Chinese funeral
In no other country that I know of do you feel so keenly this sense of possession, this wish to protect. The other countries belong to themselves, absolutely. For example, Japan owns itself and directs itself; the Japanese don't let you know much about what's going on in their country; and you feel that it is none of your business anyway. They are quite capable of managing their own affairs. So in Europe: the affairs of the European peoples are their affairs, not your concern at all. But the case is so different with poor, weak, helpless China. China enlists all your sympathies, calls forth every decent instinct you possess.
For these are dark, distressful days for China. At present she is passing through a reconstruction period corresponding to our reconstruction period after the Civil War. Just five years ago the revolution occurred by which she rid herself of the Manchu rulers, an alien race which had dominated her and ruled her for two hundred years. And chaos followed that upheaval, just as political chaos followed the close of our Civil War. We, however, were free to work our way upward and outward from the difficulties that beset us at that time, out of the maze of corruption and intrigue that almost overwhelmed us. We were permitted to manage our own affairs, to bring order out of that chaos, harmony out of strife, without having to deal with foreign predatory powers who for their own ends were anxious to prolong the period of internal dissension. China is not free in that respect: not only must she set her house in order, but she must deal with those foreign powers who do not wish her house in order, who are slily and adroitly using their enormous, subtle influence to defeat this end. During our reconstruction period in America we made mistakes; but after those mistakes we did not have to hear a chorus from European nations telling us that we were unfit to govern ourselves. Nor were we forced to have other nations trying to corrupt every honest man we wished to put in office, nor to have these alien nations attempting to put into power dishonest and inefficient men as their own tools. That is China's problem at present: not only must she contend against the inherent weakness and dishonesty, the inefficiency and graft of her own people, but she must contend against unseen, suave enemies, who under diplomatic disguise are intriguing to bring the nation under foreign control.
I have not been able to get much definite news so far. Our Chinese colds proved so severe that they were nearly our undoing. I fancied myself reposing under a little mound on the plains, after an imposing Chinese funeral. I must say I should have enjoyed a Chinese funeral, with drums and horns, flags and banners, carried along in a car supported by three score bearers. But for the present it's not to be.
II
THE OPIUM SCANDAL
I knew it would happen. I knew that if we went away from Peking for even a short time, let alone for three months, something would take place that oughtn't to. The minute you turn your head the other way, take your hand off the throttle, pop goes the weasel! It's popped this time with an awful bang. The papers are full of it, pages and pages, the entire paper, and not only one or two but all of them. You have probably not been permitted to hear a word of it at home, but the Chinese papers are allowed to explode all they please, to rail and rave and rant. As I said before, much good may it do them.
I wrote you last autumn of the ten-year contract entered into between China and the British Government, the final outcome of the contract to be the total suppression of the opium trade. Every year for ten years the importation of British opium into China was to decrease in proportion to the decrease of native-grown Chinese opium, until at the expiration of the ten years the vanishing-point would be reached. During these ten years each side has lived up to its part of the bargain. British imports have been lessened year by year, scrupulously, and the Chinese have rigidly supervised and suppressed the production of native opium. China began to plant poppies extensively after 1858, the year in which Great Britain forced the opium trade upon her.
The ten-year contract was to expire on April 1, 1917, a day which the Chinese press referred to as "a glorious day for China and her well-wishers throughout the world, a day on which a nation liberated herself from an age-long vice." I also told you last autumn something of the activities of the Shanghai Opium Combine, a combination of several firms of British opium-dealers, who were making prodigious efforts to have the time limit extended. This Shanghai Opium Combine are not officials of the British Government: they are private firms, private dealers; but they buy their opium direct from the British Government, and may therefore be considered its unofficial agents or middlemen. This Opium Combine had been appealing for an extension of the ten-year contract, an extension of nine months. They had appealed to the various British officials in China, and to the Foreign Office in London, but apparently the British Government had turned a deaf ear to these pleas, which must have been a hard thing to do, considering the enormous revenue that country derives from her opium monopoly. Even without the Chinese markets, one would have supposed that the markets of India, Siam, the Straits Settlements, etc., and other subject or helpless states, would afford these dealers opportunity to get rid of their surplus stocks. But no. The opium was in China, in their go-downs in Shanghai, and they wanted nine months' additional time in which to get rid of it.