r will see the end of the whole sordid business. But no
assistance has been given her in this enormous task; she has
accomplished it alone. During this ten-years' struggle she has had to
contend not only against the inclinations of her drug-sodden people but
against the fact that her people could procure opium freely in the
foreign concessions, over which the Chinese have no control.

The bargain between China and Great Britain, however, has been lived up
to. The Chinese began to plant poppies when they were unable to curb or
suppress the British imports. As long as the vice was to be fastened
upon the country by treaties, they shrewdly decided that at least all
the money spent for opium should not go out of the country; therefore
they started in on poppy cultivation on their own account. But this
native cultivation has been almost entirely suppressed in the last ten
years, and the supplies of both native and foreign opium will reach
the vanishing-point on April 1, 1917. But it seems pretty hard to
realize that the foreign governments have given China no assistance in
this struggle. It is too lucrative a trade. The Peking papers are
already talking of the great day, only six months distant, when China
will have freed herself from this curse. We are determined to be here
in Peking to witness the celebration.

But that brings me back to my starting-point, the fact that foreigners
are not subject to Chinese laws. In his own concession the foreigner is
amenable to the laws of his own country. If on Chinese soil he violates
Chinese law, all that the Chinese can do is to hand him to his nearest
consul, who may or may not punish him. And this immunity from
responsibility, this arrogant privilege of doing as one likes on Chinese
soil, with very small chance of being brought to book for it, has a
demoralizing influence upon the average foreigner who comes out here.
Between ourselves, the class of foreigners who come to China don't
amount to much. "Beach-combers" they were called in the good old
days--adventurers, gamblers, shady characters of all sorts, and pretty
well dwarfed ethically. But no matter what they did, they were usually
supported by their various governments, and the result to-day is a
well-defined fear of the foreigner, a desire to sidestep him, to stand
from under. It seems rather cowardly, this cringing attitude on the part
of the Chinese, but it is the result of a century of experience with the
ethics of the W