At Changsha I heard a similar story, but with a tragic side, which one felt exonerated the Chinese for being rather incredulous as to the morality of our civilisation. Changsha, I should explain, is reputed one of the most bigoted cities in China; even at the present moment white women are advised not to walk through the streets. The Hunanese have a bold independent character, which makes them rather hostile to any foreigner or to foreign ways, and I am afraid that the story I am going to repeat will have {78} confirmed them in their conviction that foreigners are undesirable. Two white men belonging to one of the South European races--Greeks, I think--settled themselves down in defiance of treaty rights in Changsha, and at once opened a gambling hell. Very soon they taught the Chinese, who are as a race very addicted to gambling, new and most pernicious forms of that hateful vice. The Governor complained to the Consul; the Consul sent his officer down, accompanied by the police, to arrest the Greeks; the Private Secretary to the Governor informed the Consul of the tragedy that followed. The Consular officer warned the Greeks that they must give up their gambling establishment and go back to Hankow. They said they would not. He told them that if they refused he would arrest them, take them to the boat, and send them down by force to Hankow. They still refused, and he advanced, upon which one of the Greeks shot the officer dead. The Chinese police after their manner vanished, while the Governor's Private Secretary, according to his own account, spent most of the time of the interview under the table. The Greeks, seeing the coast clear, and realising that vengeance must come, took to the open country. The Chinese were told to arrest them if they could. Of course they had no difficulty in finding them, but to arrest them was a different matter. They mobilised two or three regiments, and surrounding the house in which the Greeks had taken refuge, they kept on firing at long range till they judged, from there being no signs of life, that they {79} must have killed them. They then carried off the bodies, but thought it better to describe the incident in an official document as a case of suicide from fear of arrest, lest they should be held responsible for the death of these murderers. The next Greeks that came up the river were sent down with a guard of forty men, and so terrified were the Chinese that they had to put them first-class, as no Chinese would have dared to have travelled with them.