At the outset they found themselves in the English quarter. It was a splendid section of the city, with handsome buildings and well-kept streets, and giving eloquent testimony to the colonizing genius of the British empire. Here England had entrenched herself firmly, and from this as a point of departure, her long arm stretched out to the farthest limits of the Celestial Kingdom. She had made the place a modern Gibraltar, dominating the waters of the East as its older prototype held sway over the Mediterranean. Everywhere there were evidences of the law and order and regulated liberty that always accompany the Union Jack, and that explains why a little island in the Western Ocean rules a larger part of the earth’s surface than any other power.
“We’ve certainly got to hand it to the English,” said Ralph. “They’re the worst hated nation in Europe, and yet as colonizers the whole world has to take off its hat to them. Look at Egypt and India and Canada and Australia and a score of smaller places. No wonder that Webster was impressed by it when he spoke of the ‘drum-beat that, following the sun and keeping pace with the hours, encircled the globe with the martial airs of England.’”
“It’s queer, too, why it is so,” mused Bert. “If they were specially genial and adaptable, you could understand it. But, as a rule, they’re cold and arrogant and distant, and they don’t even try to get in touch with the people they rule. Now the French are far more sympathetic and flexible, but, although they have done pretty well in Algiers and Tonquin and Madagascar, they don’t compare with the British as colonizers.”
“Well,” rejoined Ralph, “I suppose the real explanation lies in their tenacity and their sense of justice. They may be hard but they are just, and the people after a while realize that their right to life and property will be protected, and that in their courts the poor have almost an equal chance with the rich. But when all’s said and done, I guess we’ll simply have to say that they have the genius for colonizing and let it go at that.”
“Speaking of justice and fair play, though,” said Bert, “there’s one big blot on their record, and that is the way they have forced the opium traffic on China. The Chinese as a rule are a temperate race, but there seems to be some deadly attraction for them in opium that they can’t resist. It is to them what ‘firewater’ is to the Indian. The rulers of China realized how it was destroying the nation and tried to prohibit its importation. But England saw a great source of revenue threatened by this reform, as most of the opium comes from the poppy grown in India. So up she comes with her gunboats, this Christian nation, and fairly forces the reluctant rulers to let in the opium under threat of bombardment if they refused. To-day the habit has grown to enormous proportions. It is the curse of China, and the blame for the debauchery of a whole nation lies directly at the door of England and no one else.”
By this time they had passed through the British section and found themselves in the native quarter. Here at last they were face to face with the real China. They had practically been in Europe; a moment later and they were in Asia. A new world lay before them.
The streets were very narrow, sometimes not more than eight or ten feet in width. A man standing at a window on one side could leap into one directly opposite. They were winding as well as narrow, and crowded on both sides with tiny shops in which merchants sat beside their wares or artisans plied their trade. Before each shop was a little altar dedicated to the god of wealth, a frank admission that here, as in America, they all worshipped the “Almighty Dollar.” Flaunting signs, on which were traced dragons and other fearsome and impossible beasts, hung over the store entrances.
“My,” said Ralph, “this would be a bad place for a heavy drinker to find himself in suddenly. He’d think he ‘had ’em’ sure. Pink giraffes and blue elephants wouldn’t be a circumstance to some of these works of art.”
“Right you are,” assented Tom. “I’ll bet if the truth were known the Futurist and Cubist painters, that are making such a splurge in America just now, got their first tips from just such awful specimens as these.”
“Well, these narrow streets have one advantage over Fifth Avenue,” said Ralph. “No automobile can come along here and propel you into another world.”