humorously
remarked that in case of disturbances the first thing the Chinese Tommy
would do would be to shoot the officers for treating him so badly and
for drilling him so hard and long.

What is true of the capital in respect to military progress I found to
be true also of Tali-fu.

A couple of years ago a company of drilled soldiers arrived there as a
nucleus for recruiting units for the new army. Soon 1,500 men were
enlisted. They were to serve a three years' term, were to receive four
dollars per month, and were promised good treatment. The officers
drilled them from dawn to dusk; deserters were therefore many,
necessitating the detail of a few heads coming off to avert the trouble
of losing all the men. It cost the men about a dollar or so for their
rice, so that it will be readily seen that, with a clear profit of three
dollars as a monthly allowance, they were better off than they would
have been working on their land. Officers received from forty to sixty
taels a month. Temples here were converted into barracks--a sign in
itself of the altered conditions of the times--and I visited some
extensive buildings which were being erected at a cost of eighty
thousand gold dollars.

Military progress in this "backward province" is as great as it has been
anywhere at any time in any part of the Chinese Empire.

THE POLICE

Until a few years ago, as China was kept in law and order without the
necessary evil of a standing army, so did Yuen-nan-fu slumber on in the
Chinese equivalent for peace and plenty. As they now are, and taking
into consideration that they were all picked from the rawest material,
the police force of this capital is as able a body of men as are to be
found in all Western China. Probably the Metropolitan police of dear old
London could not be re-forced from their ranks, but disciplined and
well-ordered they certainly are withal. Swords seem to take the place of
the English bludgeon, and a peaked cap, beribboned with gold, is
substituted for the old-fashioned helmet of blue; and if the time should
ever come, with international rights, when Englishmen will be "run in"
in the Empire, the sallow physiognomy and the dangling pigtail alone
will be unmistakable proofs to the victim, even in heaviest
intoxication, that he is not being handled by policemen of his awn
kind--that is, if the Yuen-nan police shall ever have made strides
towards the attainment of home police principles. However, in their
pl