One of the most encouraging trends in contemporary scholarship is the considerable raprochment between fields of study conventionally classed as the “humanities” and those called the “social sciences,” or now fashionably, “behavioral sciences.” A strong contributing factor here has been the growth, especially during and since World War II, of so-called “area” studies which focus various disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches upon a region. Furthermore, the region which has constituted perhaps the most active front for such experiments in coordination is the Far East.

The problem proposed by the editor of the Quarterly to the members of this symposium is to consider the varying patterns of railway development in three Far Eastern countries. It is a particularly challenging problem because the influential role which railroads have played in Western economic growth leads one naturally to ask whether Western experience has been repeated in the East, and, if not, how the differences may be explained. This question does, indeed, seem to have been the central one raised by the three following articles.

After three-quarters of a century of fluctuating efforts, the development of railways in China remains an unfinished task today. In contrast to industrially more advanced countries, which had built most of their existing lines by the turn of the present century, railway construction is regarded even now as an indispensable part of the economic development of China. Measured by the potential demands of the country the existing railway facilities are small indeed. Recent data indicate that at the end of 1952 the Chinese railway system consisted of some 17,570 miles of tracks, including all lines in operation on the mainland and Hainan but excluding those on Formosa. This means that there is one mile of railway for every 216 square miles of territory (or approximately 463 miles per 100,000 square miles), and that for every 1,000,000 of population there are 39 miles of rail transportation. Small though the figures appear to be, they nevertheless represent an increase over those of a decade ago. In 1942 the estimate was 12,036 miles of railways in all of China, including those in Manchuria and the occupied areas; the ratio was then 274 miles of railroads per 100,000 square miles, and 27 miles per 1,000,000 population. The vast potential development that lies ahead is apparent when we compare the above figures with those for the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan.

India alone of the countries with great railway networks is unindustrialized. In the other leading railway powers—particularly the United States, Russia, Germany, though to a lesser extent in sparsely settled areas like Canada and Australia—the railway was the veritable dynamo of the Industrial Revolution. It has had no such effect in India, even though the country's network by 1947 was 40,500 miles long, counting only first-line main track, or 57,000 miles long, counting just about everything. I propose to sketch the setting in which railways were brought to India and then to review the 75 years of argument and experiment as to which form of enterprise (public, private, or some combination of the two) was best suited to India's railway development. I shall attempt to give a picture of the absolute and comparative magnitude of the Indian railway system as of 1947, and to discuss its economic and historical significance for Britain and for India.

A glance At the railway map of Japan will show that the country is criss-crossed by a network of railroads. Trunk lines run along almost the entire coast line of both Honshu and Kyushu. These and several other main lines running north and south are connected by numerous cross-connecting lines. Today all of the important cities are linked by rail.

The perennially fascinating problem of translating Chinese into Western languages (or vice versa) has evoked considerable discussion in recent years. My excuse for adding to it here is that Professor Boodberg, in his review (see foregoing note) of my translation of Fung Yu-lan's History of Chinese Philosophy, has raised questions which, while addressed specifically to my rendering of certain Chinese philosophic terms, at the same time bear importantly on the larger problems of Chinese translation as a whole. In the following pages, therefore, I shall begin by commenting—I trust in a spirit of friendly discussion—on what Professor Boodberg has said about these terms (indicating in parentheses for each of them the English equivalents used by me in my translation, the two volumes of which will hereafter be cited as Fung 1 and 2). Then, using some of these as illustrations, I shall comment on the theories of translation presented by Professor Boodberg in his own article on “semasiology,” as well as that by Professor Schafer on “two sinological maladies” (both cited in note 1 above). And having done this, I shall finally try to formulate a few general conclusions of my own.