Then the boy suddenly dropped to his knees behind the missionary's desk and whipped out a big knife. Then he took from his white gown a long piece of white cloth. This he laid out on the floor. Then he opened his sharp knife with a quick motion and before the missionary knew it, he had ripped the index finger of his right hand, from, the tip to the palm, clear to the bone, until the blood spurted all over the floor.
"What are you doing, my boy?" cried the missionary.
The boy smiled a sublime smile and then knelt on his knees over the white cloth and before the missionary's tear-misty eyes wrote across the immaculate cloth in his own blood the words: "Mansei! Mansei! Mansei! Korean Independence Forever! Self-determination!"
Then underneath these words in a few swift strokes in his own blood he drew a picture of the Korean flag. And as he drew, now and then the blood would not flow fast enough; and he took his knife, as one primes a fountain pen; and cut a bit deeper to open new veins in order that the flag of his country and the declaration of his faith might be written in the deepest colors that his own veins could furnish.
Finally, after what seemed hours he jumped to his feet and handed the missionary that flag; crying as he did so: "That is our faith! That is the way we Koreans feel! You are going back to America! We want America to know that our faith in the Independence of Korea has not died! The fire burns higher to-day than ever. The Japanese cruelties are worse! The need is greater! The oppression is more terrible! Our determination is deeper than ever before! I have come here this day, knowing that you are going back to America; I came to write these words in my own blood that you may know; and that America may know; that our faith is a flame which burns out like the beacon lights on the Korean hills, never to die!"
* * * * * *
The most scintillating Flash-light of Faith that I saw in the Orient was in the Philippine Islands. We were traveling the jungle trail to visit a tribe of naked Negritos. These are diminutive people who look like American negroes only they are much smaller; much more underfed, and who live in trees very much like the Orangutans of Borneo. They eat roots and nuts. They hunt with bows and arrows.
They are the lowest tribe in mentality on the Islands.
It was a terribly hot, tropical day and I had a sunstroke on the way up the mountainside to this Negrito village.
I did not expect to get back alive.