p. The main street on which the Y. M. C. A. building is situated was
a solid lake from housewall to housewall, though not more than six
inches or so. But the street is considerably wider than Broadway, so it
was something of a sight. Peking has for many hundred years had sewers
big enough for a man to stand up in, but they don't carry fast enough.
Probably about this time you will be reading cables from some part of
China about floods and the number of homeless. The Yellow River is known
as the curse of China, so much damage is done. We were told that when
the missionaries went down to do flood relief work a year or so ago,
they were so busy that they didn't have time to preach, and they did so
much good that when they were through they had to put up the bars to
keep the Chinese from joining the churches en masse. We haven't heard,
however, that they took the hint as to the best way of doing business.
These floods go back largely if not wholly to the policy of the Chinese
in stripping the forests. If you were to see the big coffins they are
buried in and realize the large part of China's scant forests that must
go into coffins you would favor a law that no man could die until he had
planted a tree for his coffin and one extra.

One of our new friends here is quite an important politician, though
quite out of it just now. He told a story last night which tickled the
Chinese greatly. The Japanese minister here haunted the President and
Prime Minister while the peace negotiations were on, and every day on
the strength of what they told him cabled the Tokyo government that the
Chinese delegates were surely going to sign. Now he is in a somewhat
uncomfortable position making explanations to the home government. He
sent a representative after they didn't sign to the above-mentioned
friend to ask him whether the government had been fooling him all the
time. He replied No, but that the Japanese should remember that there
was one power greater than the government, namely, the people, and that
the delegates had obeyed the people. The Japanese will never be able to
make up their minds though whether they were being deliberately deceived
or not. The worst of the whole thing, however, is that even intelligent
Chinese are relying upon war between the United States and Japan, and
when they find out that the United States won't go to war just on
China's account, there will be some kind of a revulsion. But if the
United States had used i