perhaps it
sounds academic at home, but over here Chinese at least regard it as
very practical--as, in fact, a definite threat. On the other hand, we
continue to get tales of how the Washington State Department has
declined to take the reports sent from here as authentic. Lately they
have had a number of special agents over here, more or less secret, to
get independent information.

In talking about democratic developments in America, whenever I make a
remark such as the Americans do not depend upon the government to do
things for them, but go ahead and do things for themselves, the response
is immediate and emphatic. The Chinese are socially a very democratic
people and their centralized government bores them.

June 16.

Chinesewise speaking, we are now having another lull. The three
"traitors" have had their resignations accepted, the cabinet is
undergoing reconstruction, the strike has been called off, both of
students and merchants (the railwaymen striking was the last straw), and
the mystery is what will happen next. There are evidences that the
extreme militarists are spitting on their hands to take hold in spite of
their defeat, and also that the President, who is said to be a moderate
and skillful politician, is nursing things along to get matters more and
more into his own hands. Although he issued a mandate against the
students and commending the traitors, the students' victory seems to
have strengthened him. I can't figure it out, but it is part of the
general beginning to read at the back of the book. The idea seems to be
that he has demonstrated the weakness of the militarists in the country,
while in sticking in form by them he has given them no excuse for
attacking him. They are attacking most everybody else in anonymous
circulars. One was got out signed "Thirteen hundred and fifty-eight
students," but giving no names, saying that the sole object of the
strike was to regain Tsingtao, but that a few men had tried to turn the
movement to their own ends, one wishing to be Chancellor of the
University.

PEKING, June 20.

Some time ago I had decided to tell you that here I had found the human
duplication of the bee colony in actual working order. China is it, and
in all particulars lives up to the perfect socialization of the race.
Nobody can do anything alone, nobody can do anything in a hurry. The
hunt of the bee for her cell goes on before one's eyes all the time.
When found, lo, the