The treaty expressly states that students, without qualification, are to be admitted. But they are required to present a certificate similar in detail to that described for merchants and to undergo a similar examination. But the Immigration Bureau proceeds to further neutralize the treaty by a ruling that a student to be entitled to admission must show that he is “a person (1) who intends to pursue some of the higher branches of study, or who seeks to be fitted for some particular profession or occupation (2) for which facilities of study are not afforded in his own country; (3) for whose support and maintenance in this country, as a student, provision has been made, and (4) who, upon completion of his studies, expects to return to China." And a fifth condition has been added, that during his attendance at college he must not engage in manual labor, although it is well known that many young men in American colleges support themselves in that way.

A provision of the treaty is that Chinese laborers may cross the territory of the United States, en route to a foreign country, under suitable regulations. But without warrant of treaty, or even of law, the Immigration Bureau requires Chinese gentlemen, merchants and other like classes, who desire to pass through the United States, going to or coming from Europe, on arrival at a port of the United States to produce a prepaid through ticket across the continent; and it is required of each person that he give a bond of five hundred dollars that he will make a continuous transit through, and actually depart from, the United States within twenty days; he must furnish three photographs of himself and submit to a carefully prepared description of his person; and when he reaches the port of departure he must submit to another examination of his person and be compared with his photograph. When all this is done and the officer at the port of arrival is notified of his certain departure, his bond is surrendered.

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If allowed, other instances of exactions, not warranted by treaty, applied to Chinese seeking admission to the United States, might be given. The examination to which Chinese are subjected at San Francisco, where most of them apply for admission, is one of their most aggravating experiences. All are required to undergo a very strict examination, even if their certificates are in proper order and duly viséd by the American Consul. During the pendency of the examination the applicants are confined in a wooden shed or loft, not only without comforts but without many of the decent conveniences of life; and this confinement sometimes is extended into weeks and months. The Chinese person on arrival is not permitted to communicate with his friends, he is deprived of the benefit of an attorney, and the examination is conducted by the immigration official alone. The position is the merest travesty of a hearing or trial, and it is not strange that in many cases it results in injustice and great hardship.

The treatment which the Chinese residents have received at the hands of hoodlums, ruffians, race-haters, and mobs has been a disgrace to our civilization; but that has not been so shameful as their treatment by the officials of Federal and local governments. The Boston raid furnishes an illustration. Let me give one

more.

Tom Kim Yung, the military attaché of the Chinese Legation in Washington, was in 1903 sent to San Francisco on a temporary duty. One night, after spending the evening dining with the president of the Chinese Merchants' Association, when returning to his lodgings at the Consulate General, and near that place, he was accosted by a policeman in most indecent language and struck with gross indignity. This resulted in an encounter participated in by another policeman. The attaché was beaten and severely bruised, and finally handcuffed and tied by his queue to a fence until the arrival of a patrol wagon, into which he was

forced and taken to the police station. Here he was kept for some time, until released on bail given by a Chinese merchant, about half past one o'clock at night.

He was held for trial on a charge of assaulting a police officer, and when his diplomatic character was brought to the attention of the chief of police by the consul general, that officer refused to dismiss the charge. The excuse of the policeman for his conduct was that he mistook the attaché for another Chinaman for whom he was on the look-out. The attaché, not being able to secure the dismissal of the charges or any punishment of the policeman, was greatly chagrined; he felt that he had "lost face" with his countrymen; and brooding over what he regarded as his disgrace, he committed suicide.

He was followed to the grave by thousands of his countrymen who regarded themselves as personally outraged. The Secretary of State brought the subject to the attention of the Governor of California, and the latter to the mayor of the city, but no redress was given or punishment inflicted.

The foregoing recital running through a series of years—and it might be greatly enlarged-furnishes some of the reasons for the resentment of the Chinese which is manifesting itself in the boycott of American goods. The laws of Congress and the Bureau regulations have practically nullified the treaties so far as the higher class of Chinese are concerned. I have not discussed those laws and regulations as they affect the Chinese laborers, although as to them they are scarcely less unjust. The laws and regulations and the harsh treatment of Chinese subjects in the United States have been the occasion of frequent and reiterated complaints by the Chinese Legation to the Department of State. That Department has given them a sympathetic hearing and forwarded them from time to time to Congress or the Bureau of Immigration, where they have fallen upon deaf ears.

American merchants and companies engaged in the China trade have in recent years sounded a note of warning without any influence upon Congress. American missionaries have wrought up their denominations to a state of fear for the missionaries and of indignation at the inhumanity of our conduct as a nation.

It is not to our credit as a Christian and liberal-minded people and as a just government that all these complaints, warnings, and appeals have been of no avail, and that our interest and sense of duty could be awakened only when our trade was threatened. Not until the boycott began to be felt was any check placed upon the harsh treatment of and unwarranted discrimination against the Chinese in or seeking admission to our country. The President's order of June last has been effective in bringing about a more reasonable enforcement of the laws and regulations, and has greatly relieved the situation. But the laws of Congress and the regulations to carry them out are still in force, and until they are repealed or modified, the grievance of the Chinese will continue.

President Roosevelt, during his Southern tour in October last, set forth in his Atlanta speech the true remedy for our present unsatisfactory relations with China, when he said:

"We cannot expect China to do us justice unless we do China justice. The chief cause in bringing about the boycott of our goods in China was undoubtedly our attitude towards the Chinese who come to this country. . . . Our laws and treaties should be so framed as to guarantee to all Chinamen, save of the excepted coolie class, the same right of entry to this country, and the same treatment while here, as is guaranteed to citizens of any other nation. By executive action I am as rapidly as possible putting a stop to the abuses which have grown up during many years in the administration of this [exclusion] law. I can do a great deal and will do a great deal even without the action of Congress; but I cannot do all that should be

done unless some action is taken. It is needed in our own interest, and especially in the interest of the Pacific Slope and of the South Atlantic and Gulf States. . . . The action I ask is demanded by considerations that are higher than mere interest, for I ask it in the name of what is just and right. America should take the lead in establishing international relations on the same basis of honest and upright dealing which we regard as essential between man and man.”

The same view is also urged by the President in his annual message to Congress now in session. If Congress shall take the action during the present session which is indicated by the President as just and right, and called for in the interest of international comity, the boycott will speedily come to an end. If, on the other hand, the present legislation is continued in force, the boycott of American goods in China will not only continue, but will grow in extent and vigor. And the danger is that it will not only affect our commerce, but extend to all other American interests.

The churches of the United States of almost all denominations have entered

upon

the mission work in China. Duty and opportunity seem to call them to enlarged efforts in that great Empire. But that work can speedily be brought to an end, not by proscription or persecution, but simply by the Chinese government applying to American citizens in China the same laws and regulations that are now applied in the United States to Chinese subjects. And by the same means an effective stop can be put to all other American enterprises in China. By such regulations all American bankers, capitalists, railroad contractors, builders, and engineers, mining experts and operatives, manufacturers and machinists, missionaries and physicians, would be barred out of that Empire, because such classes of Chinese are by the laws of Congress, as now interpreted and enforced, excluded from the United States. And no American merchant, student, or traveler could enter China without being submitted to conditions so humiliating that they would be spurned by every self-respecting American. It can hardly be believed that Congress will, by its inaction, bring such misfortunes upon our commerce and our citizens. and such disgrace upon itself.

A preface is more than an author can resist, for it is the reward of his labours. When the foundation stone is laid, the architect appears with his plans, and struts for an hour before the public eye. So with the writer in his preface he may have never a word to say, but he must show himself for a moment in the portico, hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanour. - ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, An Inland Voyage.

GOOD old Jeremy Taylor, in the preface to A Dissuasive from Popery, tells the story of a "Roman Gentleman [who] had to please himself written a book in Greek and presented it to Cato; he desired him to pardon the faults of his expressions, since he wrote in Greek, which was a tongue in which he was not perfect Master. Cato told him he had better then to have let it alone, and written in Latine, by how much it is better not to commit a fault then to make apologies. For if the thing be good, it needs not to be excus'd, if it be not good, a crude apologie will do nothing but confess the fault, but never make amends." Whereupon the Lord Bishop of Down, pointing the moral of his own tale, devotes eleven pages to his prefatory apologies.

The case is typical; for forewords, be they the poetic prologue of the drama, or the prose preliminaries of philosopher, poet, essayist, or novelist, are not infrequently fraught with more danger to the author than is the book which they would excuse. Hours of Idleness, had it appeared anonymously, might have won at least the safety of oblivion, and the noble author might have been spared more than one mauvais quart d'heure. But young George Gordon, Lord Byron, wrote a preface apologizing for his poetry on the score of his youth and inexperience, and quite went out of his way to provide a peg for the Edinburgh reviewer to hang

a gibe on. "As an extenuation of this offence" (the publication of the poems) remarks Brougham in the Edinburgh, "the noble author is peculiarly forward in pleading minority. . . . Much stress is laid upon it in the preface, and the poems are connected with this general statement of the case by particular dates substantiating the age at which each was written. Now the law upon the point of minority, we hold to be perfectly clear. It is a plea available only to the defendant; no plaintiff can offer it as a supplementary ground of action. Thus, if any suit could be brought against Lord Byron for the purpose of compelling him to put into court a certain quantity of poetry; and if judgment were given against him; it is highly probable that an exception would be taken, were he to deliver for poetry the contents of this volume. To this, he might plead minority; but as he now makes voluntary tender of the article, he hath no right to sue, on that ground, for the price in good current praise, should the goods be unmarketable. This is our view of the law on the point, and, we dare to say, so will it be ruled. Perhaps however, in reality, all that he tells us about his youth is rather with a view to increase our wonder than to soften our censures. He possibly means to say, 'See how a minor can write! This poem was actually composed by a young man of eighteen, and this by one of only sixteen!""

O acrid Brougham! O writhing Noble Minor! One can imagine the young poet wishing that he had been compelled, like exiled Ovid, to say: Sine me, liber, ibis in urbem.

No less fatal was Keats's deprecatory plea when Endymion was offered to the world. "Knowing within myself,” he

says, "the manner in which this poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it public. - What manner I mean will be quite clear to the reader, who must perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished." On this boyish apology the fiend of the Quarterly seizes with avidity; but it is a subsequent admission which seals the author's doom. "The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sensible are not of such completion as to warrant their passing the press.' Here indeed is an opening in the victim's wavering guard. "Je touche," cries Mr. Reviewer-Cyrano, triumphantly. "Thus 'the two first books' are, even in his [Keats's] own judgment, unfit to appear, and 'the two last' are, it seems, in the same condition, and as two and two make four, and as that is the whole number of books, we have a clear and, we believe, a very just estimate of the entire work.”

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Nor is it unusual for the author quite unconsciously to suggest in his prefatory remarks the basis for the most deservedly severe criticism of his work. The creator of Peter Bell and the Idiot Boy never came to realize that he was programmeridden, and that much of his best writing was done when he was most oblivious of his thesis. The preface to the Lyrical Ballads was not only an epoch-making pronunciamento; it was also a confession of a mechanical method. To Wordsworth's way of thinking the poems of the edition of 1798 were not primarily poems; they were experiments, written "chiefly with a view to ascertain how far " (in his now famous phrase)" the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure."

Just two years before the future English Laureate pronounced his arduous programme, a Scottish poet brought to its troubled close a life whose ideal had been much the same, who had done because he could not help it what WordsVOL. 97 - NO. 1

worth did because it could be done. Oddly the prefatory explanations contrast. "None of the following works," Burns had written in the preface to the collection of 1786, "were ever composed with a view to the press. To amuse myself with the little creations of my own fancy, amid the toils and fatigues of a laborious life; to transcribe the various feelings, the loves, the griefs, the hopes, the fears in my own breast; to find some kind of counterpoise to the struggles of a world, always an alien scene, a task uncouth to the poetical mind, these were my motives for courting the muses, and in these I found poetry its own reward."

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But if the preface has occasionally served no higher purpose than to furnish a theme for the "chorus of insolent reviewers" or to point out the weak spots in the champion's armor, it has also at times thrown more than one fascinating sidelight upon the personality of the author. It has not infrequently been a medium of naïve self-confession, as when Charles Kingsley, setting out to write an historical novel of fifth-century Christianity, confesses to his somewhat prudish public that though he has endeavored "to sketch the age, its manners, and its literature" as he found them, his Anglican conscience has rather balked at telling the whole truth. "Oh, don't be shocked at this or that," so Mr. Gosse rather flippantly interprets the author's preface. "It is nothing to what I could tell you if I chose. You think that Orestes was a very wicked man, do you? Shall I make your flesh creep by explaining,but no, I won't; your dear little Early Victorian ears would n't stand it."

Or, to make a leap back over the centuries, one finds Lord Berners, in the prologue to his translation of "The Hystorye of the moost noble and valiaunt Knyght Arthur of lytell Brytayne," quaintly admitting that he set out to translate the book before he had read it, and that, as he proceeded, he had been so staggered by its "unpossibilities" that he had more than once been of a mind to lay it down.