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THE EISING TEMPER 
 OF THE EAST 
 
THE RISING TEMPER 
 OF THE EAST 
 
 Sounding the Human Note in the World-Wide 
 Cry for Land and Liberty 
 
 BY 
 FRAZIER HUNT 
 
 The toad beneath the harrow knows 
 Exactly where each tooth-pomt goes. 
 The butterfly beside the road 
 Preaches contentment to that toad. 
 — Kipling. 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
 , ^ / •■•? -> ■? -,.- 
 
Copyright 1922 
 The Bobbs-Merrill Company 
 
 6 
 
 \'i 
 
 '^y^^i 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 BRAUNWORTH & CO 
 
 BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y. 
 
 APR -3 ^22 
 
 0)C!.A659431 
 

 To 
 MY FATHER 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
 
 Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made to 
 Hearst's International Magazine, The Century 
 and Good Housekeeping for permission to repub- 
 lish certain portions of this book. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I HAVE called this book The Rising Temper of 
 the East because in it I have attempted to show 
 not only the awakening of a billion backward peo- 
 ples of the Old World but to sound a note of 
 warning to the white Christian East. I have tried 
 to tell the human story of the rising winds of new 
 freedom, the coming of new ideas, the birth of 
 new hopes, the whole renaissance of the ancient 
 East. 
 
 The white man's domination of the billion men 
 of the East hy force must cease. No longer 
 can our culture and our civilization be carried to 
 backward, ancient peoples on the vehicle of force. 
 If there is a "white man's burden" it must in the 
 future be borne on other shoulders than those that 
 carry bayonets. 
 
 Everywhere throughout the East there are 
 danger signals flashing their warning to the con- 
 quering West. The ruling, the domineering, the 
 looting, must cease. If the West were wise it 
 would shift its course now while there is still 
 time. If it blindly stumbles on, ignoring these 
 danger signals, the day will soon come when the 
 work and the profits of four hundred years will 
 be swept away. 
 
 There are many men, wise to the East, who to- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 day not only feel that this will happen but that 
 once freed from the heel of the white West, and 
 with the adoption of the science and culture of 
 modem warfare, these billion men will seek 
 race revenge, and that again black, brown and 
 yellow hordes may swoop over white Europe and 
 its great outposts of white culture. 
 
 But they fail to take cognizance of a great new 
 power that is abroad in the world — the power of 
 the universal social unrest that is working within 
 the borders of each country. Labor leaders in 
 Calcutta are dreaming exactly the same hopes as 
 labor leaders in Manchester ; social revolutionists 
 in Tokyo are preaching the same doctrines as 
 the revolutionists of Rome ; organizers of the cot- 
 ton spinners of Shanghai are using the same argu- 
 ments as organizers among the cotton workers of 
 Fall River. 
 
 The world unrest is world-wide unrest. No 
 Great "Wall of China can exclude it : no desert is 
 too wide for it to cross, or no ocean too deep. 
 New winds of freedom are blowing over every 
 country and into every corner of the globe. 
 
 For the moment these winds in the East are 
 winds of nationalism — self-determination — apoliti- 
 cal freedom. They will bring an end to the physi- 
 cal, political rule of the white West over the East. 
 And then they mil change to winds of social 
 unrest — and the energies and hopes of these bil- 
 lion men will be turned from white hate to inter- 
 nal struggles. There will be no time for con- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 quest or revenge, no heart for wars of ag- 
 gression. 
 
 This is the story that I would tell in these 
 following chapters — stories of common peoples 
 and their leaders struggling up toward the light. 
 I have no theories to prove — no pet ideas to ad- 
 vance. I would set down between covers these 
 pages of world news — facts of progress, garnered 
 in years of travel and investigation. 
 
 I saw a great new East being born before my 
 very eyes. It was a new East of hope emerging 
 from a tired, ancient, hopeless world. It was a 
 restless, moving world that I saw. Books have 
 been written about The Unchanging East, but 
 that is not what I found ; it was a Changing East 
 that greeted me everywhere. 
 
 Its leaders interested me and its people fas- 
 cinated me. Its revolt against the West and 
 against its own traditions and time-worn customs 
 thrilled me, just as the Eussian revolution first 
 thrilled me in North Russia and then in Petrograd 
 and Moscow and later in Siberia. Everywhere it 
 has been the same story — ^millions awakening 
 from the slumber of centuries. 
 
 I have tried to chronicle things here just as I 
 found them — ^to tell simply, directly and honestly 
 the great pulsing, human story of Gandhi and 
 India, of the Near East, China, Japan, Korea, 
 Siberia, the Philippines — and, as well, the story 
 of our own imperialistic ventures in Haiti and 
 Mexico, I have tried to tell of Gandhi, the Man, 
 
PREFACE 
 
 as well as Gandhi, the Leader ! I have attempted 
 to paint Kagawa, the young liberal leader of 
 Japan, just as vividly and humanly as he ap- 
 peared to me that December day when I talked to 
 him. I have tried to tell of common peoples and 
 common hopes rather than of great international 
 movements and world politics. 
 
 If I have even partly succeeded in lifting the 
 veil that is drawn over the hidden East and have 
 shown that here are common peoples living and 
 fighting and dreaming of better things, then I 
 will be more than satisfied. 
 
 New York, F, H. 
 
 Feb. 1, 1922, 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I Gandhi and His India IS 
 
 II The New Religious Nationalism of the East . 42 
 
 III Young China 66 
 
 IV Kagawa of Kobe— the Story of the New Japan . 93 
 V Struggling Korea ii5 
 
 VI Ivan the Jap Killer 127 
 
 VII White Australia 150 
 
 VIII Our Own Little India 168 
 
 IX Whose Country Is Haiti? 189 
 
 X Our Restless Brothers below the Rio Grande . 204 
 
 XI The Lamp Bearers 226 
 
 XII The World's Under-dogs— a Conclusion . . . 241 
 
The Rising Temper of the East 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 
 
 To TELL about Gandhi is to tell about India. 
 Gandhi is India, and India, restless, determined 
 and race conscious, is the real spirit of the awak- 
 ening East. 
 
 This that follows is the plain story of Gandhi 
 — the hero and saint of India's struggling three 
 hundred million, to-day little known to the out- 
 side world but to-morrOw to be recognized as the 
 insurgent figure leading the great coming revolt 
 of the East against the white man's domination. 
 
 To ninety-nine per cent, of the people of Ameri- 
 ca and Europe the idea of a violent repudiation 
 of white mastery by the black, brown and yellow 
 men of the East is still a wild phantasy. But it 
 is no longer a wild phantasy to me — ^for I have 
 seen Gandhi and myself felt the rising temper 
 of Asia. 
 
 For hours I sat with this strange, shrunken 
 little man whom three hundred million worship, 
 and talked with him as freely as I would with an 
 old friend. There was no fencing or parrying. 
 
 15 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 He had nothing to conceal. He had hit upon a 
 way of breaking the British power in India and 
 cracking the greatest empire history has ever 
 seen, and all without bombs or bloodshed. It was 
 no secret and he wanted to tell me about it. 
 
 This was down in Cawnpore. Early that morn- 
 ing I had gone to the station to see him come in. 
 The Indian city was still sleeping in the filth of 
 its mud doorways. The heat of the night was 
 dead and this was the cooling hour before a blaz- 
 ing sun jumped like a jack-in-the-box high into 
 the sky. 
 
 We jogged through a semi-European street. 
 In another part of the city— a clean part with 
 wide streets and great la^vns — the white sahibs 
 from England live. 
 
 **You go Delhi?" my driver asked. 
 
 "No. I'm going to see Gandhi arrive at the 
 station. ' ' 
 
 He turned in his seat. 
 
 *' Saint Gandhi?" he questioned, as one pro- 
 nouncing a sacred name. ''He is very wonderful. 
 . . . He is poor like I am. His wife weaves 
 his clothes for him. . . The English are afraid 
 of him. They would like to put him in prison and 
 kill him but they don't dare. He is very won- 
 derful. ..." 
 
 He had to pull his horse up sharp to keep from 
 hitting a lazy, old sacred cow ambling across the 
 road. Hitting a cow in India is no laughing mat- 
 
 16 
 
GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 
 
 ter. It might be some one's grandmother or 
 great-great-grandfather. It is the superstition 
 of five thousand years' standing. 
 
 We passed two men, wearing dirty patches of 
 cotton around their loins, straining at a great 
 cart. They were thin men with their ribs show- 
 ing. 
 
 "Do they know who Gandhi is?" I asked my 
 driver. I was anxious to find out what different 
 types of Indians thought of this leader. 
 
 "Shall I ask them, sahihf" 
 
 I nodded yes. 
 
 He stopped them and spoke to the taller of the 
 two, in a native dialect. The man was eager to 
 talk. 
 
 "He says Gandhi will give them freedom from 
 the white men and ..." 
 
 The smaller fellow who had kept silent so far 
 stepped forward then and broke into the con- 
 versation. 
 
 "They have worked all their lives like beasts," 
 he says, "and all they got is half enough food and 
 a pig pen to sleep in. Gandhi will change every- 
 thing for them." 
 
 We drove on. An old man stretched on a rope- 
 bed in front of a doorway in the street was dy- 
 ing; my driver explained that old ones were al- 
 ways brought outdoors to die. 
 
 We turned into a narrow crooked street smell- 
 ing of the rotted East. Early though it was, it 
 
 17 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 was noisy with unwashed children, so filthy that 
 one stopped idly to wonder whether the street got 
 its dirt from the children or the children from 
 the street. Most of them were naked: there was 
 not even a rag to tie around them. They ran 
 after me screaming for coppers. I told my driver 
 to whip up his lazy horse. 
 
 **Do they know about Gandhi?*' I asked him. 
 
 "They get him now from their mother's 
 breast," he answered. 
 
 He was a talkative man, but it took all his at- 
 tention now in order not to run over some naked 
 baby playing in the dust, or brush into some 
 woman, toothless and barren at forty — or crash 
 into some blind beggar picking his way through 
 the eternal night with his staff. 
 
 In another five minutes we drew up at the sta- 
 tion. Only a few local leaders were supposed to 
 be there to welcome Gandhi, for the committee 
 in charge of the great mass meeting to be held 
 in the evening had given out word that there was 
 to be no demonstration when Gandhi arrived. 
 But that did not keep them away. They had come 
 by the hundreds on foot and donkey-back and in 
 western motor-cars. 
 
 There must have been eight thousand there — • 
 and I was the only white man among them. It 
 gave me a creepy sensation of half fear. I felt 
 like some thoughtless tourist peering into a 
 strange temple during the hour of worship. For 
 
 18 
 
GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 
 
 Gandhi was their priest and this was as holy to 
 them as a sacrament. I imagine many of them 
 thought I was a government agent or secret ser- 
 vice man as I made my way through the great 
 crush that filled the railway platform and over- 
 ran into the little square in front of the station. 
 I decided I would be less conspicuous and enjoy 
 myself more in some modest niche so I elbowed 
 to a place by the door of the station-master's 
 office, on the outskirts of the crowd. 
 
 The station agent, a pleasant Indian in Euro- 
 pean uniform, came from his office and addressed 
 me in English. I imagine he too thought I was 
 an English official. 
 
 **I'm an American writer." I explained imme- 
 diately. "I've been hearing a lot about your man 
 Gandhi so I've made a special trip here from Cal- 
 cutta to see him." 
 
 "You're an American!" he questioned. 
 
 When I finally convinced him that I was, he 
 was only too willing to answer my questions. 
 
 "Gandhi is the man who is going to free India 
 from the British," he whispered. "He has three 
 hundred million Indians back of him. He's the 
 only thing in the world the British are afraid of. 
 They don't dare touch him. If they'd put him in 
 jail or try to stop him there 'd be a revolution 
 here within twenty-four hours. Just look at this 
 crowd — there's every type of man in India here." 
 
 It was a wonderful group of worshipers. 
 
 19 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 Here and there scattered through the crowd you 
 could see a man in western dress, but the great 
 majcrity wore very plain white cotton garments 
 with gay colored headgear. They were mostly 
 poor clerks or laborers. 
 
 Gandhi was a dream and a hope for them. 
 They were tired of it all — the ignorance, and 
 poverty, and caste, crowned now with white su- 
 premacy. They were blaming the white man for 
 everything. It was unfair but very human. 
 
 For one hundred and seventy years the British 
 had been running things in India. Unquestion- 
 ably they had accomplished much that was good 
 for India — ^but they had only gone half-way. 
 They had painted a veneer of western civilization 
 on the soiled and outworn East when what was 
 needed was a real renovation. The common man 
 had not been touched. There 'd been no effort to 
 educate him — ^that was too dangerous because 
 with education comes new demands and fresh 
 assumptions. 
 
 So these laborers and petty clerks were ready 
 for their chance in the world. They were gaining 
 it, too, through their own fighting. Everywhere 
 over India an epidemic of strikes had broken out. 
 There was hardly a city of any importance that 
 did not face serious labor troubles. These very 
 nights Bombay was dark on account of a strike 
 of the men of the gas works, while the postal and 
 telegraph men had been striking for weeks and 
 
 20 
 
GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 
 
 twelve hundred street-car men were out. In 
 another part of India a great walk-ont of thou- 
 sands of railroad men had taken place and word 
 had just been received of a dangerous labor situa- 
 tion on a number of tea plantations. 
 
 I recalled the filth of Calcutta's streets. The 
 sweepers were fighting for four cents more a 
 day. Only recently a hundred thousand laborers 
 employed in the great cotton mills of Bombay had 
 struck for a thirty per cent, increase in wages and 
 a ten-hour day. They were now earning about 
 thirty cents a day. 
 
 The birth of the labor movement in India has 
 been even more spectacular than the political 
 awakening. Two and a half years ago there was 
 not an effective labor organization in the whole 
 country. To-day there is a great central organi- 
 zation known as the All Indian Trades Union Con- 
 gress with several hundred thousand members 
 enrolled in scores of trade unions. In the city of 
 Madras alone there are twenty-seven distinct 
 unions with a membership of more than eighty 
 thousand — and the work is just started. 
 
 The organizers of the national body plan to 
 enroll more than two million workmen within 
 a year. While it is all basically economic this 
 powerful young organization is to be swung as a 
 political club, in the battle for home rule. It is, 
 with the Mohammedan organizations, the most 
 powerful of the fighting bodies supporting 
 
 21 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 Gandhi and his non-cooperation. Its leaders 
 plan to use all the methods of direct action, go- 
 slow strikes and simple non-cooperation in order 
 to gain their political ends. 
 
 It is all tremendously picturesque. One leader 
 outlined to me his plan for enrolling the cooks of 
 Bombay. He explained there were fifteen thou- 
 sand of them mostly employed in foreign homes, 
 who already had a working organization. Any 
 organized effort on their part to boycott British 
 homes would simply demoralize the whole foreign 
 life — ^for the servant is all-powerful and all-neces- 
 sary in India. Modest households, which in 
 America would have one maid at the most, must 
 have from six to ten servants in India. 
 
 Besides growing race conscious, these millions 
 were becoming class conscious as well. To-day 
 they were blaming the white man for their condi- 
 tion. But to-morrow they will find that their 
 newly born unions are not being checked by Brit- 
 ish power alone. Some day they will discover 
 that Calcutta's jute mills and Bombay's cotton 
 factories and the steaming tea plantations and 
 the scorching fields are not all owned by English- 
 men. 
 
 They will discover that the caste system that 
 chains them to the mud-holes they were born in 
 was thought out and working long before — thou- 
 sands of years before — ^the British Empire was 
 ever dreamed of. Some day the fifty-seven mil- 
 
 22 
 
GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 
 
 lion '^untoucliables" — ^the pitiful human animals 
 of the lowest depths and the bottom caste, living 
 worse than swine — will Hft up their heads and 
 tear to pieces the system that has cheated them 
 for so long. To-day in some parts of India, if 
 they walk within sixty-four feet of a Brahmin of 
 the sacred highest caste, or throw their shadow 
 on him, they might be beaten to death. To-mor- 
 row they will wield the clubs themselves. 
 
 Our own Christian foreign missions, often 
 sneered at and made fun of by the unknowing, 
 are reaching down and touching these poor "un- 
 touchables. ' ' They are bringing them out of their 
 wallow holes. Most of the Christian converts in 
 India are from this God-forgotten class. And 
 strange to tell, the simple single baptism of these 
 abused people makes them step forward real men, 
 who shake off all the fear and superstition of 
 their beaten caste as they shake the water from 
 their dripping heads. 
 
 And this same thing is coming true of the num- 
 berless other castes of the lower orders. They 
 blame the British to-day for their poverty and 
 ignorance. But when they do break the British 
 power they will discover they have other things 
 to break before they can come up into the sun- 
 light. And one by one they will smash their 
 castes and superstitions and traditions and their 
 man-made religions. 
 
 The revolt of the East against the West is only 
 
 23 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 a prelude to the greater revolt of the East against 
 the East itself. But foreign masters come first, 
 and so here these thousands were on this seething 
 platform offering themselves to Gandhi — their 
 saint and hero-leader. 
 
 Standing near me was a beggar in a bit of 
 grimy sack cloth: in the bazaars and the great 
 whispering galleries of the East he had caught 
 the magic of Saint Gandhi. He had quit his stand 
 and hidden his beggar's bowl for the moment, to 
 shout the name of Gandhi. 
 
 The train was late but the crowd was patient; 
 for thousands of years they had been waiting and 
 so an hour or two more didn't make any differ- 
 ence. Several women were in the crowd and I 
 noticed a number of boys; but they lacked the 
 irresponsibility and spontaneity of our own boys ; 
 they were born old. 
 
 Then the train came in, and from a third-class 
 wooden coach a little figure in white — a pathetic 
 little figure — alighted. With a sense of shock I 
 realized that this insignificant shrunken figure 
 was the man I had heard so much about — the 
 great Gandhi. He was thin, shrunken, almost 
 emaciated, and there was no look of the leader 
 about him. 
 
 But I knew it was Gandhi as quickly as the 
 crowd did. He was pathetic but there was a touch 
 of tremendous spiritual power about him. 
 
 Here was the man who was shaking the world 
 
 24 
 
GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 
 
 with a new idea. Here was the man who was 
 fighting a new kind of warfare — who was enlist- 
 ing the souls and hearts of men to break ma- 
 chine-guns. 
 
 This was the man who twenty-five years ago, 
 a young English trained lawyer of good family 
 and high caste, had given up everything to fight 
 for his countrymen. 
 
 Eeturning to India from his law school in Eng- 
 land he had been sent by his firm to South Africa 
 to conduct an important case. With the case set- 
 tled he was preparing to go back to India when 
 his sympathies were enlisted in a fight that was 
 being made to improve the condition of thousands 
 of contract Indian laborers employed in South 
 Africa by the Boers and English. 
 
 It was a fight that extended through twenty- 
 five years and this thin, anemic weakling led it. 
 He spent not a little of that time in prison and in 
 disgrace but he stuck to his guns and in the end 
 saw the worst of the injustices swept away and 
 his countrymen in much better condition. 
 
 Time and again he had been roughly handled, 
 but he had never lost faith in the right and justice 
 of the British Empire. When the Boer War came 
 along he promptly organized an ambulance corps 
 for the English Army and actively engaged in 
 helping the British cause. 
 
 When this last great war broke out, Gandhi 
 had only just arrived in England from South 
 
 25 
 
THE RlSIXa TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 Africa, but he promptly organized another ambu- 
 lance corps. In 1915 he went to India and for 
 three years was active in his support of the Brit- 
 ish cause. 
 
 At the same time he was quite willing to throw 
 himself into dangerous labor situations when he 
 made certain that his people were being mis- 
 treated by the government or their employers or 
 their landlords. He made no discrimination here 
 between the English and his own people. Slowly 
 he gained the great confidence of all India. His 
 life of sacrifice and unselfish devotion had won 
 him the title of *' Saint'* Gandhi. Like most of 
 India's beloved heroes of the past, he was a hero 
 of the soul and not of the sword. 
 
 Through it all he kept his faith in the British 
 Empire. Others faltered and lost faith, but he 
 kept his bright. He insisted that India must help 
 England in her hour of need and then when the 
 war was won England would do the square thing. 
 He would not countenance anything that even 
 hinted at revolt. 
 
 Then one steaming April day at Amritsar in 
 the north of India, when a British general pumped 
 steel into a vast crowd of unarmed Indians, killing 
 four hundred and injuring another one thousand 
 — and England didn't seem to care — ^he lost this 
 faith. Not many people in the western world re- 
 member anything about the incident, but there 
 are few dates in India's thousands of years of 
 
 26 
 
GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 
 
 history that are more important — and few days 
 in the annals of the British Empire that are 
 blacker or promise to be more costly. 
 
 It turned Gandhi from a strong believer in the 
 Empire to a great hater. And when Gandhi 
 turned India turned. All India turned — Moslems, 
 Hindus, Sikhs — all India. 
 
 For centuries India has quarreled and fought 
 within herself. Different sects, castes and reli- 
 gions have kept the great country in a turmoil. 
 England had only to fan the fire of these differ- 
 ences to make her rule a comparatively easy one. 
 It has been her famous "divide and rule" policy. 
 
 The Indian army is a good illustration of this 
 policy. Each brigade will be composed of entirely 
 different and distinct units — one Mohammedan 
 battalion, one Hindu battalion, one Sikh battalion 
 with one British white battalion to control the 
 whole thing. Each has different customs, dia- 
 lects, religions and superstitions. There has been 
 no chance of developing any unity of opposition 
 among all these widely separated groups. 
 
 Now it is different. The Mohammedans and 
 the Hindus have buried their ancient grudges and 
 the leaders of the seventy million Moslems and 
 the two hundred million Hindus are at last work- 
 ing hand in glove. In 1906 a Moslem League was 
 formed and in 1915 held its first joint session 
 with the great All Indian National Congress — an 
 unofficial body representing the hopes and de- 
 
 27 
 
THE ElSma TEMPEE OF TKE EAST 
 
 mands of all India. Tighter and tighter the bonds 
 binding the two great bodies have been drawn 
 so that to-day they are fighting side by side. 
 
 These seventy million Mohammedans, incident- 
 ally, are the real fighting force of the home rnle 
 agitation. As a leaven and ferment their unrest 
 has been pnt upon a religions basis, with a fonn- 
 dation that goes down to the very depths of the 
 Moslem faith. 
 
 These Moslems, besides fighting for home mle, 
 demand that England rewrite the TnrMsh peace 
 treaty and give back to the snltan of Turkey the 
 control over all the sacred Mohammedan shrines- 
 To the simple believer it is a pure matter of reli- 
 gion, but to the shrewd Moslem leaders, this 
 religious element is the steel in their swords of 
 revolt. 
 
 The terrible killing that April day in Amritsar 
 helped forge these same swords. And quite as 
 important, it broke the faith of Gandhi in the just- 
 ness and fairness of England. And when 
 Gandhi's faith went, India too lost her faith. 
 
 With faith in England gone Gandhi showed 
 them how to draw a great new faith in their own 
 India. They could break this power that was 
 overshadowing them by the invincible forc^ of 
 their spirits. They would withdraw from every- 
 thing that was British. They would cease all 
 cooperation: they would boycott British goods; 
 they would pull the fires from the British engine 
 in India. They would leave England in India 
 
 28 
 
GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 
 
 prostrate and helpless. They would beat the 
 British Empire by simply not playing baU. They 
 TTould break the British Empire by taking away 
 India. 
 
 This thin, half broken figure worming his way 
 gently through the crowd was the torch-bearer of 
 aU tlis. 
 
 It was raw drama. It was all new for the West 
 — ^this power of spiritual force. This man was 
 pleading and begging for peace, for non-violence, 
 and yet he was enlisting the millions of sleeping 
 India for war. It was a paradox that only the 
 East could understand. It was his weak thin 
 voice that was calling millions of native Indians 
 out of the past. 
 
 He had finally awakened them and here they 
 were, thousands of them, cheering from the very 
 depths of their hearts. 
 
 Men fought to kiss his hands and to touch his 
 skirt with their lips. One patriarch with a great 
 white beard clutched his hands and buried his 
 face in them and sobbed in them. He was a Mes- 
 siah to them all. 
 
 Two hours later Gandhi was sitting at my feet 
 talking to me in soft low voice. It was in a great 
 bare room without furniture. There was no one 
 there when I entered, but presently a door opened 
 and Gandhi stepped forward with hand out- 
 stretched. 
 
 He had eyes that were deep with pity and love, 
 
 29 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 and burning bright with a great purpose. You 
 forgot that he was a frail little man with a funny 
 shaved head and hollow sallow cheeks, with most 
 of his teeth gone, and that he wore coarse home- 
 spun clothes, and that his feet were bare. It was 
 his eyes that held you. 
 
 Some one brought a single chair and he insisted 
 that I sit on it while he squatted cross-legged on 
 the floor beside me. Possibly twenty of his local 
 disciples came in noiselessly and seated them- 
 selves on the floor in a semicircle about us. Cer- 
 tainly not half of them could understand English, 
 but they could look at Gandhi. 
 
 "What can I tell you?" he asked in soft, per- 
 fectly spoken English, 
 
 "The story of how you are going to break Brit- 
 ish power in India," I replied. 
 
 A ghost of a smile that seemed to hurt him 
 trailed across his face like a moving shadow. 
 "During the Boer War I had great faith and con- 
 fidence in the British and raised a stretcher- 
 bearer corps to help them," he began. "In 1914 
 I reached London two days after" war was de- 
 clared and immediately organized an ambulance 
 corps. Later I came on here and when I found 
 the Mohammedan leaders worried about the fu- 
 ture of the sultan, who is the head of the Church 
 and the guardian of their shrines, I told them that 
 Lloyd George would keep his promise, that he 
 would treat Turkey fairly. But they said no. 
 
 30 
 
GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 
 
 **I was insistent that we must do all we could 
 to help England in this great hour of her need. 
 I pleaded for army enlistment — ^we raised more 
 than a million men in India for the British Army, 
 
 "Then the war ended and I said that now we 
 would gain our reward, we would he given at least 
 practical home rule and be permitted to work out 
 our own destiny. I still had faith ! ' ' 
 
 Always it was this great faith that he came back 
 to, time and again. Faith, he believed, would 
 move empires. 
 
 "But there was nothing but promises and a 
 half-hearted reform bill. They call this bill the 
 Montague-Chelmsford Bill and they hold that it 
 fulfills their pledges. But it gives us only the 
 cheapest imitation of self-government, of home 
 rule. It allows ieertain Indian assemblies and 
 local administrations, but it is all circumscribed 
 by a system of checks and balances that leaves all 
 the real power in the hands of the British. It is 
 a great subterfuge — and we are sick and tired of 
 subterfuges. 
 
 "While this bill was being discussed and pre- 
 pared the Punjab disturbances broke out. Those 
 were terrible days, but I was sure that the British 
 would be just and fair so I still held faith." 
 
 At great length Gandhi explained all about 
 these terrible days. Over all the cities of North- 
 em India there was in that spring of 1919 a grow- 
 ing feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction. About 
 
 31 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 half the population are Moslems, and already 
 there was at work the religious ferment that was 
 expressing itself in the KJialifat questions. But 
 more important than this religious aspect was a 
 pure demand for nationalism. This demand and 
 the unrest that went with it were intensified by 
 the Rowlatt Bill which gave special and drastic 
 power for the handling of all kinds and phases 
 of rebellious actions. 
 
 This Rowlatt Bill was a pure war-time measure 
 kept in force after the war. It gave the govern- 
 ment tremendous powers over the press and gave 
 to police and judiciary practically autocratic 
 authority over everything that seemed so much as 
 flavored with any demand for home rule and free- 
 dom. 
 
 As a protest against this law, hartals — com- 
 plete closing of all stores and shops — ^began to be 
 called by the natives toward the last of Febru- 
 ary, 1919. Meetings were held everywhere and a 
 tenseness against the British began to be felt. 
 Gandhi, who attempted to visit the Punjab, was 
 turned back to the border, intensifying the feel- 
 ing. Inflammatory speeches and seditious notices 
 were of almost daily occurrence. 
 
 On the morning of April 10, 1919, Doctor Satya- 
 pal and Doctor Kitchlew, the two most powerful 
 local leaders in the north, were deported by motor 
 from Amritsar. As soon as this news spread a 
 crowd collected in Amritsar and attempted to 
 
 32 
 
GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 
 
 marcli to the deputy commissioner's to protest. 
 At HaU Gate Bridge it encountered a patrol of 
 soldiers; stones were thrown and the troops re- 
 plied with fire, killing several. At this the crowd 
 became a wild mob, completely out of the hands 
 of its leaders. It burned all European and gov- 
 ernment property in the city and kiUed three Eng- 
 lish bank managers, and Miss Sherwood, a mis- 
 sion worker, was assaulted, the railway station 
 was attacked and an English guard killed. 
 
 "On the morning of April 13th, General Dyer 
 heard that a great meeting was to be held in a 
 hollow square called Jallenwala Bagh," Gandhi 
 went on. "A few minutes before five in the eve- 
 ning he marched a detachment of fifty Gurkhas 
 and Sikhs into one end of the square and imme- 
 diately opened fire on the unarmed crowd, some 
 ten thousand people, assembled there." 
 
 Gandhi's voice trailed into a whisper of horror. 
 I was living again the brutal memories of my own 
 visit to this slaughter pen. 
 
 Gandhi called it ''Jallenwala Bagh" — its In- 
 dian name. In my mind I had always called it 
 Death's Hollow. I had been there only a few 
 days before, and again I was walking along the 
 lane leading into it-r-a lane so narrow that Dyer's 
 two armored cars could not pass through. 
 
 Over the whole terrible hollow hung a death 
 shadow as sickly and crushing as the pitiless heat 
 that smothered everything like a great blanket. 
 
 33 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 There should have been buzzing blue flies and a 
 vulture or two about, but there was none — the 
 heat was too terrific even for flies and carrion. 
 
 "Through that lane Dyer and his fifty Gurkhas 
 and Sikhs came in," Gandhi droned. "They left 
 their armored cars outside because they could not 
 bring them in; they would have killed every one 
 had they had those machine-guns. 
 
 "On a little rise of ground next the wall Dyer 
 drew up his soldiers. He marched them in, 
 placed them on both sides the entrance and imme- 
 diately they opened fire. The people had no 
 warning, no chance. 
 
 "The speaker's stand was in the center. There 
 were four or five small passages, altogether, and 
 after the soldiers started firing and the crowd 
 tried to escape he concentrated his firing on these 
 exits. There were heaps of dead and injured 
 around each of them. He fired until he 'd used up 
 all his ammunition — one thousand six hundred 
 and fifty rounds — ^he admitted that in his evi- 
 dence. If he'd had his armored cars inside he 
 would have killed them all." 
 
 Like one wandering in a trance I stumbled 
 again over the parched brown ground of the 
 square, raising my feet so that I would not tram- 
 ple the prostrate ghosts of dead men. Here were 
 bullet marks in the wall; some untrained boy 
 sepoy still with a heart, was shooting high. Over 
 there was the low mud wall that had proved 
 
 34 
 
GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 
 
 death's hurdle to scores; a fresh coat of dried 
 mud hid its scars. On this side was an unpro- 
 tected open well, some twenty feet wide, that had 
 been the tomb of a half dozen men. 
 
 Again I sat in the shade of the single big tree — 
 men and boys had fought that day for a place 
 behind its sturdy trunk. Four hundred men had 
 been killed and at least a thousand injured in this 
 hollow during those six minutes of firing. 
 
 I brought myself up with a jerk. I was back in 
 Cawnpore in this great bare room. Gandhi was 
 squatting on the floor beside me, playing with his 
 bare toes, and in the half-circle were his followers. 
 He was still talking in his soft, gentle voice. 
 
 "But infinitely worse was the horrible, devilish 
 crime of deliberately breaking the spirit of the 
 people — ^people who had given tremendous help 
 to the empire during the war. 
 
 ' ' Still I held to my faith and in December, 1919, 
 I pleaded with our unofficial Indian National 
 Congress for cooperation, assuring them that 
 when the British people knew the facts they 
 would sweep away Lieutenant-Governor O'Dwy- 
 er, General Dyer and the whole breed, and right 
 the Khalifat wrongs. But I saw Lloyd George 
 turn against us and British public opinion praise 
 to the skies Lieutenant-Governor O'Dwyer, who 
 was a hundred times worse than General Dyer. 
 I think General Dyer would have acted like a fine 
 soldier had not the spirit of O'Dwyer poisoned 
 
 35 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 him. But Greneral Dyer went mad, shooting inno- 
 cent men until his ammunition was exhausted." 
 
 Gandhi's face was flushed as he continued: "I 
 can't accuse the Germans of anything half as 
 terrible as what Dyer did. When I saw the House 
 of Lords and many members of the House of Com- 
 mons further insult India by defending Dyer, I 
 thought my connection with British power must 
 end until they repented for their crimes and 
 asked forgiveness. They've done neither, so I 
 am trying my best to end British connection 
 with India. 
 
 ** At first I thought the new legislative reforms 
 might work, but to-day with the scales dropped 
 from my eyes I look upon them as a death-trap. 
 So now I am advocating non-violent non-coopera- 
 tion. India has a population of three hundred 
 and fifteen million, while the number of English 
 officials here are not more than one hundred thou- 
 sand. If we break all connection with this one 
 hundred thousand, in spite of machine-guns, aero- 
 planes and strong forts, they are physically pow- 
 erless; therefore if we non-cooperate they must 
 automatically leave India or satisfy us. And 
 they can satisfy us now only by rewriting the 
 Turkish peace terms, granting full reparation for 
 Punjab crimes and by giving full self-govern- 
 ment, such that India may voluntarily remain a 
 party in the empire — if she chooses* It is to be 
 non- violent non-cooperation." 
 
 36 
 
GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 
 
 This Tolstoian philosophy of non-resistance is 
 as old to the Bast as the hills of the Himalayas, 
 but it will always be mysterious and untranslat- 
 able to the pure western mind. It is a faith in 
 the unbreakable force of spirit. It is the convert- 
 ing of a negative force into a positive one; the 
 vitalizing of the inertia of the East. It is all of 
 the mysticism of the Orient. 
 
 Yet it is quite simple and quite plausible. It 
 is nothing more nor less than the strike of all 
 India. The problem Gandhi faces is to establish 
 a propaganda organization sufficient to make 
 India conscious of her power and willing to suffer 
 in order to gain her ends. 
 
 The general scheme of non-cooperation adopted 
 by the Indian National Congress, the great voice 
 of India, embodies a number of points : 
 
 1. Giving up of all British titles and honorary 
 offices. 
 
 2. Boycott of all official functions. 
 
 3. Withdrawal of students from all govern- 
 ment owned or aided schools and the establish- 
 ment of Indian national schools. 
 
 4. Boycott British courts by Indian lawyers 
 and litigants and the establishment of private 
 arbitration courts. 
 
 5. Refusal of Indians to be candidates for new 
 assemblies and the total abstinence from all vot- 
 ing, and 
 
 6. Boycott English-made goods, 
 
 37 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 Already the program is being extended to in- 
 clude non-payment of taxes. "VVitlidrawal of all 
 government servants will probably be attempted 
 later, with desertion from the army as a final 
 stage. It is all Gandhi's idea and it is Gandhi's 
 power that keeps the whole movement from turn- 
 ing to terrible violence. 
 
 "If there is violence it mil be because the gov- 
 ernment takes oppressive measures against us," 
 Gandhi continued. *' There is always danger in a 
 movement of this kind, but if we had not taken 
 this course there would have been trouble any- 
 how. We shall go ahead with what we have 
 mapped out, but if our present non-cooperation 
 fails, we shall next call out all government ser- 
 vants; and the next phase will be to call out the 
 soldiers. The amount of violence will depend on 
 what the government does rather than what we 
 do. 
 
 "One thing is certain — ^India is not going to 
 stop. We are trying to win now by non-violence ; 
 if this fails the consequence will be too terrible to 
 contemplate. Our people then will have lost all 
 faith in peaceful means. 
 
 "The movement might get out of my hands and 
 beyond my power but even with that in view and 
 even facing anarchy, it will be better than the 
 present emasculated, half -beaten condition of 
 India. The English have deprived us of all man- 
 liness, all self-respect, all self-reliance. They 
 
 38 
 
GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 
 
 have impoverished us in body, mind and soul. 
 They have broken our hearts." 
 
 Outside there was shouting. Gandhi's follow- 
 ers were tired of waiting; they wanted a fresh 
 glimpse of their hero. 
 
 I rose and bowed myself out of the room. As 
 I made my way to my carriage the crowd won- 
 dered what a white man had been doing in this 
 house of their saint. Some of them muttered 
 sullenly as I went by. 
 
 It was India muttering. It was the whole 
 East muttering. 
 
 And some day it will turn into a wild shouting 
 — a cry that will carry with it hope and fear and 
 anger and sorrow. The splendid, lovable young 
 Prince of "Wales heard it on his visit to this pass- 
 ing half empire of his. In two or three places it 
 became an audible, sullen warning cry: in others 
 it was but the low moaning of heart-broken 
 people. 
 
 Surely the prince learned a great deal on this 
 inspection tour — just as Gandhi learned a great 
 deal. They both must have felt keenly and fear- 
 somely the rising temper of great India. 
 
 Gandhi, I know, saw that his immediate task 
 was to keep his non-violent movement just that — 
 to keep angry men sane. He had seen a strong 
 wind of hate and determination throw the sparks 
 of his gentle flame of non-cooperation high in the 
 air. He had seen that common India is hardly 
 
 39 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 prepared for mass discipline and non-violent 
 mass revolt. 
 
 This knowledge will probably slow up bis re- 
 volt. In these early days of 1922 as I write he is 
 centering his work on the idea of a nation-wide, 
 effective, pacific boycott of foreign, and particu- 
 larly British-made, goods. To the millions this 
 means cotton goods. 
 
 In his fight to awaken British consciousness 
 through the pocketbooks of Manchester cotton 
 manufacturers, he has led the movement for a 
 return to the old hand looms. To-day in India 
 the real badge of patriotism and nationalism is 
 the wearing of the course, home-made cotton gar- 
 ments. Clothes of foreign cut or foreign goods 
 are a mark of disloyalty. 
 
 And so India stumbles on. Her best friends 
 know that the days ahead will not be gentle ones 
 for her. They know that should she succeed in 
 breaking the British hold on India that dark days 
 would follow. 
 
 But they also know that England can not give 
 much to India — that India must dream and hope 
 and fight to gain things that will be of real bene- 
 fit to her. They know that the very wishing and 
 struggling — the very doing and daring — ^the very 
 act of arousing a consciousness for independence 
 and a willingness to fight and die to gain it, goes 
 a long way in making common India ready and 
 worthy of that independence. 
 
 40 
 
GANDHI AND HIS INDIA 
 
 India did need England — ^but now for her own 
 national soul she needs the battle that it will take 
 to send England from her shores. She will gain 
 from the very fight more than England could 
 ever give. 
 
 In the end a new India will be bom — an India 
 that is of the East yet has the iron of the West 
 in her civilization. As she takes from the West 
 our genius for organization, our inventions, our 
 science and some of our ethics, she will give back 
 much of her priceless philosophies, her medita- 
 tion, her arts. 
 
 It will be a fair exchange. A better, finer East 
 will result — and a wiser, more tolerant West. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NEW EELIGIOUS NATIONALISM OF THE EAST 
 
 The stoey of the revolt against white domina- 
 tion by India 's three hundred million is the story 
 of the imrest of but one-third of the billion black, 
 brown and yellow men of the awakening East. 
 This that follows is the story of another discon- 
 tented third — of the great Mohammedan millions 
 scattered from the provinces of India, through 
 the historical passes of the Himalayas, across 
 Persia, Mesopotamia, Arabia, over the Nile and 
 into Egypt, and across the great stretches of 
 Northern Africa. 
 
 They too are tired of domination. They too 
 are tired of their subservience to Europe. They, 
 like the millions of ignorant, half -hungry Hindus 
 of India, want to run their own affairs their own 
 way, and they do not care if it is less efficient or 
 less modern or less "civilized" than the way of 
 their European masters and tutors. They are 
 willing to admit the superiority of much of west- 
 em civilization, but they want to be the choosers 
 themselves. 
 
 It is difficult for the outsider to realize the 
 depth and the vital consequences of this growing 
 
 42 
 
THE NEW EELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 
 
 racial and national consciousness of the sub- 
 merged peoples of the East. It is easy to wax 
 sentimental over the denied rights of small na- 
 tions and grow maudlin over such honeyed 
 phrases as self-determination, but demand for 
 self-government of the East is far from a senti- 
 mental thing — it is deep and lasting and its roots 
 are planted in hate. 
 
 I remember it was in a tiny nameless village 
 not so very far from Cairo that I first touched 
 hands with this growing hate of the common 
 Egyptian for the British. British officials had 
 told me that all this talk of revolt and nationalism 
 was the work of a few rattle-brained, loose- 
 tongued Egyptian lawyers and boy-students, and 
 that it had no real roots. So I took a camel trip 
 into the mud villages along the Nile to discover 
 first-hand whether it was only an exotic plant 
 thriving on hot air or if it did really go deep into 
 the ground. 
 
 Our lazy old camels shambled their way noise- 
 lessly through the narrow crooked lanes of the 
 village. Everything was baked mud and straw 
 and brown dirt. A half-dozen times we turned 
 corners and all but bumped into veilless women 
 carrying water-jugs on their heads. Each time 
 they fled in panic. Within their own little com- 
 munities they lived freely and sanely, but the in- 
 stant they encountered a stranger and particu- 
 larly a white man they ducked their heads behind 
 raised elbows like bashful children. 
 
 43 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 We drew up in front of the largest house in the 
 village and our camels folded themselves up joint 
 by joint and we slid off. A queer-looking individ- 
 ual, with cross eyes and a torn old khaki overcoat 
 that had seen war service, welcomed us to his city. 
 Apparently he was the village constable. He led 
 us to the corridor of the house and excusing him- 
 self for a moment, shuffled inside and in a half 
 minute brought out a kindly-looking patriarch 
 with a great white beard and very gentle, friendly 
 eyes. 
 
 The old fellow apologized profusely for not 
 knowing in advance of our intention to visit him, 
 and hospitably showed us the way into a large 
 square living-room with a divan at one end. Then 
 he gave an order to the constable and the cross- 
 eyed man retired. Apparently he sent him after 
 the rest of the village elders, for in a few minutes 
 they began to file into the room with their best 
 robes on. There must have been ten or a dozen 
 of them all told. 
 
 These were wonderful old men. The village 
 probably had a hmidred mud houses and these 
 dozen men were the wisest and most trusted men 
 of the community. Only one or two of them could 
 read or write, but they were as shrewd as Yan- 
 kee farmers. In their flowing colored robes and 
 brilliant headgear they looked as if they might 
 have stepped from some child's picture-book of 
 biblical tales. 
 
THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 
 
 They welcomed me with greatest courtesy, but 
 they were suspicious. I said something about 
 Egyptian politics, but they were evasive. ''We 
 have no interest in politics here in the country," 
 one old man on my left answered. "We care only 
 about how much it costs to live and how low the 
 price of our cotton is." 
 
 For fifteen minutes they talked of cotton and 
 explained how the whole life of Egypt was bound 
 up in it. When the price was high Egypt smiled 
 and was happy but when a slump came there was 
 no joy along the Nile. 
 
 "We are actually growing cotton at a loss at 
 the present price," one explained for the tenth 
 time. "Something must be done or we fellaheen 
 wm ..." 
 
 "Just why is it that you want the British to 
 go?" I cut in suddenly, turning to a squat old 
 fellow sitting near me who had remained silent 
 all during the cotton talk. 
 
 "We want Egypt for ourselves," he replied, 
 thrown for the moment off his guard. "I slave 
 and save and send my boy to school and then to 
 college. When he finishes he finds all the good 
 government jobs open only to the English, He 
 must take a small place or come back to this little 
 village and help me in the fields and irrigation 
 ditches. We want our own people to run our oa^ti 
 country. We are tired of outsiders; we are sick 
 of doing only what they want us to do. . „ ,. " 
 
 45 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 ''And you," I shot at another, ''what have you 
 against the British?" 
 
 "During the war they took our camels and our 
 donkeys and our grain and drafted our sons in 
 their labor armies and oppressed us just as they 
 mshed," he answered rapidly. I had broken the 
 crust at last and they all wanted to talk. "The 
 British showed us just what they were in the war. 
 We trusted them before that but never again will 
 we . . . " 
 
 A tall, raw-boned, bearded man in a rich blue 
 robe — a commanding figure in any gathering — 
 rose from his chair at this point and strode up in 
 front of me. He was excited and aroused, and if 
 ever a man told what was beating in his heart 
 it was he. 
 
 "Yes, but that isn't all," he exclaimed. "Look 
 at the cursed Capitulations — chains tied to the 
 hands and feet of poor Egypt. You all profit 
 from them. What chance have we for justice in 
 a case against a foreigner?" 
 
 I was silent although I could have answered 
 with the stock foreign apologies for these Capitu- 
 lations. They were an inheritance from the days 
 of Turkish rule and had been brought from Con- 
 stantinople by the Sick Man of Europe. They 
 were similar to the "extra territorial rights" 
 practised in China. Here in Egypt they exempted 
 foreigners from practically all taxation and all 
 control by Egyptian authority. If a foreigner 
 
 46 
 
THE NEW EELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 
 
 conunitted a crime he could be tried only by his 
 own consular court. If there was a civil dispute 
 between foreigners or a foreigner and a native 
 it was tried in the "mixed courts" with foreign 
 and native judges. These Capitulations were un- 
 questionably unjust in many ways. 
 
 "Even these terrible Capitulations are only 
 part of it," he went on. "So much do the Eng- 
 lish want our cotton that they won't let us plant 
 tobacco, and they discourage the growth of our 
 own industries and retard our commercial devel- 
 opment. We are tired of the English and we 
 want them all to leave. If they remain they must 
 act as our guests and not as our masters. We 
 want istiJclad — independence. ' ' 
 
 "But independence comes high," I suggested. 
 "Are you sure you are ready to pay the full 
 cost?" 
 
 "With our own lives and with the lives of our 
 sons . . . " 
 
 "And with the lives of our wives and of our 
 children," a man across the room interjected. 
 
 It was dramatic but these men were speaking 
 from their hearts. In frozen Siberia I had heard 
 peasants, dreaming of driving the Japanese from 
 their lands, speak with the same fervor and spirit. 
 This Egyptian word istiJclad was as magic a 
 word as the Eussian svohoda or the Korean 
 mansai — ^independence! liberty! freedom! 
 
 Here in this Nile village I was seeing the birth 
 
 47 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 of the spirit of nationalism, of something new for 
 this part of the world. For the first time in the 
 history of all Egypt the fellah was thinking of 
 other things besides family or village loyalty — or 
 a stomach full of rice. He had a national idea 
 and ideal for the first time. He wanted common 
 education and common chance. He wanted real 
 equality. He wanted class equality and color 
 equality and political equality. He was awaken- 
 ing. 
 
 **But you men forget what the conditions were 
 in the old days before the British came," I 
 argued. **I venture that some of you in this room 
 still bear the scars of the tax collector's whip or 
 the overseer's lash." 
 
 "Yes," one old fellow answered, "but no one 
 is ever going to oppress us in the future. We are 
 sick and tired of being under-dogs." 
 
 For the forty years the British had been in 
 Egypt they had neglected lower education and 
 spent Egyptian money only for higher schools to 
 train their clerks and educate an overdose of 
 lawyers. But there had been no great outcry 
 from the Egyptians. 
 
 Now it was different. Now there was a nation- 
 al appeal for universal education. There was an 
 awakened interest among rich and educated 
 Egyptians for lowly Egypt. There was a new 
 national consciousness. 
 
 This from a mud village along the sleepy old 
 
THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 
 
 Nile. It was the voice of Egypt and these men 
 were talking for millions of simple farmer folks. 
 In other villages and in the big cities I heard 
 echoes of the same words. 
 
 It wasn't a question of what was best or right 
 or fair — ^it was the question of a national impulse. 
 These people wanted to run their own affairs 
 their own way. It was a national impulse that 
 gained a driving force from the resentment of 
 one of the strongest religions in the world — 
 Islamism. Fundamentally Islamism is opposed 
 to Christian Europe and this new idea of Eastern 
 Nationalism only enlarges this gulf between the 
 two great groups. 
 
 Of the thirteen million Egyptians probably 
 ninety per cent, belong to the two or three differ- 
 ent branches of the Moslem faith. There are 
 some eight hundred thousand Copts — the relics 
 of a very early Christian faith — ^but just as in 
 India where the Hindus and Moslems have joined 
 together, so here in Egypt the Moslems and most 
 of the Christians are now united in their fight 
 for independence. 
 
 During the war there was no trouble of conse- 
 quence. Egypt was loyal, filled her quotas, raised 
 great labor corps, and stuck. With victory for 
 the British came an immediate demand for the 
 recognition of Egyptian independence. Zaghlul 
 Pasha, the most influential Egyptian politician, 
 asked for permission to take a delegation to Paris 
 
 49 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 to press Egyptian claims before the coming Peace 
 Conference. This was November 13, 1918, and 
 already they call it Independence Day in Egypt. 
 
 Instead of landing in Paris, Zaghlul, Egypt's 
 hero, eventually was taken to Malta. A terrible 
 flare of revolt and bloodshed and race hatred 
 was the result. Schools struck, government 
 clerks refused to work, and the whole country 
 dropped like a plummet into a bitter boycott 
 against everything that had to do with the British 
 or their government of Egypt. 
 
 Friends hearing where Zaghlul had been taken, 
 went to his home and told his wife that he was in 
 Malta and safe. 
 
 "What do I care about news of my husband," 
 she is said to have cried. "I care only for Egypt, 
 As long as she is in slavery I have no interest in 
 my husband's health or his whereabouts." 
 
 And this was in the dying East where women 
 still hide their faces behind veils and hide their 
 lives and hearts behind the eternal black curtains 
 of outworn traditions and cruel superstitions. 
 
 Children, schoolboys and girls, flocked through 
 the streets, screaming their words "Vehvia 
 istiklad" — Long live Independence! For four 
 months there was not a school in Egypt open. 
 Ignorant cotton farmers, like the fellaheen in the 
 Nile villages I had visited, burned buildings and 
 bridges and tore up railroad tracks. Many of 
 them had only their bare hands to fight with, but 
 
 50 
 
THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 
 
 they foiiglit with them. Finally the revolt was 
 put down with a considerable loss of life, and 
 Zaghlul with his Egyptian delegation was even- 
 tually permitted to go to Paris. 
 
 Lord Milner, at that time colonial secretary, 
 came to Egypt to make a careful investigation. 
 All Egypt boycotted him, saying that their only 
 spokesman was Zaghlul and that he must deal 
 with him. Eventually the two men were brought 
 together and a plan for sweeping changes in the 
 government of Egypt arrived at. 
 
 But it was not to be. In the spring of 1921 Lord 
 Milner was eased out of the British Cabinet and 
 all that he had done toward a fair and satisfactory 
 Egyptian settlement upset. And so again the 
 fires of revolt burn up and down the great Nile 
 Valley. Again there are Egyptian mobs and 
 again British Tommies are ordered to fire into 
 them. 
 
 Zaghlul Pasha, the hero of millions of common 
 Egyptians, arrested and spirited away, is held in 
 exile in Ceylon, but his spirit still remains the 
 inspiration for Egypt. 
 
 ''If the proposals for Egyptian independence 
 fall through we shall use every weapon of bitter 
 protest and resistance we can find," one of the 
 leaders in Cairo explained to me. "We refuse 
 to be ruled longer against our will. We are in 
 no mood to be fooled with. Ninety per cent, of 
 our people are standing shoulder to shoulder in 
 
 51 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 these demands for independence, and if Britain 
 refuse to recognize us then we shall start fresh 
 revolts. They may for the present take only the 
 form of intense passive resistance after the man- 
 ner of Gandhi and India, but violence may break 
 out at any time. There is a small group here, 
 mostly rich men, who want England to retain her 
 grip on Egypt, but they are more than offset by 
 the extreme radicals who want England ta leave, 
 lock, stock and barrel." 
 
 This is nationalism, but it is nationalism made 
 of the bricks of race feelings and bound together 
 by the mortor of Moslem religion. It is difficult 
 for the western world to realize that nationalism 
 is a new thing for the East. There, for thousands 
 of years, the loyalty has been to family and vil- 
 lage and tribe and religion — and possibly to king. 
 But until now there has never been that pride of 
 country and flag that the West has developed. 
 
 During the war Moslem fought against Moslem, 
 and the German-conceived idea of a great Holy 
 "War of Moslems against Christians fell flat like 
 the rest of Germany's dreams. The Arabs 
 around the holy Moslem city of Mecca followed 
 their King Feisal and fought alongside British 
 Tommies against the German-led Turks. When 
 British planes dropped propaganda pamphlets 
 within the crumbling walls of old Jerusalem, 
 Moslems thought Britain meant her high-sound- 
 ing phrases of self-determination — and these 
 
 52 
 
THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 
 
 Moslem desertions helped materially to bring 
 General AUenby victory. Since then they have 
 had a large dose of the white man of Europe, and 
 now they are dreaming of the good old days when 
 they had only the indolent, inefficient Sick Man 
 of Turkey to bother them. 
 
 I spent an hour or two in a tiny harem — ^which 
 sounds naughty and romantic, but which in this 
 instance was only a small one-roomed building 
 alongside the beautiful Mosque of Omar, on the 
 site of King Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. 
 Two old sheiks met me there and we squatted 
 cross-legged on the rug and talked of religion and 
 politics and Turkey and England and white men 
 and things in general. In addition to these two 
 rich and prominent elders, a pair of old fellows 
 who worked around the mosque came in and 
 squatted alongside of us — the real social democ- 
 racy of Mohammedanism. One made sweet, thick 
 Turkish coffee over a charcoal brazier and served 
 us ; and then drank out of the same little bowl. 
 
 "Before the war we used to pray to God to rid 
 us of the Turks, and now we pray God to rid us 
 of the English,'' one of the elders said in a soft 
 low voice. *'The British promised us they would 
 free us from the Turks and help us establish a 
 great Arabic state. We Moslems are fully seventy 
 per cent, of the people here, but instead of help- 
 ing us establish an Arabic state they are helping 
 a Zionist minority of fifteen per cent, to rule us. 
 
 53 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 *'We will never suffer that," he went on. 
 **What we really want is a confederation of all 
 the Moslem states of old Turkey. We can work 
 out our own affairs then. We can have our reli- 
 gion and our holy shrines and yet we can have 
 nationalism too," 
 
 "And about Kernel Pasha?" I asked, referring 
 to the dashing young Turk who refused to recog- 
 nize the Turkish peace treaty. 
 
 The elder hesitated for a moment. "Of course 
 we all believe in him now," he answered. "He's 
 fighting our battles against Europe." They, like 
 the rest of the great, sleepy East, were tired of 
 Europe's interference. They wanted the West 
 to leave them alone. 
 
 While in Palestine it may not be fundamentally 
 a racial or color question or a religious question, 
 yet it certainly has to do with the people of that 
 district running their own affairs. The fact that 
 the immediate peace and prosperity of the com- 
 munity probably depends on the presence of Brit- 
 ish troops and Pax Britainiac, does not at all 
 affect the fundamental proposition. The people 
 native there simply want to govern themselves. 
 
 Just as in India and Egypt where different 
 religions and sects have combined to gain home 
 rule, so there in those sun-lit holy hills of Judas 
 one finds the Christians, numbering some fifteen 
 per cent., combined with the Moslems, numbering 
 certainly seventy per cent,, in a Moslem-Christian 
 
 54 
 
THE NEW EELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 
 
 League. It is a combination to oppose the grow- 
 ing strength of the Zionists who — within Pales- 
 tine — have no real power without the support and 
 drive of the British Government and the British 
 troops. 
 
 The white man has interfered again — and 
 again he has gained only deep hatred as a reward. 
 Go east across the Jordan and hit the long dusty 
 trail to that ancient land between the Tigris and 
 the Euphrates. Here Europe, searching for oil 
 and new cotton-fields and undeveloped markets, 
 has driven deep her stakes of influence — and the 
 farmers of the great valley and the silent Arabs 
 of the deserts have said ''NO! we don't want you 
 or your governments or your western ways." 
 
 Nationalism is something brand-new here. too. 
 There is only the nationalism of the tent and the 
 flock. There is almost as much difference be- 
 tween these various Arab tribes as between the 
 several peoples of Europe. 
 
 Roughly speaking, there are three million peo- 
 ple in Mesopotamia, divided up in six great tribes 
 and some fifty smaller ones. But they are all 
 men of one color and pretty much of one religion, 
 and they are all against British interference. 
 
 It is a romantic gamble — this billion dollar 
 gamble that England is taking in Mesopotamia. 
 After all, the oil that is to pay the piper is of un- 
 certain quantity, but if it flows full and black a 
 pipe line stretched from the oil fields to AUepo 
 
 55 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OP THE EAST 
 
 on the Mediterranean would only be a stretch of 
 some five hundred fifty miles — an eight-inch pipe 
 line, eighteen inches under the ground, with only 
 two great pumping stations, would do it. And 
 the British fleet would he two or three weeks 
 nearer its precious fuel supply. And control of 
 Arabia, too, would guarantee a short-cut railroad 
 route from the sea to India. 
 
 But all this is mere speculation, while the deep 
 growing hate of the East and the Near East is 
 anything but speculation. As I have tried to 
 make clear, the Moslems offer the closest bound, 
 most virile organization against the West. There 
 are some three hundred million of them scattered 
 through Southern Asia and across Arabia and 
 Northern Africa. 
 
 They have no great central organization or di- 
 recting force, but they have a deep-rooted reli- 
 gion that lends itself easily to belligerency. Dur- 
 ing the war the Central Powers attempted to turn 
 it into a Holy War against the AlKes, but failed 
 because the resentment against Europe was only 
 beginning to seethe and because in many districts 
 the native Moslems were bitter against their own 
 Moslem masters — ^to wit, the Arab Moslems 
 against the Turkish Moslems. 
 
 With the war ended and the European nations 
 splitting the spoils of the Near East among them- 
 selves, the Moslems turned against Europe. At 
 present all throughout the Moslem countries 
 
 56 
 
THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 
 
 there has been great ranting and waving of arms 
 over what is termed the Khalifat injustices. 
 
 This is especially true in India where the sev- 
 enty million Moslems have been whipped into a 
 fury of religious hate by their leaders over what 
 they believe to be the grave injustices done by 
 England against them. 
 
 Mohammed Ali, who shares with his fighting 
 brother, Shaukat Ali, the distinction of leading 
 Indian Mohammedans, talked with me a long time 
 about all these questions. This man, Mohammed 
 Ali, is a tremendous big, thick chested, black 
 bearded man, who is frankly out to break Britain 
 and gain independence for India at any cost. 
 Late in 1921 these brothers were thrown in jail 
 charged with preaching sedition among Indian 
 troops. 
 
 **We are body and soul in the revolution to free 
 India from Britain," he screamed at me when 
 I talked to him. "We are out to abolish the pres- 
 ent system of British government in India, law 
 or no law. We are with Mahatma Gandhi and his 
 non-violent non-cooperating revolt, but if non-co- 
 operation fails then we seventy million Moslems 
 are allowed by our faith but two courses — we 
 must either migrate from the country or declare 
 a holy war against the British." 
 
 Mohammed thundered away about what India 
 had suffered from British rule and gently I led 
 him back on the track. * 'What's all this Khalifat 
 business r' I asked. 
 
 57 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 ''When England declared war against Tur- 
 key," he explained, ''she announced to India that 
 the war involved no religious question and the 
 holy places of Islam, Mecca, Jerusalem, etc., 
 would remain free as long as Turkey did not in- 
 terfere with pilgrims visiting these holy places. 
 Turkey never stopped pilgrims, yet to-day despite 
 repeated pledges, all the holy places of Islam are 
 directly or indirectly in British hands. 
 
 * ' The Turkish treaty aims at the complete elim- 
 ination of the Khalifat, which is the church or- 
 ganization with a head who enjoys temporal 
 power. The sultan has for years been the ac- 
 cepted head. 
 
 ''During the World War thousands of Indian 
 Moslems fought for the British on the definite 
 pledge from Lloyd George that we were not fight- 
 ing Turkey to deprive her of Constantinople or 
 the rich and renowned lands of Thrace, which are 
 predominantly Turkish in race. 
 
 "All these pledges have been violated; the holy 
 places have been attacked ; the sultan detained in 
 Constantinople as a sort of hostage ; Thrace and 
 Smyrna, the richest parts of Asia Minor, handed 
 to Greece, while over the holy places of Islam, 
 mandates have been established which neither 
 Palestine, Syria or Mesopotamia want. England 
 has been to blame for all this and only by restor- 
 ing the power of the head of the Moslem faith will 
 Indian Mohammedans be satisfied. Let all the 
 
 58 
 
THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 
 
 different districts of Asia Minor form their own 
 governments with as much autonomy as they 
 wish, all to fuse in some federation with the 
 Turks. Until England rights these Khalifat 
 wrongs and gives India home rule, there will be 
 no truce. We will accept no compromise." 
 
 But these are fine colorful words. They are 
 words to thrill Moslems and to make them hate 
 the British. I talked with many educated and 
 intelligent Moslem leaders about them. A few 
 of these leaders freely admitted they were just 
 words — words to stir up the ignorant common 
 Mohammedan against foreign domination. 
 
 Which is to say they were using religion as a 
 political weapon. Religion comes as the last of 
 all the great surges that make men die in num- 
 bers — struggle for existence, race, nationalism 
 and religion. Yet religious wars have been and 
 can be as bitter and desperate as any other 
 struggle. 
 
 After all, religion is deep — and nowhere are its 
 roots so firmly implanted as in the backwaters 
 of civilization. It was in the Khyber Pass — the 
 great gateway between Central Asia and India — 
 that this struck me most forcibly. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon and the cool of the 
 approaching evening was keeping pace with the 
 lengthening shadows of the great bare mountains. 
 Every rock and shrub was reeking with romance. 
 It was the Pass of the Ages. Through its tor- 
 
 59 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 turous fifty miles of narrow road the Arions — the 
 white men from some early cradle of civilization 
 — had fought their way southward into the rich 
 plains of India. They had stayed on as rulers, 
 and slowly the blazing Indian sun had browned 
 them. To-day, ten or fifteen thousand years 
 later, they are still the ruling caste of all India — 
 the Brahmins. And hundreds of years later the 
 hard riding Eastern nomads, thirsty for conquest 
 and loot, had whipped their shaggy ponies 
 through this same Pass of Romance. 
 
 No other single spot in the world could tell 
 such tales of wonder and war and adventure and 
 romance; its deep sides still echo these tales. 
 And Romance and Adventure still live there. 
 
 This day the sun was just dropping and eve- 
 ning now would come on with a rush. The foot 
 road and the motor road that for miles run one 
 above the other on the mountain sides, like par- 
 allel snakes, drew together and now ran side by 
 side. A tired dusty camel-train choked the soft 
 foot road. They were carrying rugs from Bok- 
 hara and fruits from Afghanistan and Romance 
 from Back There. Suddenly they halted and the 
 camel men silently spread out their worn and 
 dusty prayer-rugs and began their evening devo- 
 tion. 
 
 These were men — ^men of the Old East — tired 
 men, brave men, men of different standards of 
 conduct and life from us of the "West. They 
 
 60 
 
THE NEW EELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 
 
 wouldn't have hesitated in the least to have 
 robbed me or killed me — and here they were on 
 their knees before the dropping sun. Five times 
 each day they unrolled their prayer-mats. This 
 is the religion that to-day stands like a citadel 
 against the interference of the West. Three hun- 
 dred million obey its sacred orders. 
 
 That night I was chatting with a British offi- 
 cial in his office at Peshawr. He was telling me 
 about the two million Moslem tribesmen who live 
 in tiny villages perched like eagles' nests among 
 these great hills of the Himalayas of Northwest- 
 em India. He explained how backward they 
 were, how brutal their civilization ; he told about 
 the family and village blood feuds that are passed 
 down from one generation to another sometimes 
 resulting in the extermination of whole families. 
 
 He explained, too, how these two million tribes- 
 men, with their four hundred thousand men, all 
 armed with rifles of some sort, and all fighters 
 by instinct and wish, are the most difficult mili- 
 tary problem that the British Government in 
 India has had to solve in the past. Religious al- 
 most to a degree of fanaticism, they have always 
 been at the call of their half -mad mullahs — Mos- 
 lem leaders — as well as being amenable to money 
 and religious influences from their Moslem broth- 
 ers in the great backward country of Afghanis- 
 tan, lying to their north and west, separating 
 India from Eussia proper. 
 
 61 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 These different tribes, with their tribal hates 
 and jealousies, have been kept in hand through 
 a liberal use of money and the British Indian 
 Army. Peace here has been bought. In the past 
 money has had a great deal to do with keeping 
 peace with Afghanistan, as well. For almost a 
 half-century the great duel for the control of 
 Afghanistan went on between the British and 
 the Russians. By the power of persuasion and 
 the threat of invasion and the liberal use of money 
 the amir of Afghanistan had been kept under the 
 spell of the British political agents. 
 
 In 1876 the old amir consolidated the country 
 following an Afghan war. Toward the end of 
 the last century he died and his son succeeded 
 him. As in the case of his father, the British paid 
 him for his loyalty and for continuing to act as 
 a buffer state between India and Russia. 
 
 During the Great War the amir flirted with 
 German and Turkish missions, but all in all 
 played fair with the British. He could handle his 
 foreign affairs fairly satisfactorily, but when it 
 came to palace intrigues and family quarrels he 
 wasn't quite man enough. 
 
 His favorite wife, the mother of his third son, 
 jealous of her waning power, engineered a con- 
 spiracy with her son, which ended with the old 
 amir getting the poisoned coffee handed to him. 
 A brother of the old amir started to take a hand 
 then, but the third son grabbed the capital, 
 
 62 
 
THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 
 
 Kabul, captured the army and the treasury and 
 throwing the uncle and one of his own brothers 
 into prison, declared himself amir. This hap- 
 pened in February, 1919, and is interesting only 
 as it gives a sidelight on the adventure of politics 
 in Afghan. 
 
 The young amir profited by all the anti-British 
 sentiment and believing that the revolt in India 
 was certain, started a little private war of his 
 own against the British. Our Khyber Pass, 
 highly amused, was the scene. 
 
 The British were not worried by the amir's 
 stage army, but they were worried over what the 
 four hundred thousand armed Moslem tribesmen 
 of this Northwest Frontier would do if the thing 
 was put on a religious basis and a Holy War 
 declared. So a peace was hurried up ; money was 
 passed and a settlement patched up. 
 
 But the four hundred thousand tribesmen, with 
 their fighting religion, still squat in the doorway 
 of their tiny walled villages or, slipping out into 
 the sunshine, take pot shots at British Tommies 
 from behind friendly boulders. As long as Bri- 
 tain remains in India these tribesmen will be a 
 growing menace. They are a strange breed and 
 they bring strange men into the world. 
 
 This night as I sat with the British official one 
 of his Moslem soldiers came into the office and 
 announced that a boy was outside and wanted to 
 see him. The Englishman ordered him to be ad- 
 
 63 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 mitted and suggested that I wait and see what it 
 was all about. 
 
 In a minute or two a little fellow of about seven 
 or eight years stepped into the room and without 
 the degrading subservience one sees throughout 
 all Hindu districts, boldly stepped forward and 
 without the slightest embarrassment walked to 
 the official's desk. 
 
 **Did you send for me, sir?" he asked directly. 
 
 "Yes. Your father was an Indian soldier and 
 died in service. I have five hundred rupees that 
 the great British Government has sent me to give 
 to you, his only son, as reward for his service. 
 Do you want this money now?" 
 
 The boy hesitated. He had walked a dozen 
 miles along the mountain trails in answer to this 
 summons from the great white official. It was 
 probably the first time he had ever been that far 
 away from his tiny village with its mud wall and 
 its adobe tower, where every one gathered at 
 night for defense against a possible raid from 
 some enemy village. 
 
 He'd never seen a picture-show — ^he didn't 
 know there was such a thing. Life was very real 
 and very hard for him, and often very bitter. 
 The civilization that was molding him was a civ- 
 ilization of thousands of years ago — and one of 
 bleak hills and biting days. It was a poor civili- 
 zation compared to our own electric-heated, self- 
 starter, rubber-tired civilization. 
 
 64 
 
THE NEW RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 
 
 "Shall I keep the money for you or do you 
 want me to give it to you now?" the wise and 
 kindly official asked again. 
 
 *'You keep it for me," this seven-year-old hill- 
 boy finally replied. "If you give it to me either 
 my relatives will steal it, or my mother will take 
 it from me and spend it on her new husband. 
 You keep it for me and some day when I am a 
 man I will buy a rifle with it. ' ' 
 
 I smiled when I thought of the candy and the 
 red balloons and toy street-cars my own little boy 
 would havef demanded, had he, of the rubber- 
 tired age, been offered money. Then a lump came 
 into my throat when I thought of this splendid 
 half-man going back on foot to his filthy mud 
 village to dream there of the day when he would 
 be old enough to go again to the white official 
 and get his money and buy a contraband rifle and 
 settle some ancient family quarrel — or a new 
 quarrel of race and country and religion a million 
 times greater. 
 
 I wondered which quarrel this boy of seven 
 would be busy with at seventeen. 
 
CHAPTEE III 
 
 YOUNG CHINA 
 
 I HOLD that it is something to discover that an 
 ancient race is really young and virile after all, 
 and that a nation that had been thought back- 
 ward, decadent and inferior has greatness and 
 majesty and humanness. 
 
 This, to me, is China — Young China — New 
 China. And this that follows is the story of the 
 tremendous revolution, the great renaissance, 
 the awakening of the millions of common Chinese 
 from the sleep and superstitions of centuries. 
 
 Four hundred million of them there are. 
 That's four times as many people as we have in 
 America — and a good deal more than the total 
 population of all Europe, excluding Russia — and 
 within one hundred and fifty million of the white 
 population of the entire world. 
 
 Theirs is the oldest civilization; they are the 
 greatest propagandists; they are the most suc- 
 cessful colonizers; they are the most industrious 
 of the nations ; they are the master egoists ; they 
 have the greatest power of resistance — and they 
 are the champion smilers. 
 
 Down in the Shanghai country I saw a Chinese 
 
 66 
 
YOUNG CHINA 
 
 version of our own Uncle Tom's Cabin. The 
 man who transported it across the Pacific was 
 not bound down by any of the ordinary ethics of 
 authorship. The colored folks were kept intact 
 and played by Chinese actors without burnt cork, 
 but Simon Legree was none other than Yaman- 
 iato Nakagawa, a Japanese slave driver imported 
 direct from the rice paddies. 
 
 This was where the plot thickened. Yaman- 
 iato, the Simon Legree of the piece, gave old 
 Chinese Uncle Tom a terrible whaling and then 
 practised on the other slaves. The audience, busy 
 with munching their watermelon seeds, didn't 
 mind it the least until they discovered that these 
 coolies were getting just what they deserved for 
 permitting the Japanese to come into their coun- 
 try and bully them. Then they howled in good 
 Chinese: "Kill him! Throw him out!" 
 
 The Japanese menace had hit home. It was 
 evident that the only thing to do was for all China 
 to go on an anti-Japanese strike and force the 
 little tan cousins to go back to their island. 
 
 Propaganda, of course! I mentioned above 
 that China was the greatest propagandist in the 
 world. Consider what she has done to the visitors 
 living within her borders. 
 
 There are some forty thousand or fifty thou- 
 sand foreigners residing in China and every one 
 of them stands ready to make any sacrifice to the 
 end that China may be preserved from the ambi- 
 
 67 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 tions of Japan. Let an innocent traveler show 
 the slightest sympathy for Japan's point of view 
 and the wrath of the gods falls on his head. A 
 hundred resident foreigners take his comment as 
 a personal affront. Long before he passes half- 
 way throngh the treaty ports he's either been 
 branded *'N. G." by his own conntrymen or else 
 he's been converted into a Chinese booster, and 
 has joined the long list of volunteers who stand 
 ready at any moment to give their lives for China 
 against Japan. 
 
 Nothing wrong with that only the Chinese 
 themselves are far too philosophic to worry them- 
 selves sick over such a question as Japanese in- 
 trusion when everything is going to come out all 
 right in the end. Simply outwait them — or play 
 one against the other or let the thing drag. Why 
 rush out and get shot up? Smile your way 
 through — and let the other fellow stop the bullets. 
 
 After all, he is a tremendously human and in- 
 teresting and wise fellow, this smiling Chinese. 
 There's an old saying that a smile will take yon 
 further in China than anywhere else in the world. 
 I believe it — and a smile takes the Chinese fur- 
 ther, too. It has taken them ten thousand years 
 down the long trail and will take them another 
 ten thousand. 
 
 But our friend One Lung not only smiles but he 
 works. He is industrious beyond belief. He 
 :works harder and longer and more consistently 
 
YOUNG CHINA 
 
 and for less pay than any one else in the world. 
 Many of ns think of the Japanese as being master 
 toilers : they would starve in China. Incidentally, 
 Japan has her owti exclusion law against Chinese, 
 and during the World War when a Japanese mine 
 owner imported some twenty-seven thousand 
 Chinese laborers the Japanese Government 
 turned them around and waltzed them right back 
 to the continent. 
 
 And they really are the greatest egoists in the 
 world. Certainly three hundred and ninety-nine 
 million out of the four hundred million consider 
 their culture and civilization with its five thou- 
 sand years of history as the beginning and end of 
 all things. A Chinese houseboy "knows he is 
 superior in every way to the foreigner whom he 
 serves. The houseboy can cheat him and not be 
 found out; he can loaf on the job and not be fired; 
 he can divide up among four Chinese men the 
 house work that one servant could easily do. And 
 the same idea goes right on up through the dif- 
 ferent social classes. 
 
 What I'm trying to say is that fundamentally 
 China believes in herself. Way down deep in the 
 heart of the Chinese people there is no great fear 
 regarding Japan or any one else. They do, of 
 course, fear for the immediate future, but basic- 
 ally and fundamentally they believe themselves 
 vastly superior to any race. 
 
 I took a ten-day journey with a high Chinese 
 
 69 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 railroad official. This man held two degrees 
 from American universities and he was about as 
 thoroughly Americanized as any Oriental ever 
 becomes — which is about ten per cent. 
 
 We talked and we sparred and we played poker 
 with words and finally the last day we were 
 together I told him it was my opinion that China 
 would have to help herself, that nobody was going 
 to do much for her. It was all right to ask for 
 advice, and good will, and all that sort of thing, 
 but in the end she would have to take care of her 
 Japanese menace herself. 
 
 ''Well," he said slowly after a pause, *'we are 
 not worrying so much about Japan as you may 
 think. Of course things are very discouraging 
 now, but we are awakening the consciousness of 
 China and for the first time instilling an idea of 
 nationalism and patriotism into our common peo- 
 ple — and we are doing it through preaching Jap- 
 anese hatred. We'll get along all right. It 
 may take us fifty or a hundred or possibly several 
 hundred years, but in the end our superiority will 
 tell and our civilization will dominate theirs." 
 
 That 's China ! Here is Japan bribing govern- 
 ment officials, shoving her wishes down Chinese 
 throats mth bayonets, but deep in their celestial 
 hearts not one drop of real fear. The corrupted 
 Peking officials who would sell China to the high- 
 est bidder and who may at this very moment be 
 taking their orders from the Japanese minister, 
 
 70 
 
YOUNG CHINA 
 
 believe Japanese domination is only a temporary 
 affair. 
 
 Maybe tbey are right. China understands the 
 expensive lesson that Germany has been taught 
 — while Japan has only begun to learn it. And 
 China knows that if she waits long enough she can 
 outwait even Japan. She believes that the whirl- 
 igig of time may bring forth some champion who 
 will fight her battles for her, perchance uncon- 
 sciously, just as the Allies fought her battles 
 against Germany. In her five thousand years 
 she 's seen young champions by the score — Greece, 
 Eome, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Germany, all of 
 them in turn — conquer and dominate for a while 
 and then go down. And while others have been 
 fighting and struggling she has quietly and peace- 
 fully penetrated all of Eastern Asia. 
 
 No colonizer in the world compares with her. 
 Her people are slipping into Siberia by the thou- 
 sands; at first they are the hewers of wood and 
 the drawers of water — then they become the small 
 retailers — then the wholesalers — then the big 
 merchants. Everywhere throughout Eastern 
 Asia and in many of the islands of the sea it has 
 come about in this way — the world fights while 
 China trades and colonizes and propagates. 
 
 They work like a great family of ants attack- 
 ing a sleeping enemy; slowly, methodically, end- 
 lessly they creep over their victim. Nothing 
 daunts them — nothing can stop them. They're 
 
 71 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 a superior race. They're the only race in the his- 
 tory of the world that has ever completely ab- 
 sorbed the Jews. It's a clean record. 
 
 Some two thousand years ago there was a large 
 Jewish colony in China. To-day every trace of 
 it is gone. Great China slowly, patiently digested 
 it. 
 
 Patience — ^probably that describes China bet- 
 ter than any other single word. It's the keynote 
 to their home life, their national life and the very 
 pass word to their foreign policies — ^patience and 
 a certain deep-rooted sense of justice and a 
 knowledge that things that are not settled rightly 
 are never really settled. 
 
 For fifty centuries these two things — ^patience 
 and justice — and the power of ''face" have run 
 China. Chinese "face" — class, or standing or the 
 respect of your fellow man — is the strangest 
 moral code in the world and one of the most effec- 
 tive. China has never had written laws as we 
 understand them. In many ways her commu- 
 nities have been the only examples in the world 
 of pure anarchial states. They've simply run 
 themselves. The central government has let the 
 provinces go ahead unheeded as long as the 
 provincial governors have "come across" regu- 
 larly with the taxes. The governors, in turn, 
 haven't bothered the district magistrates so long 
 as they passed the tribute on up ; and the district 
 magistrates have never interfered with the peo- 
 
 72 
 
YOUNG CHINA 
 
 pie at all so long as they stood quietly while the 
 taxes were tied on them. It's all amounted to the 
 simple formula of the people saying, ''You leave 
 us alone and we'll pay you taxes," while the 
 rulers have echoed back, "You pay taxes and 
 we'll leave you alone." 
 
 And within the individual communities the 
 great moral law that 's kept them going peacefully 
 and securely has been the law of "face." Con- 
 fucius taught an inverted Golden Rule that said, 
 "Do not do to others what you would not have 
 them do to you," and the unwritten code tacked 
 on to this "or you'll lose face." 
 
 A foreigner's banking partner would hesitate 
 to indulge himself in too sharp a deal because if 
 he were found out he would lose "face" among 
 his fellows. A foreigner's houseboy doesn't dare 
 knock down beyond his ten per cent., because if 
 he is caught and discharged he 'd lose a great deal 
 of "face" among other houseboys. A rich man 
 must treat wife No. 2 according to custom or he 
 loses "face" tremendously. 
 
 China, by and large, is run on "face," and it 
 works out vastly better than it sounds, for, fun- 
 damentally, the Chinese are an honest and up- 
 right people. They look you straight in the eye — 
 and while they don't tell you to go to blazes they 
 do smile straight at you. They're superior — 
 they're not the downtrodden, worthless, spine- 
 less people the story-books say they are. They 
 
 73 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 couldn't have lived and resisted pressure as they 
 have had there not been something fine and great 
 and distinctly superior about them. 
 
 A young American missionary named Jimmy 
 Hunter, who used to be champion quarter miler 
 of the University of Illinois, took me for a week's 
 trip into the district to the north of Peking to 
 study the common country folk. All one needs 
 to do is to go five miles away from the railway 
 or from a treaty city to drop back five thousand 
 years into the very center of ancient China. 
 
 We had a springless Peking cart drawn by a 
 shaggy Mongolian pony, and we split our time 
 between sitting on the shaft of the cart and rid- 
 ing on our two undersized donkeys. It was in the 
 very early spring; the snow had gone but April's 
 green brush had not yet painted out the winter's 
 brown. 
 
 We had nowhere particular to go and nothing 
 particular to see. We just jogged our way 
 through deep-rutted mud roads from one old 
 walled village to another. At night we would 
 stop in the village inn and after our supper wan- 
 der on "down-town" and into the grocery store 
 for an hour's gossip. 
 
 Dried peppers and rows of onions and knick- 
 knacks hung from the low ceiling. Usually there 
 was a counter and behind it, next the wall, open 
 bins for sugar and rice and ground wheat and 
 spices. Most of the purchases were for a penny 
 
 74 
 
YOUNG CHINA 
 
 or twos' worth of stuff — China is very poor and 
 the margin of existence is a pathetically narrow 
 one. The store was the village club and all the 
 old fellows with their thick skirts and padded 
 short jackets wandered on down-town just as they 
 do every^\^here else in the world. 
 
 It was like being back home. The loafer, the 
 joker, the alarmist, the skinflint and the village 
 drunkard, were all taken right out of the picture 
 from the General Store in the little old home 
 town. You could pick them out as soon as they 
 came in. 
 
 I think I enjoyed those hours sitting around on 
 a home-made chair propped against the wall talk- 
 ing through a sympathetic interpreter to common 
 China, as much as I have enjoyed any hours in 
 my life. We talked about crops and they told 
 me that most of the farmers around there — they 
 all live in the villages and go out to their bits of 
 ground to work — owned on an average of two 
 acres each and rented an acre or two more from 
 old Chang Tong, and that they had to give half 
 they raised as rent. 
 
 Crops had been poor that year, they went on. 
 Some parts of China had suffered from famine 
 and thousands had died. Coolies somewhere 
 about were always dying, but that couldn't be 
 helped. 
 
 They weren't worrying much about the Japan- 
 ese out here in those villages; all they wanted 
 
 75 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 was to be left to run their own affairs as they had 
 been doing for five or ten thousand years. Some 
 of the young men of the villages attended Peking 
 schools and when they came back during their va- 
 cations they told how terrible the Japanese were 
 and said that the Chinese must not buy or use 
 anything the Japanese made. If they couldn't 
 find what they needed in Chinese made goods, 
 then they should buy American goods. America 
 was good to them in a hundred ways, they said: 
 America gave them schools and universities and 
 doctors and hospitals and new ideas of govern- 
 ment and new national ideals. 
 
 It was the West but particularly America 
 creeping in slowly but surely. And China needs 
 America. That was the one great discovery I 
 made in this little invasion of common China — 
 that and the fact that these were ordinary human 
 beings who suffered from ordinary ills and 
 dreamed ordinary dreams and wanted to get 
 ahead so that their sons and their families could 
 have a little better place in the community. 
 
 They needed our high standards of living and 
 our squarer dealing in the treatment of women, 
 and a little of the brotherhood of all men that 
 Christ taught. They needed to be shown that 
 the scale of living and the ethics of living of the 
 best of America would make them happier and 
 better. 
 
 They needed new ideas of sanitation and health 
 
 76 
 
YOUNG CHINA 
 
 and education and modern agricultural methods. 
 They needed complete modernization of their 
 practical affairs. 
 
 * 'What's worrying me/' Jimmy Hunter said 
 one morning as we passed a dozen *' razor-backs " 
 that were half head and half legs, "is how I can 
 improve the swine in this part of the country. 
 These pigs are nothing but bone and bristle — 
 what they need is some good American stock 
 crossed with theirs." 
 
 It was the new type of American missionary in 
 China talking. There's a saying over here now 
 that it's harder to be sent to China as a mission- 
 ary than to get into the United States Consular 
 Service. I don't vouch for that but I do vouch 
 for the statement that the new missionary is not 
 worrying so much about propagating religion as 
 he is about disseminating ideas of clean living and 
 sanitation and independence and patriotism 
 among young Chinese. 
 
 No foreign influence so far has more than 
 scratched China. The country is so large and so 
 old and its superstitions are so ancient and its 
 customs so deep rooted that for China to change 
 would be almost like Nature altering her features. 
 In the home life the man is still the one master 
 and lord. The woman's place is distinctly a sec- 
 ondary one. Her great task is to bear male chil- 
 dren who will worship the memory of their father. 
 If a woman fails to bear children then the master 
 
 77 
 
THE EISINa TEMPEE OF THE EAST 
 
 can either get himself Wife No. 2 or divorce No. 
 1, and marry again. And marriages, incidentally, 
 are always performed in the home of the bride- 
 groom ; — again the men show their superior place. 
 
 Very, very slowly some of these customs are 
 changing — and the American missionaries have 
 had more to do with these changes than all the 
 other foreign influences in China put together. 
 Civilizations that have existed for hundreds and 
 thousands of years necessarily have developed 
 tremendous powers of resistance, and they resist 
 good innovations the same as evil ones. This 
 old civilization of China, I repeat, has hardly 
 been scratched. 
 
 Take, for instance, the Province of Shantung 
 that the Germans had marked off for their own 
 until the Japanese took it as their share of the 
 spoils of the War. There are thirty million 
 Chinese in this one province and I suppose alto- 
 gether possibly three thousand Japanese. A 
 German-built railroad runs from the German- 
 built city of Tsingtau on the coast, back to Tsi- 
 nanfu, the capital. It is a scratch on the surface 
 of Shantung. 
 
 The thirty million go peacefully ahead, planting 
 their wheat and weaving their hair nets. To the 
 millions of farmers in their thousands of hidden 
 villages it doesn't matter a great deal whether the 
 Germans, the Japanese or Fiji Islanders own and 
 operate that scratch of steel across Shantung. 
 
 78 
 
YOUNG CHINA 
 
 The days I was there the anti-Japanese boycott 
 was booming and China was not using the rail- 
 road. Merchants were having their goods 
 shipped by the wheel-barrow route instead of by 
 the railroads. Day and night the road paralleling 
 the railway track echoed with the ceaseless 
 squeak of the high, single-wheeled barrows teach- 
 ing Japan that it was better business to treat 
 China fairly. Coolies walked the dusty miles 
 between stations rather than contribute copper 
 pennies to the hated Japanese. These were the 
 coolies of the cities, — those of the country hardly 
 knew there was such a thing as a railroad. 
 
 The very oppression and domination by Japan, 
 it seemed to me, were doing something that noth- 
 ing else could do, — they were tending to awaken 
 China to the necessity of unity and patriotism and 
 modernization. The boycott was shaking China 
 from her lethargy. 
 
 Even these sleepy, lost villages were beginning 
 to feel it a little. It was getting into the army, 
 too. 
 
 I smile when I think about this wonderful army 
 of China. Chinese soldiers will give you a laugh 
 twenty-four hours a day — there are one million 
 three hundred thousand of them and that's one 
 million three hundred thousand laughs. 
 
 Troops, according to China, are for stage pur- 
 poses and not for real fighting. Judged by the 
 number of soldiers under arms, China this minute 
 
 79 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 is one of the greatest military nations in the 
 world — but she isn't to be taken seriously, except 
 locally. And locally she is anything but the paci- 
 fist country she's cracked up to be. Her govern- 
 ment is a purely militaristic one ; her armies cost 
 her sixty-five per cent, of her total income. 
 That's double what she spends for all other state 
 purposes put together — except interest on the 
 national debt — and six times what the whole coun- 
 try spends on public education. Incidentally she 
 is spending at present more than tmce as much 
 on her soldiers as she spent in the fine old mili- 
 taristic days of the Manchu dynasty, twelve or 
 thirteen years ago. 
 
 These humorous, padded soldiers, who declare 
 armistice for tea, have been one of the great 
 curses of China. To appreciate what they've 
 meant we must go back to the formation of the 
 republic. The government then under the Man- 
 chus was strongly centralized as regards military 
 power. "With the revolution Yuan Shi-Kai, the 
 first regular president, dreaming of another mon- 
 archical dynasty, set about to build up a great 
 personal national army. For this purpose he 
 used up a reorganization loan and shouldered on 
 the Peking Government a big army. 
 
 With his death the army broke up into many 
 parts and the day of the powerful military gov- 
 ernor, who was a law unto himself, came. The 
 Peking Government had no great army of its own 
 
 80 
 
YOUNG CHINA 
 
 and lived only through the shifting balance of 
 military power that kept its officials in office. 
 This was the condition when America entered the 
 World War. 
 
 Most of the Chinese at this time were fairly 
 apathetic about the war. They were not violently 
 pro-anything. During the spring and summer of 
 1917 when it seemed quite reasonable that the 
 Germans might win the war or at least tie it, 
 there were a good many Chinese who were very 
 friendly toward the Germans. They reasoned 
 that the Germans might win and if they did it 
 was not at all improbable that Japan might make 
 a new alliance with Germany and Russia. China 
 could not afford to be against any such combina- 
 tion. 
 
 Then many of the Chinese felt that if China 
 entered the war it would be to help England — 
 and they were strongly anti-English. Besides, 
 the German merchant and commercial man here 
 had treated the Chinese carefully and as an equal 
 and many Chinese liked them personally. 
 
 America brought China into the war. Liberal 
 China, which has always been friendly with 
 America, wanted to be with us — and the militar- 
 ists saw a chance to get the great national army 
 they had dreamed of. So China was swung into 
 the war on August 14, 1917. Before this Japan 
 had bought a hold on the military politicians of 
 Peking and the then premier, Marshal Tuan Chi- 
 
 81 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 Jui, leader of the Anfu-Club, had dissolved Par- 
 liament, opening afresh the old struggle between 
 the North and the South. 
 
 The result of all this was that China, officially 
 in the war, borrowed money and raised a special 
 national army of some four hundred thousand. 
 The patriotic men of the government wanted this 
 army sent to France so that it would give China 
 an advantageous position at the peace table; but 
 the ambitious military politicians wanted the 
 army only to hold their own power. America 
 refused to lend them money to build up this fight- 
 ing force, so they turned to Japan. In the forty- 
 eight months preceding September, 1918, fifty- 
 one loans, totaling three hundred million dollars, 
 were made by Japan. 
 
 Most of this money went for military pur- 
 poses and resulted in the formation of a great 
 northern army that has been more or less under 
 the direct influence of Japanese military officers. 
 This army kept the corrupt and inefficient Pek- 
 ing officials in power and drew tighter the stran- 
 glehold that Japan had on the Chinese Govern- 
 ment. It kept the four hundred million people 
 of China under the heel of the Peking militarists 
 and the different military governors, and in turn 
 held these military politicians under the spell of 
 Japan. 
 
 China to-day is really less of a republic than 
 Japan is — and Japan to-day is hardly more than 
 
 82 
 
YOUNG CHINA 
 
 an echo of the Germany of Bismarck. The gov- 
 ernment instead of being a responsible democracy 
 is nothing short of a military autocracy — or 
 rather a collection of military autocracies. It is 
 uncontrollably decentralized to the extent that 
 the real power rests in some twenty tu-chuns or 
 military governors of provinces, each of whom 
 has his own army and belongs to some clique of 
 fellow tu-chuns that controls combinations of dif- 
 ferent tu-chuns. And they have one million three 
 hundred thousand of these non-fighting soldiers 
 of theirs, drawing six silver dollars a month, 
 which they mostly don't get, and living off the fat 
 and lean of the land by streaks. 
 
 Most of all this is a pessimistic picture for a 
 nation that some day is going to take its rightful 
 place among the great nations of to-morrow. But 
 China is going to win because to-day Cliina is 
 reeking with revolutions: every kind that the 
 world has ever known, except a fighting revolu- 
 tion, is going on there this very second. As fast 
 as she can she is tearing down the great walls of 
 tradition and ignorance and stupidity and letting 
 in the winds of truth and hope and justice from 
 the West. And just as fast as she can she is un- 
 loosening the foot-binding that has bound her to 
 an outworn past with all its stupid cruelties. 
 
 In the spring of 1920, the first five girl students 
 were permitted to enroll in the Government Uni- 
 
 83 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 versity in Peking. It is not an item that would 
 *'make" the front page of very many American 
 dailies, hut it is one of far more real significance 
 that ninety-nine out of a hundred first-page 
 stories. It was a harhinger of the emancipation 
 of Chinese women. Here were Chinese girls 
 fighting their way before the public gaze as the 
 full equals of men. 
 
 Woman's place around the home is still a 
 submerged one, but the woman's revolution is not 
 going to be denied. Our mission teachers and 
 preachers have a tremendous amount to do with 
 this and in thousands of homes scattered about 
 great China the emancipation of the women is as 
 real a thing as the physical unbinding of their 
 tortured feet. It is a part of the great moral 
 revolution that is sweeping over the country and 
 will change all the stupid, cruel customs just as 
 the connnercial revolution is changing old style 
 business methods of China and unloosening a 
 great tide of industrial awakening. 
 
 But the greatest revolution of them all is the 
 one that centers around the student movement. 
 Here is the heart and head and hope of Young 
 China. It would take a book to tell about this 
 great movement and the tremendous influence it 
 has already had on the life and future of these 
 gentle, smiling, backward four hundred millions- 
 It is the biggest thing that has ever happened 
 to China. No concrete movement and no single 
 
 84 
 
YOUNG CHINA 
 
 action has ever had the instantaneous effect that 
 this great student mass movement has had. This 
 can be partly accounted for on account of the 
 unique position that the student occupies and has 
 always occupied in the consideration of common 
 China. For thousands of years she has picked 
 all her officials by competitive examination from 
 among her students and this quite naturally has 
 placed the student body in a singular place of re- 
 spect and admiration by the great unlettered 
 masses. 
 
 To get the full story of the Chinese student 
 movement we must go back to May 3, 1919. This 
 was in the days of the Paris Peace Conference, 
 when Doctor C. T. Wang and Wellington Koo of 
 the Chinese delegation were putting up their 
 brave and losing fight against the rape of Shan- 
 tung by the Japanese. 
 
 There was a little too much publicity about the 
 whole Shantung proposition to suit the Japanese 
 delegation so cables were passed and orders 
 given, and shortly the Japanese minister at Pe- 
 king brought pressure to bear on the Chinese Gov- 
 ernment for the recall of Wang and Koo from the 
 Paris delegation. 
 
 The word of this protest spread like wildfire 
 through the mysterious underground news chan- 
 nels that are everywhere in the East, and on the 
 fourth day of May a great mass meeting of the 
 students of Peking was called openly to protest 
 
 85 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 against this interference. Several thousand stu- 
 dents gathered that night and the tiny flame of 
 patriotism suddenly blazed forth in a great fire 
 of spirit that swept all over China. 
 
 Instantly it was out of hand: before that first 
 night was over the infuriated students attacked 
 and tore down the home of Tsao Ju-ling, Chinese 
 Minister of Finance and Communications, and 
 credited with being the guiding spirit and paid 
 agent of Japan's intrigues in Peking, and at the 
 same time they assaulted Chang Chung Hsiang, 
 Chinese Minister to Japan, and sent him to the 
 hospital with severe injuries. 
 
 That night thirty-two students were arrested 
 and thrown into jail. The next day a general 
 strike of the students was ordered: they would 
 refrain from attending classes until these national 
 wrongs were righted. 
 
 This same day the president of China dismissed 
 the chancellor of the University and issued a 
 mandate forbidding student meetings. On May 
 20th the Peking Students' Union was formally 
 organized and on May 24th, a general strike of 
 all the students in the city was ordered. 
 
 The campaign was well thought out and care- 
 fully executed. On June 3rd the ten thousand 
 student agitators filtered into every corner of 
 Peking and preached boycott and revolution. By 
 nightfall three thousand were arrested and the 
 halls of Peking University turned into a prison. 
 
 86 
 
YOUNG CHINA 
 
 The following day the students who were still 
 free were again sent ont to spread the truth about 
 the Peking Government and explain how China 
 was being sold out to the Japanese. That day- 
 thousands more were arrested. 
 
 So far the great movement was limited to Pe- 
 king. After this second day of general student 
 arrest, however, Shanghai came to the rescue. 
 Aroused by the students there, the merchants 
 and common people of the international settle- 
 ment and the native city went on a ten-day strike 
 of protest, and not a wheel turned. Even the beg- 
 gars struck. 
 
 The government turned pale, and, shaking with 
 fear, weakened before this tremendous demand of 
 public opinion. 
 
 The famous Twenty-one Demands that Japan 
 forced China to agree to in 1915, coupled with all 
 the aggressions of Japan before and after, 
 brought on the boycott that these hundreds of 
 thousands of students so gallantly championed 
 and propagandized. Millions of Chinese villagers 
 and coolies who knew Japan only as a name were 
 swung into the most intense, bitter hate against 
 her. In Shantung, as I have already described, 
 hundreds of thousands of Chinese walked or rode 
 on squeaky high-wheeled barrows, rather than 
 pay one cent of tariff to the railroad that Japan 
 had grabbed. Yangtsi River steamers flying 
 Japanese flags plied up and down the river empty 
 
 87 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 — ^in five months during the latter part of 1919, 
 their average cargo dropped from one hun- 
 dred and fifty-four tons a trip to less than five 
 tons, and they carried practically no passengers 
 at all. During the year that the boycott was 
 pushed Japan's loss was fully forty per cent, of 
 her gross trade with China and in certain sec- 
 tions the decrease was probably ninety per cent. 
 
 The students had furnished the match for all 
 of this, but it was the small merchants of China 
 who supplied the fuel that kept the boycott afire. 
 These merchants with money and business to lose 
 proved that China did have a certain patriotism 
 and a tremendous weapon of resistance. They 
 showed to the world that there are other effec- 
 tive weapons of warfare besides poison gas and 
 machine-guns. 
 
 Slowly the fire of the boycott has died down, 
 but it is still glowing and at any moment may 
 flare up again. And it has taught tremendous 
 lessons to Japan. It has proved that an un- 
 friendly market is a poor market — and this 
 knowledge has had not a little to do with the bat- 
 tle now going on in Japan between the military 
 and the commercial interests. 
 
 Almost a year to a day after the birth of the 
 great student movement the students again at- 
 tempted a nation-wide protesting strike. This 
 attempt failed to gain all its ends, but it is a fail- 
 ure that has no particular significance because 
 
YOUNG CHINA 
 
 the student movement is going forward with ever- 
 increasing momentum. 
 
 Slowly the revolt is broadening and outgrowing 
 its original conception of a flaming political pro- 
 test against the stupid unpatriotic actions of 
 Peking officials in their dealings with aggressive 
 Japan. To-day it is dreaming of the reformation 
 of China — of breaking down the old walls of ignor- 
 ance and poverty and traditions that hide China 
 from the modern world. It is dreaming of educat- 
 ing China's four hundred million common people 
 and making them responsible citizens with new 
 codes of living. 
 
 The student leaders are still willing to carry 
 on their fight against the inefficient, unpatriotic 
 Government of Peking and against Japan with 
 the boycott or any other weapon possible, but it 
 is the broader vision of their great task that is 
 inspiring them at present. This vision divides 
 itself into two channels : one of social service and 
 the other of a cultural reformation. They are 
 both new to China. 
 
 In the line of social service these student or- 
 ganizations are doing wonderful things. They 
 have established scores of free night primary 
 schools for poor children and factory workers and 
 they are giving their own precious time as teach- 
 ers. They are going into the villages and cities 
 during their vacations and hours off and preach- 
 ing ideas of sanitation and health and right liv- 
 
 89 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 ing. They are actually, physically reaching down 
 and pulling China out of the past. 
 
 In their dream of cultural reformation they 
 vision a breaking of all the old traditions and cus- 
 toms that bind China to so much that is unworthy 
 in her old civilization. The "literary revolution" 
 IS a big part of this. Started before the present 
 student movement in an attempt to make the 
 spoken language the written language in place of 
 the old difficult and scholarly literary language, 
 the literary revolt has been given force by the 
 students. To-day more than three hundred little 
 student publications are being printed in the style 
 of the spoken language — a year ago there were 
 only three liberal papers. The work is going 
 ahead to do away with the thousands of Chinese 
 characters and substitute a phonetic alphabet of 
 thirty-nine letters as against our own of twenty- 
 six. 
 
 All in all it is a wholly new China for which 
 these students are making sacrifices; a China 
 where public opinion will have a place ; a China of 
 good citizens with a good government; a China 
 of unbound feet and emancipated women; a 
 China of revolutions ; and a China that some day 
 will have no fear of Japan and will be able to take 
 her place in the family of nations as the great 
 peace lover of the world. 
 
 The West must recognize all this and change 
 her whole view-point regarding China. England 
 
 90 
 
YOUNG CHINA 
 
 and France and Russia and Germany and Italy 
 must completely revise all their ideas about this 
 great land of the East. 
 
 For a hundred years Europe has bullied and 
 abused China, just as she has bullied and abused 
 India, just as she has bullied and abused the half- 
 billion other black, brown and yellow men of the 
 East and Near East. And China, like the rest of 
 the dominated races of the world, is getting tired 
 of it all. Only America has treated her fairly. 
 Following the Boxer uprising of 1900 America 
 was the one country that turned back to China 
 the huge indemnities exacted. (For four years 
 the foreign diplomatic ministers in Peking com- 
 pelled the poor bankrupt country to pay the an- 
 nual Boxer indemnity to the powerless ex-Rus- 
 sian legation, which is a hold-over of the old 
 Romanoff days and represents no one. 
 
 China has been fought over and quarreled over 
 and split up into spheres of influence for a full 
 century. Fortunately for the West, she is at this 
 moment more anti-Japanese than she is anti-any- 
 thing else. But the West must not forget that the 
 Chinese are yellow men and have a great bond 
 of color to link them with the yellow men of 
 Japan. 
 
 They know the history of the white invasion of 
 China, they know of the British Opium War, and 
 the grab for ports and the fights for concessions 
 and the haggling and bullying and brow-beating 
 
 91 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 by European diplomats and business concerns. 
 They are tired of it. 
 
 China is at the cross-roads, and America is 
 the one great nation that she trusts and loves. 
 We can show her the right road, — the trail that 
 will help her develop herself, help her teach her- 
 self, help her protect herself, and yet keep her 
 the peace-loving, gentle, kindly, smiling country 
 that she is. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 KAGAWA OF KOBE — THE STORY OF THE NEW JAPAN 
 
 The story of the unrest of Japan differs fun- 
 damentally from that of India and Egypt because 
 here in Japan a most violent nationalism is 
 already burning. The growing restlessness is 
 expressed not against outsiders but against social 
 conditions and the government itself. 
 
 As the one country of the Old World that has 
 withstood the encroachments of the white man, 
 Japan for more than a decade has held a unique 
 place. Since the defeat of the Russians at Port 
 Arthur in 1904 she has been in a position for real 
 eastern leadership. But she has recklessly squan- 
 dered this in a wild debauch of ambitious impe- 
 rialism. 
 
 To-day the millions of China hate and fear 
 Japan infinitely more intensely and bitterly than 
 they despise the western nations. The seventeen 
 million of Korea look upon her as a brutal con- 
 queror. The millions of India have no faith in 
 her quality of leadership and scoff at her shoddy 
 tricks of trade: at the Indian National Con- 
 gress held in October, 1921, a motion condemning 
 Japan for her treaty association with England 
 
 93 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 was passed by a large majority. And Indian 
 merchants, deceived by cheap Japanese goods, 
 have turned against everything that is Japanese. 
 
 Japan's own ambitions — ^her imperialism and 
 her dreams of conquest — ^would in time wreck 
 themselves against the overwhelming numbers 
 of the East, but there is something that keeps this 
 from being necessary — ^New Japan itself. Kaga- 
 wa of Kobe represents this New Japan — ^liberal, 
 daring, hopeful, fine. 
 
 Something about this man Kagawa of Kobe, 
 makes me think of Mahatma Gandhi. Possibly it 
 is because both are thin, emaciated, almost pitiful 
 figures kept going by the blazing fire of their 
 spirit. 
 
 I suppose it is in this last — this spiritual fire 
 — that lies the strongest resemblance. I'm sure 
 their hearts beat the same tune. 
 
 In India they call Gandhi, Saint Gandhi — and 
 I'm certain that if these poor submerged out- 
 casts of Kobe's underworld and the striving, half 
 educated workers of the great shipyards and fac- 
 tories could make Japanese saints they'd turn 
 their Kagawa into one. 
 
 I first heard of him at a thrilling labor meet- 
 ing in Tokyo. A cordon of police stretched from 
 the street to the entrance and once inside the 
 assembly hall they lined the walls and strung 
 like long arms down the aisles. 
 
 Probably five hundred men were at this labor 
 
 94 
 
KAGAWA OF KOBE 
 
 meeting and certainly no less than seventy-five 
 policemen — who listened open mouthed to the 
 speakers' magic plea for liberty and more rice 
 while they preserved the majesty of worn-out 
 laws. 
 
 A liberal sprinkling of bine-capped students 
 gave a tone to the crowd. For the most part the 
 men were skilled workmen and petty clerks, with 
 groups of students, but here and there you 
 caught sight of the lettered jacket of some coolie 
 — a coolie who only yesterday was a serf and 
 to-day is fettered to a submerged class. 
 
 A young boy in the uniform of a Tokyo mail 
 carrier was the first to open the mouths of those 
 undersized cops: "I work long hours and yet I 
 must live in a cold unlighted room, and I am hun- 
 gry, and ninety per cent, of the men who work 
 with me want what I do — a real democracy and 
 real freedom and real living wages." And the 
 police, thinking of their own half -filled rice bowls 
 — the average wage of the Japanese policeman is 
 something like ten dollars a month — forgot their 
 majestic pose and became but striving hungry 
 humans. 
 
 But a minute later when a square-jawed coal 
 miner from the striking districts began to tell 
 how gendarmes and soldiers were beating up the 
 miners in their camps a police captain loaded 
 down with a half -ton of gold braid blew a whistle 
 and the fight was on. It was a neat battle for a 
 
 95 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 few moments and then while the crowd jeered, 
 the officers carried out two men feet first. 
 
 So it went for an hour. Once there was a fairly- 
 general fight. That time I stood on my chair and 
 almost cheered. It was good for your soul just to 
 look on. The miracle had happened — the Japan- 
 ese worm was turning. 
 
 After this last "battle royal" I hummed my 
 way out of the building. I was too happy to want 
 to stay and face the prospect of having it all 
 spoiled. Young Japan, it was clear now, was 
 coming strong; let common ordinary folk really 
 start fighting and dying for what they want and 
 nothing can stop them. These common Japanese 
 folk were no longer completely crushed by the 
 threat of the emperor's gendarmes. They had 
 crawled out from under the iron heels. 
 
 This night a young student who was earning 
 his way through college by working half time as 
 a translator in one of the newspaper offices acted 
 as my interpreter. He was eighteen and a proud 
 and almost haughty Socialist — and chuck full of 
 fight. He told me that he had turned naturally 
 to Socialism on account of the injustices and 
 social wrongs of Old Japan. 
 
 "Are there many Socialists among the stu- 
 dents?" I asked. 
 
 "Not many are Socialists, but most of the stu- 
 dents are against the present government," he 
 answered. "They all want Japan to become a 
 
 96 
 
KAGAWA OF KOBE 
 
 free democratic country. We are sick and tired 
 of being ruled by the military party. And we 
 are against Japan's imperialistic ambitions." 
 
 ''How about Japan's actions in China and Si- 
 beria f" 
 
 ''We are all for the Chinese students, and our 
 student organizations are in close touch with 
 theirs. Of course we have always been against 
 our government's policy in Siberia. We are 
 fighting every move of our militarists. We are 
 going to fight them until either they are killed or 
 we are killed." 
 
 I was glad to get him away from that strike 
 meeting at the Y. M. C. A. My boy Socialist was 
 too full of fight to be loose where the smoke of 
 battle was so heavy and the fighting was so good. 
 Then, too, he wanted to talk to me about his 
 Young Japan — about how it had and would fight 
 against the Old Japan. He said that Kobe and 
 Osaka, where they had had the great rice riots 
 and the big steel strikes, were the places to study 
 New Japan — and that Kagawa of Kobe was the 
 man to tell me about it. So I v/ent and sat at the 
 feet of this "Saint of New Japan." 
 
 Around Kobe they call him the Sensei of 
 Shinkawa — the teacher of the slums of Shinkawa. 
 His real name is Toyakiko Kagawa and since his 
 graduation from Princeton, a few years ago, he 
 has been giving his time to bringing a little touch 
 of hope to the outcasts of Kobe and a little light 
 
 97 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 to the bewildered lal3orers of the great Osaka and 
 Kobe mills. He had secretly formed the Federa- 
 tion of Labor of Western Japan, and it was his 
 genins that had dreamed the idea of the great 
 ''Go Slow" strike. 
 
 I wdsh you conld see these slums of his; tiny 
 crooked alleys, less than four feet wide, banked 
 on both sides with narrow, wooden dog kennels, 
 six by eight feet square and probably five feet 
 high. Here twenty thousand outcasts live like 
 homeless dogs ; each human kennel crowded with 
 squalling, quarreling creatures of filth and ver- 
 min, rotting with crime and tuberculosis and 
 disease. Outcasts of all kinds — whites, blacks, 
 Eurasians, Chinese — dregs of an old, old East. 
 God ! what a sore on the earth ! 
 
 Crowding the doorways and filling the winding 
 alley paths are hundreds of poor outcast children 
 in filthy rags, whose eyes light up with happiness 
 when they see Kagawa, this teacher of kindness, 
 approach. For him it is always a triumphal 
 march ; shrill little voices herald his coming, while 
 thin, hungry, half-clad little bodies scramble to 
 hold his hand or even to touch his kimono. No 
 Pied Piper ever had a more mlling, joyful train. 
 
 You follow him with real tears in your eyes — 
 this teacher of Shinkawa — wan and undersized, 
 smiling with warm brown eyes, preaching God; 
 a young savior, walking among outcasts, mur- 
 derers and broken lives of the lower depths, 
 preaching a living, breathing Christianity. 
 
 98 
 
KAGAWA OF KOBE 
 
 That first night I met him we wandered about 
 these forbidden streets for an hour, and then he 
 led the way to the blackened two-story mission 
 house where he holds his little school, gives out 
 his free medicines, and brings God to these God- 
 forgotten people. I took off my shoes at the 
 door, and in my stockinged feet walked up the 
 stairs and into the matted and immaculate study. 
 For hours we talked of '^ Dangerous Thoughts," 
 and Kagawa told me the thrilling story of how 
 Young Japan is opening her eyes, and seeing 
 visions, and daring real democracy. 
 
 "Dangerous Thoughts," the government here 
 calls them. America would call them ''Inspiring 
 Thoughts," "Glorious Thoughts," "Winning 
 Thoughts," because they are all about the hope 
 of a people struggling up to the light. And that 's 
 the greatest gripping romance in the world — not 
 the struggle and fight and dreams of individuals, 
 but of millions opening their eyes for the first 
 time, stretching themselves and realizing the 
 power of their strength. 
 
 It has been some time since the famous rice 
 riots broke out in Kobe and spread over Japan, 
 but they are well worth reviewing now because 
 they prove this theory that the common people 
 of Japan are not afraid to fight against the Old 
 Order and the Things That Were — and that in- 
 cludes imperialism and militarism in whatever 
 disguise they may wear, 
 
 99 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 The Great War brought Japan the commercial 
 chances that she had long been dreaming of. 
 Suddenly like the swing of a door all the markets 
 in the Far East were magically opened to her. 
 England and Germany and France, which for 
 years had controlled the business of the Orient, 
 were overnight removed from competition. Alone 
 with America, Japan profited from the disasters 
 of the others' war. Her shipping interests paid 
 for their vessels in a single voyage; cotton mills 
 declared one hundred per cent, dividends and 
 gave away the rest of their profits in one form or 
 another; a brand-new crop of millionaires 
 sprang up like mushrooms after a spring rain — 
 despised narikins who, lying back in pink uphol- 
 stered foreign limousines, honk-honked the com- 
 mon millions out of the narrow streets. And with 
 every new nariJcin rice rose another notch. 
 
 Then one September day a great mob gathered 
 as if brought together by some magic magnet, 
 and in the evening, moved by the same compel- 
 ling force, swept along to the office of the big- 
 gest rice dealer in Kobe. Suddenly a young 
 man with chest bared to his waist leaped to the 
 stone steps and waving an old Samuria sword, 
 dramatically led the crowd of angry hungry work- 
 men to destory the building. That was a real 
 night in Japan. For forty-eight hours mobs 
 roamed the streets of Kobe raiding rice shops — 
 while the police, hungry, too, on their starvation 
 
 100 
 
KAGAWA OF KOBE 
 
 salaries, looked on with a poor imitation of pre- 
 serving order. 
 
 The police would not and conld not stop those 
 September mobs and it was necessary to call out 
 the soldiers. The soldiers did their work, but 
 it was whispered in a hundred governmental con- 
 ferences that the police were not always to be 
 depended on in hunger riots and that some of the 
 soldiers too had shown little enthusiasm against 
 the mobs. 
 
 The government learned much from these rice 
 riots. Before those mad days were over the riots 
 had spread to two hundred and forty towns with 
 a total damage of ten million dollars. Something 
 had to be done to control this wild rush of an- 
 archy. Instead of attempting to dam it the gov- 
 ernment wisely tried to direct it into sane chan- 
 nels. They winked at the formation of labor 
 unions as the only safe outlet for the growing 
 unrest. 
 
 Eleven years ago a group of Socialists had 
 thrown a chill over governmental circles with an 
 attempted radical move, but that was years be- 
 fore and easily solved. Twelve of the leaders 
 were executed after a secret trial and another 
 dozen sentenced to life imprisonment. But that 
 was long before the word Bolshevism was even 
 heard of. Times had changed and to-day they 
 examine this word with fear and trembling. 
 
 Japan did not gradually, patiently grow into 
 101 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 a modern industrial system — it was thrust upon 
 her full bloomed. Her society thirty years 
 ago was a feudal system, and nothing could have 
 so rapidly disintegrated this system as the mod- 
 ern factory idea. Almost overnight it trans- 
 formed men from peasants wading ankle deep in 
 the muddy waters of the rice paddies to me- 
 chanics sweating before their lathes. It created 
 in a day a brand-new wage class, drafted from 
 the simple peasants and fishermen. In 1887 there 
 were only one hundred thousand factory em- 
 ployees in Japan ; thirty-four years later the num- 
 ber ran up to a million and a half. 
 
 The patriarchal system still endured even in 
 these modern factories. The workmen were 
 bound to their masters by old-fashioned ties of 
 loyalty and a system of bonuses that were gifts 
 handed down from above. The national laws 
 prohibited the formation of trade unions, and 
 strike leaders could be and were thrown into jail 
 and heavily sentenced. 
 
 The war gave a tremendous boom to all Japan 's 
 industries and with this boom came all the undi- 
 gested social, economic problems that always ac- 
 company too rapid expansion. "Wages rose but 
 the cost of living climbed twice as fast. 
 
 The rice riots were the inmaediate result. The 
 next result was the formation of several near 
 labor unions. For some time there had existed 
 a very conservative union, the Yusiki (The 
 
 102 
 
KAGAWA OF KOBE 
 
 Friendly Society of Japan) under the intense 
 leadership of Bunji Suzuki, but this was too 
 lukewarm and too pacific for the fighting Kagawa 
 of Kobe, Immediately he set to work and brought 
 to life a belligerent organization known as the 
 Federation of Labor for West Japan. 
 
 In a few weeks he had five thousand members 
 and had started his own Laborer's News — and he 
 succeeded in doing it without being arrested. As 
 a consequence every liberal labor man in Japan 
 blinked his eyes and hustled right out to estab- 
 lish his own pet union. In Tokyo alone twenty- 
 eight brand-new organizations were formed, 
 ranging all the way from a Japanese I. W. W. to 
 plain labor parties. 
 
 Now and then a strike broke out, but, poorly 
 led and unorganized, it usually collapsed. If it 
 occurred in some great concern it would probably 
 include only one or two departments and its doom 
 was prepared in advance. If larger and better 
 led, its leaders were most probably tossed in jail 
 and permitted to cool off in damp cells. 
 
 Almost a year to a day after the thrilling rice 
 riots it was discovered that most of the sixteen 
 thousand workmen in the great Kawasaki Dock- 
 yards, in Kobe, where dreadnaughts, locomotives 
 and everything to do with steel is made, were 
 standing in front of their lathes and work-benches 
 with folded arms or merely playing at work. Su- 
 perintendents and managers tore their hair, but 
 
 103 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 one thousand agitating members of the new Fed- 
 eration of Labor of West Japan, scattered about 
 the great plant, talked **Go Slow" — and after two 
 weeks of going slowly the officials called in a 
 delegation and promised them what they wanted 
 — an eight-hour day and an increase in pay. It 
 was the strangest sabotage strike in history, and 
 the strikers won. Not a man quit and not a man 
 threw a monkey-wrench into the machinery. They 
 simply slowed up — and they won an eight-hour 
 day and an increase in pay that made their wages 
 average from seventy-five cents to two dollars 
 and seventy-five cents per day for skilled 
 mechanics. 
 
 A slim little consumptive led this great strike — 
 an almost pathetic figure who in more ways than 
 one, resembles the simple, saint-like Gandhi of 
 India. His name is Kagawa of Kobe. It takes 
 wise and brave leaders to do this sort of thing 
 — ^men as wise and brave as Kagawa. And it 
 takes courageous workers to follow such leaders. 
 
 That was the start of the great Kobe labor 
 movement. Within a year after this "Go-Slow" 
 strike most of these Kawasaki workmen were or- 
 ganized in unions of one kind or another. 
 
 But this was not true of the eleven thousand 
 workers in the Mitsubishi Shipyards. Here the 
 management had been able to root out all agi- 
 tators and keep their plant "clean" of organizers 
 
 104 
 
KAGAWA OF KOBE 
 
 — less than ten per cent, of the men being or^ 
 ganized in June, 1921. As direct result of lack 
 of a fighting organization, hours, wages and 
 working conditions were much worse at these 
 yards than at the Kawasaki. 
 
 On June 28, 1921, the Kobe Federation of 
 Labor held a meeting to see what could be done 
 to establish firmly the position of labor in Kobe — 
 to hold what had been gained and to plan for fu^ 
 ture organizing. 
 
 The following day the Electrical Department of 
 the Kawasaki yards presented demands to the 
 factory management, including recognition of the 
 unions as negotiating bodies in wage or other 
 disputes, a high allowance system in cases of dis- 
 charge, and the establishment of a factory com- 
 mittee system of work committees selected by the 
 workmen. 
 
 At about the same time the workers of a branch 
 at the Mitsubishi presented demands for the right 
 to organize unions, the recognition of such unions 
 as negotiating bodies, an increase of wages, the 
 introduction of an eight-hour day and a ** dis- 
 charge allowance" system. 
 
 After parleys lasting a week the sixteen com- 
 mitteemen from the Electrical Department of the 
 Kawasaki yards were dismissed with liberal ** dis- 
 charge allowances" — but the sixteen refused to 
 be fired. There were fights and riots at the yard- 
 gates that resulted in a general decision of the 
 
 105 
 
/ 
 / 
 
 THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAS^ 
 
 men to quit work. Much the same thing hap- 
 pened at the Mitsubishi plant. 
 
 On the following day, July 8th, the workers 
 from both shipyards, to the number of some 
 twenty-five thousand, paraded the principal 
 streets of Kobe. The next day, Sunday, a second 
 and even larger demonstration took place. The 
 procession stretched for miles and miles, a great 
 line of red flags, red union banners and white 
 banners inscribed with strike slogans. 
 
 The next day the workers reported to the plant 
 in the Kawasaki yards but there was no work 
 done. The company directors steadily refused to 
 discuss matters with the workers owing, they 
 claimed, to the absence of the president of the 
 company in Europe. 
 
 Things apparently were at a draw — when into 
 the consciousness of the workers was planted the 
 idea of taking over control of the shops. It was 
 radical — ^it was pure Russian! And it proved 
 that Japan's labor leaders were in close touch 
 with the reddest red thought of Europe. 
 
 A proclamation was passed out to all the work- 
 ers that read as follows : 
 
 ''The Kawasaki Industrial Committee assumes 
 control of the operations of the various work- 
 shops from date. We, as representatives of over 
 17,000 workers at the head and branch factories 
 of the Kawasaki Shipbuilding Yard, presented to 
 the management of the company demands con- 
 
 106 
 
KAG AWA OF KOBE 
 
 sisting of seven counts, including the introduc- 
 tion of the factory committee system. To these 
 demands Messrs. Nagatomo and Yamamoto, di- 
 rectors of the company, refused to give a satisfac- 
 tory answer, on tiie plea of the absence of the 
 president. 
 
 ''We have never been prompted by a desire to 
 put the industry of Japan in jeopardy. What we 
 desire is that the company should recognize our 
 personality and help in rendering our lives less 
 difficult. If, however, we continue to strike as a 
 counter-measure against the arrogant and insin- 
 cere attitude which has been hitherto assumed by 
 the company, it will only end in paralyzing the 
 industry of Japan and in causing social unrest, 
 and therefore we propose to do our work at our 
 respective workshops, ourselves assuming con- 
 trol of all operations, until our demands are ac- 
 cepted. 
 
 THE METHODS OF CONTROL 
 
 **1. The Industrial Committee shall control 
 all the business. 
 
 *'2. All the clerks and other employees must 
 attend to their respective duties as hitherto, 
 under the direction of the Industrial Committee. 
 
 "3. The company shall be made to pay wages 
 to the workers at the same rates as hitherto. 
 
 "4. The working hours shall be reduced from 
 the present eight hours to six, but efforts will be 
 made to do the same amount of work during this 
 reduced working period. When, however, the 
 Industrial Committee considers it expedient, this 
 time will either be extended or further reduced. 
 
 107 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 "5. Those who act in a manner disturbing the 
 general peace of the various workshops and im- 
 pairing the efficiency shall be referred to the 
 Disciplinary Committee." 
 
 For several days workers came to their benches 
 as usual, but there was no work done for no de- 
 tails of operation were formulated. Then on the 
 morning of the fourteenth, a battalion of troops 
 arrived and the works were closed and a ten-day 
 lockout declared. Demonstrations were pro- 
 hibited, but there were great gatherings under 
 the guise of athletic meetings and later vast con- 
 claves at religious shrines. 
 
 While all this was being done by the Kawasaki 
 workers, the laborers in the Mitsubishi yards were 
 demonstrating and rioting, eventually suffering 
 a lockout. For two weeks the strike went on and 
 finally, July 29th, while visiting shrines en masse 
 the paraders turned off from their regular line 
 of march, moving toward the Kawasaki docks, 
 where a bloody riot took place. One man was 
 mortally wounded and forty or fifty others se- 
 riously hurt. 
 
 This affair was followed by wholesale arrests 
 and some three hundred strike leaders were im- 
 prisoned, including Kagawa, the real brains and 
 inspiration of the whole movement. On August 
 8th, after refusing all attempts at mediation the 
 workers returned to the yards making no terms 
 whatever with their employers. 
 
 108 
 
KAGAWA OF KOBE 
 
 Their strike was lost, but they had gone far in 
 awakened labor conseionsness. No longer were 
 they centuries behind their factory brothers in 
 European and Russian shops. They were in the 
 vanguard of labor radicalism. And this in bu- 
 reaucratic, imperialistic Japan — ancient Japan. 
 
 "Some day I shall be assassinated," Kagawa 
 told me, very quietly, and without fear. **In my 
 slums here there are seven hundred gamblers, 
 who belong to the ancient Gamblers ' Guild of Old 
 Japan. Hounded and abused by the police in the 
 past, the government has now organized these 
 gamblers into a recognized fraternity, humor- 
 ously called 'The Flower of the Nation,' with the 
 sole purpose of using them to combat the fight 
 for democracy. Working now with the police, 
 they are used to choke down unrest and check the 
 growing power of the millions. The Old Order is 
 desperate in Japan to-day." 
 
 It is desperate, too — this worn-out old order of 
 militarism and medievalism. It is desperate and 
 therefore dangerous. Against it are ranged all 
 that are fair and liberal and intelligent. The best 
 of the commercial interests of Japan are trying 
 to check military ambition before it reaps the har- 
 vest that was Germany's; and they are trying to 
 solve the problems of industrial unrest before 
 they break forth in some wild rush of Bolshevism. 
 
 All Young Japan is helping these liberal ele- 
 109 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 ments. The students of Japan are dreaming of a 
 New Japan — ^liberal — advanced, clean. They are 
 in harmony with the ideals of China's great stu- 
 dent body. 
 
 Japan is at the forks of the road. She must 
 choose either a path that will lead to internal and 
 external peace and happiness or one that will lead 
 her to both wars and revolution. For generations 
 the militarists with their great colonial ambitions 
 have been at the wheel. They have brought Japan 
 a certain success and a certain prosperity, but it 
 has all been built on moving sands. The worms 
 of unrest and dissatisfaction are eating at the 
 wooden foundations. The millions of Common 
 Japan are tired of their job. They want a good 
 living and fair chance in the world and an equal 
 voice in their own affairs. Universal suffrage 
 may not come this year or the next, but the cries 
 of the great majorities must sooner or later be 
 heard. No longer will they consent to remain 
 inarticulate — they learned to lisp in their rice 
 riots and steel strikes and soon they will talk. 
 
 They have proved that there is no wrath like 
 the wrath of the patient man; for the Oriental, 
 slow to anger and disciplined for centuries in 
 obedience and respect and patience, knows no 
 restraint when he finally does break loose. This 
 fundamental psychological fact must be reckoned 
 with in considering what revolution would mean 
 to an eastern country like Japan. The old ideas 
 
 110 
 
KAGAWA OF KOBE 
 
 of feudalism, carrying Avith them eastern obe- 
 dience and loyalty and submission, are deeply 
 rooted, but some sudden cyclone of hate or hunger 
 or wild Bolshevism could tear them up in a night. 
 
 The winds of Bolshevism that are blowing more 
 or less over the world are only faint whispering 
 breezes, but as the storm center comes eastward 
 from the Urals they grow stronger and stronger. 
 
 The millions and millions of Japan's submerged 
 stand at one end of the social balance; at the 
 other end stands the old and firmly entrenched 
 royalty backed by a ruling military class and 
 caste. Up to now they never squarely faced each 
 other, but the time is surely coming when they 
 will, and if there is no middle ground for them to 
 meet on or no one from the center to show them 
 the way, revolution must inevitably result. 
 
 The best and finest men of Japan see this and 
 they are desperately trying to meet the situation 
 by taking the power away from the military and 
 giving it bit by bit to the millions. These men 
 are gaining every day in strength and confidence. 
 They are fighting against tremendous odds be- 
 cause neither side sympathizes with them ; and in 
 fighting the military they are battling all the past 
 traditions of Japan. 
 
 There is little question but that democracy 
 eventually will come. It takes a great faith in 
 the spirit of the new world to sense its approach 
 in this last bulwark of unfair, irresponsible autoc- 
 
 111 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 racy — the emperor here does actually live behind 
 stone walls and moats — but it will come and it 
 will overturn the old military idea and the flar- 
 ing new radicalism as well. Democracy will play 
 no favorites here if it is given a chance, and it will 
 stand neither for autocratic Russian Bolshevism 
 nor autocratic Japanese militarism. 
 
 Behind, and more important than the awaken- 
 ing of the working masses of Japan and the very 
 modest, conservative liberalism of a few officials, 
 stands the real hope of this coming democracy — 
 Japan's wonderful student body. It is these 
 thousands of young men, in their student caps and 
 blue capes, who are the real lamp-bearers of New 
 Japan. They are not the petty minded, narrow 
 gauged men that their fathers were, but rather 
 broad visioned and liberal, who hold firmly the 
 idea of leading their Japan peacefully to her 
 real place in the New World. 
 
 American college students, absorbed in athletics 
 and junior proms, could take many useful lessons 
 from these boys of Japan. Seventy-five per cent, 
 of them are going out of their universities thrilled 
 with the prospect of helping Japan solve fairly 
 and decently these great social and international 
 problems. Many of their professors are opening 
 to them visions of self-sacrifice and public ser- 
 vice, and giving them ideals that will help carry 
 them through their battles with the Things That 
 Are, 
 
 112 
 
KAGAWA OF KOBE 
 
 In one of the student clubs at the Imperial Uni- 
 versity in Tokyo there is a single group of twenty- 
 five young men who have pledged themselves to 
 give their lives to the bringing of democracy to 
 Japan. Five years ago they would have gone into 
 the army or the navy, but now they are enlisting 
 in the ranks of democracy to fight for what is 
 right and fair and fine. There is an actual short- 
 age of applicants to the military schools and 
 scores of young officers are leaving the army and 
 other scores are coming from service in Siberia 
 with the knowledge that things are fundamentally 
 wrong at home. 
 
 The hope of peace in the Pacific rests with 
 these same students and young liberals — and with 
 the widening vision and broadened knowledge of 
 thousands of the more progressive Japanese. 
 
 One of the great things accomplished at the 
 "Washington Conference was a removing of the 
 colored spectacles of fear and distortion that large 
 numbers of Japanese had been wearing. As long 
 as the professional Japanese militarists could 
 point to the growing menace of the American 
 Navy he could hold through fear the upper hand 
 in government affairs. But no longer is the 
 American Navy a potential menace to the western 
 Pacific — and so at present the shop-worn shib- 
 boleths of the Japanese war party have lost their 
 magic with the common millions. 
 
 It will be a long battle in Japan — this fight to 
 113 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 gain a liberal democracy. But it is coming, just 
 as the other great liberal movements of the world 
 that have to do mth man's emancipation and 
 political liberty, are coming. 
 
 Kagawa of Kobe will pass on, but there will be 
 other young and brave leaders to snatch up the 
 torch and carry it forward. And some day this 
 torch of New Nippon will help light the world. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 STRUGGLING KOREA 
 
 Korea, like India and the Philippines, is 
 another example of the world tides of unrest 
 bringing to strange shores a determination for 
 nationalism. 
 
 By chance it is expressed here not against white 
 conquerors but against yellow conquerors — con- 
 querors worshipping the same gods and writing 
 the same language and living under the same cul- 
 ture and civilization. But it is the same great 
 battle — ^the same revolt — and the same awaken- 
 ing. 
 
 Four years of fighting and suffering for inde- 
 pendence have made a new people of the Koreans. 
 They are nothing short of a transformed race, 
 finally awakened from the lethargy that has 
 chained them for countless generations. 
 
 There are few stories in the world more 
 dramatic and thrilling than this story of the re- 
 birth of Korea. It is the actual coming to life of 
 a nation that had died and passed on. 
 
 Korea was gone forever, and even her warmest 
 friends and sympathizers had not one ray of hope 
 for her. She was not only crushed to death under 
 
 115 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 an iron heel but the spark that makes nations rise 
 up, apparently had been put out forever. Other 
 nations that have been reborn, like Poland, Fin- 
 land, Czecho-Slovakia, were physically crushed 
 but the fire of revolt and the secret love of coun- 
 try still burned brightly. Four years ago no one 
 dreamed that there were more than smoldering 
 embers of nationalism still alive in Korea. 
 
 Modern Korea had always been misruled. The 
 court had degenerated into a fat, flabby, weak 
 affair that permitted great power to the gov- 
 ernors of the provinces and the local magistrates 
 and farmed out the all important task of collect- 
 ing the taxes. Graft was everywhere and the 
 eternal system of ''squeezing," which has worked 
 such harm to China, was rampant. The country 
 had no backbone, no morale, no spiritual reserve 
 of any kind. The people were poor and kept poor. 
 The army had countless generals but few sol- 
 diers; the navy had eighteen admirals but no 
 ships. 
 
 In 1592 Japan had invaded Korea and for eight 
 years had raided and ravaged the country. 
 Korea never recovered from the beating she 
 received — nor did she ever cease to hate Japan. 
 Since then she has been merely the country that 
 has been fought over and fought for. Until a 
 generation ago she was the Hermit Kingdom that 
 had closed her doors to progress and civilization. 
 When they were forced open she faced an ambi- 
 
 116 
 
STRUGGLING KOREA 
 
 tious world with weak faith, weaker spirit, and 
 absolute lack of preparation. 
 
 With victory in the China-Japanese War and 
 the Russian-Japanese War it was inevitable that 
 Japan should take Korea as the final spoils. No 
 one any longer bothers to grow violent over the 
 way Japan broke her pledges to respect the 
 sovereignty of Korea — ^it's an established fact and 
 one of a rather long series that has made Japan's 
 pledged word carry little weight in the East. 
 
 August 29, 1910, Japan formally annexed 
 Korea. Previous to this she had forced the abdi- 
 cation of the old emperor in favor of a weak and 
 spineless son. In 1908 she had declared her pro- 
 tectorate over Korea, and two years later she had 
 actually and completely taken her into the fold. 
 
 Japan had her full and fair chance then. 
 Unlike these days of her ambitions in Manchuria 
 and Siberia no one had any objection to her ac- 
 tions. With absolutely no opposition from the 
 outside, and none worthy of mention from the 
 inside, she took over a country and its seventeen 
 million people. For a long time they had been 
 an unhappy and a dissatisfied people. Their 
 rulers had abused them and misruled them and 
 kept them in ignorance and poverty. What they 
 wanted most was a little more rice and better 
 homes and a little less ''squeezing" and a few 
 schools for their children. 
 
 Had Japan had the vision and the real interest 
 117 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 in Korea she could easily have given all these 
 things and more — and won Korea both for the 
 Koreans and the Japanese. But she dreamed of 
 Korea only for the Japanese. 
 
 She started out immediately to carry this 
 through. She backed a government-planned de- 
 veloping company that dreamed of colonizing 
 Korea with hundreds of thousands of Japanese 
 farmers. This company, organized in 1908, had 
 forced the old Korean Government to take out 
 three million dollars in stock and pay for it in 
 government lands. It was a fair start for a young 
 concern. To-day it owns one twenty-sixth of all 
 the rice lands in Korea and thousands of acres of 
 other land. The country is full of tales about its 
 petty discriminations against Koreans; I can not 
 vouch for the truth of these, but I do know the 
 Korean farmers distrust and hate the company. 
 
 This was only one of a score of mistakes that 
 Japan made when she had everything in her 
 favor. She planted down a police and gendarme 
 system that was both cruel and unnecessary. She 
 honeycombed the country with spies and put in 
 thousands of soldiers. She filled the cities and 
 towns mth Japanese shop-keepers and small busi- 
 ness men. She interfered with old religious cus- 
 toms. She crushed the Korean press and made 
 free speech and free press bywords. And worst 
 of all, she attempted to stop the use of the Korean 
 language in the government schools. 
 
 118 
 
STRUGGLING KOREA 
 
 For nine weary years the Koreans patiently 
 bent their backs and bowed their heads. For cen- 
 turies they had been accustomed to abuse from 
 overlords — but finally the worm turned. 
 
 In February, 1919, the old emperor's younger 
 son, who had been taken as a boy to Japan and 
 kept under the influence of the Japanese court, 
 was to marry into the Japanese royal family. 
 Three days before the wedding was to take place 
 the old emperor suddenly died under circum- 
 stances that led the Korean people to believe that 
 he had committed suicide so that the marriage 
 would not take place — by an old Korean custom 
 there could be no wedding in the royal family for 
 three years after a death. This costly protest of 
 the old emperor to the union of his son with a 
 Japanese acted as a spark to all the piled-up 
 hatred and resentment of his people. Among cer- 
 tain of the educated Koreans there had long been 
 dreams of revolution and now there came a de- 
 termination to set it in action. 
 
 The date for the funeral of the old emperor 
 was set for March 3rd. The Japanese police ex- 
 pected trouble, but they were taken unawares 
 when on Sunday afternoon, two days before the 
 funeral, thousands of students and young people 
 ran through the streets of Seoul shouting: 
 ''Mansai! Mansai!" There was no violence of 
 any kind on the part of the paraders, but their 
 cries for independence brought police riot calls 
 
 119 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 and they were clubbed and mauled about and 
 some hundreds thrown into jail. 
 
 Over all Korea the movement spread like a for- 
 est fire. Everywhere there were parades and 
 demonstrations — ^with the police using their 
 swords and finally their rifles. According to the 
 government figure there were from March 1st to 
 July 2nd, 28,934 arrested. Of this number 9,078 
 were flogged. The police reports show 631 were 
 killed, but Koreans say the actual number was 
 several times larger. Thousands of those 
 arrested were tortured in ways that even the mas- 
 ter torturers of the days of the Inquisition could 
 have learned from. 
 
 The violence with which the Japanese police 
 and officials struck back shocked the world; and 
 Japan, sensitive to criticism, ordered a change 
 in the governing officials. Baron Siato was sent 
 as governor-general and immediately reforms 
 were promised — the abolishing of the custom of 
 flogging; the establishment of free press and free 
 speech; the teaching of Korean in certain of the 
 schools ; more religious freedom and the reestab- 
 lishment of certain old customs ; and a less vigor- 
 ous police system. All these were promised and 
 highly advertised, but Koreans say that many of 
 them have been just promises and that the petty 
 under-officials and police are but little more 
 humane or considerate now than they were two 
 years ago. 
 
 120 
 
STRUGGLING KOREA 
 
 After all you can almost waste a little pity on 
 Japan even at the same moment that you are 
 swept into a storm of anger at the stupidity and 
 cruelty of her record in this heart-broken penin- 
 sula — ^foecause Japan's position is an impossible 
 one. It is a situation that has no answer and 
 offers no solution for Japan except the giving 
 of full independence to a people who are by no 
 means ready for it — and she has no more inten- 
 tion of doing this than she has of splitting up her 
 own island empire. By immediate and dramatic 
 reforms and generous gifts of semi-independence 
 she might sidetrack this Korean independence 
 revolution, but one is wasting time even to think 
 about this because present-day Japan does not 
 talk this language of democracy and international 
 justice and fair play. 
 
 Japan's promised reforms are not even keep- 
 ing pace with the growth of the revolutionary 
 movement. Instead of checking it with generous 
 actions she isn't even keeping up with it. This 
 determination to be free from Japan is sinking 
 itself deeper and deeper into the hearts of all of 
 the seventeen million of Korea's people. Every 
 day the solution is becoming more difficult and 
 impossible. The best that Japan can hope for is a 
 temporary victory such as the English have had 
 in India and Egypt. 
 
 All in all Japan has made a pitiful mess of it. 
 She faces to-day a race of people who apparently 
 
 121 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 are in the revolutionary business for keeps. She 
 has changed front, softened her old policy of mili- 
 tary colonization, with her banks and railroads 
 and traders and land-grabbers all mixed up 
 together — but it's been too late. She has discov- 
 ered that you can't hammer the swords into wel- 
 come plowshares after once the sword has been 
 stained with blood. 
 
 New demands for independence and fresh 
 demonstrations against Japanese rule will in all 
 probability be made. They may continue peace- 
 ful demonstrations of parades and shouts for 
 Korean independence, but they will probably be 
 put down with force — because it is impossible for 
 the Japanese military mind to understand any 
 other power but that of force. And the more 
 force used the deeper sinks the determination for 
 freedom. 
 
 In every way it is a hopeless and thankless job 
 that Japan has on her hands. Korea has felt the 
 magic winds of self-determination that have been 
 blowing over the world. The same spirit that has 
 swept through Poland, Finland, Czecho- Slovakia, 
 Ireland, Egypt, India and even touched our own 
 smiling Philippines has set fire to men's hearts 
 here. 
 
 But it was far more than any call for national 
 freedom that sent men and women down the 
 streets of Korean cities crying "Mansai'^ — ^liter- 
 ally translated "ten thousands years" but mean- 
 
 122 
 
STRUGGLING KOREA 
 
 ing liberty forever. It was far more than the sud- 
 den setting off of all the piled-up hate and cruelty 
 and petty interference and injustices of Japanese 
 domination that had been practised during the 
 ten years of Japanese annexation. Deep down 
 the whole great movement was almost as much 
 a demonstration and protest against economic 
 injustices as against political injustices. As far 
 as the uneducated Korean peasant and the poor 
 coolies were concerned the revolution had little 
 of the glorious thrill of men fighting for their 
 freedom; it was a protest against the harshness 
 of landlords, and the pettiness and stupidity and 
 overbearing attitude of the gendarmes and sol- 
 diers and civil administrators. 
 
 Yet it is only fair to write that Japan has done 
 some fine things in Korea. She has built roads — 
 although they are mostly military roads ; she has 
 opened great banks; she has established schools 
 — although she insisted for years that only the 
 Japanese language be taught. She has done these 
 and countless other things that have helped 
 Korea, but she has done them all for Japan and 
 not for Korea. And with this spirit dominating 
 her she failed in her dream of assimilating the 
 Koreans. She failed to give them any reason for 
 wanting to become Nipponized. She tried with 
 bayonets to make people love her. 
 
 Can she still come back? Can she not only 
 checkmate this revolutionary movement but sat- 
 
 123 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 isfy it and win the revolting Koreans? Is the 
 independence movement so deep and wide-spread 
 that nothing can more than temporarily check 
 it? 
 
 I went among Koreans of all classes trying to 
 find the answer. I found ahmidant proof that 
 there was little spirit of compromise in the Ko- 
 rean people; that they are really back of their 
 revolution and will never be permanently satis- 
 fied with anything short of full independence. 
 
 I recall now the story of a primary schoolboy 
 sitting up in his bed at night and in his sleep 
 shouting: ^'Mansai! Mansai!" His little heart 
 was so full of this fight for independence that he 
 dreamed of it and cried its magic words in his 
 sleep. 
 
 An eight-year-old girl coming home from school 
 one afternoon drew the forbidden Korean flag 
 on the pavement with a bit of chalk. Three or 
 four Korean elders cautioned her that if the 
 police saw her they might arrest her and punish 
 her. 
 
 "I would not care," she answered, "I am 
 doing this for independence. " 
 
 So it goes everywhere over his reborn land. A 
 fifteen-year-old factory boy with whom I talked 
 one day on the outskirts of Seoul proved again to 
 me what magic the dreams of freedom can work. 
 
 ''Were you in the demonstrations and did you 
 shout Mansaif I asked. 
 
 124 
 
STRUGGLING KOREA 
 
 "Of course," he answered. 
 
 ''And are you going to take part in more 
 demonstrations ? ' ' 
 
 ''Of course." 
 
 ' ' But you might be arrested and beaten, ' ' I sug- 
 gested. 
 
 "What does that matter?" he answered simply, 
 
 "But you might even be killed. You are young 
 and you have many things to live for. You might 
 be killed." 
 
 "Indeed I would truly live forever then," he 
 answered. "I would be a Korean hero and men 
 would honor me forever. ' ' 
 
 Pride in revolution! Dreams of a hero's 
 death! Boys growing up singing the eternal 
 songs of independence ! 
 
 So again let it be written that the fire of revo- 
 lution burns in the heart of every Korean. In 
 some It still is only a dull glow, but in others it is 
 a flaming spirit that can never be put out. 
 
 The hate of the Korean people for the Japanese 
 is only equaled by the hate of the Siberian com- 
 mon people for the Japanese. When I saw how 
 intense this was in Siberia I thought I had never 
 seen anything so bitter and deep — but that was 
 before I had seen how these simple people of the 
 once Hermit Kingdom despise and distrust and 
 hate these men from Nippon. 
 
 Hate is a strange tonic to give strength to a 
 broken people, but it has worked miracles with 
 
 125 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 the Koreans. For this hate of Japan, with the 
 love for Korea, has given new life and fresh 
 hopes to a cause that seemed lost forever. 
 
 Japan faces the impossible because there can 
 be no lasting answer to the call for independence 
 — except independence. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 IVAN THE JAP KILLER 
 
 To TELL of the unrest and revolt of the East 
 without including the dramatic recital of the 
 unrest of great Siberia would be to tell but half 
 a story. 
 
 Yet this particular tale of Siberia that I have 
 to chronicle isn't about Bolshevism or Bolsheviks 
 — ^it's about a plain, simple farmer boy. 
 
 His fighting comrades called him "The Jap 
 Killer," and he had a record that warranted the 
 name. He was only a kid, a fourteen-year-old 
 kid, who should have been in school — had there 
 been any school for him. For days I'd heard 
 tales of this firebrand of a boy who had sworn 
 to die fighting the Japanese. Finally I reached 
 the Partizan detachment he had joined and his 
 comrades in arms brought him around to me. 
 
 The men soldiers left the room when he came 
 in; only the boy and the interpreter and myself 
 remained. 
 
 **Tell me just what has happened," I asked him 
 directly. 
 
 He answered in a tired little voice, that now 
 and then showed a soggy brutal determination. It 
 
 127 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 was a story grown old, but its very repetition 
 was like a vow resworn. There was something 
 almost religious about it. 
 
 **It was last summer and I'd gone into the hills 
 for wood, when the Japs came into my village," 
 he began. ''Some one had told them that my 
 father had given food to Partizan troops, and 
 let them sleep in our house — so they killed him. 
 Then they killed mj mother and brother and sis- 
 ter and baby brother, and burned the house. 
 When I got back from the hills with my load of 
 wood I found out all that. I started out for 
 revenge. I've killed ten Japs already and I'^ll 
 keep on until the last Jap in Siberia is either 
 killed or driven out." 
 
 ''But you may be killed yourself," I suggested. 
 
 "Nitchevo!" — ^it doesn't matter — "they killed 
 my father : he was a better man than I am. I hate 
 them. I shall keep on fighting imtil either I 
 or the last makaka in Siberia is killed." 
 
 He was fourteen — an ordinary Siberian boy. 
 He was unafraid to die. His was the heart and 
 flaming spirit of this great new Siberia. 
 
 For six years he and his older brothers and his 
 father had been fighting wars and revolutions, 
 and now he faces another conflict. On a shaggy 
 Siberian pony with an nondescript rifle and a 
 bandoleer of cartridges he fights for his home 
 and his land and his future liberties ; he fights the 
 brown man of Japan for a dozen kings ' ransoms. 
 
 128 
 
IVAN THE JAP KILLER 
 
 Take a bleak forest, with a starving pack of 
 gray wolves and three feet of snow and a dashing 
 troika Vvdth a man and his bride and his last car- 
 tridge, and mix with long lines of ball-and-chain 
 exiles being driven into the hungry mouths of 
 cruel mines, and w^hat's the result — a composite 
 picture of the Average Person's idea of Siberia. 
 
 Take a country roughly four thousand miles 
 long and a thousand or two deep, with millions 
 upon millions of smiling acres, the most valuable 
 gold mines in the world and more miles of navi- 
 gable rivers than even America has, and mix with 
 virgin forests yet untracked, and coal and ore and 
 platinum and precious mines, and what's the re- 
 sult — a composite picture of the Siberia of reality. 
 
 ''The last great frontier of the white man," 
 some one had called this land of undreamed miles 
 and uncalculated wealth. And it is a land for 
 white men, a half -world that will help to conquer 
 the rest of the world. If there ever v^as a coun- 
 try worth fighting for it is this Siberia that we 
 are talking about. That's what the little men of 
 Japan think. And that's what a determined 
 handful of white men, fighting a long fight, bat- 
 tling for almost a lost cause in their frozen hills 
 of Eastern Siberia, think. 
 
 Plain drama it is — big tremendous drama, 
 where races and color and religions and cultures 
 clash and fight ; where the man on horseback bat- 
 tles the hordes from the rice paddies. And this 
 
 129 
 
THE EISINa TEMPER OF, THE EAST 
 
 lone white man is worth telling about, because 
 few understand him, and while he fights for all 
 his race and color no one of his own kind gives 
 him a hand or a word. 
 
 Let's consider for one moment the situation as 
 it is in Eastern Siberia in the early days of 1922. 
 The Japanese Army scattered along the railroads 
 and rivers of the Siberian coast line, dominates 
 local governments and bullies through its own 
 ends. It dreams of gaining by hook or crook the 
 priceless mines and petroleum deposits of the 
 northern half of Saghalien; of controlling the 
 great ore deposits of the Pre-Amur Province, 
 These two alone would give to Japan the material 
 for forging the weapons for future wars. The 
 World War taught Japan no moral lesson, but it 
 did teach her that a nation which failed to con- 
 trol the essentials of war materials — coal and 
 iron — would lose a modem war. 
 
 Military Japan must have these. To gain na- 
 tional wealth she would grab the priceless gold 
 mines and the fishing rights and the economic 
 advantages that the control of the railroads of 
 Eastern Siberia would give her. With this wealth 
 and these raw materials in twenty years she 
 would not hesitate to force any issue with the 
 Western World. 
 
 Japan is a master at creating situations. By 
 leaving a small battalion of Japanese troops in 
 the frozen city of Nickolayevsk she invited the 
 fighting that last year resulted in practically th« 
 
 130 
 
IVAN THE JAP KILLER 
 
 annihilation of her nationals there. She called it 
 "the Nickolayevsk massacre," and with it as a 
 match she attempted through pure governmental 
 propaganda to light the fire of false patriotism in 
 her people at home — ^most of whom have always 
 been opposed to the whole Siberian adventure — 
 and gain popular consent to a brutal Siberian 
 military campaign. 
 
 When Japan moves she advances in three col- 
 umns — her army, her official propaganda agents 
 and her commercial interests. While her official 
 propaganda feeds the world on tales of red terror 
 in Siberia, her armies kill the game that her com- 
 mercial interests later gobble up. Assisting in 
 the complete breakdown and demoralization of 
 Eastern Siberia by playing one side against the 
 other, Japan has secured not only great timber, 
 mining and fishery concessions, but her protected 
 nationals have purchased for a song valuable 
 mining properties from impoverished and fright- 
 ened Siberians. 
 
 She demands and will continue to demand that 
 all these concessions granted by various Cossack 
 chiefs and these properties bought even after they 
 had been confiscated, shall be recognized and pro- 
 tected by any future Siberian Government. How 
 much further and deeper her demands will go no 
 one knows : the Siberian Provisional Government 
 leaders quote the French proverb that, "appetite 
 grows mth eating." 
 
 Some say she will attempt to keep the northern 
 131 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OP THE EAST 
 
 half of Saghalien and at least dominate the won- 
 derful port of Vladivostok. This city whose 
 name freely translated means, "The Ruler of the 
 East,'* is just that. It controls the Pacific end 
 of the great Trans-Siberian railroad and with it 
 the thousand-mile Chinese Eastern railroad that 
 economically dominates the northern part of Man- 
 churia: it is the genuine Ruler of the East. 
 
 It is a district and a future that fills every 
 dream demand of Japan. It is a country worth 
 a half million men — to Japan. It is a land that 
 would make Japan a nation to be more than 
 reckoned with by the whole world. 
 
 And a few thousand white men fight to drive 
 back these invaders. Their cities on the coast 
 fly the flag of the Rising Sun: they have only 
 their hills and ponies and their rifles — and their 
 determination. For seven years they've been 
 fighting wars and revolution. And yet they are 
 still battling. 
 
 This drama of Siberia had thrilled me — but I 
 wanted to get behind the scenes and touch hands 
 with these tragic actors. I wanted to feel the 
 heart beat of these brave common people who 
 dared to fight a nation, backed by the world. So 
 with an interpreter and a Partizan spy guide I 
 faded out of the Japanese picture in Vladivostok. 
 A day's journey by train and then a twenty-mile 
 sled ride and we were beyond the Japanese lines 
 and in the deep snow-blanketed hills. 
 
 132 
 
IVAN THE JAP KILLEE 
 
 It was almost dusk when we rounded the brow 
 of a hill and looked down on the log cabin of a 
 half-dozen woodchoppers, nestling in the valley 
 below. Apparently the road was watched, for in 
 less than a minute after we had come into view, 
 two men left the house, mounted horses and gal- 
 loped off down the valley. When we had trudged 
 through the quarter-mile of snow and reached the 
 house there was no one there but the wood- 
 choppers. 
 
 I wanted to go back into the hill villages, I told 
 them through my interpreter. I was an American 
 and I wanted to see just what these Siberian 
 farmer folk were, and why they were so bitter 
 against the Japanese. They told me they would 
 bring one of the Partizan chiefs, and let him talk 
 to me. In five minutes they had saddled one of 
 their work horses and trotted off toward the near- 
 est village held by these anti-Japanese, anti- 
 Cossack, peasant soldiers — called Partizans in 
 Siberia. 
 
 We waited, and while we rested we drank tea. 
 That's Russia — waiting and drinking tea. Some 
 day when Russia gets tired of waving a red flag 
 and wants another she should design a samovar 
 rampant on a snowy white background. 
 
 In about an hour four Partizan soldiers gal- 
 loped up to the house and flinging themselves 
 from their ponies in best revolutionary style, 
 pushed open the low wooden door and entered. 
 
 133 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 "We shook hands all the way around, and then 
 sat down at the candle-lit table to discuss affairs. 
 It was all full of color and warmth and drama: 
 this low-ceilinged house of woodsmen, with two- 
 thirds of the space taken with rough, straw cov- 
 ered boards resting on wooden supports, where 
 the men slept: the group at the table — the tall 
 dashing leader, a mere boy vdth. a blond curl dip- 
 ping low over his forehead ; the pock-marked sec- 
 ond in command, a short stubby figure in his white 
 sheepskin jacket with the fur turned out; and 
 behind in the shadow of the single candle the final 
 fringe of the ignorant gentle woodcutters. The 
 pock-marked man spoke strange words of Inter- 
 nationalism, Communism and Karl Marx and for 
 the tenth of a second you could catch the glimmer 
 of superior patience flash over the faces of these 
 men of the woods who were determined to cut the 
 way to their own freedom. They, too, were tired 
 of words and magic phrases — they wanted some 
 of the good things of the world. 
 
 I was to go into the hills and I would be wel- 
 comed. I could stay as long as I wanted to, and 
 they would pledge their lives that I would not fall 
 into the hands of any Japanese troops. We drank 
 another gallon of tea to the arrangement and for 
 an hour sat around talking of wars and peace and 
 more wars. My interpreter explained to th©m 
 that I had been in Archangel and Moscow th« 
 year before, and they plied me with questions 
 
 134 
 
IVAN THE JAP KILLER 
 
 about conditions there. The stubby, pock-marked 
 man, I discovered, was from the outside world: 
 all the others were Siberians who knew only of 
 their home provinces. 
 
 At eight one of the woodcutters announced that 
 the horses were ready, so we bundled into our 
 fur coats, and climbed in the peasant sled. Two 
 of the mounted men rode ahead and the remaining 
 two brought up behind. There was no moon, but 
 the stars were brilliant. It must have been thirty 
 degrees below zero, and now and then we would 
 crawl off the low sled and walk for half a mile 
 or so ; even heavy overshoes could not keep one 's 
 feet from freezing in such temperature. 
 
 After some two hours we passed a great ghost 
 of a building, lying roofless and with broken win- 
 dows, like the gigantic skull of some brick and 
 mortar skeleton. One of the Partizans galloped 
 alongside the sled and explained that the building 
 was the ruins of the once famous Piankoff's 
 vodka distillery, that had been burned down 
 months before, by the peasants of the district. In 
 the fall of 1914, following the czar's temperance 
 edict, it had been closed down, and it had re- 
 mained shut during the Kerensky regime, and 
 during the short period that followed when the 
 Soviets held forth in Siberia. But with the com- 
 ing of Kolchak it had reopened and Japanese sol- 
 diers had been sent out to guard it. But the 
 peasants wanted none of the vodka and none of 
 
 135 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 the Japanese so one warm June night they or- 
 ganized, and sweeping down from the hills, 
 destroyed it. Alcohol, I have found, has come 
 for good and all into Russia. The peasants over 
 the great spread of Russia are finished with 
 vodka: Soviet Russia has always prohibited the 
 manufacture and sale of high proof spirits, and 
 it was only in the districts held by the ''Whites" 
 that vodka was permitted to be sold. 
 
 Even before I had touched hands with them, 
 this ruined distillery taught me a good deal about 
 my Siberian folk. It had been built here so that 
 it could get without high freightage charges the 
 grain these small farmers grew, and so it offered 
 them a good market and high prices for their 
 produce. But they had burned it down because 
 first of all they did not want their sons to have the 
 vodka, and they could not stand to see the hated 
 makakas — Japanese — strutting about their hills. 
 
 It was almost midnight when we reached the 
 little village with its row of low one-storied 
 houses, built along the single wide street. A 
 frozen creek touched its borders here and there 
 like some silver ribbon flung carelessly down the 
 narrow valley by a giant's hand. Inside the house 
 of Dubrovin we found a score of peasant soldier 
 boys lolling about the great Dutch oven in the 
 kitchen, humming to the music of a guitar. They 
 were billeted here, and of the three rooms in the 
 house they had mllingly been given two. The 
 
 136 
 
IVAN THE JAP KILLER 
 
 bearded peasant owner, and his kindly hospitable 
 wife, with their four children, wanted only one 
 room. These fighting boys were their own fight- 
 ing boys, whose battles were their battles, and 
 whose victories were their victories. It was one 
 great family, and a willing family. They took 
 their scanty meals from the same mother pot, and 
 they drank their tea from the same samovar. 
 
 '•See the boy there in the corner — ^he is my 
 son," the gentle old peasant housewife proudly 
 said to me, as she nodded slyly to a great raw- 
 boned country lad, with a carbine strapped over 
 his shoulder. Then she went on with all the pride 
 there was in her heart: "He's fighting the 
 Japanese for me. ' ' 
 
 And I found it the same everywhere among 
 these frozen hills. This army of Partizan soldiers 
 was a peasant army, and these old mothers and 
 fathers were real mothers and fathers, and these 
 fighting sons were real sons — their sons and the 
 sons of the peasants of the next hill village. 
 
 Ideals taught by candle-light, it seemed to me, 
 were the essence of these Siberian farmer folk; 
 ideals that meant something because they had to 
 be fought for and sacrificed for and paid for. 
 There are other ideals besides candle-lit ideals, 
 but men do not give their lives so freely for elec- 
 tric lighted ideals, nor do they bum so brightly 
 as those of the pine knots and the tallow dips. 
 Civilizations and super-progress does take some- 
 
 137 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OP THE EAST 
 
 thing out of men's hearts — it takes the fire and 
 the dare and the punch. Life does become too 
 precious the moment that it's worth more than 
 its ideals are worth. 
 
 A sixteen-year-old peasant boy named Audrey 
 proved all this that following morning. In his 
 farm sled he drove us up and down the hills, 
 through two tiny hamlets to the village of 
 Rakovka, and while he urged his lazy ponies into 
 a trot he would answer our questions in a low 
 soft voice, looking squarely at us out of eyes that 
 were! used to gazing on hills and valleys and 
 honest things. There was no guile in his heart, 
 and no deceit on his lips. 
 
 * 'What is it that you Siberians want T ' I asked 
 him through my interpreter. 
 
 *'We want the Japanese to leave our country," 
 he answered, turning from his horses. 
 
 ''What else?" 
 
 "Svohoda." (Freedom.) 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 "Land and some other things." 
 
 "Do you want them bad enough to die for 
 them?" I questioned. 
 
 "Of course," he answered very simply. 
 
 "But you are young, and there are many fine 
 things ahead that you would miss. Surely you 
 wouldn't give your life for svohoda." 
 
 "Oh, yes — because I would be dying for my 
 ideal," he answered. 
 
 138 
 
IVAN THE JAP KILLER 
 
 I persisted in my searching for the real heart 
 of this boy. "Do you mean to tell me that if by 
 going to the crest of that hill you could drive out 
 the Japanese and get your precious svoboda, but 
 that you'd be killed, that you would do it?" 
 
 *'0f course, because I would be dying for my 
 ideal." 
 
 I wanted to reach out and put my arms about 
 this sixteen-year-old boy who would have been 
 happy to die for his ideal. He'd never seen an 
 American before, he told me, and he didn't know 
 just where America was, but his was the heart of 
 the best of America : his was the fighting soul of 
 the boys of America of other generations when 
 there was American svoboda to be fought for. 
 And his was the great heart of these Siberian 
 folk. 
 
 "Who told you about these wonderful ideals?" 
 I asked him. 
 
 "My father," he answered. 
 
 Candle-lit ideals, I thought — simple courageous 
 ideals of real patriots. 
 
 He sat silent for a long time and then he turned 
 from his horses. "We will all die fighting Japan. 
 We hate the makakas. But we Ve nothing against 
 America. We'll fight to drive out the Japanese, 
 but if America took Siberia we wouldn't care 
 very much. We know America is a free country, 
 and that she would give us the land and freedom. 
 But we'll all die fighting the makakas.*' 
 
 139 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 I knew that in the heart of this simple, un- 
 spoiled peasant boy, echoing his father's words 
 about ideals, that I had found the real pulsing, 
 breathing heart of Russia's one hundred and 
 fifty million peasants. No one who hasn't seen 
 the tears in their eyes can know what dreams they 
 have of education and what hopes of freedom, 
 and what thoughts of having just a little of the 
 good things of the world, and how they want the 
 Japanese troops to go and let them settle their 
 own affairs their own way. These people and 
 their dreams are still to be discovered by the 
 world, yet they are Russia — the real Russia of 
 the future. They are the eighty-five per cent, of 
 the millions of this great republic. 
 
 This night at the village of Rakovka a dozen of 
 the peasants came over to the house to see me. 
 They drifted into the tiny double-windowed room, 
 one at a time, and stood silent on the edge of the 
 circle looking at me. None of them had ever seen 
 a foreigner before and at first they couldn't un- 
 derstand why I was there. The next morning the 
 dashing chief of the detachment, who lived with 
 his widowed mother in this same village, said to 
 me: **When the peasants first saw you last night 
 they resented your being in their hill village, but 
 after they saw how you only wanted to find the 
 truth they wept." 
 
 That was a wonderful night: the half hun- 
 dred soldiers crowded about the pine table where 
 
 140 
 
IVAN THE JAP KILLER 
 
 we ate supper from the single great dish; and 
 on the fringe of the crowd the bearded old peas- 
 ants sucking in the words like hungry men starv- 
 ing for new hopes of freedom. There was a story 
 in every soldier there, and a novel in every leader 
 at the table. Neither time nor adventure will 
 ever make me forget the bearded old Cossack 
 from Orenburg, in South Russia, who was moth- 
 ering and fathering all these farmer-soldier boys. 
 His wrist had been broken by a Japanese rifle 
 bullet, and his left hand was useless, and when 
 he told me of his wife and four children at 
 the other end of Russia his eyes were warm with 
 tears. At home he was a school-teacher, and a 
 member of the Cossack Council, and had been sen- 
 tenced to life imprisonment in Siberia because, 
 at the beginning of the Bolshevik revolution, 
 when Ataman Dutoff had asked the Cossack 
 Council for authority to hang a Cossack colonel 
 who had refused to fight the Bolshevik, this old 
 fellow had said aloud in meeting: **Try hanging 
 yourself first, Ataman Dutoff, and if it does 
 you any good then hang your colonel." 
 
 Nor will I ever forget the Dreamer who had 
 been a revolutionist from boyhood. In the 1905 
 revolution he had been sentenced for life in the 
 Siberian mines and had served until the Keren- 
 sky revolution had released him. He was no 
 Communist — only a revolutionist, and now a 
 patriot fighting brown men who would take his 
 
 141 
 
THE RISING TEMPEE OF THE EAST 
 
 country. Excepting these two from the outside 
 world all were native Siberian peasant fighters. 
 Even their chief, Stepanenko, had never been si. 
 hundred miles from his hills. 
 
 He was a figure after your own heart, this 
 Stepanenko. A great black beard covered his 
 face, and he looked tired and worn and old, but 
 he confessed that he was only twenty-six. He 
 was going to take us to stay at what was left of 
 his house after the Japs had finished with it, but 
 at the last moment he decided differently: "My 
 mother always cries so when she sees me when 
 I get home," he explained simply: **she is so 
 afraid that something will happen." 
 
 I had never in my life seen such love for men 
 as these peasants of his bore for him. A dozen 
 of them whispered to me that they would give 
 their lives gladly for him. And I know that he 
 would give his life just as freely for them. 
 
 **"We shall lay down our rifles and go to farm- 
 ing again as soon as the Japanese are driven out 
 and we get our liberty and the land," he ex- 
 plained. ''We are only peasants, fighting for 
 what we believe to be right. We were willing to 
 support the Omsk directory when it promised us 
 democratic government. But it did not give us 
 democracy. It gave us instead Kolchak and the 
 Japanese: and Kolchak conscripted us and took 
 our horses and food and gave us no freedom. So 
 we fought and defeated him, and we will fight 
 
 142 
 
IVAN THE JAP KILLER 
 
 always for the things we believe in. We will fight 
 the Japanese until the last man of us is killed." 
 
 Over and over again I heard the same thought 
 that night until I grew convinced that in nowise 
 were these men radical men, but merely straight 
 farmers fighting for what they believed to be 
 right and just. For hours on end they asked me 
 questions about America and Japan and then in 
 turn they answered mine. One by one the tired 
 soldiers and old peasants drifted away, until at 
 midnight only the dozen men billeted in the house 
 remained. Slowly they began spreading their 
 sheepskin coats on the floor, pulling off their 
 boots, unstrapping their pistols and soon we were 
 all stretched out on the uncarpeted planks. The 
 old Cossack blew out the candle, and then, in the 
 darkness, the Dreamer, who 'd spent fifteen years 
 of his life in Siberian prisons, began humming a 
 revolutionary song. In a minute the others were 
 nibbling at it, and soon the dozen men had thrown 
 their hearts into the singing. I couldn't under- 
 stand the words of the song, but the low, plain- 
 tive, thrilling music swept into my heart, and I 
 was glad that there was no light to show the tears 
 in my eyes. 
 
 I awoke in the morning \vith the sun streaming 
 in through the double windows. My bunkies 
 were pulling on their boots, and strapping on 
 their pistols. I pulled on my own shoes and took 
 my turn at splashing myself with cold water in 
 
 143 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 the kitchen. Ten minutes later we sat down with 
 the chief and the Dreamer and the old Cossack 
 to a breakfast of tea and black bread and country 
 sausage. We ate true Eussian peasant style, with 
 wooden spoons from the same dish. 
 
 At eleven a delegation of peasants arrived with 
 an invitation for me to attend their Sunday morn- 
 ing village assembly, so we started off with them. 
 We walked a quarter of a mile down the broad 
 single street and then entered one of the small 
 one-story houses. The room was packed with 
 bearded old peasants. They asked that all the 
 soldiers leave, so that we would be alone with 
 them. The Partizans smilingly withdrew, and, 
 seated at a table, we faced these men to whom 
 this fight against Japan and this whole revolu- 
 tion were things as sacred and holy as their reli- 
 gion. Only a few of them could read and write 
 and none of them had ever seen an American 
 before. 
 
 ''Just what is it that you Siberians want?" I 
 asked very directly. 
 
 *'We want the Japanese to get out and leave 
 us alone," one of their spokesmen answered. 
 
 "And what else do you want?" 
 
 "Land and freedom," a half-dozen answered. 
 
 It was the old cry — ''Zemla e svohoda" — that 
 had echoed for a century from one end of great 
 Russia to the other. 
 
 "And will the Soviets give it to you?" 
 144 
 
IVAN THE JAP KILLER 
 
 **Yes — and if they do not, we will figlit on until 
 we get it," one old man answered and the others 
 nodded their heads. 
 
 For the moment Soviet was a magic word for 
 them and in it they saw their dreams of land and 
 freedom. Bnt there had been other magic words 
 too, and some of them had lost their charm, but 
 "Land and Freedom," never. If Soviet failed 
 they would fight on and on and on. They wanted 
 the land for themselves — all of it — and nothing on 
 this earth was strong enough to keep them from 
 having it. 
 
 It is difficult for America to grasp this land 
 problem here in Russia and to realize how deep 
 it has sunk itself into the hearts of the great 
 Russian majorities. Before 1861 practically all 
 the land was owned by the court, the church and 
 the great landlords, and it was worked by serfs 
 who were part of the estates. For the most part 
 the work was done on the share basis and the serf 
 attached to the land looked upon it as his, just as 
 he thought that he belonged to it. In 1861 when 
 he was freed the village in which he lived was 
 permitted to buy part of the great estates and 
 farm the land on the communal system. This 
 meant that the land was divided among the fam- 
 ilies according to number and at the end of from 
 five to ten years redivided. The village paid for 
 the land by yearly instalments, but so small was 
 the plot allotted to each family that the peasant 
 
 145 
 
THE EISINa TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 was in many cases worse off than he had been be- 
 fore. 
 
 This was especially true of the peasants who 
 remained on the great estates as hired hands. 
 They had only their eternal ceaseless dream of 
 land. In 1905 this dream was lit by the fire of 
 revolt and terrible revolution followed. The 
 world thinks of the 1905 revolution as a city revo- 
 lution, but it was really a peasant revolution. 
 Peasants burned the houses of the great estates, 
 MUed hundreds of landlords, and in turn hun- 
 dreds of thousands of them were killed. But it 
 was like killing sheep; these peasants could only 
 fight with scythes against professional hired sol- 
 diers with machine-guns. 
 
 Things were different in the next revolution, 
 1917. After the army debacle of July, 1917, the 
 farmer-boy soldiers took their rifles and machine- 
 guns and went home. Many of them killed their 
 landlords and burned the great houses and 
 divided up the estates. The stabler, more intel- 
 ligent peasants, took the advice of their Social 
 Revolutionist political leaders, who told them to 
 wait until the Constitutional Assembly could 
 decide how the land was to be taken over by them 
 and distributed. But Lenine dissolved the Con- 
 stituent Assembly and declared for peace, and 
 gave the poorer peasants permission to take over 
 the estates themselves. Yet peace did not come 
 and Lenine clamped down his commissars, orders, 
 
 146 
 
IVAN THE JAP KILLER 
 
 requisitions, mobilizations, and a score of brutal 
 things on them. Millions of them were against 
 Lenine — but there was nowhere else for them to 
 turn. Kolchak, Denekin and the others gave 
 them only hollow promises, that blew up like a 
 bubble whenever tested. The old military crowd 
 and the old landowners crowded about these 
 ** white hopes," and the peasants saw that they 
 could dream of nothing but a victory for reac- 
 tion. If there had been a third party, a fair, 
 democratic body, they would have turned to it — 
 most of the one hundred fifty million, and by the 
 very force of their numbers they would have 
 pulled Lenine down just as they pulled Kolchak 
 down. But there was no place for them to turn, 
 except toward Moscow. 
 
 So this Sunday morning, in this hill village, 
 these Siberian peasants told me that first they 
 would drive out Japan, and then turn their eyes 
 toward the Soviets, and that if Moscow did not 
 give them what they wanted, they would fight on 
 until they got it. And they will — and they will 
 win. Russia will be a peasant republic sooner 
 than any one dreams. It can not be anything 
 else, because they are eighty-five per cent, of 
 Russia's uncounted milKons, and the day is here 
 when eighty-five per cent, will always rule. 
 
 Other wonderful days there were, there in the 
 frozen hills of Eastern Siberia, when these things 
 were proved even more vividly and surely for me. 
 
 147 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 And times without number I felt the warm 
 friendly pulse of Russia, beating to the same time 
 that the heart of America is set to. 
 
 I recall now one special ride through these 
 snow-blanketed hills. My driver, this time, was 
 not a young boy, dreaming of dying for his ideal, 
 but an old man who had been all his life in Siberia. 
 I asked him to tell me just what he thought about 
 America. 
 
 *' America did some few things against us when 
 they first came here, but we don 't mind them now 
 that America has gone," he went on slowly. "She 
 did help Kolchak and the military, but she didn't 
 know what they were : as soon as she found out, 
 she stopped. She didn't understand that they 
 were not working for the people, but only for 
 themselves. We know America wants nothing 
 from us, and that she is the only one that didn't 
 want something from us. Japan is different. "We 
 hate her and we shall fight her forever.'* 
 
 He was Siberia speaking — ^the great coming 
 Siberia. He couldn 't read nor write, but he could 
 think straight as a dye about such things as lib- 
 erty, freedom, justice. I was like a man standing 
 for the first time before some tremendous, won- 
 derful thing of God. 
 
 He went on urging his lazy, shaggy, Siberian 
 ponies, covered with snow and frost. Pretty 
 soon he turned in his seat: "America is a great 
 free country, and if America will help Siberia 
 
 148 
 
IVAN THE JAP KILLER 
 
 there will be two great free countries, and they 
 will make the whole world free. As I work here 
 among these hills, I often dream of how it will 
 be some day: way over there free democratic 
 America, and over here free democratic Siberia. 
 We shall be great friends and we shall make the 
 whole world free." 
 
 I thought of nations of small souls and dwarf 
 hearts, dreaming of world power and world con- 
 quest. I thought how foolish and futile their 
 unworthy ambitions were before the two great 
 hearts that some day would beat together to music 
 that this Siberian peasant had dreamed. 
 
 "Way over there free democratic America, and 
 over here free democratic Siberia. We shall be 
 great friends and we shall make the whole world 
 free. ,./ . .?' 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 WHITE AUSTRALIA 
 
 It is a big jump from the frozen hiUs of Siberia 
 to the tropical lands of North Queensland and 
 the smiling acres of New South Wales, but if one 
 would know the full story of the New Pacific and 
 the world's unrest one must travel far. 
 
 In the chapters that have preceded this I have 
 told of the cry of "India for the Indians" — 
 ** China for the Chinese" — ''Japan for the Japan- 
 ese." Here in this great Southland there is still 
 another cry — "Australia for the white man." 
 
 Somehow the other slogans sound perfectly 
 reasonable and fine, while this one that has to do 
 with a White Australia seems far-fetched and un- 
 necessary. And yet . . . 
 
 The man who first painted white Australia in 
 vivid colors for me was the "guard" on the train 
 that had the Brisbane end of the Brisbane-Sydney 
 run. 
 
 I suppose what attracted him to my compart- 
 ment was my American accent. He began talking 
 to me about what odd habits Americans had and 
 how a friend of his who had been in the States 
 had remarked to him that Americans were rare 
 
 150 
 
WHITE AUSTRALIA 
 
 birds because they shifted their forks when they 
 ate. I wanted some more of these strange obser- 
 vations so I asked him to have a seat alongside 
 me. 
 
 We talked railroading for a time and then 
 swung into the popular topic of the high cost of 
 living and from there to union hours and Lloyd 
 George and finally I mentioned white Australia to 
 him. 
 
 "We don't want any of those brown beggars in 
 here," he explained to me. "They work twice 
 as long and for one-half the pay we work for. No 
 sir, we're going to keep Australia clean white. 
 We'll fight England or Japan or anybody for 
 that. Ugh ! There 's one of those Japanese gents 
 in the front compartment of this car. He's a 
 commercial traveler, but I hate him just the same. 
 They got to whip us before they can come in here. 
 I was cold on this conscription for the Great War, 
 but they can take me any time to fight these 
 Japs." 
 
 Apparently nothing else had interested him. But 
 he was talking now with sober repressed sincer- 
 ity. He was stating a political code that was 
 nothing short of a religion to him. 
 
 That's exactly what this doctrine of white Aus- 
 tralia is — a religion; the fervent, fanatical and 
 sacred determination of five and one-half million 
 people to keep a great continent for themselves — 
 for their own race and color and faith. 
 
 151 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 To the great majority of Australians this new 
 religion of Oriental exclusion at any cost and at 
 any sacrifice is a living breathing thing — just as 
 it was to this train guard in Queensland. It is 
 Australia. She wiU fight for it and she will die 
 for it. No League of Nations, no Association of 
 Nations — not even the British Empire — can force 
 her to change this religion. It is her very life. 
 
 On its face value one might easily suggest that 
 even if this is a political religion it is distinctly 
 Australia's business and of little importance to 
 the rest of the world. But this is a wrong con- 
 clusion because it is distinctly of grave impor- 
 tance to the peace and welfare of the whole 
 world. For this doctrine of white Australia has a 
 tremendous bearing on the whole question of 
 racial equality as advanced by Japan. 
 
 And racial equality may be shouted at any mo- 
 ment with greater vehemence and determination 
 than it has ever been cried before. It is one of 
 the unanswerables — one of the unsolvables. For 
 eventually with Japan will be the great voice of 
 China with her four hundred million and India 
 with her three hundred fifteen million. It is 
 the ultimate cry of more than one-half of the peo- 
 ples of this earth — ^people still barely learning to 
 lisp, yet whose voice some day will shake the 
 world ! 
 
 Australia refuses and will continue to refuse 
 to heed this clamoring — and nothing can change 
 
 152 
 
WHITE AUSTRALIA 
 
 her. She is determined to keep her great, quarter- 
 developed continent for herself — to keep it at any 
 cost and any sacrifice. For twenty years she has 
 been reaffirming this determination mitil it has 
 become a faith. 
 
 To-day no Asiatic native can enter Australia—^ 
 miless he be a student or merchant or traveler. 
 An elastic educational test that all immigrants 
 must pass keeps him out; a fifty- word dictation 
 test that may include any and all European lan- 
 guages. There is no written law that discrim- 
 inates against him in any way — he simply must 
 pass an educational test that may be stretched to 
 exclude a coolie who might be learned enough to 
 wear a Phi Beta Kappa key. 
 
 And this religion of a white Australia is no sud- 
 den burst of racial hate or fear of invasion : it is 
 a slow-moving, ever-increasing political philoso- 
 phy that has now reached to the very roots of 
 Australia's national soul. 
 
 It was born two decades ago of purely economic 
 parentage. At that time there were a few thou- 
 sand Oriental coolies in the country and some 
 thousands of Kanaka laborers in the sugar dis- 
 tricts of north Queensland. But there were 
 enough Asiatics and South Sea natives to prove 
 to the Australian workmen that direct competi- 
 tion with the cheap coolies of Asia, with their 
 low standard of living, was a brutal unnecessary 
 test. 
 
 153 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 It was Australian workmen who first demanded 
 a white Australia — but it is the Australian mid- 
 dle-class nationalists with all their pride of coun- 
 try and race and color whose voices are loudest 
 now in disseminating this political religion. 
 
 Australia has a greater land area than the 
 United States (excluding Alaska), yet her total 
 white population is less than five and one-half 
 millions. Of the non-Europeans there are in 
 round numbers 37,000 made up as follows : 23,000 
 Chinese (one-fourth British-born), 6,000 Hindus 
 and other Indian races, 3,000 Japanese, 2,000 
 other Asiatics, 2,500 Polynesians and 500 others. 
 In addition there are estimated to be some 30,000 
 Australian aboriginals. 
 
 Of the great area of Australia about one-third 
 is or can be made productive — two-thirds make 
 up the Never-Never country that is good for little 
 else than fiction. But this one-third can readily 
 support one hundred million people — and Aus- 
 tralia to-day has fewer inhabitants than the 
 single city of New York. 
 
 The northeast country is tropical and semi- 
 tropical and here are milKons of acres of unde- 
 veloped lands that can be used for sugar, cotton 
 and other tropical and semi-tropical products. 
 It is particularly in this tropical district where 
 Asiatic coolies and Kanaka laborers could be per- 
 manently settled, that one faces the great moral 
 issue of the right of a nation to build a waU of 
 
 154 
 
WHITE AUSTRALIA 
 
 exclusion around itself while its rich lands lie 
 idle and undeveloped. 
 
 Scientists have been wrangling for generations 
 over the effect of tropical life on the white man. 
 This question has a deep bearing on the whole 
 problem of a white Australia. Recently in their 
 convention in Brisbane, Queensland, the National 
 Medical Conference devoted an entire session to 
 the discussion of this very point. Medical men 
 who had lived for years in the tropical sugar cane 
 country of northern Queensland gave it as their 
 opinion that white men could live and prosper 
 in the tropics if they took proper care of them- 
 selves. 
 
 This pronouncement was hailed with delight by 
 the white Australianists. They were not cheat- 
 ing the world of the food that must some day be 
 grown in these tropical lands that now are fallow. 
 They point to the Queensland sugar plantations 
 as their proof. 
 
 From the beginning these plantations were 
 worked by indentured Kanaka labor from the 
 South Sea Islands. To all intents and purposes 
 these ignorant blacks were virtually slaves. The 
 workmen of Australia started the agitation 
 against this ''slave trade*' and eventually the 
 whole of the country was lighted up by a blaze 
 of moral indignation over this colored labor. 
 
 Notice was given the planters that after a spec- 
 ified time a white Australia policy would be en- 
 
 155 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 forced and colored labor would be abolished. A 
 wail of protest went up from sugar planters, and 
 '^blackbirders" who profited in the procuring and 
 transportation of the Kanaka laborers, but it was 
 of no use. In due time the South Sea Islanders 
 were shipped back to their homes, and the irate 
 planters appeased by a government grant of six 
 pounds sterling for every ton of sugar they pro- 
 duced thereafter. 
 
 With many misgivings white laborers were put 
 into the cane fields to take the place of the 
 Kanakas. And to the surprise of a good many 
 they were able not only to do the tropical work 
 but to do more and better work per man than the 
 imported negroes. They were more expensive, 
 of course, but the subsidy took care of this dif- 
 ference. 
 
 It was a great boon for white Australia. 
 ''White men, good strong Europeans of our own 
 color and own religions, are what we want," all 
 Australia said. *'We are going to keep our race 
 pure: we are going to keep Australia for our- 
 selves.'* 
 
 Little by little this determination has grown 
 until to-day it is the soul of Australia's national 
 life. From Premier Hughes down to my train 
 guard this is a settled conviction. 
 
 I don't know which feels it the deepest — cer- 
 tainly it is part of the heart and mind of this 
 strange, bent, irascible, hawk-like figure who 
 
 156 
 
WHITE AUSTRALIA 
 
 has been the mouthpiece of Australia for a half- 
 dozen years. 
 
 In some ways this man "Billy" Hughes is one 
 of the most picturesque and unusual characters 
 in the world. Coming to Australia from Wales 
 some twenty-five years ago as a consumptive ex- 
 school-teacher he was for several years a roust- 
 about on sheep ranches in Queensland. Event- 
 ually he drifted to Sydney where he opened a 
 small bookshop along the wharf. Soon he was 
 organizing the longshoremen and leading their 
 fight for better wages and better working condi- 
 tions. 
 
 Little by little he worked his way up in the 
 labor ranks and eventually injected himself into 
 New South Wales politics. 
 
 With the formation of the Commonwealth Par- 
 liament twenty years ago he turned his brilliant, 
 vitriolic talents toward federal affairs and rap- 
 idly became one of the foremost Labor party 
 leaders. 
 
 In 1914 with the political Labor party in con- 
 trol in five of the six states, and heavily en- 
 trenched in the Federal Parliament, Hughes was 
 first in command under Premier Fisher. Early 
 in the war Fisher resigned the premiership to 
 become Australian high commissioner in London, 
 and Hughes became premier. 
 
 In 1916 he made a hurried trip to London and 
 returned convinced that Australia must adopt 
 
 157 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OP THE EAST 
 
 conscription. But his attempt to push his bill 
 through met with bitter opposition from a ma- 
 jority of the Labor leaders and the party was 
 split wide open. One section followed Hughes, 
 who now formed a coalition with the Liberal 
 party, retaining power and making for himself 
 bitter and lasting enemies of the majority of his 
 old Labor associates. 
 
 Each election the Labor party, incensed at his 
 ''treachery," attempted to break his power, but 
 Avith somewhat of the same cunning and quick 
 shift and easy compromise of his fellow Welsh- 
 man, Lloyd George, this strange little fighter 
 holds together his coalition. Frail, with broken 
 health, tryingly deaf, he is nevertheless easily 
 the most brilliant and capable man in Australian 
 public life. He trusts no one, has few friends, a 
 million enemies, yet he cuts and slashes his way 
 through to the end — ^the master politician: a 
 striking contrast in personality to our o^vn soft- 
 spoken lawyer in Washington who bears the same 
 name. 
 
 In his high pitched, rasping, almost quarrel- 
 some voice Hughes briefly outlined for me just 
 where Australia stood in regard to Japanese ex- 
 clusion. We were seated in his private office in 
 the Parliament House in Melbourne. A tiny 
 black telephone disk was clapped to his ear and a 
 small six by six inch box receiver on his desk was 
 pointed in my direction. 
 
 158 
 
WHITE AUSTRALIA 
 
 **We must recognize absolutely that our sev- 
 eral countries have certain fundamental, vital, 
 individual principles that we can not sacrifice, 
 compromise, or even open for discussion to other 
 peoples," he explained. **The white Australia 
 policy is ours; the Monroe Doctrine is America's; 
 the freedom of the seas is Britain's. These are 
 outside the province of any League or Associa- 
 tion or any international conference. It must 
 recognize the rights of any nation to protect its 
 own vital interests." 
 
 His was the voice of Australia — of white Aus- 
 tralia — not arguing but simply laying down cer- 
 tain fundamental religious dogmas that it would 
 fight for, die for, if necessary. 
 
 And strangely enough he and most Australians 
 look to America for their greatest physical and 
 moral support in this new religion. 
 
 **The same Pacific with its same problems and 
 questions washes both our shores giving America 
 and Australia certain common interests," he 
 went on that day. *'We rejoice in the launching 
 of each new American battle-ship: it is another 
 brick in our citadel of defense." 
 
 Somehow there is a feeling generally about the 
 country that England can not and will not under- 
 stand the necessity for a white Australia. On 
 the tight little island itself there have never been 
 any color lines. Australians point out how the 
 rich young Oxford student from India is received 
 
 159 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 in the best homes in England as an equal — ^yet 
 when he returns to his own India his pride is 
 trampled on and his heart is broken by every 
 white under-official in the Indian service. 
 
 Englishmen are liberal and democratic with 
 themselves in their own country — ^but once out- 
 side they are Britishers with all the weight of a 
 great far-flung empire and the "white man's 
 burden" on their shoulders. And Australia rec- 
 ognizes this. She expects no sympathetic under- 
 standing of her Australia-for-the-white-man from 
 Downing Street. 
 
 So it is that she is looking to Canada and the 
 United States. There is a certain amount of jeal- 
 ousy against the powerful America, but it is 
 smothered in the belief that America stands 
 squarely between Australia and ambitious Japan. 
 
 A score of men throughout Australia have ex- 
 plained to me how this ** menace" of Japan has 
 drawn them to America. *'You could count on 
 thousands of us enlisting in your armies if you 
 should ever have trouble with Japan," I was told 
 from one end of the continent to the other. 
 
 This fear of Japanese aggression amounts 
 almost to an obsession. Men who submitted the 
 same offer of military assistance in a possible 
 war against Japan, would turn to me in sincerest 
 anxiety and ask if America would help them if 
 they should be crowded to the wall by Japan. 
 
 This feeling that America better understands 
 160 
 
WHITE AUSTRALIA 
 
 her Japanese problem than England ever can, 
 has severed more than one of the cords that bind 
 the great daughter of the south to the mother 
 England. Yet to report quite honestly all that I 
 found there I must explain that I discovered very 
 little desire to cut these ties completely. 
 
 Frankly I had expected that in Australia I 
 should see the first real evidence of the breaking 
 up of the White British Empire. I had thought 
 that here at the end of the world there would be 
 independence of thought and action and a demand 
 for full and complete freedom. 
 
 Instead, I found that except in radical Labor 
 circles and among certain radical Irish Sinn 
 Feiners, Australia is closely tied to the apron- 
 strings of England — tied sentimentally, econom- 
 ically, nationally. Many great business enter- 
 prises, even the great ranches, were financed in 
 London. And deeper than that, her thought still 
 bears a pure British trade-mark. 
 
 Everywhere there was a vague, half -born idea 
 that by some magic the empire would suffer a 
 transformation that would give complete freedom 
 of action and an equal voice to the individual 
 commonwealths and yet retain unity. The do- 
 minions will never engage in another war unless 
 it is their several, individual wishes to do so, they 
 argue — and yet when pressed as to what their 
 attitude would be if faced with another crisis like 
 that of August, 1914, they invariably would 
 
 161 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 answer: **0f course we must always stand by 
 the empire when she needs us." 
 
 But not so the radical Labor elements. They, 
 with the Sinn Feiners, making up possibly fifty 
 per cent, of the Labor population, were frank in 
 their determination to end all connection with the 
 empire. 
 
 And this mention of the stand of radical Labor 
 takes us from White Australia to Pink Queens- 
 land. And Pink Queensland after all does have to 
 do with the story of the world's unrest. 
 
 In the friendly, hospitable but extremely aristo- 
 cratic Queensland Club of Brisbane, where the 
 great ranch owners and bankers foregather, they 
 told me that real red revolution was abroad in 
 the land. 
 
 **A11 this business of State Socialism is nothing 
 but the vanguard of a real revolution, ' ' one earn- 
 est gentleman shouted at me in frightened tones. 
 
 In the old Trades Hall in the same city Tim 
 Moroney, head of the Railway Union, called this 
 same State Socialism *' cockroach capitalism." 
 ''These cheap Labor politicians are just a lot of 
 half penny office holders, afraid of their own 
 shadows. Red! Ugh!" he grunted. 
 
 For myself, I'd call this most ''revolutionary" 
 of Australia's six states possibly a pale, sickly 
 pink. As for being red, it simply fails to make 
 good on its color reputation. 
 
 Two years ago when the Prince of Wales en- 
 162 
 
WHITE AUSTRALIA 
 
 tered Queensland his party came trembling in 
 their boots. There was serious fear that the ' ' red 
 raggers," or Bolsheviks, or some low-browed rad- 
 ical laborites, would hoot the prince or bomb his 
 train or say nasty things to him. Instead, Jack 
 Fihelly, their acting Labor premier, wined, dined 
 and cheered him — and then trailed his departing 
 train in a 'plane to say a final good-by. 
 
 In exactly the same degree in everything else 
 does Queensland fail to hold up its red reputa- 
 tion. Briefly here is what I found in this alleged 
 radical state with its sprawling six hundred sev- 
 enty thousand five hundred square miles and 
 iseven hundred thousand inhabitants : 
 
 A Labor government firmly in power with 
 forty-seven seats to the combined opposition's 
 twenty-five. 
 
 Seven great state enterprises being worked 
 fairly successfully: 
 
 More than five thousand miles of state owned 
 railroads, stretching through little settled coun- 
 try, operated at small profit : 
 
 A government insurance bureau that has low- 
 ered insurance charges some twenty-five per 
 cent. : 
 
 A state Court of Industrial Arbitration that 
 unquestionably has averted many labor difficul- 
 ties and a Fair Rents Court that is actually bene- 
 fiting the renter: 
 
 A general forty-four-hour week and a minimum 
 163 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 wage that at least keeps the wolf from the 
 door: 
 
 And certain weakness for red tape, favoritism, 
 and a degree of inefficiency that comes with all 
 government departments. 
 
 Of all these points probably Queensland's state 
 enterprises are being most closely watched by the 
 world. During the past six years that the present 
 Labor government has been in power the state 
 has entered into seven lines of direct competition : 
 cattle ranches, butcher shops, railway refresh- 
 ment rooms, produce agencies, sawmills, fish 
 shops and a single hotel. For the past year these 
 seven show a total net profit to the state of 
 94,638 pounds sterling — about $425,000 at the rate 
 of exchange at that time, only one, the fish mar- 
 kets shoAving a loss — $46,000 for the year. 
 
 The state cattle ranches are sixteen in number, 
 cover thirty-two thousand square miles, and graze 
 two hundred thousand head of cattle. For the 
 year they showed a net profit of $198,000. The 
 state management pa^^s the same state rent as 
 any private lease, but it pays no income tax. 
 
 The fifty state butcher shops — sixteen in the 
 city of Brisbane and thirty-four scattered 
 throughout the state — returned a net profit of 
 $164,000 for the year, but infinitely more impor- 
 tant than that, they kept the price of meat down. 
 These state shops, with their low prices, have 
 saved thousands of pounds sterling to the ordi- 
 nary consumers. Their turn-over for the year 
 
 164 
 
WHITE AUSTEALIA 
 
 amounted to $2,836,000, and they handled 26,254,- 
 893 pounds of meat. 
 
 According to U. H. Austin, the non-political 
 Commissioner for Trade for the state, the people 
 of Queensland have been saved more than two 
 million dollars annually directly through the state 
 enterprises. My own observations were that by 
 and large they were being run as carefully and 
 efficiently as the ordinary government bureau. 
 At least they were actually keeping prices 
 down. 
 
 The state railways were able to show a profit 
 of 0.77% — a decrease over former years. From 
 a financial point of view, however, Queensland is 
 overrailroaded, with its 5,469 miles serving a bare 
 seven hundred thousand people. 
 
 The Court of Industrial Arbitration while fail- 
 ing to stop strikes at least has greatly decreased 
 the number. There are two judges, appointed for 
 seven-year terms, and they make their awards on 
 the basis of a general forty-four-hour week, and 
 a basic wage for unskilled work of three pounds 
 seventeen shillings per week — about sixteen dol- 
 lars at the present rate of exchange. The court 
 may impose fines up to one hundred pounds and 
 six months in jail, but the hold the Court has over 
 Labor lies in the fact that if its decisions are not 
 obeyed the Union loses its standing in the Court 
 and its wage award. Its function, after all, is 
 really to get the two factions together and then 
 to deal fairly and squarely with the case. 
 
 165 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 The Fair Rents Court is really doing business. 
 All flub-dub and horse play is hewn off and the 
 court is an informal place where the renter can 
 go for protection against a profiteering landlord. 
 The judge simply asks two questions — ^neither 
 side may be represented by a lawyer and must 
 appear in person — ^how much does the renter pay 
 and how much did the property cost. If the an- 
 nual rental figures more than ten per cent, of the 
 property cost then the rent is actually brought 
 down to that figure: if the rent is less than ten 
 per cent, then it is brought up to that amount. 
 That's all there is to it — and it works. 
 
 All in all it's only a pale, sickly pink Queens- 
 land. But Queensland labor, like the labor of all 
 the rest of Australia is on the move toward the 
 Left. In June, 1921, the first All- Australian Con- 
 gress of Trade Unions was held in Melbourne, 
 and the three hundred delegates laid down a 
 broad, progressive policy that labor should point 
 toward. 
 
 This goal was frankly for the ultimate socializa- 
 tion of industry, production, distribution and ex- 
 change. To achieve it both industrial and parlia- 
 mentary machinery was to be utilized. To gain 
 efficiency the old craft organization — trade 
 unions — are to give way to organization of work- 
 ers along lines of industry: that is, where all the 
 workers in any one industry will work in a single 
 union. 
 
 166 
 
WHITE AUSTRALIA 
 
 All of which means that Australian labor is out 
 to turn this great southern continent into a social- 
 istic state— to turn it by use of a political party 
 and a tightly bound industrial organization. If 
 it's revolution, then it's evolutionary revolution; 
 and if it's evolution it's revolutionary evolution. 
 You can take your choice. 
 
 In the meantime, it's White Australia that 
 really counts— White Australia that will act as 
 an unfriendly, echoless sounding board to the 
 eventual cry of the East for racial equality. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 OUE OWN LITTIjE INDIA 
 
 Befoee the days of the Irish settlement I had 
 heard the Philippines called ''Our Own Little 
 Ireland.'' I preferred to call them "Our Own 
 Little India." 
 
 They are distinctly a little India because, after 
 all, compared to what England faces in her India 
 our troubles in the islands are very small. And 
 yet there are troubles there for us — ^for the teach- 
 ing of independence must always and ever bring 
 a demand for full independence. 
 
 And it is a growing demand. A new generation 
 is being brought up in the islands that has been 
 taught Americanism by Americans. We have told 
 them of the Fourth of July — and they celebrate 
 it. And now they ask for their own Glorious 
 Fourth. 
 
 Somehow this story of Independence and what 
 it means to the old and new generations in the 
 islands was best dramatized for me by an old 
 pagan ex-head-hunting Ifagao and his young son. 
 
 When I first saw the old fellow he was climb- 
 ing down the ladder steps that led from the un- 
 dersized doorway of a high-roosted native 
 
 168 
 
PUE OWN LITTLE INDIA 
 
 thatched hut — climbing down like some ancient 
 cock from an upper-story perch. Except for a 
 loin-cloth— dubbed a G-string in the Philippine 
 Islands — ^he was as naked as the day of his birth. 
 And he was as full as a tick. 
 
 He safely negotiated the five-foot descent and 
 then, dramatically stretching out his withered 
 and shrunken arms and looking across the nar- 
 row valley and down the deep mountainside, cried 
 in his native tongue: "The whole world is 
 drunk! The whole world is crazy!" 
 
 For hours he had been squatting on his bare 
 heels with two other ancient fakirs mumbling the 
 words, crooning the songs, making the mystic 
 passes of a high pagan harvest ceremony — and 
 between times drinking deep and satisfying 
 draughts from a great earthen jug filled with 
 hubiid — the native brew from fermented rice. 
 His only worry was his supply of hubud — and 
 what his wife would say to him when he got home. 
 "The whole world is drunk! The whole world 
 is crazy!" he repeated. 
 
 I was thoroughly fascinated and asked my in- 
 terpreter to bring him over and let me talk with 
 him. So over he came and squatted beside me 
 and we talked. His wrinkled, leathery face wore 
 a friendly smile and his eyes twinkled with good 
 feeling. For half a century he had been priest to 
 this pagan tribe of head-hunters in the Ifagao 
 valley among the mountains of Northern Luzon. 
 
 169 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 He and his nine hundred thousand pagan and 
 Moslem brothers have offered the most difficult 
 problem that the American administration in the 
 Philippines has had to face. I had come the long 
 two hundred and fifty-mile momitain trip by 
 horseback from Bagio in order to see just what 
 the Americanos had been able to accomplish 
 among a tribe which is not only backward but 
 savage and untouched at any point by the western 
 civilization we are so proud of. 
 
 '* What's all this independencia talk I hear so 
 much about ? " I asked the old fellow, after I had 
 complimented him on his evident capacity for 
 bubud^ 
 
 A strange look came over his face. His priest 
 game called for him to be the wisest man of the 
 valley and he hesitated to admit his ignorance. 
 But we were white men and, there being no neces- 
 sity of bluff with us, he finally answered: "I 
 don't know — but my son does. You ask him." 
 
 That afternoon I met the boy. He was proba- 
 bly fifteen and was dressed in a strange combina- 
 tion of native bareness and American clothes. 
 Below the waist line he wore only the "conven- 
 tional" G-string, but above he sported an Ameri- 
 can coat and a straw sailor hat — the size and con- 
 dition of these articles making it clear that they 
 were legacies from some American of grander 
 mold. When he was pointed out to me as the old 
 priest's son I went up to him and spoke to him in 
 
 170 
 
PUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 
 
 English. He answered me slowly and with a 
 rather pleasing accent. He attended an American 
 school, he said, and at one time had had an Ameri- 
 can teacher, but at present his instructor was a 
 Filipino from Manila. 
 
 **When I finish here I wish I may go to Bagio 
 High School," he said. **Then I wish to go to 
 Manila University to study to be a doctor. Then 
 some day I come back here to this valley to my 
 people and teach them how be clean, and healthy 
 and everything. My teacher promised me all that 
 if I study hard and be good student. So I work 
 hard. Next year I go Bagio." 
 
 **And how about this independencia?'^ I sug- 
 gested. 
 
 He hesitated a moment. Then he looked me 
 straight in the eye and answered: ''We want inde- 
 pendence for our islands. We learn that at 
 school. America has taught us that." 
 
 It seemed to me I had no need to look further. I 
 had found the magic I was looking for — and it 
 was the magic that American schools and Ameri- 
 can ideals and American sanitation and American 
 inspiration had planted among the eleven mil- 
 lion people of these enchanted islands. The pass- 
 ing generation had missed most of it — ^just as this 
 ancient fakir had missed it — but the youth of the 
 land, the future of the islands, had made it a part 
 of them. They knew what this word independ- 
 encia meant — because they knew the magic of 
 
 171 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 American political ideals. We had taught it to 
 them ourselves. 
 
 This hill-boy, Juan, had learned it, too — and 
 he's the fellow we're interested in; he's the new 
 Filipino: in a few years more he'll be running 
 the islands. He's distinctly the product of 
 twenty years of American influence. And, after 
 all, he's the big consideration when it comes to 
 weighing the argument for independence. His 
 old pagan father, drinking his hubud and curing 
 ills by signs and strange words, doesn't matter 
 much. What we would do to and for this young 
 boy, who would study modern medicine and lead 
 his tribe and his islands upward, is the big test. 
 
 If one could put down in a single word the most 
 priceless gift that America has made to this new 
 generation one would unhesitatingly say 
 ** schools." That's the password of the Philip- 
 pines and one hears it in barrios hidden in great 
 cocoanut groves and listens to its echo along the 
 freshly paved streets of new cities. It's the heart 
 song of a young nation. 
 
 A year ago there were more than seventy-five 
 thousand children turned away from school doors 
 because there were not rooms or teachers to care 
 for them. I shall never forget seeing a barefoot 
 mother bringing her seven-year-old boy to a 
 home-made nipa school in the island of Bohol — 
 a thousand miles south of the Ifagao valley of my 
 hill-boy. The room was overcrowded already and 
 
 172 
 
OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 
 
 the teacher had accepted more pupils than the 
 regulations permitted. But the mother couldn't 
 understand all these things and when she found 
 that her tears could not get her child admitted 
 she wanted to pay his way with her peso or two of 
 savings. 
 
 *'I will pay — I will pay you all I have," she 
 cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. **I want 
 my boy to learn so that he will not always live in 
 a hut and be poor. Please let him go to school." 
 
 She could not read nor write and she lived in a 
 tiny bamboo thatched hut, roosting on stilts, but 
 she wanted her boy to become educated so that 
 he could have a better place in the world. And 
 the same thing is happening over all the islands — 
 except among the non-Christian tribes, who are 
 taking more slowly to education. It is a glorious 
 sign for the future. 
 
 Of the one million two hundred thousand chil- 
 dren of school age in the islands, 776,639 are at- 
 tending school — a voluntary attendance of ap- 
 proximately two-thirds of the eligible children. 
 It is a great record, but cold figures fail to show 
 the priceless value of this steady stream of 
 American ideals of life and citizenship flowing 
 into the million homes scattered about these 
 islands. It is a new country that is being born, 
 and a new people. That hill-boy is typical. 
 
 One should really not visit the Philippines 
 until after he has seen India and Korea and 
 
 173 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 Egypt and Indo-China, and the other examples of 
 outside rule clapped on native peoples. To see 
 others first would make one more tolerant and 
 sympathetic and infinitely more patient, and 
 decidedly more grateful to the big Americans who 
 have spent and are even now spending the best 
 years of their lives in the islands planting deeply 
 American ideals and ideas. 
 
 It's quite easy to see the fundamental differ- 
 ence between either British or French or Japan- 
 ese or German colonial rule and that of American 
 control in the Philippines. It is basically a ques- 
 tion of the spirit that is behind the rule. 
 
 Is the highly propagandized ** white man's 
 burden" shouldered for the benefit of Manchester 
 cotton mills, or Hamburg merchants or Lyon 
 manufacturers, or is it for the benefit of the na- 
 tive peoples themselves? 
 
 This is where America's supervision of the 
 Philippines has shone like a white light in com- 
 parison to the efforts of the Old World colonizers. 
 America's work in the islands has been guided by 
 one ideal : that which is best for the Filipinos. 
 
 Twenty years ago when William Howard Taft, 
 with the cooperation of the secretary of state, 
 Philander E. Knox, first laid out the broad 
 scheme for American work in the Philippines, it 
 was under the great inspiration of preparing the 
 islands for self-government and then giving it to 
 them as soon as they were capable of taking care 
 of themselves. 
 
 174 
 
OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 
 
 Every administration at Washington and every 
 governor-general at Manila since then has 
 worked along this same general line. Carefully, 
 patiently, thoroughly we have planted this idea of 
 independence — until everywhere about the islands 
 one hears the word spoken. Somehow, no matter 
 how you may try to dodge the question, it keeps 
 popping up in a thousand different guises. I've 
 met it on the dreamy, flower-lit streets of Zam- 
 boanga; I've sat with it a thousand miles north- 
 ward in the twilight of the gorgeous days of the 
 empire in front of nipa huts, while head-hunters 
 swayed in their graceful dances: and I've enter- 
 tained it in half the clubs in Manila. 
 
 And now America talks seriously of her obli- 
 gations to the islands. 
 
 I'd really like to plead my hill-boy's side of 
 this case, but after all I'm a reporter and not a 
 partisan. All I would do is to put down in black 
 and white some basis for judgment and let you 
 who read draw your own conclusions. 
 
 My hill-boy interests me — and so do America 's 
 national and military necessities interest me. In 
 this Philippine problem it is not only what's good 
 for the Filipinos that must be considered, but 
 what's good for America. 
 
 We'll need a little historic basis to build our 
 decision on. 
 
 Two or three years before the World War a 
 large-sized scare blew our way from Japan. It 
 
 175 
 
THE EISINd TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 wafted by without damage but, nevertheless, cer- 
 tain American militaiy and naval men were 
 greatly worried. At that time we had less than 
 ten thousand American soldiers in the Philip- 
 pines, and about ten thousand Scout soldiers — 
 Filipinos commanded mostly by American offi- 
 cers. They would have been a nice, juicy morsel 
 for Japan to gulp down in one small gobble. 
 
 America's battle fleet — far less than half its 
 present size — was cavorting about the blue At- 
 lantic, some eight or nine thousand miles away, 
 and in the whole Pacific there wasn't a dry dock 
 big enough to hold one of our dreadnaughts, or a 
 naval base worthy of half the name. Our Pacific 
 fleet consisted mostly of a brace of admirals and 
 some homesick "gobs" and a tiny flock of gun- 
 boats captured from the Spaniards. They would 
 have made fair target practise for the Japanese 
 fleet. 
 
 Anjrway, the American Army and Navy staffs 
 decided in those piping days of 1913 that should 
 The Thing happen, our soldiers would concentrate 
 on Corrigador, the real Gibraltar of the Philip- 
 pines that controls the mouth of Manila Bay, with 
 Manila thirty miles away. The fortress, pro- 
 visioned and ready to withstand siege for six 
 months or more, could hold the bay as a sort of 
 refuge for our alleged Pacific fleet and retain a 
 base for future operations. In the meantime our 
 Atlantic fleet, without base or even adequate coal- 
 
 176 
 
OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 
 
 ing facilities, wonld sally forth and attempt to 
 draw the wily Jap into open naval battle — with 
 about as much chance of luring him out as the 
 small boy has of coaxing the groundhog from his 
 safe retreat. 
 
 Well, The Thing blew over and the scare was 
 forgotten and good folks laughed again at all this 
 silly talk of Yellow Peril — ^but the general staffs 
 of the Army and Navy thought it was high time 
 America got from under this far-flung burden 
 she was carrying at arm's length, seven thousand 
 miles away in the Pacific. 
 
 ''The heel of Achilles" they called the Philip- 
 pines around Washington those days. In both 
 the political and military inner circles the islands 
 suddenly grew to be recognized as our greatest 
 national weakness. Our gravest dangers were 
 in the Atlantic, where the fleet had to be cen- 
 tered, but with the Philippines hanging on a 
 string as a tempting bait, the Pacific assumed 
 new terrors and doubts. 
 
 So the scheme was put forward by certain 
 statesmen and navy and army men to cut the 
 islands adrift and let them shift for themselves. 
 As long as our flag flew over them they were an 
 increasing source of danger — and an unnecessary 
 and unremunerative danger. 
 
 All this happened along in 1913, and as a result, 
 when the new governor-general was sent over that 
 same year, he went with clear instructions to 
 
 177 
 
THE EISINa TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 liquidate this national deficit as soon as possible 
 by rushing through an independence program. 
 This was evident from his first move. 
 
 Good and true Americans who had served long 
 and faithfully in the islands were dumped out and 
 Filipinos given their jobs. And, instead of exer- 
 cising his full power in matters of legislation and 
 control, the new governor-general chose to use 
 only the friendly influence of his powerful office. 
 
 Three years later, in 1916, came the Jones Bill, 
 practically giving autonomy and self-government 
 to the islands. This was a tremendous move 
 toward full independence because, besides plac- 
 ing more power in the hands of the Filipinos, the 
 preamble of the law carried a definite pledge. 
 * 'WHEREAS, It is and has always been the pur- 
 pose of the people of the United States to with- 
 draw their sovereignty over the Philippine 
 Islands and to recognize their independence as 
 soon as a stable government can be established." 
 
 Then bang into the fire of the World War 
 dropped America. The Philippines and their 
 independence and the Yellow Peril and every- 
 thing of the Pacific were forgotten in the first 
 great surge of patriotism. Even the islands 
 tried to do their bit, and there was never the 
 slightest question of their loyalty or their will- 
 ingness to help the United States. 
 
 With the complete crushing of Germany the 
 whole military problem of America was shifted 
 
 178 
 
OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 
 
 about. The Atlantic was no longer the sea of 
 menace and we could turn our backs on Europe, 
 and for the first time concentrate our gaze on 
 the Far East. We no longer needed fear that 
 Japan would spring on us from behind and sink 
 a dagger in our open back. We could look her 
 straight and fearlessly in the eye now. And we 
 could, as well, turn our full attention to the un- 
 limited future commercial markets of the East. 
 
 So almost overnight these smiling islands 
 changed in the eyes of many men. They were no 
 longer the "heel of Achilles." Our military and 
 naval men could dream out their great military 
 and naval bases here — and our commercial pio- 
 neers could plan on the peaceful conquest of the 
 East with Manila as their great commercial base. 
 
 To another school of thought the growing im- 
 perialistic ambitions of Japan and her then 
 great naval expenditures only increased our re- 
 sponsibilities of keeping the islands under the 
 American flag — and these men would have 
 dropped the Philippines not for altruistic reasons 
 but simply because they were not worth the 
 danger we ran in holding them. 
 
 With the securing of the mandate over the 
 former German Marshall and Caroline Islands, 
 Japan lay directly in the path of our long trail to 
 the Philippines — and it was very evident that 
 for us to hold them in case of war would involve 
 tremendous and dangerous adventures, 
 
 179 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 All these are purely naval and military wrinkles 
 tliat the "Washington Conference went a long way 
 toward ironing out. We have pledged ourselves 
 not to increase our naval base at Manila, and the 
 war cloud has again disappeared. With a fair 
 settlement of the war-breeding difficulties that 
 were rapidly developing between the United 
 States and Japan, the military man must now re- 
 sign his concern over the right or wrong strategy 
 of giving up the islands. 
 
 The distinctly moral issue still remains, how- 
 ever — and that has to do with my hill-boy. To 
 study his side of the case we must take a quick 
 look at the present internal conditions. 
 
 For the past six years the islands have been 
 regulated by the provisions of the Jones Bill- 
 seriously referred to by the Filipinos as Bill 
 Jones. Under this law the islands are governed 
 by the Philippine Legislature, consisting of an 
 upper house of twenty-four senators, elected for 
 six-year terms, and a lower house of ninety mem- 
 bers, elected for three years. High executive 
 powers of appointment and veto are placed in the 
 hands of the governor-general, appointed by the 
 president of the United States. The different 
 provinces, corresponding to American states, 
 have locally elected governors ; while the districts 
 inhabited by the nine hundred thousand-odd non- 
 Christian tribes are controlled by the governors 
 appointed by the governor-general. 
 
 180 
 
OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 
 
 The power of the governor-general, under the 
 Jones Law, is tremendous, but Francis Burton 
 Harrison, the incumbent under the Wilson admin- 
 istration, exercised this power only in a most 
 friendly way. Both in his appointments and in 
 his vetoes he bent to the wishes of the Filipino 
 leaders. He accomplished his ends more through 
 the influence of his office than through any at- 
 tempt to use the great power that was his. 
 
 To all intents and purposes the Filipinos are 
 self-governing. Most of the work and responsi- 
 bility of running the eleven million people on the 
 hundreds of islands that sprinkle this part of 
 the Pacific are in the hands of natives. There 
 are still a few score of American officials, but 
 they are retained because the Filipinos them- 
 selves want them to remain. Of the different 
 government bureaus only those of Education, 
 Audit, Finance, and Science are still headed by 
 Americans. 
 
 Probably the worst error in the present Phil- 
 ippine scheme of government is the one-party 
 system. There are two parties on paper but, as 
 it works out, there is actually only one. The oppo- 
 sition to the strong, victorious Nationalist party 
 is so slight that it can hardly be called real opposi- 
 tion. Such as there is centers in an unhappy 
 Democracia, which has only one of the twenty- 
 four senators, and but four of the ninety repre- 
 sentatives. 
 
 181 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 Not only is this a naturally unhealthy state of 
 party affairs but the whole country is run, 
 dominated, and controlled by this single Nation- 
 alist party; the real government is in the hands 
 of its party caucus and its conventions. 
 
 To aU intent and purpose the Philippine gov- 
 ernment to-day is directed and dominated by two 
 powerful opposing figures, who are allied within 
 one political party for a single cause — ^the peace- 
 ful and successful solution of the independence 
 problem. These two figures who differ so greatly 
 in thought and temperament and psychology are 
 Manuel L. Quezon, President of the Philippine 
 Senate, and Segio Osmena, Speaker of the House 
 of Representatives. 
 
 For practical purposes and national interests 
 they are allied intimately and securely, but the 
 minute that the independence proposition is set- 
 tled, they will begin a battle for individual su- 
 premacy. Behind each is a definite faction, and a 
 pronounced school of thought that can work in 
 harmony with the other only when held by some 
 great magnet of universal desire. To the public 
 the dominating Nationalist party presents a uni- 
 fied front, but within the inner circles there is 
 really a growing split. 
 
 Once the independence question is solved, there 
 will be immediate and violent cleavage — if this 
 does not happen even before self-government is 
 gained. The young, progressive, liberal, and 
 
 182 
 
OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 
 
 pro- American elements will follow Quezon, while 
 the conservative, older and financial elements 
 will back Osmena. But it will also be deeper and 
 more fundamental than all that : it will be a battle 
 between the East and the West — Orientalism 
 against western ideals. 
 
 Quezon, temperamental, brilliant, frank, senti- 
 mental, a man of quick and generous impulses, 
 but often wrong, reflects American and western 
 ideas better than any other Filipino in the islands. 
 With a background of many years in America, as 
 the resident commissioner, he has become thor- 
 oughly westernized. 
 
 At the other extreme is Osmena — Speaker of 
 the House — unfathomable, cautious, analytical, a 
 master politician who is an absolute Oriental in 
 thought and action. As against Quezon's dash- 
 ing, violent, open manner, Osmena is silent, self- 
 effacing, cunning. Quezon, the adventurer, 
 breaks trails without fear, while Osmena never 
 ventures a single step without knowing exactly 
 where his foot is going to land. 
 
 Already there has been a split between these 
 two groups. And once the armistice for the cause 
 of independence is ended, then the forces will 
 form naturally into opposing camps. Quezon, in 
 tune with the most liberal ideas of the world, will 
 open the fight mth such modest liberal demands 
 as equal suffrage for women, and equal rights 
 in the divorce courts. He will carry this on 
 through all shades of progressive ideas. 
 
 183 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 But the great fight that is coming some day is 
 one of keeping the islands on the side of the "West 
 and not the Orient. A thousand million black, 
 brown and yellow peoples along the shores of Asia 
 find themselves bound more or less together by 
 geographic proximity, color, and the necessity for 
 defense against western aggression. "With all of 
 these — Japan, China, India and the Malay Islands 
 — there is also one basic religion, which is dis- 
 tinctly non-Christian. Of the billion on this side 
 of the world only the Filipinos are allied with 
 the West in religion and ideals. 
 
 Some day, if this East vs. West question be- 
 comes acute, it will be of priceless value to have a 
 friendly nation in the great East inspired by our 
 own ideals ready and willing to stand by the West. 
 
 This point is well worth deep study. A friendly 
 Filipino nation would be worth its weight in gold 
 on The Day when the test comes. 
 
 Military men are apt to think too much in terms 
 of guns and ships. It is a grievous mistake — and 
 if we fail to keep our fingers on the heart pulse 
 of these islands some day we shall pay for the 
 error. 
 
 My hill-boy to-day is close to America. So long 
 as his hopes are not bruised too badly or his 
 sense of the justice of America lost, he will 
 believe in America and the West against the 
 Oriental East. Quezon stands out as his leader. 
 
 Unquestionably it is this red-hot, young, West- 
 184 
 
OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 
 
 ern-inspired firebrand, Manuel Quezon, who will 
 keep the islands looking to America and the West. 
 Some months have passed now since I had my last 
 talk with him, but I'm sure nothing has changed 
 — except an even stronger determination for self- 
 government. 
 
 ''The Filipinos are loyal, grateful, and affec- 
 tionate to America for all that she has done for 
 us," he said to me. *'We are ready to make any 
 reasonable arrangements with America and we 
 are only too glad to carry out any reasonable 
 wishes of America. 
 
 ''Of course we want independence now, but any 
 unavoidable delay resulting from the present un- 
 settled condition of the world, and the necessity 
 of fixing future international relations of the 
 Philippines, would be understood by us and would 
 cause no resentment on the part of our people if 
 in the meantime, the spirit of the present Jones 
 law be carried out. 
 
 **We do not want any checking of the steady 
 flow of independence. We would gladly consent 
 to America holding permanent military bases 
 here of any kind. In fact we desire that. Natur- 
 ally we want the protection that an American 
 fleet whose base is here, would give us. And we 
 want America to make Manila a great commercial 
 base for her future eastern trade." 
 
 "And about the future of American citizens 
 and American business in the islands!" I asked. 
 
 185 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 ** There will never be the slightest discrimina- 
 tion against American citizens and American 
 business. They will have every right and every 
 protection we Filipinos have. We want free re- 
 ciprocal trade, and in every way the fullest, 
 freest, closest connection between our countries. 
 We want America always to be our big brother." 
 
 I would inject one observation of my own: My 
 hill-boy and the great majority of the educated, 
 intelligent Filipinos will be quite content if inde- 
 pendence comes to the islands any time within the 
 next few years. So long as there is no turning 
 back in the program of independence that the 
 United States has been following for the last 
 eight years there will be no trouble. 
 
 The one chance of a deep misunderstanding 
 would come from a complete reversal in the pres- 
 ent idea of American supervision. A decided 
 choking of independence would bring disastrous 
 and terrible results. And any attempt to turn 
 back the clock and take away liberties and powers 
 already held by the islanders might easily bring 
 open revolt. 
 
 These coming days will be trying ones for the 
 islands, but a degree of patience must be antici- 
 pated from all sides. The new governor-general, 
 General Wood, is out of sympathy with the idea 
 of full and immediate self-government, but it is 
 reasonable to expect that he will be moderate in 
 both his demands and his actions. 
 
 186 
 
OUR OWN LITTLE INDIA 
 
 Time, after all, is not the essential thing in the 
 Philippine question. The essential thing is that 
 the steady flow of independence continue and 
 eventually end in a close and friendly partnership 
 between the two countries. 
 
 Many intelligent Filipinos do not want America 
 to cut completely loose from the islands. They 
 want eventual independence but they want a con- 
 tinuation of America's help and protection and 
 they are ready to make any "reasonable arrange- 
 ments" with America to gain it. They are even 
 willing that America should hold some general 
 supervision over them, comparable to the powers 
 of the Piatt Amendment over Cuba. 
 
 After all, the Philippine question is not a cold, 
 dead proposition that can be solved by a yardstick 
 and an engineer's rule. There are other impor- 
 tant things to measure besides military expe- 
 diency or even what would be safest and easiest 
 for America. 
 
 We must be true to our own fine ideals of the 
 rights of other peoples, and we must be true to 
 the American ideal this hill-boy of mine has built 
 up in his own heart. If we must deny him inde- 
 pendence we must, for our good, be square with 
 the reason why. There must be no wallowing in 
 cheap sentimentality — we have had enough of that 
 in such false phrases as ''the white man's bur- 
 den." Let us at least be fair with ourselves. 
 
 One of the wisest of the American colony in 
 187 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 Manila, and one of the few Americans there who 
 was inclined to view the cry for immediate self- 
 government with any sympathy, seemed to put it 
 all in a nutshell for me just before I left. 
 
 '* There ^s no question but that it would be far 
 better for the Filipinos to continue for another 
 generation under our benevolent supervision and 
 protection, but if they want full independence we 
 must give it to them. And we must do more than 
 give them independence : we must announce to the 
 world that they are under our protection. That 's 
 what an American father does for his daughter 
 even when she takes another name. We can do 
 no less." 
 
 He was thinking of the new generation of 
 these islands — the men and women and the boys 
 and girls who owe their very dream of independ- 
 ence to America. He was thinking of my hill-boy 
 and a million others. He wasn 't afraid to be fair 
 to the other fellow — even if he is only the little 
 brown brother of the islands. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 WHOSE COUNTRY IS HAITI ? 
 
 RotTGHLY it is ten thousand miles from the 
 Phihppine Islands to the tiny Black Republic of 
 Haiti — or rather to what was the tiny Black 
 Republic of Haiti, Geographically and racially 
 they are that far apart, but when it comes to a 
 discussion of America's *' white man's burden" 
 we must pull them close together and see what 
 we may reasonably hope to do in one by what 
 we have actually accomplished in the other. 
 
 I often think that Shakespere's fine old idea 
 about "a rose would be as sweet by any other 
 name" might well be reversed and twisted to in- 
 clude a nation's expansion — "imperialism would 
 be as foul by any other name." 
 
 It's soothing and insidious, this whole white 
 man's business — when we do it ourselves. It's 
 the other fellow who is always the conqueror and 
 the aggressor and the imperialist. It's never 
 ourselves — ^not by those names, at least. 
 
 And so it might be profitable to stop a moment 
 and consider just whose country Haiti is. And to 
 ask ourselves just what business we have there, 
 
 189 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 I asked a rather fine type of Haitian to tell me 
 all about it — what we had done and what we 
 needed to do. 
 
 ''How is that expression of yours?" He 
 turned to me. "Unscrambling eggs, that's it. 
 Well, that's what America must do here now — 
 unscramble the Haitian eggs that have been 
 broken during six and a half years of your occu- 
 pation. ' ' 
 
 We were sitting on the broad corridor of the 
 Haitian Club in the northern part of Cape Hai- 
 tian. My host was a cultured elderly member 
 of the highest type of the Haitian elite — one of 
 the five per cent., mostly mulatto, who have ruled 
 and misruled the ninety-five per cent, of illiterate, 
 ignorant black natives for the one hundred and 
 eighteen years that Haiti has been a republic — 
 or rather the one hundred and twelve years that 
 preceded the American entry. 
 
 He was known more or less unfavorably among 
 his co-elite because he was classed as pro-Occu- 
 pation. He was supposed to be one of the few 
 educated Haitians in that part of the country 
 favorable to the American intervention. I had 
 expected that he would '* orate" on the glories of 
 what America has done in her six years there — ■< 
 possibly, I thought, there might be a word or two 
 of criticism about the color question, but nothing 
 more than that. 
 
 Instead, what I really found when I penetrated 
 his crust of hesitancy and fear, was a gentle man 
 
 190 
 
^HOSE COUNTRY IS HAITI? 
 
 heartbroken for his race, grief- stricken for his 
 country, disconsolate for his liberties. He was 
 not a politician and basically he had only the kind- 
 est and the most generous feelings for things 
 American. He had been referred to me as a 
 friendly Haitian who would tell me the truth. 
 After two hours of frank conversation I could 
 find no reason to distrust his sentiments nor any 
 evidence to disprove his words. 
 
 "It is true that Haiti was in difficult and des- 
 perate straits when America first landed her 
 troops July, 1915," he spoke in a low passionless 
 voice. "During the four years that immediately 
 preceded, we had five changes in presidents. We 
 had drifted into revolutionary habits and only 
 some strong dictator could have saved us from 
 ourselves. In times past we had had a number of 
 strong men who had been able to hold the country 
 in peace and it was only reasonable to expect 
 that out of this maelstrom of revolution some 
 powerful Haitian, strong enough to have brought 
 peace and quiet to Haiti, would have emerged. 
 
 "But we were not given the opportunity to find 
 him. Those tragic events that led up to the vio- 
 lation of the French Legation, where President 
 Sam had found asylum after ordering one hun- 
 dred and sixty of his political enemies killed in 
 their prison cells, brought a small Legation guard 
 of marines from the French cruiser in Port au 
 Prince. Then American marines landed by the 
 hundreds, here in Cape Haitian and other ports. 
 
 191 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE BAST 
 
 "We welcomed them. We. knew they would 
 give our cities a guarantee of peace and protec- 
 tion while a new government was establishing 
 itself in Port au Prince. We opened up our clubs 
 and our homes to them. Everybody was friendly 
 and hospitable. 
 
 *'Then slowly they dug deeper and deeper into 
 our country. They left the cities and went out 
 into the country districts looking for trouble — 
 and of course they found it, in small fights with 
 ragged, poorly armed revolutionists. We didn't 
 mind that; they were still our guests and they 
 were still in our clubs and homes. 
 
 "And then things slowly began to change. Lit- 
 tle by little the officers brought down their fam- 
 ilies with their American color prejudices — and 
 we are African negroes. We are proud of it, too. 
 and we were proud beyond words of this little 
 country of ours. We were brought here in slave 
 ships, and in the face of a white world supremacy 
 we won our freedom. 
 
 "This is something that so few Americans here 
 seem to care to understand: how, for more than 
 a century, we had kept this little country our 
 own — the Black Republic. True, we had ruled it 
 inefficiently and the civilization and culture of 
 our two million common people had been pitiably 
 low — but, after all, it was ours. In those one hun- 
 dred and eighteen years we had twenty-seven 
 presidents, many of whom rode into power on 
 
 192 
 
WHOSE COUNTEY IS HAITI? 
 
 revolutions. But in all those years and all those 
 violent changes of government no American ever 
 was killed, and what little American property 
 was damaged was generously paid for. 
 
 "With the coming of Americans strict color 
 lines were drawn ; our feelings were trampled on ; 
 our hearts — our spirits — ^were broken. Unfor- 
 tunately fully seventy-five per cent, of the Occu- 
 pation are from the southern portions of the 
 United States and these people came with their 
 deep color prejudices. They handled us as though 
 we were American negroes in their own states. 
 And many of our elite here are cultured people 
 who have been educated in Europe. We were 
 treated like negro cotton workers on a Georgia 
 plantation. ' ' 
 
 I had to question him to get the rest of his 
 story. I asked him about the cacos — who are 
 either bandits or patriots according to your point 
 of view — and about the corvee system of road 
 making that apparently brought on the revolt of 
 three years ago. He explained how the orders 
 went out for miracles in roads: difficult moun- 
 tain roads, that were primarily military roads 
 necessary for military motor transport, to be built 
 within impossible time limits. 
 
 **You see, early in the occupation a gendarm- 
 erie was established that resembled the Philip- 
 pine constabulary," he went on. *'The higher 
 officers were all regular marine officers but the 
 
 193 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 lieutenants and captains were non-commissioned 
 officers from the enlisted men of the marines. 
 These young men were sent out to districts with 
 practically unlimited power. Some of them were 
 very fine and some of them were very bad. 
 
 "When the road-building orders went out they 
 revived an old corvee law that compelled the 
 country people to work a certain number of days 
 each year on their community roads. But some 
 of the gendarmerie officers abused this terribly. 
 Men were worked for weeks at a time and even 
 sent out of their districts without pay and worked 
 in gangs with armed guards over them like con- 
 vict labor. 
 
 "This brought on the real caco outbreak and 
 the complete subjugation of our country. To-day 
 we have nothing left but a mockery of sover- 
 eignty. The 1915 Treaty that was forced on us 
 gives American Treaty officials control of our 
 customs ; an American financial adviser virtually 
 commands our finances; American marines 
 dominate us and martial law grips us. Every- 
 where there is distrust, fear and blind hate." 
 
 "And is it too late — can the eggs be unscram- 
 bled?" I questioned. 
 
 "It will be difficult but it isn't too late," he 
 answered. "First of all, withdraw the military. 
 Guantanamo is only twenty-four hours away. 
 End the distasteful martial law. Send us a big 
 fine American head who will do for us what your 
 
 194 
 
WHOSE COUNTEY IS HAITI? 
 
 Mr. Taft did for the Philippines. Let him have 
 charge of the whole occupation and let him make 
 the Americans here treat us as equals. If the 
 'nigger haters' insist on their color prejudice let 
 them be replaced by other men. 
 
 **We who really know what America can do 
 and how fine she really is, want your help — but 
 we don't want to be bullied by you. We don't 
 want to have our country taken away from us so 
 that all we have left is a flag to play with. We 
 just want you to remember whose country this 
 is." 
 
 And this from one of the most ardent pro-Occu- 
 pation men in Haiti. Others I talked with said 
 with great bitterness that they wanted us to get 
 out and stay out ; some of these were only dream- 
 ing of getting back their old government grafts 
 and again dominating the ninety-five per cent. 
 
 After all, it's an unsatisfactory business to look 
 in on civilization while it is being born. It's like 
 any other birth — ^it is painful and not nice. Take 
 the Philippines for example. 
 
 Some twenty years ago in the glorious old days 
 of the Empire they used to sing a song over there 
 that went something like this : 
 
 Damn, damn, damn the Filipinos, 
 Pock-marked, bandy-legged Ladrones, 
 Underneath the starry flag 
 We '11 civilize 'em with a Krag — 
 Oh, return us to our own beloved homes ! 
 195 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 It was a song of happy warriors and their little 
 brown brothers — and it was a point of view that 
 all booted and spurred men in every corner and 
 far-away valley of the world have. There in 
 those smiling islands it was softened and human- 
 ized by other young white men — ^youthful school- 
 teachers and administrators coming out from a 
 provincial, generous America with the great 
 words of Washington and Lincoln on their lips. 
 But even these gentle civilians could not stop all 
 the malpractise of the water cure and other 
 heroic treatments. 
 
 Here in these kindly states ignorant in those 
 days of even the word imperialism there was a 
 deep resentment in many quarters, and the crush- 
 ing of the insurrection movement and the military 
 rule in the islands came near being a national 
 political issue. But we kept on with our water 
 cures and our school-teachers and our new roads, 
 and then came William Howard Taft with a great, 
 simple plan of helping the Filipinos, of educating 
 them as quickly as possible for self-government. 
 
 And so out of those schools that thousands of 
 fine American youths built, and down those splen- 
 did highways that American engineers laid out, 
 comes marching what is little less than a new na- 
 tion. The days of the Krag and its civilizing 
 influence are passed and forgotten — and now 
 American-educated, American-inspired Filipinos 
 quote our own words to us that have to do with 
 
 196 
 
WHOSE COUNTRY IS EAITI? 
 
 liberty and freedom and independence. And that 
 itself is the great proof that America has accom- 
 plished miracles in her one great chance. 
 
 Now I didn't hear any United States Marine 
 sing that old Filipino soldier song down in Haiti. 
 Maybe they don't even know the words — but they 
 do know the tune because it's a universal tune. 
 Spanish conquistadores sang it, French adven- 
 turers hummed it, gallant Portuguese sailormen 
 braving unknown seas recalled it, British empire 
 builders made it carry their white-man 's-burden 
 song; and now for almost a quarter of a century 
 Americans have sung it from the Order of the 
 Carabao dinners in Washington to the fever laden 
 swamps of Nicaragua. It has a lilt and a swing to 
 it; it's a fascinating, alluring song; it lulls you 
 and charms you; it deadens your senses; it's the 
 hardest song in the world to resist; it's the song 
 of white men winning a world. 
 
 All of which is rather a roundabout way of say- 
 ing that without a background of the wonder 
 things that America had been able to accomplish 
 in the Philippines and Porto Rico and to a cer- 
 tain degree in Cuba, the observer with sensitive 
 moral values might be shocked at what he would 
 find or would fail to find in a first-hand investi- 
 gation of tiny Haiti after six and one-half years 
 of American occupation and American assistance. 
 He might be quite as shocked as he would have 
 been had be gone into the *'insurrecto" country 
 
 197 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 of North Luzon above Manila say two decades 
 ago when the civilizing- with-a-Krag culture was 
 in full bloom. 
 
 Those were the days of the labor pains that 
 preceded the birth of the new Philippines. And 
 these are days now of the trying labor pains for 
 Haiti. 
 
 If one wished to be very gay he might ask at 
 this juncture ''Who is the father?" In one form 
 or another this question has been asked for a half- 
 dozen years by certain sensitive and inquisitive 
 Americans. 
 
 Well, just who is responsible for the Haitian 
 scramble! Is it the State Department at Wash- 
 ington? — the Marine Corps? — American foreign 
 banks? — American foreign business? — who is this 
 particular gentleman behind the wood-pile? 
 
 I confess that I haven't been able to find out — 
 unless I may be permitted to draw a composite 
 picture of a number of villains. If so I would 
 make up this composite picture out of about the 
 following per cent : 
 
 State Dept. Monroe Doctrine Obsession 15% 
 
 State Dept. Protection Panama Canal Ob- 
 session 15% 
 
 Commercial and Banking Imperialism 20% 
 
 White-man 's-burden Obsession 15% 
 
 Marines Spoiling for a Fight 10% 
 
 Just plain bungling 25% 
 
 100% 
 198 
 
[WHOSE COUNTRY IS HAITI? 
 
 Now there was some nasty local trouble in 
 Haiti — but it distinctly had to do with the 
 Haitians. No foreign lives and no foreign proper- 
 ties were in grave danger. There was unrest that 
 interfered with business and profits, but it is 
 quite safe to say that in a century of Haitian 
 revolutions there had not been as many Haitians 
 killed or as much property damage as the losses 
 in one ordinary day on any fairly active front 
 during the World War. 
 
 During those summer days of 1915 Germany 
 was fairly busy invading Northern France, while 
 France and England likewise had their hands 
 full entertaining the German troops. American 
 banking interests deep in tiny Haitian railroads 
 and banking needed but little imagination to 
 figure out great commercial opportunities for 
 American capital. Under-secretaries and sub- 
 secretaries around the State Department, admir- 
 als and marine major generals around the Navy 
 Department; generals and staff colonels around 
 the Army Department, all obsessed with the Mon- 
 roe Doctrine idea and equally under the spell of 
 the ''necessary for the defense of the Canal" 
 propagandists — finally got their chance when on 
 July 28, 1915, the mob broke into the French Le- 
 gation, brought forth the then president, oper- 
 ated crudely but effectively on him and dragged 
 what was once Monsieur Jean Vilburn Guillaune 
 Sam through the streets of Port au Prince. 
 
 199 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 William Jennings Bryan, at that time secretary 
 of state, apparently was converted to the idea of 
 intervention. He in turn convinced President Wil- 
 son. And, as I have intimated, everybody, includ- 
 ing two or three war-ships full of marines, were 
 on the bit and rearing to go. This was and is the 
 business of the marines — ^to be the * 'first to 
 fight" and the last to quit. There are no better 
 soldiers in the world — ^but they are soldiers and 
 not administrators or school-teachers or mission- 
 aries. 
 
 The rest is unimportant as to detail. Briefly, 
 in 1915 we forced through a treaty that to all 
 intent and purpose gave us the government. The 
 figureheads in the hollow office of president 
 became a fairly easy tool in the hands of the 
 American military. A bitter personal animosity 
 between the president and the American financial 
 adviser led to the infrequent use of certain ex- 
 ecutive powers of obstruction but on the whole the 
 present incumbent has been like clay in the hands 
 of a sculptor. Marines, with their martial law, a 
 native gendarmerie officered and entirely con- 
 trolled by marine officers and non-coms, an ab- 
 solute control of all government finances through 
 the collection and disbursement of custom 
 revenues, gave us a ninety per cent, domination 
 of the country. 
 
 Some of the things we have done during these 
 six and one-half years have been very foolish and 
 
 200 
 
:WHOSE COUNTRY IS HAITI? 
 
 very stupid; we have assumed the role of con- 
 querors — ^we have often been cruel and unreason- 
 able — ^we have often been inefficient and ineffec- 
 tive. Other things we have done have been very- 
 wise and very fine: we have stopped revolution 
 and brought a physical peace — we have built a 
 few roads — ^we have cleaned up scores of cities 
 and tremendously improved sanitation — ^we have 
 honestly and efficiently collected custom revenue 
 and done away with government graft. Some of 
 our military officers have been splendid sane men 
 and others have been plain fighting men who 
 had no appreciation of their great opportunity to 
 help both America and Haiti. The same thing 
 may be said of the civilian treaty-officers and 
 their assistants. 
 
 But it is both futile and silly to bring person- 
 alities into even the most friendly criticism of our 
 Haitian venture. After all, it is not the individ- 
 ual gendarmerie officer tucked away in the lone- 
 some hills of Northern Haiti who has really been 
 to blame for the present condition in Haiti ; nor, 
 by the same token, has it been due primarily to 
 his superior, back in the sunlit city of Port au 
 Prince. It doesn't take a trained bloodhound to 
 follow the scent back to "Washington. 
 
 And there in "Washington we must search 
 deeper than any individual. It is the whole un- 
 knowing system — the whole hit or miss system — 
 the whole lack of a definite foreign policy. For 
 
 201 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 instance, blundering into Haiti, we forced upon 
 this colored republic a half-way treaty. Here 
 were military men and civilians uncoordinated, 
 non-cooperating, lacking a directing, command- 
 ing head. Each treaty official reported back to 
 separate and distinct departments of the Wash- 
 ington government. There was no real coopera- 
 tion even among the American officials in Haiti. 
 We blundered along getting in deeper and deeper. 
 Now we are in up to our heads — that, at least, is 
 one very positive fact that no one can deny. Well, 
 what are we going to do about it? 
 
 Following two whitewash commissions making 
 blindfolded investigations of alleged military 
 atrocities — some of which were committed and 
 some of which were not — there was finally ap- 
 pointed in the fall of 1921 a real Senatorial Com- 
 mission with Senator Medill McCormick as its 
 chairman. This commission proposed to dig 
 deeply into the whole Haitian and Santo Domingo 
 business. 
 
 For weeks it held open and fair court in Wash- 
 ington ; then came seven hectic trial days in Haiti 
 in which, to some observers at least, the natives 
 and not the Occupation were on trial. 
 
 Out of all this at least one definite thing will 
 come — a real Caribbean policy for the United 
 States. And it is a tremendously essential and 
 necessary thing at this time. For what we do or 
 do not do in Haiti is having and will continue to 
 
 202 
 
WHOSE COUNTRY IS HAITI? 
 
 have a vital bearing on tlie friendship and politi- 
 cal and commercial relations of all the Caribbean 
 and Latin- American countries, toward the United 
 States. "We are being weighed in the scales of 
 these tiny and weak half-brother countries — and 
 the very fact that they are weak and tiny while 
 we are powerful and great makes it the more 
 necessary that we be just and fair. 
 
 But there is one other consideration of even 
 greater importance. What is the effect of our 
 strong arm methods on ourselves — on our own 
 sense of justice and fairness? Are we blindly 
 putting a righteous 0. K. on our own frequent use 
 of force against smaller and weaker peoples — ' 
 0. K.'ing them as morally right simply because 
 we are doing them? 
 
 Certainly it is high time we ended all the cheap 
 deception and sentimental twaddle about Haiti. 
 Let us courageously face facts, and if we have 
 made mistakes let us bravely acknowledge them. 
 
 Let us stay on and do our duty toward Haiti — 
 but let us do it honestly and in a big way. Let 
 us withdraw our military force and substitute for 
 it broad-visioned civilians who will give gener- 
 ously from their wide knowledge and experience. 
 Let us make definite pledges of exactly what we 
 intend to do for Haiti — and then carry them out. 
 
 The ''white man's burden" will be a light and 
 joyous burden then. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 OUB EESTIiESS BKOTHEES BELOW THE EIO GEANDB 
 
 Mexico is not a part of the Restless East but it 
 is distinctly a part of the Restless "World. And 
 the Restless World is small: the revolt of nation- 
 alists in Egypt inspires the tired Hindus in Cal- 
 cutta: and what is happening in Moscow in the 
 great social and economic revolt there thrills the 
 liberal leaders in Mexico City. For in this capi- 
 tal south of the Texas border new peons for old 
 are being dreamed of. 
 
 I almost missed finding the real heart of 
 Mexico. For days and weeks I talked with Mexi- 
 can officials and American business men and 
 Tampico's oil managers and had the run of the 
 Mexico City clubs in general. 
 
 They told me a score and one stories : the pres- 
 ent government of Mexico was a dangerous fiery 
 red — as red as Moscow and twice as dangerous; 
 Mexico was in the high road to happiness and 
 prosperity; nothing could save Mexico but for 
 the United States to take over the country; the 
 oil wells of Tampico were growing salty and in a 
 few years more would be useless — and thus the 
 Mexican problem would be settled for good and 
 
 204 
 
BELOW THE RIO GRANDE 
 
 all; the peons were in worse condition than ever 
 before; Obregon was the greatest man in the 
 world ; Obregon was a one-armed villain. 
 
 I listened respectfully — and then went on my 
 way and looked some more. I knew that some- 
 where there was a real Mexican story — ^but it was 
 as elusive as all truth is. And then one day I 
 bumped straight into it. 
 
 It was in the corridor of the St. Regis Hotel in 
 Mexico City. A little old gray-haired lady who 
 has seen more plain hell than Foch and dreamed 
 more dreams than H. Gr. Wells, guided me bang 
 into my story. Her name was Mother Jones, and 
 it's a right name — she mothers half the world — 
 the lower half. 
 
 She led me straight up to a man in ''store 
 clothes" and a flannel shirt. His face was lined 
 with deep "sun wrinkles" and his eyes were 
 gentle and smiling. He had worked in mines in 
 Arizona in his younger days and could stumble 
 along with English. 
 
 ''Here's one of my boys," she said, patting the 
 miner's arm as she spoke. "If you want some- 
 thing about Mexico he '11 give it to you. ' ' 
 
 I led him up to my room and seated him in the 
 one big chair. 
 
 ' ' You 're a miner, ' ' I began. 
 
 "Si, but mine in Sonora he shut down and work 
 finished. For five six months no work. Miners 
 no got dollars, ninas hungry, womans crying. So 
 
 205 
 
THE RISINa TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 I say, *I go Cuidad Mexico see General Calles and 
 he give ns farm for work.' . . . Last week I 
 come here and see Mi General. He take me in his 
 automobile to Secretario Villareal and he say 
 'Sure we give you miners land. You mus' work 
 or starve. You work for yourself. We give you 
 big farm, you make small farms and you miners 
 go work on own farms. ' ' ' 
 
 My friend sat back in his chair and lit a fresh 
 cigarette. It was so simple. Men unemployed, 
 and hungry — well put them to work on idle lands. 
 Like the Russian proletariat, ninety per cent, of 
 them had come from the farms, so they could go 
 back to the farms now. The government would 
 sell them machinery and animals at cost and see 
 them through to the time of the first crop. They 
 could pay back in small payments through a 
 period of years. Land that most of them had 
 been dreaming of for a half-dozen generations 
 would be their own; they would become econom- 
 ically independent; they would become good citi- 
 zens; they would want their children to go to 
 school; they would want a voice in the affairs of 
 their government. 
 
 And this in Mexico! The land of revolution 
 and civil war and the manana habit — worthless, 
 drunken, vicious, ignorant, brutal Mexico! 
 
 I looked up Mother Jones again when my miner 
 had gone. "I'm getting hot on the real story 
 now," I told her. "Pass me on some more." 
 
 206 
 
BELOW THE RIO GRANDE 
 
 She did. The next day in the tow of a very fine 
 young, liberal, States-educated Mexican I started 
 out really to see the high officials of the govern- 
 ment. I had seen most of them before, but now I 
 was to talk to them freely and frankly as fellow 
 men, and not as politicians and statesmen. 
 
 Several days later when we had finished the 
 rounds I took a train for the northwest and Villa 
 and the great bandit colonies. Then slowly I 
 worked my way to the border and to the States. 
 
 And so it was that I found the real heart of 
 these ten tremendous years of war and revolu- 
 tion. It meant a good deal to me because I had a 
 background of an old Mexico that distinctly was 
 not concerned with miners and peons — that 
 instead was loaded down with the weight of for- 
 eign interference, alien exploitation, and neglect 
 of the common millions. 
 
 In the glorious old swashbuckling days of the 
 empire I had gone to Mexico and for three years 
 had driven men and cattle alike on a sugar planta- 
 tion. Fifty miles below me there were plantations 
 where real peonage was practised, and a hundred 
 miles away the Villa National where men were 
 lured, chained in gangs, herded in barb-wired and 
 guarded corrals and worked in steaming tobacco 
 fields until death broke their false contracts for 
 them. Still farther down, in Yucatan, brave 
 Yaqui Indians, with the hearts of lions, brought 
 down in prison trains from their hills of Sonora, 
 
 207 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 were worked, beaten and killed on the terrible 
 heneqnen plantations. 
 
 In those days I thought Diaz to be one of the 
 great men of the world — wise, jnst, brave, the 
 savior and maker of his country. 
 
 Then the revolution flared and one day my 
 hero Diaz slipped out of Mexico City and foolish, 
 stupid Madero rode into power. The grizzled, 
 unwashed men who rode with him were to me 
 bandits, trouble-makers, the riff-raff, the scour- 
 ings of the country. If Madero was sincere he 
 was the one honest man among a hundred thou- 
 sand scoundrels. 
 
 Then the revolution hit my part of the country 
 and I left between suns, bringing out with me the 
 story of a foolish Madero and his brutal bandits 
 riding their stolen horses behind a banner of false 
 revolution. 
 
 That was ten years ago. And now I have come 
 out again from adventuring in Mexico — but this 
 time I have another story to tell. 
 
 Down in a little village in the state of Vera 
 Cruz there is a public plaza that ten years ago had 
 two circular promenade walks — one for the gen- 
 try in shoes and rehozos, and the other for the 
 peons in blankets and sandals. To-day the peon 
 walk is overgrown with grass and weeds: these 
 colorful tropical nights the entire village strolls 
 where only the high and royal dared tread a 
 decade ago. 
 
 208 
 
BELOW THE EIO GEANDE 
 
 That, for me at least, is a part of the real heart 
 of Mexico. It is the story of human beings dream- 
 ing and fighting and struggling for elusive bits 
 of freedom and self-respect — for things they can 
 not pronounce but for things they unconsciously 
 know they have been cheated out of. 
 
 After all, nothing really counts for much except 
 the progress and advancement of the common 
 man — and so it is that peons and not pesos, men 
 and not money, liberties and not foreign lands, 
 honor and not oil, flash before me in this mem- 
 ory-film of Mexico and her ten-year revolution. 
 
 It is still a revolution but one-quarter won. 
 There is education to be gained, economic free- 
 dom to be secured, real political expression to be 
 voiced. The revolution may be over and the evo- 
 lution now under way. 
 
 From a constructive standpoint the French 
 Revolution failed because for hundreds of years 
 the common people had absolutely no experience 
 in local or national self-government, no training 
 in cooperation and voluntary unions. The suc- 
 cess of the great Russian revolution was brought 
 about not only by the thrilling moving idea that 
 gave it fire, but because for generations the peas- 
 ants of Russia not only had their own great co- 
 operative organizations in smooth working order 
 but because they had already tasted the flavor 
 of local self-government and had trained their 
 hands for it. 
 
 209 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 Mexico's fifteen million peons are exactly in 
 the same condition as the French peasants of a 
 century and a quarter ago — dependent on their 
 leaders, many of whom are selfish and ambitious 
 men. As yet they have won little of the things 
 they dreamed of, though these years of struggle 
 and revolution have brought them an abiding 
 sense of freedom and a conviction of their inalien- 
 able right to its enjoyment. 
 
 That is a great deal, but after all, it is still 
 primarily a question of leadership. Their revo- 
 lutionary evolution — or their evolutionary revo- 
 lution, just as you choose — can be at this moment 
 tragically retarded or brilliantly advanced by the 
 wrong or the right leaders. 
 
 Mexican political leaders to-day form a triangle 
 — one might almost say the eternal political 
 triangle. On one side are certain conservative, 
 reactionary forces with a small but determined 
 representation in the present Cabinet. Behind 
 this group are aligned the great old land and 
 money interests of Mexico — ^the half feudal Mex- 
 ico of the past. 
 
 A second side of the triangle is painted a vivid 
 Socialistic red and is composed of radical and 
 liberal leaders, such as General Plutarco Elias 
 Calles, present head of the Cabinet ; Adolf o de la 
 Huerta, with the important portfolio of Finance 
 tucked under his arm; Jose Vasconcelos, head of 
 the Department of Education: Antonio Villar- 
 
 210 
 
BELOW THE RIO GRANDE 
 
 real, Secretary of Agriculture; with the more 
 radical Luis N. Morones, head of Mexican labor, 
 Felipe Carrillo, firebrand leader from Yucatan, 
 Samuel 0. Yudico and a hundred more real revo- 
 lutionists behind them. They are the fighting 
 Left Wing of the government. 
 
 And in between, forming the third angle of our 
 triangle is President Obregon, shrewd, capable, 
 hard working, with a good set of brains and a 
 strong and willing left hand — he has already 
 given his right arm to his country. 
 
 It is a difficult job that President Obregon had 
 wished upon him — this harmonizing White Mexi- 
 co with Red Mexico. It 's carrying water on both 
 shoulders. And if there is any single figure in 
 Mexico to-day who can perform this difficult task 
 successfully it is this man from Sonora. He ap- 
 parently holds for the moment the confidence of 
 both ends ; he apparently can turn from a confer- 
 ence with conservative Foreign Minister Pani and 
 talk with radical de la Huerta without changing 
 one iota the expression on his powerful face. 
 
 He is a fighter and a politician; which is 
 another way of saying that he is both a brave 
 man and a willing compromiser. He stands in 
 the middle of a bridge with opposing forces on 
 both bridgeheads that are quite willing to blow 
 him up if he makes a false step. 
 
 He is what we Americans love to call "a strong 
 man. ' ' He doesn 't hesitate to order some revolt- 
 
 211 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 ing general parked up against a handy stone wall 
 and bumped off in approved style. Nor does he 
 hesitate to protect Mexican labor against a dozen 
 old-fashioned methods of discipline. 
 
 And his troubles are legion. Not only does he 
 face continual friction within his own Cabinet, 
 but he must attempt to win over and placate 
 American big business — ranch and mine owners, 
 railroad investors and speculators and the oily oil 
 manipulators — and at the same time give positive 
 assurance to his own people that he isn't doing 
 this. 
 
 Whatever conscious public opinion there is in 
 Mexico to-day — and it is decidedly a growing fac- 
 tor — ^it is against the trading of any Mexican 
 rights for United States recognition. Over Mexi- 
 co there is a determined spirit of nationalism that 
 refuses to be bought or bullied by the big 
 ''brother" to the north. 
 
 "With Obregon it is over and over again a case 
 of damn you if you do and damn you if you don't. 
 If he pleases Washington and Wall Street he 
 faces what might easily prove a brand-new up- 
 heaval — and the fate of Carranza. If he con- 
 tinues to make dramatic Mexican gestures with 
 his one remaining arm there may be no recogni- 
 tion, no financial arrangement, no rebuilding of 
 the physical Mexico. Why anybody wants to be 
 president of Mexico, I don't know. 
 
 But there are some thousands, or hundreds of 
 212 
 
BELOW THE RIO GEANDE 
 
 thousands of lier citizens who do. It is my opin- 
 ion that General Calles is one. Apparently he is 
 absolutely loyal to Obregon — bnt he is far more 
 loyal to his revolution and what it stood for. 
 
 To me Calles is the most interesting figure in 
 Mexico City. In the old days he had been a 
 school-teacher in the hills of Sonora. His eyes 
 still have an odd squint about them like those of a 
 dreamer peering into the future. 
 
 His face is hard, with deep seams that sun and 
 wind and exposure have left; his voice is rough 
 and heavy ; his manner is brusk and almost brutal. 
 And yet you would know him for a school-teacher 
 and a dreamer. I don't believe he would hesitate 
 to kill a man with his own hands — though I am 
 sure he would willingly sacrifice his life to help 
 the peons of his Sonora hills. 
 
 It was Calles who, as Minister of War under 
 de la Huerta, planned most the scheme of dis- 
 banding parts of the army and putting the men 
 on the land in "bandit colonies." I asked him 
 how he happened to figure it out. 
 
 ** Nothing could have been simpler," he 
 answered me with a trace of impatience. "These 
 common men had been fighting for ten years for 
 land — so it was the natural thing to give it to 
 them. They Ye happy now. ' ^ 
 
 Calles is almost as direct as this about every- 
 thing else. He knows what he wants Mexico to 
 want. I don 't know how much patience he 11 have. 
 
 213 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 He understands things, anyway — and by 
 *' things" I mean the power of the United States 
 over Mexico for both good and evil. He appre- 
 ciates what the displeasure of Washington means 
 and how far Mexican labor, for instance, may 
 expect to go before American capital in Mexico 
 screams for help. He is a wise man in a country 
 where wisdom is at a great premium. 
 
 There are a few other wise men there. One of 
 them is de la Huerta. During the six months be- 
 tween the death of Carranza in May, 1920, and 
 the inauguration of Obregon in November, de la 
 Huerta was provisional president. Later when 
 Obregon selected his Cabinet he made him secre- 
 tary of finance. This means that such delicate 
 and all-important questions as the changing of 
 the Constitution to suit the Tampico oil magnates, 
 the handling of the international financial situa- 
 tion and the whole Mexican currency proposition, 
 must be directed by him. 
 
 Now, de la Huerta has a strange combination of 
 Yaqui Indian, Spanish and Polish-Jewish blood 
 racing through his veins. He is not a soldier — 
 but he's almost everything else. He is a social- 
 ist, an internationalist, a laborite, a radical of 
 fairly crimson tint and an extremely brilliant and 
 shrewd financier. 
 
 He stands four square with Calles, at least at 
 present. They are the heavyweights of the Left 
 Wing — they and Luis Morones, the Labor leader. 
 
 214 
 
BELOW THE EIO GRANDE 
 
 Morones wears checked suits, silk shirts and a 
 heavy caliber revolver and has one bad eye. He 
 is Mexican union labor: he's the parent and the 
 child rolled in one. And Mexican union labor is a 
 power that is the **X" — the unknown quantity — 
 in the political and revolutionary life of the 
 country. 
 
 When the Carranza revolution — which is hope- 
 fully referred to as ''the last revolution" — came 
 along it was the power of action and the power of 
 sabotage of the union labor in Mexico City that 
 finished Carranza 's slender chances. Mexican 
 labor has neither the organization nor the dis- 
 cipline that Petrograd and Moscow radical labor 
 had in those terrific days of 1917 when armed 
 workmen swung the revolution the way they 
 wished — ^but it is growing in the consciousness of 
 its power. It has its friends at court to-day. It 
 is a conscious part of the government. 
 
 No longer are striking workers shot down by 
 machine-guns as they were in the old days of 
 Porfirio Diaz — and they know it. They tell a 
 story around Mexico City of Celestino Gasca, one 
 time shoe-maker and now governor of the Federal 
 District. During a railroad strike Gasa was told 
 to order out his troops to put down the strike. 
 
 "I resign my office," he replied. *'I am a 
 workman first and a governor afterward." 
 
 With such men in strongly entrenched official 
 positions, Morones advances with his great labor 
 
 215 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 movement. In every industry and craft is it being 
 pushed. Even the plantation workers are being 
 effectively organized and already in certain sec- 
 tions they have secured increased wages, shorter 
 hours and better working conditions. 
 
 Morones is admittedly a radical. And so is 
 Felipe Carrillo of Yucatan. Felipe is a tall, 
 dashing, fighting leader. He plunges ahead by 
 instinct — ^I mean he has no background of radical 
 training or education but instinctively takes the 
 side of the oppressed. In this particular case 
 they happen to be the Indian peons in his own 
 beloved state of Yucatan. 
 
 Two years ago when Carrillo was preaching the 
 beauties of cooperation to his own Indians he 
 decided to hold a great local celebration on the 
 Mexican national holiday, the Fifth of May. 
 
 * 'While we are at it, Felipe, let's turn this holi- 
 day into a fine old Socialistic celebration of the 
 anniversary of the birthday of Karl Marx," an 
 American radical friend, Robert Haberman, sug- 
 gested to him. 
 
 "All right — that's great! ., . . Say, by the 
 way, who is this Karl Marx, anyway?" And this 
 from the leader of the Yucatan Socialists. 
 
 I stopped writing here for a moment and went 
 over the past two or three pages — and counted 
 the word "Socialists," four times. That's too 
 many these days, unless I want to leave the im- 
 pression that Mexico is about to blossom out into 
 
 216 
 
BELOW THE RIO GRANDE 
 
 a nice brilliant Socialists' Utopia — and I decid- 
 edly don't want to leave any such idea. 
 
 But there is a considerable section of the city 
 working-population that has been thrilled by the 
 promises of radical agitators. After all, to thou- 
 sands of these peons Socialism is a magic word — 
 and common people over the whole world must 
 live and die by magic words. In Siberia I found 
 ignorant Russian peasants speaking of the 
 "soviet" as the great magic healer of their 
 trampled lives ; it was a word to conjure with ; it 
 was a word that opened up a vision of some 
 heaven on earth to them. It was a battle-cry, and 
 a dream that they would follow at any cost. 
 
 And so it is down below the Rio Grande. They 
 have had their own magic words there — ^for ten 
 years they were "tierra y lihertad/' land and 
 freedom — ^just as for a half -century Russian peas- 
 ants found hope in the two words "Zemla e 
 svohoda^' — land and freedom. 
 
 Now many of these peons are taking fresh 
 hope from the new magic word *' Socialism." 
 Down in the steaming henequen fields of Yucatan 
 fully seventy-five per cent, of the Indian peons 
 joined an actual Socialist party and in their hat- 
 bands wore a bit of red pasteboard — a magic 
 charm that would bring them land and food and 
 happiness. 
 
 Mexico has only fairly started on] the long 
 climb upward, but she does have these shibboleths 
 
 217 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 tliat make the trail seem shorter and the burdens 
 lighter. After all there are many short-cuts, but 
 there are many bad bits of road that must be 
 traveled. There's the road of education, for 
 example. 
 
 Mexico is making frantic efforts to pave this 
 now. A young man with a real vision is going 
 after the job. His name is Jose Vasconeelos and 
 he dreams of a school in every Indian pueblo in 
 every state in Mexico. 
 
 "As a start we are sending to the Indian vil- 
 lages traveling teachers who take three or four of 
 the brightest Indian girls and train them,'* he 
 explained to me. ''These girls in turn open little 
 village schools and teach the rudiments of read- 
 ing and writing in Spanish. 
 
 **In thirty different cities," he went on, "we 
 are opening up manual-training schools for the 
 poor children — free schools that will help to give 
 Mexico a group of young men and women who 
 have mastered a trade. 
 
 Then he dreamed for me a scheme of placing a 
 library of one hundred standard books in every 
 village. Young Mexican artists would travel 
 about the country teaching the natives basket 
 weaving and pottery decorations and other pure 
 native arts. Small traveling orchestras, with 
 their expenses partly paid by the government and 
 with free transportation, would bring ideas of 
 good music into the villages of these music-loving 
 
 218 
 
BELOW THE RIO GRANDE 
 
 people. In Mexico City, Guadalajara, Yucatan 
 and Monterey there would be great national uni- 
 versities. 
 
 It was an inspiring dream — possibly for the 
 time being, it will prove only that. And possibly 
 it will come true, as other dreams in Mexico have 
 come true. There was the dream of putting the 
 soldiers on the land, for example — that has come 
 true with a bang. 
 
 On December 1, 1920, the regular army of 
 Mexico consisted of 338 generals, 15,891 colonels, 
 majors, captains and lieutenants, and 77,295 
 soldiers. This was only the regular army. Fol- 
 lowing the defeat of Carranza thousands of revo- 
 lutionists and so-called bandits gladly made terms 
 with the new government and for the moment 
 became a part of the army. This move was 
 necessary for two reasons: first, it secured a 
 livelihood through military pay for these men 
 who had been following war for years ; second, it 
 brought these armed men under military dis- 
 cipline and government control. 
 
 This enrolling of all the revolutionary anti- 
 Carranza forces raised the grand total of the 
 army on the first of 1921, to 669 generals, 18,992 
 officers, and 93,132 men. To keep this force going 
 an appropriation of one hundred and thirty-one 
 million pesos for the army and thirty-five million 
 for the arsenals was necessary, out of a total 
 federal appropriation of two hundred and seventy 
 
 219 
 
THE EISINa TEMPEE OF THE EAST 
 
 million — more than fifty per cent, of the total gov- 
 ernment income. 
 
 Drastic methods were decided on. A triple 
 plan affair was devised whereby first of all there 
 was to be a decrease through voluntary discharge, 
 that was to be further augmented by forced dis- 
 charge of all incompetent soldiers and officers 
 who could not establish their rank; but the real 
 solution was the formation of a number of sol- 
 dier agriculture colonies. 
 
 The words *' Bandit colonies" may have a 
 rather bad sting to them — but not down in Mex- 
 ico. For ten years the difference between 
 ''bandits" and "revolutionists" has been a mat- 
 ter of point of view. So these colonies might just 
 as well be called "revolutionary colonies." 
 
 And the big thing about them is that they have 
 actually been formed and are really working. 
 Thousands of soldiers who for years have been 
 following the trade of fighting — with the dream 
 of land always somewhere in the background — 
 have been put on the land in colonies, supplied 
 with the tools of farming and financially backed 
 and cared for by the government. Mexican 
 swords have actually been beaten into plow- 
 shares and pruning-hooks and into books and 
 pencils — ^money saved from army disarmament 
 automatically goes into education. 
 
 I know of no greater adventure in pioneering 
 than this back-to-the-land movement of these sol- 
 
 220 
 
BELOW THE EIO GRANDE 
 
 diers who have been fighting and revolting 
 for years, that land and some intangible, indefin- 
 ite thing called "freedom," might be theirs. 
 Villa is one of them — Pancho Villa, despised 
 bandit, or beloved knight, just as you choose. I 
 searched him out in his own private colony — and 
 the Villa I found was a vastly different Villa from 
 the two-gun villain of the American press. I will 
 tell you of him just as I found him and just as he 
 appeared to me. 
 
 For three long dusty days I rode north from 
 Mexico City — then an eight-hour ride on a 
 bumpy railroad-stub to the filthy little mud vil- 
 lage of Rosario in the hills of Northern Durango: 
 then a six-hour valley-ride in a rickety, high- 
 wheeled vehicle behind mangy, dwarfed mules to 
 the ranch. 
 
 There, in a long, one-storied adobe house that 
 nestled against a great brown adobe church, I 
 found him — Don Pancho, the Killer, or Don 
 Pancho the Knight, as you will. In soiled shirt, 
 beltless baggy trousers and the grimy hands of a 
 Mexican rancher, he greeted me in the doorway 
 of his bedroom. He was a big two hundred- 
 pound man with crumpled black hair, a well 
 trimmed mustache, a great handsome head with 
 unusually high forehead and remarkable black 
 eyes. 
 
 He was friendly and hospitable. We sat down 
 in his room for a while and then he led the way 
 
 221 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 into the patio and through a gateway to a long 
 shed where he kept the farming implements the 
 government had given him. Here were parked 
 two or three heavy gasoline trucks, a pair of trac- 
 tors, a threshing-machine, and a full set of wheat 
 drills, plows, cultivators, and the score and one 
 implements used on a great modern ranch. 
 
 Villa was proud of them. He slipped into the 
 seat of a baby tractor and threw on a lever. He 
 petted it almost as he would have petted a horse. 
 
 *' They 're all ready for use when we want 
 them," he said. ''I've about six hundred acres of 
 wheat in now and next year I'll have several 
 times that number. . . I'm going to go into the 
 cattle business, too. I could run forty thousand 
 head on this place — ^if I had the money to buy 
 them. . . . Some people are afraid to trust me. 
 They wouldn 't even trust me for cattle. ' ' 
 
 He stopped and looked down the long trail of 
 years that have passed. He was triste — ^he was 
 a defeated champion, dreaming of days and 
 glories that were. 
 
 For a minute or two he sat on the little iron 
 seat of his baby tractor and dreamed. A blazing 
 Mexican sun streamed down into the alleyway: 
 everything was motionless and still except for 
 the droning voices of men loitering about in front 
 of the church. 
 
 "Caramha!" he sighed. His dream was over. 
 Forgetful of his injured leg, he jumped down 
 
 222 
 
BELOW THE RIO GRANDE 
 
 from the baby tractor and led the way to his black- 
 smith shop. 
 
 With the pride of a boy Villa pointed to the 
 open door: *'See, it's unlocked; everything is 
 safe around here. You could leave your coat and 
 purse anywhere and they would never be 
 touched. ' ' 
 
 I muttered words of praise while he led me to 
 the front of the old adobe church of the village. 
 A score of men were lounging about and just 
 within the entrance in front of an improvised 
 store counter, a half-dozen ex- Villa soldiers were 
 making Sunday morning purchases of lard, cigar- 
 ettes, corn and beans. 
 
 We edged our way past the counter and walked 
 to the rear of the church. Everywhere there were 
 piled bags of com, cans of lard, tools, and the 
 traps and clatter of a store and a warehouse. 
 
 There were no flickering candles nor clean 
 altar cloths, but the statuary and the pictures had 
 been left undamaged and were still in place. 
 
 Villa pointed to pictures of the saints and 
 smiled. "When I came here these poor fellows 
 were thin and hungry," he joked. **See how fat 
 they are since I brought in all this corn and food. ' ' 
 
 After a minute or two he led me out of the 
 church, down a filthy narrow mud street, through 
 a large door into a big patio surrounded by a 
 string of rooms made of adobe brick. 
 
 "This is to be our school," he said with tre- 
 223 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 mendous pride. ''I'm fixing it up as fast as I 
 can. Everything is tumbled down and the roofs 
 have fallen in, but I am repairing them and in a 
 few weeks we shall have a school here with four 
 teachers. It's going to be the best school I know 
 how to start, and every child on this ranch is going 
 to attend. . . . Schools are what Mexico needs 
 above everything else. If I was at the head of 
 things I would put plenty of schools in the cities 
 and towns and besides I'd put a school on every 
 hacienda and ranch. ..." 
 
 Again he fell to dreaming. "Poor, ignorant 
 Mexico," he said slowly. ''Until she has educa- 
 tion nothing much can be done. I know — I was 
 twenty-five before I could sign my own name. 
 And I know what it is to try to help people who 
 can't understand what you are trying to do for 
 them. I fought ten years for them. I had a prin- 
 ciple — I fought ten years so that the poor man 
 could live like a human being should, have his 
 land and send his children to school and have 
 human freedom. But most of them were too 
 ignorant to understand my ideas. That's the 
 reason I quit fighting. I kept fighting as long as 
 Carranza was in power, but now with Obregon 
 at the head I'd be doing more harm than good, 
 so I 've quit. . . . Nothing can ever be done until 
 the common people of Mexico are educated. ' ' 
 
 No one knows better than this strong, half- 
 ignorant man what this job is or how necessary it 
 
 224 
 
BELOW THE EIO GRANDE 
 
 is. With education, he might now be living in 
 the palace in Mexico City instead of on an 
 unknown ranch in the hills of Durango. 
 
 "I am through fighting," he went on. "I only 
 want to live and die here in peace and do what I 
 can to help my own people, and then when I'm 
 finished, Mexico will say that I was not the bad 
 man I have been pictured. ' ' 
 
 His voice trailed off; then once more: "I've 
 finished fighting. Nothing will ever get me to 
 pick up my rifle again — and we have two thou- 
 sand seven hundred rifles among my own men in 
 these hills here — ^unless Mexico is invaded or the 
 government fails to treat my own people justly. 
 Then they'll hear again from Pancho Villa. . . 
 Adios! Buena fortuna!'* 
 
 I climbed up to the back seat of the old buggy. 
 The driver cracked his whip over the flank of 
 the little black mules and we were off. It was six 
 hours to Eosario and ham and eggs at the China- 
 man's freight-car-restaurant — and then two days 
 of dust and heat to the border. 
 
 I had found the heart of the Mexico of to-day — 
 and it was beating bravely for new peons for old. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE LAMP BEAEERS 
 
 Haed-headed business men, both in America 
 and in foreign fields, may scoff at the idea of 
 **soul savers" having a very particular and a 
 very important part in this story of world unrest 
 — but they have, just the same. It is a star part. 
 
 The day when Force shall cease to be the vehicle 
 for the dissemination of our civilization is fast 
 dawning. Lord Eeading in India is learning — 
 just as the Allied Powers have learned in Russia 
 — that ideas can not be checked by bayonets nor 
 projected by bullets. They can only be success- 
 fully and lastingly combated by better ideas, sired 
 by sympathetic understanding and a real desire 
 to help in the long climb upward. 
 
 And this is where the missionary comes in — 
 the new model missionary, with his native student 
 protegees. 
 
 I'm tempted to tell the real missionary story 
 of Korea. I promised I wouldn't, but there are 
 times when even a word pledge must be stretched. 
 I'll let the story itself plead its own cause and 
 square me, if it can. 
 
 It was four o'clock in the morning and it was 
 226 
 
THE LAMP BEAEERS 
 
 cold and drizzly and muddy and we were hungry 
 and absolutely tired out. Our car had broken 
 down and we went trudging along a sloppy dirty 
 road in the general direction of Seoul, the capital 
 and heart of poor discouraged Korea. It had 
 been almost a year since the great burst of revolu- 
 tionary fire had spread over this unfortunate 
 country, but the embers of revolt were still smold- 
 ering — the blackened ruins of homes and hopes 
 still lay like deep pitted scars over the country. 
 
 We — two young missionaries and myself — ^had 
 driven the ninety miles to a tiny, nameless Korean 
 village where a Christian church and a score of 
 native houses had been burnt by a senseless, 
 Japanese non-commissioned officer and his men. 
 Our car had broken down a few miles from Seoul 
 and now early in the morning we were plowing our 
 way home through melted snow and a cold drizzle. 
 
 I was out of patience with the Korean revolu- 
 tion and thoroughly disgusted at the Japanese 
 soldiers for not having done their village-burning 
 closer to Seoul — and peeved at missionaries and 
 the whole world in general. And I was dead tired 
 and so hungry I would have fought Jack Dempsey 
 for the right to chew the leather upholstery in the 
 car. I was looking for an argument. 
 
 *'You missionaries in Korea have got a lot of 
 nerve to deny you've had anything to do with this 
 revolutionary movement here," I began on the 
 gentlest and smallest of the pair. 
 
 227 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 **Why, we don't deny weVe had something to 
 do with the inspiration of the revolution,"' he 
 answered me in a pained but very kindly voice. 
 **How can we deny we had a considerable part in 
 this great awakening of Korea? Isn't Christian- 
 ity a militant religion? Isn't it a religion that 
 teaches right and justice and equality, and com- 
 mands that men fight for their liberties . . . ? 
 
 "The Japanese are right in their contention 
 that American missionaries have had something 
 to do with the re-birth of Korea. We are to 
 blame indirectly for a lot of this trouble. And" 
 — ^he hesitated for a second or two as we strode 
 on — *'and we're proud of it." 
 
 I slipped my arm through his as we walked side 
 by side. I was ashamed of myself. He and the 
 other exiles working their lives out in these far- 
 away lands for the barest of a living, were doing 
 the big thing. They were taking the great chance. 
 There were thoroughly brave men. 
 
 A day or two later, after we got back to Seoul, 
 one of these same men shunted me into the back 
 room of a small Korean store, owned by one of 
 the leaders of the revolution. We sat cross- 
 legged with him on the floor and drank tea. And 
 we talked of this tremendous spiritual awakening 
 of a country that a few years ago was dead. 
 
 My queer old host, pulling at his thin little 
 beard and eying me with friendly glances, was a 
 Korean Christian. 
 
 228 
 
THE LAMP BEARERS 
 
 "More than seventy-five per cent, of the Ko- 
 reans who have taken an active part in our great 
 revolution against Japan are Christians," he said 
 to me through my missionary interpreter. **The 
 Christian Koreans have been the real leaders. 
 "We have kept the fire burning. Your American 
 missionaries and your dollars have built schools 
 for us, and hospitals, and they have given us new 
 hearts and fresh hopes. They have taught us 
 many fine things. They have prepared hundreds 
 of native missionaries and teachers and doctors 
 and nurses who in turn will carry on the things 
 they have learned from you. Korea could never 
 have lifted up her head again without Christianity 
 to help her." 
 
 And these inspirers of unrest were the same 
 missiojiaries whom I have heard laughed at and 
 damned a hundred times in steamship smoking- 
 rooms and hotel lobbies and in the clubs and 
 streets of half the world. For it is distinctly the 
 smart thing in the Far East to assume the su- 
 perior attitude over the missionary. Somehow 
 he doesn't fit into the free and easy gesture of 
 the foreigner's life in the Orient. 
 
 Then, too, he gives his life to help the native 
 peoples — and not to trade on them or make money 
 out of them. He has an entirely different point 
 of view from the average foreign business man 
 who wants to make his fortune and then leave the 
 "beggers" to the next foreigner who comes along. 
 
 229 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 These men — and even the consular and diplo- 
 matic people — come and go : and when they leave 
 they take their hearts with them. Their influence 
 can not be anything but negligible — they 're work- 
 ing primarily for themselves or their own govern- 
 ments and they can't possibly give any great 
 amount to the native. 
 
 But not so the missionary. He must and he 
 does give everything — ^years, dreams, heart, 
 hopes, life, everything. That's what makes him 
 great and Ms influence tremendous. 
 
 Not long ago one of the finest members of the 
 diplomatic corps in Peking said in an address: 
 "The American missionary worker and teacher 
 and doctor have done more to gain the friendship 
 and respect and good will of the East for America 
 than all the business men, consular and diplomat- 
 ic agents who have ever sojourned here, put to- 
 gether. ' ' And he was a diplomatic agent himself. 
 
 It is there in China that you really see what 
 tremendous effect the missionaries and their 
 schools and ideas can have on an ancient and 
 stolid people. "When I first went to China I didn't 
 believe this. I resented every phase of foreign 
 missionary influence. I thought it was a brazen 
 interference in the intimate life of a people who 
 had more thousands of years of tradition and 
 custom and proved civilization back of them than 
 we had scores of years, I resented the mission 
 boards with their great walled compounds: I 
 
 230 
 
THE LAMP BEAEEES 
 
 resented the whole business of trying to force our 
 standards and ideals and civilization on a people 
 who apparently didn't want them. 
 
 Then I took a trip into the country districts of 
 China. There were mud and dirt and dust and 
 filth everywhere. It was the filth of thousands 
 and thousands of years. And there was disease 
 of every imaginable sort. And an ignorance of 
 all sanitation and modern health standards so 
 appalling that it is indescribable. 
 
 Each little walled town was like all the others — 
 the great walls of China, with the village walls 
 themselves, had shut out all that was new and fine 
 and necessary in the new world. 
 
 For endless miles and days I jogged through 
 these picture-books of the past: a toothless old 
 woman with bound feet grinding flour at a stone 
 mill that could easily have come down from the 
 time of Confucius; a forked stick plow drawn 
 by two mangy donkeys — ^donkeys that might have 
 carried stones of the Great Wall, and a plow that 
 might have cultivated grain for the men who built 
 it; adobe huts with mud plastered walls copied 
 after the models of a thousand years past. It 
 was a panorama of long ago that I viewed — a 
 panorama of strong, virile men and women who 
 had turned to stone in their tracks and could only 
 be given the breath of life by the warm summer 
 winds blowing from the new lands and civilization 
 of the West. 
 
 231 
 
THE EISINa TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 In these few days that I lived close to common 
 China I grew tremendously fond of these kindly, 
 hospitable, smiling people. They are great and 
 they are a distinctly superior folk, but they need 
 us. And when I say **us" I mean those of "us" 
 who are willing to give our years and our hearts 
 and all our hopes and dreams for some one else. 
 And that's what these missionary teachers and 
 doctors and workers in China are doing. 
 
 On this trip we stopped mostly at filthy little 
 native inns, but several times we were invited into 
 homes. Some of them were fairly clean ; most of 
 them were not — ^but one I remember was immacu- 
 late. That was the home of a Chinese Christian 
 preacher. His home and his home life were ex- 
 actly what you would expect from a man who had 
 been inspired by the ideals and customs and codes 
 of the finest Americans. 
 
 There were no bound feet around his house and 
 there was no great-lord-and-master man worship, 
 and there was no Wife No. 2 or concubine No. 1. 
 It was a spick and span, clean little Christian 
 home — ^in the best and highest sense of the word. 
 
 In the same village we visited the tiny mission 
 where they held services on Sunday. Probably 
 forty or fifty of the native Christians gathered 
 to pay their respects to me. They asked me to 
 talk to them, and I told them pretty much what 
 I Ve just written here. When I had finished they 
 shook hands with me and two or three of them 
 
 232 
 
THE LAMP BEAEERS 
 
 told me with great pride that they had sons in 
 American mission schools. I recall that one old 
 fellow, bursting with joy, explained that he had 
 a daughter in an American school. 
 
 This was the big thing — schools to educate 
 native boys and girls in modern ideas and new 
 moral codes and sanitation and medicine and all 
 that the past two or three thousand years have 
 given the world in comfort and right living. My 
 missionary companion was helpless to do any- 
 thing for China with his own hands, but he could 
 train the hands of ten thousand Chinese youths to 
 go out into the highways and byways and slowly 
 but surely break down all the stupid superstitions 
 and traditions and customs of the dead past and 
 give them instead the best of the West. 
 
 This is a big part of the new missionary idea. 
 Religious proselytizing only, among a people 
 bound as tight by traditions as are the Chinese, 
 is only half a job even if successful. The brand- 
 new model missionary would teach young men to 
 teach China modem civilization, modern Chris- 
 tian standards and ethics and codes, modem 
 science and medicine — and he could rest mighty 
 certain that China's soul would come out of the 
 process all right. 
 
 After all, it is the work done by the mission 
 schools among the student body of the ancient 
 East that is having the deepest effect in the great 
 awakening of these slumbering millions. **The 
 
 233 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 germ carriers of unrest" some one has called 
 these brave, fighting young students of the East. 
 And that is what they are — bearers of the disease 
 of freedom — disseminators of the plague of na- 
 tionalism — transporters of the fever of revolt. 
 
 No one can possibly write about those rising 
 tides of unrest that are splashing against all the 
 shores of the world without writing about these 
 students. They are the very heart of it all; and 
 they are the hope of it all. 
 
 Without their youth and enthusiasm — ^without 
 their vision and strength — ^without their bravery 
 and determination the great awakening of the 
 East could not come about. They blow the pre- 
 cious breath of warm life into dreams of freedom 
 and make them come true. It is their voices that 
 are calling the old tired world out of its past; 
 it is their unfettered feet that are breaking the 
 trail to new days and new visions. They are 
 happy to fight and to die. 
 
 I can hardly keep the tears out of my eyes even 
 now as I think of those fine, brave young students 
 of India. To go against the established thing, to 
 dare stand against the government and the 
 dominant race — to dream and to act and to die if 
 necessary for their own people — this is what 
 thousands of the young men of India are doing. 
 
 In the great Mohammedan University at Ali- 
 grath in Northern India the student body with- 
 drew from the government supported school 
 
 234 
 
THE LAMP BEARERS 
 
 under the inspiration of the Moslem leader, 
 Mohammed Ali, and started up a tent school on 
 some vacant ground near by the walled enclosure 
 of the old college. Many of the parents objected 
 to the great movement and all the power and influ- 
 ence and weight of the established thing — of the 
 past — tried to break the flaming spirit of these 
 Indian boys, fighting as they believed for a New 
 India, a free India — and failed. 
 
 In Calcutta a tall Indian boy with a beautiful 
 Arion head and the soft grayish brown skin of 
 the high caste Arion, came to my room in the hotel.. 
 He wore very simple inexpensive robes and there 
 were sandals on his feet. He was trembling with 
 anger when he entered — the hotel elevator starter 
 had made him walk up the stairs because he was a 
 native. 
 
 He took me over to the square near his college. 
 There a crowd of poorer natives were gathered 
 about a soap-box orator — a youthful student. He 
 was preaching "SwadashV — the boycott of all 
 foreign goods in preference to native makes. He 
 wasn't stirring up enthusiasm for the coming 
 football game — ^he was arousing a sleeping in- 
 articulate people for the thrilling game of free- 
 dom and liberty that was about to be played. 
 
 And I can see now a great colorful crowd of 
 the common poor of India gathered on the sandy 
 shore of the gorgeously beautiful harbor at Bom- 
 bay. Never has such a great wave of color — 
 
 235 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 turbans and robes of white and red and greens 
 and blues and scarlets aU blending into the back- 
 ground of this magic bay — ^never has such a tide 
 of color swept over me. 
 
 Here in the twilight — the twilight of the world 
 that was, it seemed to me — these same youthful 
 students came with their dreams and their mes- 
 sages and their words of inspiration. It was a 
 great game they were playing — a game that made 
 our American college sports seem small and so 
 trivial. 
 
 And the Y. M. C. A. foreign secretary has had 
 his great part to do with all of this. Throughout 
 the East <*Y" men have exerted a tremendous 
 influence in giving life to the new ideas of 
 democracy and political and social consciousness 
 that are slowly permeating the ancient life of this 
 quarter of the world. Their schools and training 
 courses and their wide-open meeting-rooms have 
 gone a long ways toward awakening China. Many 
 of the vigorous young Chinese men who are fight- 
 ing their way into the new political life of the 
 country and trying to uproot the old Manchu 
 trained politician are Y. M. C. A. taught and 
 inspired. 
 
 In Japan, Korea, China, Siberia — everywhere 
 — the Y has been driving in its licks for the best. 
 None has ever told about the magnificent work 
 of the organization in the frozen, forgotten hills 
 of Siberia. Not only were countless American 
 
 236 
 
THE LAMP BEAEERS 
 
 soldier boys, scattered in small groups over htm- 
 dreds of miles, given cheery entertainments and 
 loafing-rooms and scores of little services, but 
 the Y attempted to bring some little dash of 
 pleasure into the dreary lives of the Siberian 
 soldiers themselves. 
 
 This was in the days when the misguided reac- 
 tionary Kolchak was fighting to turn back the 
 clock and return to the great landlords their con- 
 fiscated estates and set in power again the ousted 
 czar officials. A number of Y. M. C. A, secre- 
 taries with their picture-machines and their mov- 
 able canteens were sent to the discouraged army. 
 Little by little they worked their way into the 
 confidence of the common soldiers and told them 
 to fight on and bravely — for democracy and com- 
 mon freedom. They told them of American insti- 
 tutions and our own Revolutionary War. They 
 thrilled them with this word democracy. 
 
 When Kolchak 's reactionary advisers heard of 
 these Americans who dared give ideas with pic- 
 ture-shows and democratic ideals with hot coffee 
 they summarily boosted them out of their army. 
 I say boosted because it is distinctly a boost to be 
 kicked up and out for spreading ideas of Ameri- 
 can democracy. I know a lot of fine and pic- 
 turesque things about Y. M. C. A. work all over 
 the world, but none of them ever made me quite 
 so proud of this great institution as their being 
 "given the air" by Kolchak 's czarist officers. 
 
 237 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 It's a long trail from Siberia to India, but 
 there's not a foot of it that doesn't feel in some 
 indirect form or another the influence of the 
 foreign mission worker. What they've been able 
 to do in India itself is tremendous. And the 
 thrilling thing about their work in this great back- 
 ward country is that it has been done for the most 
 part among the lowest caste natives — the poor, 
 abused, underfed, despised ** untouchables." No 
 one else but foreign mission workers has ever had 
 time to give them more than a kick back into their 
 mud wallows when they have tried to climb out. 
 
 In Egypt, too, and all the Near East, mission 
 schools and hospitals and missionary influences 
 have made deep and tremendous impressions. To 
 these ancient and backward peoples they have 
 brought the fresh and fragrant breath of new 
 hope and of cleaner and happier lives. Their 
 hundreds of schools have taken the thousands of 
 boys and girls from homes of ancient days and 
 taught them of the New World; and then sent 
 them back to their decaying cities and villages to 
 show by precept and example that 1922 is a little 
 further down the road to happiness than 1922 
 was. 
 
 And the same things hold true the world over. 
 With their hospital school they have sent out doc- 
 tors and nurses to conserve life and lessen the 
 suffering and pain. The little hospitals and free 
 climes have done much of this work. 
 
 238 
 
THE LAMP BEARERS 
 
 I recall vividly a very small, old-fashioned 
 cUnie and hospital in Northern Manchuria. It 
 was the only one in the whole district, and the 
 doctor who conducted the clinic had been there 
 for more than forty years. It was a down-at-the- 
 heels old place and in no way was it the immacu- 
 late, spotless hospital we demand in America. It 
 was dirty, but it was priceless. 
 
 This old doctor and his sweet little wife, and 
 one or two Chinese girls they had trained, ran 
 the whole thing. And they only had a few hun- 
 dred dollars a year to do it with — ^not enough to 
 buy the medicines they really needed. 
 
 There were no clean hospital cots with pure 
 white linen: there were just long benches where 
 the patients could sleep and a long rough table 
 where the rice that the ancient one-eyed cook pre- 
 pared, was served. And the old doctor's operat- 
 ing-room would have brought tears to your eyes. 
 
 But he was doing his job. He was saving lives 
 and easing pain and trying to make people a little 
 happier — ^poor people whom the rest of the world 
 had forgotten. He wasn't bothering about souls — 
 he was bothering about sores. He was helping 
 helpless people. He needed no soldiers with bay- 
 onets to back him up: he was spending little of 
 his precious time bothering about the white man's 
 burden — ^he had something else to do with his 
 hours. 
 
 And I imagine if a certain carpenter of Judea 
 239 
 
THE RISING TEMPEE OF THE EAST 
 
 would ever happen along those dusty tired roads 
 of North China He would stop at this old mission- 
 ary doctor's little free clinic and put His arm 
 around him and tell him that his was the great- 
 est hospital in the world. 
 It seemed that to me. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE WOBUD's UNDEE-DOGS — ^A CONCLTJSION" 
 
 One has a strange half foreboding to come thus 
 to the end of a survey of a world of real people — 
 to take one look backward down the long dim 
 years of the past and to steal one swift glance 
 ahead into the unknown and unbroken trail of 
 to-morrow. 
 
 After all, it is something to be writing about 
 living, breathing people, and to try to catch and 
 throw on paper, in black and white, their dreams 
 and their aspirations — their struggles and their 
 battles. It is a tremendous responsibility, replete 
 with possibilities for good or evil. 
 
 As I try to value what I have said through all 
 these pages — ^to examine my own point of view 
 and weigh the job of reporting I have done — ^I 
 feel that possibly what I have written here in 
 the chapter on Mexico about Felipe Carrillo of 
 Yucatan may be said in criticism of me as well: 
 ''He plunges ahead by instinct — ^he has no back- 
 ground of radical training or education, but in- 
 stinctively takes the side of the oppressed.'* 
 
 I might as well admit it: common people — 
 Mexicon peons, Filipino taos, Indian ryots, 
 
 241 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 Egyptian fellaheen, Siberian peasants, Chinese 
 coolies, Haitian habitants — ^these are the people 
 who interest me, and it is their struggles and 
 hopes that thrill me. I have no concern with 
 unrest and revolution except as it touches them 
 and their lives. The philosophies, the theories, 
 the mere study of great political and social and 
 industrial changes mean very little to me — ^but 
 better homes and better food and better children 
 and education and new hopes for common mil- 
 lions mean a great deal to me. 
 
 It may be that I have misplaced some little 
 enthusiasm. I have tried very hard to be always 
 the observer, always the reporter, but en- 
 thusiasms will creep in now and then. And 
 enthusiasms make sentimentalists out of the best 
 of us; and when it comes to the future hopes of 
 common people I am just that. 
 
 Yet I am confident of one thing: the seething 
 unrest of the East will bring great sorrow before 
 it brings great good. There can be no short-cuts 
 to any real advancement. If the revolt of India 
 should by chance bring an early return of self- 
 government, common India will miss the fair jus- 
 tice of the British raj. She will miss the clean 
 efficiency and honesty of the British administra- 
 tion. She would be better off for a generation 
 or two under British rule — ^if she would accept 
 and assimilate the crumbs of self-government 
 that the empire is giving her. But if she wants 
 
 242 
 
THE WORLD'S UNDER-DOGS 
 
 freedom courageously enough to battle for it, 
 then I am sufficient of an idealist to believe that 
 in the end the wanting and the fighting and the 
 dreaming will help the half hungry, half clothed 
 native millions ; through learning to think of and 
 fight for nationalism they will learn to think of 
 and fight for their own social and economic 
 rights. 
 
 I can not too strongly emphasize this point — 
 this one theory of revolution that I have indulged 
 in. Only by a great, deep stirring of conscious- 
 ness can the slave complex of the billion under- 
 dogs of the world be broken and a real spirit of 
 freedom and independence be substituted for it. 
 
 It probably will seem a very cruel thing to say 
 but if I were the great molder of the Universe I 
 would not turn a hand or pull a cord to give the 
 struggling, submerged peoples of the world their 
 freedom. It is the dreaming and fighting and 
 sacrificing that make them worthy and prepare 
 them for it. 
 
 If England would withdraw from India at this 
 moment and give this great, seething half-conti- 
 nent, with its scores of divergent castes and reli- 
 gions and traditions, full independence there 
 would be gray days ahead for India. But when 
 the dream of freedom has penetrated into the 
 inertia of three hundred million ignorant Indian 
 peasants and workmen so deeply that they are 
 willing to give their lives for it, then they are 
 
 243 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 spiritually ready for it — and tliey will be ready 
 to begin the long fight for social and industrial 
 justice. 
 
 These young-old nations of the world must 
 again learn to walk alone. Some of them will try 
 before they are quite ready and they will fall, but 
 they must choose their own time; we can have 
 very little to do with that. 
 
 There is not the slightest doubt in my mind but 
 that our own little India — and there are many 
 who will object to this designation of the Philip- 
 pines — ^would be infinitely better off for another 
 full generation under the beneficent supervision 
 of the United States. Americans in the islands 
 who claim that there is less efficiency, less hon- 
 esty, less advancement under the present scheme 
 of native government than in the old days of un- 
 divided American administration, are unquestion- 
 ably right — ^but inefficiency and demagogery 
 are ever the prices of democracy. 
 
 There is no question but that a decade ago the 
 Philippines were the best governed and most effi- 
 ciently administrated lands in the world. The 
 finest citizens of our republic poured out the best 
 years of their lives in honest, intelligent and, 
 idealistic service. No city or state or govern- 
 mental department in our own country was admin- 
 istered more efficiently or honestly than the 
 most distant hill district of North Luzon. But 
 it was a paternal and foreign government rest- 
 
 244 
 
THE WOELD'S UNDER-DOGS 
 
 ing on the rule of force — and this can never be 
 either a sound or a rightful foundation. 
 
 When Manuel Quezon, head of the Philippine 
 independence movement, announces — in the same 
 words that I have heard Indian revolutionists 
 state their own case — that ''good government is 
 no substitute for self-government" he is stating 
 a fact that Americans, least of all, can dispute. 
 
 These slogans, these signs of discontent and 
 revolt, are real danger-signals. We of America 
 are less guilty than the others, but our hands are 
 not stainless. The whole West must drop its 
 arrogance, its domineering, its superior bearing. 
 
 We must cease to look upon the East as a great 
 field for exploitation : we must think of the East 
 in terms of striving peoples and not of future 
 markets. The East is tired of our looting and our 
 ruling. 
 
 But there are other things we can and should 
 do — the world's under-dogs do need a great deal 
 that our white West can give them. They need 
 our science and our medical skill ; they need our 
 skill for organization and our technical ability; 
 they need our own neglected theory of the broth- 
 erhood of man, and much of our own gentler 
 social system. But they don't want and won't 
 have these things shoved down their throats with 
 bayonets. 
 
 Slowly and after a terrible cost we are begin- 
 ning to realize that there are better and easier 
 
 245 
 
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 ways of gaining our ends. Doctor Cross, the 
 brave sacrificing medical explorer who gave his 
 life in Vera Cruz in an attempt to rid the ''hot 
 country" of Mexico of its yellow-fever menace, 
 knew one way to give the lower half of the world 
 the best of our civilization without the use of 
 threat or force. He was the new type of soldier 
 who will one day "conquer" the world through 
 kindness and gentleness and generosity. 
 
 Teachers, doctors, mission workers, engineers, 
 organizers — ^these must be the future colonizers, 
 the bearers of new ideas. 
 
 After all, the history of the spreading of the 
 white man's civilization is not a pretty one. It 
 has been mostly one of conquest and gain and 
 loot, with a few fine mission workers and teach- 
 ers and a handful of sincere civilians trying to 
 undo all that men with bayonets and men dream- 
 ing only of profits have done. 
 
 And these men with bayonets and these men 
 dreaming of profits have differed very little, 
 regardless of the time or of the flag under which 
 they conquered and looted. None has been a con- 
 queror or an imperialist in his own eyes — ^but each 
 in turn has pointed the finger of scorn at the 
 other fellow and accused him of bad faith in deal- 
 ing with weaker, far-away peoples. 
 
 So it is that we Americans have had much to 
 say of the British in Egypt and India and Ire- 
 land, and the French in Indo-China and Madagas- 
 
 246 
 
THE WORLD'S UNDER-DOGS 
 
 car, and the Japanese in Korea and China and 
 Siberia. Any of these accused might quite justly 
 say, "Let him who is without sin cast the first 
 stone" — and suggest that we study our own little 
 conquest of Haiti and Santo Domingo and our 
 interference in the affairs of Mexico and the tiny 
 republics to the south. 
 
 And it is high time that we all take stock, for 
 there is a rising temper among these backward 
 peoples all over the world — and particularly 
 among the billion black, brown and yellow races 
 of the East. For centuries the imagination of 
 the Great East had been unstirred. There had 
 been no ideals, no dreams. A billion people had 
 been marking time while the stream of civiliza- 
 tion had been flowing smftly in the New World. 
 
 But now new ideals of nationalism have lit up 
 the imagination and hearts of these peoples. 
 They have been stirred from their great coma. 
 They have opened their eyes and are stretching 
 themselves and discovering the power of their 
 numbers and of their years. 
 
 They will gain their nationalism — ^nothing is 
 more certain than that. But they will not stop 
 there. If the fair rule of the British in India 
 was to be permanently replaced by the rule of 
 backward, Oriental maharajahs, steeped in their 
 ancient despotic ways, I would find no thrill in 
 the home-rule dreams of India. But they will not 
 stop there. 
 
 247 
 
THE EISING TEMPER OF THE EAST 
 
 I shall never forget what an Egyptian fellah 
 in a mud village along the sleepy Nile said to me 
 when I reminded him of the cruel conditions in 
 Egypt before the British came. 
 
 '*Yes," he answered with set jaw, ''but no one 
 is going to oppress us in the future. We are sick 
 and tired of being the under-dogs." 
 
 And this to me is the great story of the Old 
 East. These ancient millions will not stop with 
 the victory of nationalism : they will go on and on, 
 dreaming and demanding and finally gaining 
 more victories for themselves — for the peons and 
 the taos and the ryots and the fellaheen and the 
 peasants and the coolies of the world. They will 
 gain more rice and better homes and all the pre- 
 cious things of real freedom. 
 
 And those will be glorious days. 
 
 IH£ END 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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