"Taken asa whole the foreigners would jump at the chance.. There! [would of course be a great howl at giving up their civie improvements; their parks and gardens, but to: the foreigner these are only expressions of their idle hours any way. The foreigner seethes in his mind for jon, Factory smoke "is far Detter to his eyes than green gardens and well—trimmed shrubbery. A lot of them look fat and lazy—and they are, because we have tied them up s0 tightly that they are doomed to ting some way to pass the thine in their narrow confines. But once sive them a chance to get out and you will find them leaving their leisurely games and spending their hours in active superintending of ines, factories and everything vat will then be open to them. And they will be happier in the grime ang dust of whirling machinery than to their pongee suits and white flannel attire."
"But how would Shanghai be cov ered?" broke in the young man with the very question for which the old man had been waiting. Lao Goo smiled sweetly:
"If the transaction were to be ace complished at the present moment, the government of Shanghai. would be a certain individual who ig make ing quite a name for himself. His Excellency Marshal Sun Chuan fang'
me of Make-Believe The young man made no reply. Lao Goo went on:
"You have been enjoying your game of make-believe, It would be 0 nice and fine if the Chamber of Commerce or the Student organi" zations could control Shangh always refusing to se0 that at once }you would become subject to the very bowers from which your residence in Shanghai has been an escape. You have seen of Into that, when it comes cons: ructivenest," neither Chamber of Commerce nor Student organizations have been al to accomplish anything. As strike organizers and fomenters of anti" foreign feeling they were superb bat—" and the old man completed kis sentence with a disdainful wave of i's thin cand. A moment wert on:
"Public opinion" and he pointed toa pile of foreign papers and magazines near by "is a strangely potent thing. Two years ago oF even less the opinions I find in these magazines, especially of England and America, would have been re= ceived by the foreign population of Saanghai with derisive laughter, Under the steady pressure of opinion from their own home lands, their nly support and backing, they were forced to think as they have never bought before. They have been Surprised at their own mental factions, and what had been only a more possibility of the remote future has become a strong probability of their own life time. I am free to confess that their former stand was wiser and that they are far better aware of what is best for Shangh both foreign ang Chinese popula tions, than those who view the problem from across the seas, but their hands will be forced by their own people.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.