ch a trip, having fortified himself with the
reading of many books written about these far lands, in addition to his
travel, one still has the profound conviction that, after all is said,
done, and thought out, the only honest way to picture these vast
stretches of land and humanity is to confess that all is in motion; like
a great mass of bees in a hive, one on top of the other, busy at
buzzing, buying, selling, living, dying, climbing, achieving; groping in
the dark; moving upward by an unerring instinct toward the light.

At nights I cannot sleep for thinking about that weird, dim, misty
panorama of fleeting, flashing pictures; those thousands of Javanese
that I saw down in Sourabaya, who have never known what it means to have
a home; who sleep in doorways by night, and along the river banks; where
mothers give birth to children, who in turn live and die out under the
open sky. Nor can I forget that animal-like beggar in Canton who dug
into a gutter for his food; or those hideous beggars, by winter along
the railway in Shantung; or the naked one-year-old child covered with
sores which a beggar woman in the Chinese section of Shanghai held to
her own naked breast. Those pictures and a thousand others abide.

One has the feeling that if he could go back, again, and again, and
again to these far shores, and live with these peoples and die with
them, then he would begin faintly to understand what it all means and
where it is all headed.

And this author, for one, is honest in saying that, in spite of careful
investigation, in spite of extensive travel and a sympathetic heart, he
sees but dimly. The very glory of it all, the age of it all, the wonder
of it all, the mysterious beauty and thrill of it all; the thrill of
these masses of humanity, their infinite possibilities for future
greatness; like a great blinding flash of glory, dims one's eyes for a
time.

But, now, that he has, through quiet meditation and perspective, had a
chance to develop the films of thought, he finds that he has brought
back home pictures that one ought not to keep to one's self; especially
in this day, when, what happens to Asia is so largely to determine what
happens to America.

So, out of the dark room, where they have been developing for a year,
and out of the dim shadows of that mysterious land whence they came,
they are printed and at the bottom of each picture shall be written the
humble words:

"Flash-Lights from the Seven Se