one stood on the top of this, the most sacred
mountain of all China, he began to understand the spiritual loss that is
China's when her worshiping-place is in the hands of aliens.

"And don't forget that Mencius, the first disciple of Confucius, was
born and died in Shantung, too, when you are taking census of the
spiritual values of Shantung to the Chinese," was a word of caution from
the old missionary who was checking up on my facts for me. He had been
laboring in China for a quarter of a century.

"And don't forget that the Boxer uprising originated in Shantung, and
don't forget that it is called, and has been for centuries, 'the Sacred
Province' by the Chinese. It is their 'Holy Land.' And don't forget
that, from Shantung, coolies went to South Africa in the early part of
this century and that the Chinese from Shantung were the first to get in
touch with the western world. And don't forget that nine-tenths of the
coolies who went to help in the war in France were from Shantung!" he
added with emphasis. This was a thing that I well knew, for I had, only
a few weeks before this, seen two thousand coolies unloaded from the
_Empress of Asia_ at Tsingtao.

No, Shantung is not an appendix of China, as many Americans suppose; but
it is the very heart and soul of China. It is China's "Holy Land." It is
the "Cradle of China." It is the "Sacred Province of China." It is the
shrine of her greatest sage. It is the home of "the oldest
worshiping-place on earth." It is because of its spiritual values that
China is unhappy about the loss of Shantung, and not because of its
wealth of material things.

The failure of the world to understand what Shantung means to China and
the failure of Japan to understand that they cannot for many years stand
out against the indignation of the entire world in continuing to keep
Shantung is one of the great spiritual failures of the Far East in our
century.

The second great failure is the tragic failure of an entire race of
people; that of the Ainu Indians of Japan.

It is a pathetic thing to see a human race dying out; coming to "The End
of the Trail." But I was determined to see them, in spite of the fact
that people told me I would have to travel from one end of Japan to the
other; and then cross four hours of sea before I got to Hokkaido, the
most northern island of Japan, where lived the tattered remnants of
this once noble race.

The name of this dying race is pronounced as if it w