When beginning the book, I have to admit, I had a great prejudice against him. Knowing his background, I considered him to be conceit ,impolite, and feudal.

  First begin with my ”prejudice” on him. 

  He was a restorationist, and he advocated feudal society. Particularly, he hated revolution, he called the revolutionaries the “mob”s. So in the preface, he spent a great amount of paragraphs to condemn revolutions, and the mob was the most frequency word he used. I hated it greatly, for I’v read lots of great books about revolutions since young. In my opinion, people initate revolutions not because of their tacklessness, instead, they are victims, they have no choices but to rebel, just to save their lives. The inferior  class lived a hard life, especially when upperclass exploited them. But Gu didn’t know that. Even in the turmoil Qing dynasty, He was an official and lived rich. He didn’t know much about their sorrow so wanna keep it.The background and experience which caused his hatred of revolution limited him. 

  Besides, he supported san cong si de and appreciated having concubines. A great woman in his eyes is to be obedience and dedicate her all to her husband. Woman shouldn’t be knowledgeable, can’t talk loud, can’t have their own meaningful life ,and can’t do any other things but to take care of their husbands and serve the family meticulously. But it makes sense, for his ideas are related to his time, which was so feudal and looked down upon women.

  In addition to these shotcomings, there are some excellent ideas in the book.

  The most inpressive one is the idea on the war. “Nobody wanted this war.Well then, what brought on this war? I answer, It was panic which brought on this war”Why did the war happen? According to Mr Gu’s words, it was the insecure feeling in the people’s heart pushed them to do so. I can’t agree more on this! In the famous book The Three Body Problem, which raises a concept called Dark Forest. When the globals first know each other, they can’t make out whether they are friends or not, so just in case, they would have a war. It’s the insecure feeling in their heart pushes it, so does the human nature. There must be something that raises their insecure feeling, maybe money, maybe power, maybe something else.

  Let’s ignore his words on Chinese wars are just accidents, maybe lots of his ideas on China are one-side, but his comments and understanding on Chinese civilisation, Confucius theory, comparison between Chinese and European ,and so on brighted my mind. It not only woke up my love for my homeland, but made me know more about our civilisation. He taught me about the tack and right, “this Right and Tact, das Recht und die Schicklichkeit, is the essence of the Religion of good citizenship which Confucius gave to us Chinese here in China; this Tact, this Schicklichkeit, especially, is the essence of the Chinese civilisation. ”“This Religion of righteousness with good taste, which I have called the Religion of good citizenship, is the new religion I believe, which the people of Europe, especially the people of the countries now at war, want at this moment not only to put an end to this war, but to save the civilisation of Europe, to save the civilisation of the world. ”And he believes, only the Confucious theory,which is Chinese spirit, can stop the war and save the European people.

  Finally let me quote his words to end“I do this with the hope that all educated serious thinking people, who read this book of mine will, by reading this book, better understand the moral causes of this war and understanding the moral causes of this war, will all help to put an end to this cruel, inhuman, useless and most monstrous war which the world has ever seen.”