In our glorious border areas there are some people who claim that we are no longer in the age of the tsa-wen. I too wish that there was no need for the tsa-wen to stage a comeback, for if there were no tsa-wen then there would be no more of that dreadful darkness or of those evil, nauseating abscesses. If there were no tsa-wen surely all the world would be at peace? Surely we would be certain of final victory in the anti-Japanese war of resistance? But facts are rarely as rounded as hopes, and however much effort we spend on making our thought as brilliant as the sun, it will still be easy as the years go by to find dark, dank corners, full of decaying curios.

Experts in the study of historical evolution commonly claim that the old-fashioned ideas and forms of behaviour handed down across the millenia are not easy to uproot at one go. Certain clever gentlemen exploit the gap opened up by this theory as a bolt-hole in which to indulge themselves, happily wallowing and submerging like pigs in a stinking, filthy pool of mud. Since they themselves are not afraid of getting dirty, they see nothing wrong with smearing passers-by. In actual fact there is nothing at all ‘clever’ about such crude behaviour. Then there is the other sort of person who, although he hides in the same hole, is always bandying phrases around and makinig dazzlingly brilliant speeches. It would never occur to natural intelligence that inside that lustrous and armoured shell there hides a lump of boneless, sluggardly, timorous flesh!