"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.