"Self-determination!" That phrase has set the whole world on fire!

"Independence!" That word somehow has awakened the Oriental world; awakened that mass of humanity as it has never been awakened before.

Korea perhaps has thrilled to this awakening as no other section of the Orient or the Near and Far East. India's millions are restless; the Filipino is hungry for Independence although he is loyal to the United States; but Korea has the matter set in its heart like adamant. This determination will never be broken; Korea will never be conquered by Japan!

This dream of complete and full independence is buried in the souls of the children, as well as in the souls of the brave women, and of the old men of Korea.

"It is one of the most thrilling things I have ever seen in the Orient!" said a man on the Editorial staff of Millard's Weekly. "It is the most significant outcome of the war; Korea's passion for independence, and the Student Movement in China!"

I said to a business man of California who had traveled all over the Orient and who had been sent as part of the Commission that prepared the way for the abandonment of the Picture Bride custom, "What is the most significant thing you have seen in the Orient?"

"The determination of the Koreans for Self-determination!" was his quick reply.

"Will they get it?"

"It is inevitable in time!" he responded, and then he added: "Why the little rascals; the children, I mean; paint the Korean flags on their brown bellies, because the Japanese gendarmes will not allow them to display the Korean flag in public!" and he laughed aloud at the memory.

"Have you seen Korean kiddies with flags painted on their stomachs?"

"Dozens of them. They like to show them to Americans," he said.

A week later I was walking with a Korean missionary and asked him if what the business man from California had told me about the children was true and he said, "Wait until we find a group of them."

We waited for only a few minutes when we ran into a crowd coming home from school. A friendly smile and a low-voiced "Mansei" got attention.

Then we pointed to our own stomachs.

In a flash they caught on to what we wanted and, looking around cautiously, each little rascal untied his robe and there, sure enough was the flag of his country painted on his stomach.

"That is one of the most thrilling sights I have seen in the Orient!" I said with tears in my eyes. "If the children of the land feel that way, Korea will never be conquered!"

"The American understands! The American understands!" one of the little bright-eyed boys said to the missionary in Korean.

******

A missionary was teaching a class of Koreans about Heaven.

A little hand shot up.

The missionary nodded that the child could speak.

"Will there be any Japs in Heaven?"

This was a baffling question; for diplomatic destinies were at stake. But missionaries are usually honest, so she said, "Yes, if they are good Japs!"

"Then I don't want to go!" said the little eight-year-old Korean with emphasis.

Another teacher was telling a class in Geography to draw a map of the Orient.One Korean child said, "Do we have to put in that little group of islands east of the coast of China?"

I met one Korean whom I had known in America. He was educated in the American universities. He was in every sense of the word a gentleman and an intellectual.

He told me that the older children of his family had taught the nine-months-old baby to raise its hands in the air above its head whenever the word "Mansei" was spoken.

I got an electrical shock of patriotism the day I saw that tiny child lift its little arms above its head when that sacred word was spoken. It was like a benediction of freedom!

"This posture of the child is more significant," said Mr. ——, "when you know that the most cruel method of torture that the Japanese use is that of stretching a man, woman or child up by the thumbs to the ceiling with his toes just touching the floor."

In that same posture of torture Koreans rise to their toes when they give their national cry of "Mansei" for all the world like an American student giving his college yell.

"It means life and death to give that cry as you know," said this intelligent Korean.

"Then what will your children do when they grow a bit older and go out on the streets and yell this cry?" I asked this intelligent father.

"Be killed, no doubt, by some ignorant, ruthless Japanese gendarme!" he said with finality.

"Then you should not allow them to teach its tiny lips that word!" I said.

"I would rather my child were dead than to have it forget that cry!"

In this same family one Sunday afternoon a two-year-old child was sleeping on a mat. The father and mother were reading some American papers sent them by their old college friends in the United States.

Suddenly that little two-year-old sat straight up in its mat bed, lifted its arms in the air and shouted "Mansei! Mansei! Mansei!" three times and then dropped back to sleep as if nothing had happened.

"How did you feel?" I asked my Korean friend.

"It made me cry. I said to my wife 'As long as Korea has babies with that in their little souls before they are two years of age, Korea will never be assimilated by Japan!'"

The children of Korea look up at the ceiling when a Japanese teacher enters a room. They are compelled to have Japanese teachers; even in the mission schools. The children refuse to do anything for a Japanese teacher.One day a Japanese teacher thought that he would break that mood by telling a funny story. He told it with skill.

But not a child laughed, although one of them said to her father that night, "It was hard not to laugh for it was a very funny story!"

"Who tells you to do these things; you students? Who teaches you to treat your Japanese teachers in that manner?" my Korean friend asked his six-year-old child.

"Nobody tells us; we just do it ourselves! All the children hate the Japanese!" he replied with the wisdom of a grown man.

All over Korea we saw Korean flags cut in walls, carved on stones, and against excavations where the sand was impressionable to little fingers and sticks. I took many photographs of these unconventional flags.

There is one instance where Korean children went on a strike just at Commencement time. It meant that they would not get their diplomas but that was just the reason they did it: to show their contempt for Japanese diplomas.

Japanese authorities begged them to return to school.

Finally on Commencement Day they decided to return.

Something had happened.

It was a day of rejoicing among the Japanese so they invited a lot of Japanese officers to the Commencement exercises.

The diplomas were given, to each boy; the Japanese teachers bowing, and smiling in their peculiar way.

Then a thirteen-year-old Korean boy stepped to the front to make the address of thanks. He made a beautiful speech of thanks. The Japanese teachers were bowing with delight.

But the boy's speech was not finished. He paused toward the end, threw back his blouse, lifted his proud head and said, "I have only this one thing further to add."

He knew the seriousness of what he was about to do. He knew that it would possibly mean death to him and his relatives.

"We want but one thing of you Japanese. You have given us education, and you have given us these diplomas. The teachers have been good to us."

Then he reached in his blouse and pulled out a Korean flag. To have one in one's possession is a crime in Korea in the judgment of the Japanese.

Waving it above his little head he cried, "Give us back our country! May Korea live a thousand years! Mansei! Mansei! Mansei!"

At that signal every boy in that school jumped to his feet, whipped out a Korean flag and frantically waved it in the air, weeping and yelling in wild abandonment to the faith and courage of freedom in their hearts!

Then they tore their diplomas up before the horrified and angered Japanese teachers.

The result was a great student demonstration for freedom; which was broken up by a force of Japanese gendarmes with drawn swords; but not before the shooting of many boys and girls; and not before over four hundred girls and boys were thrown into prison; some of them never to emerge.

In the chapter on "Flash-lights of Faith" I told the story of the seventy-five-year-old Korean who unflinchingly faced the Japanese gendarmes and admitted that he knew the source from which the Independence Movement had come; and knew the signers of the Declaration personally; every one of them. This spirit burns in the heart of, not only the babies of Korea but also in the souls of the white haired stately patriarchs.

One old man who was dumb had his own way of expressing his patriotism when "Mansei" was yelled. He always lifted his arms above his head. He could not speak but he could yell with his arms!

This placed the Japanese authorities in the ridiculous position of arresting a dumb man for yelling "Mansei!"

They tortured him for months. He was told that he would be released if he would promise never to lift his hands above his head again.

He could not speak in answer to their demands. They waited.

Suddenly he caught their meaning. They were trying to frighten him from giving vent to his only method of showing his patriotism.

His eyes flashed fire. He leapt to his feet with a contemptuous look at his Japanese captors.

Then like flashing piston rods of steel his arms shot into the air above his head three times, shouting in their mute patriotism, "Mansei! Mansei! Mansei!"

Nor are the women void of this determination for freedom. It beats in their brave hearts. It is a great flame in their souls as well as in the hearts of the children and men of the peninsula.

"The soul's armor is never set well to heart unless a woman's hand has braced it, and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of manhood fails!" says Robert McKenna in "The Adventure of Life."

If that is a true definition of the strength of honor and the desire for freedom then the armor of the Korean men is well set.

Sauci, a young Korean girl was under arrest. She was just a school girl and very beautiful; with dark brown eyes; skin the color of a walnut; and a form, bred of the grace of her much walking race. She had walked the innumerable trails of her native land from babyhood and the rhythmic swing of her supple body would have made any race, save that of her conquerors, reverent with admiration.

Sauci was too much for her Japanese captors.

The Japanese guard struck her across the mouth with a whip.

"That doesn't hurt me. That is the grace of God. I don't hate you for that blow!" said Sauci.

This angered the Jap and he struck her again. This stroke left a streak of blood across her face.

Sauci said again, "That doesn't hurt me. That is the grace of God. I do not hate you for striking me!"

The gendarme was furious. His anger was like that of a beast. He flew at her blindly, and struck, struck, struck her woman's body until he was exhausted.

A few days later when she was recovering from that brutal beating, a high official of the Japanese gendarme force came to see her.

"Sauci," said he to her, recognizing her for an intelligent Korean girl, "why do not the Koreans like us?"

She replied, "I had a dream last night here in the cell. That will tell you why. In my dream a visitor came to our home and stayed for dinner. Then instead of going home, the visitor stayed all night. Then the visitor stayed two or three days. Then two or three months. Then two or three years. We were surprised but were too polite to say anything.

"But finally the visitor got to telling us how to run our house."

"How?" asked the Japanese official, "Did the visitor tell you how to run your house?"

"The visitor," replied Sauci, "told us that he didn't like our wall paper. 'I think you had better get new paper!' he said. 'I do not like your clothes and your schools. Wear clothes like mine, and have schools like mine. I do not like your way of talking. Learn my language!'

"So finally we got tired of our visitor and said, 'Please go home! WE do not like you! We do not want you! Please go home!'"

"But what has that to do with us?" said the Japanese official.

"Why in a few days the visitor in my dream went home!" said Sauci simply. "And in a few years the Japanese will go back home also!" Such is the courageous spirit of the Korean women.

******

One day an American friend of mine had gone to the Police Station with a young Korean girl who had been summoned to appear on what was called a "rearrest charge."For the Japanese feel perfectly free to rearrest a person even after that person has been proven innocent of a charge. A Korean may be rearrested any time. He can never feel free.

This young, educated girl had been subjected to such indignities on her previous arrest as I would not be able to describe in this book; so she begged the woman friend to go with her.

As she entered the station a rough, ignorant Japanese officer snarled at her as she passed, "Hello! Are you here again? I thought you were still in prison!"

When he had gone from the room the Korean girl said to the American woman, "That man beat me for ten hours one day the last time I was in prison!"

"Why did he beat you?" asked the missionary.

"He was trying to compel me to give him the names of those girls who belonged to the 'Woman's League'."

"And you would not tell him their names?"

"I would rather have been beaten to death than give him their names!"

"Thank God for your courage!" said the missionary, for she had seen the girl's body when she had gotten out of prison; the burns of cigarette stumps all over her beautiful skin; the scars, the whip marks; the desecrations.

When I was told this story, amid the tears of the narrator, an American college woman, she concluded with fire in her soul: "I have never seen such courage on the part of women in all my life! Even mere girls and children have it. Most of those who are arrested come out of our American Missionary schools. There isn't a one of them who doesn't have in her soul the spirit of Joan of Arc. If France had one Joan of Arc, Korea has ten thousand!"

One young girl of whom I heard was kept in prison under constant torture for six months. And a cruel imprisonment it is. I visited this prison myself one winter day when I was in Korea. The thermometer was at zero; the snow covered the ground, and there wasn't a fire in a single room in that prison save where the Japanese guards were staying, and they were huddled around a roaring coal stove.

And this is the show prison of the whole Peninsula. The Japanese take visitors through it. But to an American even it is fit only for the darkness of the Middle Ages.

In its limited quarters I saw ten and fifteen young girls, sweet faced, cultured, educated school girls, huddled together in narrow rooms, without a single chair, so closely packed that they were seated on the floor like bees in a hive.

After six months of this awful life the girl of whom I speak was about to be released.The guard questioned her. "Now what are you going to do?"

Her answer came, quick as a shot, although she knew that it would send her back to the hell from which she was about to be released.

"It is either liberty for Korea or we die!" she said.

And in three minutes, beaten, and dragged on the ground by the hair she was thrown into the cell from which she had been taken; to rot and die as far as the Japanese were concerned.

Another girl who had been kept in jail 135 days without even a charge having been preferred against her was released. Her old mother came to meet her and while in Seoul the mother attended an Independence Meeting for women. The whole crowd of women then went to the Police Station and shouted "Mansei"!

The mother was arrested and cruelly beaten in spite of her seventy-five years of age.

When they were through beating her they said, "Now will you refrain from yelling, 'Mansei!'"

"Never!" said this old woman.

Then they took a bar of iron and beat her over the legs until she dropped.

"Now will you refrain from yelling 'Mansei?'"

The old woman was weak, but in a low, painful whisper said, "The next time the women come to yell, if I am able to walk I will be with them!"Another old woman was brought to prison for yelling "Mansei!" When they asked her why she yelled "Mansei" she answered in a sentence that sums up the entire spirit that is in the woman-heart of Korea.

"I have only one word in my head and that is 'Mansei!'"

I personally, one day in Korea, saw the Japanese gendarmes come for a Korean girl. She was one of the most popular girls in the American Methodist Missionary School.

It was the common custom for Japanese officials to come and take Korean girls out of these schools, without warning, without warrants, without words, and carry them off to prison.

Often the girl was not even permitted to say good-by to her American teachers or to write a word to her parents.

"They are not even permitted to supply themselves with toilet articles," said the matron to me that day.

On this day, six big, brutal, ugly faced, animal-like Japanese officers came for this beautiful girl.

The missionary women wept as the girl was dragged away. The girl waved good-by.

It was a sight never to be forgotten; one of those Flash-lights of Freedom, which burned its way into my soul with the hot acid of indignation. This injustice and indecency in the treatment of a pure girl made my blood run hot in my veins.

The look on her face I shall never forget. It was such a look as the martyrs of old must have had when they died for their faith.

"Good-by! Good-by! Give my love to Mary and Elizabeth!" she cried to the missionary woman standing by, helpless to assist her. These two names were children of the missionary home; children whom this Korean girl had learned to love as she lived in this American home.

"And the awful thing about it all, is," said the missionary to me as they took the girl away, "that, as pure as that girl is, as pure as a flower, she will be taken to a prison fifty miles from Seoul, kept there under torture for six months, and she will not be allowed to see her friends. They will not even allow us to visit her. She may be undressed and spat upon by men who are lower than animals. She may suffer even worse than that——"

Then the American missionary woman fainted.

That flash-light may be duplicated a hundred times in Korea.

"The woman of Korea suffers as much as the man. But thank God they do not flinch!" said an American missionary.

The Japanese Gendarmes have forbidden the singing of several of the great church hymns in mission churches because they insist that these are hymns of Freedom; that they foment what the Japanese call "Dangerous Ideas." Japanese spies have reported certain Seoul Methodist churches for singing hymns that, to their way of thinking, were directed against the Japanese Government. This particular illustration of the peculiar workings of the Japanese mind might have been included in the chapter on Flash-lights of Fun; were it not for the fact that the Japanese officers themselves call these old church hymns "Hymns of Freedom."

The Japanese are just as much afraid of these "Dangerous Thoughts" in Japan as they are in Korea. A good illustration of this fear is the fact that a certain picture corporation of America called "The Liberty Film Company" sent several films to Japan. The Government would not allow these pictures to be shown until that word "Liberty" was cut from the film.

Certain Japanese spies reported a Mission church in Seoul for singing "Rock of Ages."

"But why may we not sing 'Rock of Ages'?" asked the American preacher in charge.

"Because it starts off with 'Mansei!'" replied the officer.

He interpreted the thought of "Rock of Ages" to be a direct imputation that the Japanese Government was not able to take care of the Koreans and that they were flying to some other protecting power.

"It would be funny if it were not so serious!" said a missionary to me one day in Seoul.

Later they stopped the churches from singing "Nearer My God to Thee," because there seemed to be an implication in that, that those who sang that hymn, were swearing allegiance to a higher power than that of Japan.

"Ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous!" I said in disgust.

"Yes, ridiculous, but serious," replied the missionary, "when you have to live with it year in and year out."

"Crown Him Lord of All," insisted the Japanese spies, when they seriously reported a certain church for singing that old hymn was "Dangerous Thought." It seemed to this ignorant spy that "Crowning Him" was putting some other power before that of the Japanese Government.

"All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name" has been put under the ban and when a certain missionary woman was asked to sing at the Korean Y.M.C.A. and announced that she was going to sing "Oh, Rest in the Lord" she was advised not to sing it because it was considered by the gendarmes to be "Dangerous Thought" and to suggest "Liberty," "Freedom" and such dangerous words and ideas.When one Protestant preacher prayed about "Casting Out Devils" he was reported by Japanese spies, who insisted that he was talking about Japanese in Korea and meant that these should be cast out of the land.

"'It is to laugh!' as the French say!" I responded to this story.

"No! It is to weep!" said the American missionary.

When Dr. Frank W. Schoefield spoke against Prostitution the Japanese papers declared that he had made a virulent attack on the Government.

One Korean preacher who preached on a theme from Luke 4:18, which reads "Setting the captives free," was arrested and kept in jail for four days.

"It is very foolish to yell 'Mansei' when you know you will be killed," I said to a Korean preacher. I wanted to see how he would take that suggestion.

"We Koreans would rather be under the ground than on top of it if we do not get our liberty!" he said with a thrill in his quiet voice.

One day a Korean preacher was arrested for preaching on the theme, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you," because that was, without doubt, disloyal to Japan and meant rebellion.

Another day a speaker in the Y.M.C.A. said, "Arise and let us build for the new age!" He was asked to report to Police Headquarters just what he meant by that kind of "Dangerous" talk about Freedom.