Ellen N. La Motte

“ We recognize quite clearly that it is not good for ourselves, for Americans. We recognize that fact quite as clearly as England realizes that it is not good for the inhabitants of the British Isles. Quite as clearly as France, while setting up opium shops in her colony of Indo-China, refuses to establish them in Paris or Marseilles. America is unique in the fact that although we have colonial possessions, we do not have a double standard of morality. We attempt to throw around our colonies the same safeguards that we throw around ourselves at home. ”

“ On each side of the rocking railway carriage stretched vast arid plains, sprinkled with innumerable villages consisting of mud houses. The fields were cut across in every direction by dirt roads, unpaved, full of deep ruts and holes. At times these roads were sunk far below the level of the fields, worn deep into the earth by the traffic of centuries; so deep in places that the tops of the blue-hooded carts were also below the level of the fields. Yet these roads afford the only means of communication with the immense interior provinces of China—these sunken roads and the rivers. ”

“ If, on the contrary, the physician is one who exploits his patients, who keeps the nature of the disease hidden, whether through ignorance or design, and fails to give proper instruction as to its infectiousness, then we must look for nothing but opposition and antagonism. We must hear objections as to the nurse’s interference, to her uniform, to her tactlessness, to her scaring the patient to death—and we must consider the motives which underlie them. ”

“ It is all there, for any one to read who chooses. How then, does it happen that we in America know nothing about Great Britain's Opium Monopoly? That the facts are new to us and come to us as a shock? One is because of our admiration for Great Britain. Those who know—and there are a few—hesitate to state them. Those who know, feel that it is a policy unworthy of her. We hesitate to call attention to the shortcomings of a friend. ”

“ The railway pierces the wall of the West City, and for a time we ran along under the walls outside, with the great crenelated battlements rising above us, and their magnificent gates or towers glittering in the sunshine. How incongruous and insignificant seemed that train-load of chattering foreigners beneath the majestic, towering ramparts of this old royal city! The arid plains presented rather a Biblical appearance, with camel-trains moving slowly across the desolate landscape, while here and there flocks of broad-tailed sheep were browsing, tended by their shepherds. ”

“ He's so human now, outside the temples. Sitting on a chair for human beings to touch him, now he's off the altar, he's in contact with humanity. The devout ones rub his wooden image—there is no bronze or gold in poor Binzuru's makeup. So the people rub his wooden image, rub his ears, his head, his forehead, rub his arms, his legs, his shoulders. How they suffer, human beings! How their bodies ache and suffer, judged by poor Binzuru's body! For if you rub Binzuru on the part which hurts you in your body, and then rub your body with a hand fresh from Binzuru, you will be cured. ”

“ No one in the ward was fond of Rochard. He had been there only a few hours. He meant nothing to any one there. He was a dying man, in a field hospital, that was all. Little stranger Rochard, with one blind, red eye that stared into Hell, the Hell he had come from. And one white, dying eye, that showed his hold on life, his brief, short hold. The nurse cared for him very gently, very conscientiously, very skilfully. The surgeon came many times to look at him, but he had done for him all that could be done, so each time he turned away with a shrug. ”

“ A nation that can subjugate 300,000,000 helpless people, and then turn them into drug addicts—for the sake of revenue—is a nation which commits a cold-blooded atrocity unparalleled by any atrocities committed in the rage and heat of war. ”

“ Two big Mongolian dogs were locked together in a fight to the death. Each had the other in a death-grip, and they rolled over and over in the dust, surrounded by a great crowd of people who stood by indifferently and watched them fight it out. This is the attitude of China toward the European War, the attitude of the calm, indifferent spectator.
The structure of civilization that Europe has erected for itself is imposing and beautiful. We in America are confronted with the façade of this great building, and beheld from our side of the Atlantic it looks magnificent and superb. ”

“ Walker would do everything himself, as far as possible. Only, he might have to send for the Bishop, if it became necessary, to identify——
Two nights later, the Bishop was reclining on the long chair on his verandah, while overhead the heavy punkah fans swayed to and fro, stirring the moist, warm air. Out in the harbour the lights gleamed fitfully, the lanterns on the bobbing sampans contrasting with the steadier beams of the big ships anchored in the roadway. The ships of the Orient, congregated from the Seven Seas, full of the mystery and romance of the East. ”

“ The private practitioner should be as well able to make a sure diagnosis as the municipal physician. He should be as ready to report the case. The private practitioner should be as capable a teacher, as careful a distributor of supplies, as alive to the danger of tuberculosis as the municipal nurse. The only difference between these two groups of people is that one acts and the other does not—or acts in such intermittent and irregular manner as to be productive of no results. ”

“ Every day, as one passes in or out of the legation quarter by that road, one's attention is arrested by those words. "Lest we forget." Every foreigner in Peking is thus reminded of those dreadful months of siege in 1900. But so is every Chinese of the upper classes; so is every rickshaw coolie who stops to point out those words to the tourists as he passes. Why remember? Why not try to forget? Neither side will forget. Neither foreigner nor Chinese has any intention of forgetting. The huge indemnities that are paid out year by year by the Chinese make forgetting impossible. ”

“ Life is very easy in these countries. And with the coming of the sudden sunset of the Tropics, the evening fires are lighted in the compounds and there is gathering together, with song and laughter, rest and ease. So as life is very facile in the jungle, love of money is unknown. Why money—what can it mean? Why toil for something which one has no use for, cannot spend? Just enough, perhaps, to bargain with the white man for some simple need—to buy a water buffalo, maybe, for ploughing in the rice fields. ”

“ The feet masterless, as the spirit had been masterless, years ago. The three judges in white blouses stood with arms folded, motionless. The patients in the beds sat up and tittered. The man who had been kicked by a horse raised himself and smiled. He who had been knocked down by a despatch rider sat up, as did those with bronchitis, and those with ptomaine poisoning. They sat up, looked, and sniggered. They knew. So did André. So did the Paris surgeon, and the little staff doctor, and the swarthy orderly and the priest-orderly. They all knew. ”

“ The menace of opium is now threatening America, and our first duty is to ourselves. Little by little, surreptitiously, this drug has been creeping in over our borders, and to-day many thousands of our young men and young women are drug addicts, habituated to the use of one of the opium derivatives, morphia or heroin. The recent campaign against drug users, conducted by the New York Department of Health, has uncovered these addicts in great numbers; has brought them before us, made us see, in spite of ourselves, that thousands of them exist and that new ones are being created daily. ”

“ As public health nurses we cannot but object that the last word on so serious a disease should be said by men whose diagnoses we distrust. That the health of the community should be endangered by even a few physicians of this sort,—either ignorant, or dishonest, or both,—is grave commentary upon the medical ethics of the day. It is a severe criticism on that “professional courtesy” which forbids intervention, even by the health authorities, with a physician who drives his trade at the community’s expense. ”

“ The great, brown, muddy Yangtzse! His own river! The ships of the world lay anchored in the harbour, the ships of all the world! The tender made its way upward against the rushing tide, and great, clumsy junks floated downstream. As they neared the dock, crowds of bobbing sampans, with square, painted eyes—so that they might see where they were going—came out and surrounded them. A miserable emotion overcame him. They were his junks—he understood them. They were his sampans, with their square, painted eyes—eyes that the foreigners pointed to and laughed at! ”

“ Broken glass covers the tops of the walls, and in the courtyards Mongolian watch-dogs guard the premises, huge, fierce, long-haired creatures, like a woolly mastiff. Through the day they are chained, but at night they are unloosed. Oh, there is not only style but excitement in living in a native house in Peking! We have looked at a good many Chinese houses, but can't quite make up our minds about renting one. If we decide to stay, it will mean that we must give up our trip to Angkor, and it was to make that trip that we came out to the Orient! ”

“ In the first place, tuberculosis is largely a disease of the poor—of those on or below the poverty line. We must further realize that there are two sorts of poor people—not only those financially handicapped and so unable to control their environment, but those who are mentally and morally poor, and lack intelligence, will power, and self-control. The poor, from whatever cause, form a class whose environment is difficult to alter. And we must further realize that these patients are surrounded in their homes by people of their own kind—their families and friends—who are also poor. ”

“ The trouble with America is that every one is so busy thinking of clean streets, clean garbage-cans, the possibilities of disease contained in impure food, that much of the beauty and comfort of life is lost. Life is not all in length.
Well, as I say, with our visit to the bazaar reserved for the end of the afternoon, we went into the Chinese City in search of camel's-hair blankets. Soon we turned aside from the big high-street, and dived into one of the narrow, winding, unpaved lanes of the native city, which only the rickshaw-boys can negotiate. ”

“ Unless one is a tourist or a missionary, or a buyer of Chinese antiques, or has had an overwhelming desire to write a book upon international politics, a desire springing from the depths of gross ignorance. But after all, why not such a book? It reaches, if it reaches at all, a public still less informed, and misinformation is as valuable as no information at all, when we desire to interfere with the destiny of the Chinese. In his leisure moments, Lawson had tried his hand at such a book—until he suddenly realised that he had been in the Orient too long to make it a success. ”