_mais oui_, I could certainly manage a trunk in my compartment. And he
did even better than his word, wiring ahead to the nights'
stopping-places, Chu-ma-tien and Chang-te-ho, and when the train pulled
in at each place, I was charmingly welcomed by the division
superintendent with an invitation from his wife to put up with them; and
so instead of two nights in the stuffy sleeping-compartment of the
express train, I had two enjoyable evenings in French homes, and long
nights in a real bed. It was indeed a bit of France that these
delightful Frenchwomen had created in the plain of Central China; books
and journals, dogs and wines from home, and French dishes skilfully
prepared by Chinese hands. But the houses where they lived opened out of
the strongly walled station enclosure; it would not take long to put it
in condition to stand a siege. No one in China forgets the days of 1900.

The train was of the comfortable corridor sort. Most of the time I was
the only European, and the only person in the first class, but the
second and especially the third were crowded full, although the
passengers did not seem about to flow out of the windows, feet foremost,
as so often on an Indian railway. The Chinese is beset by many fears,
superstitious fears or real mundane ones, but he has the wit to know a
good thing when he sees it, and it does not take him long to overcome
any pet fear that stands in the way of possessing it. In 1870 the first
Chinese railway was built by the great shipowners of the East, Jardine,
Mattheson & Co. It was only twelve miles long, connecting Shanghai with
Woosung. At first there was no trouble, then certain native interests,
fearing the competition, stirred up the people by the usual methods,
finally clinching the opposition by a suicide (hired) under a train; so
in the end the Government bought out the English firm and dismantled the
railway. That was forty years ago, and to-day all that stands in the way
of gridironing China with iron highways is the lack of home capital and
the perfectly reasonable fear of foreign loans. The Chinese want
railways, and they want to build them themselves, but they have not got
the money, and for the moment they prefer to go without rather than put
themselves in the power of European capitalists and European
governments. And who can blame them?

The Six Power Railway Loan of 1908 proved the undoing of the Manchus,
and the inevitable sequence, the appointing of European and