Now, so far as actual trading advantages are concerned, it may be said of the British that they hold the highest advantage possible over other nations; that advantage is in the fact that they hold the confidence of the people. No foreigner, be he merchant, {25} missionary, traveller, or official, is trusted in China as is the Britisher. I speak with no intention of hurting the susceptibilities of any one. In trade the Chinese believe in the British, they believe in his goods; in the Revolution the soldiers would congratulate you most heartily if they knew that you were an Englishman, telling you that there is none better in the world. They might be right or wrong, I am merely writing what they were saying, and it is a fair ensample of the general opinion of the common people. But despite this advantage, it is patent to the thoughtful student of Chinese affairs that a great need exists among British merchants as a whole to "wake up." I am a Britisher, am perhaps naturally quick to notice where British merchants fail, where they are outrun in the race for trade in this land of great promise. I know there will be many who will at once ask me to turn to the shipping in Shanghai, in Tientsin, in any of the ports, and notice the predominance of British shipping. I shall be told that Great Britain still controls the bulk of the trade of China, and that there is no need for fear of the future. But there is another side to the story. Go any day to the Bund at Hankow or Shanghai; watch the progress being made also by Japan. Go into the godowns and watch the progress of the little brown men from the land of the Rising Sun and watch their methods; run your eye along the offices whose men work hardest and longest--the Germans; keep yourself informed on the doings of the day in exports and imports, and you will find that, even if he does hold the volume of trade he has held for years, the Britisher by no means advances with new trade as rapidly as his competitors. In the past no nation has done so much towards the true development of China as the British. The British have laid the foundation, have sown the seed, and it is only their due that they should reap the harvest now at hand. But in the period {26} during which the trade of China has so phenomenally advanced the cry has gone up from all quarters that the Britisher is not only losing his grip of the increase of China's trade in her commercial dawn, but literally giving way to the German, and that but a few years will be necessary to prove that Great Britain occupies a position relatively nearer the bottom of the list of nations who have a commercial finger in the pie.