Just now when China is so much in the public eye it is of interest to note what Ellen N. La Mottie has to tell us of how China is parceled out and made subservient to the Greater European Powers. We append below from her recent book "Peking Dust," published by The Century Co., New York.-The Editor. H ERE we are in Peking the beautiful Barbaric Capital of China. For Peking is the capital of Asia, of the whole Orient, the center of the stormy politics of the far East. Peking is not a commercial city, not a business center; it is not filled with drummers or traveling men or small fry of that kind, such as you find in Shanghai and lesser places. It is the diplomatic and political center of the Orient, and here are the people who are at the top of things, no matter how shady the things. At least it is the top man in the concern who is here to promote its interests. Here are the big concession-hunters of all nationalities, with headquarters in the hotel, ready to sit tight for a period of weeks or months or as long as it may take to wheedle or bribe or threaten the Chinese Government into granting them what they wish-a railroad, a bank, a mine, a treaty port. The Western nations are in accord, and the Orient-China-belongs to them. of influence at work came about in this wise: After we had spent two or three weeks in Korea, we took the train from Seoul to Peking, a two days' journey. In these exciting days it is hard to do without newspapers, and at Mukden, where we had a five-hour wait, we came across a funny little sheet called "The Manchuria Daily News." It was a nice little paper; that is, if you are sufficiently cosmopolitan to be emancipated from American standards. It was ten by fifteen inches in size, comfortable to hold, at any China on the ground that the Sino-American railway loan agreement recently concluded, infringes upon their acquired rights. The Russian contention is that the construction of the railway from Fengchen to Ninghshia conflicts with the 1899 Russo-Chinese Secret Treaty. The British point out that the HangchowWenchow railway under scheme is a violation of the Anglo-Chinese Treaty re Human and Kwanghsi, and that the proposed railway constitutes a trespass on the British preferential right to build with the immense interior provinces of China these sunken roads and the rivers. with a tremendous war on their hands, draining all their resources of both time and money, yet able to keep a sharp eye on China to see that she doesn't get any improvements that are not of their making. And after the war how many years will it be before they are sufficiently recovered financially to undertake such an expenditure? China will just have to wait patiently. On each side of the rocking railway dignity at the rate of two miles an hour! Just then we passed a procession of camels, and for a moment I forgot all about the article in "The Manchuria Daily News." Who wouldn't seeing camels on the landscape! A whole long caravan of them, several hundred, all heavily laden, and moving in slow, majestic War's Gifts of Words By Warwick James Price In this thoughtful and painstaking compilation, Warwick James Price shows how our vocabulary has been enlarged and our language, in many instances, enriched by the new words coined during the war. These word-makers in seeking to express themselves, have realized that henceforth and to all time heroic deeds are now our Epic.-The Editor. S PEAK plain English. Putting up a barrage like that all 'round what you mean! Camouflage gets across to deceive Boches, but don't dig in when it's only me." Nothing extenuate nor aught set down imagined, this veritable behind-thecounter comment proclaims one result of the great war. New ways and policies the world over have brought new words and phrases. If it has always been so with a single invention, how much more with twenty-five nations wrapped in a struggle threatening civilization itself? And not new words only; new content has been read into old ones, till old has become new. The nomenclature of geography itself can never be the same again. France, once held by a much speaking minority to be suggestive of not less than decadence, is now a synonym at once for unyielding steadiness and uplifting inspiration. The vivacity we knew has been found no stronger in the people than a miraculous cheeriness; if we were not surprised at their elan, we have been amazed by their calm endurance. Belgium? Aside from the mental picture which the name calls up, a picture of horhors long drawn out and heroism beyond measure, the word promises to give us a verb as eloquent as awkward. We may never come to say "to Belgiumize," but we were saying "Venetia was near being made another Belgium," and none mistook the meaning. And Rheims and Louvain, which once connoted the arts and treasures of mind and spirit, now stand types to all men for those arts and treasures desecrated by gross materialism. The Marne is no longer just a peaceful river but a rallying cry like Thermopylae. Who now thinks of Gallipoli as a peninsula, scarce known save to Levantine travelers? It is a glorious blunder, a magnificent mistake, a forlorn hope failing of brilliant success only by the narrowest of margins-yet not so narrow as to leave no room for heroes' graves. That Jutland, which once told of faint, forgotten, faroff Alfred and Canute, has been written down the heading for yet another chapter in the naval annals that shall stir man's blood through years to come. Even Enden shall no longer be index merely to an East Friesland port of gabled houses and frequent fairs, but takes its place along with Bon Homme Richard and Alabama in the chronicle of privateering gallantry-a gallantry so genuine as to show the traditional exception by which one proves the rule of German maritime beastliness. There is, too, a whole verbal phalanx of words yesterday quite specific in meaning but now so general as to approach the generic. A "push" or a "drive" takes on a military background of disciplined effort. A "Prussian," for generations now unborn, will imply a human as utterly untrustworthy and as |