raceful as the bronzes
in a museum; friars of the religious orders in shovel-hats and linen
robes; sailors of the fleet and of the merchant vessels in the harbor,
swaggering along with the roll of the sea in their gait; Armenian
peddlers with piles of rugs and embroideries slung across their
shoulders; Arabs, Indians, Malays, Cambodians, Laos, Siamese, Burmese,
Chinese, world without end, Amen.

But, beneath it all, a paralysis is on everything--the paralysis of the
excessive administration with which the French have ruined Indo-China.
There are too many people in front of the cafes and too few in the
offices and shops. There is too much drinking and too little work. The
officials are alternately melancholy and overbearing; the natives
cringing and sullen. It is not a wholesome atmosphere. Corruption, if
not universal, is appallingly common. Foreigners engaged in business in
Saigon told me that it is necessary to "grease the palms" of everyone
who holds a Government position. As a result of this practise,
officials who are poor men when they arrive in the colony retire after
four or five years' service with comfortable fortunes--and France does
not pay her public servants highly either. And there are other vices.
The manager of a great American corporation doing business in Saigon
told me that ninety per cent of the city's European population are
confirmed users of opium. And, judging from their unhealthy pallor and
lacklustre eyes, I can well believe it. But what else could you expect
in a country where the drug is sold to anyone who has money to pay for
it; where it is one of the Government's chief sources of revenue?

On the native population the hand of the French lies heavily. In 1916
there was an attempted jail delivery of political prisoners in Saigon,
but the plot was discovered before it could be put into execution, the
ring-leaders arrested, and thirty-eight of them condemned to death.
They were executed in batches of four, kneeling, blind-folded, lashed
to stakes. The firing party consisted of a platoon of Annamite
tirailleurs. Behind them, with machine guns trained, was drawn up a
battalion of French infantry. The occasion was celebrated in Saigon as
a public holiday, hundreds of Frenchmen, accompanied by their wives and
children, driving out to see the sight. The next day picture postcards
of the execution were hawked about the streets. But the authorities in
Paris evidently disapproved of the proceeding,