Drugging a Nation

on of its own. It is one of the most corrupt of nations; on the other hand, the standard of personal and commercial honesty is probably higher in China than in any other country in the world.

oints south, not north; where books are read backward, not forward; where names and titles are put in reverse order, as in our directories-Theodore Roosevelt would be Roosevelt Theodore in China, Uncle

ears ago Shansi Province was the scene of one of the most atrocious massacres in history, modern or ancient. During a few weeks, in the summer of 1900, one hundred and fifty-nine white foreigners, men, women, and children, were killed within the province, forty-six of them in the city of T'ai Yuan-fu. The massacre completely wiped out the mission churches and schools and the opium refuges, the only missionaries who escaped being those who happened to be away on leave at the time. The attack was not directed at the missionaries as such, but at the foreigners in general. It was widely b

in our Western range of experience. Naturally he does not see human relations as we see them. His habits and customs are enough different from ours to appear bizarre to us; but they are no more than surface evidences of the difference between his mind and ours. Thanks to our strong racial instinct, we can be fai

s anti-foreign riots and massacres in China within thirty-five years, besides the Boxer uprising of 1900; and among these there was probably not one which the mandarins could not have suppressed had they wished. The Boxer trouble was worked up by Yü Hsien while he was governor of Shantung Province. When the foreign powers protested he was transferred to Shansi, which had scarcely heard of the Boxer Society, and almost at once there was

the ever-seething revolution. In a word, the officials in China seem perfectly able to control their populace and protect foreigners. As Dr. Fer

e risk. The individual Chinaman is simply a part of a family, the family is part of a neighbourhood, the neighbourhood is part of a village or district, and so on. In all its relations with the central government, the province is responsible for the affairs of its larger districts, these for the smaller districts, the smaller districts for the villages, the villages for the neighbour

ises, or else not to make promises. The neighbourhood, well knowing that it will be held accountable for its units, watches them with a close eye. When a new family comes into a neighbourhood, the neighbours crowd about and ask questions which are not, in view of the facts, so impertinent as they migh

ent could deliberately incite its people to repeated riots and massacres without losing control of them. The Chinese government has seemed to have not the slightest difficulty in keeping the people quiet-when it wanted to. The story of Shantung Province makes this clear. It was driven into what appeared to be anarchy by a rabid governor. But only a few months l

h, the Chinese official, or mandarin, is about the most subtle and bewildering. His duplicity is simply beyond our understanding. He has a bland and childish smile, but his ways are peculiar. Most of us know that our own state department has a neat little custom of issuing letters to travellers ordering our diplomatic and consular representatives abroad to extend special courtesies, and sending, at the same time, a notice to these same representatives advising them to take no notice of the letters. In Chinese diplomacy everything is done in this way, but very much more so. Documents issued by the Chinese government usually bear about the same relation to any existing facts or intentions as a Thanksgiving proclamation does. You must be very astute, indeed, to perceive

ial is punished for failure and rewarded for success in China, as in other countries. And the official on whom is saddled the extremely difficult job of pleasing, at one time, an empress who believes that a Boxer can render himself invisible to foreign sharpshooters by a little mumbling and dancing, a set of courtiers and palace eunuchs who are constantly undermining

to a frame of mind in which he doubts anything and everything. He takes it for granted that the Chinese government is always insincere. It is incredible to him that a Chinese official could mean what he says. And so, when the Chinese government declared against the opium evil, the cynical foreign diplomats and traders at once began looking between and behind the lines in the effort to find out what the crafty yellow men were really getting at. That they might mean what they said seemed wholly out of the question. But what deep motive might underl

re in China. The demand has grown to a point where the Indian article alone could not begin to supply it. But, on the other hand, the stopping of the importation is necessarily the first step

es on the imported opium? In asking the British to stop their opium traffic the Chinese are proposing deliberately to sacrifice $5,000,00

lic opinion all over China, among rich and poor, mandarins and peasants, has turned strongly against the use of opium. I have had this information from too many sources to doubt it. Travellers from the remotest provinces are reporting to this effect. The anti-opium sentiment is found in the highest official circles, in the army, in the navy, in the schools. Within the past year or so

s so? I will venture to offer an answer to the question. Said one Tientsin foreign merchant, an American who has had unusual opportunities to observe conditions in Northern

en each. In all, there are eighteen hundred foreign soldiers in Peking, "a force large enough," said one o

on. I could give many more illustrations of the foreign grip on China, but these will serve. And back of these facts looms the always impending "partition of China." The Chinese are not fools. They have sat tight, wearing that inscrutable smile, while the foreigners discussed the cutting up of China as if it were a huge cake. They have seen the Japanese, a race of little brown men, inhabiting a few little islands, face the dreaded bear of Russia and drive it back into Siberia. Now, at last, these patient Chinamen are picking up some odds and ends of Western science. T

baffling duplicity. But we are forced to believe that they are "sincere" in put

an opium trade, with the idea of taking it up in a later chapter. Let us consider now what China, flabby, backward, long-suffering China, is actually doing in this tremendous effort to cure her disorder in order

ea of the land used for this purpose shall then be cut down by one-ninth part each year, "so that at the end of nine years there will be no more land used for such purposes, and the land thus disused"-I am quoting here from the Chinaman who translated the regulations for me-"sha

ars of age, but those under sixty "must get cured before arriving at sixty years of age. Persons who smoke or buy opium without certificates will be punished. No new smokers will be allowed from the date of prohibition. The amount of opium supplied to each smoker must decrease by one

pared. Multiply the number of anti-opium clubs. If any citizens who can, through their efforts, get many people cured, they will be rewarded.... All officials, and the officers of the army and navy, and professors of schools, colleges, and universities, must all get cured within six months." And further, it was decided to "o

nslation) or is doing more harm than opium. The custom authorities are to be i

THE EDICT

Ivory and Costly Woods

ansi Province to see whether there seemed any likelihood of enforcement. The time was ripe. It was April; in May the si

ppy you are depriving man of no useful or necessary article. The poppy must be grown in the open, along the river-bottoms (where the roads run). It cannot be hidden. As government regulating goes, nothing is easier than to find a field of poppies and measure it. The plans of the Shansi farmers for the coming year should throw some light on the sincerity of the opium reforms. Were they really arranging to plant less opium? Yes, they were. Reports came to m

easy to transport as opium. A man can carry several hundred dollars' worth on his person; a man with a mule can carry several thousand dollars' worth. That is one of the reasons why opium is a more profitable crop than potatoes or wheat. But the law descends without waiting for solutions of all the problems involved. The closing of the opium dens all over Shansi had the immediate effect

pe and lamp all going. I told him to clear out. I asked him why he was there, and he told me he had nowhere else to go

s who buy the drug for home consumption. It was the closing of the dens, the places for public smoking, in all the cities of Shansi, which had the immediate effect of limiting the crop and the manufacture of smoking instruments. The one hundred

opium refuges" are maintained by the various missions. The usual plan is to charge a small fee for the medicines administered, in order to make the refuges self-supporting. It takes a week or ten days to effect a cure by the methods usually followed. The patient is confined to a room, less and less opium is allowed from day to day, stimulants (either strychnine or atropine) are administered, and local symptoms are treated as may seem necessary to the physician in charge. Some of the missions at first took a stand against the reduction method,

finding a great many men employed in selling so-called anti-opium medicines. The demand for cures existed everywhere. Now that the popular sentiment is setting in so strongly against the opium habit, the Chinese are peculiarly easy prey for thes

lace where I knew a man who had some drugs, so I sent for him and asked him to bring me some medicine. He came along with three bottles, none of which was labelled. He could not tell me what any one of them contained. He said they were all good for

I naturally looked about to find the man behind the enforcement. Judging from the work done, he should prove worth seeing. Further inquiries drew

sed for instructor and guide through the mazes of official etiquette. It was arranged that I should call at Mr. Sowerby's compound at a quarter to four. From there we would each ride in a Peking

There is no seat in a Peking cart; you sit on the padded floor. When you get in, the servant holds up the front curtain, you vault to the front platform, and, placing your hands on the floor, propel yourself backward, with as much dignity as possible, taking care not to knock your hat against the roof, until you have disappeared inside. If you are long o

halted at the second gate while Mr. Sowerby's servant ran in with our red Chinese cards. There was a brief wait, and then we drove on through a long courtyard to the inner or screen gate, where massive timbered doors were closed against us. Soon these swung open; the carts crossed a paved yard and pulled up under the p

ter at his barrow the typical Englishman; just about as accurate as to call the Bowery loafer the typical American. His Excellency appeared to be close to six feet in height; he was erect and lithe of figure, with marked physical grace. He greeted Mr. Sowerby by clasping his hands bef

dicating the seat which I was to take, on the platform. Mr. Wen said, in my ear, "Sit down." Mr. Sowerby was placed at the other side of the stand; the two Chinese gentlemen seated themselves at the two side-tables, facing each other. One thing I remembered from Mr. Sowerby's coaching-I must not touch my bowl of tea. I must not even look at it. The tea is not to drink; it is brought in or

fare which China is waging against her besetting vice. "China is sincere in this struggle," he said. "Public opinion was never more determined." He asked me if I had investigated the new Malay drug which had lately been heralded as a specific for opium-poisoning. "If," he said, "you should learn of any real cure, while you are investigating this subject, I wish you would advise me

nto the room, bearing presents from the provincial judge. The runner bowed to me and presented his tray. On it, beside the large