es
and secret diplomacy. On the other hand, a genuine League of
Nations--one with some vigor--is the only salvation I can see of the
whole Eastern situation, and it is infinitely more serious than we
realize at home. If things drift on five or ten years more, the world
will have a China under Japanese military domination--barring two
things--Japan will collapse in the meantime under the strain, or Asia
will be completely Bolshevikized, which I think is about fifty-fifty
with a Japanized-Militarized China. European diplomacy here, which of
course dominates America, is completely futile. England does everything
with reference to India, and they all temporize and drift and take what
are called optimistic long-run views and quarrel among themselves, and
Japan alone knows what it wants and comes after it.

I still believe in the genuineness of the Japanese liberal movement
there, but they lack moral courage. They, the intellectual liberals, are
almost as ignorant of the true facts as we are, and enough aware of them
to wish to keep themselves in ignorance. Then there is the great
patriotism, which of course easily justifies, by the predatory example
of the Europeans, the idea that this is all in self-defense.

SHANGHAI, May 13.

I closed up abruptly because there seemed a possibility of mail going
out and now it is a day after and more to tell, with a prospect of
little time to tell it. China is full of unused resources and there are
too many people. The factories begin to work at six or earlier in the
morning, with not enough for the poor to do, and they have the habit of
not wanting to work much. Two shifts work in factories for the
twenty-four hours. They get about twenty to thirty cents a day and the
little children get from nothing up to nine cents, or even eleven cents
after they get older. Iron mines are idle, coal and oil undeveloped, and
they cannot get railroads. They burn their wood everywhere and the
country is withering away because it is deforested. They made the
porcelain industry for the world and they buy their table dishes from
Japan. They raise a deteriorated cotton and buy cotton cloth from Japan.
They buy any quantity of small useful articles from Japan. Japanese are
in every town across China like a network closing in on fishes.

All the mineral resources of China are the prey of the Japanese, and
they have secured 80 per cent of them by bribery of the Peking
government. Talk to a Chinese an