IN considering the effects of the operation of this missionary force, we are at once confronted by the complaint of many Chinese that missionaries interfere on behalf of their converts in lawsuits. This complaint has been taken up and circulated by foreign critics until it has become one of the most formidable of the objections to missionary work. The difficulty will be understood when we remember that, though the Chinese are not a warlike people, they are litigious to an extraordinary degree. The struggle for existence in such a densely populated country often results in real or fancied entanglements of rights. So the Chinese are forever disputing about something, and the magistrates and village headmen are beset by clamorous hordes who demand a settlement of their alleged grievances. Naturally the Chinese Christians do not at once outgrow this national disposition. Whether they do or not, their profession of Christianity makes them an easy mark for the greedy and envious. Jealousy and dislike of the native who abandons the faith of his fathers and espouses ``the foreigner's religion'' frequently hale him into court on trumped-up charges and the notorious prejudice and corruption of the average magistrate often result in grievous persecution. The terrified Christian naturally implores the missionary to save him. It is hard to resist such an appeal. But the defendant is not always so innocent as he appears to be, and whether innocent or guilty, the interference of the foreigner irritates both magistrate and prosecutor, while it not infrequently arouses the resentment of the whole community by giving the idea that the Christians are a privileged class who are not amenable to the ordinary laws of the land. When, as sometimes happens, the Christians themselves get that idea and presume upon it, the difficulty becomes acute. Speaking of the Chinese talent for indirection, the Rev. Dr. Arthur H. Smith says:-- ``It is this which makes it so difficult for the most conscientious and discreet missionary to be quite sure that he is in possession of all the needed data in any given case. The difficulty in getting at the bottom facts frequently is that there are no facts available, and, as the pilots say, `no bottom.' Every Protestant missionary is anxious to have his flock of Christians such as fear God and work righteousness, but in the effort to compass this end he not infrequently finds that when endeavouring to investigate the `facts' in any case he is chasing a school of cuttlefish through seas of ink.''[68] [68] ``Rex Christus,'' pp. 103, 107.