An oceanic lagoon of seventeen square miles, the harbor lies sheltered between mountain ranges to the north and south and is shielded from the open sea by narrow entrances at its east and west ends. Vessels drawing up to thirty-six feet of water can enter through Lei Yue Mun pass at the eastern end of the harbor. Through the same pass, jet airliners approach Kai Tak Airport, roaring between the mountains like rim-rock flyers as they glide down to the long airstrip built on reclaimed land in Kowloon Bay, on the northern side of the harbor. The intangible ramparts of the colony are as solid as its peaks: the sea power of the British and American navies, and the stability of British rule. At their worst, the colony’s overlords have been autocratic, stiff-necked and chilly toward their Chinese subjects. The same British administrators who nobly refused to hand over native criminals for the interrogation-by-torture of the Chinese courts could flog and brand Chinese prisoners with a fierce conviction of their own rectitude. Nevertheless, they brought to China something never seen there before; respect for the law as an abstraction, an objective code of justice that had to be followed even when it embarrassed and discommoded the rulers. Almost from its inception, the colony attracted refugees from China. Many brought capital and technical skills with them, others were brigands and murderers fleeing Chinese executioners. Banking, shipping and insurance services of the colony quickly became the most reliable in Southeast Asia. Macao, in spite of its three-century lead on Hong Kong, was so badly handicapped by its shallow harbor, critical land shortage, and unenterprising government that it sank into a state of suspended antiquity. Hong Kong merchants, eager for new business, kept in close touch with world markets. Labor was cheap and abundant, still it was more liberally paid than in most of the Asiatic countries. Labor unions numbered in the hundreds, but they were split into so many quarreling political factions that they could rarely hope to win a showdown fight against the colony’s business-dominated government, although the Seamen’s Union did obtain many concessions after a long strike in 1922. Notwithstanding the social gulfs between the British, Portuguese, Indian and other national elements in the colony, all of them march arm-in-arm through one great field of endeavor; the desire and the capacity to make money. Hong Kong lives to turn a profit, and its deepest fraternal bond is the Fellowship of Greater Solvency. Motivated by this common purpose, the British and Chinese dwelt together in peaceful contempt during the first fifteen years of the colony’s history, sharing the returns of a fast-growing world trade. The opium traffic resumed as though there had never been a war over it. The only enemy that worried the merchants became the Chinese pirates who preyed on their ships.