And in the times through which we have just passed, it is pardonable for foreigners, except those who have made the real study of China a serious matter, to believe that China is getting more and more to love the foreigner. I believe that she is--but the love comes slowly, slowly indeed. My personal opinion is that to-day, not perhaps less than in 1900, there are many places in China where the unveneered feeling of the Chinese towards the foreigner has not changed. But with that, at present, I can have nothing to do, and I trust that this Revolution will not unfold to us further stories--such as had to be told in Sianfu in Shensi last winter--that will make sad reading. China has gained, and is still fast gaining, strength in naval and military strategy, knowledge in education, in art, in science, in commerce, in all that she has set her heart upon from outside. But by the policy of conservatism, that "China for the Chinese" policy, a great majority of her _literati_ are weakening her from the inside--and to such an extent that she may yet have to eat humble bread. For as the disturbances in Szechuen have so forcefully proved to the world, China has not by any means succeeded in {246} putting her own house in order, and the Revolution has given us another overwhelming truth. If the reader will turn to a map of China, he will find that perhaps one-third, certainly one-fourth, of the areas of the provinces of Western China, and much territory farther north, are marked "unsurveyed," occupied for the most part by unconquered and independent and semi-independent tribes of people. And herein lies the danger zone of what I would characterise as the greatest of China's hidden menaces. Sun Yat Sen's greatest enemy, Yuan Shih K'ai's greatest enemy--or "the greatest enemies" of any particular faction of the Government which will become paramount--the peculiarities of which are not known to a dozen men, it is a menace which China herself knows little of. I am fully aware that my contention will open up entirely new ground. The question of the possibility of the Chinese Government having been given such trouble as she underwent in Szechuen by the aboriginals of interior provinces has never been broached, so far as my memory serves me, in any of the literature dealing with China's reform during the last decade. I am aware that I shall spring upon the ordinary student of China's affairs a problem he may wriggle out of by stigmatising as unimportant, for the world's manner of dealing with China is with those things seen on the political surface only. Indeed, this is the greatest error in literature upon China. But I am not speaking without first-hand knowledge. After having travelled some seven thousand miles in China, in parts often where no other foreigner has ever entered, and having lived for several months out in the wilds where none other than the missionary could have contact--so that none