. Opium-smoking used to be taken as a matter of
course; now, where you find a man smoking too much, you also find a group
of friends apologizing for him. I have already explained that
opium-smoking is not tolerated in the "new" army. There is now a rapidly
growing number of officials and merchants who refuse to employ
opium-smokers in any capacity.

Now, why is the public opinion of China setting so strongly against opium?
Even apart from moral considerations, bringing the matter down to a
"practical" basis, why is this so? I will venture to offer an answer to
the question. Said one Tientsin foreign merchant, an American who has had
unusual opportunities to observe conditions in Northern China: "If the
Chinese do succeed in shutting down on opium, it may mean the end of the
foreigners in China. Opium is the one thing that is holding the Chinese
back to-day."

Ten or twelve of the legations at Peking now have "legation guards" of
from one hundred to three hundred men each. In all, there are eighteen
hundred foreign soldiers in Peking, "a force large enough," said one
officer, "to be an insult to China, but not large enough to defend us
should they really resent the insult."

Twelve hundred miles up the Yangtse River, above the rapids, there is a
fleet of tiny foreign gunboats, English and French, which were carried up
in sections and put together "to stay." At every treaty port there are one
or more foreign settlements, maintained under foreign laws. The Imperial
Maritime Customs Service of China is directed and administered throughout
by foreigners; this, to insure the proper collection of the "indemnity"
money. Foreign "syndicates" have been gobbling up the wonderful coal and
iron deposits of China wherever they could find them. And so on. I could
give many more illustrations of the foreign grip on China, but these will
serve. And back of these facts looms the always impending "partition of
China." The Chinese are not fools. They have sat tight, wearing that
inscrutable smile, while the foreigners discussed the cutting up of China
as if it were a huge cake. They have seen the Japanese, a race of little
brown men, inhabiting a few little islands, face the dreaded bear of
Russia and drive it back into Siberia. Now, at last, these patient
Chinamen are picking up some odds and ends of Western science. They are
building railroads, and manufacturing the rails for them. They are talking
about saving China "for the Chinese."