Manila city wallsLOOKING OVER THE WALLED CITY OF MANILA, AMERICAN SOLDIERS SCALED THIS WALL A FEW YEARS AGO TO STAY.
LOOKING OVER THE WALLED CITY OF MANILA, AMERICAN SOLDIERS SCALED THIS WALL A FEW YEARS AGO TO STAY.
LOOKING OVER THE WALLED CITY OF MANILA, AMERICAN SOLDIERS SCALED THIS WALL A FEW YEARS AGO TO STAY.
Filipino GirlsBEAUTIFUL FILIPINO GIRLS ALL OF WHOM SPEAK ENGLISH.
BEAUTIFUL FILIPINO GIRLS ALL OF WHOM SPEAK ENGLISH.
BEAUTIFUL FILIPINO GIRLS ALL OF WHOM SPEAK ENGLISH.
Korean GirlsKOREAN GIRLS WITH AMERICAN IDEALS AND TRAINING.
KOREAN GIRLS WITH AMERICAN IDEALS AND TRAINING.
KOREAN GIRLS WITH AMERICAN IDEALS AND TRAINING.
Korean peasant and oxSTEPPING ASIDE IN KOREA TO LET THE AMERICAN DEVIL WAGON GO BY.
STEPPING ASIDE IN KOREA TO LET THE AMERICAN DEVIL WAGON GO BY.
STEPPING ASIDE IN KOREA TO LET THE AMERICAN DEVIL WAGON GO BY.
He was an old man; gray-haired, gray-bearded; gray-gowned; and he knew that the Japanese Gendarmes would just as soon take his life as light a cigarette. They do each with inhumane impunity. One means as much to them as the other.
He was under arrest for conspiracy in the Independence Movement.
"Do you know about the Independence Movement?" he was asked.
"Yes, I know all about it," was his fearless reply; though he knew that that reply in itself might mean his death; even without trial or further evidence. Just the fact that he had admitted that he knew anything at all about the movement was enough to throw him into prison. He was like an old Prophet in his demeanor. Something about the very dignity and sublime Faith of the man awed the souls of these crude barbarians from the Island Empire.
"Since when was it begun?" asked theGendarmes.
"Since ten years ago when you Japanese first came to Korea," was the dignified reply.
"From whence did it spring?" he was asked next.
"From the hearts of twenty million people!"
"Did twenty millions of people all get together then, and plan?"
"Not together in body but in spirit!"
"But there must have been some men to start it?" the Japanese Gendarme said.
"They all started it!" was the old man's reply.
"Is there no one who had charge of this movement from the beginning?"
"Yes, there is one!"
"Do you know him?"
"I know him well!"
"What is his name?"
"His name is God!" said this seventy-year old, fearless Christian Korean Patriot.
Such faith as I have indicated in the paragraphs above is a common thing in Korea. Never in the history of the world have Christian people been subjected to the same tortures, the same cruelties, the same terrors, for their Faith as the early Christian martyrs; save these; the Koreans.
We had thought that the world had gotten past that day when men would be tortured, crushed, persecuted, and killed because they wereChristians but that day is not yet past as almost any American Missionary in Korea will testify.
The Japanese officials will say that there is no persecution because of Christianity; but missionaries in Korea know better. They will point to countless incidents when men, women and children have been hounded, and persecuted for no other reason than that they were Christians.
"And when Jesus heard it, He marveled greatly and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel!" might well be said of the Korean Christians every hour, every minute, every second. They know what it means to die for their Faith.
The story of Pak Suk Han is one of the most thrilling illustrations of Faith that I have ever heard in Oriental lands. He had been a Christian since he was seven years of age. He was a brilliant speaker and the Assistant Pastor of the First Methodist Church at Pyeng Yang, where, even the non-Christians loved him. He was arrested on Independence Day and sent to prison where a barbarous Japanese officer, whom the natives called "The Brute" kicked him in the side because he would not give up his Christ. From that kick and further inhuman treatment running over a period of six months; a disease developed which a most reliable missionary doctor told me ended Pak Suk Han's life.
When he knew that he was about to die he said, "I have been a Christian and have served the church since I was seven years old. I have given my life to Christ, all but the last six months in prison which I have given to my country. I have no regrets. I might have lived had I been willing to deny my nation's rights and give up my Christ. I am going home to my Father's house. Good-by!" No Christian martyrs in the early centuries of the persecutions by Rome ever died with greater glory in their souls; or with deeper Faith!
* * * * * *
The temperature was zero.
The cold had swept down over night from the Siberian and Manchurian plains across the city of Seoul. The capital city of Korea was shivering with cold. But it was vibrant with something else. It was vibrant with a great sense of something impending.
There were those who said that the restlessness in the souls of the Koreans had died down with the terrible days of the March Independence Movement; but I knew that the faith of the people was deeper than that. I knew that the flame of faith was just smouldering.
I sensed this from the conversation of old-time missionaries who had been in Korea from the very beginning. I sensed it in the conversationof young Koreans who had graduated from American schools. It was there; a vibrant, living, pulsing, faith in God and in the justice of their hopes: the Independence of Korea.
The whole thing was summed up for me in a flash. It was a flash of the light of a tremendous faith that blinded mine eyes for a day; but my soul it lighted as with a great eternal light.
A Korean boy stepped into the home of a missionary friend of mine, whose name I dare not use. If I did he would likely be sent home by the Japanese. Men have been sent home for less.
The snow crunched under his feet as he walked up across the yard and the porch. He knocked at the door.
"Come in," said the missionary, kindly.
The boy stepped in. The missionary had never seen him before. The boy was moved deeply as with a great emotion. He seemed to have carried into that quiet missionary home with him some of the tenseness of the outside air and some of the tenseness of the political situation.
"What do you want?" asked the missionary.
"I want to talk with you about something very important," he replied in Korean.
"All right! Go ahead! Do not be afraid. I am your friend!"
"So I know. All missionaries are our friends."
"Then you need not be afraid to talk."
"No!" said the boy. But he did not talk. His agitation was growing more marked.
"Go on, my boy! Tell me what you came for."
The Korean boy looked at the half open door which led into the kitchen. The missionary, without a word, stepped over and closed that door, because he understood.
The boy himself closed a door which led into the missionary's study. For in Korea in these days no home; not even a missionary's home, is free from spies.
The boy started to talk hurriedly. The missionary soon saw that he was not talking about the thing that he had come for.
"Come to the point! Come to the point! You did not come to me, in such secrecy, to talk commonplace things like that!" said the missionary a bit sharply.
Then the boy suddenly dropped to his knees behind the missionary's desk and whipped out a big knife. Then he took from his white gown a long piece of white cloth. This he laid out on the floor. Then he opened his sharp knife with a quick motion and before the missionary knew it, he had ripped the index finger of his right hand, from, the tip to the palm, clear to the bone, until the blood spurted all over the floor.
"What are you doing, my boy?" cried themissionary.
The boy smiled a sublime smile and then knelt on his knees over the white cloth and before the missionary's tear-misty eyes wrote across the immaculate cloth in his own blood the words: "Mansei! Mansei! Mansei! Korean Independence Forever! Self-determination!"
Then underneath these words in a few swift strokes in his own blood he drew a picture of the Korean flag. And as he drew, now and then the blood would not flow fast enough; and he took his knife, as one primes a fountain pen; and cut a bit deeper to open new veins in order that the flag of his country and the declaration of his faith might be written in the deepest colors that his own veins could furnish.
Finally, after what seemed hours he jumped to his feet and handed the missionary that flag; crying as he did so: "That is our faith! That is the way we Koreans feel! You are going back to America! We want America to know that our faith in the Independence of Korea has not died! The fire burns higher to-day than ever. The Japanese cruelties are worse! The need is greater! The oppression is more terrible! Our determination is deeper than ever before! I have come here this day, knowing that you are going back to America; I came to write these words in my own blood that you may know; and that America may know; that our faith is a flamewhich burns out like the beacon lights on the Korean hills, never to die!"
* * * * * *
The most scintillating Flash-light of Faith that I saw in the Orient was in the Philippine Islands. We were traveling the jungle trail to visit a tribe of naked Negritos. These are diminutive people who look like American negroes only they are much smaller; much more underfed, and who live in trees very much like the Orangutans of Borneo. They eat roots and nuts. They hunt with bows and arrows.
They are the lowest tribe in mentality on the Islands.
It was a terribly hot, tropical day and I had a sunstroke on the way up the mountainside to this Negrito village.
I did not expect to get back alive.
For three solid hours under a killing tropical sun, without the proper cork helmet and protection, a pile driver kept hammering down on my head. I felt it at every step I took. Finally I dropped unconscious on the trail. After several hours I was able to proceed to the top of the mountain, where the Negritos were camped.
We got there about two o'clock and had lunch. As we ate about fifty Negritos swarmed about us.
They were a horrible looking crowd; starknaked, filthy with dirt; starved to skin and bones; and animal-like in every look and move.
I was so sick that I was not able to eat the lunch which had been provided in baskets. I lay on my back trying to get back my strength.
As the rest of the expedition ate, the Negritos with hungry eyes, crowded closer.
One hideous old man was in the forefront of the natives. He was so hideous looking that he was sickeningly repulsive to me as I looked at him crouched as he was like an animal with a streak of sunlight playing on his face.
This streak of sunlight, with ruthless severity, made the ugly scabs of dirt stand out on his old wrinkled face. That face had not felt the touch of water in years. His whole body was covered with dirt and sores. Wherever the sunlight struck on that black body it revealed scales like those on a mangy dog. His body was also covered with gray hairs matted into the dirt.
"That old codger represents the nearest thing to an animal that the human being can reach," said McLaughlin, one of the oldest missionaries on the island.
"You're right!" I said. "He looks as much like a Borneo Orangutan as any human being I ever saw."
"And he lives like one, too; up in a tree in a nest of matted limbs and grass," said another.
"I've traveled among the wild tribes of the world all my life and I have seen the lowest human beings on earth; in Africa, South America, Malaysia, Borneo, Java—Australia—everywhere," said a widely traveled man in the crowd, "and I never saw a type as low in the scale as that old fellow!"
So we discussed him as the lunch proceeded. He did not know, of course, that we had consigned him to the lowest rung on the ladder of humanity, so he just sat looking at us with his animal-like eyes as we ate; and at me as I lay under a tree trying to recover my strength for the trip back.
"He is not a human being!" added a philosopher in the crowd. "He is lower than that stage. He doesn't seem to have a single spark of humanity left in him!"
Then the meal over; the missionaries started to hand out what was left of the food to these starving Negritos. The old man whom we had decided was the lowest type of a human being on earth seemed, after all, to be the leader of the tribe; no doubt because of his age; perhaps because of something else which we were later to discover.
McLaughlin handed out a sandwich to the old man.
"Did he eat it himself?"
"He did not! He handed it to a child near by."
McLaughlin handed out another sandwich which was left.
"Did the old man, whom we had decided was more of an animal than a human being, eat that one?"
"He did not. He took it over behind a tree where another old man was timidly hiding and gave it to him."
McLaughlin handed out another sandwich.
"Did the old man eat that one?"
"He did not. He took it over and gave it to an old woman near by."
And so it continued, until every last piece of food was disposed of. That old man; whom we had decided was an animal; saw to it, that every man, woman, and child in that crowd was fed before he took a single bite himself.
Then he suddenly disappeared. In half an hour he came back with an armful of great, broad, palm leaves. He spread these out on the ground in the shade of a tree; did this old man; this hideous looking monster; and then motioned for me to lie down on the bed he had made for me. He saw that I was sick.
Then he disappeared once again, and when he returned he was carrying a long Bamboo-tube full of clear, cool water which he had gotten from a mountain spring. He brought it to where I was lying on the bed he had made for me and with thiswater he cooled my fevered, burning head; and from this water he gave me to drink; he whom we had decided was the lowest type of a human being on earth.
And I am writing here to say; that I have never seen a "cup of cold water given in His name" that was given with a higher, or a deeper sense of the Divine spark of God in humanity than I saw that tropical summer afternoon, and this water was given by the naked Negrito whom we had decided was the lowest human being on the earth. Yet even in this animal-man; even in this naked savage; there was a spark of the Divine that made us forever have a deeper and a more abiding faith that God never did and never shall make a man to live on this old earth that He did not have some purpose in making him.
A few days before I took this trip up into the jungles of Luzon to visit this Negrito tribe I had received a copy of a slender volume of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay. In the cool beauty of the tropical evening preceding this trip I had read the last lines of its introductory poem called "Interim"; and these lines came flashing into my mind, even as I lay on the hot earth on that Luzon hillside. I can still remember the honey dripping like rain from the Cocoanut trees, and I can still hear the ceaseless and maddening cry of millions of Locusts that hot day; but suddenly came thisbeautiful outpouring of faith from, the cool depths of a woman's woodland soul:
"Not Truth but Faith, it isThat keeps the world alive! If, all at onceFaith were to slacken,—that unconscious faithWhich must, I know, yet be the corner-stoneOf all believing—birds now flying fearlessAcross would drop in terror to the earth;Fishes would drown; and the all-governing reinsWould tangle in the frantic hands of GodAnd the worlds gallop headlong to destruction!"
"Not Truth but Faith, it isThat keeps the world alive! If, all at onceFaith were to slacken,—that unconscious faithWhich must, I know, yet be the corner-stoneOf all believing—birds now flying fearlessAcross would drop in terror to the earth;Fishes would drown; and the all-governing reinsWould tangle in the frantic hands of GodAnd the worlds gallop headlong to destruction!"
That day bred new faith into my soul!
I have told this story of the naked Negrito a hundred times since that eventful day and it kindles new flames of faith in human hearts every time it is repeated! Mr. Edmund Vance Cooke, the poet, heard it in Cleveland where I spoke in a Chautauqua programme and he said to me several months later in my home at Detroit, Michigan, "That was the most thrilling story of the Divine spark in a savage soul that I have ever heard! It gave me new faith in God and in humanity!"
These, and a thousand other Flashlights of Faith come flashing out of that Far Eastern background; the sublime faith of thousands of college men and women who are giving their lives because they believe that savages and barbarians, such as I have described in this Negrito; Do have that spark of the Divine in their souls; faith thatChristian civilization, and Christian education; and a Christian God, may awaken that spark.
And, indeed many a proof do they have of this miracle! Only the other day from an American School, a girl from darkest Africa graduated as a Phi Beta Kappa honor scholar. Bishop William A. Taylor picked up this girl as a naked child in the jungles of Africa less than a quarter of a century ago!
Quick, short, sharp signals shot down the speaking tube from the bridge.
The Chief Engineer of theSanta Cruzyelled across the boiler room.
The bell rang for reverse and the entire ship shivered.
A woman on deck screamed, and there was a rush to the railings, for the old boat had been slowly making its way up the winding, treacherous Saigon River out of the China Sea into French Indo-China.
"Those damned Chinks again, trying to escape the Devil!"
"What's the matter, Pop?" some one asked the captain.
"That sampan full of Chinks was trying to get away from the River Devil, so they shot across our bow to fool him and we nearly ran them down."
"Do they often indulge in that little friendly game with the Devil?" I asked him, smiling at his seriousness.
"Every time we enter one of these rivers they do it. I killed six of them going up the river at Shanghai a year ago. It gives me the creeps every time I see them shoot across our bow. A ship like this will cut 'em in two like a knife!"
We looked over the green railing of theSanta Cruz. The big ship had almost come to a stop for the engines were still in reverse and the shallow river mud was churned up until the otherwise clear water looked like a muddy pond. The little sampan, full of grinning, naked Chinese coolies was fifty feet away from us, and our American sailors were swearing at them in every language they knew and shaking big, brawny, brown fists in their grinning direction.
It was considered a joke by the passengers but it was a very real thing to these poor ignorant Chinese. One sees this happen everywhere in the Orient. For the Chinaman starts out every morning in his sampan with the worst kind of a River Devil after him. He must rid himself of that Devil. So, when a big ship comes into sight, he waits until its bow is very close and then darts in front of its pathway. The idea is, that when a sampan full of Chinamen shoots in front of a big ship the Devil is supposed to follow the ship all that day, and let the Chinese junk or sampan alone.
Tomb of ConfuciusCONFUCIUS' TOMB AT CHUFU, CHINA.
CONFUCIUS' TOMB AT CHUFU, CHINA.
CONFUCIUS' TOMB AT CHUFU, CHINA.
Ming TombsRUIN OF THE MING TOMBS.The turtle, the symbol of long life, is almost as common in China as the dragon.
RUIN OF THE MING TOMBS.The turtle, the symbol of long life, is almost as common in China as the dragon.
RUIN OF THE MING TOMBS.
The turtle, the symbol of long life, is almost as common in China as the dragon.
Peasant grinding riceGRINDING RICE IN CHINA.
GRINDING RICE IN CHINA.
GRINDING RICE IN CHINA.
A camel caravanA CAMEL TRAIN FROM THE PLAINS OF MONGOLIA ENTERS PEKING ON A WINTER'S DAY.
A CAMEL TRAIN FROM THE PLAINS OF MONGOLIA ENTERS PEKING ON A WINTER'S DAY.
A CAMEL TRAIN FROM THE PLAINS OF MONGOLIA ENTERS PEKING ON A WINTER'S DAY.
It is the pest of an American seaman's life, foreven a seaman hates to see a human being drowned.
To an American mind this seems ridiculous. It even seems humorous. I shall never forget how the passengers laughed when the captain told them why he had had to reverse his engines to keep from crushing the frail Chinese sampan. But suddenly the thought came to one of the passengers; that to the poor Chinaman the fear which made him do that foolish thing and the fear which made him take that awful risk was very real.
"Under God, the poor Devils must have an awful life if they have such a fear as that in their souls day and night!" said an Englishman.
"They never start out for a day's work that they are not haunted every minute of that day by a thousand devils, ill-omens, and bad spirits which are constantly hovering about to leap on them and kill them!" said a missionary. "The whole Orient is full of the thought of fear!"
This missionary was right. Paul Hutchinson, Editor of theChinese Christian Advocateand one of the real literary men of the Americans who are permanent residents of Shanghai, told me of a Chinese boy who was graduating from a Christian College in Nanking. The boy had been for four years under the influence of Americans. He could speak good English. He was aboutready to go to America to school when he had completed his work at Nanking.
He, with a younger brother, was at home for the Christmas vacation. On the way back to college the younger brother fell overboard into the river. The older brother was not a coward. Everybody will testify to that. In fact he was unusually courageous. But in spite of the fact that his puny brother was able to swim to the side of the small boat, and in spite of the fact that he begged his older and stronger brother to pull him back into the boat, that older brother refused to do so.
"Why?"
Mr. Hutchinson says that the English teacher heard the tale in terror, but that the brother took it as a matter of course, explaining that the River Devil would most certainly have caught and dragged into the water, any person who should have dared to attempt a rescue of his brother.
It is an established thing in China; that if a native falls into the river, he never gets out unless he pulls himself out. Nobody will help him, for if they do, that will incur the wrath of the River God and the rescuer also will be dragged down to his death.
It is assumed that if a person falls into the river that is the River God pulling him in.
The constant fear of this River God is so deeply intrenched in these poor souls that they take no pleasure on the water and they carry their sense of fear to such an extent that they will not even attempt a rescue of their own babies or loved ones if these happen to fall into the water.
Mr. Hutchinson calls attention to Dr. E. D. Soper's book "The Faiths of Mankind" in which there is an entire chapter called "Where Fear Holds Sway."
"Where is it that fear holds sway?" the reader asks.
The answer is, "In the Orient"!
Yes, the whole Orient is one great gallery of dim, uncertain, weird, mysterious Flash-lights of Fear.
Paul Hutchinson says:
"It is impossible for the Westerner to conceive such an atmosphere until he has lived in it. In fact he may live in it for years and never realize the hold which it has upon his native neighbors. But it is no exaggeration to say that, to the average Chinese, the air is peopled with countless spirits, most of them malignant, all attempting to do him harm. Even a catalogue of the devils, such as have been named by the scholarly Jesuit, Father Dore, is too long for the limits of this article. But there they are, millions of them. They hover around every motion of every waking hour, and they enter the sanctity of sleep. An intricate system of circumnavigating them, that makes the streets twist in a fashion to daze Boston's legendary cow and puts walls in front of doors to belie the hospitality within, runs through the social order."
"It is impossible for the Westerner to conceive such an atmosphere until he has lived in it. In fact he may live in it for years and never realize the hold which it has upon his native neighbors. But it is no exaggeration to say that, to the average Chinese, the air is peopled with countless spirits, most of them malignant, all attempting to do him harm. Even a catalogue of the devils, such as have been named by the scholarly Jesuit, Father Dore, is too long for the limits of this article. But there they are, millions of them. They hover around every motion of every waking hour, and they enter the sanctity of sleep. An intricate system of circumnavigating them, that makes the streets twist in a fashion to daze Boston's legendary cow and puts walls in front of doors to belie the hospitality within, runs through the social order."
This fear is even expressed in Chinese architecture.
"Why is that strange wall built in front of every household door and even before the Temples?" I asked a friend in China.
"It is put there to fool the devils. They will see that wall and think that there is no door and then will go away and not bother that house any more," I was told.
The very architecture of the Chinese home is to keep the devils out. The strange curves with the graceful upward sweep that makes the roofs so beautiful to American eyes is for the purpose of throwing devils of the air off the track. They will come down from the skies and start down the curve of the roofs but will be turned back into the skies again by the upward slant of the twisted roofs.
It was this same terrible sense of fear which developed the old surgical system that the Koreans and Chinese used before the arrival of the missionaries.
"Do you see these needles?" an American surgeon in Korea asked me one day, as he pointed to about a hundred of the most horrible looking copper and brass needles lying on a stand.
"Yes," I admitted, mystified.
"I have taken every one of them out of thebodies of human beings on whom I have operated here in the hospital."
"Where did you find them?"
"In between the bowels, in the muscles, in the organs of the body, and one in the heart of a man who came to me because he couldn't breathe very well."
"No wonder the fellow couldn't breathe. I don't think I could myself if I had a needle in my blood-pump!" I said with a smile.
"These fancy needles that the old Korean doctors thought a good deal of they put a handle on," he continued.
"What was that for?"
"So they wouldn't lose their needles in a body. The other, or common needles, they just stuck into the body wherever the wound or sore place was and left them there."
"And what, may I ask, was the idea of this playful Korean surgery! Was it something like our 'button, button, whose got the button?'"
"No, the idea was that there were devils in the wound. If it was a swelling there was a devil in that swelling. If it was typhoid fever, and there was pain in the bowels, there was a devil in the inward parts affected, and so, after carefully sterilizing the needle by running it through his long, black, greasy hair, the native doctor wouldrun it into the affected part of the body to kill the devil or let it escape from the body."
"The old idea of a fear religion, a fear social life, a fear family life and a fear surgery prevails in Korea as it does in China?" I said by way of a question.
"It prevails everywhere in the Orient. To me it is the most awful thing about working out here. The awful sense of constant fear that is on the people always and everywhere."
Pounded-up claws of a tiger; the red horn of a deer; pulverized fish bones; roots of trees, pigs' eyes; and a thousand poisons and fear-remedies make up the medical history of the Oriental doctor.
"Why do they kill girl babies?"
"Fear!"
"Fear of what?"
"Fear of devils! The devils will be displeased if a girl baby is born. Therefore kill the baby.
"Throw the babies out on the ground in the graveyards. Let the dogs eat the babies."
I heard the dogs howling in a cemetery one night about two o'clock in the morning as I was coming through the thousands of little conical mounds, with here and there an unburied coffin.
"The dogs are having a baby feast to-night," said an old missionary.
"Why?"
"To appease the devils."
"My God man; you don't mean that they let the dogs eat their babies because they are afraid of the devil?" I cried.
"I mean just that," replied the missionary.
"Fear! Fear! Fear! Everywhere. Fear by night and fear by day. They never escape it. It is fear that makes them worship their ancestors. It is fear that makes them worship idols. It is fear that makes them kill their girl babies. It is fear that makes them build their little narrow winding streets, which after a while must become so filthy; fear that if they do not, the devils will find them; and if they do build their streets narrow and winding the devils will get lost searching for them. Oh, God, fear, fear, everywhere! The Orient is full of a terrible and a constant fear!"
I looked at my friend astonished. He seldom went into such emotional outbursts. He was judicial, calm, poised; some said, cold. But this constant sense of fear that was upon the people had finally broken down his reserve of poise.
"The chimneys are beautiful. See that beautiful upward dip in the architecture. They are like the roofs," I said.
"But that beautiful, symmetrical development did not come out of a sense of beauty. It came to fool the devils just as we have said of the roofs. The devils will glide off into space and will neverbe able to get down the chimneys." It is so in other Oriental countries.
* * * * * *
The same is true in the Philippine Islands. The whole fabric of human life is permeated with the black thread of fear.
It is true of China and Korea; it is true of Borneo to a marked degree; and it is true of that great mass of conglomerate humanity that we think of as India.
These and other flash-lights of fear remain, and shall remain forever in my mind. But of a fifty thousand mile trip among hundreds of millions of human beings; pictures of fear stand out, blurred here and there; but clear enough in outline so that I can still see the human faces against a background of midnight darkness.
Three pictures are clearer than the others. Perhaps it was because the flash that focused them on the plate of my mind was stronger. Perhaps it was, that the plate of my soul was more sensitive the days these impressions were focused. But they stand out; three flash-lights of fear above all:
One was told me by Zela Wiltsie Worley, a college girl, now a missionary's wife, who has known what it means to lie on the floor of her home an entire morning with machine gun bulletscrashing through her home, between the fire of two revolutionary armies.
"I was talking with my Amah—she is the girl who cares for our children," said Mrs. Worley.
I nodded that I understood that.
"We were bathing the baby—our first wee kiddie—and the Amah seemed to have an unusual inclination to talk. I had been joking with her and asked her if she did not want to buy Clara Gene. In fun we started the characteristic Chinese haggling over price, she trying to 'jew' me up and I trying to 'jew' her down.
"'Oh!' she said, 'girl babies are very expensive the last two or three years. Now you have to pay over ten dollars to get a nice fat one! Before that, if you did not drown them, you had an awfully hard time to get rid of them. There was a man in our town to whom we took the babies—the girl babies I mean. He would go up and down the streets with them and sell them to any one who would give him a chicken and a bowl of rice in return.'
"'But do they drown the girl babies now?' I asked the Amah.
"'Oh, yes, of course, if you already have one or two boys. You know, in my village I am the only Christian. My own family and the rest of the village worship idols. They are afraid of their gods. They do not know any better. Whymy sister almost drowned my second little boy by mistake. He had just arrived and she thought that he was a girl, and had already stuck his head down in a pail of water when I rescued him.'
"'But who usually kills the girl babies?' I asked. 'Surely not the mother?'
"'Yes, she does. She is so afraid when she finds it is only a girl, afraid that the gods will be angry because she has brought another girl into the world, that she kills it!'
"'Do they bury it then?'
"'Sometimes they wrap it up, and throw it under a pile of rubbish. You know, we do not have coffins made for any of our babies who die before they have had their first teeth! I have seen so many babies drowned, Mrs. Worley. I never did like it. They cry so!'
"Then I inquired of our Chinese teacher's wife if she knew of girl baby killing still going on in China.
"'Just last week,' this teacher's wife said in answer to my inquiry, 'the woman next door went back to her village two miles from here and she saw her own sister drown a baby while she was there.'
"I asked an English missionary if she knew that this fearful custom was still prevalent over most of China with its more than four hundred million souls.
"She told me that it was the custom in Ning-daik for the women just to throw the girl babies under their beds, and they would 'be gone in a day or two.'
"And it is all because of their awful fear that the gods will be displeased if they give birth to a girl baby!"
The second outstanding flash-light of fear comes from Java.
In the chapter on Physical Flash-lights I have described the old volcano of Bromo. It is a terrible thing to look into. Great fissures in the earth, belch thunder, sulphur, fire, and lava. Great rocks as large as wagons shoot into the air to the rim of the two hundred-foot crater, and then drop back with a crash.
For centuries, and even in these days, clandestinely; I am told by men whom I trust; the most beautiful maiden of a certain tribe among the Javanese; and some of the most beautiful women I saw in the Orient were those soft-skinned, soft-voiced, easy-moving, graceful-limbed, swaying-bodied; brown skinned women of Java; she, the fairest of the tribe is taken; and with her the strongest limbed youth; he of the fibered muscles; he of the iron biceps; he of the clean skin; and the two of them are tossed into the belching fiery crater of old Bromo.
"Why?" I asked.
"They think that in that way, they may propitiate the gods of the volcano. Their hearts are constantly filled with fear lest the gods of the volcano become angry and destroy them," said the missionary.
Then he told me of a trip that they made a year before to the top of one of the most inaccessible volcanoes which was then in constant eruption.
"We had a hard time getting native guides. Finally we succeeded. We had to travel fifty miles before we reached the mountain. Then we climbed five miles up its steep side, cutting our own trail as we made our way through the tropical jungle. At last we reached the timber. But before we entered the forest one of the guides came to me and, with the most pitiable and trembling fear in his voice and face, begged us white people not to say anything disrespectful of the mountain; not to joke and laugh, and not to sing; for that would make the mountain angry, and we would all be killed.
"I saw that he was in deadly earnest, and, while I wanted to laugh I looked as solemn as I could, for there was such terror in his face, I knew that if I laughed he would turn and run back to civilization.
"An hour later we reached the timber line. Before we entered it the first boy fell flat on his face and prayed to the god of the mountain askingthat god not to hurt them. Then the next boy did likewise; then the third and the fourth and the fifth!
"Their faces were almost white with fear when we missionaries did not pray. It filled them with terror!"
* * * * * *
And the last Flash-light of Fear is that of the baby in Medan. The Priest lived across the way in a temple.
The baby was sick with whooping-cough. It was the usual, simple case of baby sickness that American babies all have, and which is not taken seriously here by either doctor or mother.
The mother took the baby to the priest.
The priest took a red hot iron; laid the baby on the church altar and ran the iron across its neck, and then across its breast and then across its little stomach. Then he laid it on the front steps of the temple.
The baby died after a few hours spent in terrible pain.
Hate the Priest?
No!
Despise the mother?
No!
Pity them!
The priest was honest and the mother was honest. They were doing the best thing for the babythat either of them knew. They knew that the baby had a devil in its little body and they were merely trying to drive that devil out of its body.
Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear of devils in the home, lurking in the shadows of night and in the light of day; lurking in the bodies of babies; devils everywhere—always.
These are the Flash-lights of Fear!
And like unto them are the pictures of Frightfulness which I have set down in the next chapter.
"The Jap is the slant-eyed Hun of the Orient. He has a slant-eyed ethics, a slant-eyed morality, a slant-eyed honesty, a slant-eyed social consciousness; a slant-eyed ambition, a slant-eyed military system; and a slant-eyed mind!" said Peter Clarke Macfarlane, the well-known author and lecturer, one day when I was interviewing him on the Japanese question.
"That's pretty strong, Mr. Macfarlane, in the light of your usual conservatism," I commented.
"I say it carefully and after much thought. It is said to stay said so far, as I am concerned," he added with finality.
This was also my own opinion, after spending three months in Japan and Korea, another month in China; and another month or two in Manila; catching the angle of Japanese leadership from every slant.
And after due consideration, and after a year to think it over carefully, I am here to say, that I never saw, or heard of anything worse happening in Belgium under German rule than thatwhich I saw and heard of happening under Japanese rule in Korea, Siberia and Formosa, while I was in the Orient.
Suffice it is to say, at this point, that the Japanese is hated by the whole Orient. I do not believe that the German Hun in his worst day was ever hated more unanimously for his inhuman practices than is the Jap Hun hated by the whole Orient to-day.
"Is it getting better or worse?" I am asked constantly.
"Worse!" I reply, and this reply is backed up by interviews I have had with returned Korean missionaries.
I found the Japanese scorned and hated from one end of the Orient to the other. As far south as Java, as far east as the Suez; as far north as the uttermost reaches of Manchuria and Siberia; as far this direction as Hawaii.
For instance, after I had been away from Korea for six months and had come back to America I met a most conservative missionary in the Romona Hotel in San Francisco. The last time previous to that meeting that I had seen him was in Korea itself.
I said to him "Are things better or worse in Korea?"
His reply was, "Worse than they have ever been; generally speaking!" I have no intentionand no desire to further augment ill feeling between America and Japan. In fact I do not fear anything like war in that direction; but I do have an intense feeling of responsibility about telling my readers the plain and simple truth that the whole Far Eastern world hates Japan.
If that thought itself can get into the mind of America, this country will understand, at least, that there is some fault that lies back in the Japanese military policy and character itself. It hardly seems possible, with ten races and five different countries hating Japan; that Japan herself is not mostly to blame. When a matter of hatred is so unanimous among all races in that part of the world, it is likely that the fault lies with the race and nation which has the hatred of so many types of people focused on its actions.
While I was in Java some high dignitaries in the Japanese Navy arrived in Batavia. The Chinese Coolies who live in Batavia absolutely refused to carry any Japanese officers or sailors in their Rickshas. It was a striking indictment of the Japanese nation.
In Singapore the distrust and hatred of the Japanese is unanimous. In the Philippines it is the same. In Hongkong you see few Japanese. They are not wanted and they are not trusted. In Shanghai, and Peking it is the same. The Student Movement, one of the most powerfulweapons that has ever arisen in any nation in the world, has focused the Chinese sentiment against selfish Japanese aggression in China.
The Japanese officials laughed at the Student Boycott of Japanese goods when it first started. But in a year they were trembling in the face of that boycott. I was in Tientsin, and Peking during the days of the Student Street Demonstrations. They were like American demonstrations.
Keen, alert, intelligent Chinese boys addressed the crowds admonishing them not to buy Japanese goods in Chinese shops. The pressure became so strong that all Chinese merchants from the lowest shopkeeper up to the owner of the great chain stores, like our Woolworth institutions, put away Japanese-made goods and refused to sell them.
I took dinner in Shanghai with one of the foremost merchant princes of China and said, "Are you selling any Japanese-made goods?"
"I certainly am not. I am not powerful enough with all my millions of money and all of my chain of stores to take such a chance as that. I have put all of my Japanese goods in the cellar."
The Boycott against Japanese goods in China became so powerful that in Tientsin, while I was there, the Japanese Consul complained bitterly to the Governor of the Province and the Governor who was said to be under the influence of Japanese money, arrested a lot of students. There wasone of the most determined and terrible riots that I have ever seen. It was war. It was not like any mild American riot. It was war to the death. Several students were killed and finally the pressure was so strong that even this Japanese Agent was compelled to release the imprisoned students. I shall quote from an editorial that I was asked to write for the PekingLeaderduring my stay in China: