Three great Flash-lights of Failure stand out in the Far East and the Oriental world to-day; one being the failure of a race to survive, another being the failure of the world to understand that Shantung is the Holy Land and not the appendix of China; this sacred shrine of the Chinese which has so carelessly and listlessly been given over to Japan; and the third being Japan's failure to understand that methods of barbarism from the Dark Ages will not work in a modern civilization.

"Why are they making all this fuss over Shantung?" an acquaintance of mine said to me just before I left America. "Isn't it just a sort of an appendix of China, after all? If I were the Chinese, I'd forget Shantung and go on to centralize and develop what I had."

That was glibly said, but the fact which the statement leaves out of reckoning is that Shantung is the very heart and soul of China instead of being the appendix.

The average American has so often thought of China just as China; a great, big, indefinite, far-off nation of four hundred million people, always stated in round numbers, that Shantung doesn't mean much to us. Yes, but it means much to China.

It means about the same as if some nation should come along and take New England from us; New England, the seat of all our most sacred history, the beginning of our national life, the oldest of our traditions, the burial-place of our early founders, the seat of our religious genesis. I don't believe that many folks in New England would desire to be called an appendix of the United States.

So one of the things that I was determined to do when I went to China was to go from one end of Shantung to the other, talking with coolies, officials, old men and young men, students, and those who can neither read nor write; missionaries and soldiers; natives and foreigners; to see just what importance Shantung is to China as a whole.

The first thing I discovered was that it has about forty million people living within the limits of the peninsula, close to half the population of the United States. Does that sound as if it might be China's appendix? You wouldn't think so if you saw the cities, roads and fields of this great stretch of land literally swarming with human beings, and every last one of them, as busy as ants.

I rode one whole day across the peninsula. I happened to be traveling with a man from Kansas. He was a man interested in farming and wheat-growing. For hundreds of miles we had been passing through land that was absolutely level and every inch of it cultivated. I had been saying to myself over and over again, "Why, it's exactly like our Middle West Country."

Then much to my astonishment this Kansas man turned to me, and said, "Did it ever occur to you that these fields of Shantung look just like Kansas?"

"Yes, it has just occurred to me this minute," I responded.

Then the wife of the Kansas man said, "I have been shutting my eyes and trying to imagine that I was in Kansas, it's so much like home."

"And say, man, but a tractor on those fields would work wonders," added a portion of William Allen White's reading constituency.

And that is exactly how Shantung strikes an American when he has ridden all day through its great stretches of level fields. He can easily imagine himself riding through Kansas for a day.

My first visit to Shantung was at Tsingtao, the headquarters of the German concession and now of the Japanese concession. I spent a day there, and took photographs of the wharves and town. On the wharves were still standing hundreds of boxes marked with German names and the inevitable phrase "Made in Germany." Those boxes were mute reminders of the evacuation of one nation from a foreign soil. But standing side by side with these boxes were also other hundreds, already being shot into Shantung in a steady stream; and these boxes have a new trademark printed in every case in English and Japanese, "Made in Japan."

I spent several days in Tsinanfu and Tientsin, two great inland cities, and more than a week in cruising about through Shantung's little towns, its villages and its sacred spots.

I heard of its mines and of its physical wealth. But the world already knows of that. The world already knows that this physical wealth of mines and raw material was what made it look good to Germany and Japan. But the thing that impressed me was its spiritual wealth.

The thing that makes Shantung attractive to the Japanese, of course, is not the spiritual wealth, as the world well knows. Perhaps the Japanese have never considered the latter any more than the Germans did; but the one thing that makes it most sacred to the Chinese, who are, after all, a race of idealists, is its treasuries of spiritual memories and shrines.In the first place, many Chinese will tell you that it is the "cradle of the Chinese race." I am not sure that histories will confirm this statement. And I am also not sure that that makes any difference as long as the idea is buried in the heart of the Chinese people. A tradition often means as much to a race as a fact. And the tradition certainly is well established that Shantung is the birthplace of all Chinese history. So that is one of the deeply rooted spiritual facts that makes Shantung sacred to the Chinese.

The second spiritual gold mine is that one of its cities, Chufu, is the birthplace and the last resting-place of the sage Confucius. And China is literally impregnated with Confusian philosophy and Confucian sayings.

I took a trip to this shrine in order to catch some of the spiritual atmosphere of the Shantung loss. The trip made it necessary to tramp about fifteen miles coming and going through as dusty a desert as I ever saw, but that was a trifle compared with the thrill that I had as I stood at last before the little mound about as high as a California bungalow; the mound that held the dust of this great Chinese sage. During the war I stood before the grave of Napoleon in France. Before I went to France I visited Grant's tomb. I have also stood many times beside a little mound in West Virginia, the resting-place of my mother, and I think that I know something of the sacredness of such experiences to a human heart, but somehow the thrill that came to me on that January morning, warm with sunlight, spicy with winter cold, produced a feeling too deep for mere printed words to convey.

"If we feel as we do standing here on this sacred spot, think of how the Chinese feel toward their own sage!" said an old missionary of the party.

"Yes," added another, "and remember that the Chinese revere their ancestors and their sages and their shrines more than we ever dream of doing. Any grave is a sacred spot to them, so much so that railroads have to run their trunk lines for miles in a detour to avoid graves. These Chinese are idealists of the first water. They live in the past, and they dream of the future."

"When you get these facts into your American heads," added a third member of the party, not without some bitterness, "then you will begin to know that the Chinese do not estimate the loss of Shantung in terms of mineral wealth."

At Chufu, the resting-place of Confucius, there is also the spot of his birth, and this too is most sacred to the Chinese nation. We visited both places. I think that I never before quite realized just what the loss of Shantung meant to these Chinese until that day, unless it was the next day, when we climbed the sacred mountain Taishan, which is also in Shantung.

"It is the oldest worshiping-place in the world," said the historian of the party. "There is no other spot on earth where continuous worship has gone on so long. Here for more than twenty centuries before Christ was born men and women were worshiping. Emperors from the oldest history of China down to the present time have all visited this mountain to worship. Confucius himself climbed the more than six thousand steps to worship here."

"Yes," said another missionary historian, "and this mountain is referred to twelve separate times in the Chinese classics, and great pilgrimages were made here as long ago as two centuries before Christ."

That day we climbed the mountain up more than six thousand stone steps, which are in perfect condition and which were engineered thousands of years ago by early worshipers.

The only climb with which I can compare that of Mt. Taishan is that of Mt. Tamalpais overlooking San Francisco. The climb is about equal to that. The mountain itself is about a mile in height, and the climb is a hard one to those who are unaccustomed to mountain-climbing, and yet thousands upon thousands climb it every year after pilgrimages from all over China.We climbed to the top of Taishan, and saw the "No-Character Stone" erected by Emperor Chin, he who tried to drive learning out of China hundreds of years ago. We saw the spot on which Confucius stood, and glimpsed the Pacific Ocean, ninety miles away, on a clear day. It was a hard climb; but, when one stood on the top of this, the most sacred mountain of all China, he began to understand the spiritual loss that is China's when her worshiping-place is in the hands of aliens.

"And don't forget that Mencius, the first disciple of Confucius, was born and died in Shantung, too, when you are taking census of the spiritual values of Shantung to the Chinese," was a word of caution from the old missionary who was checking up on my facts for me. He had been laboring in China for a quarter of a century.

"And don't forget that the Boxer uprising originated in Shantung, and don't forget that it is called, and has been for centuries, 'the Sacred Province' by the Chinese. It is their 'Holy Land.' And don't forget that, from Shantung, coolies went to South Africa in the early part of this century and that the Chinese from Shantung were the first to get in touch with the western world. And don't forget that nine-tenths of the coolies who went to help in the war in France were from Shantung!" he added with emphasis. This was a thing that I well knew, for I had, only a few weeks before this, seen two thousand coolies unloaded from the Empress of Asia at Tsingtao.

No, Shantung is not an appendix of China, as many Americans suppose; but it is the very heart and soul of China. It is China's "Holy Land." It is the "Cradle of China." It is the "Sacred Province of China." It is the shrine of her greatest sage. It is the home of "the oldest worshiping-place on earth." It is because of its spiritual values that China is unhappy about the loss of Shantung, and not because of its wealth of material things.

The failure of the world to understand what Shantung means to China and the failure of Japan to understand that they cannot for many years stand out against the indignation of the entire world in continuing to keep Shantung is one of the great spiritual failures of the Far East in our century.

The second great failure is the tragic failure of an entire race of people; that of the Ainu Indians of Japan.

It is a pathetic thing to see a human race dying out; coming to "The End of the Trail." But I was determined to see them, in spite of the fact that people told me I would have to travel from one end of Japan to the other; and then cross four hours of sea before I got to Hokkaido, the most northern island of Japan, where lived the tattered remnants of this once noble race.

The name of this dying race is pronounced as if it were spelled I-new with a long I.

These are the people who inhabited Japan before the present Japanese entered the land from Korea and drove them, inch by inch, back and north and west across Japan. It was a stubborn fight, and it has lasted many centuries; but to-day they have been driven up on the island of Hokkaido, that northern frontier of Japan where the overflow of Japan is pouring at the rate of four thousand a year, making two million to date and only about fifty thousand of them Ainus.

"Are they like our American Indians in looks, since their history is so much like them?" I asked my missionary friend.

"Wait until you see them, and decide for yourself. I know very little about American Indians."

So one morning at three o'clock, after traveling for two days and nights from one end of Japan to the other, and then crossing a strait between the Japan Sea and the Pacific Ocean to the island, we climbed from our train, and landed in a little country railroad station.

It was blowing a blizzard, and the snow crashed into our faces with stinging, whip-like snaps.

I was appointed stoker for the small stove in the station while the rest of the party tried to sleep on the benches arranged in a circle, huddled as close as they could get to the stove.

We were the first party of foreigners of this size that had ever honored the village with a visit. And in addition to that we had come at an unearthly hour.

Who but a group of insane foreigners would drop into a town at three o'clock in the morning with a blizzard blowing? Either we were insane, or we had some sinister motives. Perhaps we were making maps of the seacoast.

And before daylight half of the town was peeking in through the windows at us. Then the policemen came. They were Japanese policemen, and did not take any chances on us. Even after our interpreter had told them that we were a group of scientists who had come to visit the Ainus they still followed us around most of the morning, keeping polite track of our movements.

About five o'clock that morning, as I was trying to catch a cat-nap, the newsboys of the village came to get the morning papers which had come in on the train on which we had arrived. They unbundled the papers in the cold station; their breath forming clouds of vapor; laughing and joking as they unrolled, folded and counted the papers; and arranged their routes for morning delivery.It took me back to boyhood days down in West Virginia. I did the same thing as these Japanese boys were doing. I, too, arose before daylight, climbed out of bed, and went whistling through the dark streets to the station where the early morning trains dumped off the papers from the city. I, too, along with several other American boys of a winter morning, breathed clouds of vapor into the air, stamped my feet to keep them warm, and whipped my hands against my sides. I, too, unwrapped the big bundles of papers, and did it in the same way in which these Japanese boys did, by smashing the tightly bound wrappers on the floor until they burst. I, too, counted, folded, put in inserts, arranged my paper-route and darted out into the frosty air with the snow crunching under my feet. How universal some things are. The only difference was that these boys were dressed in a sort of buccaneer uniform. They had on high leather boots, and belts around their coats that made them look as if they had stepped out of a Richard Harding Davis novel. But otherwise they went through the same processes as an American boy in a small town.

When the vanguard of villagers had come to inspect us, they at first tried to talk Russian to us. They had never seen any other kind of foreigners. They had never seen Americans in this far-off island.

When daylight came, we started out on a long tramp to the Ainu villages. They were a mile or two away on the ocean. These people always build near the sea if they can. Fishing is one of their main sources of food.

We spent the day in their huts. They live like animals. A big, square hut covered with rice straw and thatch, with a fence of the same kind of straw running around the house, forms the residence. The only fire is in the middle of the only room, and this consists of a pile of wood burning on a flat stone or piece of metal in the center. There is no chimney in the roof, and not even an opening such as the American Indians had in the tops of their tepees. I do not know how they live. The smoke finds its way gradually through cracks in the walls and roofs. One can hardly find a single Ainu whose eyes are not ruined. The smoke has done this damage.

The only opening in their houses besides the door is one north window, and it is never closed. In fact, there is no window. It is only an opening.

"Why is that? I'd think they would freeze on a day like this," I said to the guide.

"They keep it that way all winter, and it gets a good deal below zero here," he said."But why do they do it?" old Shylock demanded.

"It is part of their religion. They believe that the god comes in that window. They want it open, so that he can come in whenever he wishes. It offends them greatly when you stick your head through that window."

Pat tried it just to see what would happen, just like a man who looks into the barrel of a gun, or a man who takes a watch apart, or wants to hit a "dud" with a hammer just to see whether it is a dud. The result was bad. There was a sudden series of outlandish yells from the household. I think that every man, woman and child, including the dogs, of which there were many, started at once. I wonder now how Pat escaped alive, and only under the assumption that "the good die young" can I explain his escape.

I wanted some arrows to take to America as souvenirs; and, when an old Indian pulled out a lot of metal arrows on long bows with which he had killed more than a hundred bears, I was not satisfied. They were not the kind of arrows I wanted.

"What kind are you looking for?" I was asked.

"Flint arrow-heads," I responded.

"Why, man, these Indians have known the use of metals for five hundred years. The stone age with them is half a thousand years in the past."

"Have they a history?" I wanted to know.

My interpreter, who has much knowledge of these things, having worked among them for years, said, "All of the Japanese mythology is centered about the battles that took place when these Indians were driven out of Japan proper step by step."

I was surprised to find that they were white people compared with the Japanese who were their conquerors. There are other marked differences. The Ainus are broad between the eyes instead of narrow as are the Japanese. They are rather square-headed like Americans as compared with the oval of the Japanese face. They do not have markedly slant eyes, and they are white-skinned. They might feel at home in any place in America. I have seen many old men at home who look like them, old men with beards. This came as a distinct surprise to me.

At each house, just in front of the ever-open window of which I have spoken, there is a little crude shrine. It is more like a small fence than anything that I know, a most crude affair made of broken bamboo poles. Flowers and vines are planted here to beautify this shrine, and every pole has a bear-skull on it. The more bear-skulls you have, the safer you are and the more religious you have become.

Pat was sacrilegious enough to steal a skull in order to get the teeth, which he wanted as souvenirs. I was chagrined and shocked at Pat's lack of religious propriety. However, I was enticed into accepting one of the teeth after Pat had knocked them out and stolen them.

"How do they worship bears and kill them at the same time?" I queried the guide.

"That's a part of the worship. They kill the bear, slowly singing and chanting as they kill him. They think that the spirit of every bear that they kill comes into their own souls. That's why they kill so many. That seventy-year-old rascal over there has killed a hundred. He is a great man in his tribe."

"If I was a bear," commented Pat, "I'd rather they wouldn't worship me. That's a funny way to show reverence to a god. I'd rather be their devil and live than be their god and die." Pat is sometimes loquacious. "They dance about the poor old bear as they kill him. One fellow will hurl an arrow into his side, and then cry out, 'O spirit of the great bear-god, come enter into me, and make me strong and brave like you! Come, take up thine abode in my house! Come, be a part of me! Let thy strength and thy courage be my strength and my courage!'"

"Then," said the interpreter, "he hurls another arrow into him."

"And what is Mr. Bear doing all that time?"

"Mr. Bear is helpless. He is captured first in a trap, and then kept and fattened for the killing. He is tied to a tree during the killing ceremony."

"All I gotta say is that they're darned poor sports," said Flintlock with indignation. "They're poor sports not to give Mr. Bear a fighting chance."

And old Flintlock has voiced the sentiments of the entire party.

Everybody that was at the Panama Pacific International Exposition will remember the magnificent statue of an Indian there. This Indian was riding a horse, and both were worn out and drooping. A spear which dragged on the ground in front of the pony was further evidence of the weariness of the horse and rider. The title of this Fraser bronze was "The End of the Trail," and it was intended to tell the story of a vanishing race, the American Indians. But even more could that picture tell the story of the Ainus of Japan.

"They will be entirely extinct in a quarter of a century," our guide said. "They are going fast. They used to be vigorous and militant, as Japanese mythology shows. They were a fighting race. They built their houses by the sea. They used to go out for miles to fish, but now they are so petered out that they go only to the mouths of the rivers to fish. They used to hunt in the mountains, but they do not take hunting-trips any more. Venereal diseases and rum (saki) have depleted them year by year, just as in the case of our American Indians. They are largely sterile now. They used to build their own boats, but they build no more. It is a biological old age. Their day is through."

"It is a sad thing to see a race dying out," said Pat.

"Especially a white race, as these Ainus seem to be," said another member of the party.

And back to the village we went silently, plodding through a driving blizzard that bore in upon us with terrific force. As we fought our way through this blizzard, I could not help feeling a great sense of depression. It is a fearful thing to see anything die, especially a race of human beings. That is a great epic tragedy worthy of a Shakespeare. That is enough to wring the soul of the gods. That a race has played the game, has been powerful and conquering and triumphant, and then step by step has petered out and become weak and senile until biological decay has set in—that is fearful.

Another illustration of the ignominious failure of a lower type of mind to understand a higher type of mind is set forth in the following letter which was written at my request by a missionary whom I met in San Francisco just as the final chapters of this book were being written.

The first time I met this missionary was in Seoul, Korea.

I have been told so many times that the cruelties in Korea have been stopped. Certain men said that they had been stopped immediately after the Independence Movement, but they were not stopped. At frequent intervals the American press is flooded with statements which come from Japanese press sources that the outrages in Korea have ceased.

I said to this missionary, who had just arrived from Korea, "Is it true that the cruelties have stopped in Korea?"

"No! They have not stopped! They have not even diminished! They are getting worse, rather than better!"

"Would you be willing to write out, in your own handwriting, a few things that you know yourself which have occurred since I was in Korea so that the book which I am writing may be accurate and up to date in its facts?"

"I will be glad to do that for you! We who are missionaries dare not speak the truth!"

"Why?""If we did the Japanese Government would never let us get back to our people!"

"Then you may talk through me, if you are willing to do it. I want the truth to get to the American people!"

"I am not only willing but I am eager to talk!" said this missionary and wrote out the following story of cruelty against an educated and cultured Korean, who was the Religious and Educational Director in the Seoul Y.M.C.A. This story of the latest Japanese barbarisms I pass on to the reader in this chapter to illustrate another ignominious Hun failure to understand that the practices of the Dark Ages will not work in this century:

And so it is that these great failures stand out: the failure of a race of people to survive; the failure of the American people to estimate the loss of Shantung at its proper valuation spiritually, and the failure of Japan to understand that Korea is still and ever shall be Korea the Unconquered; this Korea which I call "The Wild Boar at Bay."