industrial conditions, the most pernicious of our vices, and against them
he sets not the best that China can show, but an exaggerated picture
which is false to fact. This is not argument but trickery, because it
presumes on the fact that one's readers will know no better.''


Indeed, the Rev. Dr. C. H. Fenn, who has resided in
Peking for ten years, writes that he cannot believe that the
author of ``Letters from a Chinese Official'' is a sincere man.
He continues:


``I would be almost willing to assert that it is impossible for a man,
brought up in China, then spending many years abroad, to return to China
and write such a book in honesty and sincerity of heart. He could not
possibly help knowing that nine-tenths of what he was writing about
China was absolutely untrue, that her political, legal, social, domestic and
personal life are rotten to the core, and that only in a few exceptional
cases is any pretence even made of living according to the ethics of
Confucius. It might be possible for an educated man, whose surroundings
had always been of an exceptionally good character, and who had never
gone outside of his own province or studied foreign books, to write with
some enthusiasm of the beauties of Chinese life, but not for any one else.''


Still, at a time when the Chinese are being vociferously
abused, it is only fair that we should give them credit for the
good qualities which they do possess. I ask with Dr. William
Elliott Griffis: ``In talking of our brother men, what shall
be our general principle, detraction or fair play? Because