torney, seems to hold no visionary
theories, in spite of the high standard he has set. Before leaving China,
I made it a point to call on him and talk with him about the work he is
doing in the interest of the American name. He seemed to recognize clearly
enough that vice and depravity can no more be put down out of hand in
Shanghai than they can be put down out of hand in New York or Chicago or
Boston. But he maintained that the disreputably open flaunting of vice can
be stopped. In fining the "American girls" $500 (gold) each, and driving a
number of them off the Coast, his attack has been directed mainly against
the dishonourable use of an honourable phrase. In imprisoning or driving
away the American gamblers, he has been trying to put gambling down more
nearly to the place it occupies, in this country, as a minor rather than
as a major branch of industry. Judge Wilfley has undertaken an Herculean
task. It seems to be the hope of all that patient minority, the better
class of Americans on the China Coast, that he will be permitted to
continue his fight unhampered by political machinery "back home."

There are two other points, besides Shanghai, at which the two kinds of
civilization, Western and Eastern, come into contact--Hongkong and
Tientsin. Each is different from the other as well as from Shanghai; and
each plays a curious part in the opium drama. We shall take them up in the
next chapter.

VI

SOWING THE WIND IN CHINA--TIENTSIN AND HONGKONG

If you could avoid the suburbs of mud huts and walled compounds, and step
directly down from an airship on the broad piazza of the Astor House at
Tientsin (no treaty port is complete without its Astor House), you might
also imagine yourself in a thriving English town. Set about this piazza
are round tables, in bowers of potted plants, where sit Britishers,
Germans, and Americans, with a gay sprinkling of soldiery. Across the
street there is a green little park, where plump British babies are
wheeled about and children romp among the shrubbery, and where the Sikh
band plays on Sundays. There is nothing, unless it be the group of
rickshaw coolies at the curb, or the fat Chinese policeman in the roadway,
to recall China to the mind.

Yet Tientsin dominates all Northern China much as Shanghai dominates the
mighty valley of the Yangtse. The railways and waterways (including the
Grand Canal) all lead to Tientsin. It is Peking's seaport. The viceroy of
the Northern P