rain and vegetables wherever it
has spread, and has thus become a contributing factor to famines. Its
product, opium, has run over China like a black wave, leaving behind it a
misery, a darkness, a desolation that has struck even the Chinese, even
its victims, with horror. China has passed from misery to disaster. And as
if the laws of trade had chosen to turn capriciously from their inexorable
business and wreak a grim joke on a prostrate race, the solution, the
great step, has failed in its purpose. The trade in Indian opium has been
hurt, to be sure, but not supplanted. It will never be supplanted until
the British government deliberately puts it down. For the Chinese cannot
raise opium which competes in quality with the Indian drug. Indian opium
is in steady demand for the purpose of mixing with Chinese opium. No
duties can keep it out; duties simply increase the cost to the Chinese
consumer, simply ruin him a bit more rapidly. So authoritative an expert
as Sir Robert Hart, director of the Chinese imperial customs, had hoped
that the great step would prove effective. In "These from the Land of
Sinim" he has expressed his hope:

"Your legalized opium has been a cure in every province it penetrates, and
your refusal to limit or decrease the import has forced us to attempt a
dangerous remedy--legalized native opium--not because we approve of it,
but to compete with and drive out the foreign drug; and it is expelling
it, and when we have only the native production to deal with, and thus
have the business in our own hands, we hope to stop the habit in our own
way."

The great step has failed. Indian opium has not been expelled. For the
Chinese to put down the native drug without stopping the import is
impossible as well as useless. The Chinese seem determined, in one way or
another, to put down both. Once, again, after a weary century of struggle,
they have approached the British government. Once again the British
government has been driven from the Scylla of healthy Anglo-Saxon moral
indignation to the Charybdis behind that illuminating phrase--"India needs
the money." Twenty million dollars is a good deal of money. The balance
sheet reigns; and the balance sheet is an exacting ruler, even if it has
triumphed over common decency, over common morality, over common humanity.

* * * * *

Will you ride with me (by rickshaw) along the International Bund at
Shanghai--beyond the German Club an