y heart. I return,
and the light that kindled mine is dark. We stood here, and the words
you spoke were brighter than the lamps of Siangtan that we looked down
upon. Shall I repeat them, Yu Tai Shun?

(_Shun is silent._)

_Ching_

I would hear them, Makuro.

_Makuro_

The master said: "Forty centuries has China been content to plough, to
sow, to reap, and with her harvest support one-quarter of the human lives
on our planet. Drudgery has been her lot, frugality her virtue. Only so
had she lease of breath. Now she is to unlock her mines, build ships,
and roads of commerce, and with the magic of machinery set her people
free. If that magic is owned by a few, there will be no freedom, but
a slavery whose agony no man can tell. Every owner will be a monarch
greater than the Son of Heaven to whom we bowed. We cannot shut them out
by war. We can do it solely by making China a true democracy where the
people themselves own the magic tools and the great ways to the markets.
To do this is the work of all who love Freedom, and I know no other
goddess." Were these your words, Yu Tai Shun?

_Shun_

Yes ... my words.

_Makuro_

That was five years ago. From all parts of the earth come powers
fulfilling your fear. Leagued with our own purblind princes and dwellers
in the dusk, they hover over China, waiting for war and bribery to
dismember her. And you say your work is done. Yu Tai Shun, where have
you buried my master?

_Ching_

In the heart of the Princess Wong Fe.

_Shun_ (_rallying_)

May we not be too stern in our judgment of the lords of steam and iron?
Lei Kung Sang and the British minister of the So-nan mineral beds have
built houses for the people.

_Ching_

And have taken their land. Men who plucked their own fruit, and took
food from their own gardens, now cannot eat until they have torn new
treasure out of the earth for the kind Briton and the good Lei Kung
Sang.

_Shun_

Their days of work were always long and weary.

_Ching_

But they toiled as free men in the sun, and as free men sang from the
river-boats when the moon rose. In America, where there is still much
land and few people, there are places where children go down into the
mines and never see the sun except on the day they call "holy." How will
it be with China's four hundred millions, when there are not even waste
places where those who would flee may gather? For even her great
untilled spaces are being covered by the foreign