some five hundred Chinese students in the States. According to present arrangements, large numbers are to be sent every year till 1940. and so as the years roll by, the number of students educated in America will inincrease and multiply till we easily have hundreds and thousands. The gathering here to-night is an eloquent witness of the influence the United States is already exercising through her adopted sons, who are now engaged in practically every branch of service of the Imperial Government. We have here represented diplomacy, finance, army, navy, education, railway and mining, and what not. The attitude of the American returned student, I am emboldened to say, is very friendly to the United States. Touched by the same sympathies, nourished by the same alma maters, taught at the foot of the same professors, and inspired by the same hopes and ideals, is it strange that the bond between the Chinese student and the land where he spends his youth and early manhood should be of the closest and most lasting nature? Nor would it be quite natural if, during the hours of relaxation, an occasional American cocktail should not find its way down a Chinese throat, nor a mild and friendly session with a well-known American game of cards occupy the attention of American educated Chinese officials in Peking. Those of us who are in diplomatic life naturally advocate friendship with the United States; in the army, regard the training of West Point as indispensable; in the navy that the American navy cannot be beat; and our ships should be ordered from Philadelphia. Returned students from America propose the use of American books and employment of American teachers in our schools. Our respected friend, Mr. Jeme, has introduced more American wrinkles and curves into China than any other person present to-night.

In short, then, we are to be the interpreters and expositors of America to our own people. Not, however, I hope, like that of the man who interpreted Shakespeare's "To be or not to be: that is the question," as "Can do, no can do, how fashion." I think we are able to bring to our own people a knowledge of the American people that no amount of explaining in books or by Americans themselves could accomplish. We constitute a bridge across the Pacific Ocean over which American education, American ideals, American machinery and manufactures, and all that is best of America pass to the Flowery Kingdom. We constitute the strongest link in the bond of friendship between China and the United States, strong because it it based on intellectual and disinterested reasons.

1. Their children make better progress in the mixed than in the exclusively Chinese school. The mingling with American young people, both in school and out, at play as well as at work, compelling the constant use of the English language, gives them an earlier and better command of it than could possibly be obtained from books, or from the requirements of the school room alone. The Chinese school deprives them of this important aid; for, outside of the preparation for lessons and the reciting thereof, their mutual communications are in Chinese, entirely so during recess, and out of school hours generally. Those of us who have attempted the acquisition of a foreign language are well aware that no other method can compare with a close and constant mingling with the people to whom that language is native. Progress in English promotes progress in other studies, for that is the language in which their text books are written. The greatest handicap to their education is thus early and rapidly removed.

Other things, too, of great import

ance are to be acquired in the American school, such as American manners, customs and modes of thought, which add greatly to the comfort and happiness of these young aliens, and will make of them much more valuable assets of this republic of ours when their years of manhood and womanhood have arrived.

a

2. Segregation they regard as humiliating discrimination. They alone of all the hodge-podge of national products in San Francisco are set off by themselves. "Why?" they ask. "Because you are Asiatics."

"But so are the Japanese,” they reply. "But what of that? Why should the accident of birth in Asia disqualify from entering an American school?"

us

"Because your lineage and training are so foreign that you can't assimilate with us."

"Are you sure we can't? Have you given us the chance? Have you allowed us to live anywhere but in Chinatown?

"Are not our native-born sons and daughters now dressed as are yours, conducting themselves in much the same fashion, taking an interest in your fiestas, your business and your politics?"

"You are an inferior race-ignorant, uncivilized, behind the age."

"If all that were true, would it not furnish the very best ground for our petition to enter your schools? Our need is so great."

brated for its obedience to law. Moreover, the teachers in your public schools like them, want them, and kept secretly admitting them for some time after the edict had gone forth from the Board of Education that they were to be excluded."

"Your children are untidy in their habits."

"Indeed! Are the admitted ones all tidy? Have you not read of the little European attending school on the East Side of New York who was so un

cleanly of habit as to emit an odor, whose teacher, in protest, addressed a note to the boy's mother, and received the prompt reply: 'Jimmie ain't no rosebud; you're ther to teach him, not to smell him?' But really, we try to keep our children clean, and they would emulate yours in this respect if allowed to associate with them."

"We do not believe, in short, that we are an inferior race so far as are concerned mental power, trustworthiness, and a real ambition for nobler, loftier attainments. Please, then, O men of San Francisco, born and bred under a more favorable sky, do not continue to impose upon us this burden which you impose upon no other who comes to your shores."

The trend of the foregoing dialogue has already indicated that the reply to the inquiry at the head of this article, coming from San Francisco's Americans, is "No." Not unanimously, however. Since the beginning of this segregation there has always existed a "remnant" unconvinced that it was a fair treatment of the young Chinese. More intimate acquaintance with the Chinese people through the opportunities of more than half a century, has led many others to doubt the wisdom-not to say kindness of a closed (schoolhouse) door. They have learned that there is in the Chinese young people good that might well be imparted to our own. Diligence in study, for example. Most of these Chinese students are in earnest. Education is with them a matter of hunger and thirst. They are ready to work and sacrifice for it. Glad are they to earn their board and lodging by waiting on table, or doing the morning and evening chores of a family, and study far into the nights, year after year, until they have obtained the coveted prize. They thus bring into the school room a spirit which would provoke our Anglo-Saxon students to greater diligence, lest they be left behind in a race with a foreign people. At this moment the best student in one of the departments of the University of California (the professor in charge being the judge) is a Chinese who, a few years since, came to America knowing but little, if any, English. Students of such ambition, diligence and ability could not but prove of tremendous stimulative influence to our own boys and girls if brought into immediate competition with them.

Their manners, too, might be introduced into our schools to their great advantage. They reverence learning, and pay the highest respect to their teachers. All over China it is expected

of the school-boy that he conduct himself with the dignity and decorum which belong to the scholar. By unanimous voice of the natior, rudeness, violence, wrangling, are, to scholar and student, proscribed. Happy for this nation if something of the same standards of etiquette were introduced to the young America of our public schools!

Some careful observers have learned, again, that this enforced segregation has entailed serious losses. To our population, in the first place. The large majority of Chinese families driven to Oakland and other cities by the great fire of 1906 have never returned. The reason is found, chiefly, in the greater school privileges granted to them by those cities. The Chinese population of San Francisco is now