East of Suez Part 11

A few industries, like cement making and silk winding, are carried on in the outskirts of the colony, and a suspiciously large amount of prepared opium is s.h.i.+pped, although the closest observer can detect not a poppy under cultivation anywhere on the rocky promontory.

The old Protestant cemetery contains many graves of good men and true, such as naval officers and seamen, who have died on Eastern seas, and whose comrades preferred to leave them interred in Christian soil rather than intrust their cherished remains to cemeteries in pagan lands. The headstones of Macao's G.o.d's-acre bear name after name once carried with pride on the rolls of the American, British or French naval and merchantman services, and diplomatic and consular t.i.tles are recorded on more than one headstone. It is interesting to scale the steps to inspect closely the facade of the Jesuit church of San Paulo, erected some three hundred years ago. Nothing remains but the towering facade, as erect as if reared yesterday, and bearing silent testimony to the courage of the pioneers in the Far East of the Catholic faith. A 'rickshaw journey through every important street, from the center where are the hotel and government buildings to the remotest patches of farming land near the "frontier," consumes scarcely two hours. In the public park you come not infrequently upon statues with tablets informing all observers of the importance and majesty of the home country welded to the peninsula of Europe, once famed for the intrepidity of its navigators and adventurers. If Macao move the visitor to voice an opinion, it is that under certain conditions which you might name the place could be a veritable paradise, but that benevolent Portugal is there conducting an earthly Nirvana for all and sundry of China's affluent sons mustering the ingenuity and influence to gain shelter beneath the flag of dear old Portugal.

Macao's claim to renown rests chiefly upon the fact that Portugal's greatest bard, Camoens, there wrote in part or its entirety the immortal "Lusiad," which in epic form details the prowess of the sons of ancient Lusitania in Eastern discovery and oversea feats of daring, and in which work the voyages and discoveries of Vasco da Gama are recorded with the fidelity of a history prepared by a sympathetic admirer. As scholars know, the "Lusiad" was first published in 1572, is in ten cantos and 1102 stanzas, and is translated into most modern languages. Important American and English libraries possess it by at least four translators, each being more or less a standard.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUST OF CAMOENS, MACAO]

The life of the great poet is underlaid with romance and sadness. Born at Lisbon about 1524, he was given an education fitting him for a courtier's life, and it was an unfortunate affection for a high-born donna in attendance upon the queen that caused him to be banished from the land of his birth. After a roystering career as a soldier in Africa, he sought shelter at Goa, in India. There he wrote a volume severely castigating the home government for its official abuses in the East, and this led to his being treated by his countrymen as a traitor and outcast. Now in a Goa prison, now at liberty, he at last went to Macao, and it was there that by his pen he redeemed to some extent his good name, to the extent certainly of being permitted to return to Lisbon, and there he died about 1580, poor and neglected. It is insisted that Camoens's influence and efforts preserved the Portuguese language from destruction during the Spanish occupation of the neighboring country, and it is a fact that before 1770 no less than thirty-eight editions of the "Lusiad" were published in Portugal.

To commemorate the eight or ten years he pa.s.sed in Macao, a public garden is named for him, and there, in a grotto of impressive grandeur, is a bust of the man singing the praises of his natal country as no other writer in verse or prose has ever succeeded in doing. The bronze effigy rests on a plinth upon which is engraved in three languages these lines from the pen of a pilgrim to the Eastern shrine once hallowed by the presence of the bard of a nation:

Gem of the Orient earth and open sea Macao! that in thy lap and on thy breast Hast gathered beauties all the loveliest O'er which the sun smiles in his majesty.

The very clouds that top the mountain crest Seem to repose there lingering lovingly.

How full of grace the green Cathyan tree Bends to the breeze and how thy sands are prest With gentlest waves which ever and anon Break their awakened furies on thy sh.o.r.e.

Were these the scenes that poet looked upon, Whose lyre though known to fame knew misery more?

They have their glories and earth's diadems Have nought so bright as genius' gilded gems.

The lines were written by Sir John Bowring, English scholar and traveler, who visited Macao in the latter half of the last century, and the expense of the memorial and its grounds was borne by a patriotic Portuguese, Lorenco Marques, whose name has been preserved by being given to the seaport on Delagoa Bay in Portuguese East Africa.

For a place whose commerce is notoriously in eclipse, you are curious to learn whence springs the golden shower giving the appearance of prosperity to Macao, for the general air of the colony suggests an easy affluence. To keep the governor's palace and the judiciary buildings covered with paint costs something, you know, while the paved streets and bridges and viaducts give support to the surmise of an exchequer not permanently depleted. Portugal, nowadays almost robbing Peter to pay Paul, is in no condition to succor an impecunious colony situated in another hemisphere, you are aware, and you appeal for elucidation of the fiscal problem. "Very easy, dear sir," your cicerone promptly rejoins, "this is the Monte Carlo of the Far East. Gambling is here a business--all the business there is, and the concessions for the fan-tan and lottery monopolies pay for everything, practically making taxation unnecessary."

The statement would cause something of a shock to a guileless stranger, especially to one who had believed he had perceived a natural likeness between the little princ.i.p.ality on the Mediterranean and this beauty spot of the Orient. But China is rather too far to the eastward of Suez for simon-pure guile, and the globe-trotter decides to thoroughly explore local conditions by way of adding to his worldly knowledge. If you go to the post-office to mail a letter, you recognize perforce how backward a colony of Portugal may be in supplying the trifling requirements of life, for you stand minutes in a nondescript line before your stamp is sheared from a sheet by a functionary having a capacity for activity possibly rivaled by an Alpine glacier--then you wait at the communal mucilage pot to secure in turn the required adhesive substance.

A good correspondent in Macao would pa.s.s half his time at the post-office, you conclude.

But there is nothing backward, nothing harking back to the middle ages, in the plan by which the public cash-box is filled, you learn after plodding investigation. The merits of direct and indirect taxation, even of the Henry George program for raising the public wind, have never been seriously considered by Portugal's administrators in the East, nor has munic.i.p.al owners.h.i.+p of utilities been discussed, you discover. The official bigwigs who administer Macao know that it is as necessary for the Chinaman to gamble as to have food--and the colony accordingly legalizes fan-tan and semi-daily lotteries, supplies the requisite machinery for carrying on the games, and reaps a _benefice_ for its enterprise that runs the community without further ado. That is all there is to Macao's fiscal policy. Hong Kong, only forty miles across the estuary, bristles with commercial prosperity. The British government permits Hong Kongers to bet on horse-races, buy and sell stocks, and promote devious companies, but forbids fan-tan and lotteries. There is, consequently, a daily flow of men, women, and dollars between Hong Kong and Macao. Besides, no traveler not actively engaged in uplifting his fellow-man, feels that he has seen the Orient unless he pa.s.ses a few hours or days in endeavoring to lure fortune at the gambling tables.

The colonial lottery is no more dignified or important than a policy game in an American town, and seems to be but the Western idea clouded by its adaptation to Asiatic uses, tourists affirm.

Macao licenses twenty fan-tan places, and these run all day and all night, and are graded in their patrons from tourists and natives of fortune and position down to joints admitting 'rickshaw coolies, sailors, and harbor riffraff. The gilded establishment claiming attention from travelers is conducted by a couple of Chinese worthies, by name Ung Hang and Hung Vo, according to the business card deferentially handed you at your hotel, and the signs in front of it and the legends painted on great lanterns proclaim it as a first-chop _Casa de Jogo_, and a gambling-house that is "No. 1" in all respects. The gamesters whose garments proclaim them to be middle-cla.s.s Chinamen pack themselves like sardines into the room where the table is situated, for they obviously believe in watching their interests at close hand. The floor above, by reason of the rail-protected opening in the center, is little more than a s.p.a.cious gallery; but it is there that the big gamblers congregate, natives in costly fabrics, and whose rotund bodies tell of lives not spent in toil. They loll on blackwood divans and smoke opium and send their bank-notes and commands to the gambling table by servants, until yielding to the exalted dreams induced by the poppy fumes. They are polite fellows, every man of them, and make it apparent that they would like to do something for the entertainment of each man and woman tourist in the room.

In this strange establishment globe-trotting novices sit around the railed opening and make their bets on the game below through an interpreter attendant. This obliging man lowers your coins to the croupier in a basket, and draws up any "bet" you may have had the luck to win. And what a medley of coins you are paid in! There are coins of China and j.a.pan obsolete years ago in those countries, money of the Philippine Islands, even nickles and dimes whose worth has been stamped by Uncle Sam. It is said that half the pocket-pieces of Asia find their way onto the gambling boards of Macao, and that a thrifty croupier seeks to pay them out to the tourist who will remove them from local circulation. The linguistic representative of the management endeavors to play the bountiful host to most visitors. He takes one through the building, permits you to peep within a chamber filled with oleaginous Chinamen in brocade petticoats, sleeping off the effects of the opium pipe, explains painted fans and other attempts at decoration on the walls, and indicates a retiring room where you may rest or even pa.s.s the night, all without charge.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN A FAN-TAN GAMBLING HOUSE, MACAO]

Then he orders refreshments brought, and with the manner of a veteran courtier proffers a tray heaped with oranges, an egg-sh.e.l.l cup filled with tea that is almost without color, and dried watermelon seeds that you might munch after the manner of the neck-or-nothing gamblers on the lower floor. When you politely decline these, the courtly one most likely says, "You no likee tea and seeds--then have whiskysoda." Chinese courtezans, with feet bound to a smallness making locomotion difficult and obviously painful, wearing what in the Western World would be called "trousers," and invariably bedecked with earrings or bracelets of exquisite jade, edge their way to the gambling table, and put their money down in handfuls as long as it lasts. To spend an evening in the liberally-conducted establishment of Messrs. Ung Hang and Hung Vo is enlightening in various ways.

Because fan-tan is the pa.s.sion of Asiatics, the popular idea is that it must be the wickedest of all games, if not the most complicated. Fan-tan as a fact is simplicity itself, being no more than the counting off into units of four several quarts of little metal discs called "cash," until there remain one, two, three or four discs. The result determines what bets, laid about a four-sided s.p.a.ce on the table, win--a single remaining "cash" makes the 1-side win, two the 2-side, and so on. Each hazard is a one-to-three wager, and the bank pays on this basis after deducting the recognized percentage supporting the establishment.

Spinning a top with four numbered sides would accomplish in a minute the same result as the tedious counting of a heap of discs, varying with every "deal" according to the whim or superst.i.tion of the players, who may add to or take from the pile prior to the beginning of the count. It is fortunate for the millions of the conservative Far East that their princ.i.p.al gambling game is not a quick one, like roulette, for the player of fan-tan gets "action" only about once in every ten minutes. At roulette and most other games favored by white men a gambler knows his fate in a minute.

CHAPTER XIV

THE KAISER'S PLAY FOR CHINESE TRADE

Having no voice in the controversy leading to the war, Germany should have remained neutral throughout the bitter Russo-j.a.panese conflict.

Germany was neutral so far as official proprieties went; but in sympathy and numberless unofficial acts she aided and abetted Russia to a degree unsurpa.s.sed by the Bear's plighted ally, France. It is a fact incontrovertible that from the commencement of hostilities the German Emperor was as pro-Russian as any wearer of the Czar's uniform, and most German bankers and s.h.i.+p-owners found it easy to take the cue from Berlin and view situations of international procedure in a manner permitting them to reap golden benefits. Teuton bankers took the lead in financing the Russian cause, and whenever Russia was forced to purchase s.h.i.+ps to augment her fleet, these were always found in Germany. When the Czar despatched his squadrons to the Far East, they were coaled practically throughout the long journey from German colliers. And in other helpful ways Germany officiated as the handmaiden of Russia.

The Kaiser's favoritism was infectious throughout his empire, and had the contending armies and fleets in the Far East been equally matched, with the outcome hanging in the balance, the influence of William II could have swayed the continent of Europe in Russia's favor, and a great moral advantage would thereby have accrued to Russia that would have been difficult to overcome. Why? Because the Kaiser is the strongest, most influential, and cleverest potentate in Europe. Splendid exemplar of the war-lord idea, he is really the peer of diplomatists, a ruler whose utterances are to-day weighed and discussed as are those of none other. Understanding the value of words, and a coiner of subtle phrases, an epigram from the Kaiser contrasting the destiny and rights of the "white man" and the "yellow man" would probably have isolated the British as j.a.pan's only sympathizers in the Old World, had it been made at an opportune time.

But the psychological moment never came--there was a hitch somewhere in Asia, and Kuropatkin's genius was expended in masterly retreats; all the triumphs on land and sea were those of the little men under the sun flag. Finally came a mighty engagement, and William hastened to decorate the Russian loser and the j.a.panese victor. But the point was strained; the public perceived this. As a result, the incident fell flatter than the anticlimax of a melodrama played to empty seats.

The Kaiser's chagrin was great. But it need not have been, for the march of events in the East was proving him simply to be mortal--he had failed to pick the winner, and was gradually becoming aware of it. A plunger in a sporting event perceives an error of judgment in a few minutes, usually. With the War-Lord of Germany it required the lapse of months to convince him of the sad fact that j.a.pan would win in the great struggle.

Why War-Lord, as an appellation for the august William? Adept in the art of warfare he surely is; but have not the Fatherland's victories under his rule been those of peace, and those only? Has Germany been involved in strife possessing the dignity of war since he came to the throne? Has she not, on the other hand, made headway in trade and sea transportation under his guidance that has no parallel in the history of a European state? Yes, emphatically. And are not the words "Made in Germany" so painfully familiar throughout two thirds of the globe, especially in Great Britain and her possessions, that they strike terror to Britons who study with apprehension the statistics of England's waning trade?

This is true, also. And Suez Ca.n.a.l returns prove that the users of the waterway under Britain's red flag are yearly less numerous, while the number of German s.h.i.+ps is steadily growing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TYPICAL BUSINESS STREET IN A CHINESE CITY]

Then why not Trade-Lord, for this is what the German Emperor is? It is the better appellation, and more truthfully descriptive. It surely is creditable to the German people that their national progress is due to habits of industry and thrift, rather than to military display: the artisan, not the drill-master, is making Germany great.

And could Trade-Lord William be honestly called "astute" if he overlooked the fact, obvious as a mountain, that one of the stakes in the Russo-j.a.panese conflict would be the privilege amounting almost to right, to commercially exploit the most populous country on G.o.d's footstool--China? More than one fourth of the people of the earth are Chinese, and their country at the present time is more primitive, in the scarcity of railways, telegraphs, public utilities, and every provision conducing to comfort and common-sense living, than any other land pretending to civilization. It is a fact that outside of Shanghai, Canton, Pekin and Tientsin, the people do not want many of the products of the outer world; but it is a truism that much profit accrues from teaching Asiatics to "want" modern products.

The German Emperor foresaw that China could not much longer resist the invasion of outside enterprise and trade; and to his mind there could have been no suspicion of doubt that the victor in the awful contest could and would dictate trade terms and privileges everywhere in the Celestial Empire. If j.a.pan won, the j.a.panese would surely exploit commercially their great neighbor, whose written language is nearly identical with their own--this would be but natural to the Mikado's people, teeming with apt.i.tude as manufacturers and traders, and recognizing the necessity for recouping outlay in the war.

If Russia were successful, her reward would be the validating of her hold upon Manchuria, the bundling of the j.a.ps out of Korea, and the attainment to a position of controlling influence in China's political affairs. The supplying of articles of general manufacture and commerce to the 400,000,000 people of China could have been no part of Russia's aspiration, for the reason that Russia is not a manufacturing country and has but little to sell. Her enormous tea bill to China is paid yearly in money, even. A nation seeking in time to control the whole of Asia couldn't bother with commercial matters, certainly not. Yet, one of the fruits of victory in the war would have been the splendid opportunity to exploit trade everywhere in China--a privilege of priceless value.

What country was to benefit through this, with Russia's moral support and permission, had the Czar's legions been successful?

France? Hardly; for the French were bound by hard and fast alliance, and it had never been the policy at St. Petersburg to give anything material to France. Uncle Sam, whose people had financed half the war loans of j.a.pan, could scarcely hope to extend his business in China with Russia's cooperation; nor could j.a.pan's ally and moral supporter, John Bull.

Who, then, could stand in a likelier position to become legatee of this valued privilege than the Trade-Lord of Germany? The Emperor William had been Russia's "best friend" from the inception of the war, and was admittedly an adept in promoting trade, for his people had attained in a few years to an envied position in the commerce of the world. A quarter of the trade of "awakened" China would make Germany a vast workshop, a hive of industry. And this was precisely what the astute Hohenzollern saw through the smoke of battle in far-away Manchuria. He saw a prosperous Germany if the Slav crushed the yellow man. To say he did not would be a libel upon a giant intellect.

Any one disposed to review practically certain incidents in the recent history of Germany may develop a dozen reasons why the Emperor should seek to make his country all important through trade conquest. Let it be remembered that the Kaiser chafes at barriers of every kind, and that there is a boundlessness in his nature at times trying to his patience.

He looks at the map of the German Empire and painfully admits that the present frontiers and area are practically those bequeathed by the great William. To a divine-right monarch this is exasperating. The loftiest ambition of a sovereign is to have the national area expand under his rule.

William's medieval temperament shudders at the crowded condition of the earth in this twentieth century, when all frontiers appear immovable.

Had he lived in the days of the Crusaders his valiant sword would probably have brought all Palestine under German control; and had he been a free agent when Bonapartism collapsed he most likely would have carried the German standard to the Mediterranean, perhaps to Stamboul.

The ironical fact is that the German Emperor has had rebuffs and disappointments in his efforts to expand his realm. The Monroe Doctrine, excluding his empire from even a coaling station in this hemisphere, is to the Kaiser a perpetual nightmare. St.u.r.dy sons of the Fatherland control the trade of more than one republic in South and Central America, but nowhere is it possible to unfurl the standard of Germany over "colony" or "sphere of influence." To forcibly back up his subjects' pecuniary rights in the American hemisphere, even, the approval of the government at Was.h.i.+ngton has first to be obtained. In his heart the Kaiser loathes the doctrine of Monroe; that is obvious.

It is twenty years since Germany began to build up a colonial empire in Africa, and the net result is that, after spending some hundred million dollars, she has acquired over a hundred million square miles of territory, with a spa.r.s.ely scattered German population of between five and six thousand souls. A third of the adult white population is represented by officials and soldiers. Militarism is rampant everywhere, with the result that the white settler shuns German colonies as he would the plague. The keen-witted Kaiser long ago saw that empire-building in the Dark Continent could produce nothing but expense during his lifetime.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EXHIBITION OF BODIES OF CHINESE MALEFACTORS WHO HAVE BEEN STRANGLED]

"To perdition with the Monroe Doctrine, and with African tribes blind to the excellence of German-made wares," the Kaiser might have said ten years ago: "I'll have sweet revenge upon all and sundry by capturing trade everywhere--I'll make Germany the workshop of the universe. Keep your territory, if you like; I'll get the trade! Bah, Monroe Doctrine!

Bah, grinning Senegambians!"

The resolute Trade-Lord then turned his face to the bountiful Orient, pregnant with resource beyond the dreams of avarice, teeming with hundreds of millions of people. The East had made England dominant in the world's affairs. Keeping his soldiers at home, the Kaiser hurled a legion of trade-getters into the Far East, planting commercial outposts in Ceylon, sending a flying column of bagmen and negotiators to India and the Straits Settlements, and distributing a numerical division of business agents throughout China. The Empire of the Celestials was made the focal point of a great propaganda, openly espoused by the Emperor.

It was readily demonstrated that Great Britain had no permanent control of commerce in the East, not even in her own possessions. The Teuton, for a time content with trifling profit, underbid all rivals--and orders and contracts poured into Germany. Belgian products competed only in price; and American manufacturers seemed too busy in providing goods for home use to seriously try for business in Asia--they booked orders coming practically unsought, that was about all. The Chino-j.a.panese conflict of a dozen years ago, although disastrous to China's army, stimulated the absorbing power of the Chinese for goods of western manufacture, and Germany sold her wares right and left.