t much definite news so far. Our Chinese colds
proved so severe that they were nearly our undoing. I fancied myself
reposing under a little mound on the plains, after an imposing Chinese
funeral. I must say I should have enjoyed a Chinese funeral, with drums
and horns, flags and banners, carried along in a car supported by three
score bearers. But for the present it's not to be.

II

THE OPIUM SCANDAL

I knew it would happen. I knew that if we went away from Peking for even
a short time, let alone for three months, something would take place
that oughtn't to. The minute you turn your head the other way, take your
hand off the throttle, pop goes the weasel! It's popped this time with
an awful bang. The papers are full of it, pages and pages, the entire
paper, and not only one or two but all of them. You have probably not
been permitted to hear a word of it at home, but the Chinese papers are
allowed to explode all they please, to rail and rave and rant. As I said
before, much good may it do them.

I wrote you last autumn of the ten-year contract entered into between
China and the British Government, the final outcome of the contract to
be the total suppression of the opium trade. Every year for ten years
the importation of British opium into China was to decrease in
proportion to the decrease of native-grown Chinese opium, until at the
expiration of the ten years the vanishing-point would be reached. During
these ten years each side has lived up to its part of the bargain.
British imports have been lessened year by year, scrupulously, and the
Chinese have rigidly supervised and suppressed the production of native
opium. China began to plant poppies extensively after 1858, the year in
which Great Britain forced the opium trade upon her.

The ten-year contract was to expire on April 1, 1917, a day which the
Chinese press referred to as "a glorious day for China and her
well-wishers throughout the world, a day on which a nation liberated
herself from an age-long vice." I also told you last autumn something of
the activities of the Shanghai Opium Combine, a combination of several
firms of British opium-dealers, who were making prodigious efforts to
have the time limit extended. This Shanghai Opium Combine are not
officials of the British Government: they are private firms, private
dealers; but they buy their opium direct from the British Government,
and may therefore be considered its unofficial agents or middle