Bert Wilson, Wireless Operator Part 16

"Then, if you wanted to praise a Chinese author, I suppose, instead of alluding to his 'bulging brow,' it would be good form to refer to his 'bulging stomach,'" laughed Ralph.

"Gee," put in Tom, "if that were so, I've seen some fat people in the side shows at the circus that would have it all over Socrates."

"There's one thing," went on the doctor, "where they set us an example that we well might follow, and that is in the tolerance they have for the religious views of other people. There isn't any such thing as persecution or ostracism in China on the score of religious belief.

There are three or four religions and all are viewed with approval and kindly toleration. A man, for instance, will meet several strangers in the course of business or of travel, and they will fall into conversation. It is etiquette to ask the religious belief of your new acquaintances, so our Chinaman asks the first of them: 'Of what religion are you?' 'I practice the maxims of Confucius,' is the response. 'Very good, and you?' turning to the second. 'I am a follower of Lao-tze.' The third answers that he is a Buddhist, and the first speaker winds up the conversation on this point by shaking hands--with himself--and genially remarking: 'Ah, well, we are all brothers after all.'"

"They certainly have the edge on us there," remarked Bert. "I wish we had a little of that spirit in our own country. We could stand a lot more of it than we have."

"Outside of the question of religion, however," went on the doctor, "we might think that they carry politeness too far to suit our mode of thinking. If you should meet a friend and ask after the health of his family, you would be expected to say something like this: 'And how is your brilliant and distinguished son, the light of your eyes and future hope of your house, getting on?' To this your friend would probably reply: 'That low blackguard and detestable dog that for my sorrow is called my son is in good health, but does not deserve that your glorious highness should deign to ask about him.'"

"You will notice," said the captain when the laugh had subsided, "that the doctor uses the son as an ill.u.s.tration. The poor daughter wouldn't even be inquired about. She is regarded as her father's secret sorrow, inflicted upon him by a malignant decree of fate. In a commercial sense, the boy is an a.s.set; the girl is a liability. You hear it said sometimes, with more or less conviction, that the world we live in is a 'man's world.' However that may be modified or denied elsewhere, it is the absolute truth as regards China. If the scale of a nation's civilization is measured by the way it treats its women,--and I believe this to be true,--then the Celestial Kingdom ranks among the very lowest. From the time she comes, unwelcomed, into the world, until, unmourned, she leaves it, her life is not worth living. She is the slave of the household, and, in the field, she pulls the plough while the man holds the handles. In marriage, she is disposed of without the slightest reference to her own wishes, but wholly at the whim of her parents, and often sees the bridegroom's face for the first time when he comes to take her to his own house. There she is as much a slave as before. Her husband can divorce her for the most flimsy reasons and she has no redress. No, it isn't 'peaches and cream' to be a woman in China."

"It doesn't seem exactly a paradise of suffragettes," murmured Ralph.

"No," interjected Tom, "the Government here doesn't have to concern itself about 'hunger strikes' or 'forcible feeding.'"

"To atone to some extent for this hateful feature of family life," said the doctor, "they have another that is altogether admirable, and that is the respect shown to parents. In no country of the world is filial reverence so fully displayed as here. A disobedient son is almost unthinkable, and a murderer would scarcely be regarded with more disapproval. From birth to old age, the son looks upon his father with humility and reverence, and worships him as a G.o.d after he is dead.

There is nothing of the flippancy with which we are too familiar in our own country. With us the 'child is father of the man,' or, if he isn't, he wants to be. Here the man always remains the father of the child."

"Yes," said Bert, "I remember in Bill Nye's story of his early life he says that at the age of four 'he took his parents by the hand and led them out to Colorado.'"

"And that's no joke," put in the captain. "All the foreigners that visit our country are struck by the independent att.i.tude of children to their parents."

"Another thing we have to place to the credit of this remarkable people," he went on, "is their love for education. The scholar is held in universal esteem. The road to learning is also the road to the highest honors of the State. Every position is filled by compet.i.tive examinations, and the one who has the highest mark gets the place. Of course their idea of education is far removed from ours. There is no attempt to develop the power of original thinking, but simply to become familiar with the teaching and wisdom of the past. Still, with all its defects, it stands for the highest that the nation knows, and they crown with laurels the men who rise to the front rank. Of course they wouldn't compare for a moment with the great scholars of the Western world.

Still, you know, 'in a nation of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,'

and their scholars stand out head and shoulders above the general level, and are reverenced accordingly."

"I suppose that system of theirs explains why the civil service in our own country is slightingly referred to as the 'Chinese' civil service by disgruntled politicians," said Ralph.

"Yes," said the captain, "and speaking of politicians, our Chinese friends could give us cards and spades and beat us out at that game.

They're the smoothest and slickest set of grafters in the world. Why, the way they work it here would make our ward politicians turn green with envy. We're only pikers compared with these fellows. Graft is universal all through China. It taints every phase of the national life.

Justice is bought and sold like any commodity and with scarcely a trace of shame or concealment. The only concern the mandarin has with the case brought before him is as to which side will make him the richest present. It is a case of the longest purse and little else. Then after a man has been sent to prison, the jailer must be paid to make his punishment as light as possible. If he is condemned to death, the executioner must be paid to do his work as painlessly and quickly as he can. At every turn and corner the grafter stands with his palm held out, and unless you grease it well you might as well abandon your cause at the start. You're certainly foredoomed to failure."

"Well," said Bert, "we're badly enough off at home in the matter of graft, but at least we have some 'chance for our white alley' when we go into a court of justice."

"Yes," a.s.sented the doctor, "of course a long purse doesn't hurt there, as everywhere else. But, in the main, our judges are beyond the coa.r.s.e temptation of money bribes. We've advanced a good deal from the time of Sir Francis Bacon, that 'brightest, wisest, _meanest_ of mankind,' who not only accepted presents from suitors in cases brought before him, but had the nerve to write a pamphlet justifying the practice and claiming that it didn't affect his judgment."

"What do you think of the present revolution in China, doctor?" asked d.i.c.k. "Will it bring the people more into sympathy with our way of looking at things?"

He shook his head skeptically.

"No," he answered, "to be frank I don't. Between us and the Chinese there is a great gulf fixed, and I don't believe it will ever be bridged. The Caucasian and Mongolian races are wholly out of sympathy.

We look at everything from opposite sides of the shield. We can no more mix than oil and water.

"The white races made a mistake," he went on and the boys detected in his voice a strain of sombre foreboding, "when they drew China out of its sh.e.l.l and forced it to come in contact with the modern world. It was a hermit nation and wanted to remain so. All it asked was to be let alone. It was a sleeping giant. Why did we wake him up unless we wanted to tempt fate and court destruction?

"Not only that, but the giant had forgotten how to fight. We're teaching him how just as fast as we can, and even sending European officers to train and lead his armies. The giant's club was rotten and wormeaten. In its place, we're giving him Gatling guns and rifled artillery, the finest in the world. We have forgotten that Mongol armies have already overrun the world and that they may do it again. We're like the fisherman in the 'Arabian Nights' who found a bottle on the sh.o.r.e and learned that it held a powerful genii. As long as he kept the bottle corked he was safe. But he was foolish enough to take out the cork, and the genii, escaping, became as big as a mountain, and couldn't be squeezed back into the bottle. We've pulled the cork that held the Chinese genii and we'll never get him back again. Think of four hundred million people, a third of the population of the world, conscious of their strength, equipped with modern arms, trained in the latest tactics, able to live on practically nothing, moving over Europe like a swarm of devastating locusts! When some Chinese Napoleon--and he may be already born--finds such an army at his back--G.o.d help Europe!"

He spoke with feeling, and a silence fell upon them as they looked over the great city, and thought of the thousands of miles and countless millions of inhabitants that lay beyond. Did they hear in imagination the gathering of shadowy hosts, the tread of marching armies, and the distant thunder of artillery? Or did they dimly sense with that mysterious clairvoyance sometimes vouchsafed to men that in a few days they themselves would be at death grip with that invisible "yellow peril" and barely win out with their lives?

d.i.c.k shivered, though the night was warm.

"Come along, fellows," he said, as the captain and doctor walked away.

"Let's go to bed."

CHAPTER XV

THE DRAGON'S CLAWS

The next morning the boys were up bright and early, ready for their trip through the city.

"By George," said d.i.c.k, "I have to pinch myself to realize that we're really in China at last. Until a month ago I never dreamed of seeing it.

As a matter of course I had hoped and expected to go to Europe and possibly take in Egypt. That seemed the regulation thing to do and it was the limit of my traveling ambition. But as regards Asia, I've never quite gotten over the feeling I had when I was a kid. Then I thought that if I dug a hole through the center of the earth I'd come to China, and, since they were on the under side of the world, I'd find the people walking around upside down."

"Well," laughed Bert, "they're upside down, sure enough, mentally and morally, but physically they don't seem to be having any rush of blood to the head."

An electric launch was at hand, but they preferred to take one of the native sampans that darted in and out among the shipping looking for pa.s.sengers. They hailed one and it came rapidly to the side.

"See those queer little eyes on each side of the bow," said Tom. "I wonder what they're for?"

"Why, so that the boat can see where it is going," replied d.i.c.k. "You wouldn't want it to go it blind and b.u.mp head first into the side, would you?"

"And this in a nation that invented the mariner's compa.s.s," groaned Tom.

"How are the mighty fallen!"

"And even that points to the south in China, while everywhere else it points to the north. Can you beat it?" chimed in Ralph.

"Even their names are contradictions," said Bert. "This place was originally called 'Hiang-Kiang,' 'the place of sweet waters.' But do you catch any whiff here that reminds you of ottar of roses or the perfume wafted from 'Araby the blest?'"

"Well, not so you could notice it," responded Ralph, as the awful smells of the waterside forced themselves on their unwilling nostrils.

They speedily reached the sh.o.r.e and handed double fare to the parchment-faced boatman, who chattered volubly.

"What do you suppose he's saying?" asked Tom.

"Heaven knows," returned Ralph; "thanking us, probably. And yet he may be cursing us as 'foreign devils,' and consigning us to perdition.

That's one of the advantages of speaking in the toughest language on earth for an outsider to master."

"It is fierce, isn't it?" a.s.sented Bert. "I've heard that it takes about seven years of the hardest kind of study to learn to speak or read it, and even then you can't do it any too well. Some simply can't learn it at all."

"Well," said Tom, "I can't conceive of any worse punishment than to have to listen to it, let alone speak it. Good old United States for mine."

At the outset they found themselves in the English quarter. It was a splendid section of the city, with handsome buildings and well-kept streets, and giving eloquent testimony to the colonizing genius of the British empire. Here England had entrenched herself firmly, and from this as a point of departure, her long arm stretched out to the farthest limits of the Celestial Kingdom. She had made the place a modern Gibraltar, dominating the waters of the East as its older prototype held sway over the Mediterranean. Everywhere there were evidences of the law and order and regulated liberty that always accompany the Union Jack, and that explains why a little island in the Western Ocean rules a larger part of the earth's surface than any other power.

"We've certainly got to hand it to the English," said Ralph. "They're the worst hated nation in Europe, and yet as colonizers the whole world has to take off its hat to them. Look at Egypt and India and Canada and Australia and a score of smaller places. No wonder that Webster was impressed by it when he spoke of the 'drum-beat that, following the sun and keeping pace with the hours, encircled the globe with the martial airs of England.'"