And now that the transfer seems imminent let us ask somewhat carefully just what China wants and what are the grounds for hesitation in granting her request. The demand is for complete sovereignty as accorded to other nations. As accorded to other nations! Just what do we accord to other nations?

The most fundamental obligation devolving upon any government is to protect the lives and property of its citizens. These are the two basic interests. All else derives from these or is subordinate to them. Nothing can absolve government from this obligation except action of the individual in contravention of government authority. In an age when foreign trade and industry are universally recognized as legitimate, the need and the obligation of protection are not limited by national frontiers. Wherever the citizen goes the duty to protect him goes with him. Government may fail in its efforts. In so far it fails as government. But it can never repudiate the obligation.

The modern comity of nations to which China aspires rests upon the recognition of this obligation. As a matter of convenience and economy of effort, governments exchange these trusts with one another when assured that they can do so safely. If we do not establish an American concession in London and demand the right of setting up our own courts and police protection for our citizens there it is because we are perfectly sure that Britain will protect them quite as well as we could, and we find it much more economical to protect her citizens residing here in exchange. It is a perfectly reciprocal arrangement based on identical principles and fairly equivalent facilities.

There is not a nation in the world that does not prefer this reciprocal arrangement wherever possible. When Japan and China were opened to

Western trade it was obviously impossible. Neither country had recognized for centuries the obligation to protect foreigners within its limits. In both countries there was a prejudice against their presence which it was doubtful if the government could control. In both countries the attitude and good faith of the government were in question. No reciprocity was possible. The Western Powers did not delegate their responsibilities, but followed their citizens abroad and built about them and their belongings the home safeguards. To have done less would have been a breach of trust.

The arrangement was provisional. Its abrogation depended on the development of the conditions of reciprocity. With amazing energy and wisdom Japan set about the task. Her entire legal system, devised for a hermit nation with no dealings outside her borders, had to be reconstructed. This entailed political, military, and economic reorganization, the abolition of long-sanctioned class distinctions, and ultimately the complete reconstruction both of Japanese society and of the mentality of the Japanese people. The task was an heroic one and it involved unparalleled sacrifice and determination. The result was apparent when, a generation after the great resolve, Japan successfully resisted mighty Russia, and astonished Europe discovered that a Western nation had arisen in the East. The demand for recognition on the basis of reciprocity was promptly granted. There were misgivings, but they were few and brief. The sneer is sometimes heard that Japan obtained the coveted recognition only when she had sharpened her sword and made herself feared. Possibly. The imputation of cowardice as the sole motive of seeming justice and generosity is a favorite with those whose temperament suggests such

explanations. The fact would seem to be that the successful prosecution of a great war against a superior enemy implies not only military power but national unity, discipline, and organization. These were the guaranties that laws promulgated and promises made would be carried into effect. They have been, and no one now' regrets Japanese recognition.

Why has not China followed suit? Simply because she was not like Japan. Though alike unprepared at the outset for the new relation of reciprocity with Europe, the two nations were other wise totally unlike. Ever since the sixteenth century Japan has enjoyed one of the most perfectly organized governments on record. For two centuries and a half this government, the work of two superlative statesmen, maintained unity and order with a minimum of tyranny and corruption, establishing the traditions of discipline and obedience to central authority which have since rendered such remarkable service. Though reluctant to come out of her seclusion, she emerged with herself perfectly in hand and ready for the crisis.

China had no such background. Never closely organized, she was in full decadence when confronted with the new situation. With a central government devoid of authority, and an almost complete lack of the organs of modern government, China faced the exigencies of the commercial era with the government machinery of the primitive clan. Her military impotence but reflects her helplessness in every department of the social organism. Imagine a people whose soldiers, when taken prisoners, unhesitatingly enroll in the other army on assurance of food and pay. Think of a country without roads opening its doors to commerce. When the rain gullies the peasant's precious field he goes out into the narrow path which does duty for a road

and digs up the earth needed to repair the damage. The traveler who later finds a mud hole in his path gets his vengeance by making a new path through the peasant's field. More completely than any other people the Chinese have gotten along without government, without machinery, without national organization. Said the headman of a Chinese village to the interpreter of an invading army in the Boxer Rebellion: 'We pay taxes to the Manchus. We would just as soon pay taxes to you if we can get the same thing in return. We pay taxes to be let alone. If you can guarantee that we will be let alone we would just as soon pay to you.' That is thoroughly Chinese. The ideal is nonintervention. That government is best that governs least. Taxes are paid to bribe the government to inaction.

It is not asserted that these are altogether the ideals of to-day, least of all the ideals of that limited nationalist element which of late has made itself the vocal exponent of China's demands. It is rather the historic attitude, the mute instinct of the uncounted millions with whom the inertia of habit so far outweighs all reasoned choice.

IV

The generous-hearted demand that we accord to China the recognition due to a modern nation is sometimes made in oversight of the fundamental elements in the problem. We do not recognize peoples or countries, but governments. Recognition of peoples is a private affair. There is nothing to prevent Americans recognizing Chinese to any extent that they choose. But governments can only recognize governments. Where is the Chinese government? It is an open secret that there has been difficulty for some years in locating that important entity.

There is much reason to believe that no Chinese government exists. The foreigner in China deals chiefly with local authorities not recognized, perhaps, ten miles away. At the port of entry he deals with the Maritime Customs, an institution imposed by treaty and presided over by foreigners. In the capital he deals with the municipal government, largely controlled by the foreign legations. Finally and chiefly, in various centres he deals with a military free lance who exercises within his sphere of influence the unauthorized authority of force. The alleged government at Peking is the puppet of one of these chieftains. That of to-morrow will be the puppet of another. Present recognition could only be of one of these self-constituted authorities. Recognition of each would be a powerful influence in favor of the partition of China. Effective recognition of one would be a potent interference in domestic affairs. Under these conditions does not that very deference to the Chinese people which is so feelingly invoked require us to withhold rather than to grant recognition?

Further, it is not always remembered that recognition is not an amenity, but a trust. Recognition such as is demanded implies a mutual delegation of the basic responsibilities of government. For a government to delegate its responsibilities to those who lack either the will or the authority or the facilities to discharge those responsibilities is a violation of trust. The present relation is condemned as unreciprocal. Would a mutual arrangement without effective guaranties on China's part be any less so?

It is inevitable that the present system should pass away. Provisional in its very nature and involving an essentially abnormal exercise of foreign power, its perpetuation would prevent that development of Chinese responsi

bility which is the recognized need of the world. The harassed governments of the West are more than willing to rid themselves of these remote jurisdictions. But there is a lively realization on their part, as there is a slumbering, instinctive conviction in the minds of their peoples, that these fundamental responsibilities of government must not lapse. Whatever the cost and whatever the delay, the transfer must be made only to trustworthy hands. Great principles and great interests, interests as legitimate as any in the homeland, are at stake. These settlements, if aggregated, would make a modern nation equal in population and superior in wealth and intelligence to nations now members of the League and eligible to a seat on its Council. No American municipality is governed so well as Shanghai. The wealth that these men have won they have created, and more, very much more, which has inured to the benefit of their Chinese neighbors, millions of whom owe them both livelihood and fortune.

By what right are these things adjudged less sacred here than elsewhere? Who stands to profit by the precipitate surrender of all this to a government whose identity is unestablished and whose existence is doubtful, a government whose only certainty is its incompetence? The rising tide of race consciousness in China at a time when her people are as yet unequipped with adequate organs of government renders extremely difficult the safeguarding of these interests during this trying period of transition. But if the Western Powers are forced to precipitate action, and the great structure of civilization so laboriously reared in the East by missionary and merchant goes down in ruin and possibly in blood, I fear the chief responsibility will rest, not with Young China, but with her doctrinaire partisans in the West.

SHARP, jagged lines stabbed at the sky through fog and smoke; the air was acrid with the bitterness of dirt and oils and rotted, water-soaked wood. Vittoria, leaning on the rail of the incoming steamer, smelled her roses to dispel the odors and shut out what her eyes had seen. Her idea of it all had been far different.

'It's a rotten day,' said Mr. Tempest anxiously. 'I'm afraid it's given you the wrong impression. Generally this is one of the most beautiful harbors in the world.'

Vittoria was ready to admit it; she had not the habit of comparisons, and anyway she was not observant enough to bother. It was a feeling, not an observation; the stab of those mammoth buildings was in her side, not in her eyes.

'Will you receive the reporters in your sitting room?' Tempest began again. He had just been rounding them up, and had left them there in charge of Vittoria's large and noisy crowd of dependents.

She came with him willingly enough. It seemed to be so abysmally unimportant whether she did or not. The fog and drizzle were in her brain, or her heart she could not tell which. In the sitting room Madame Magini, perspiring a vigorous red, was in struggle with the reporters.

'Madonna!' she exclaimed as Vittoria entered. 'Here are men who have never heard of me of me, the

Magini was astonishingly fat, and her little beady eyes looked astonishingly small by comparison with their setting. Her nose was a commanding feature, presiding superciliously over the rest of her face like a cathedral in a slum. Her voice squeaked indignation in oddly assorted Italian and French. The reporters, some ten or twelve of them, of all ages and descriptions, looked at her with considerable alarm.

Vittoria sat down and folded her hands in her lap. She had been prepared for this; there was no flutter of embarrassment about her.

The reporters looked at each other significantly. To most of them she was a species unexpected, legendary: she was she was an opera singer of fame, and she was undeniably beautiful. Her face had the repose, the ageless purity of Greek marble; and her burnished bronze hair, when she removed her hat, clustered at her neck like grapes overripe.

'I make my début on the twelfth of November, as Isolde,' she told them evenly. Her English was the precise, uncolored idiom of the educated foreigner; it was as correct and accentless as a history book.

'Yes, I was born in this country. At Springfield, in the Massachusetts. My father was a violinist in a traveling opera troupe; my mother sang. She

was Italian. He was American. Named Holmar. They are dead.'

With a tranquil, unemotional affection, she paraded her eyes over the indignant figure of Magini, spread across the largest chair in the room.

that I shall not have them? . . . The Metropolitan is a very great house; I am glad to come here. ... Yes, I have heard that my wage is very high. I do not know if it is the highest offered a new singer; I do not care. I am not permitted to say what it is. The contract is for one year; there is an option for five more years.'

'No, I am not married. I never have been. I am thirty-three, and I do not see why I should marry. Perhaps, when I am sixty-five.

'No, I do not disbelieve in marriage. Or believe in it. Or believe or disbelieve in anything. I have enough to do to sing. I have no time for believing or disbelieving in things. . . .

'I do not remember America at all. I was only five years old when I left here. . . . Yes, it is very impressive, the harbor. . . . No, I do not think it is beautiful. It is something, yes; but it is not beautiful. . . . Yes, I shall be here all season. In the spring, Paris and Covent Garden. In the summer, Bayreuth. Here I shall sing Isolde, Iphigénie en Aulide, Sieglinde, Elsa, Elisabeth, Donna Anna, the Contessa in The Marriage of Figaro. Other things, perhaps. . . . I have been singing for ten years. Everywhere. All the Italian houses; German ones, too; French, Spanish. The Scala at Milan is the best house I know.... I know nothing about woman's suffrage. ... I have no pets, but Madame Magini has a cat.... I have forty-one pieces of luggage. ... No, I shall not miss wines very much; but is it certain

They were photographed on the top deck, Vittoria many times, once with Madame Magini and her saffron-colored husband, Artemidoro. Mr. Tempest hovered about, apprehensive, thoughtful; he distrusted this unregulated publicity, like a good Metropolitan

silence was more in keeping with the traditions of the house. When questions about marriage and prohibition were in the air, you never could tell what these singers would say, especially when they were new to the country.

Vittoria went through it all unmoved, and as silent as the circumstances allowed. The mist and the cold would not leave her; the skyline maintained its terrifying gesture. She was in the presence of the totally unfamiliar, the completely new; it depressed without exciting her. She could not be puzzled, for she never asked herself questions; it was only that same deaf pressure on the chest, a crushing of inexplicable foreboding. She could not fear what could not hurt her; but if she had ever known what it was to be afraid, she would have been then, perhaps.

An apartment spacious enough for twenty had been reserved for them at the Ritz; Magini and Artemidoro, with a maid and a voluble, decrepit valet de chambre, one of Magini's innumerable relics, established themselves with much inefficient excitement while Vittoria locked herself wearily into her room and went to sleep.