ldren will. The Government
is going to conquer the people. She has done so already in certain
provinces, and in a few years the reform--deep and real, not the
make-believe we see in many parts of the Empire to-day--will be
universal.

* * * * *

Between Singapore and Shanghai the opportunity occurred of calling at
Saigon and Hong-Kong, two cities offering instructive contrasts of
French and British administration in the Far East.

Saigon is not troubled much by the Britisher. The nationally-exacting
Frenchman has brought it to represent fairly his loved Paris in the
East. The approach to the city, through the dirty brown mud of the
treacherous Mekong, which is swept down vigorously to the China sea
between stretches of monotonous mangrove, with no habitation of man
anywhere visible, is distinctly unpicturesque; but Saigon itself, apart
from the exorbitance of the charges (especially so to the spendthrift
Englishman), is worth the dreary journey of numberless twists and quick
turns up-river, annoying to the most patient pilot.

In the daytime, Saigon is as hot as that last bourne whither all
evil-doers wander--Englishmen and dogs alone are seen abroad between
nine and one. But in the soothing cool of the soft tropical evening,
gay-lit boulevards, a magnificent State-subsidized opera-house, alfresco
cafes where dawdle the domino-playing absinthe drinkers, the
fierce-moustached gendarmes, and innumerable features typically and
picturesquely French, induced me easily to believe myself back in the
bewildering whirl of the Boulevard des Capucines or des Italiennes.
Whether the narrow streets of the native city are clean or dirty,
whether garbage heaps lie festering in the broiling sun, sending their
disgusting effluvia out to annoy the sense of smell at every turn, the
municipality cares not a little bit. Indifference to the well-being of
the native pervades it; there is present no progressive prosperity.
Every second person I met was, or seemed to be, a Government official.
He was dressed in immaculate white clothes of the typical ugly French
cut, trimmed elaborately with an _ad libitum_ decoration of gold braid
and brass buttons. All was so different from Singapore and Hong-Kong,
and one did not feel, in surroundings which made strongly for the
_laissez-faire_ of the Frenchman in the East, ashamed of the fact that
he was an Englishman.

Three days north lies Hong-Kong, an all-important l