em simply as practical problems bearing on the trade, the territorial
development, and the military and naval power of the nations. We must try
for the present to ignore the mere moral and ethical suggestions which the
questions arouse.

First, then: can China, single-handed, possibly succeed in this fight, now
going on, against the slow paralysis of opium?

China is not a nation in the sense in which we ordinarily use the word. If
we picture to ourselves the countries of Europe, with their different
languages and different customs drawn together into a loose confederation
under the government of a conquering race, we shall have some small
conception of what this Chinese "nation" really is. The peoples of these
different European countries are all Caucasians; the different peoples of
China are all Mongolians. These Chinese people speak eighteen or twenty
"languages," each divided into almost innumerable dialects and
sub-dialects. They are governed by Manchu, or Tartar, conquerors who
spring from a different stock, wear different costumes, and speak, among
themselves, a language wholly different from any of the eighteen or twenty
native tongues.

In making this diversity clear, it is necessary only to cite a few
illustrations. There is not even a standard of currency in China. Each
province or group of provinces has its own standard tael, differing
greatly in value from the tael which may be the basis of value in the next
province or group. There is no government coinage whatever. All the mints
are privately owned and are run for profit in supplying the local demand
for currency, and the basis of this currency is the Mexican dollar, a
foreign unit. They make dollar bills in Honan Province. I went into Chili
Province and offered some of these Honan bills in exchange for purchases.
The merchants merely looked at them and shook their heads. "Tientsin
dollar have got?" was the question. So the money of a community or a
province is simply a local commodity and has either a lower value or no
value elsewhere, for the simple reason that the average Chinaman knows
only his local money and will accept no other. The diversity of language
is as easily observed as the diversity of coinage. On the wharves at
Shanghai you can hear a Canton Chinaman and a Shanghai Chinaman talking
together in pidgin English, their only means of communication. When I was
travelling in the Northwest, I was accosted in French one day by a Chinese
station