r capacity to withstand the ravages of opium.

It was partly to answer this question that I went to China. I did not
leave China until I had arrived at an answer that seemed convincing. If,
in presenting the facts in these columns, the picture I have been painting
of China's problem should verge on the painful, that, I am afraid, will be
the fault of the facts. It is a picture of the hugest empire in the whole
world, fighting a curse which has all but mastered it, turning for aid, in
sheer despair, to the government, that has brought it to the edge of ruin.
Strange to say, this British government, as it is to-day constituted,
would apparently like to help. But, across the path of assistance stands,
like a grotesque, inhuman dragon,--the Indian Revenue.

VIII

THE POSITION OF GREAT BRITAIN

An observant correspondent recently wrote from Shanghai to a New York
newspaper: "China has missed catching the fire of the West in the manner
of Japan, and has lain idle and supine while neighbour and foreigner
despoiled her. Her statesmanship has been languid and irresolute, and her
armies slow and spiritless in the field. Observers who know China, and are
familiar at the same time with the symptoms of opium, say that it is as if
the listless symptoms of the drug were to be seen in the very nation
itself. Many conclude that the military and political inertia of the
Chinese is due to the special prevalence of the opium habit among the two
classes of Chinamen directly responsible: both the soldiers and the
scholars, among whom all the civil and political posts are held in
monopoly, are notoriously addicted to opium."

The point which these chapters should make clear is that opium is the
evil thing which is not only holding China back but is also actually
threatening to bring about the most complete demoralization and decadence
that any large portion of the world has ever experienced. It is evident,
in this day of extended trade interests, that such a paralysis of the
hugest and the most industrious of the great races would amount to a
world-disaster. Already the United States is suffering from the weakness
of the Chinese government in Manchuria, which permits Japan to control in
the Manchurian province and to discriminate against American trade. This
discrimination would appear to have been one strong reason for the sailing
of the battleship fleet to the Pacific. If this relatively small result of
China's weakness and iner