"When first your traders came to China it was not at our invitation; yet we received them, if not with enthusiasm, at least with tolerance. So long as they were content to observe our regulations we were willing to sanction their traffic, but always on the condition that it should not disturb our social and political order. To this condition, in earlier days, your countrymen consented to conform, and for many years, in spite of occasional disputes, there was no serious trouble between them and us. The trouble arose over a matter in regard to which you yourselves have hardly ventured to defend your conduct. A considerable part of your trade was the commerce in opium. The use of this drug, we observed, was destroying the health and the morals of our people, and we therefore prohibited the trade. Your merchants, however, evaded the law; opium was smuggled in, till at last we were driven to take the matter into our own hands and to seize and destroy the whole stock of the forbidden drug. Your government made our action an excuse for war. You invaded our territory, exacted an indemnity, and took from us the island of Hong Kong. Was this an auspicious beginning? Was it calculated to impress us with a sense of the justice and fair play of the British nation? Years went on; a petty dispute about the privileges of the flag--a dispute in which we still believe that we were in the right--brought us once more into collision with you. You made the unfortunate conflict an excuse for new demands. In conjunction with the French you occupied our capital and imposed upon us terms which you would never have dared to offer to a European nation. We submitted because we must; we were not a military power. But do you suppose our sense of justice was not outraged? Or later, when every power in Europe, on some pretext or other, has seized some part of our territory, do you suppose because we cannot resist that we do not feel?" These passages, one-sided though they may be, give us some idea of what the Chinese think of Europe, of the politics of the West, and of our civilization as a whole, and we cannot be greatly surprised that the yellow empire looks upon us as its greatest enemy. From the time that our first trading vessels touched the coasts of China, closely followed by men-of-war, the Chinese have been on the losing side, both economically and politically. One great Power after another came upon the scene of action, and seized and occupied provinces, many of them larger than their own European dominions. When a Chinese schoolboy of today studies the map of his country, and considers how much smaller it has become in the course of the last hundred years, how can it fail to make him sad?