In the meanwhile the tide of Japanese immigration was daily rising higher and higher as to quantity, but the friends of Japan would certainly like to think that the people who came could have represented only her worst classes. This is not the place, nor are missionaries the people to animadvert upon them or their conduct; nor perhaps did it seem possible with the war on their hands at first, and a hostile native people to keep in check later, for the few Japanese officials to look into the cases brought before them, and deal out justice to their own offending countrymen. But I do say that had they been able to do so, their task in Korea would be an easier one to-day, for Koreans are a long-suffering people. Moreover, when loud complaints concerning the Koreans’ unwillingness to yield to “legally constituted authority” (?) are heard, let the reader bear in mind that this same “legally constituted authority” seldom, if ever, so far as the writer is aware, has protected the Korean in his rights, or made him safe and inviolate in his home, when a home was left to him. We are not accusing the Japanese. They have undertaken a difficult task, in which older and more civilized, more Christian nations have failed, and when we look at Poland and elsewhere, we do not see that they are more to be blamed than the illustrious examples they have followed, but we do say, “Do not judge the Korean too hardly if he rises in self defense to do what he can to make reprisals on invaders and to defend his own rights.” In connection with the laying of the railroads, large tracts of some of the best land in the country were practically confiscated, and in Seoul large blocks of the most valuable property in the city were taken at a merely nominal price, and hundreds of people lost practically all they had in the world. In the north, where soldiers were quartered on Koreans, many of the women, whose custom it is never to be seen by strangers, fled to the mountain recesses at a most inclement season and incurred untold suffering. Still the Koreans bore all these trials with remarkable patience and few complaints. Many, however, of the malcontents and those who had suffered loss joined the robbers, and large bands made frequent and destructive raids upon the smaller towns and villages, adding to the general distress of the poor people who actually had no one to look to but the missionaries and Americans whom they regarded as their only friends, who could do little enough, alas, to help, but who could point them to God who pities the helpless, and bid them hope in Him.