And the West, too, must learn that the peace of Europe depends upon the integrity of China.  For the time is coming—­not in the lives of any who read these lines, but coming inevitably—­when China will, by her might, by her immense numbers of trained men, by her developed naval and military strength, be able to say to the nations of the earth, “There must be no more war.”  And she will be strong enough to be able to enforce it.

As with individuals, so with nations, and a people who are marked by such rare physical vitality, such remarkable powers of endurance against great odds, are surely designed for some nobler purpose than merely to bear with fortitude the ills of life and the misery of starvation.  It is the easiest thing in the world to criticise—­the West criticises the Chinese because he is a heathen, because they do not understand him.  Hundreds of millions of the Chinese race hate and fear the man of the West for exactly the same reason as would cause us to hate the Chinese were the situation reversed.

I do not need to go into history from the days when the Chinese first began to show their suspicion, contempt, and fear of foreigners, and their interpretation of the motives and purposes which took them to the Celestial Empire; it would take too much space.  But if we of the West did our part to-day, as we rub up against the Chinese everywhere, in charitably taking him at his best, things would alter much more speedily that they are doing.  Because the Chinese bristles with contradictions and seemingly unanswerable conundrums, we immediately dub him a barbarian, do not endeavor to understand him, do not understand enough of his language to listen to him and learn his point of view.  However, it is all slowly passing—­so very slowly, too.  But still China is progressing, and now this oldest man in the world is becoming again the youngest, but has all the accumulations and advantages of age in all countries to lean upon and learn from.

Chao-chow gave me a very decent inn, the top room in front of which was provided with a well-paved courtyard, with every convenience for the traveler—­that is, for China.

The inn cook and water-carrier was out playing on the street when we put in an early appearance.  My men lost their temper, ground their teeth, foamed at the mouth, and got desperate.  The only man on the premises was a poor old fellow, who foolishly bumped his uncovered head on the ground on which I stood, as an act of great servility and a secret sign that I should throw him a few cash, and then resumed his occupation in the sun of wiping his already inflamed eyes with the one unwashed garment which covered him.  I pitied him; he knew it, and traded upon my pity until I invoked a few choice words from Lao Chang to fall upon him.  When the cook did put in an appearance, he and everybody dead and living placed anywhere near his genealogical tree underwent a rough quarter of an hour from the anathematical tongues of my companions.