temptuous ignoring of Eastern
problems! European imperialism, which does not disdain to raise the
absurd cry of the Yellow Peril, fails to realise that Asia may also
awaken to the cruel sense of the White Disaster. You may laugh at us for
having "too much tea," but may we not suspect that you of the West have
"no tea" in your constitution?

Let us stop the continents from hurling epigrams at each other, and be
sadder if not wiser by the mutual gain of half a hemisphere. We have
developed along different lines, but there is no reason why one should
not supplement the other. You have gained expansion at the cost
of restlessness; we have created a harmony which is weak against
aggression. Will you believe it?--the East is better off in some
respects than the West!

Strangely enough humanity has so far met in the tea-cup. It is the only
Asiatic ceremonial which commands universal esteem. The white man has
scoffed at our religion and our morals, but has accepted the brown
beverage without hesitation. The afternoon tea is now an important
function in Western society. In the delicate clatter of trays and
saucers, in the soft rustle of feminine hospitality, in the common
catechism about cream and sugar, we know that the Worship of Tea is
established beyond question. The philosophic resignation of the guest
to the fate awaiting him in the dubious decoction proclaims that in this
single instance the Oriental spirit reigns supreme.

The earliest record of tea in European writing is said to be found in
the statement of an Arabian traveller, that after the year 879 the main
sources of revenue in Canton were the duties on salt and tea. Marco Polo
records the deposition of a Chinese minister of finance in 1285 for his
arbitrary augmentation of the tea-taxes. It was at the period of the
great discoveries that the European people began to know more about
the extreme Orient. At the end of the sixteenth century the Hollanders
brought the news that a pleasant drink was made in the East from the
leaves of a bush. The travellers Giovanni Batista Ramusio (1559), L.
Almeida (1576), Maffeno (1588), Tareira (1610), also mentioned tea. In
the last-named year ships of the Dutch East India Company brought the
first tea into Europe. It was known in France in 1636, and reached
Russia in 1638. England welcomed it in 1650 and spoke of it as "That
excellent and by all physicians approved China drink, called by the
Chineans Tcha, and by other nations