But we are sometimes told that the churches should not be allowed to go on; that one of the conditions of good feeling will be the exclusion of missionaries from China. On this point, I venture three suggestions:-- First,--No administration that can ever be elected in the United States will thus interfere with the liberty of the churches. It will never say, in effect, that arms' manufacturing companies can send agents to Peking and distilleries send drummers to Shanghai, but that the Church of God cannot send devoted, intelligent men and women to found schools and hospitals and printing-presses and to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. It will never say that American gamblers in Tien-tsin and American prostitutes in Hongkong shall be protected by all the might of the American army and navy, but that the pure, high-minded missionary, who represents the noblest motives and ideals of our American life, shall be expatriated, a man without a country. This is, however, a problem for the nation, rather than for the boards. The American missionary went to Asia before his Government did, and until recently he saw very little of the American flag. European nations have protected their citizens, whether they were missionaries or traders. In the United States Senate Mr. Frye once reminded the nation that about twenty years ago England sent an army of 15,000 men down to the African coast, across 700 miles of burning sand, to batter down iron gates and stone walls, reach down into an Abyssinian dungeon and lift out of it one British subject who had been unlawfully imprisoned. It cost England $25,000,000 to do it, but it made a highway over this planet for every common son of Britain, and the words, ``I am an English citizen,'' more potent than the sceptre of a king. And because of that reputation American missionaries have more than once been saved by the intervention of British ministers and consuls who have not forgotten that ``blood is thicker than water.'' Shall we vociferously curse England one day and the next supinely depend upon her representatives to help us out when our citizens are endangered? This is not a question of ``jingoism,'' whatever that may be. It is not a question of making unreasonable complaints to home governments. It is not a question of religion or of missions. It is a question of treaties, of citizenship, of national honour and of self-respect. Let the nation settle it from that viewpoint. The missionary asks no special privileges. He can stand it to go on as before, if the nation can stand it to have him.