Human Values

By ‘K’

In Lin Yutang’s A Leaf in the Storm occurs the following passage:

“On that day the newspapers reported that over a hundred persons were killed and a hundred and sixty more were injured. But the mere number of casualties had no meaning. Pin-pin was not even among the casualties. The damage of war is not to be measured in terms of statistics of the number of persons killed and the value of property destroyed. The death of Pin-pin makes war indemnity ridiculous.”

Coming as it does at the end of a moving episode, it leaves a deep impression on the reader’s mind, though the idea expressed may sound simple and even common place.

Pin-pin is a young Chinese girl suffering from tuberculosis, and is a refugee in Hankow. Her father, who has already suffered bereavement, is anxious to do everything to save her. The refugee camp in Hankow had become overcrowded, and this family was removed to a vacant house–which was easily available as it was considered to be haunted. The family was under the care of Lao Peng–a noble character whose life of dedicated service and whose equanimity and wisdom provide a ground to Lin Yutang’s intensely human story. Tanni, the heroine in the novel, a girl ‘with a past’ who is assisting Lao Peng in his humanitarian work, is providing for the comforts of the refugee family. Pin-pin is getting worse, and Tanni arranges for an injection to be given to her costing twenty dollars. Pin-pin shows signs of recovery. At this time there is an air raid on Hankow–a splinter strikes the house where Pin-pin lives and, to avoid further danger, she is carried to a safer quarter. But the shock proves too much for her. She vomits blood and, as soon as she is moved , she worsens and dies.

After describing the circumstances of Pin-pin’s death, Lin Yutang makes the observation quoted above.

How moving and human the experiences of men and women–how cold and callous the ‘official’ report of such events! People read casualty lists, and accounts of losses so constantly in newspapers that their significance in terms of human misery ceases to make its due appeal and blunts the sensibility of most persons living in the midst of war. The human value is borne in only on those who have the misfortune to lose their own near and dear ones. So far as others are concerned, the news is passed over without even the customary shrug of the shoulder–or the twitch of a muscle, either in the face or about the heart. And, yet, the true import of every such record of casualty is the misery that is caused to scores, possibly to hundreds and thousands, of human beings like ourselves.

This is not a grievance against ‘official’ reports. The exigencies of time and space and the impersonal character of official authority make it necessary that such reports should be devoid of colour or embellishment of any kind.

And other reports, too, even from non-official agencies, take the cue from and partake of the same neutral character. Otherwise they run the risk of becoming suspect. So custom has ordained in modern time that while setting forth facts and figures objectively the presentation should be as passionless as possible.
A taste for statistics is a trait of the modern age. Departments of Government compile and publish them year after year–and much of the work of ‘bureaucracy’ is calling for figures and more figures and dressing them up for reports. And once in ten years there is that ‘variorum’ edition called the Census Report with its interminable tables. Students of economics and conscientious publicists (following the illustrious examples of the late Sir Dinshaw Wacha and Gokhale) revel in statistics in Councils and Assemblies. And, yet, there lurks in the ground the fear of the common man who looks upon the conclusions of statistical experts with more than mere suspicion, for has it not been said, “There are three kinds of lies: black lies, white lies and statistics”?

In the early days of Gandhiji’s return to India after his South African life, he was invited everywhere and patronised by all and sundry. Gandhiji, of course, was modest to a fault, embarrassingly truthful and disclaimed even passable acquaintance with learned matters. The Economic Conference took it into its head to invite him. Blissfully ignorant of the recondite speculations of the economists and indifferent to the controversies regarding the average income of an Indian and numerous other matters, he naively declared that irrespective of whatever economic investigators might say, he was convinced of the enormous poverty of India. In his wide travels, over practically every province in the country, he had not met one cheerful face, or seen a bright pair of eyes among the middle and poorer classes of our population. This personal observation and inference were conclusive so far as Gandhiji was concerned, more convincing than any mass of figures collected by investigators. By taking up this attitude Gandhiji was perhaps turning away from the inductive method of arriving a truth, so dear to the scientist; but then truth directly apprehended has a validity that cannot be shaken even by the contrary conclusions which learned investigation of details might suggest. Against human vision, much of this will be learned lumber.

The human approach to figures seems greatly needed at the present time when figures are flaunted on every conceivable problem and at every turn. They seem to be sometimes pursued for their own sake as though they exercised a fascination of their own, and presented in cold setting with every show of great work accomplished. But such figures are no more than lifeless symbols, which conceal behind them moving facts in the shape of human joy and misery; but it is these that are often passed over. The compiling of figures can never be after all more than merely a means to an end. Was it not in reference to such sophistry, into which mankind seems to be able to slide so easily, that Jesus uttered the whole-some warning: “Sabbath is made for man and not man for the sabbath”?