The weapon which most worries the Japanese I should say, is the boycott that the Students Movement has inaugurated. The Japanese Government never had anything that quite worried it so much. It is a weapon that is worth a thousand battleships, or fifty divisions of soldiers. It is a weapon that will, if continuously, and consistently and faithfully used, bring a money-loving nation, like Japan to her knees, and send her finally, scurrying like a whipped cur, with her tail between her legs back home where she belongs.
The weapon which most worries the Japanese I should say, is the boycott that the Students Movement has inaugurated. The Japanese Government never had anything that quite worried it so much. It is a weapon that is worth a thousand battleships, or fifty divisions of soldiers. It is a weapon that will, if continuously, and consistently and faithfully used, bring a money-loving nation, like Japan to her knees, and send her finally, scurrying like a whipped cur, with her tail between her legs back home where she belongs.
I talked with a ragged Chinese boy through an interpreter just to find what his reactions to the Japanese were. He was a beggar. He said, "The Japanese has a heart like a dog and a liver like a wolf."
I quote again from the editorial in the PekingLeader:
All day I have been on the streets of Peking listening to groups of students discussing the all[84]absorbing-question of the Boycott. I have not understood the characters printed on their banners, but I have understood the light in Young China's eyes. I can understand that language and that light, for it is the language and the light of freedom, justice, liberty! I am an American. I understand that light when I see it; and I know also; that it is a light that can never be snuffed out. It is a light that prison walls cannot hide and that the brute hand of the invader cannot dim.
All day I have been on the streets of Peking listening to groups of students discussing the all[84]absorbing-question of the Boycott. I have not understood the characters printed on their banners, but I have understood the light in Young China's eyes. I can understand that language and that light, for it is the language and the light of freedom, justice, liberty! I am an American. I understand that light when I see it; and I know also; that it is a light that can never be snuffed out. It is a light that prison walls cannot hide and that the brute hand of the invader cannot dim.
"And what are they protesting against?" is the question asked.
Primarily against the Japanese control of Shantung. Secondarily, against a type of civilization which Japan represents; a civilization that uses the weapons of frightfulness to accomplish its ends; a civilization that steals a nation like Korea, compelling the abdication of a weak Emperor at the point of the bayonet; and then using the avowed method of extermination to deplete a subjected nation. The whole Orient knows Japan and knows the methods that Japan has used and is using in conquered territory. It is a continuous and continual policy of extermination, frightfulness, and assimilation. This is the underlying cause of the hatred of the whole Orient and the Far and Near East against Japan; and this is the fundamental reason for the Students' Boycott of Japanese goods in China.
One might devote an entire book to narrations of frightful cruelties perpetrated by Japanese on Koreans, Siberians and Formosans; but that would not be so strong as the setting forth of the underlying ethical reasons for this universal hatred in which Japan is held.
However it might be quite honest and fair for this writer to set down here several acts of frightfulness that came under his own personal observation merely as casual illustrations of that which is going on all the time.
One day I was walking with a missionary's wife through the streets of Seoul. There was an excavation being made and a little railroad track was being run along this excavation. A Korean boy had been set to guard this track to keep folks from getting hurt when the dump car came down its steep grade. He had been ordered by his Japanese employers to stop all passage when the signal was given.
We were walking along when this Korean stopped an ordinary Japanese civilian. He was of the low-browed type; mentally deficient I should say; but quite the average type that is used by Japan to settle these conquered countries.
The Korean held up his hands in warning.
The Japanese stooped over, picked up a stone as large as a cabbage head and, with only a spaceof two feet between himself and the Korean, threw it with all his force against the cheek of the Korean and smashed his jaw in, tearing his ear off, breaking his jaw bone, and lacerating his face fearfully. It was one of the most inhuman things that I have ever seen done.
The missionary woman said to the Korean when the Jap ran; "Why do you not report this to the Japanese police?"
"It would do no good. They would give no justice to me, and I would be hounded to my death for reporting it."
One evening with a friend I had been speaking in Pyeng Yang. It was midnight one Sunday and we were waiting for a train down to Seoul. As we stood on the platform waiting; a north-bound train came in. It stopped. As it stopped several Japanese train boys got off of the train. An old white-haired Korean gentleman, about seventy-five years of age, stood on the platform waiting for the train. He was intelligent looking; poised; and well-dressed in the usual immaculately white robes.
A fifteen-year old Japanese train boy, seeing him standing there, deliberately ran out of his way, lowered his shoulders like a football charger and ran squarely into the old man, knocking him down to the platform and ran on with a laugh and some muttered Japanese words.
The dignified Korean gentleman got up, brushed the dirt from his clothes; did not even deign to glance at the offending boy; and walked on as if nothing had happened.
This scene illustrates two things: First, the superiority of the Korean mind and character to that of the Japanese. This is one of the causes of the extreme frightfulness pursued by the Japanese. They instinctively feel the superiority of their captives. It is not the first time in history that a lesser nation has conquered a superior people.
This superiority in soul-stuff that the Korean has over that of the Japanese is recognized immediately by all Europeans and Americans who become, even in the least bit, familiar with the two peoples. The sympathy of Christian civilizations is with the Koreans immediately.
The other thing that this simple scene illustrates, is the spirit of ruthless cruelty and frightfulness that is bred in the very soul of the youth of Japan toward the Koreans. Even the train boys can do a thing like that without fear of punishment.
The first day that we were in Seoul, the capital city of Korea, Pat McConnell and myself were walking down the main street of this interesting city toward the depot. Parallel with us marched a squad of Japanese soldiers. In frontof them, going the same direction, was a poor Korean workman pushing a small cart that looked like our American wheelbarrow.
The Japanese soldiers were in formation and marching in the middle of a wide street. But deliberately; evidently with orders from their officer in charge; they edged over to that side of the street where the Korean was walking and pushed him into the curb stone, kicking his barrow as they passed, although this meant a useless swerving of, at least, fifteen feet out of their course to do so. It was a case of deliberate brutality.
"Korea is a land of trails and terraces," said a prominent missionary in that fair spot to me one day as we were riding from Fusan to Seoul.
"And terror," added another traveler from America. "It is a land of trails, terraces, and terror!"
One day a friend of mine was begging Baron Saito, the present Governor-General of Korea, to stop the cruelties of the Japanese gendarmes in villages in northern Korea. The Baron asked for the names of those who had given the missionary his information about the cruelties and he refused to give them.
"Why should you not give them?" asked Baron Saito.
"Because they would be killed for complaining," said the missionary.
Then he told Governor-General Saito how he had once complained to the police department when a father and son were cruelly beaten in prison.
"Give me their names," said the gendarme.
"I will if you will give me a promise that they will be protected."
"No! I cannot do that! The gendarmes are very revengeful!"
I know personally of a Korean preacher who has done no greater crime than to attend a meeting at a dinner given for released Korean prisoners. He was arrested and kept in jail for three days, just for attending that dinner.
Another preacher with whom I talked was suspected of collecting money eight months after the March Independence Movement. When he heard that the Japanese police were coming for him he fled. This angered the police. They appeared the next morning at three o'clock at his home. There were only the mother and a twelve-year-old daughter left. First the gendarmes burst in the frail doors with the butts of their rifles, and then from three o'clock in the morning until daylight, they beat and tortured those two helpless Christian Korean women; kicking them all over the house until they were unconscious. These two Korean women were in bed for two weeks because of that night's experience andwere not able to walk for a much longer period than that.
And these women were educated, cultured women. They had committed no crime. It was simply because they did not know where the father was.
Later the father and son were arrested. They were beaten cruelly in the process of arrest although they offered no resistance. The son later said to me, "I could stand it to be beaten myself and even to see my father beaten but the unbearably cruel thing was to know that they had beaten my innocent mother and sister when no man was there to protect them."
I cite this instance because it happened eight months after the Independence Movement, and three months after the so-called reform Government of Baron Saito had been in effect and after the Japanese Press had said to the world that all cruelties had ceased.
A case of frightfulness that was called to my attention; which seemed to me to be the very essence of cruelty was that of the moral terrorizing of an educated Korean Pastor, whom the police merely suspected of having had something to do with the Independence Movement. They had no direct evidence but submitted him to months of moral terrorizing which was the worst I have ever heard of.
For months at a stretch they would suddenly appear outside of his home and thrust their bayonets through his doors. Then they would go away without saying a word. He had absolutely no redress. If he had complained, he would have been thrown into prison.
One of the most reliable missionaries that I met in Korea told me of how one morning the policemen came to a church in northern Korea during the hour of service. They broke eighty windows, arrested fourteen men, smashed the little organ with their gun butts, smashed a beautiful lamp, tore up the mat seats from the floors, and burned them in front of the church.
At the funeral service of another young Korean preacher, Pak Suk Han in Pyeng Yang, hundreds of Japanese soldiers appeared with drawn bayonets just to terrorize the people. The church was full of Japanese officers with drawn swords.
"What would have happened if somebody in a fit of patriotism had shouted 'Mansei'?" I asked.
"We would have been killed instantly!" said the missionary soberly. "I was afraid of that!"
A prominent, educated and English-speaking Korean official, told me that in a conversation with a high Japanese official that that particular Japanese had said "Our plan will be to assimilate the Korean people!"
"But that will be impossible. There are twentymillion of us. You will find that a hard thing to do!" said this Korean.
The Japanese official smiled and said significantly, "We know the way!"
The Korean knew what that meant. It meant extermination; extermination in every way possible. It meant extermination by introducing prostitution in Korea. This has been done. Korea never had any legalized prostitution. Korea never knew what the Red Light Section meant. Japan's first move was to introduce that. She sent her diseased women to Korea. She made prostitution ridiculously cheap; fifty sen; which is twenty-five cents in American money.
"Why?"
It is one of her ways of assimilation which means extermination and she has already shot venereal disease rates up to an alarming state in Korea.
Her next step in frightfulness was to introduce opium. Japanese Agents raise thousands of acres of Opium in Korea and sell it. This is another one of her steps in the process of assimilation or extermination.
Japan has stolen from poor Koreans their rice lands and their coal beds. The process is for a Japanese company to buy the water sources of the rice paddies below and then refuse to let the Koreans have water for his rice fields. This isanother step in frightfulness that will finally exterminate the Korean if it keeps up long enough.
The recent massacre of Koreans in Manchuria by Japanese soldiers illustrate the Japanese spirit.
This same policy of frightfulness is carried on in Formosa and in Siberia and wherever the Japanese army and gendarme system has authority. It is worse than anything that the Germans ever did in France or Belgium. It has its only parallel in the dark ages.
I told Baron Saito, Governor-General of Korea this in an interview. He wanted to know what America thought of Japan's rule in Korea. I said: "America and the whole civilized world is stirred with indignation at the Japanese rule in Korea. There has been nothing like it since the dark ages." Then I read him a quotation from an editorial inZion's Herald, a church paper published in Boston with virtually those words in it.
* * * * * *
My friend, whom I met first in France, when he came back from. France was sent to Siberia as a Captain in the American Army.
I met him in Manila just after he had returned from Siberia. He, in common with all Americans who had seen the Japanese methods of frightfulness in Siberia, was filled with hatred.
"One night," he said, "a company of Japanesesoldiers entered the little village six hundred miles north of Vladivostok where we were located. They announced that they were hunting for Bolsheviks.
"They did not find any in the little village, although they ruthlessly broke down every door of every home in that village. Then they went out to a sawmill about three miles from town and brought in five boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen.
"After torturing these boys in an old box car for two days, hanging them up by the thumbs with their arms behind their backs until they were unconscious; and then forcing salt water, hot water, cold water, and water with pepper in it down their nostrils, alternately; and other added cruelties; they announced to the village that they would release them that night on the public square."
"Did they do it?" I asked anxiously, for I was stirred to my soul's depths with his narration of cruelties in Siberia.
"Yes, they released them; in this way:
"They called all the friends and families of the prisoners together on the public square. Then they dug five graves. Then five Japanese officers came stalking across the public square, whisking at the thistle-tops with swords as they came; andthen walked up to these innocent Russian boys, and whacked off their heads.
"Had they been tried?" I asked indignantly.
"They had been given no trial. They were mere boys, who, probably, didn't even know what the word Bolshevik meant. It was the worst illustration of frightfulness that I ever saw, although it was a common thing for the Japanese troops to go through the country upsetting the barrels of honey that the poor peasants were saving up for the long winters; rooting up their young potatoes; cutting the throats of their colts and cattle, and ravishing the land."
"How could you stand it?"
"We couldn't stand it. I had to fight to keep my company of Americans from sailing into them with fists and bayonets. It would have meant war. So I sent word back to headquarters that we were out of provisions and we were called back to Vladivostok."
Can this scene be duplicated in Formosa and Korea, where the Japanese hold sway?
It can.
During the Independence Movement in Korea this thing happened: All of the Korean Christians had been asked to assemble in a church for a meeting. When they were all in the church, the Japanese gendarme set fire to the church and then fired into it, killing every man.
A woman, big with child, came running toward the church having heard the shooting and knowing that her husband was within.
A big, burly Japanese pushed her back.
"What do you want?" he cried in Korean.
"I want to go in there. My husband is there," she cried in terror.
"But you will be killed if you go in there!"
"I don't care! I want to die if he is to die!"
"All right! You shall have your wish!" said the Japanese, and pulling out his sword, cut off her head, killing her instantly. She fell at his feet with her unborn child; and he laughed aloud at the spectacle.
This is Japanese frightfulness and it can be duplicated by many missionaries in Korea if they dared to speak.
But the minute they speak and tell the truth that minute they are sent home from their life work. They realize that this leaves the Koreans to the utter and awful cruelties of the barbarous Japanese, and because of this, in spite of their indignation they hold their tongues for the larger good. But they eagerly give the facts to those of us who are coming back to America so that America in turn may know what is going on in Korea. That is the only hope; that the indignation of a righteous world, without war, may bring pressure to bear on Japan to stop these terriblecruelties and tortures; this unutterable frightfulness. This is the hope of the missionaries; this is the only hope of the Koreans!
* * * * * *
I don't know whether or not it was because I had been listening for so long to the most brutal stories of Japanese treatment of Korean men, women and children; with murder, rapine, burning of homes, especially Christian homes; beating of a mother and her twelve-year-old girl from three in the morning until eight to make them reveal the hiding-place of their preacher daddy, that the crimson, blood-red sunset I witnessed on my last night in Korea seemed to me like a "sunset of crimson wounds." All I know is that it happened in Korea while I was there, and that my soul had been, for a solid month, stirred to the depths of its righteous wrath over the things that I had heard first-hand from human lips.
But there it was. The sky was blood-red. At first it was black, a somber black. Not a coal-black but a slate black. Then suddenly just at the edge of the horizon a crack began to appear. It was a slit of blood. It looked more like a wound than anything else I ever saw. The slit of blood grew larger and larger in the slate-black clouds.
Then suddenly all over the horizon these wounds began to break through the mass of blackclouds. Some of these slits were horizontal slits, and some of them ran in graceful curves. Some of them looked as if a bayonet had been lunged into the body of that somber cloud and a great crimson gash was made with ragged edges as big as a house. Then it looked as if some ruthless Japanese gendarme had taken his sword and slashed a rip in the abdomen of that sky; and from side to side like a crescent moon appeared this great crimson wound.
I had never seen a sunset just like it. But there it was. It seemed that there was back of that great black cloud a blood-red planet, pouring its crimson tides like a great waterfall down back of that slate-black mass until finally the curtain of black began to tear, and the blood poured through to run along the horizon, and splash against the clouds, and slit its way like wounds through the clouds of night.
And I thought of something else. I thought how a Man once was crucified. I thought how dark the skies were on that afternoon. I thought how slate-colored and somber all life seemed, especially to that little group of disciples. I thought of the wounds in His hands and feet and side. I thought of the wounds the thorns in His crown made, and of the blood that ran over His face. I could see Him there back of that cloud in Korea. I could see His Christian people beingcrucified again because of their religion. I could see Japanese bayonets thrust into His side and Japanese nails through His feet and His hands. I could see a Japanese crown of thorns on His head because He said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me." And I could see the blood of his wounds breaking through that nation's clouds on that wonder evening of the "sunset of wounds" back of the Korean mountains in December.
"Oriental women are fascinating to Occidental men," said a newspaper reporter in a Shanghai hotel lobby, a year ago.
"All women are fascinating to Occidental men. Take the French girls and the way they captured our American soldiers; of course, these brown-eyed, brown-skinned, graceful, mysterious——"
"It's just as I said," replied the first speaker interrupting the second speaker, "Oriental girls are more fascinating to Occidental men than white girls."
"Yes—I guess you are right, when we get down to the honest to goodness truth of the thing," said an American oil man. "Take that Javanese girl who knocked at the door of my room; or take that half-breed Malay girl we met on the ship between Singapore and Batavia; or that little red-cheeked Japanese girl in Tokyo; or that Spanish brunette in Manila; or—Oh, Boy! Do you remember that Chinese half-breed, with English blood in her veins and an English education in her brain and Paris clothes on her back,and American pep in her eyes, and Japanese silk stockings on her——"
"Come on! Come on! We didn't call on you for a lecture on Oriental girls whom you have met," said the first speaker.
Then a bell boy paged me and I lost the rest of the conversation.
But this dialogue set me to thinking on the various types of fascinating Oriental women; the standing they have in the world; and the status of their living.
There were the Japanese women; beautiful, graceful, red-cheeked, small of stature, wistful-eyed, colorfully dressed; always smiling slaves to their men.
The well-trained Geisha girl has, for centuries, because of her superior education, received the confidences of Japanese men; while a Japanese man would scorn to talk things over with his wife.
There was the banquet we attended at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Mr. Uchida, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and many of the high officials of Japan were present with their wives. Several members of the House of Parliament were present as well as the Secretary to Mr. Hara, the Prime Minister. Each of these great leaders of Japan had his wife by his side at the banquet table.
It was a small group.
One of the speakers of the evening said: "Perhaps you Americans do not realize that this banquet is an unusual occasion in Japan. I think that it is the first time that I have ever attended a banquet in all my life, when so many Japanese gentlemen had their own wives with them at that banquet. It is a very unusual thing to do, but I hope that, in time, it will become more common in Japan, as it is in America."
This speech was met with amused laughter on the part of the Japanese gentlemen present; but laughter that was kindly; and it was met with applause on the part of the Americans present.
It was typical of the attitude of even the educated Japanese man toward the matter of appearing in public with his wife at his side.
Up in Sapporo, on the island of Hokkaido, we were entertained by a beautiful Japanese woman. We had been away from America for several months and were tired of eating Japanese food, so when we were invited to this Japanese home for a dinner we groaned.
But much to our delight, when we sat down we had as fine an American dinner as any of us had ever eaten.
I turned to our hostess, a most beautiful Japanese woman; the wife of the Dean of the Collegeat Sapporo; and said: "Do you have servants who know how to cook American food?"
"No, I cooked it all myself!" she said much to my surprise with a bow and a smile.
And there she sat, cool and poised after having cooked food enough for fifteen people that morning; and arranging for it to be served in the finest style; with place cards, salted almonds, Turkey, pudding, vegetables and everything that makes an American dinner good; including a fine salad. There she sat; as cool, calm and collected as if servants had done all of the work that morning instead of she herself.
And never in all of my life have I seen a more gracious hostess. She watched the wants of every guest. She noted which guests liked a special food, and saw to it that they had plenty of that particular food; and, in addition to this she kept a fascinating line of conversation going constantly during the meal.
"Do you live in American fashion or Japanese fashion?" I asked her, knowing that she had been educated in America.
"Both!" was her reply. "We have Japanese rooms for our Japanese guests and American rooms for our European and American guests."
"But how do you live yourselves; how are you training your children?" I asked her.
"We are training our daughters to live inAmerican style; on a common ground with the men. That is the better way. That is the fairer way! That is the way out of our feminine darkness!"
She said it quietly, with poise, and with a fine assurance which was thrilling. It sounded like a call to battle, like a trumpet note in the new freedom for women.
A missionary friend told me at the conclusion of that meal that this beautiful young Japanese hostess whispered to her Mother-in-law during the dinner a phrase that sounded strangely like American slang, when she noted that her mother-in-law was not carrying on much of a conversation with the man beside her, "Start something! He can speak Japanese as well as English!"
At that, dear Mrs. Mother-in-law started an animated conversation in Japanese with her silent guest on her left. This was illustrative of the care with which our hostess was watching that we be kept happy at her table. It was a Feminine Flash-light that I do not care to forget; an illustration of the possible efficiency, poise, grace, beauty and sweetness of the Japanese woman of the future when she shall have won her rights of freedom from the slavery of an inferior position to man in the social scale.
To an American, the position of woman in regard to prostitution in Japan is a terrible thing,but when we consider the light in which the Ethical thought of Japan sees it, we do not blame the women any more than Jesus blamed the woman taken in adultery in his day.
The system of prostitution is run by the Government and the largest income that the Government has, comes from the sale of Sake, the national drink, and its houses of prostitution.
A woman who becomes a Prostitute is looked upon as a heroine. This is for the simple reason that she is given a matter of several hundred yen, it depending upon her form, beauty and qualifications for her position; and that money goes to her poor parents. When she leaves her little village to give a certain number of the years of her life to the Yoshiwara in order to free her parents from debt she is lauded and fêted by the people of her village and sent off as one who goes on a crusade of service.
Prostitution is so much a part of the acknowledged life of Japan that Temples for prostitutes exist where they may go and pray. In one Temple we saw large numbers of photographs put up by certain girls of the Yoshiwara to advertise their wares.
Consequently there is no fine tradition of ethical values established in Japan and the poor girl herself is not to blame. Nor is she blamed; for it is not at all an uncommon thing for aJapanese girl to marry out of a house of prostitution into a fine family.
One of the terrible Feminine Flash-lights that every careful traveler discovers in the Orient is the presence of Japanese girls in the segregated sections of Shanghai, Seoul, Peking, Nanking; and even so far away as Singapore. I understand however that a recent order from the Emperor has called all these girls back to Japan, which is an upward step not only for Japan as a nation; but for the womankind of Japan.
* * * * * *
It was in a Japanese Hotel in northern China that Pat McConnell and I had our experience with the strange ways and customs of Japan. Pat was taking the pictures and I was writing the stories.
We thought it would be an unusual experience to stay all night at a regular Japanese Inn. We stayed.
That night, much to the amusement, of the missionaries who stayed with us, three beautiful Japanese girls came gracefully into the cold room where we had started to take our clothes off.
They bowed several times as they came with cups of hot tea.
They seemed to pay particular attention to me.
All three of them bowed to me first and then each proceeded to select an individual man to whom they served tea.
I took it for granted that they had paid this particular attention to me because of some special characteristic of masculine beauty or intellectual appearance; or atmosphere of greatness that must have hovered about me in some unknown fashion.
I made the mistake of swelling up with pride and bragging about this attention that I had received.
"Ah, that's because of your bald head. They think that you are the old man of the party. They have great respect for old age!" the missionary said with a roar of laughter.
The truth of the matter was that I was the youngest of the party, but those girls had selected me as the venerable member of the group of Americans.
But the climax came when these young ladies decided to stay with us "To the bitter end" as Pat called it.
After filling us with tea they still remained; bowing and smiling; even though they could not understand a word we were saying nor we a word that they were saying.
"It's one o'clock now! I'd like to get to bed," said Pat.
"How long will they stay with us?" I asked.
The missionaries only grinned in reply.
"By George, I'm going to take my shirt off and see if they won't go!" said Pat.
He took it off. The young girl who was serving him took his shirt and after neatly folding it, laid it carefully away.
"So that's what they're waiting for; to undress us?" queried Pat and the missionaries laughed again, waiting to see what would happen.
"They can go as far as they like. If they can stand it, I can!" said Pat.
Then he took off his shoes.
A young lady took the shoes, carefully brushed them off, and put them away. Then he took off socks, followed by his trousers.
It looked as they would stay until Pat got into his Pajamas. He was in a corner.
"It seems as if this young lady wants to put me to bed right!" said Pat, with a grin.
"That's exactly what she is here for. It's a hotel custom in Japanese hotels and we get so that we don't think anything of it. They bathe in the same pool; men and women alike; and think nothing of it. After all, modesty is not entirely a matter of clothes, as the Japanese prove."
"Anyhow, that's what I call service!" said Pat with a grin.
* * * * * *
It was a cold winter night in Seoul, Korea. I had been invited to dinner at a Korean home;the home of a former Governor under the Korean regime; and now, a respected official under the Japanese rule.
I had looked forward to this dinner with unusual interest.
We took Rickshas to get there and nearly froze on the way.
We took both our shoes and our coats off on the back porch and left them to the tender mercies of the zero weather which prevailed on that night.
We were ushered into this beautiful home.
A room was full of men; stately sons of the family; the gray-bearded, dignified father; but no women, not a single woman. I wondered about this, for I knew that this household was noted for its beautiful daughters and a wonderful mother. The missionaries had told me that.
I wondered why no women came to welcome me.
Finally we sat down to one of those interminable Oriental dinners, with thirty or forty courses; squatted on our haunches, on the cold floor; half-frozen, cramped and uncomfortable.
Then in came a beautiful girl. She was beautiful in every sense of the word; physically and spiritually. There was a touch of refinement about her which made me know that she had received an English education.
But she was not there for any part of the dinner. Not at all. She was there merely to serve.
I found that she could speak English and every time she came to serve me, I took the opportunity of talking with her; taking a chance on whether it was diplomatic for me to do so or not. I was after information.
"You speak good English?" I said. "Why do you not sit down and eat with us?"
She laughed aloud.
"My father would drop over dead if I did. It is not the custom in Korea for the women of the family to dine with the men on an occasion like this. We eat alone in the kitchen."
"Have you a mother?"
"Yes, but she is in the kitchen."
"Will I not get to meet her before I go?"
"Perhaps? Perhaps not. If you meet her at all it will be just at the close, of the evening, providing my father thinks to call her. It is not important; so our Korean men think."
"But you; you know better? You have been in an American School?" I said, as she came in for the fifteenth course and paused a moment to talk with me.
"Yes, I know better! I know the American way of treating women is the Christian way," she said sadly.
"And what do you think of that way? Doyou not like that way better than the Korean way?" I asked.
"The American way is much better." Then she paused and much to my delight used a typical American girl's phrase, with an appealing touch of pathos in her voice and a blush of crimson in her brown cheeks, "Why, I just love the American way!" she said and then fled, blushing with shame, as if she had said something immodest.
I did not see her again that evening. Nor did I see any of the other women of that household. Nor did I see the mother of the home at all.
* * * * * *
It was in a Shanghai hospital. I was sitting beside an American newspaper friend who was at the head of the Chinese Information Bureau. He was a world-vagabond. Beside his bed sat a beautiful Chinese girl, who had been educated in England and whose mother was a Scotch woman. Her father was a full-blooded Chinese.
"I love her but she won't marry me!" said my friend suddenly looking up toward the Chinese girl.
Temple of HeavenTHE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN, PEKING.Long before a single cathedral had been built in Europe this beautiful structure was erected.
THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN, PEKING.Long before a single cathedral had been built in Europe this beautiful structure was erected.
THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN, PEKING.
Long before a single cathedral had been built in Europe this beautiful structure was erected.
A PagodaA BEAUTIFUL THIRTEEN STORY PAGODA NEAR PEKING.
A BEAUTIFUL THIRTEEN STORY PAGODA NEAR PEKING.
A BEAUTIFUL THIRTEEN STORY PAGODA NEAR PEKING.
A wayside shrineMILLIONS OF WAYSIDE TEMPLES AND SHRINES ADORN THE FIELDS AND HIGHWAYS EVERYWHERE IN JAPAN, KOREA, AND CHINA. THIS IS ONE OF THEM. A SHRINE AND A TEMPLE.
MILLIONS OF WAYSIDE TEMPLES AND SHRINES ADORN THE FIELDS AND HIGHWAYS EVERYWHERE IN JAPAN, KOREA, AND CHINA. THIS IS ONE OF THEM. A SHRINE AND A TEMPLE.
MILLIONS OF WAYSIDE TEMPLES AND SHRINES ADORN THE FIELDS AND HIGHWAYS EVERYWHERE IN JAPAN, KOREA, AND CHINA. THIS IS ONE OF THEM. A SHRINE AND A TEMPLE.
Silhouette of BoroboedoerA SUNRISE SILHOUETTE PHOTOGRAPH OF SOME OF THE HUNDREDS OF BELLS OF BUDDHA ON BOROBOEDOER, JAVA.
A SUNRISE SILHOUETTE PHOTOGRAPH OF SOME OF THE HUNDREDS OF BELLS OF BUDDHA ON BOROBOEDOER, JAVA.
A SUNRISE SILHOUETTE PHOTOGRAPH OF SOME OF THE HUNDREDS OF BELLS OF BUDDHA ON BOROBOEDOER, JAVA.
She was a beautiful girl and could play a piano as few American women I have met. She would have graced any social room in America with her dark beauty, her brown eyes, and her Oriental fire. She was rich. Her father was worth several millions; being one of many shrewdChinese business men. She was dressed like a Parisian model, in the latest European styles. She was in China for the first time in her life. Her father had brought her back to marry a Chinese boy. She did not love him. She did love my American friend.
"Why will you not marry James?" I asked her.
"My father would kill me," she said quietly.
"Does he say so?"
"He does. He went to America a week ago; and the last thing he said was, 'If you marry anything but a Chinese I will kill you!'"
"Did he really mean it?" I asked her, astonished.
"He meant it more than anything he ever meant in his life. It would be considered a disgrace to my entire family if I married anybody but a Chinese boy."
"Even though your father married a Scotch woman?" I said.
"For that very reason it is imperative that I marry my own blood," she said.
"That is terrible!" I replied catching my first glimpse of the strange and terrible social position in which a girl of mixed blood is placed in China.
"You see," she said in a quiet, refined voice, with a marked English accent, "I have an English education but I have Chinese blood. I can neverbe happy marrying a Chinese after I have been educated in England. I can never be happy with Chinese clothes, Chinese customs, and Chinese people. And yet if I marry the man I love, it will break my father's heart. He would kill me to be sure; for if he says he will, that means that he will keep his word. But that would not be the worst of it. To die would be easy."
"What would be the worst of it?" I asked, my heart stirred with a strangely deep sympathy at this beautiful Chinese girl's dilemma.
"The worst thing would be that it would break my father's heart!"
Then she wept.
That was my first glimpse of the life of tragedy through which a half-breed woman of the Orient has to go.
I met them in the Philippines, with Spanish and American blood running in their veins; I met Malay girls whose fathers had been German or English; I met Dyak girls whose fathers had been Dutch; and Javanese girls whose fathers had been either American, English or Dutch.
I stayed with such a woman in a home in Borneo. She had been a Dyak girl. Yet she did not look it. She had a beautiful home with beautiful English speaking children. I met her in the interior of Borneo a hundred miles from a single white woman. And yet in this far interior; livingwith her English husband who was the head of a mining project; she was keeping intact the English education of her children. There was a piano and the children played beautifully while the mother, in a rich contralto voice sang.
She was graceful, accomplished, beautiful, poised and sweet.
One night as we walked alone under the moonlight the Englishman opened his heart to me and said, "You are going to visit the Head-Hunting Dyaks to-morrow. You will see their abject squalor and filth. You will be surprised when I tell you that my wife was a Dyak girl and that I took her out of a Kampong fifteen years ago and took her to England."
"That's a lie!" I exclaimed.
"It is the truth!" he added.
Somehow his statement angered me. I don't know why. Perhaps it was the unusual heat of the tropics. We were directly on the Equator. I would have fought him for that statement.
But it was true.
"And the hell of it was that when I took her to England she was not happy and my people would not receive her. So we have had to come back to Borneo and live our lives in this fashion, far from civilization."
He was silent for a few minutes.
"That is the fate of mixing bloods in thesetropical lands," he said with a shudder. "And the woman always suffers more than the man!"
I met another Malay-English girl on the ship going from Singapore to Batavia, Java.
She too was an educated, English-speaking girl of a strange beauty and fascination. She started to talk with me as I sat alone on the Dutch ship. We were the only English-speaking people on board and we felt a certain comradeship. We sat an entire evening talking about the problem of a girl of mixed blood in the Malay States.
"White men always assume that we are bad girls. They come into the offices where we work as stenographers and insult us. It is that taint of mixed blood. We have the longings and the ideals of the best blood that is in our veins; but the skin and the color and the passions of the worst. We try to be good; some of us; but everything is against us. We can never marry white men; though we frequently fall in love with them for we work side by side with them in the offices. But when it comes to marrying us they fear the social ban. It is a terrible thing. There is no way out! It is a thing that has been imposed upon us from the generations that have gone. We pay!"
I shall never forget her brown eyes, her brown skin, her heaving breast, as the great Dutch shipcut the waves of the South China Sea bound for Java.
"Why are you leaving a good position and going to Java?" I asked her.
"They say things are better for us girls in Java; that the Dutch are not so particular. I shall no doubt be homesick for Singapore but I am going to try Java for a while. My sister is there!"
* * * * * *
A Feminine-Flash light that has its humorous side was one that I experienced in Borneo.
We had gone out to a Dyak village to take pictures.
It was a miserably hot morning. That night I stayed in Pontianak which is bisected by the Equator. It was so cold in the middle of the night that I had to get up and put on a night shirt!
The next day we tramped ten miles through the Jungle to a Head-hunting Dyak village.
I had been taking pictures for an hour in this Kampong when six of the most beautiful Dyak girls came in, with great Bamboo water tubes flung over their gracefully strong shoulders. Their skin looked like that of a red banana from toe to chin. They were stark naked save for a girdle about their loins. They had been five miles away for water.
Their skin was flushed with exercise. There they stood, mystified at seeing white men in the village Kampong.
In fact they were terrified.
Their big brown eyes bulged out.
Their breasts heaved with fear.
I said to the missionary, "Dyak Madonnas! What a painting they would make?"
"Yes, there are no more beautiful women anywhere. They look like bronze statues. A Rodin, or a St. Gaudens would go wild over their limbs and bodies."
I asked the missionary to tell them that I wanted to take a picture of them just as they were, standing with their water vessels poised on their shoulders; in their naked splendor and beauty.
He told them.
They squealed for all the world like American girls and ran for dear life, disappearing in the flash of an eye.
He tried to coax them to come out to get a picture taken. The Missionary could speak their language but they would only peek through the doors with grinning faces.
Finally they agreed that we could take their pictures if I would let them put dresses on.
I didn't want to do this; for I wanted them justas they were; but saw that they were adamant in their souls even if their brown bodies did look as soft as ripening mangos; and as beautiful and brown.
I pictured all sorts of ugly dresses; discarded by the white folks and given to them. But much to my surprise, when they appeared all dressed up for the picture, every last one of them had on a white woman's discarded night gown.
I wanted to laugh. It destroyed their picturesqueness but those gowns could not destroy their symmetrical beauty of limb and body.
"That's a quick way to dress up!" I said to my missionary friend.
We smiled but I got the picture.
And back of these Flash-lights Feminine; is the black page of the history of womankind in all the Far East; with footbinding still rampant over nine-tenths of China; baby-killing, baby-selling, and baby-slavery which I saw with my own eyes time and time again; with slavery of womankind, from Japan down to Ceylon the regular thing. But there is still hope in the woman-heart of the Far East; and the hope is the American woman and her religion. That and that alone will break down prejudices, break off shackles, and tear to bits the traditions of the past.
* * * * * *
"The women suffer! Yes, the women always suffer!" said a big fellow to me up in the northern part of Luzon in the Philippines one evening.
"What do you mean?" I asked him, scenting a story.
Then the man told me of a cholera epidemic that he had passed through; of how he had tried to care for the sick, even though he was not a physician; told me of their poor superstitious methods of driving away the "evil spirits."
He told of how he had gone into homes where he found seven inmates dead and four dying; of how he tried to care for them with nothing medicinal at hand.
Then he told me of how the poor people went down to a dirty inland river and had killed a hog, taken its heart; killed a dog, taken its heart; and then after putting them on a little raft, floated them off down the river to drive the cholera away. Then he told me of how the natives had, in their desperation, tied tight bands about their ankles to keep the evil spirits from coming up out of the earth into their bodies.
"But what do you yourself do about a doctor. You say that you are 400 miles from a doctor, even here. What about your children, when they take sick?" I asked him, and then was sorry that I had asked the question because of a terribly hurt and unutterably sorrowful look in his eyes.
"Mother and I don't like to talk about that or to think about it!" he said simply, and I knew that I had torn open an old wound which was just over his heart.
His voice broke as he spoke, and he looked at the woman who was his brave helpmate and said again: "Mother and I don't like to think about that!" The tears ran down over his cheeks and "Mother's" too, and mine also.
"I am sorry! I am sorry if I have opened an old wound!" I said, quite helpless to remedy the damage I had done. I felt as one who had unwittingly trodden on a flower bed and crushed some violets. They bleed, even though you see no blood. I saw that their hearts were bleeding. But he spoke.
"We were 400 miles from a doctor. Baby took sick. If we could have had a doctor she would have been saved."
"Now Daddy, we do not know for certain about that," said the ever-conservative woman in her.
"There was not a Filipino doctor. She died in mother's arms!"
It was oppressively silent in that far-off mission home for a few minutes. I thought some one would sob aloud. It might have been any one of us, the way we all felt. I took hold of my cane chair with a grip that numbed my hands for a half hour afterwards.
All the "Peck's Bad Boys" of the world are not confined to American soil.
I found them all over the Far East; especially in China.
I was annexed by one of them who became a sort of a guide de luxe when we were going through the ruined Palaces of the romantic regions of Peking.
He annexed himself to us in somewhat the same fashion as a thistle or a burr annexes itself to you as you walk through the field where thistles are thick.
He was an acquired asset of questionable value. With him were a lot of followers but it was plain to be seen that he was the leader of the gang; which was, for all the world, like a typical street gang in an American city.
Who could pass up that group of a dozen little rascals who followed us through the ruins of the old Summer Palace? Who could resist their imitations of everything one did? I sneezed and the little rascals sneezed also. I counted one,two, three, four, as I adjusted my Graflex for a picture and I heard a chorus of laughing "One, two, three, fours." I yelled ahead to an American member of the party and said "Wait!" and a dozen boys yelled "Wait!"
We fell in love with the dirty-faced rascals. They looked to be a nuisance when we started and I wanted them driven back, but before we were through they had become the most interesting part of the whole trip. Sure enough we emptied our purses of pennies and some white money. The little fellow who was in his bare feet and who said, with a real touch of seven year old Chinese humor, "These are leather shoes that I have on and they will last all my life," won our hearts. That was humor with a vengeance.
This lad was happy. No wonder then that when one of the party passed him an extra penny early in the morning he winked knowingly as one who had been taken into the inner councils of affection.
And no wonder that he followed the man who gave him that penny to the end of the morning, and no wonder when we told him through the interpreter that we liked the boys because they were good boys; he said in return, "Some boys would have followed you around, pulling your coats and being rude and yelling at you."
The nonchalant way in which they admittedthat they were good boys won our hearts and we came back penniless.
Then who can forget the little rascals who smiled and winked back in the midst of the dignified Lama ceremonies over at the Lama Temple, proving that they were, after all, real human boys with a laugh and the spirit of fun in their little souls in spite of their having to take part in this dignified chanting service.
It was fun when the service was over to see them tumble out of the Temple so fast that one boy fell and about six fell on top of him just as American boys do pouring out of school. I even saw one lad whack another one on the back of his little bald head and a scuffle ensued. They laughed, fought, tumbled pell-mell, got up again grinning, winked and laughed back at the good natured Americans for all the world like American boys.
The Chinese have a distinct sense of humor and it is very much like that which is found in our own America. Indeed the Chinese are like us in many respects.
The Filipino enjoys a good joke but his humor is more cruel than is American humor.
The Dyak of Borneo has a sense of play and fun that would not exactly appeal to an American mind; although there are those who claim that American football is a near kin to the delightfulgame of Head-hunting indulged in by the Dyaks of Borneo.
The Dyaks have for centuries been known as the head-hunters of the Far East. They, in common with the Igorotes of the Philippines, have had the playful custom of going out when the mood took them and bringing in a few heads just as our Indians used to get scalps. When a Dyak youth wanted to marry a nice young Dyak girl to whom he had taken a fancy (and I can assure the reader that some of them are as beautiful as Rodin's bronze statues), he didn't even dare mention his desire for that young bronze beauty until he had brought in five or six heads. After that he had some standing in the lady's sight. Without the heads he had no more chance of winning either the girl herself or her pa or ma or any of the Dyak family than the proverbial snowball has of getting through Borneo without melting. It just simply couldn't be done according to Dyak etiquette.
Head-hunting was a game between tribes also. When two tribes of Dyaks felt a playful mood coming on, they would challenge each other to a head-hunting game. The game would last for a week or so and the tribe that took the most heads won. It was nothing like "Tag you're it." If so, some of the skulls that I have seen at Dyak Compounds would not be grinning so hideously thesedays as they ornament the poles of certain vain and proud Dyak hunters.
The Battaks of Sumatra also have a playful custom of getting rid of their old men. When a man gets so old that they think it is about time for him to tell his last tale, they put him up a Cocoanut tree. Then all of the young bucks of the village get together and try to shake him down. If he is too feeble to hold on, and comes down, that is a sign of heaven that his days are through and they cook him and eat him.
* * * * * *
The Japanese claim to have a great sense of humor. Japanese students speaking in America, insist that this is true. But travelers in Japan do not find it so. Indeed if Japan had a sense of humor, it would keep her out of many an international tangle. She does not know how to laugh. Her sense of dignity is so exaggerated that she does not know the fine art of smiling and laughing at herself.
"What does Japan most need to learn?" a student asked me.
"To laugh," I replied.
"I think that you are right! Your Lincoln knew how to laugh!" was his response as he went off thoughtfully.
I was advertised to speak in a northern college in Japan. The Dean of the school wanted toadvertise me so that the students would all come out to hear me. This is the way he did it: