are better than the single-roomed sheds about them, that
the graduates of our Siam mission schools for girls wear shirt
waists instead of sunshine, that the members of any one of our
Korean churches spend more money on soap than a whole village
of their heathen neighbours whose bodies are caked with
the accumulations of years of neglect, that the sessions of our
Syrian churches are Christian gentlemen in appearance as well
as in fact, and that the houses of our Chinese Christians do not
mix pigs, chickens and babies in one lousy, malodorous
company.

But these altered conditions have not yet brought the ability
to meet them. The cost of living has increased faster than the
resources of the people. Only France and Russia are primarily
political in their foreign policy. England, Germany and
the United States are avowedly commercial. They talk incessantly
about ``the open door.'' Their supreme object in Asia
is to ``extend their markets.'' They are producing more than
they can use themselves, and they seek an opportunity to dispose
of their surplus products. They are less concerned to
bring the products of Asia into their own territories.
Indeed, Germany and particularly the United States have
built a tariff wall about themselves, expressly to protect
home industries from outside competition, and not a few
American manufacturers have recently been on the verge of
panic on account of Japanese competition. Europe and America
are trying to force their own manufactures on to Asia and
to take in return only what they please.

In time, this will probably right itself, in part at least.