The interesting and significant fact is that while this miserable condition of affairs was allowed to drag along in the international settlement, where the white men rule, the Chinese native city, immediately adjoining, was strictly enforcing the anti-opium edicts. The Chinese authorities went about the enforcement in a thoroughly effective manner. The date set for the closing of the dens was May 22, 1907. There was some fear that the closing down might precipitate a riot, and, accordingly, the authorities took measures to keep the populace in hand. Chinese soldiers were placed on guard at the places where crowds would be most likely to gather, the dens were quietly closed, padlocked, and the shutters put up; and red signs, calling attention to the imperial edict prohibiting opium, were pasted up on doors or shutters. It was quite evident that the proprietors of these dens took the enforcement most seriously. Some of them went immediately into other lines of business; others made their places over into tea-houses. [Illustration: IN AN OPIUM DEN, SHANGHAI] [Illustration: OPIUM SMOKING] So at Shanghai the Chinese warfare on the "foreign smoke" was waged earnestly and effectively in the native city. The Chinese authorities closed the dens--permanently, it seems fair to believe. And the only result of their heroic action,--and it is an heroic action to suppress a prosperous and thoroughly established branch of commerce in any city,--the only result was that the opium business went over to the adjoining city of the foreigners, who gladly accepted it, and took the money which had formerly been spent in the native city. The foreigners live wholly outside of and above Chinese law. They have their own strips of land, their own courts, their own local government, all guaranteed to them by the treaties which China has, at one time or another, been forced to sign. When the Chinese first proposed to stamp out opium, these foreigners laughed, and talked about the chronic insincerity of the Chinese government. When the yellow men did stamp out opium in that native city a mile or so away, these foreigners said that it would not be fair to the holders of licenses to close down in the settlement. As I have had occasion to say before, the Chinese are not fools. They grasped the significance of the situation, and spoke out frankly. The local mandarins protested to the settlement council. The native newspapers called attention to it. And all this clear insight into an extraordinary situation and the frank comment on it were communicated, by the routes and the means which I have described earlier in this chapter, to the fifty or seventy-five million Chinese who are directly influenced by conditions at Shanghai. Now, in the light of these facts, in the light of what they see and know, it is time to ask, and to ask with feeling--How can you hope to make those fifty to seventy-five million Chinamen believe that our civilization, with its science, and its