tim could remain in the public service. But a member of the
Emperor's cabinet, or Grand Council, tells me that 95 per cent, of the
public officials who were formerly opium-smokers have given up the
habit, or have been dismissed from office. Five per cent, may smoke in
secret, but with the constant menace of dismissal hanging like a
Damocles sword over their heads, it may be assumed that even these few
are breaking themselves from the use of the drug.

Formerly it was the custom for the host to offer opium to his guests,
but the Chinese have now quite a changed public sentiment. Because
they recognize that opium is ruining the lives of many of their
people, and lessening the efficiency of many others, because they
regard it as a source of weakness to their country and danger to their
sons, it has become a matter of shame for a man to be known as an
opium-smoker, even "in moderation." To be free from such an enervating
dissipation is regarded as the duty not only to one's self and one's
family, but to the country as well: it is a patriotic duty. I saw a
cartoon in a native Chinese paper the other day in which there were
held up to especial scorn and humiliation the weakling officials who
had lost their offices by reason of failure to shake off opium. In
short, the opium-smoker, instead of being a sort of "good fellow with
human weaknessess"--and with possibilities, of course, of going
utterly to wreck--has become an object of contempt, a bad citizen.

The earnestness of the people has been strikingly illustrated in the
great financial sacrifices made by farmers and landowners in sections
where the opium poppy was formerly grown. The culture of the poppy in
some sections was far more profitable than that of any other crop; it
was, in fact, the "money crop" of the people. In fact, to stop growing
the opium poppy has meant in some cases a decrease of 75 per cent, in
the profit and value of the land. Farms mortgaged on the basis of old
land values, therefore, had to be sold; peasants who had {96} been
home-owners became homeless. And yet China has thought no price too
great to pay in the effort to free herself from this form of
intemperance. Well may her leading men proudly declare, as one did to
me to-day: "While America dares not undertake the task of stopping the
whiskey curse among less than a hundred million people, we are
stopping the opium curse among over four hundred millions." It should
also be observed that there