Some people who are ignorant of the real situation in China are being misled by an anonymous little book entitled ``Letters From a Chinese Official.'' The author insists that Anglo-Saxon institutions are far inferior to the institutions of China. He declares that ``our religion (Chinese) is more rational than yours, our morality higher and our institutions more perfect,'' and that there is less real happiness in Europe and America than in China. As for Christianity, he regards it as quite impracticable. He holds that Confucianism is feasible and that Christianity is not, and much more to the same effect. There is strong internal evidence that the author is not a Chinese at all, but a cynical European. At any rate, the book is an ex parte statement of the most glaring kind, omitting the good in Europe and America and the bad in China. One who has visited the Celestial Empire gasps when he reads that the Chinese houses are ``cheerful and clean,'' that the Chinese live the life of the mind and the spirit to a far higher degree than the Christian peoples of the West, and that Chinese life has a dignity and peace and beauty which Europe cannot equal. ``Such silence! Such sounds! Such perfume! Such colour!'' the author rhapsodizes. Bishop Graves, of Shanghai, who has spent a quarter of a century in China and who is therefore presumably competent to speak, declares: ``Far be it from me to belittle the beauty of the Chinese landscape; but why did he not leave out that about the perfume? Why, you can smell China out at sea! However, it is just as easy to imagine the perfume as the rest of it, while you are writing. . . . Exaggeration is the most conspicuous note of these `Letters.' Any one who has not seen China can test whether this book is true to fact by comparing it with any narrative of sober travel, and if he happens to live in China, his own nose and eyes are a sufficient witness. . . . The writer takes the worst of our morals, the weakest of our religion, the most debasing of our industrial conditions, the most pernicious of our vices, and against them he sets not the best that China can show, but an exaggerated picture which is false to fact. This is not argument but trickery, because it presumes on the fact that one's readers will know no better.'' Indeed, the Rev. Dr. C. H. Fenn, who has resided in Peking for ten years, writes that he cannot believe that the author of ``Letters from a Chinese Official'' is a sincere man. He continues: