"'It is to laugh!' as the French say!" I responded to this story.

"No! It is to weep!" said the American missionary.

When Dr. Frank W. Schoefield spoke against Prostitution the Japanese papers declared that he had made a virulent attack on the Government.

One Korean preacher who preached on a theme from Luke 4:18, which reads "Setting the captives free," was arrested and kept in jail for four days.

"It is very foolish to yell 'Mansei' when you know you will be killed," I said to a Korean preacher. I wanted to see how he would take that suggestion.

"We Koreans would rather be under the ground than on top of it if we do not get our liberty!" he said with a thrill in his quiet voice.

One day a Korean preacher was arrested for preaching on the theme, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you," because that was, without doubt, disloyal to Japan and meant rebellion.

Another day a speaker in the Y.M.C.A. said, "Arise and let us build for the new age!" He was asked to report to Police Headquarters just what he meant by that kind of "Dangerous" talk about Freedom.



CHAPTER IX

FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAILURE

Three great Flash-lights of Failure stand out in the Far East and the Oriental world to-day; one being the failure of a race to survive, another being the failure of the world to understand that Shantung is the Holy Land and not the appendix of China; this sacred shrine of the Chinese which has so carelessly and listlessly been given over to Japan; and the third being Japan's failure to understand that methods of barbarism from the Dark Ages will not work in a modern civilization.

"Why are they making all this fuss over Shantung?" an acquaintance of mine said to me just before I left America. "Isn't it just a sort of an appendix of China, after all? If I were the Chinese, I'd forget Shantung and go on to centralize and develop what I had."

That was glibly said, but the fact which the statement leaves out of reckoning is that Shantung is the very heart and soul of China instead of being the appendix.

The average American has so often thought of China just as China; a great, big, indefinite, far-off nation of four hundred million people, always stated in round numbers, that Shantung doesn't mean much to us. Yes, but it means much to China.

It means about the same as if some nation should come along and take New England from us; New England, the seat of all our most sacred history, the beginning of our national life, the oldest of our traditions, the burial-place of our early founders, the seat of our religious genesis. I don't believe that many folks in New England would desire to be called an appendix of the United States.

So one of the things that I was determined to do when I went to China was to go from one end of Shantung to the other, talking with coolies, officials, old men and young men, students, and those who can neither read nor write; missionaries and soldiers; natives and foreigners; to see just what importance Shantung is to China as a whole.

The first thing I discovered was that it has about forty million people living within the limits of the peninsula, close to half the population of the United States. Does that sound as if it might be China's appendix? You wouldn't think so if you saw the cities, roads and fields of this great stretch of land literally swarming with human beings, and every last one of them, as busy as ants.

I rode one whole day across the peninsula. I happened to be traveling with a man from Kansas. He was a man interested in farming and wheat-growing. For hundreds of miles we had been passing through land that was absolutely level and every inch of it cultivated. I had been saying to myself over and over again, "Why, it's exactly like our Middle West Country."

Then much to my astonishment this Kansas man turned to me, and said, "Did it ever occur to you that these fields of Shantung look just like Kansas?"

"Yes, it has just occurred to me this minute," I responded.

Then the wife of the Kansas man said, "I have been shutting my eyes and trying to imagine that I was in Kansas, it's so much like home."

"And say, man, but a tractor on those fields would work wonders," added a portion of William Allen White's reading constituency.

And that is exactly how Shantung strikes an American when he has ridden all day through its great stretches of level fields. He can easily imagine himself riding through Kansas for a day.

My first visit to Shantung was at Tsingtao, the headquarters of the German concession and now of the Japanese concession. I spent a day there, and took photographs of the wharves and town. On the wharves were still standing hundreds of boxes marked with German names and the inevitable phrase "Made in Germany." Those boxes were mute reminders of the evacuation of one nation from a foreign soil. But standing side by side with these boxes were also other hundreds, already being shot into Shantung in a steady stream; and these boxes have a new trademark printed in every case in English and Japanese, "Made in Japan."

I spent several days in Tsinanfu and Tientsin, two great inland cities, and more than a week in cruising about through Shantung's little towns, its villages and its sacred spots.

I heard of its mines and of its physical wealth. But the world already knows of that. The world already knows that this physical wealth of mines and raw material was what made it look good to Germany and Japan. But the thing that impressed me was its spiritual wealth.

The thing that makes Shantung attractive to the Japanese, of course, is not the spiritual wealth, as the world well knows. Perhaps the Japanese have never considered the latter any more than the Germans did; but the one thing that makes it most sacred to the Chinese, who are, after all, a race of idealists, is its treasuries of spiritual memories and shrines.

In the first place, many Chinese will tell you that it is the "cradle of the Chinese race." I am not sure that histories will confirm this statement. And I am also not sure that that makes any difference as long as the idea is buried in the heart of the Chinese people. A tradition often means as much to a race as a fact. And the tradition certainly is well established that Shantung is the birthplace of all Chinese history. So that is one of the deeply rooted spiritual facts that makes Shantung sacred to the Chinese.

The second spiritual gold mine is that one of its cities, Chufu, is the birthplace and the last resting-place of the sage Confucius. And China is literally impregnated with Confusian philosophy and Confucian sayings.

I took a trip to this shrine in order to catch some of the spiritual atmosphere of the Shantung loss. The trip made it necessary to tramp about fifteen miles coming and going through as dusty a desert as I ever saw, but that was a trifle compared with the thrill that I had as I stood at last before the little mound about as high as a California bungalow; the mound that held the dust of this great Chinese sage. During the war I stood before the grave of Napoleon in France. Before I went to France I visited Grant's tomb. I have also stood many times beside a little mound in West Virginia, the resting-place of my mother, and I think that I know something of the sacredness of such experiences to a human heart, but somehow the thrill that came to me on that January morning, warm with sunlight, spicy with winter cold, produced a feeling too deep for mere printed words to convey.

"If we feel as we do standing here on this sacred spot, think of how the Chinese feel toward their own sage!" said an old missionary of the party.

"Yes," added another, "and remember that the Chinese revere their ancestors and their sages and their shrines more than we ever dream of doing. Any grave is a sacred spot to them, so much so that railroads have to run their trunk lines for miles in a detour to avoid graves. These Chinese are idealists of the first water. They live in the past, and they dream of the future."

"When you get these facts into your American heads," added a third member of the party, not without some bitterness, "then you will begin to know that the Chinese do not estimate the loss of Shantung in terms of mineral wealth."

At Chufu, the resting-place of Confucius, there is also the spot of his birth, and this too is most sacred to the Chinese nation. We visited both places. I think that I never before quite realized just what the loss of Shantung meant to these Chinese until that day, unless it was the next day, when we climbed the sacred mountain Taishan, which is also in Shantung.

"It is the oldest worshiping-place in the world," said the historian of the party. "There is no other spot on earth where continuous worship has gone on so long. Here for more than twenty centuries before Christ was born men and women were worshiping. Emperors from the oldest history of China down to the present time have all visited this mountain to worship. Confucius himself climbed the more than six thousand steps to worship here."

"Yes," said another missionary historian, "and this mountain is referred to twelve separate times in the Chinese classics, and great pilgrimages were made here as long ago as two centuries before Christ."

That day we climbed the mountain up more than six thousand stone steps, which are in perfect condition and which were engineered thousands of years ago by early worshipers.

The only climb with which I can compare that of Mt. Taishan is that of Mt. Tamalpais overlooking San Francisco. The climb is about equal to that. The mountain itself is about a mile in height, and the climb is a hard one to those who are unaccustomed to mountain-climbing, and yet thousands upon thousands climb it every year after pilgrimages from all over China.

We climbed to the top of Taishan, and saw the "No-Character Stone" erected by Emperor Chin, he who tried to drive learning out of China hundreds of years ago. We saw the spot on which Confucius stood, and glimpsed the Pacific Ocean, ninety miles away, on a clear day. It was a hard climb; but, when one stood on the top of this, the most sacred mountain of all China, he began to understand the spiritual loss that is China's when her worshiping-place is in the hands of aliens.

"And don't forget that Mencius, the first disciple of Confucius, was born and died in Shantung, too, when you are taking census of the spiritual values of Shantung to the Chinese," was a word of caution from the old missionary who was checking up on my facts for me. He had been laboring in China for a quarter of a century.

"And don't forget that the Boxer uprising originated in Shantung, and don't forget that it is called, and has been for centuries, 'the Sacred Province' by the Chinese. It is their 'Holy Land.' And don't forget that, from Shantung, coolies went to South Africa in the early part of this century and that the Chinese from Shantung were the first to get in touch with the western world. And don't forget that nine-tenths of the coolies who went to help in the war in France were from Shantung!" he added with emphasis. This was a thing that I well knew, for I had, only a few weeks before this, seen two thousand coolies unloaded from the Empress of Asia at Tsingtao.

No, Shantung is not an appendix of China, as many Americans suppose; but it is the very heart and soul of China. It is China's "Holy Land." It is the "Cradle of China." It is the "Sacred Province of China." It is the shrine of her greatest sage. It is the home of "the oldest worshiping-place on earth." It is because of its spiritual values that China is unhappy about the loss of Shantung, and not because of its wealth of material things.

The failure of the world to understand what Shantung means to China and the failure of Japan to understand that they cannot for many years stand out against the indignation of the entire world in continuing to keep Shantung is one of the great spiritual failures of the Far East in our century.

The second great failure is the tragic failure of an entire race of people; that of the Ainu Indians of Japan.

It is a pathetic thing to see a human race dying out; coming to "The End of the Trail." But I was determined to see them, in spite of the fact that people told me I would have to travel from one end of Japan to the other; and then cross four hours of sea before I got to Hokkaido, the most northern island of Japan, where lived the tattered remnants of this once noble race.

The name of this dying race is pronounced as if it were spelled I-new with a long I.

These are the people who inhabited Japan before the present Japanese entered the land from Korea and drove them, inch by inch, back and north and west across Japan. It was a stubborn fight, and it has lasted many centuries; but to-day they have been driven up on the island of Hokkaido, that northern frontier of Japan where the overflow of Japan is pouring at the rate of four thousand a year, making two million to date and only about fifty thousand of them Ainus.

"Are they like our American Indians in looks, since their history is so much like them?" I asked my missionary friend.

"Wait until you see them, and decide for yourself. I know very little about American Indians."

So one morning at three o'clock, after traveling for two days and nights from one end of Japan to the other, and then crossing a strait between the Japan Sea and the Pacific Ocean to the island, we climbed from our train, and landed in a little country railroad station.

It was blowing a blizzard, and the snow crashed into our faces with stinging, whip-like snaps.

I was appointed stoker for the small stove in the station while the rest of the party tried to sleep on the benches arranged in a circle, huddled as close as they could get to the stove.

We were the first party of foreigners of this size that had ever honored the village with a visit. And in addition to that we had come at an unearthly hour.

Who but a group of insane foreigners would drop into a town at three o'clock in the morning with a blizzard blowing? Either we were insane, or we had some sinister motives. Perhaps we were making maps of the seacoast.

And before daylight half of the town was peeking in through the windows at us. Then the policemen came. They were Japanese policemen, and did not take any chances on us. Even after our interpreter had told them that we were a group of scientists who had come to visit the Ainus they still followed us around most of the morning, keeping polite track of our movements.

About five o'clock that morning, as I was trying to catch a cat-nap, the newsboys of the village came to get the morning papers which had come in on the train on which we had arrived. They unbundled the papers in the cold station; their breath forming clouds of vapor; laughing and joking as they unrolled, folded and counted the papers; and arranged their routes for morning delivery.

It took me back to boyhood days down in West Virginia. I did the same thing as these Japanese boys were doing. I, too, arose before daylight, climbed out of bed, and went whistling through the dark streets to the station where the early morning trains dumped off the papers from the city. I, too, along with several other American boys of a winter morning, breathed clouds of vapor into the air, stamped my feet to keep them warm, and whipped my hands against my sides. I, too, unwrapped the big bundles of papers, and did it in the same way in which these Japanese boys did, by smashing the tightly bound wrappers on the floor until they burst. I, too, counted, folded, put in inserts, arranged my paper-route and darted out into the frosty air with the snow crunching under my feet. How universal some things are. The only difference was that these boys were dressed in a sort of buccaneer uniform. They had on high leather boots, and belts around their coats that made them look as if they had stepped out of a Richard Harding Davis novel. But otherwise they went through the same processes as an American boy in a small town.

When the vanguard of villagers had come to inspect us, they at first tried to talk Russian to us. They had never seen any other kind of foreigners. They had never seen Americans in this far-off island.

When daylight came, we started out on a long tramp to the Ainu villages. They were a mile or two away on the ocean. These people always build near the sea if they can. Fishing is one of their main sources of food.

We spent the day in their huts. They live like animals. A big, square hut covered with rice straw and thatch, with a fence of the same kind of straw running around the house, forms the residence. The only fire is in the middle of the only room, and this consists of a pile of wood burning on a flat stone or piece of metal in the center. There is no chimney in the roof, and not even an opening such as the American Indians had in the tops of their tepees. I do not know how they live. The smoke finds its way gradually through cracks in the walls and roofs. One can hardly find a single Ainu whose eyes are not ruined. The smoke has done this damage.

The only opening in their houses besides the door is one north window, and it is never closed. In fact, there is no window. It is only an opening.

"Why is that? I'd think they would freeze on a day like this," I said to the guide.

"They keep it that way all winter, and it gets a good deal below zero here," he said.

"But why do they do it?" old Shylock demanded.

"It is part of their religion. They believe that the god comes in that window. They want it open, so that he can come in whenever he wishes. It offends them greatly when you stick your head through that window."

Pat tried it just to see what would happen, just like a man who looks into the barrel of a gun, or a man who takes a watch apart, or wants to hit a "dud" with a hammer just to see whether it is a dud. The result was bad. There was a sudden series of outlandish yells from the household. I think that every man, woman and child, including the dogs, of which there were many, started at once. I wonder now how Pat escaped alive, and only under the assumption that "the good die young" can I explain his escape.

I wanted some arrows to take to America as souvenirs; and, when an old Indian pulled out a lot of metal arrows on long bows with which he had killed more than a hundred bears, I was not satisfied. They were not the kind of arrows I wanted.

"What kind are you looking for?" I was asked.

"Flint arrow-heads," I responded.

"Why, man, these Indians have known the use of metals for five hundred years. The stone age with them is half a thousand years in the past."

"Have they a history?" I wanted to know.

My interpreter, who has much knowledge of these things, having worked among them for years, said, "All of the Japanese mythology is centered about the battles that took place when these Indians were driven out of Japan proper step by step."

I was surprised to find that they were white people compared with the Japanese who were their conquerors. There are other marked differences. The Ainus are broad between the eyes instead of narrow as are the Japanese. They are rather square-headed like Americans as compared with the oval of the Japanese face. They do not have markedly slant eyes, and they are white-skinned. They might feel at home in any place in America. I have seen many old men at home who look like them, old men with beards. This came as a distinct surprise to me.

At each house, just in front of the ever-open window of which I have spoken, there is a little crude shrine. It is more like a small fence than anything that I know, a most crude affair made of broken bamboo poles. Flowers and vines are planted here to beautify this shrine, and every pole has a bear-skull on it. The more bear-skulls you have, the safer you are and the more religious you have become.

Pat was sacrilegious enough to steal a skull in order to get the teeth, which he wanted as souvenirs. I was chagrined and shocked at Pat's lack of religious propriety. However, I was enticed into accepting one of the teeth after Pat had knocked them out and stolen them.

"How do they worship bears and kill them at the same time?" I queried the guide.

"That's a part of the worship. They kill the bear, slowly singing and chanting as they kill him. They think that the spirit of every bear that they kill comes into their own souls. That's why they kill so many. That seventy-year-old rascal over there has killed a hundred. He is a great man in his tribe."

"If I was a bear," commented Pat, "I'd rather they wouldn't worship me. That's a funny way to show reverence to a god. I'd rather be their devil and live than be their god and die." Pat is sometimes loquacious. "They dance about the poor old bear as they kill him. One fellow will hurl an arrow into his side, and then cry out, 'O spirit of the great bear-god, come enter into me, and make me strong and brave like you! Come, take up thine abode in my house! Come, be a part of me! Let thy strength and thy courage be my strength and my courage!'"

"Then," said the interpreter, "he hurls another arrow into him."

"And what is Mr. Bear doing all that time?"

"Mr. Bear is helpless. He is captured first in a trap, and then kept and fattened for the killing. He is tied to a tree during the killing ceremony."

"All I gotta say is that they're darned poor sports," said Flintlock with indignation. "They're poor sports not to give Mr. Bear a fighting chance."

And old Flintlock has voiced the sentiments of the entire party.

Everybody that was at the Panama Pacific International Exposition will remember the magnificent statue of an Indian there. This Indian was riding a horse, and both were worn out and drooping. A spear which dragged on the ground in front of the pony was further evidence of the weariness of the horse and rider. The title of this Fraser bronze was "The End of the Trail," and it was intended to tell the story of a vanishing race, the American Indians. But even more could that picture tell the story of the Ainus of Japan.

"They will be entirely extinct in a quarter of a century," our guide said. "They are going fast. They used to be vigorous and militant, as Japanese mythology shows. They were a fighting race. They built their houses by the sea. They used to go out for miles to fish, but now they are so petered out that they go only to the mouths of the rivers to fish. They used to hunt in the mountains, but they do not take hunting-trips any more. Venereal diseases and rum (saki) have depleted them year by year, just as in the case of our American Indians. They are largely sterile now. They used to build their own boats, but they build no more. It is a biological old age. Their day is through."

"It is a sad thing to see a race dying out," said Pat.

"Especially a white race, as these Ainus seem to be," said another member of the party.

And back to the village we went silently, plodding through a driving blizzard that bore in upon us with terrific force. As we fought our way through this blizzard, I could not help feeling a great sense of depression. It is a fearful thing to see anything die, especially a race of human beings. That is a great epic tragedy worthy of a Shakespeare. That is enough to wring the soul of the gods. That a race has played the game, has been powerful and conquering and triumphant, and then step by step has petered out and become weak and senile until biological decay has set in—that is fearful.

Another illustration of the ignominious failure of a lower type of mind to understand a higher type of mind is set forth in the following letter which was written at my request by a missionary whom I met in San Francisco just as the final chapters of this book were being written.

The first time I met this missionary was in Seoul, Korea.

I have been told so many times that the cruelties in Korea have been stopped. Certain men said that they had been stopped immediately after the Independence Movement, but they were not stopped. At frequent intervals the American press is flooded with statements which come from Japanese press sources that the outrages in Korea have ceased.

I said to this missionary, who had just arrived from Korea, "Is it true that the cruelties have stopped in Korea?"

"No! They have not stopped! They have not even diminished! They are getting worse, rather than better!"

"Would you be willing to write out, in your own handwriting, a few things that you know yourself which have occurred since I was in Korea so that the book which I am writing may be accurate and up to date in its facts?"

"I will be glad to do that for you! We who are missionaries dare not speak the truth!"

"Why?"

"If we did the Japanese Government would never let us get back to our people!"

"Then you may talk through me, if you are willing to do it. I want the truth to get to the American people!"

"I am not only willing but I am eager to talk!" said this missionary and wrote out the following story of cruelty against an educated and cultured Korean, who was the Religious and Educational Director in the Seoul Y.M.C.A. This story of the latest Japanese barbarisms I pass on to the reader in this chapter to illustrate another ignominious Hun failure to understand that the practices of the Dark Ages will not work in this century:

"On May 26th, 1920, just as Mr. Choi was coming out of his class room he was met by two detectives, one Korean and one Japanese, who informed him that he was wanted at the Central Police Station. Here he was turned over to the Chief of Police and thrown into a room and kept all day. Mr. Brockman and Cynn both made several attempts to find out why he was arrested. Each time they were given an evasive answer. Finally Mr. Cynn insisted that they tell him the cause of the arrest. It was finally discovered that he was wanted in Pyengyang on certain charges. He was to leave Seoul that evening on the 11 p.m. train. Anxious to see how Mr. Choi was being treated, Mr. Cynn and several of the Y.M.C.A. men went down to the station. Mr. Choi with the other six students were standing on the platform. Apparently Mr. Choi was not bound as is the usual custom. Closer observation, however, revealed the fact that his hands were bound with cords, but in his case the ropes were placed on the inside instead of the outside, of the clothes. He arrived in Pyengyang the next day, May 27, at 5 p.m. Instead of taking Mr. Choi first they called in one of the students whose name is Chai Pony Am. After the usual preliminary questions these inquisitors of the Dark Ages said, 'We know all about you everything you have done. There is no use for you to deny anything. You make a clean confession of everything.' Mr. Choi replied, 'I have done nothing. If I knew what you wanted, I would tell you.' More pressure was urged in the way of bombastic speech. Finally the police said, 'If you won't tell of your own free will we will make you tell!' Then the tortures, which the Government published broadcast had been done away with, began. They brought out a round stool with four legs and laid it down on its side with the sharp legs up and made him strip naked. Then they took the silken bands (about 2 in. wide) and placing his hands behind his back until the shoulder blades touched begun bending the arm from the wrist very tight. This completed, they made him kneel upon the sharp edge of the legs of the stool with his shins. Then they took the bamboo paddle (this is made of two strips of bamboo about 2 in. wide and 2 ft. long wound with cord) and begun beating him on the head, face, back, feet and thighs. Every time they struck him his body would move and the movement cause the shins to rub on the sharp edges of the stool. To further increase the pain they took lighted cigarettes and burnt his flesh. This was continued until the student fainted and fell off. They then would restore the patient by artificial respiration and when he refused to confess, continued the torture. This process was continued for 45 minutes and then the student was put into a dark cell and kept for three days. Upon the third day he was again brought before these just policemen and asked if he were ready to confess. Said they, 'If you do not tell us this time we will kill you. You see how the waters of the Tai Pong (the river at Pyengyang) wear smooth these stones. That is what we do with those who come in here. Many have been killed in here. Your life is not worth as much as a fly.' He was tortured in the same manner as before and then put back into the cell for another three days. This process was continued every three days for two weeks.

"When Mr. Choi, the educational director of the Y.M.C.A. was called in the police said, 'You are an educated gentleman and we propose to give you the gentleman's treatment. We do not want to treat you like ordinary men. Now we want you to tell us what your thoughts have been and are. Make a confession of anything you have done since March 1st, 1919.' Mr. Choi said, 'What do you want me to confess? If you will give me a little time I will write you out something.' This they refused to do and said, 'Since you refuse to tell us we will make you tell. We will treat you like all other dogs.' Then they forcibly took off his clothes, and proceeded to bind him in the same manner as the previous student. After being bound he was placed on the stool and beaten. He did not lose his consciousness but fell off the stool, and then was placed back and the same process continued. When Mr. Choi fell off the stool the bands on his arms were loosened and they proceeded to unloosen and rewind his arms. This time they wound them tighter than before. At the ends of these bands are brass rings which are placed next to the flesh and made to press upon the nerves. This time Mr. Choi said as they wound his right arm he felt a sharp pain and at once noticed that he had lost the use of his arm. It was paralyzed. Mr. Choi was tortured five times in all—one every three days. The first torture lasted one hour and the succeeding ones were less severe than the first. At the end of two weeks, June 10th, Mr. Choi and the six students with him were called before a police captain who said to the students, 'There is nothing against you. Some bad Korean has testified falsely against you. We are sorry you have suffered but you can now go free.' However to Mr. Choi he said, 'You must remain here a week yet. You are still under police supervision. Go to —— hotel and stay.' On June 16th the police came to the hotel where he was staying and said, 'You may go down to Seoul tonight.' Mr. Choi arrived in Seoul on the 17th and gave this testimony. His arm is still paralyzed."

And so it is that these great failures stand out: the failure of a race of people to survive; the failure of the American people to estimate the loss of Shantung at its proper valuation spiritually, and the failure of Japan to understand that Korea is still and ever shall be Korea the Unconquered; this Korea which I call "The Wild Boar at Bay."



CHAPTER X

FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIENDSHIP

We were running down the Samabs River in a small Dutch ship, the Merkeus. This river, running almost parallel to the Equator, and not more than fifty miles away from that well-known institution, cuts the western end of Borneo in two, and lends phenomenal fertility to its soil.

Shooting around a bend in the river, suddenly there loomed on the western shores, so close that we could throw a stone and hit it, a tree that was leafless, dead as a volcanic dump; but its dead branches literally swarmed with monkeys. The light in the west had so far gone that they appeared as silent silhouettes against the sunset Their tails, which seemed to be about three feet long, and were curled at the ends, hung below the dead branches. One big fellow had perched himself on the tiptop of the tree, and in the dim light he looked like a human sentinel as his black outline appeared against the evening light.

Then came Missionary Worthington's story about Kin Thung, the boy who, with characteristic Oriental spirit, had quick murder in his heart:

"It was while I was the head of the Boys' School down in Batavia, Java, that it happened. One has experiences out here in dealing with youth that he does not get at home, for it is inflammable material, explosive to the highest degree."

I waited for his story to continue as the Dutch ship glided swiftly down the river toward the South China Sea, and night settled over us as we sat there on the upper deck, watching the crimson glory change into sudden purple.

"I heard a noise and I knew there was a fight on in the dormitory. I had seen the aftermath of such Malay and Chinese feuds in our schools before, and I knew that it was no trivial matter, as it often is with boy fights at home, so I hurried up.

"When I got there I saw Kin Thung wiping his knife, and the boy he had been fighting lying on the floor, bleeding from a long wound."

"What had happened?"

"Kin Thung was a quick-tempered boy. In addition to that, he was of a sullen make-up, with, what I call, a criminal tendency in him. That, added to his already volatile spirit, made him a real problem in the school. For instance, he was the kind of a boy who, if a teacher called on him without warning to recite, he would get uncontrollably angry, turn sullen and refuse to answer."

"Why didn't you fire him?" I said.

"That would have been the easy thing to do. I preferred to win him rather than to fire him!"

I felt ashamed of myself for my suggestion, and looked out into the night skies where the beautiful form of the southern cross loomed in the zenith.

"No, I didn't fire him."

"What did you do?"

"As I was dressing the boy's wound Kin Thung stood looking on, utterly expressionless and unrepentant, even sullen.

"I didn't say anything to Kin that night, save to ask him to come to the office the next day.

"The other boys were calling out to him as he entered, and I could hear them through the window, 'I wonder how many strokes of the rattan he will get?' for that is one of our forms of punishment.

"He was no doubt wondering himself when he entered, still sullen.

"I said to him, 'Kin, I could give you as punishment a hundred strokes of the rattan. I could put you on rice and water for a month, or I could put you to a room for a week in solitary confinement. But I am not going to do either or any of them. I am going to pray for you!"

"'I don't want you to, sir!' he cried in alarm.

"'Kneel down!' I said to him.

"'I don't want to.'

"'Kneel down, I say!'

"'I won't!'

"'But this is your punishment. You would submit to the rattan if I imposed that. You must submit to this!' I said.

"'I hate prayer!'

"'Kneel down, boy!'

"He knelt. I prayed. He wept."

This was the cryptic way the missionary came to the climax of his story. Again the Southern Cross shot into view as we turned a curve in the river.

"The fountain broke. A boy's heart was won! I didn't have to fire him. I won him!"

"That lad came to me two years later as he started out from our school in Batavia, and said, 'Mr. Worthington, that moment when you called me into your office was the crucial moment of my life. If you had been unkind to me then; if you had punished me, even as much as I deserved it; if you had not been Christ-like, I should have killed you. I had my knife ready. There was a demon in me! Your kindness, your praying for me, broke something inside of me. I guess it was my heart. I cried. I prayed. That morning saved my soul!'"

"That was a marvelous experience, Mr. Missionary! It was a marvelous way to meet the situation," I said in a low tone, looking up at the white outline of the Southern Cross, and remembering two thieves.

"It was Christ's way!" said the missionary.

But perhaps the outstanding Flash-light of national Friendship is that of America for the Philippines. I shall never forget the day we started southward from winter-bound China for sun-warmed Manila.

As the great ship swung about in the muddy waters of the Yangsti and turned southward, the bitter winds of winter were blowing across her deserted decks. But in two days one felt not only a breath of warm tropical winds on his face but he also felt a breath of warmer friendship blowing into his soul as he thought of the Philippines and America.

The first breath of warm winds from southern tropical seas gently kissed one's cheeks that afternoon. It was a soothing breath of romance, freighted with the scent of tropical trees. It was much of a contrast with the bitter winter winds that had blown the day before at Shanghai. There the snow was flying, and woolen suits were greatly needed.

But to-night men and women alike walk the decks of this Manila-bound ship. They are all in white. One stands at the bow of the ship, glad to catch the salt spray on tanned cheeks, glad to feel the sea-touched winds playing with his hair, glad to see fair women of the Orient tanned with summer suns; for it is summer in the Philippines, while winter reigns in China and the rest of the Oriental lands further north.

Last night we passed the narrow straits leading out of Shanghai harbor directly south. Two lighthouses blinked through the dusk of evening, the one to the north in short sharp notes, like a musician of the sea singing coasts, rapidly beating time. The light to the south seemed to count four in blinks and then hold its last count like a note of music. In between the two lighthouses vague, dim, mist-belted mountains of the China coast loomed through the dusk.

This morning and all day long we have been sailing past the huge outlines of mountainous Formosa, that rich island off the coast of China, between Shanghai and Manila. It looks like some fairly island with its coves and caves, into which pours the purple sea, visible through the faint mists of morning and noontime. Its precipitous sides shoot down to the sea in great bare cliffs, save where, here and there, a beautiful bay runs in from the southern sea to kiss the green lips of the land.

But now the sun is setting. I am watching it from my stateroom window.

* * * * *

And now it is the rainy season in the Philippines.

It doesn't rain in Luzon; it opens up clouds, and oceans suddenly drop to the land. Lakes and rivers form overnight. Bridges wash out, fields are inundated, houses by thousands are swept away, and railroad tracks twisted and played with, as if they were grappled by gigantic fists.

Men will tell you of the great Typhoon that suddenly dropped out of the mountains at Baguio, sliced off a few sections of the mountains, rushed down through the great gorge, and left in its trail the iron ruins of eight or ten bridges, put in by American engineers, founded on solid granite; but swept away like playthings of wood, in an hour.

One night we were driving from Baguio to Manila.

A storm dropped suddenly out of the nowhere. We had no side curtains on, and in just three minutes we were soaked to the skin, and dripping streams of water. The artesian wells along the way were but dribbling springs compared with us.

The storm came out of a clear, star-lit sky. Storms come that way in the Philippines. Only a few minutes before I had been looking up at the Southern Cross admiring its beauty. I looked again and there was no Southern Cross. A few great drops of rain fell and then came the deluge.

Candle lights flickered in innumerable thatched houses where brown and naked women fluttered about dodging the rain, looking strangely like great paintings in the night. At the edge of each side porch a Bamboo ladder reached up from the ground. A fire burned against the rain. This fire leapt up for two feet.

One could easily imagine on this stormy night, with every road a river, every field a flood, and every vacant space a sea, that the thatched houses raised on Bamboo poles were boats, afloat in a great ocean. The fires on the back porches looked for all the world like the fires that I have seen flaring against the night from Japanese fishing boats.

We had been warm, personal friends since college days, this driver and I. He had chosen the harder way of the mission fields to spend his life.

"After all," said he, "that was a dream worth dreaming!"

"What do you mean?" I asked him, a bit startled.

"Why the American occupation of these islands; the dream that McKinley had, of teaching them to govern themselves; and then giving them their independence; an Imperial Dream such as the world never heard of before; a dream that, if it has done nothing else, has won for America the undying friendship of the intelligent Filipino."

"Right you are, man! But why such a thought at this ungodly hour? I should think rather that you would be sending out an S. O. S."

"Dunno! Just flashed over me that that was a dream worth dreaming; and, by gad, boy, we're seeing it come to pass. Look at those contented people living in peace and security; their home fires lighted; their children in school; plenty to eat; not afraid that to-morrow morning some Friar will sell their home from under them. No wonder they have given their undying friendship to America!"

He continued as we sped through the rain.

"England and Germany sneered at America's dream. Such a dream of friendship through serving its colony had never been born in any other national soul from the Genesis of colonization up to this day, save in the soul of America in the Philippines. We have set the ideals of the world in many ways but never in a more marked way than this.

"The Phoenicians were the first colonizers and they swept the Mediterranean with a policy of exploitation and slavery which was selfish and sordid. Then came Greece which had some such ideal of colonization as America. Her ideal was, that colonies, like fruit from a tree, when ripe, should fall off of the mother tree. Or the ideal of Greece was that colonizing should come about like the swarming of bees."

I nodded my head. He went on as we slashed through the muddy ways, "Rome with her Imperial dream, her army to back it up, failed as have failed both Germany and Japan; three nations with kindred ideals as to colonization.

"Venice was cruel, adventurous and rapacious in her colonizing policy on the Black Sea and she left a record of exploitations which makes a black blotch on the world's pages.

"Modern colonization began with Spain in South America, Mexico and the Philippines. Spain has nothing over which to boast in that record. The Dutch in Java, the record of Belgium in the Congo; that of the Portuguese in the Far East; the French in Africa; the English in India; Germany in China and Africa, and Japan in Korea, have not been entirely for the service of the subjected people, for all of these Governments have gone on the fundamental theory that the colony exists for the Mother States."

He paused a moment as we made a cautious way around a big caribou. "Then came the great dream of America that the Mother State exists for the benefit of the colony.

"Elihu Root said, 'We have declared a trust for the benefit of the people of the Philippine Islands!'

"President William McKinley said: The government is designed not for exploitation nor for our own satisfaction, or for the expression of our theoretical views, but for the happiness, peace and prosperity of the people of the Philippine Islands.'

"Ex-President Taft said when he was Governor-General of the Islands: The chief difference between the English policy and treatment of tropical peoples and ours, arises from the fact that we are seeking to prepare them under our guidance for popular self-government. We are attempting to do this, first by primary and secondary education offered freely to the Filipino people.'

"This spirit has won the undying friendship of the Filipino people. True enough, they will finally want their independence. That is natural, but there is a deep love for America buried in their hearts because America has been square with them; has fulfilled her promises; has not exploited them, but has served them. That is why I call the colonization policy of America here in the Philippines a dream worth dreaming." My friend was right.

"We love America, because America is our friend!" said a humble fisherman to me one day on the banks of the Pasig.

"Yes, the United States; it is our own! You are our brothers!" said a Filipino boy who had been educated in a Mission school.

"We are no longer our own. We belong to America. You have bought us with a price! It cost the blood of American soldiers to buy us!" said an old Filipino, gray with years, but high in the councils of the Government.

* * * * *

One night on the Lunetta the Filipino Band was playing. It was a beautiful evening with a sunset that lifted one into the very skies with its bewildering glory and ecstasy. I had been sitting there, drinking in the beautiful music made by the world-famous Constabulary Band, and watching the quicksilver-like changing colors of the sunset. Then the band started to play "The Star Spangled Banner." I was so lost in the sunset and the music that I did not notice.

I heard a sudden stirring. Brown bodies, half-naked Filipinos all about me, had leapt to their feet at the playing of our national hymn. Beautiful Filipino women in their dainty and delicately winged gowns, bare brown shoulders heaving with pride and friendship, stood reverently. Filipino soldiers all over the Lunetta stood at attention facing the flag, the Stars and Stripes waving in the winds from the old walled city. Side by side with American soldiers who had just returned from Siberia stood Filipino Constabulary soldiers. Side by side with well-dressed American children stood half-naked Filipino children at reverent attention, paying a wholesome respect to the Stars and Stripes as the old hymn swept across the Lunetta.

"That is a thrilling thing to see!" I said to a friend.

"It could not have happened ten years ago! M he replied.

"Why?"

"They did not trust us, and they did not love us. They had seen too much of the selfish colonization policies of Spain. They expected the same things from America. It did not come. They have been won to us!"

This warm-hearted friendship is not true either of England's colonies anywhere in the Orient or of Japan's in Formosa or Korea. It is true alone in the Philippines.

* * * * *

While I was in the Philippines, down in San Fernando, a statue was erected to a well-known rebel. He was a man who had refused to take the oath of allegiance to America when we captured the islands. He escaped and carried on a propaganda against us. But when he died and a request was made that a statue be erected to his memory, the United States granted this permission.

At the dedication of this statue the Governor of this Province said that he doubted if any nation on the face of the earth, save the United States, would have permitted the erection of such a statue to a rebel against that government. "That act will bind our hearts closer to the heart of the United States!" he said in closing his address. The thrilling thing about it all was, that his address was met with prolonged cheering on the part of the thousands of Filipinos who had gathered for the dedication.

Another evidence of this beautiful friendship for America is the painting which adorns the walls of one of the Government buildings in Manila. It is called "The Welcome to America." It was purchased, paid for and erected by Filipinos; erected in good will, with laughter in their souls, and joy in their hearts.

It was painted by Hidalgo in Paris in 1904.

High colors; reds, browns, yellows, golds, blues, purples; tell its story. It adorns the panel at the end of the Senate Chamber of the Filipino Government.

It has spirit in it and a great, deep sincerity.

The central figure is a beautiful woman, symbolic of America. She comes across the Pacific carrying the gifts of peace, prosperity, security and love to her colony, the Philippines.

She carries in one hand the American flag. At her side is Youth bearing a Harp, symbol of the music that America brings into the souls of the people whom she comes to serve. Singing angels hover about the scene.

Above the central figure of America, on angel wings, is a Youth carrying a lighted torch. To the left is a beautiful brown-skinned Filipino woman with eyes uplifted to this torch. She bears within her ample bosom the children of the islands. The torch is symbol of the fact that we are handing on the light of our Christian civilization to the children of our colonies.

I visited this painting many times, but I never visited it that I did not see many Filipinos, both young and old, standing before it, with reverent eyes.

I said to a high official of the Government, "Does that painting represent the way you Filipinos feel to-day?"

"Hidalgo has spoken for us. He has voiced our feelings well!" was the reply.

* * * * *

This friendship for the United States is a thrilling thing found all over the Far East. One finds it in Korea, as well as in the Philippines, like a burning light of glory. Korea says, "America is our only hope! We have always trusted and loved America!"

One finds it like a silver stream running through the life of China. Dr. Sun Yat Sen said to me in Shanghai: "America has always been China's staunch friend! America we trust! America we love! America is our hope! America is our model!"

Mr. Tang Shao-yi said, "America's hands and those of America alone are clean in her relations with China. This cannot be said of the other nations."

Then he told me a thrilling story of the Boxer Rebellion. He, with two thousand Chinese, who were Government officials, were barricaded in a compound behind the usual Chinese walls. The Boxers were firing on them every day. They had run out of food. In fact, they were starving.

But one morning a bright-faced American boy appeared at the gates of the wall. He was admitted because he was an American. He asked to be taken to Mr. Tang Shao-yi.

"What do you most need?" this young American asked the rich Chinese merchant.

"We most need food," was the reply.

"All right, I'll get enough for you to-day!" said the young American.

"That night," said Mr. Tang Shao-yi, "that American boy returned with five hundred hams which the Boxers had thrown away, in addition to a thousand sacks of flour which he had gotten from the English legation."

"Wonderful!" I exclaimed.

"And that boyish American was——"

"Who?" I asked with tense interest, for the old man was smiling with a suggestive Oriental smile, as if he had a climax up his commodious sleeves.

"That man was Herbert Hoover!"

And from that interview henceforth and forever no human being need tell me that the Chinese have no sense of the dramatic.

"That's why we love and trust America," said this great Chinese statesman. "It is because America has always been our friend in time of need!"

I found this friendship for the United States true all over the Oriental world. It was to me a great miracle of national friendship. The peoples of the Orient trust us. They are not suspicious of our intentions in spite of what jingo papers say. We have won their hearts. We have claimed their friendship.

The name "America," which stands in the Oriental mind for the United States, is a sacred passport and password. It is a magical word. It opens doors that are locked to all the rest of the world; it tears down barriers, century-old, that have been barricading certain places for ages past. That simple word opens hearts that would open with none other.

The eyes of the brown men of the Far East open wide at that word, and a new light appears in them. This is particularly true in Korea, in China, in the Malacca Straits, and in the Philippines.

It is enough to bring a flood of tears to the heart of an American, lonely for a sight of his own flag, homesick for his native shores, to see and feel and hear and know the pulse of this friendship for our country among millions of brown men.

"It is because we are like you, we Chinese," said Tang Shao-yi. "It is because we are both Democrats at heart!"

"It is because you have been our true friends!" said Dr. Sun Yat Sen.

"It is because your ideals are our ideals; your dreams our dreams and your friends our friends," said Wu Ting-fang, one of China's greatest leaders, to me.

"It is because so many of our young men have been trained in your American schools, and because so many of us feel that the United States is our second home. It is because you have sent so many good men and women to China to help us; to teach us; to live with us; to love us; to serve us! It is because your missionaries from America have shown the real heart of the United States to us!" said Mr. Walter Busch, a Chinese American student who is now editor of the Peking Leader.

But whatever the cause, the glorious fact is enough to:

"Send a thrill of rapture through the framework of the heart And warm the inner bein' till the tear drops want to start!"

But perhaps the highest and holiest Flash-lights of Friendship that one finds in the Far East is that of the friendship formed by the American missionaries for the people among whom they are working, and the friendship that these people give in return. These are holy things.

The average missionary comes home on his furlough, but before he is home three months he is homesick to go back to his people. So they come and go across the seas of the world through the years, weaving like a great Shuttle of Service the fabric of friendship for themselves and for the United States.

This shuttle of service is being woven night and day across the Atlantic and across the Pacific by great ships bearing missionaries going and coming; furlough following furlough, after six years of service; term after term; leaving native land, children, memories; time after time until death ends that particular thread, crimson, gold, brown or white. The great Shuttle of Love weaves the fabric of friendship across the seas as the ships come and go, bearing outbound and homebound missionaries to foreign fields.

I am thinking particularly of the Pacific as I write this sketch sitting in a room overlooking the great harbor of Yokohama where three Japanese warship lie anchored and two great Pacific liners, one on its way to San Francisco and another bound for Vancouver. They come and go, these great ships. A few days ago the Empress of Asia made its twenty-eighth trip across and it soon will start on its twenty-eighth trip back to Vancouver again. Some of the ships out of San Francisco have made more than a hundred trips. So they weave the shuttle back and forward across this great sea. And never a ship sails this sea that it does not carry its passenger list of missionaries. Our list was more than half a hundred.

As Mr. Forman, in a sympathetic and appreciative article that he has written for the Ladies' Home Journal, says, the common phrase on a Pacific liner is, "There are two hundred and fifty passengers and forty-five missionaries on board." Every Pacific passenger list immediately divides itself into two groups, the missionaries and the other passengers.

Then Mr. Forman proceeds to slay those shallow, narrow-minded, often ignorant and uneducated tourists and business men who dare to speak of this traveling missionary with derision. Mr. Forman has no particular interest in missions and he has no particular interest in the Church, but he started out to investigate this derogatory phrase, "and forty-five missionaries."

Mr. Forman starts his article with these striking paragraphs

"If ever you cross the Pacific you will find the passengers on the steamer quietly and automatically dividing themselves into two groups.

"'How many passengers have we on board?' you may lightly ask your neighbor.

"And your neighbor, traveled man no doubt (his twelfth crossing, he will mention), will smartly reply, with a suave, man-of-the-world smile: 'A hundred and two passengers and forty-five missionaries.'

"After that you will be initiated and you will be mentioning with an easy grace to some one else that there are on board so many passengers and so many missionaries. It becomes a part of the jargon of Pacific crossing."

But Mr. Forman sees working that Shuttle of Service of which I am speaking. He sees, as any thinking man sees, as Roosevelt saw, as Bryan saw, and as Taft saw, that the greatest single influence for good in the Orient is the missionary. Mr. Forman was incensed at this careless phrase on the Pacific liners, and he investigated the work of our missionaries when he was in the Orient, and he came to the decision that they are worth more to America, even from that selfish standpoint, than all the ambassadors that we have sent over, because they are, in their crossing and recrossing, weaving a Fabric of Friendship between the Orient and the Occident; between the nations of the East and those of the West; between the white peoples and the brown peoples; in spite of the diplomatic differences and yellow newspapers in the United States and Japan.

Mr. Forman says about his conclusions:

"I concluded that any one of the large missions in those Oriental countries accomplished, so far as concerns American standing and prestige, more than all our diplomatic representation there put together. I do not believe it to be an exaggeration to say that for the Orient the missionaries are perhaps the only useful form of what is called diplomatic representation."

And again in the same article he says:

"One good missionary in the right place, it seemed to me, can accomplish more than quite a number of ambassadors."

And again he wonderfully sums up that mission of love in a paragraph which I think ought to be passed on:

"But when a missionary establishes a clinic or a hospital, healing sores and diseases that their own medicine men have abandoned as hopeless; when he educates boys and girls that otherwise would have remained in darkness; when, with a whole-souled enthusiasm, he gives them counsel, aid and service and he asks nothing in return then the stolid and passive Chinese or Korean is genuinely impressed. Then America really becomes in his mind the synonym for kindness and service, and from mouth to mouth goes abroad the fame of the land that is aiming to do him good, without any menacing background of exploitation."

I talked with one bright-faced, twinkling-eyed, red-blooded, big-framed missionary who was crossing with his family of a wife and four children. He had spent fifteen years in the Orient as a missionary, and then because of illness he had been compelled to go to America. There he had taken a church and had preached for five years. His health came back, and as he told me, "The lure of the East got me and I had to come back. I never was so happy in my life as I am on this trip and the whole family feels the same way. We are going back to our people!" And the way he pronounced those italicised words made me know that he, too, was weaving a thread in the Fabric of Friendship.

We met a woman who was traveling back to China with her three darling little tots. I made love to all three of them, and it wasn't long before I asked one where her Daddy was. I assumed, of course, that they had been home on a furlough and that Daddy was back there in China waiting anxiously for them to return to him. I pictured that meeting, for I have seen many such during war days, both on this side and in France.

"My Daddy is dead," the child said simply with a quiver of her little lips.

"All right, dear baby, we won't talk about it then," for I was afraid that those little trembling lips couldn't hold in much longer. But she wanted to tell me about it. I soon saw that. She liked to talk about her "dear dead Daddy."

"He went to France," she said simply.

"Ah, he was a soldier?" I questioned.

"No, he was better than a soldier, my Mamma says. He did not go to kill; he went to help." And back of that sentiment and that statement I saw a world of struggle and ideals in a missionary home where the man felt called across the seas to be "in it" with his country and at last the refuge of the man who could go "not to kill but to help."

"He went to work with the coolies and he got the influenza and died last winter. We won't have any Daddy any more," and her little blue eyes were misty with tears. And so were mine, more misty than I dared let her see. And they are misty now as I write about it. And yours will be misty if you read about it, as they should be. That is something fine in you being called out.

Later I met the mother. She told me over again the story that little Doris had told me of the big Daddy who had felt the call to go to France in the Y.M.C.A. to help the poor "coolies," several hundred of whom were, by strange coincidence, going back to China on the same boat with us, and with that brave mother and those dear children. These "coolies" were going back alive, but he who went to serve them died. "Others he saved; Himself he could not save," echoed in my soul as that mother and I talked.

"I am going back to the Chinese to spend the rest of my life finishing Will's work. It is better so. I shall be happier."

"But the association there—everything—every turn you make—every place you go—will remind you of him," I protested.

"It would be what Will would want most of all, that I go on with his work. I go gladly. It will be the best balm for my sorrow."

And far above national friendships there loom these snow-white peaks of the sacrificial friendship the missionaries bear in their hearts for the people with whom they live, and serve, and die.



THE END



TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

Inconsistencies in hyphenation of words preserved. (flash-lights, flashlights; foot-ball, football; star-lit, starlit; to-day, today; to-night, tonight)

Inconsistencies in the spelling and transliteration of non-English words preserved. (Pyeng Yang, Pyengyang)

Pg. 25, "bacon" changed to "beacon". (like beacon lights of hope)

Pg. 26, inserted missing comma. (there to the north," I said)

Pgs. 79, 101, 145, inserted opening double quote mark to start of direct speech at top of chapter.

Pg. 153, "flashng" changed to "flashing" (like flashing piston rods of steel)

THE END