employ
the word "Christian" in the title of this book. The word is used thus
when reckoning the world's population according to religions.

As we treat the Hindoo or Mohammedan so he treats us. Our Christianity
is judged, and must ever be, in the Orient, by the moral character of
the men who are called Christian; and the distinguishing vices of
such men are regarded as characteristic of their religion. Official
representatives of a Christian nation have gone to Hong Kong and to
Singapore, and there, because of their social vices, elaborated a
system, first of all of brothel slavery; and domestic slavery has
sheltered itself under its wing, as it were; and lastly, at Singapore
coolie labor is managed by the same set of officials. What these
officials have done has been accepted by the Oriental people about
them as done by the Christian civilization. It cannot be said that the
evils mentioned above have been the outgrowth of Oriental conditions
and customs, principally. It has been rather the misfortune of
the Orient that there were brought to their borders by Western
civilization elements calculated to induce their criminal classes to
ally themselves with these aggressive and stronger "Christians" to
destroy safeguards which had been heretofore sufficient, for the most
part, to conserve Chinese social morality.

Christian people, even as far back as Sir John Bowring, Governor
of Hong Kong, and up to the present time, both at Hong Kong and
Singapore, have acquiesced in the false teaching that vice cannot be
put under check in the Orient, where, it is claimed, passion mounts
higher than in the Occident, and that morality is, to a certain
extent, a matter of climate; and in the presence of large numbers of
unmarried soldiers and sailors it is simply "impracticable" to attempt
repressive measures in dealing with social vice. These Christians
have listened to counsels of despair,--the arguments of gross
materialists,--and have shut their eyes to the plainly written THOU
SHALT NOT of the finger of God in His Book.

Had there been the same staunch standing true to principle in these
Oriental countries as in Great Britain the state of immorality
described in the pages of this book could never have developed to the
extent it did. But Christians yielded before what they considered at
least unavoidable, and, not abiding living protests, must take their
share of blame for the state of matters. A higher moral public opinion
_coul