moves out across the staring blue of the bay. So-and-so and such-an-one,
both friends, are going home in her, and some one else goes next week by
the French mail. He, and he alone, it seems to him, must stay on; and it
is so maddeningly easy to go--for every one save himself. The boat's
smoke dies out along the horizon, and he is left alone with the warm
wind and the white dust of the Bund. Now Japan is a good place, a place
that men swear by and live in for thirty years at a stretch. There are
China ports a week's sail to the westward where life is really hard, and
where the sight of the restless shipping hurts very much indeed.
Tourists and you who travel the world over, be very gentle to the men of
the Overseas Clubs. Remember that, unlike yourselves, they have not come
here for the good of their health, and that the return ticket in your
wallet may possibly colour your views of their land. Perhaps it would
not be altogether wise on the strength of much kindness from Japanese
officials to recommend that these your countrymen be handed over lock,
stock, and barrel to a people that are beginning to experiment with
fresh-drafted half-grafted codes which do not include juries, to a
system that does not contemplate a free Press, to a suspicious
absolutism from which there is no appeal. Truly, it might be
interesting, but as surely it would begin in farce and end in tragedy,
that would leave the politest people on earth in no case to play at
civilised government for a long time to come. In his concession, where
he is an apologetic and much sat-upon importation, the foreign resident
does no harm. He does not always sue for money due to him on the part of
a Japanese. Once outside those limits, free to move into the heart of
the country, it would only be a question of time as to where and when
the trouble would begin. And in the long run it would not be the foreign
resident that would suffer. The imaginative eye can see the most
unpleasant possibilities, from a general overrunning of Japan by the
Chinaman, who is far the most important foreign resident, to the