The Days of a Man 1:1913 



trade and colonial exploitation is a minor matter as compared 

 with the daily bread of the people. . . . The individual 

 banker is no longer much of a factor. Money flows where it is 

 demanded on accurate security. The great joint-stock corpo- 

 rations have much more capital than any single house; the 

 Rothschilds are now in a secondary place. . . . Even debt 

 will not prevent war, once the fever takes possession of the 

 people. 



On the whole, English workingmen are efficient. The tend- 

 ency of legislation is to check individual effort in production and 

 thus promote inefficiency. The English upper classes have little 

 initiative or executive force. This appears in the fact that 

 England is a bond-holding nation; money-lending is not business 

 enterprise. France is in the same condition. The wealth of 

 London was accumulated during the years when other nations 

 were at war. Joint-stock companies are poorly managed be- 

 cause there is no directing hand familiar with the business. 

 Personality is needed even in money-lending. London business 

 would be powerless to avert war, although it would cut heavily 

 into affairs. 



A China correspondent says in the London Times of July i6: 

 "To speak plainly, the anti-opium crusade in this country 

 has suffered from unbalanced sentimentalism of a kind the 

 Chinese government has always been prompt to exploit for 

 purposes which have nothing sentimental about them. Philan- 

 thropists hope that Great Britain will continue to make sacrifices 

 in a cause they have com.e to regard as wholly righteous." 



Jardine, Matthewson, and the Sassoons act as commission 

 agents for the Indian government. 12,000,000 pounds' worth of 

 the stuff is now in the treaty ports of China unsold. The Indian 

 government received a large revenue on opium from the export 

 tax. Failing to retain this, it asks to be repaid out of the Boxer 

 indemnity. 



5 



In the course of the summer Mrs. Jordan and I 

 found time for two extended motor trips — as usual 



n 484 3 



