nce makes this clear.
It was driven into what appeared to be anarchy by a rabid governor. But
only a few months later this governor's successor had little difficulty in
keeping the entire province in almost perfect order while the adjoining
province was actually at war with the allied powers of the world and was
overrun with foreign troops. No; a government which has within it the
power, on occasion, to carry through such an achievement as this, can
hardly be called weak.

We begin, then, by admitting that the Chinese government has the strength
and the organization necessary to carry out any ordinary reform--if it
wants to. The putting down of the opium evil is, of course, no ordinary
reform. It is an undertaking so colossal and so desperate that it staggers
imagination, as I trust I have made plain in the preceding articles. But
setting aside, for the moment, our doubts as to whether or not the Chinese
government, or any other government on earth, could hope to check so
insidious and pervading an evil, we have to consider other doubts which
arise from even a slight acquaintance with that puzzling organism, the
Chinese official mind. If the Chinese business man is, as many think, the
most honest and straightforward business man on earth, the Chinese
official, or mandarin, is about the most subtle and bewildering. His
duplicity is simply beyond our understanding. He has a bland and childish
smile, but his ways are peculiar. Most of us know that our own state
department has a neat little custom of issuing letters to travellers
ordering our diplomatic and consular representatives abroad to extend
special courtesies, and sending, at the same time, a notice to these same
representatives advising them to take no notice of the letters. In Chinese
diplomacy everything is done in this way, but very much more so. Documents
issued by the Chinese government usually bear about the same relation to
any existing facts or intentions as a Thanksgiving proclamation does. You
must be very astute, indeed, to perceive from the speech, manner, or
writing of a mandarin what he is really getting at. Motive underlies
motive; self-interest lies deeper still; and the base of it all is an
Oriental conception of life and affairs which cannot be so remodelled or
reshaped as to fit into our square-shaped Western minds. No one else was
so eloquent on the horrors of opium as the great Li Hung Chang, when
talking with foreigners; yet Li Hung Chang was o