There is
only one opinion to be formed if to himself one would be true. I give
the following quotation from a work from the pen of one of the most
fair-minded diplomatists who have ever held office in China:--
"The writer has seen an able-bodied and apparently rugged laboring
Chinese tumble all in a heap upon the ground, utterly nerveless and
unable to stand, because the time for his dose of opium had come, and
until the craving was supplied he was no longer a man, but the merest
heap of bones and flesh. In the majority of cases death is the sure
result of any determined reform. The poison has rotted the whole system,
and no power to resist the simplest disease remains. In many years'
residence in China the writer knew of but four men who finally abandoned
the habit. (Where opium refuges have been conducted by missionaries,
reports more favorable have been given concerning those who have become
Christians.) Three of them lived but a few months thereafter; the fourth
survived his reformation, but was a life-long invalid."[BA]
Much good work is now being done by the missionaries, and the number of
those who have given up the habit has probably increased since Mr.
Holcombe wrote the above.
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