The Pacific Triangle Part 14

But what a different world is found at the public school not very far from the factory! The building was not much of a building,--just an old-fas.h.i.+oned wooden structure with a court. Its sole purpose seemed to be to furnish four thousand children with training in the use of a new tongue. "Speak English," stared every one in the face from sign-boards nailed to pillars. I listened. The command was honored more in the breach than in the observance, yet where it was respected strange English sounds tripped along tongues that were doubtless more accustomed to Tagalog and Spanish. There was nothing shy in the behavior of these boys and girls. They moved about with a certain monastic self-a.s.surance, less gay than our children, more free than most Oriental youngsters. In a few years they will be advocating Filipino independence, in no mistaken terms,--if they have not been caught by the factory process.

I went straight ahead and found myself on my way back into the city,--but from a side opposite that from which I had left it. The squalor and the dungeon-like atmosphere were indeed nothing for American efficiency to be proud of. Slums in the tropics fester rapidly. One cannot say these places were slums; but they certainly were not native villages. One felt that here in Manila America's heart was not in her work. Why build up something that would in the end revert to the natives, to be laid open to possible aggression and conquest! One felt further that the Filipinos did not exactly rejoice in being Americans.

What they actually are they have long since forgotten. Once foster-children of Philip of Spain. To-day the adopted sons of America.

To-morrow? How much more fortunate their Siamese cousins or relatives by an ancient marriage! Yet all who know Manila as it was ten years ago agree that there have been vast improvements in a decade. One does not include in this generalization the residences and hotels of the foreigners, for obvious reasons; still, the welfare of a community is raised by good example.

That afternoon I stretched in the shade of one of the walls of the old walled citadel with its fine gateways. I pondered the significance of those stones against which I was resting. One gains strength from such structures as one does from the sea,--not only in the actual contact, but in the thought that that which human effort accomplished human effort can do again. My septuagenarian had returned to the s.h.i.+p for rest. I thought of his criticisms of the American occupation of Manila, of his suggestions that England would have made of it a fine city. I wondered what drove the Spanish to build this wall. To protect themselves against Chinese pirates? There is not a country in the world that has not tried to safeguard itself against invasion by the process of invasion. Yet any attempt to do otherwise is decried as impractical.

All the while, decay weakens the arm of the conqueror.

But more luring scenes distracted my thoughts. The sinking sun stretched the lengthening shadows of the wall as a fisherman, at sunset, spreads his serviceable nets. Filipinos pa.s.sed quietly to and fro; cars, motor-cars, and electric cars cut a St. Andrew's cross before me. The scent of mellow summer weighted the air. Slowly everything drew closer in the net of night.

Two days later I was in Hong-Kong, where the Oriental dominates the scene. I was at the third angle of the triangle, and hereafter the subject is Asia.

CHAPTER X

BRITAIN'S ROCK IN ASIA

1

To one who had received his most vivid impressions of China from her n.o.blest philosopher, Lao-tsze, it was somewhat disconcerting to peep through the porthole just after dawn and find oneself the center of a confusion indescribable. The sleepy, heaving sea was more in tune with the mystic "Way" of the great sage. I had not antic.i.p.ated being thrust so suddenly among the ma.s.ses and the babel on which Lao-tsze, that gray-beard child, had tried to pour some intellectual oil.

Yet, I had been living on the top floor of a Chinese "den" for twenty-six days between Sydney and Hong-Kong. On board I was ready to blame the steams.h.i.+p company for the crowding and the uncleanliness. Had there been a dozen murders, I should not have regarded it as unnatural.

Had I been compelled to spend three weeks in such circ.u.mstances, I should either have committed hara-kiri or killed off at least four hundred and fifty-five to make the decent amount of room necessary for the remaining fifty. So I was prepared to exonerate them, to praise them for their pacifism and their orderliness in such conditions.

But when I peeped out of the porthole that morning and saw the swarming thousands struggling with one another to secure a pittance of privilege, which these five hundred had to offer by way of baggage, my heart went out to the great sage of 650 B. C. He must have been courageous indeed.

Full families of them on their shallow sampans cooperating with one another against odds which would sicken the stoutest-hearted white folk.

Yet in that Oriental ma.s.s there was the ever-present exultation of spirit. Laughter and good-natured bullying, full recognition of the other man's right to rob and be robbed. No smug morality teaching you to be shy and generous in the face of an obviously bad world, a world ordered so as to make goodness the most expensive instead of the least expensive quality. But I soon discovered that beneath that external jollity only too frequently fluttered a fearful heart, filled with dread of the slightest change of circ.u.mstances.

The distance between the s.h.i.+p and the sh.o.r.e was not like Charon's river Styx, but it was a way between the Elysium of an alien metropolis and a Hades of hopeless nativity, none the less. Beyond stood the towering hills of Hong-Kong with its ma.s.sive palaces in marble at the very summit. Chinese will to live had builded these, but the people had not, it seems, enough will left to build for themselves. From the very foot of the hills upward rose a steady series of buildings which looked surprisingly familiar, yet somewhat alien to my expectations. It was something of a shock to me to find that Hong-Kong was Chinese in name and character only, while being European-owned and ordered. I felt fooled. I had gone to see China, but found only another outpost of Great Britain. My American pa.s.sport had had most fascinating Chinese characters on the back of it. But the "Emergency Permit" issued to me in Sydney, had none. Between British ports one can always expect British courtesy and that largeness of heart which comes from having taken pretty nearly all there is worth while in the world without being afraid of losing it. So I made some hurried mental adjustments as we chugged our way across, amidst bobbing sampans, and convinced myself that it might have been worse.

In that great future which will put modern civilization somewhere half-way between the Stone Age and itself, the stones of Hong-Kong will give investigators much to think about. Everything in Hong-Kong is concrete and stone. From the s.p.a.cious office buildings that stand along the waterfront, to the palaces upon the peak, stone is the material out of which everything is built. What achievement! What a monument to Britain! But as the stones become harder beneath one's feet, one senses the toil embodied in them. Male and female coolies still trudge over these stony paths, carrying baskets of gravel, tar, or sand higher and higher. These structures seemed to me like human bridges which great leaders of men sometimes lay for their armies to pa.s.s over. Where do they lead to? Perhaps to England's greatness; perhaps to the world's shame.

At first one is p.r.o.ne to be rigid in one's judgment. There seems too much evidence of desire to build securely, rather than humanely or beautifully. The Orient, one hears, builds more daintily, more softly, more picturesquely; America builds more comfortably and more thoroughly.

One might add, apologetically, that had not the masters driven these coolies to such stony tasks, the poor creatures would simply have built another Chinese wall at the behest of one of their own tyrants. Cheap labor makes pyramids and walls, and palaces on the peaks of Hong-Kong.

But it also makes an unsightly slough of humanity about itself.

Considering how costly pyramids and palaces such as those at Hong-Kong are, considering the plodding toil it took to build them, for the sake of humanity it is better that they were built of stone, so that rebuilding may never be necessary.

Everywhere as we climb we pa.s.s rest stations, coolies buying a few cents' worth of food, coolies carrying cement. While far beneath lies murky, moldy Hong-Kong with its worm-like streets, its misty harbor waters, its hundreds of steamers, sail-boats, sampans, piers, and dry-docks, and all around stand the peaks of earth and the inverted peaks of air. Returning by another route, down more winding and more precipitous paths, one pa.s.ses great concrete reservoirs, tennis-courts, an incline railway, water-sheds,--and the city again.

2

The days draw on even here, and sunlight is curtained by dim night. The din of human voices loses its shrill tone of bargaining, the rickshaw men trot regularly but more slowly. Carriers of sedan-chairs lag beneath their loads; their steps slow down to a walk. Women by the dozen slip by, still with their burdens, but their voices have a note of softness, pleasing sadness. And now comes the time of day when no matter in what station one's life may be cast, spirit and body s.h.i.+ft to better adjustment. And through the dim blue mist the shuffling of feet is heard, or the sounding of loose wooden slippers like drops of water in a well. Whatever revived activities may follow this twilight hour, now, for the world entire, is rest,--even in toil-worn, grubbing, groveling China, which seems not to have been born to rest.

"Business" is not yet gone from the streets of Hong-Kong, though it is now wholly dark. Every one is working as though the day were but just beginning and it were not Sunday night. It is impossible to select "important" things from out this heap of human debris. Filth, odors, activity, jewelry, dirty little heaps and packets of food,--all are handled over and over again, and each one is content with a lick of the fingers for the handling. Then when quite worn out one may rest his bones on the pavement covered with straw or mat, or if more fortunate, may have a hovel or a house in which to breed. The number of homeless wretches sleeping on the inclined stone pavements of Hong-Kong was simply appalling. And Hong-Kong is British made. Hong-Kong was a barren island twenty-nine miles in area when seventy-five years or so ago Britain demanded it from China; to-day its population is nearly a tenth of that of the whole continent of Australia. But what a difference in the status of that population! Certainly no man who sees the result of over-population in proportion to a people's industrial ingenuity can blame Australia for keeping herself under reproductive self-control.

A few of the things one sees as a matter of course in Hong-Kong will ill.u.s.trate. As I was coming down Pottinger Street I was horror-struck at the sight of a small boy on his knees groaning and wailing as though he were in unendurable agony. I thought at first he was having a fit, but it became obvious that there was method in his madness. He was repeating some incantation, bowing his head to the ground, tapping frantically with a tin can on the stones, and chanting or shrieking out his blessings or his curses, which ever the case may have been. He was a blind beggar, and though he must have received more money than many a coolie does (for even Chinese have coins to give) and in a way certainly earned it, I could not but smile at his wisdom,--for at its worst it was no worse than the labor of the coolie. Yet from many pa.s.sers-by he evoked only slight amus.e.m.e.nt.

Upon some steps in an unlighted thoroughfare stood a Chinese haranguing a crowd. His voice was not unpleasant, his manner was persuasive. But what to? Had he been urging China to stop breeding, to cease this worm-like living and reproducing, I should have regarded him as a public benefactor. For it made me creepy, this proximity to such squirming numbers.

Beside a dirty wall around the corner was a medicine man selling a miraculous bundle of herbs. He screeched its powers, gave each a smell, which each one took since it cost nothing, and then he went into frightful contortions to demonstrate that which these herbs could allay.

But from the expression on his face it was obvious they could not allay his disappointment that the purchasers were few.

At an open store was a crowd. I edged my way up to see the excitement.

It was a "doctor's operating-room." Upon a bench sat an old man, gray-haired and almost toothless. The "doctor" stood astride the patients' knees and with a steel instrument, somewhat rusty, calmly and carelessly stirred about in the old man's eyeless socket. All the sufferer did was to mutter "Ta, ta, ta," pausing slightly between the ta's, but never stirring. No guarding against infection out on the open, dusty, dirty thoroughfare.

The crowd looked on without any sign of emotion. A few women sat on a bench inside, but seemed quite indifferent. There was one exception. A little mother with a boy of about six contemplated the performance with a pained expression. Her boy's eyes were crossed and turned upward. He had to be treated, too.

Finally even these things end. It is nine o'clock. Shops are closing, the crowds on the streets die down. And for one brief spell the world will rest.

Here we have four examples of life in China. When we examine them closely, haphazardly chosen as they have been, there is a strange uniformity and contradiction in their basic situations. The blind beggar-boy, the charlatan advocate and medicine man, the careless surgeon,--at bottom all charlatans, yet all essentially sincere. That ranting little beggar howled his lying appeals, but at home, no doubt, were other mouths to be fed for which he--blind head of the family--was responsible. The herb-specialist seemed, from the tone of his voice, sincere in the belief in his remedies; the surgeon, certain of his operation. Yet that is what China is suffering from most, and because of the faith in their crude panaceas and the conviction that five thousand years of tradition gives folk, the Rockefeller Foundation will have to work for many generations before it will make China prophylactic.

3

There was another incident that ill.u.s.trated, to me at least, China's ailment. Hong-Kong seemed possessed one night. I thought a riot or a revolution had broken out, but it was only a house on fire. Thousands of Chinese scurried about like rats looking for ways of escape. From the littered roof and balcony of a five-story tenement a flame leaped skyward as though itself trying to escape from the unpleasant task of consuming so dirty a structure. The curious collected in hordes from everywhere.

I made my way into this ma.s.s not unaware of being quite alone in the world. It was interesting to be in this sort of mob. The reason for China's subjugation showed itself in the ease with which it was controlled. One single white policeman, running back and forth along the length of a block, kept the whole mob well along the curb. It was amazing to watch the crowd retreat at the officer's approach and then bulge out as soon as he pa.s.sed by. One young Chinese stood out a little too far. The officer came up on his rear, yanked him by the ear, and sent him scurrying back into the mob. They who dared rushed timidly across the street. I remarked this to the policeman. He was pleased. "If you want to get closer up, just walk straight ahead," he said. And so I did, as did other white men who arrived, without being stopped. That was it: we were quite different; we could go. Later a host of special police, Chinese and Indian regulars, arrived and relieved this lone white officer.

This incident seemed to me to symbolize China's present state. No leader, no cohesion, no common thinking. Had the mob been resentful,--what then! It was a mob the like of which I had never seen before. A dull murmur sounded through all the confusion. It seemed to be of one tone, as though all the notes of the scale were sung at once and they blended into one another like the colors of the spectrum. The people seemed wonderfully alert. Their hearing was keen. Two tram-car conductors conversed forty feet away from each other, with dozens of yapping Chinese between.

Thus, China enjoys a oneness like that of water. Easily separated, lightly invaded, rapidly reunited, her ma.s.ses flow on together when directed into any channel, and it matters little where or why. And the white policeman a.s.sured me that when the Chinese still wore queues a policeman raided a den and tied the queues of fifteen Chinese together and with these as reins drove them to prison.

4

Yet, what nation or race in the world has maintained such indivisibility against so much separation! Think of what the family is and has been to China,--its creeds, its government, its entire existence. Yet the family and concubinage obtain side by side.

There was evidence of this in British Hong-Kong. Upon the street one day I saw another crowd. It was waiting for the appearance of the Governor of Canton. When the worthy governor emerged from a very unworthy-looking building, the crowd cheered and gathered close around the automobile.

A well-dressed young Chinese in European clothes emerged from the hall.

I asked him what was toward, surmising his understanding. He spoke English fluently and seemed pleased to inform me. So we strolled down the street together. He was not very hopeful about Chinese democracy as yet, but believed in it and expressed great admiration for America.

Britain, he said, was not well liked. He spoke of his religion, his belief in Confucianism. He regretted that Hong-Kong had no temples and that he and his friends were compelled to meet at the club for prayer.

Yet though he was a Confucianist, he decried the family system. "Chinese cling too much to family," he said. "One man goes to America, then he sends for a brother simply because he is a relative. The brother may be a very bad character, but that doesn't matter. So it is in official circles in China to-day. Graft goes on, jobs are dispensed to relatives worthy or unworthy, efficient or inefficient. And the country is getting deeper and deeper into difficulties."

As though to prove the truth of his a.s.sertions, he told me of his own experiences as a child. "Chinese obey," he said. "My father paid for my education, therefore my duty toward him should know no bounds." His father had had ten children, only two of whom survived,--he and an elder sister. When his father died, he became the head of the family.

Therefore he had to marry, even though then only fifteen years of age.

He had been married for sixteen years. I should never have believed it, to judge from his appearance. He seemed no more than a student himself, but he a.s.sured me he had five children,--one daughter fifteen years old.

Birth-control! Limitation of offspring! Why bother? If his father could "raise" a family of ten on "nothing" and then just let them die off,--why not he? So does duty keep the race alive.

And duty tolerates that which is sapping the very foundation of the race,--not only the enslavement of the wife in such circ.u.mstances, but the entertainment of the concubine. I saw the way that works.