extract

One of the perquisites of age is reminiscence. It is the function of the historian to recount the past. As one of the elders of our fellowship and as a historian it would seem to be both my privilege and my duty on this occasion to trace the course of Far Eastern studies in the United States since I first became familiar with them. We are told on the authority of an ancient book which has come to us from the Orient that “your old men shall dream dreams.” It may not be amiss, therefore, not only to survey the past, but also to attempt, in the light of that past to look into the future and to formulate such dreams for it as that past and the prospect for the future inspire.