How very few people who, unless they rush through in a motor car to Kiangwan and back, or to theatre and back. never see thing of the Hongkew district, realize what an immense amount of harm is being done to the prestige of the white man here by the influx—and it is unfortunately still—increasing—of hordes of the most undesirable nondescripts.
Hidden away in Chinese and semi-Chinese dens up loathsome alleys there are scores, and probably hundreds, of people whom no consulate will recognize and who are almost all criminally inclined. They appear in the Mixed Court for a variety of offences and the police see to it that there is as little of a public spectacle as possible, but—things do happen sometimes which the police cannot help. It was necessary on one occasion for one of these men to be led away handcuffed, under the guard of a Sikh and a Chinese policeman and scores of Chinese surrounded the trio. Now, the educated Magistrate on the bench, the Jawyers' interpreters and court officials, the Chinese police themselves, would know and appreciate the status of such a man. The average Chinese in the street would not. To them he would be just a white man, a foreigner, the same as any other foreigner. Take a highly cultured Chinese and an ordinary shop assistant in his best clothes and how many foreigners could tell the difference between them? There nothing in all this to blame the police for: it is just a dangerous situation which has grown up the aftermath of the war and the troubles in Russia. It is difficult to know what to do to counteract. it, but its adverse effects cannot be doubted or overlooked.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.