Extracts of letters from Mr. Fred B. Smith

EXTRi^

vS FROM

P

IITH i

Re

Lour of the \

Forward

.'earn

Chinsegut Hill

University of Florida Libraries

THE DIRECTINC; COMMITTEE

Mr. Geuald Bihks

Montreal, Canada

Mr. James 11. Post

New York City

Mr. S. W. Woodward

Washington, D. C.

Sir FREnKiiicK Smith

Capetown. So. Africa

Mr. James (J. Cannon

New Yoik City

Chairmiin

Mr. Clyde U. Joy

Keokuk, Iowa

Sir Charles Goode

Adelaide, Australia

Mr. I-'rep. IC. Tasker

New York City

Mr. James M. Si'eers

New York City

EXTRACTS OF LETTERS FROM

Mr. FRED. B. SMITH

RELATING TO THE

WORLD TOUR OF THE "MEN AND RELIGION
FORWARD MOVEMENT" TEAM

PRINTED FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION BY

JAMES G. CANNON
1913

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

3 1262 08645 478 1

Mr. Smith, Mr. Robins and their as-
sociates made a tour of the world in re-
sponse to invitations from Christian lead-
ers in other nations who felt the need of
the help of message and method of the
Men and Religion Forward Movement.

The following letters were sent back
by Mr. Smith, and feeling that others
interested in the campaign will profit
by reading them, I have had them printed
for a limited circulation among the
friends of the Department.

James G. Cannon,

Chairman.

THE VISITING TEAM

Mn. FiiEi). B. Smith
New York Citv

Mr. Raymoxi) Robins
Chicago, 111.

Mr. James E. Lathrop
Pittsburgh, Pa.

Secret or If

Mr. Harry X. Holmes

Johannesburg, So. Africa

Orc/aiihin;/ Secretary

IXTKHNWTIOXAL QrAHTKT
Mr. I'aii. J. Gii.iiERT .Mr. Cohxei.i. ]\I. Keei.er

.Mu. P. H. .M ETC A IF Mr. Edward W. Peck

EXTRACTS OF LETTERS FROM
Mr. FRED. B. SMITH

Relating to the IVorld Tour of the "Men and Religion
Forward Movement " Team.

I

En route to San Francisco, January 15, 1913.

My dear Mr. Cannon : We are now on our way, and
are nearly to what may be called the " jumping-off
place," so far as the actual beginning of our tour is
concerned. In a few hours we will be in San Francisco,
and day after to-morrow will set sail for the " far East."

Every man of the team is in fine fettle. I have
worked with these same fellows now for two years in
almost unbroken campaigns, but certainly never saw
them when they were rendering a grander service than
during these days since we left you in New York. Rob-
ins, Peck, Gilbert, INIetcalf, Keeler and Lathrop — every
man is practically at his best.

I am so glad we have been granted these two weeks
of special campaign across our own dear country before
starting with this message to the distant lands. I be-
lieve there has been a peculiar providence in our contact
with the Christian workers in Pittsburgh, St. Louis,
Wichita, Denver, and then a whole group of towns in
Oregon, including Portland, Eugene, Forest Grove, Cor-

3

vallis, Albany, and Salem, and now wc arc soon to have
that privilege in San Francisco and Oakland. It has all
been splendid, and will help us in the long heavy weeks
to come. Perhaps of all of these experiences, no one
memory will stand out so long and powerfully with us, as
a constant inspiration, as the dinner in New York on the
night of January 3d. There is only one regret about
it, and that is that your illness prevented you from being
present. It seemed as though there was a wheel off the
wagon. I am sure we are going to see some days that
are pretty heavy, and some days when we will be tempted,
perhaps, to give up the struggle, but the memory of that
dinner, and the confidence expressed by our own closest
and most intimate friends will remain a compelling force
and power with us to the end of the journey.

There have been lessons we have learned during the
tour across the country which I believe are just the ones
we ought to have to give us liberty and confidence in car-
rying this message around the world.

First. — The comfort of modern methods of mission-
ary xcork.

In line with a special course of daily Bible reading
which I myself am following, I have been reading
" Paul's Missionary Journeys " and some of his letters,
and have forty times over said to myself that I believe
God had directed that I should be reading of this first
missionary's experiences just as we were starting on this
long pull. Of course, we are going to see some anxieties ;
we are going to meet some hardships ; we are having to
make some sacrifices. If any one thinks there is any
special fun in bidding your own home, family, and friends
" good bye " to go out upon a campaign of this kind
around the world for seven months, they ought to try it
once. If the only motives are those of sentimental desire

4

to travel, they will never go but once. I believe every
man in the party has had to use his full capacity of
nerve to say " good bye " and go. The easy thing, the
happy thing, the delightful thing would be to stay right
at home.

Raymond Robins, in one of his speeches upon experi-
ences in Alaska, uses this very intense statement. He
says that there were more than twenty thousand who
went over the pass into the Yukon, but that after all, it
was a very small number who really got any gold. Not
because there was no gold there, but because they were
not willing to dig. He says " nobody got any gold up
there except those who were willing to work for it."
That same law is in Christian work as well as in gold
mining, or in banking, or in any form of commercial
enterprise. I have a thousand times in my life wished I
could do my duty to the Kingdom of God and remain at
No. 20 Ridgeview Avenue, White Plains, all the time,
but God orders it differently, and just now we would be
tempted, perhaps, to magnify our sacrifice, but a little
renewing of acquaintance with Paul and his experiences
have taken that all out of me.

In the first place, I guess Paul never had an invitation
to any city he ever visited. When he went, he had to
thrust himself in. He never had an advance Secretary
ahead of him to organize the field, and not one committee
appointed to meet him at the train. His was an unwel-
come ministry. Ours is in strange contrast. We have
our Organizing Secretary, Harry Holmes, on ahead of
us, getting the committees ready, and he promises us
an enthusiastic reception committee upon our arrival in
every city. We are beckoned on by cables and most
wonderful, loving letters, telling us how much our serv-
ices are desired.

In the second place, when Paul traveled, he did not

5

have any Pullman or dining cars. There were no state
rooms or shower baths. He seemed to think himself
most happy when some kindly door of protection would
open for him that he might have rest during his mis-
sionary work, but always expected to continue his craft
and earn money enough to pay for the eggs and bacon.
He was more familiar with rioting mobs, prison cells
and cruel stripes upon his back than with the modern
twentieth-century means of travel and service.

In the third place, Paul did not have any Lathrop
with his typewriter along to take care of the letters.
It is true he had John Mark for a while, and Silas the
singer, and Barnabas, and I guess Dr. Luke occasion-
ally, but I don't think any of them ever helped him very
much with his correspondence. Notwithstanding the
limited means of his literary work, I am a little afraid
that some things he wrote down during that time will
last even longer than our feeble efforts. We will be
pretty lucky if anything we write lasts until we get
home. Paul's have lasted nearly two thousand years.

The fact is, we Christian workers of every kind and
name, at home and abroad, ought to thank God every
day for the more favorable circumstances under which
we labor.

Second. — Latest contact with the results of the Men
and Religion Forzcard Movement.

For our profit and cheer, God seems to have planned
that in the last two weeks at home, we should see and
feel something of what a splendid general impression is
left by the INIen and Religion Forward JNIovement right
straight across the land. The most essential thing in
promoting Christian work is a confidence which does not
have any element of doubt in it that the thing is right.
The evidence that has been accumulating with us clear

6

across the country in every one of these cities has been
so tremendous that every man in our party is ready to
fight for the extension of the ideals, plans and methods of
the Men and Religion Movement. I cannot help pro-
foundly pitying the fellow who is sitting around specu-
lating as to whether or not it is all right. The blessing
of God has been on the Men and Religion Forward Move-
ment, not in every respect in the way we expected, but
when it is all summed up it is beyond our greatest hope.

Third. — A uinning Church.

The day spent in St. Louis, and the privilege of
speaking both morning and evening for our enthusiastic
fellow-worker. Rev. William J. Williamson, D.D., pas-
tor of the Third Baptist Church in St. Louis, gave
us an index of what a real, winning church ought to
be. Also a definite illustration that the church does
not need to keep moving out to find a place to live.
The day in St. Louis, from the standpoint of weather,
could hardly have been worse. There was a rain and
sleet which made the streets a glare of ice, just the
kind of a day when half-hearted Christians stay at
home. In the face of that kind of weather, every seat
was filled at the morning service, and a considerable
number of people stood up all through. At night prac-
tically the same thing was duplicated. Ten years ago
Dr. Williamson became pastor of that church. Then
they had eight hundred members ; now they have twen-
ty-seven hundred. And the striking thing about it is
that while under his great ministry, that church has
grown steadily and constantly, others in the same dis-
trict have faded away, given up the struggle and gone.
We could not but think of this when on that very day
we saw a great sign marked " For Sale " in front of
a near-by church.

7

It was peculiarly interesting for us to study the
method by which this great growth has taken place in
the Tiiird Baptist Church.

In the first place, it was worthy of special note that
the church undertakes every kind of good service in
behalf of the people. It is also worthy of special note
that they put tremendous emphasis upon the Sunday
School. Of course, from the standpoint of iNIcn and
Religion Forward Movement specialists, we were pecul-
iarly interested in knowing that they have a large
men's and boys' department thoroughly organized and
right up to the minute in its program of work, but be-
hind every other element of strength, there stands this
significant fact, — at every preaching service, both morn-
ing and evening. Dr. Williamson extends an invitation
for those who wish to confess Christ to do so. In other
words, while the church is not indifferent to forms of
service that must be rendered in social life and relations,
it is intensely evangelistic. I wish all the little chaps
who are saying that the evangelistic method must not be
pressed because it will drive people away, could spend
about a month in that church and see how utterly de-
ceived they are. The evidence from New York harbor
to the Golden Gate proves that where men are brave
enough and have religion enough left to press the evan-
gelistic emphasis, crowds are in attendance. We are
thanking God for this great church in St. Louis that it
may help us as we emphasize this principle around the
world.

Fourth. — Wichito, Kansas,

I am now convinced that a tour around the world, to
be intelligent and forceful upon the problem of Chris-
tian work for men and boys, would be a failure in its
highest possibilities if Wichita, Kansas, were not in-

8

eluded in the itinerary. I am certainly thankful to God
that we had this contact, for we are able to carry the
message, that where the forces are properly organized,
absolutely wonderful things can be accomplished.

Wichita is great in a good many ways, but especially
so for three reasons. In the first place, it is great be-
cause they have organized there the most wonderful cam-
paign of evangelism that I have ever seen carried out.
One year ago last fall, the famous " Billy " Sunday held
a series of meetings there which practically doubled the
church membership of the town, and almost immediately
following that we went there with the Men and Religion
campaign which emphasized the necessity of organizing
these men for definite work.

Evangelistic bands were organized, and they have
visited, in one year, seventy-five of the surrounding
smaller towns and communities. The evangelistic results
have been simply marvelous, and the whole country
there remains under the powerful influence of a great
soul-winning program.

In the second place, Wichita is great because Mr.
A. A. Hyde, that wonderfully modest Christian busi-
ness man and philanthropist, lives there. I have
always known he was great, but I learned it better
in the day I spent there than ever before. Every man,
woman and child in the town seems to love the man.
You might expect him, and I think it would be par-
donable, to be a bit dogmatic about what ought to be
done in Christian work. Any man who gives such sums
of money as does he to extend the Kingdom of Jesus
Christ might be justified in a little more assertion of
his own views concerning the how of things. Quite the
reverse is true. He is apparently the most humble
student of the whole lot. And the grandest part of it
all is that under his leadership, this moderate-sized

9

town bids fair to have a whole school of prosperous
laymen who will use their money in an unusual way
for Christian work. Some other men are coming up
there who are going to be worthy associates of Mr.
Hyde.

Mr. Hyde is a great power any way you take him,
and I wish a lot of men who are storing away money
which they themselves can never use, and which can
never do their families any good, and which in some
cases will curse their children, could catch the vision
that this big-souled man has, of what money is really
for.

In the third place, Wichita is great because it has
no saloons. It is true that you can find liquor in the
back alleys, I suppose, and an old toper, who is willing
to go down in the basement or sneak around in some
back room, can get it, but not an open bar — not a single
place where the stuff is flaunted in your face. Of course,
the brewers, the distillers, the bums and the thugs will
declare it does not have any effect. It is always amus-
ing to see the type of men who will tell you that the
prohibitory law does not change the situation at all.
Here is the fact by the latest Government report. The
amount of liquor consumed in the state of Kansas
amounts to 48 cents per capita, per year ; while for
the whole United States it amounts to a little more than
$20 per capita, per year. Illiteracy is down to less than
2^ of the population. Thirty-eight poor farms in thirty-
eight different counties have no inmates at all, and for
the whole state, there is only one pauper to every three
thousand of the population. Sixty county jails have
not had a single prisoner for a year, and twelve others
have had no prisoners for eleven months. In the rural
districts, grand juries ai'e almost unknown. About
the only crime left is around some of the larger cen-

10

ters where the law is more or less disregarded. Kan-
sas has more wealth per capita than any other state
in the union save one, viz. : Maine, and that has been
for a long time prohibitory territory. Yesterday we
were in Albany, Oregon, where they have had no sa-
loons for many years, have not had a prisoner in the
jail for so long they don't know when they have had
one ; have a little poor farm which was provided way
back in the days when they did have saloons, and they
are now planning to sell it, for they have no use for it.
I cannot help wondering how long this great peo-
ple of ours will permit themselves to be fooled by the
whiskey gang. There are votes enough of good peo-
ple who are against this thing if they could ever once
get rallied and made a move in unison to sweep it from
the face of the earth. As we start around the world,
I am glad we have this latest evidence upon the ques-
tion of the legalized whiskey business.

Fifth. — The country as a whole.

I wish all the men you meet down there on a certain
little narrow street which has become very famous, who
sometimes get agitated about a " panic " would just
take one quiet unhurried ride across the country and
look at the untold and utterly unmeasured possibilities
in temporal resources. They would be ashamed ever to
mention " panic " again ; 8,000,000,000 bushels of corn
is now cribbed ready for the market; 13,000,000,000
bushels of wheat is moving toward the markets and the
mills. I think we ourselves have seen cattle enough to
feed the whole world for the next quarter of a cen-
tury to say nothing about the hogs, and out here in
this great northwest, sheep — if we could not get anything
else except lamb kidney stew, we would not get hungry
for the next ten years, and wool enough to clothe us

n

indefinitely, to say nothing about the minerals unseen
and almost unmeasured that are yet to be taken out of
the mountains — really, it is a joke t« talk about a panic
in such a country as this.

A few stock gamblers and manipulators may have rea-
son for anxiety, but every legitimate business has only
one future to it, and that is one of progress.

We need not worry about the size of our bank de-
posits, our dividends, our stocks and our bonds. Just
one thing the men of this great land of ours need, and
that is more religion, more of the Bible, more of Jesus
Christ, more of the Church, and we can face the future
without fear.

Of course, we are all conscious in our party that we
are going away from home, and that we have some long
weeks ahead of us. We are going to try to l)e faithful
to those who are sending us out, and to those wiio are
sustaining us, but we know the days will, after all, pass
rapidly, and the home-coming will be a great joy.

As you have opportunity, won't you express to all
our Committeemen and contributing friends our very
deep appreciation of that generous co-operation which
makes possible this campaign, and be assured that by
every power within us, and by the grace of God, we
will let no opportunity pass of rendering the highest
possible service for the Kingdom of God to the ends of
the earth. I know perfectly well that sucli an oppor-
tunity as we are now facing cannot come again in our
lives. That which we do we must do now. Pray for us
that we may be faithful.

Yours very sincerely,

Fred. B. Smith.

12

II

En route to Honolulu, January 22, 1913.

My dear Mr. Cannon : We are nearing the Hawaiian
Islands. A few hours more and we will be on land, and
I want to have just a little message ready to start back
to you at once.

If you ask us to-day, Wednesday, about our voyage,
every man in the party will respond with a chipper air
of confidence and pleasure, for we are now all well, and
the prospect of landing to-morrow in Honolulu makes
us happy in the anticipation of the great campaign
which is planned for us there. But if you had asked
us how we enjoyed sea travel about last Saturday,
there would have been a sad wail for your answer.
We left San Francisco brave in the feeling that no
flutter of the peaceful, calm, friendly blue Pacific
Ocean could disturb us. Our good ship, the China,
passed through Golden Gate at about three o'clock
Friday afternoon, but only two of our party of seven
could appear for dinner that night. We struck a rough
sea at once, and it proceeded to do its traditional work.

Sea-sickness is a dehghtful joke for those on land
when reciting their sea experiences, but you cannot per-
suade any man that there is the least semblance of
humor in it when the ship begins turning summer-saults
and he knows he must pay the inevitable penalty. From
luncheon on Friday, at one o'clock, our next unanimous
roll-call was on Sunday night for dinner. There is a
deal of poetry and sentiment about the placid Pacific,
with her calm breezes and gentle ripples, but the fact is,
when she gets mad, she is mad clear to the bottom, and
the results are just the same as those on the Atlantic

13

under similar conditions. It does not do much good
to quote lines about the " quiet blue " of the Pacific
when a poor sea-sick passenger is losing all of the meals
he may have eaten since a year ago last Thanksgiving.
Just to sum it up, the truth is, we got well tlirashed
out during our first forty-eight hours. However, it is
all over now, and like the old colored man who loved to
have somebody kick him in the shins because it felt so
good when it quit hurting, we rather boast of our ex-
perience because the joy of quiet has been the greater
since we got our " sea legs " under us.

Crossing the Pacific Ocean has some things in it that
are exactly the same as crossing the Atlantic, or any
other ocean. The sea is the sea, everywhere and any-
where, but it docs seem to me that I have had more
thoughts about its significance and about its weird hfe
upon this voyage than any of the others which I can
remember. I sometimes wonder, after all, whether God
meant us to go spinning back and forth in these human-
made machines of travel. The sea is so big and vast
that nobody can understand it. You try to think it
through in all of its mystery, and after a while you get
tired and give it up. It is so restful at times, and so
calm, that you wish you might always be out upon it,
and then in a little while it gets so mad that you believe
it to be your fiercest enemy and hope and pray never to
see it again. Out here, as we move into the tropical
zone and sit at the bow on moonlight nights, while the
spray rushes back from the prow of the ship and a thou-
sand ripples glisten with delight, it seems so full of music
that you want always to be near enough to hear it. And
then again, that long sort of distant moan has such a
sad refrain that it seems as though the sorrows of the
universe are wrapped up in its bosom, and you want to
be free from it forever.

1-t

I am not surprised that the peroration of the Bible in
its Heaven scene should declare that " the sea is no
more." There are thousands upon thousands of the
people of the world who would not want to go to Heaven
if they had to live constantly in the memory of the sea
and had to battle with its elements for all eternity as
they have had to do in time. Personally, I am a sure
enough lover of the sea, but I believe I would rather
sit somewhere on terra firma and watch it rather than
undertake to conquer it in travel. Before we can get
back, we have about twenty-seven thousand miles to
travel over these waves, and as I write now, it seems to
me the best thing the sea can do for us is to bear us
safely home.

One of the things which has made our voyage unique
is the presence of a fine lot of missionaries on board.
Some of them are going out for the first time, and
others are going back after furlough. Most striking
among the lot is the grand old Bishop Harris, of the
Methodist Episcopal Church for Japan and Korea.
These Christian workers form a strange and glorious
contrast to the average tourist. I guess every ship has
its gamblers, drunkards, blackguards, and all-around
sports on board. I have traveled a good deal, but do
not remember ever getting on any ship without finding
that same group of brawlers. There is no place on
earth, it seems to me, so sure to reveal what is really in
a man as upon a long sea journey. He lets the beast
out if it is in him. There is a kind of feeling that you
are out of the world, and that what is done on a ship
does not count. I talked with one young man who has
been drinking and gambling, who assured me that these
were not the permanent habits of his life, and that he
would not think of such a thing on shore. The Atlantic
Ocean always reveals this type, but I have an impression

15

that these crowds going to the far East take a little
more hberty along tiiis line than an^'where else. Cer-
tainly we have that crowd at its worst. The crew of
the siiip, with the exception of the officers, is made up
entirely of Chinamen, and they gamble riotously. We
have seen as many as seven Chinamen with their tables
and dice right out iji full view on the open deck of the
ship phiying '* chuck-a-luck." They gamble with just
the same zest and enthusiasm with which tliey eat rice
with chop sticks. These coolies of the crew, however,
are not more vulgar in their open gambling than a
gang of young-blood Americans who are passengers.

I wonder if you ever thought of this : the loud-
mouthed American can make more display of his im-
morality, I firmly believe, than any other man on this
footstool. When the American drinks whiskey, he drinks
it like a hog. AViien he gambles, he gambles like a
glutton, and when he swears, he stands out alone. There
is no other breathing human being who can so blas-
pheme all the names that are sacred to religion as the
American. We have a kind of refrain in our blood
which, when it gets wicked and vicious, is explosive. If
you want to see this type, you need to observe him with
liis thumbs in his vest en rmite for the far East to dis-
play his marvelous talents. Thank God, these great-
souled missionaries tell the other side of our American
life, and notwithstanding the first type, I am perfectly
willing to have the country judged by the average found
on this very ship. Among these missionaries are young
women, cultured, refined, and of first ability, leaving all
they hold dear of human ties to go out to serve Christ
in trying to penetrate the non-Christian realm with the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. Here again is a young man
and a girl wife and baby, breaking home ties, starting
for the first time, with their faces turned toward four

16

Bishop Harris, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, on Steamer
China, returning after furlough, just completing fifty
years' service in Japan

hundred million souls in China to do their part in try-
ing to evangelize them. Another brainy man and his
wife, he from Berlin and she from one of the finest
families in Canada, the holders of sufficient wealth to
make them independent for life, are returning from
furlough. He came out first sixteen years ago. Dur-
ing that time he has been home twice, and now, with
the enthusiasm of a young man going to his first work,
he returns to his mission two thousand miles in the in-
terior of China because he believes that God calls him
there. He has seen riots, revolutions, Boxer wars, mar-
tyrs' deaths, but none of these deter him.

Then, perhaps, towering grandest of them all, is
the great old Bishop to whom I have already re-
ferred. His hair is white as snow, and his face beams
like that of a young schoolboy. The foreign mission-
ary pessimist ought to have to sit at his side at the din-
ing table for an ocean voyage. He would be beaten
into pulp by the records of the Gospel triumph which
this man has witnessed. He has been almost fifty years
in Japan, and knows the whole story of Christianity's
challenge and triumph for that people. To hear him
tell the story of what he found in Japan fifty years ago
and what exists there now is a miracle. It could not
be accounted for by any possible rational logic. He
does not place first emphasis upon the hundreds of thou-
sands of actual communicants of the Christian Church
in Japan, although they have them, but he places first
emphasis upon the social, political, domestic reforma-
tion which has been wrought. In other words, Japan
is becoming Christian far. more rapidly than is indi-
cated by the mere increase of communicants in the
Church. This great prophet does not entertain one
shadow of doubt of the final issue. Japan and Korea

17

are to l)c C'liristijin. lie believes that witli all the power
of his being.

These people are paying a tremendous price for fol-
lowing their convictions. The cost is more severe prob-
ably than those of us who remain at home can ever es-
timate. But no one needs to pity them. I have been
thanking God for the privilege of traveling on this
ship that I might thus have the opportunity of personal
relationship and acquaintance with them when they are
away from home and are actually facing the long strain
of years of service. Positively, they are the most buoy-
ant, happy lot on the whole ship. They feel the sense
of the high honor and dignity of being called of God
to this service. As I have thought of their life and
watched them, I have come to the conclusion that the
people to be pitied are those who call themselves Chris-
tian, but have never known the richer joy of real sac-
rifice. The more I study the Gospel, the more I am
persuaded that there is no genuine Christianity, either
individual, church or national, without the element of
sacrifice entering into it. These missionary folks know
what that means.

I am sure, as I get farther on, I will have more to
say about our obligations to the missionaries, and what
a delightfully happy privilege it ought to be for the
home Church to sustain them. But just now, I want
to say to you, dear friend, and I wish you would say
it to everybody you can for us, that we ought to sustain
these, our representatives of the Foreign Missionary
Boards, not only because of their bravery, not only be-
cause they are going to the greatest moral need of the
woi'ld, but also because they are a good corrective in
the far East, of that impression that the Americans are
all for greed and graft. Contrasting the whiskey drink-
ing, gambling crowd of our ship, living for what they

18

can enjoy for an hour's sensuous pleasure, with these
folks who have seen the vision of winning the world for
Christ, makes me realize anew what a grand thing it is
to be a Christian. Therefore, what a glorious cam-
paign it is in which we are engaged. If we can be used
of God in the way of our travel to lead many men to
know this true life, it will be worth all of our sacrifice.

Another fact which has marked our voyage across
as unique has been the death of one of our passengers.
This is not the first time in my life that I have been
on a ship where it was necessary to have a burial at sea,
but it was the first time that I have witnessed funeral
exercises on a ship. I have always had an impression
that it would be a sort of depressing and heart-rending
scene, but really, the service we had this morning, and
the burial, I think, made a profound Christian impi'es-
sion upon evei-ybody. The young man who died was a
Japanese by the name of Shirai Nawokachi. He had
been suffering with mitral stenosis for some time, and
was returning home. I think, in our terms, it is prac-
tically the same as inflammatory rheumatism. It be-
came necessary, of course, to have the funeral at once.
The ship stopped, and Bishop Harris conducted the
exercises, assisted by a native Japanese minister. Our
quartet sang, and then a company of missionaries and
Japanese sang one of their hymns. The young man was
a Christian and of a Christian family, and there was
the manifest hope of the Christian through it all. Yet
there was that eternal lesson that there is no escape on
land or sea from the sentence of death.

I wish I could drop down to-morrow to the Fourth
National Bank, go up to the dining room where we have
sat so many times and talked over problems of Christian
work at length, and just have a little chat with you,
but that privilege will not be mine for a good many

19

weeks. Let inc tell 3'ou this niucli : I do not believe there
has ever been a day in my life when I faced opportuni-
ties with a keener desire to do my best than now.

The past five years have been a period of such intense
and constant ti'avcl with me that I am wondering if
there may not be an added Providence in this time away
from the scenes of our own task for a while, not only
for what we may be able to do in interpreting this
larger method and message, and in winning men to the
Christian life in the distant lands which we are to visit,
but also that we may get a new perspective of the real
issues of our own dear country. This much I know
already : It will be a terrible calamity and sin if we fail
to win our North American land to its highest possibili-
ties in the Christian hope. It will be a sin because we
have the men there who are ready to back up by their
personal counsel, effort and money, the biggest pro-
gram that anybody can dream out. When I think of
how the generous-hearted Christian business men of that
land have and are sustaining every type of vigorous
Christian propaganda, I am prepared to say that there
will be an awful sin resting upon somebody in the Judg-
ment if the victory is not won. It will be a calamity if
it is not done, because just as sure as anything of which
we may know the world cannot be evangelized without
the inspiring co-operation and illustration of the North
American triumph. We are not very far on this world
tour yet, but we have studied the problems enough from
New York to Honolulu to be conscious of the fact that
what takes place religiously in North America becomes
immediately of world information and interest.

I believe God is leading us in this campaign around
the world. I have not a shadow of a doubt concerning
that fact this morning, but I also believe that by these

20

experiences God means to deepen, quicken and intensify
our own message at home when we get back.

Robins, Peck, Gilbert, Keeler, Metcalf, Lathrop and
myself send back to you and all the others there the
deepest love of which we are capable. We do not for-
get to pray for you any day as we are sure you do not
forget us.

By the way, as I think of our program for each day,
probably most delightful for us is our own little church
service. We have a Bible Study class of our own. The
quartet sings, and we have what might be called chapel
exercises every day. We pile in on the trunks and the
bunks in one state-room at ten o'clock each morning.

Yours with two hands to the end of the journey.

Fred. B. Smith.

21

Ill

En route Honolulu to Yokohama, February 3, 1913.

INIy dear jNIr. Caxxox : Well, wc arc out on the big blue
deep a^ain, and this time we arc to have a long stretch.
It is 3,400 miles from Honolulu to Yokohama, and by
the rather moderate speed of our ship, the Manchuria,
it will take us at least ten days to make the trip. But
we are happy in having this long time upon a perfectly
wonderful ship. The Atlantic Ocean does not furnish
anything better for comfort than this grand Manchuria.
She is as steady as an old clock even in some pretty
rough sea which we have encountered, and she is handled
perfectly by Captain Andrew Dixon, our skipper, who is
one of the best. He is running the ship and not enter-
taining the ladies in the drawing-room or the sports
in the smoking-room. I always get restless at sea when
I find the Captain playing the part of the gay Beau
Brummel. The story of the Titanic might have been
different if the ship had been rightly handled on that
sad night. We have a man who stubbornly sticks to his
post of duty, and it gives us all confidence.

Remembering our movements for the past month, we
are surely the exemplars of Finnegan's idea of life as
being one constant round of " off agin, on agin, gone
agin."

The week at Honolulu passed so quickly that now it
seems almost like a dream. We can scarcely realize
that we have been there and are through with our first
big campaign, and are sailing away for Japan. While
it is true that the time spent there seems very short
(for the days went so quickly), yet it does not strike us

22

that the time since leaving New York can possibly be
but one month. Just four weeks ago, we were at that
never-to-be-forgotten dinner at the Hotel Astor. It
seems like three months, for since that time we have
traveled 8,000 miles. Robins has spoken 57 times,
I have spoken 54 times, the Quartet has par-
ticipated in 70 meetings and they have sung 201
times. We have held a total of 88 meetings and
conferences, with a total attendance of 20,766.
These figures are very accurate, for Peck is our statis-
tician, and he is so cruelly and persistently accurate
that I think he could tell, if we gave him a little time,
exactly the number of biscuits every man in the party
has eaten. You can get at least some little idea from
these figures that we have been putting in the full quota
of work when we have been on land.

I have spent a good many years in the itinerant type
of Christian work, but certainly was never more com-
pletely fascinated by any situation than by that in Hon-
olulu. Of course, we had a unique interest in our visit
to the Hawaiian Islands because they are a part of our
own country, our newest territory. We felt that we had
a special right and privilege there. The United States
may well be proud of these islands and their people.
They will do us good and not evil, and a hundred years
hence the great Republic may discover that this new ter-
ritory has made a big contribution to the nation's high-
est moral good.

Honolulu is great in agricultural products. Of
course, we always think first of sugar plantations when
we consider the commercial side of the Hawaiian Islands.
This is now, and doubtless always will be, the big inter-
est. They shipped $40,000,000 worth of sugar out of
the islands in 1912. That is big enough to make even
Wall Street sit up and give some special attention. I

visited one of the great plantations and saw them on
one side of the valley cutting cane where the stalks were
as big as ten-year-old trees, and saw the steam railroads
running right out into the fields, pulling long trains of
flat cars heavily loaded with the cane up to the mills.
Then I followed it into the mill, saw it dumped into the
great crushers, then on through to the other end, where
it came out the most beautiful granulated sugar ever
put upon the market, and one grade of very highly re-
fined crystal sugar, all of which is shipped to Paris for
the French confectioners' use.

On the other side of the valley I saw the immense
great steam plows turning the soil upside down to a
depth of three feet. They made the old-time plow that
I used to follow look like a Coney Island toy sand shovel.

The whole sugar operation is colossal, and it is only
in its infancy. Up to the present time just the easiest
valleys are under cultivation. With the rapid increase
of facilities for irrigation and with larger investment of
money, the coming years will see this industry multiplied
many times over.

But great as is the sugar business, it is by no means
the only resource. The higher fields, which, until re-
cently, have been considered as having little or no value,
are now being planted in pineapple orchards, and this
product promises to run a close second to sugar before
many years.

Fruit of practically every description grows in abun-
dance, and is of luscious quality. The only really
" measly " thing we saw there was the cattle. They
surely have the worst in the world, at least I sincerely
hope there are none worse. No one could quite explain
this to me, but I guess there is something about the
climate that good big short-horns and the like do not
take to. That the islands have great commercial pos-

£4

sibilities is evidenced by the fact that they have prac-
tically no poverty such as we see in other countries.

Honolulu is great in scenery and climate. It is
about the only place I have ever visited where they
can truthfully boast that it does not make much dif-
ference what time of the year you come, so far as the
weather is concerned. There are no great extremes
of heat or cold. This fact makes the climate almost
perfect, and it also produces a most magnificent growth
of foliage, especially in ferns, palms and cocoanut trees.
I think I have seen something of tropical possibilities,
but my present judgment is that Honolulu leads the
world. The most magnificent growths in southern Cal-
ifornia cannot approach those seen everywhere in Hono-
lulu. One is simply lost in wonder at the sight of the
gardens with the trees and flowers which surround the
homes.

Honolulu is great in Christian history. I think that
if I wanted to take an honest skeptic concerning the
Christian faith to some spot where I could illustrate at
close range the results of Christianity, I would take
him to Honolulu. Any man who is willing to accept
evidence can convince himself beyond any possible ques-
tion as to the transforming, uplifting, compelling power
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by the evidence of what
has taken place here in a few brief years. Go back a
hundred years into the history of these Hawaiian peo-
ple, and it reeks with horror. The well-authenticated
practices of the natives of a century ago are too fright-
ful for thought. In all the contact I have had with
missionaries of India, Ceylon, Burma and Africa, I have
heard nothing so awful as some of the incidents of the
old heathen state upon the Hawaiian Islands. The ter-
ror of their sins of human sacrifice which are written
is the mildest part of the story. A hundred years ago

25

no woman was permitted to eat food cooked in the same
oven as that for her husband. If any one of a man's
hundred wives dared even to step into his eating room
at any time, whether he was there or not, the penalty
was quick and sure death. A hundred years ago there
was no law known but the law of might.

In 1820 the first permanent Christian missionaries
landed on the shores of the Hawaiian Islands. They
were from old New England. They had religion and
knew it. They preached, founded schools, translated
the Bible, nursed the sick, buried the dead, and did all
those more spiritual things every missionary is expected
to do. They also farmed, taught the trades, launched
the sugar industry, and, along with everything else,
how they coidd iight when that seemed a necessary thing
for the Kingdom of God ! They fought the savages
within the islands, and the whaling pirates from with-
out. The early history is sad enough in the record of
the conduct of white whaling fishermen from California,
Mexico and England. Those early missionaries used
their bullets and their fists freely with this crowd. They
laid the foundations for a wonderful Christian civiliza-
tion. All there is of the Hawaiian Islands and of Hono-
lulu, the beautiful capital, which to-day is worth boast-
ing about, is due to the beneficent service of these early
missionaries. There is no such thing as Hawaiian his-
tory apart from the record of these Christian pioneers.
They are the warp and woof of what is found there now.
We were made conscious of the permanent power of
their work in the presence of great schools and churches.
Of schools for wliite students only, Cahu or Punchou
College is the most marked. It was founded by the old
missionary, Bingham, who gave the land and the first
money. It was originally intended as a school for the
children of the missionaries. It has steadily grown

26

until in educational, social and religious influence it is
the Oxford of the islands. It now has seven hundred
students, and sends annually about fifteen graduates
to eastern universities, such as Yale, Harvard and
Princeton.

The second, which is for Hawaiians only, the Kame-
hameha School, has over five hundred students. We had
the great privilege of conducting meetings in both of
these institutions. Each was of marked and unique in-
terest, but probably all of our men will remember until
they die the marvelous singing of the students at Kame-
hameha School. They sang " Urbs Beata," " Jerusa-
lem the Golden," and " Aloha Oe," the latter composed
by Queen Liliuokalani. As I sat on the platform, I
could not restrain the tears. There is no use in trying
to describe their singing; it must be heard to be appre-
ciated. It is perfectly safe to say that these two insti-
tutions will furnish all of the great leaders in the fu-
ture Hawaiian government and commercial life. Both
of them are the direct, definite results of the work of
the missionaries.

Among the many churches there, two stand out as
perhaps the most striking indications of missionary
permanence. One is the Central Union Church, which
has Congregational affiliations, and the one where the
older missionaries all belong. It has a membership oif
1,100. In addition to a local annual budget of
$17,000, this church spends $41,000 annually through
the Hawaiian Board for missionary eifort throughout
the islands. I doubt whether we have very many single
churches anywhere in the United States whose mission-
ary gifts would exceed that of the Central Union Church
of Honolulu. The other, the Kawaiahoa Church, the
grand old bulwark of the Hawaiian Islands, has a mem-
bership of 1,050 people. This is the Old South Church

27

of the Boston type. It is their Faneuil Hall, their Lib-
erty Bell, their Westminster Abbey. Here some of the
later kings were crowned, and here it was that the
Christian king, Kamehameha the Fourth, when being
crowned, used the expression, " The life of the land is
preserved by righteousness." That expression has be-
come the watchword of the whole people. It was in this
old church that the Declaration of Independence was
read in 1890, when they declared Queen Liliuokalani to
be their monarch no longer. I had the joy of going
to this church on Sunday morning. Among the most
interesting incidents was to find there one of the old
residents, a Mr. Jones, a man who came to Honolulu
from Boston fifty-five years ago. When he landed on the
islands he had a few coins of such small denomination
that he could not spend them. They had no value. They
were pennies and three-cent pieces, and he now has all the
coins he had when he landed with the exception of one.
He has prospered ; he is now a wealthy philanthropist
and is seventy-six years old, but he has been teaching
continuously a Bible class in this church since 1867. It
was my privilege to see him with that class, and to snap
my camera upon them.

Many other churches are growing strong, and are
giving evidence of how the Christian life was planted by
these first messengers. The Episcopalians have a great
catliedral there. The Methodists have strong churches,
and the Disciples of Christ have recently begun to work.

Another evidence of this abiding power is the mag-
nificent Young Men's Christian Association building,
costing $247,000, all subscribed and paid for by Hono-
lulu men. They have no debts, and their bills are
paid monthly. They have sixteen hundred members,
and ten choice men on the staff of employed secretaries.
It is the equal of any Association in any city of that

28

size I have ever visited, if indeed it does not excel any-
thing in any city of that size.

An additional evidence that these men planted a virile
truth came to us in the closer study and knowledge of
the incidents which led to the revolution, the establish-
ment of a republic, and later to annexation. The most
intense element in this is the fact that the principle which
brought the revolution was not a desire for greater
commercial gain, but was one essentially moral, Chris-
tian and spiritual. The men who led in that insurrec-
tion faced the possibility not only of commercial wreck
and the loss of their property, but they took their
very lives in their hands, for had the movement failed
their heads would not have been worth ten cents apiece.
They knew all this, and yet, for the sake of the King-
dom of God which they held dearer than life, they made
their daring challenge, and they won out. Time servers,
commercial slaves and playhouse toys do not launch
reforms of that kind.

Perhaps, however, the supreme evidence that these
missionaries had and lived a real Christ life is to be
found in the fact that the leading Christian workers
now in the islands are their sons and grandsons. We
heard much about the second and third generations.
This is the method of describing the families of mis-
sionaries up to date. The third generation is now
pretty largely upon the stage of action. Some of them
are missionaries, some are teachers, some are business
men. Some are the wealthiest and most benevolent giv-
ers of money upon the islands. Practically every great
benevolence has come with the name of a missionary
attached to it. The money given by one of the second
or third generation is often given in memory of the
old folks. It is true there are some sad instances where
sons and grandsons have drifted away, but they are

29

comparatively few. Everything you touch in Hono-
lulu that is worth while is filled with the influence of
those warring, vigorous missionaries who went out un-
der the American Board from 1820 to 1835. Other
churches have followed and are doing a grand work, but
those first great saints laid the foundations, and no man
can tear them up.

As I came into contact with that tremendous vigor,
I could but wonder whether New England's present
Christianity can send out another band who can render
such service as did these. Frankly, I am afraid they
cannot. If these men and women had started for that
buffeting of six, seven and eight months from New Bed-
ford around Cape Horn on old sailing ships to the
heathen scenes of those islands, most of them facing the
probability of never seeing their native shores again,
with a big interrogation point in their theology touch-
ing the Bible as God's Word, Jesus Christ as the Son
of God, and conversion as a supernatural work, they
would have skipped for home with " nervous prostra-
tion," the cloak for many modern defeats, by the first
returning ship. As I witnessed these marvelous results,
I thanked God they had a real religion.

Honolulu is great in its strategic Christian possibili-
iics. I was prepared for some things we were there to
meet, but I was utterly unprepared to realize that we
were going to stand on that small spot of ground and
sound out the message of our Movement almost to the
uttermost parts of the earth. I do not believe that there
is another city in all the world which can influence so
large a radius of the unevangelized parts of the world
as can Honolulu. The addresses which Robins and I
gave were in part or in full printed every day, not only
in English, but in Japanese, Chinese and Portuguese.

The shores of the Pacific Ocean are to form a very

30

large part of the forum for Christianizing the unpos-
sessed parts of the world, and everybody who goes to the
Pacific Ocean very much will some time go to Honolulu.
I was amazed at this part of the situation, for it had
not occurred to me until I reached there and had begun
our work. Those missionaries who started out of Bos-
ton or New Bedford harbors in the little old sailing
ships to beat their way around Cape Horn through six
months of peril and suffering, to find their opportunity
of planting the Gospel upon the Sandwich Isles, little
realized, I think, what a gateway they were evangeliz-
ing. The years have passed, and the seed they planted
there so faithfully, and baptized with their blood in a
good many instances, is now the ripened illustration
for those who still sit in darkness looking for the light.
I would be very happy if I thought we were in any little
way doing a work that would live as long as the work
done by those godly men and women.

As I am dictating to Lathrop this message to you,
the quartet is in the next room practicing some of the
Hawaiian songs. I hope we will be able to bring back
to you some of that intense spirit and that beautiful
life with which we there came into contact.

We were up every morning at about six o'clock, and
I do not think there was a night while we were there that
we got to bed before twelve or one o'clock, and most of
the time was spent in meetings and conferences. I can-
not begin to describe them to you, and I will not attempt
to tell you much about results. I am sure some of the
tidings will reach you through other channels, but I
can say this without being misunderstood. In our
closing meeting, such men as Bishop Restarick, of the
Protestant Episcopal Church, Dr. Scudder, the great
leader of Central Union Church, the Rev. Mr. Peters,
pastor of the Disciples of Christ Church, and Rev. Mr.

31

Smith, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Pros. A.
F. Griffiths, of Oalui College, Mr. Paul Super, Gen-
eral Secretary of the Young Men's Christian Asso-
ciation, and Mr. Frank C. Athcrton, Chairman of the
Executive Committee, grandson of a missionary and
one of the wealthiest young men of the islands, said
such words of approval and commendation about our
work as I believe we have never listened to in any
one city. We parted with those brethren, feeling that
in no uncertain or unmistakable way God had been
witnessing through us. There were, of course, many
delightful incidents in connection with our days there,
which I cannot and dare not try to put in a letter to
you, for you would be wearied in attempting to read
it, but one is of such unique interest that I cannot omit
it, for to us just ordinary United States folks, where,
of course, we have no hesitancy in walking up to the
Chief Executive of the nation, and, with delightful fa-
miliarity, put our hand on his shoulder and say, " Hello,
Bill ! " or " Hello, Teddy ! " it means a good deal to
be given the privilege of meeting some of the royalty.
Therefore you can understand with what delight we
availed ourselves of the opportunity of a brief call upon
the famous Ex-Queen Liliuokalani. Through her pri-
vate secretary an interview was arranged and was
greatly enjoyed. Of course, she is an old lady, but
she received us with most beautiful and gracious cour-
tesy, talked freely of the United States and her friends
reaching all the way to Boston, had the quartet sing
for her, and was evidently deeply moved by their music.
She herself is the author of the most delightful Ha-
waiian hymn, " Aloha Oe," which, in our terminology,
would be about equivalent to " God be with you 'till
we meet again."

There was no time when we were so conscious of being

32

in the presence of the " old order " as we were while
visiting here in the palace, for we were surrounded by
pictures of the old kings, and she herself sat like a
queen, surrounded by the emblems of her royalty. You
need not be surprised if j^ou find a kind of hitherto
unknown dignity about us when we get back, for we
are sure enough moving among the " upper ten."

As I close this message, I want again to tell you of
how intensely and wonderfully we are all working to-
gether. Every man in the party would be quick to
jump to the relief of any other man if he felt that the
work was breaking down at any point. We have many
delightful friends, of course, whom we are meeting all
the way along, but I am sure every man of the seven
would say that the happiest time in all the day is when
we meet just by ourselves each morning for our little
Bible study and chapel service.

We are moving on, constantly putting more miles
between us and those we love best in the world, but we
are continuing in the faith that God is directing and'
that we are to be His messengers in a very true sense.

With continued and ever-increasing love and good
wishes to you and to all those who are standing with
us, I am.

Yours very sincerely,

Fred. B. Smith.

33

IV

£n route Honolulu to Yokoliania, Japan, Feb-
ruary 8, 1913.

Dear jNIr. Cannon : A few hours more and we will be
off for our work in Japan. I will send you a brief
note, although the ten days from Honolulu have been
broken only by the typical ship scenes, and therefore
do not contain much of special interest to write about.
Counting the time from San Francisco, we have seen
only one little ship in sixteen daj^s of sailing, just sea,
sea, sea! I cannot even report a unique incident on the
ship. I wish I could make one voyage somewhere, some
time, that would be different. As I think over all the
years and all the voyages they seem exactly alike.

William Hodge, in the " Man from Home," says that
there are just as many different kinds of people in
Kokomo, Indiana, as there are in the world. That is
true of a ship. There are 5,000,000 people in New
York City, but I am sure we have as many kinds on this
boat among our three hundred passengers as you will
find there among the entire 5,000,000. We have the
gay " la-de-da " boy, so dapper and cunning, sure that
he is the center of the universe. We have the " fluffy-
ruffles " girl, so stunning that she marvels that the world
existed at all before she arrived. We have the literary
man who walks the deck in a poem of precision, hair
long, eyes deep sunken, a far-away stare. We have
the dashing theatrical group, who have forgotten that
this is not a stage. They keep " acting " all the while.
We have the brazen-faced, cigarette-doped, whiskey-

34

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saturated gambler. He has no respect for days, places
or people. We have the grand, substantial business
men and women, those who carry the hope of the world
in their demeanor. We have the great Bishop, the au-
gust Father, the Evangelist and the missionary. Hu-
manity at its best and worst is brought into review on
a long sea pilgrimage.

We have had " sports " galore. The " bottle race,"
the " potato race," " threading the needle," the " tug "
of war," and the " pillow fight." These are as customary
ship events as is black coffee at a well-ordered dinner.

We have a lecture upon " The Poets." Shame on
the man who first invented lectures upon poetry ! That
disease follows us even at sea. We have a " dance."
That is the night when the baggage room is stormed
and the ladies, who vowed on shore that " they were not
going to fuss with dressing on the ship," go down deep
for the swellest thing possible. The old grouch who
wouldn't speak to anybody the first three days
comes out with full dress on this evening, and is a regu-
lar chatter-box, a perfect ladies' man. Last night was
the time for this great event with us, and a dear old
Methodist preacher on board appealed to me to help
him stop the " scandalous thing." He said that these
people were going to hell before our eyes, and that we
ought to protest. Still the dance went on.

We have a " concert." Great rulers of darkness, is
there any punishment sufficient for the fiend incarnate
who first devised the " ship's concert " ? That is the
night when people who cannot sing on the key sing on
your nerves. It is the hour when the fellow who can-
not recite for sour apples recites by the yard. It is
the night when the fellow who can't talk is sure to make
some " remarks." I am persuaded that sinking at sea
is a terrible experience, but I am also sure that that

35

alone is the one thing to be dreaded more than the
famous ship concert.

We have a " pool on the run." This is where the old
ringer skins the lamb out of his pin money. I wonder
if the day will ever come when law will reach the sea
and stop gambling. Men will come from cities, states
and nations where gambling is prohibited, but the hour
they put foot on an ocean liner they gamble with no
law to interfere. It is a pity the sea does not belong
to somebody.

We have " C'hurcli " at sea. Thank God for this
grand reminder of home, family, duty and destiny. I
know the Christian services on the ocean have never
meant so much to me as this time, for we are daily
pushing our way farther from the spot where of all
tlie earth we most long to be. Last Sunday the great
Bishop Fallows preached in the morning, and our team
conducted the evening meeting. I believe the people
all enjoyed these services. The quartet sang, "Re-
member Now Thy Creator," as one of their selections,
and afterwards, on deck, the " la-de-da " boy brushed
up to me, and, wishing to be complimentary, spoke
of Robins' and my addresses appreciatively, and then
said, " That was a charming selection by the quar-
tet. I say, sir, was that one of Kipling's poems.''"
I could have jiujitsued him. After all, that is about
on a par with a good deal of deck talk. Two men
yesterday debated at length whether a ship was kept
afloat by the strength of the salt in the sea, or by
its speed. They said that river boats floated because
they were made of wood, but that a steel ship would
sink in the Hudson River! And so, amid this round
of life, we arc plowing our way to the great far East.

If we can claim any distinction for our voyage, it
might be in the presence of the Fallows party made

36

up of the Bishop, Mrs. E. H. Fallows, Mr. S. Fal-
lows, Miss A. R. Fallows, Mr. and Mrs. D. Fox,
Mr. Albert Stevens Crockett, Mr. Chessman Kitt-
redge, Mr. and Mrs. Leo H. Wise, and Captain and
Mrs. C. B. Humphrey. Mr. S. Fallows is a son of
Bishop Fallows, of Chicago. The old Bishop is along
as chaplain. They are going out to investigate the
commercial future of the Philippine Islands. There
are all sorts of rumors about what great enterprises
they are going to launch if they find the conditions
favorable. We have found them a grand lot of high-
minded people, and they have made the long days less
wearisome.

Of course, our Men and Religion party of seven has
furnished the opportunity for a deal of speculation
also. One man asked me if we were being sent out
by the Morgan interests to get a report upon the
religious status of the Philippine Islands, and to de-
cide what kind of a church would best be adapted to
those people. So you can see we are still having our
troubles with Wall Street!

But if we are to claim any unique factor, it must
be that when we reached the 180th meridian, we
dropped out a Sunday ! We reached that famous line
at six o'clock Saturday night, and so Sunday had to
go. We went to bed Saturday night, slept about ten
hours and woke up Monday morning. That is speed
enough to keep the Wright Brothers and Marconi
busy for some time. However, the Captain and the
generous-hearted passengers decided that Monday
should be observed as Sunday, and, therefore, in spirit
we lost Monday instead. I wish you could hear all the
wise speculations about this loss of a day. It is funny,
and as mentally racking, as the old " 13-14-15 puz-
zle." " Do the folks at home actually get the best of

37

us one day ? " " Do they get that much more sleep,
or when do we lose? " " Do we turn our watches ahead
thirty minutes now instead of back as we did before?"
" Will we be a day ahead or behind when we get all the
way around? " One man, the most profound, thought
he gave a solution by saying, " Why don't they cut
out one day everywhere at the same time ? " Then
everybody will be even." Personally, I give it up, and
as I feel to-day I shall not stop off at Fire Island to
debate about the calendar when I get that close to
home.

These long stretches of travel and time are severe
strains, and onl>' a sense of doing God's work could
keep us patient. I have met some men who are going
to the Philippines for dollars only, and are leaving
their families behind. One man says he does not ex-
pect to see his family for three years. I think if it
made the difference between their being hungry or
being fed, I might go, but certainly not just to put
some money in the bank.

When you get this, we will be pulling hard in Hong-
kong. It will be our most difficult city. Remember us
there. We do not forget you and the co-operating
friends for one day.

Very best greetings,

Fred. B. Smith.

38

On Steamer Cliihugo Maru of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha
Steamship Co., Japan to China, February 21, 1913.

My dear Mr. Cannon : Having finished our cam-
paign in Japan, we are now catching our breath and
getting a httle rest of forty-eight hours as we cross the
China Sea before beginning work in Shanghai. I send
back to you a greeting, and a little message concerning
the progress of the Kingdom in this far-away land. I
do not know that I ever found it more difficult to write
any intelligent or adequate statement concerning any
piece of work in which I have been engaged. There have
been running through my mind so many things about
which I would like to write to you, and yet there is such
a confusion in it all that I do not know whether I can
state anything so that you can clearly understand it.
The fact is, I believe if I would stop over here for a
while without undertaking to learn the language, it
would not be very long before I would go raving mad
trying to make myself understood. You try to pene-
trate this life with an ordinary idea, and you have had
a crowd of Japanese standing around listening and say-
ing " Yes ! yes ! yes ! " to everything you say. Present-
ly you discover that they have not understood one jot
or tittle of it all, that you have wasted your energy for
nothing, and after a while you feel as though you would
just like to jump up and down. We have been through
so many of these experiences that I do not know whether
I can dictate an intelligent letter, and I am not quite
sure but that Lathrop's pen has gotten so fogged with
the Japanese dialect that even that may refuse to work.

39

For such a brief time as we have had, it would be dar-
ing for me to say much about the country or the people.
While we have been here, they have had one of their
greatest national holidays, the one known as " Empire
Day," to commemorate the founding of the Japanese
Empire about twenty-three hundred 3^ears before Christ,
and therefore a whirlwind world tourist needs to go
pretty cautiously about giving out cock-sure ideas.
Yet, I thinlc there is something very beautiful about the
unrestrained first impressions of any new country. I
have often wished that I could be thrilled again by Lon-
don as I was the first time I saw it. Those first throbs
are grand experiences in any new country. This has
been especially true in Japan. I think the first impres-
sion is that everything seems to be upside down and
inside out. Everything at first seems to be reversed ;
the signs read up and down instead of horizontally ; the
people walk to the left instead of to the right; they
wear white for mourning instead of black; at funerals
they laugh instead of weep ; the " back yards " are in
front of the house instead of in the rear. Then to top
it all off, their " zitas," wooden shoes, rattle like a
regiment of cavalry coming down the road. Altogether
it just seems a general confusion. And yet, when you
have waited a little while, it is the old, old story — they
are busy about the same things that evcrybodj^ else is
busy about. It is the problem of bread, life and God.

I presume, however, of the moi-e striking things we
will always remember that we were here during one of
the great political upheavals. I have no doubt that the
New York papers, especially one I know of, had some
very lurid coloring concerning the riots in Tokyo on
the 11th. But we were there, and were in the Imperial
Hotel, where the crowds did throw some stones through
the front windows, but, after all, it was like a Sunday-

40

school vpicnic compared with getting a street car at the
Brooklyn Bridge about five o'clock any night, and I
would rather take my chances any time in a Tokyo riot
than to be on Broadway on New Year's or election
night. We saw a little of it. We saw the crowds and
we knew the place was disturbed. While upon the sur-
face it was not violent, down deep the very foundations
of the empire were being moved. Nobody says out
loud that it is finally directed at the Imperial throne,
but around in quiet corners, there is a whispered mur-
mur and an asking whether or not the same thing may
not be happening in Japan which has happened in
China. Prince Katsura, the Prime Minister, and the
entire Cabinet resigned because they were not liberal
enough in democratic principles to satisfy the great
mass of the people. All that is lacking in Japan now
seems to be a Sun Yat Sen to literally sweep them
through to a full republican form of government.

I think if I were with you now and were trying to
tell you some of the outstanding impressions, perhaps
the first I would name would be the awful apparent
struggle to live. As I remember India, I think possibly
it is equal to Japan in this respect, but certainly India's
struggle is not more severe than is that of the Japanese.
Nearly fifty millions of people crowded upon these little
islands present a food problem that is simply over-
whelming. If we ever farm the United States as closely
and carefully as they are farming Japan, we can take
care of a billion people. It is perfectly amazing to see
little plots, four feet square, that have been banked up
and made into wheat and rice fields. Every possible
spot of ground which can yield a vegetable or cereal
is made to work. This, of course, involves a fierce
labor problem.

Apparently, the cheapest labor in Japan is that of
41

women. Wc luive seen them doing every kind of heavy
task, wliich in our country would only be undertaken by
modem steam and electrical appliances. Just the other
day I saw about thirty women around an immense pile
driver pulling the hammer up by hand to drive the piles
where a new bridge was being constructed.

The next cheapest labor here evidently is that of men.
One of the most frequent sights is that of a man hitched
up to a load positively big enough for the best horse
in New York State. The more astonishing thing is
that he makes it go. He does not kick, balk or falter.
We have heartrending conditions among working peo-
ple, but we have nothing which approaches the situation
here. Robins has investigated with care this question,
and finds that children get from four to eight cents per
day, women get twelve to eighteen cents and men twenty-
five to thirty-five cents. There are no labor laws regu-
lating hours, ages, compensation or conditions, although
tlicy are now being agitated. Of course, the wages paid
must be considered in relation to the cost of living, which
is low, but not enough to give one full meal a day upon
this basis. This is one of the problems of the Church,
for a missionary may preach his head off to a starving
people to no avail. Great changes, however, are going
to be brought about rapidly, for the best men of the
nation are keen for improvement.

Then, of course, I would seem not to have been prop-
erly impressed by Japan if I failed to make mention of
" Fuji." We were particularly fortunate in coming
into the harbor of Yokohama to have the morning clear,
bright and sunshiny, and Fuji, the great mountain, was
in view at her best. I do not wonder that the people
rave over it. It mounts up there high above the small
buildings and rather miniature people, miniature trains,
miniature everything, grand enough to challenge the

42

attention of the whole world, twelve thousand feet of
eternal pure white snow. I am sure there is not a more
beautiful sight anywhere on earth than this great moun-
tain, and it is not at all strange that they should include
it in their objects of worship.

But of all the things in Japan, that which is con-
stantly brought to your attention, everywhere and every
day, is the delightful and wonderful courtesy of the
people. I venture the assertion that it is not equalled
anywhere in the world. To us rather untutored
westerners, it is quite amusing to see them bow and then
bow again and yet again. I have watched people com-
ing into meetings bowing and bowing to each other
until I thought I would have to go outside and have a
good laugh. Every Japanese speaker, when he rises,
before he begins his address, makes a low bow. I think
there have been twenty-five times when I have seen a
speaker make this introductory bow that I have bowed
my head, supposing prayer was to be offered, and then,
after keeping my head down for a while, I would find
out it was only the courtesy of the speaker in thus
presenting himself to the audience. I assure you that
this supreme courtesy is no formal characteristic. It
is not affected, it is not put on, it is real and genuine,
and I wish we westerners could learn some of it. It
would do us good.

While, of course, we are not out here to study the
commercial or economic problems, yet we are everywhere
face to face with the reconstruction which is going on.
Modern business methods are rapidly possessing the
land. Great factories are being built for producing
woolen, silk, linen and steel goods, and very soon the
old order of the famous hand work by the Japanese
women in the home will disappear. Their banks are
modern ; their rural delivery of mails and parcel-post

43

system make ours look a century old and out of date.
They are tlie most thirsty people in the world for educa-
tion. Any school or college, at morning, noon or night,
will be crowded. You not infrequently see jinrikisha
boys sitting over a charcoal fire reading books, papers
and magazines.

During the year 1912, they exported $6,000,000
worth of tea, $7,000,000 worth of rice and $67,000,000
worth of silk. I could not learn the amount of the ship
building and steel manufacturing industries, but they,
too, are large. The change is swift, and you may be
sure that in all the reckonings of the future, com-
mercially, socially and politically, as well as religiously,
Japan must be given a large place in consideration.

In this reconstruction I venture to say that the great-
est thing that is happening is the new birth in the realm
of religion. Of all these nations that are now spoken
of as non-Christian, I feel no hesitancy in saying that
Japan presents the most unique situation. There is no
state or national religion. While Buddhism leads
numerically, it does not lead in influence, for the great
men of Japan — great politically, commercially and
socially, are not Buddhists. They say freely that
Buddhism cannot be Japan's religion, and now, by an
official act, every religion is placed upon a par. There
is to be no preference shown. Not only this, but the
most remarkable thing in this country happened in De-
cember when the national ^Minister of Education called
together some picked representatives of Buddhism,
Shintoism and Christianity, and said to them that what
Japan was standing most in need of at the present time
was a new moral awakening, and that he felt sure this
could only be brought about by a vitalization of religion.
He then called upon the representatives of each of these
faiths to put up a more vigorous program. This pre-

sents a most overwhelming opportunity for the Christian
forces to show what they can do. Buddhism is evidently
seeing the handwriting on the wall, and I believe that
Buddhists are rallying themselves for their last tre-
mendous fight, so far as Japan is concerned.

Contact with this faith is not altogether new to me.
I have known a little of it before, but never until the past
few days have I seen Buddhist priests out on the streets
preaching. Old missionaries tell us that they have not
seen the like of it in fifty years. I, myself, have recent-
ly seen a dozen of these meetings. In other words, the
Buddhists are so aroused over the trend of things that
they have sent out a clarion call for their priests to go
out on the streets and begin to evangelize, and they are
at it hard. There is no minimizing the fact that there
is an awful fight on here. Buddhism will contend for
every inch of the ground. Shintoism is not so vigorous,
and the wisest men say that it will rapidly disappear.

Over against this stands the wonderfully inspiring
triumph of Christianity. I wish some of our half-
hearted Christian people who go at their religion as
though it were an irksome task could get a look at the
ripened fruit of Christianity as it stands out here in
bold relief against these non-Christian influences. It is
simply magnificent !

It is true that there are only about two hundred thou-
sand Protestant church members in the Empire, but
when you think that this has been brought about, start-
ing from nothing about fifty years ago, it is nothing less
than a miracle. The first Protestant Christian convert
in Japan was baptized in Yokohama in 1864. The
supreme evidence of the growth of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ is found not in the work of the foreign mission,-
aries who are here, unspeakably grand as that is, but
in the independent churches which are springing up all

45

over the country. I took a picture the otlier day of a
very beautiful Congregational church with a high spire
reaching above everything around it, with a cross on
top, the church facing the grounds of the Emperor's
palace, and the park where only a few years ago, they
were hunting the Christians down and assassinating
them at sight.

I cannot begin to attempt to name the great Japanese
preachers we have met out here, but many of the men
with whom we have come into contact would be accept-
able ministers for our strongest churches at home or
anywhere. They are princely men. I think I can un-
derstand now what INIott meant when he said at the
close of his recent journey that he believed Christianity
was so thoroughly established in Japan that if we should
let it die out in North America, these Japanese would
cross the seas and re-evangelize us. I believe that thor-
oughly. I am sure I have met Japanese Christian
leaders out here who would not hesitate to lay down
their lives if necessary to evangelize any part of the
world.

The other night in Yokoliama, I received in one room
the evidence of this romance of Christian power and
growth. I stood talking to the grand old Dr. Loomis,
missionary of the American Board, who came out here
something like fifty years ago. When he arrived, there
were known to be just twelve professing Japanese Chris-
tians throughout the whole Empire. While he stood
talking with me, he turaed and pointed across the room
at a fine type of Japanese minister, and said, " Some
years ago I baptized that young man as one of my con-
verts, and he is now the pastor of an entirely independ-
ent, self-supporting church of 1,126 members."

Then along by the side of the growth of these inde-
pendent Japanese churches, there comes the work of

46

Rev. C. Nakayaraa, thirty-eight years Methodist minister
in Japan

the great Christian schools and colleges. We have
visited so many of them that I could not attempt to tell
you about them all, but two have made the greatest
impression upon me. One is the Methodist Episcopal
School Aoyama at Tokyo, of which Dr. Agata is Presi-
dent. They have nine hundred students. It was just
like a good old time Methodist Church when I had the
privilege of speaking to them. The other school, and
the one which I suppose has most influenced the Empire,
is the famous Doshisha at Kyoto, founded by that mar-
velous Christian Neesima, who, without any doubt,
burned up his life prematurely in working for its wel-
fare, and over which Dr. Horada now presides as Presi-
dent. They have over a thousand boys, and I think it
is fair to say that it is a pretty difficult thing for any
boy to go through a four or five years' course under
that influence and not come out a Christian. These,
however, are only types of many more where we had
the privilege of holding meetings.

Then there are hospitals and libraries and settlements.
The fact is, these mighty missionaries are not forgetting
anything that can possibly help to exemplify Jesus
Christ.

Another token of victory is the splendid work of the
Young Men's Christian Associations. There has never
been a day in my life when I was gladder to be a Young
Men's Christian Association secretary than in Japan.
I have visited nations and countries where you were
made to feel a bit ashamed to be classified as an Associa-
tion secretary, but you can hold your head up high in
Japan with that title. Their work, of course, is not
perfect, and it never will be, but I will say that I have
never seen such a volume of high grade work being done
under such handicaps as I have witnessed in these Young
Men's Christian Associations in Japan. They are led

47

and largely influenced first of all by the statesmanlike
spirit of the National Secretary, Galen M. Fisher. He
would not thank nic for any fulsome praise, but I de-
clare to you, I caiuiot help saying that he is about one
of the biggest men in our whole Brotherhood, at home
or abroad. And associated with him in various capaci-
ties are Andrews, Jorgenson, Phelps, Wilbur, Gleason,
Hibbard, Trucman and Davis, while there is coming to
the front the Japanese leadership under such powerful
men as Niwa, Komatsu, Yamamoto, Kurahara, Omura,
Tsunashima and Takabatake.

We have splendid buildings at Tokyo, Kyoto, Naga-
saki and Kobe. There are a dozen other cities which
ought to have buildings, but the two most marked needs
are at Yokohama, a city of 450,000 people, and where
they arc now doing work in some terribly crowded and
ineflicient rented quarters, and at Osaka, the Pittsburgh
of Japan, with a million and a quarter of inhabitants.
Osaka lias shops, factories and mills of every descrip-
tion, while the Association has an old building put up
twenty-five years ago, thoroughly worn and out of date,
and 3'ct the other night in that building we had over
six hundred men in the gospel meeting, and at the very
same hour there were over four hundred young men in
educational classes. They were crowded in like sardines
in a closely packed box.

/ shall come home ready to look square in the eye
every man who has ever spent a dollar in any form of
Christian rcork in Japan and tell him that he has gotten*
his full money's xcorth, and that he is an honored man.

I must say at least a word about our own work.
We have visited and worked in Yokohama, Tokyo,
Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe and Nagasaki. If anybody had
said to me before we started that we could make
such an impression in Japan as I am told we have

48

made, I could not have believed it. It has been be-
yond our greatest faith. We have had three types of
meetings. The one that has been given the most prom-
inence has been the series of conferences of church offi-
cers, pastors and missionaries. These in every city have
run to about one hundred and seventy-five in attendance,
and in all except one place, we have had a fair, un-
hurried opportunity to discuss the whole method of the
Men and Religion Movement with these people. We
saw the Men and Religion program fit, as though it was
made from Heaven, some of the situations in our own
country, but I am perfectly sure it never seemed to fit
in any situation more powerfully than out here. They
have flocked around us with words of appreciation. So
urgent has become the need of giving all the Christian
forces of Japan this message of the Men and Religion
Movement that we are having printed a pamphlet in
Japanese upon the Movement, including all of the
charts we used at home and some special recommenda-
tions based upon our conferences with pastors and mis-
sionary leaders. This will spread the Men and Religion
Movement all over Japan. The younger pastors, es-
pecially, have snapped at it. There have been three
things in our presentation which seem to be of peculiar
help to these earnest Christian workers. First, we have
urged upon every Young Men's Christian Association
and every Church to carry on this type of work them-
selves by organizing the lay forces. This has been a
rather new note, especially in the churches. Second,
the undreamed-of way in which Robins' message has been
received. I think the big-hearted fellow himself was
doubting a little as to whether he could make his type of
message adaptable in this country, but I believe honestly
and sincerely that its unique place is even more signifi-
cant here in Japan than it was at home. They have

49

every problem we have, including boys' work, the vice
question, labor problems and welfare movements. They
are all here. Robins has been sought by municipal
officers, mayors, college presidents and politicians.
They will long remember this Social Service message and
messenger. The third is the quartet. Of course, we
knew they would help tremendously, not only with their
music, but by their valiant service in personal work, shop
and factory meetings, but there was a vastly more
significant element with which we had not reckoned.
The Japanese churches are having a struggle to
adapt and develop the right kind of gospel music.
They are in some places organizing men's choruses.
There are a few male quartets, doing some singing,
but it is rather in its preparatory stage, and all along
the line the missionaries have spoken in loudest praise
of the influence of the quartet, not only for their im-
mediate spiritual message, but because they are going
to set the standard for a lot of work of that kind. I
am satisfied that there will be a great awakening in the
question of gospel music following the work of the
quartet.

In addition to these conferences with Christian
workers, we have had large opportunities with non-
Christians, especially in the Universities. It has been
our unique privilege to hold meetings without any limita-
tions or restrictions whatever in every great University
in the country. This reached its climax in an invitation
to have Robins speak in the Imperial University at
Kyoto, this being the first time in the history of that
institution when an invitation had been extended to a
professional Christian speaker. He was invited there
vvithout any strings attached to him whatever, and he
gave them just the same kind of a message that he has
been giving everywhere. One of the professors, a

60

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^iHiyu.. _ —

Shinto, who presided at the meeting, was gracious
enough to send a note down to me that evening at the
hotel, thanking me for the privilege of having had Mr.
Robins at the University.

Again and again we have held meetings in the largest
auditorium available, and have been unable to get into
it all the men who came. I spoke in the Association at
Tokyo on the second night there, with the men packed
in everywhere, and standing outside at the windows.

At Kyoto we had a riot. The hall will seat about
twelve hundred comfortably. They admitted sixteen
hundred and fifty, then the crowd outside who could not
get in nearly tore down the front of the building de-
manding admission. They had to keep somebody at
the front door during the whole evening, explaining
that the hall was full and that they could not admit
any more.

Thus you can see that God has opened for us a very
wide door of service even in the little time we were in
Japan.

Possibly you will get a little view of the spirit of
appreciation manifested by our Association fellows in
the following extract taken from a card which just
came to us from Gleason, General Secretary of the
Young Men's Christian Association at Osaka :

" Dear Smith, Robins, Gilbert, Metcalf, Keeler, Peck,
Lathrop and various trunks, typewriter, cameras,
charts, etc., etc. A few words would fail to tell you
how much we have appreciated your brief visit. But
there is no doubt that it is hearty. Come again as soon
as you can. You are a fine lot, roses without thorns,
peaches without stones, and genuine good fellows.
Your spirit of no criticism and honest desire to serve

51

has left only pleasant memories behind you. Our
prayers go with you."

I shall not try to tell you very much about the
special events. The fact is, we have not permitted
ourselves to go sight-seeing very much, but we have
sandwiched in visits to some of the most interesting
places. We have seen some of the great temples at
Kamakura and the wonderful " Shiba " at Tokyo, and
then it is just temples, temples, temples everywhere.
Paul Gilbert said yesterday that he hoped he never
would have to look at another temple as long as he
lived. You can catch something of the power of this
when I tell you there are ten thousand Buddhist priests
in Kyoto alone, and about as many Buddhist temples.

There has been one very amusing feature all along
the way in the presence of a few women in every meet-
ing. Of course our meetings are supposed to be for
men and boys only, but these Christian women rebel
against that exclusive idea, and when the secretaries re-
monstrate with them, they say their " inheritance " in
Christianity is a right to go to the meetings. They
have for so long endured the oppression of Buddhism
and Shintoism that they now propose to exercise their
gospel liberty, and " Men Only " signs at religious meet-
ings do not affect them at all. Really, it is a beautiful
thing, even if they have disconcerted some of our nicely
laid plans. Nothing grander can be said for Christian-
ity than the contrast between the women of non-Chris-
tian lands and those dominated b}' the Gospel, so we
gladly surrendered.

We have enjoyed being entertained at some of the
famous Japanese dinners. You ought to see me double
up on the floor in front of a charcoal fire and cook
sukiyaki. It is a great combination. I would give

62

forty dollars to see you try it. Positively all you get
for implements is a couple of chop sticks. If you can-
not get some rice and chopped vegetables and meat on
those two sticks, you starve, that is all. I thought that
some of the hosts would come to our rescue, but they
do not help you a bit. And yet these are little social
events never to be forgotten, and we would have been
sorry enough had we missed them. We had one of
them in a student hostel at Tokyo where about forty
of us sat on the floor in one little room.* We had
fifteen of the charcoal fires going, and a chafing dish
on each. We had another at Osaka with about the
same number, and there had a company of pastors
and missionaries who gave us the story of the Christian
conquest of Osaka in a way that I suppose we never
would liave gotten it at all had we not been at that
dinner.

We had the peculiar privilege and honor of being in-
vited to go through the Emperor's palace at Kyoto.
Our American Ambassador Anderson very kindly got
us the permit.

Then what shall I say about jinrikishas.'' Upon my
soul, I have climbed into one of those jinrikishas so many
times and started out for a two or three mile run, with
a boy pulling me who was about one-third my size, when
I have been ashamed of myself, yet that is about the
only means of transportation. There is no such thing
as a hack or carriage to be had. The larger cities have
street cars going upon certain principal thoroughfares,
but usually it is a jinrikisha or you do not go, and
how those little Japanese can pull and run ! I can-
not understand it. They run all the time. There
is no such thing as stopping to walk until they have
reached the end of the journey. The penalty for
my size is usually to pay excess fare. I do not be-

53

Hcve there is a jinrikisha boy in all Japan (and there
are about a million of tlieni) who cannot speak enough
English to say " Very heavy man." They may not
be able to say anything else, but they all have that
much.

Perhaps the outstanding memory will be the little fare-
well tea and reception which was tendered us in Tokyo
the last afternoon we were there. Our men felt that it
was a most significant and wonderful gathering. The
following gentlemen met us and spent about two hours
in an informal conference, speech-making, and tea : Hon.
S. Ebara, President of the Tokyo Young Men's Chris-
tian Association and a member of the House of Peers,
Mayor Baron Sakatani, Prof. Dr. Anazaki, Professor
of History and Philosophy of Religion in the Imperial
University, Baron N. Kikkawa, graduate of Harvard
and a member of the House of Peers, Dr. F. Uzawa,
M.P., Barrister, Counsel in Korean Conspiracy Trial,
Baron N. Konda, graduate of Amherst and Dean of
Higher Commercial School, Dr. H. Fuknoka, graduate
of Yale University and Professor of International Law,
Imperial University, Prof. T. Suguira, Ph.D., Professor
of St. Paul's University, Rev. K. Tsunashima, graduate
of Yale Seminary and Pastor of a Congregational
Church, Dr. T. Namae, graduate of Wesleyan, Char-
ity Expert, Department of Interior, Mr. S. Otsuka,
Director, Club Work, South Manchuria Railway, Mr.
A. Hayashi, IManagcr, Imperial Hotel, and ]\Ir. K. Yam-
amoto. General Secretary of the Tokj-o Young Men's
Christian Association. Mayor Baron Sakatani in Ijis
remarks said : " We owe a good deal to you westerners.
You have helped us in many of our ideals of government
and commerce. But along with the incoming of bene-
ficial western ideas, there has been the penalty of the
breakdown of the old order of religion, and we have

54

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lost what restraining power it had. Now the west ought
to be willing to do a great deal for us in helping to
establish some form of religion which will take the place
of that which we have lost." He then paid a most
cordial tribute to all missionaries and Christian workers,
but with peculiar commendation for the work of the
Young Men's Christian Association. He is not a Chris-
tian, and spoke not from the standpoint of a man who
was convinced of the truth of Christianity, but rather
from the standpoint of one of their great leaders in
public and political life who sees the need of some
form of moral energy to take hold of this country in the
hour of its awful need.

Most of our contact, of course, had been in the great
crowded cities, and, were peculiarly glad to be able to
get an afternoon last week in what is known as the
" Mustard Seed Mission " at Hachiman, at some dis-
tance from the railroad. The missionary in charge is
William M. Vories. He came out here seven years ago
and asked that he be sent back to some interior place
where he could begin a work right from the foundation.
It is almost beyond belief to see what that man has
accomplished during that time. He is an architect by
profession, and like the famous Apostle Paul, he de-
sired to earn his own way, so that he is self-supporting.
He has built a hospital, a good Young Men's Christian
Association building, a splendid school, and has bought
and established an experimental farm three miles out in
the country so that he can help the Japanese farmers
in better methods. Altogether he has literally trans-
formed the life, not of only the village but of the whole
community round about.

I am sure you can understand that there is a good
deal of tenderness out here as we meet those homesick,
hard-worked missionaries. This has been especially

55

true in the singing of the quartet. When they hear
some of the old hymns they used to sing and have not
heard for a long time, we get a little view into the
depths of their hearts, and see how hungry many of
them are for home. God pity the Christian at home
who is failing to share in their battle.

Yesterday, as we were en route to Nagasaki, Dr. J. H.
Pettee, a representative of the American Board, was
at the train to meet us at Okayama, where we made a
little stop. He had with him four or five missionaries,
and about twenty of his associate workers, Bible women,
evangelists and village preachers. Some of them had
traveled long distances just for the privilege of getting
a look at us for that stopover of ten minutes.

I must not fail to tell you about our achievement yes-
terday in getting away from Nagasaki. As a part of
the penalty of trying to penetrate this life with our
ordinary English language, instead of being checked
from Kobe to Nagasaki, my two trunks were checked in
the opposite direction and were sent to Osaka, with the
result that when I arrived in Nagasaki ready to sail for
China, I had about two collars, one shirt and a hand-
kerchief. We started the telegraph wires working as
hard as we could, but by the closest possible connections,
my trunks would not arrive at Nagasaki until 6:10, and
the boat, the ChiJiugo Maru of the Nippon Yusen
Kaisha Line, was scheduled to sail at 4 o'clock in the
afternoon. I put on my best smile and called upon the
gallant Captain K. Sato and asked him if it would be
possible for him to hold the boat two hours. I was
told before going by the officers of the Company in
Nagasaki, and by the editor of the paper, an English-
man who has been out here manj"^ years, that it would
be absolutely useless to make the request, for it had not
been done in the history of the Company, and that the

56

boat always started exactly on the minute, just as the
railroad trains. After an interview in which I conveyed
to the Captain the nature of our work, and how much
I needed my trunks, he said he would hold the boat
until 6:30. We were all in ^reat glee over it. We
finished our work, then I went to the railroad station,
only to learn that by a later development the trunks
could not arrive until 7:58. I thought then, of course,
that it was all up witii me, and that we would have to go
on without my trunks, and it looked as though we could
not get them before reaching ^Manila, possibly not until
we arrived in Australia. Under this pressure, I went
back to the ship, found all of our fellows standing with
the Captain anxiously awaiting the news, and we were a
rather depressed lot when I told them that the trunks
could not arrive until 8 o'clock. Then, in the gentlest
voice of which I am capable, I asked the Captain if he
could hold the boat until 8 :30, which would mean four
hours and a half wait. He asked me if I had some impor-
tant papers in my trunks. I thought a man was justified
in saying he had. even though the most critical thing
involved was a clean shirt, and so I assured him that
there were important documents in both trunks. Then,
with that marvelous Japanese courtesy, he quietly said
that he would wait until 8 :30. It created a commotion
of course. I am satisfied that, way down deep in this
man's heart, the real reason was that either he himself
is almost persuaded to be a Christian or else that he has
a son who has been in some of our Young Men's Chris-
tian Associations, or that some of his family are Chris-
tians. I am hoping yet to get the secret from him.
Surely it was some touch of that kind in his life, for
it has never been done before, we were told that it could
not be done, and for any ordinary commercial proposi-
tion it would not have been done. Anyway, we prac-

57

tlcod our true Americanism and held up one of the
Imperial Government's steamers for four and a half
hours while we hunted up some lost trunks,

I do not know whether I have written you that our
party has been increased by one. Coming out from
Honolulu, we were delighted to find that Mr. Alexander
Hyde, son of our mighty friend Mr. A. A. Hyde of
Wichita, was a passenger on the same boat. He was
coming out on business, and inasmuch as he has to go
half way around the world and cannot reach home in
any case until June, we urged him to accompany us, and
he has decided to do so. He is a royal fellow, and we
are going to enjoy his company very much.

I need not tell you that sometimes we ourselves get
mighty homesick. Of course our task is not to be put
in the same list with that of these folks who come out to
stay, but, after all, ours has its difficulties. We are con-
stantly thinking of home, and are ever and again re-
minded of our duties there, yet, amid it all, as the weeks
pass, I think we know more fully every day that God is
leading us and that He prompted the undertaking. I
think I would be willing to give five years out of my
life if that were the only way by which I could have
delivered this message in Japan. I am as sure as I am
of life that this sounding out of the message of the Men
and Religion Movement is going to go down in history
to the glory of God and of the Church, not only at
home, but around the woi'ld.

I am afraid I have written you so much that you
will wear^^ in reading, but I cannot help the desire to
write to somebody, for I want some of these impressions
to be so recorded that they may possibly live for a long
time to come.

Yours very sincerely,

Fred. B. Smith.
68

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lyieut.-Col. Yaniamuro of the Japanese Sah.itioii Army

VI

On Steamer Derffi'nic/cr, Hoiitfkong to Manila, P. I.,
March 5, 1913.

Di:ak Mr. C'axxox: Whatever purpose Got! had in
our being in China for a httle while, is fulfilled, or at
least we have closed the active personal part in it for
the present, and now we arc out on the big sea again
en route to Manila. Thinking over these days and of
you and of home, I have felt almost as though I would
not write a single word about China. We have only
seen the port cities, and that does not give any adequate
idea of such a vast country. Then, too, we have just
been knocked endways by what we have seen.

If I write you of present convictions, I may be in
peril of giving a wrong idea, for there is another side
to everything, and it seems impossible to try to inter-
pret our experiences without injustice to somebody. I
think I wrote you in something of the same refrain
about Japan, but the situation is vastly more compli-
cated here. However, there are a few convictions I am
prepared to record anywhere, for I am sure they are
founded on facts.

Perhaps the comment which has broken most fre-
quently and involuntarily from our lips has been " Poor
China!" Here are at 'least 400,000,000 people, and
they seem so helpless as viewed from their contact with
the powerful great North American and European
nations. This is most marked at Shanghai and Hong-
kong. At each there is a European settlement that is
as modern as London, Paris, Berlin, New York or
Chicago, with massive buildings, wide streets, boule-

59

vards, parks and gardens. Then in five minutes' ride
in jinrikishas you are in the " old city," where you
would not think human beings could exist. Streets
too narrow for two people to walk abreast ; cats,
dogs, pigs, chickens, men, women and children all hud-
dled in the same rooms. There is, of course, an element
of the better class who live in affluent circumstances,
but they are only a drop in the great sea of the millions.
Christianity has a problem of housing and helping
people to know how to live, as well as of teaching the
Bible, if China is to be redeemed.

Then there seems so much to be done to get really
started here. There are no labor laws of any kind.
We have seen little seven-year-old girls working in mills
fourteen hours without a stop for a bite to eat. They
must eat with one hand while they keep the spindle
going with the other, and the whole for the princely
sum of ten cents per day. We saw old women and
young girls carrying thirty-eight bricks, at nine pounds
per brick (three hundred and forty-two pounds), up a
mountain two thousand feet high, to build a mansion.
Every brick and board in it is being transported up
there by that labor at about fifteen cents per day. We
have severe labor problems in America, but if anywhere
in the United States there was such a scene as I wit-
nessed at Hongkong, the nation would be in an uproar
in twenty-four hours. There is no adequate educational
law. The women of all except the higher caste prac-
tically cannot read or write at all. The contrast in
these respects between Japan and China is very great.
The Japanese have labor laws, compulsory education,
interest laws and much very progressive legislation.
China has it all to do.

Then, again, China is terribly in the grip of the
white man. There are fourteen different " settlements "

60

A l\ jiical Cliiiiese coolir fisluriiuiii

in Shanghai, each one of thcni governed by some Euro-
pean or American power. Of course, among these men
there are some grand men, true, honest and sincere ; but
the rank and file of them are out here to exploit the
Chinese, squeeze the blood out of them and get back
home with the spoils. That may seem harsh, but it is
a fact. They hate the missionaries and Sun Yat Sen,
Yuan Shi Kia, Wu-Ting-Fang, Wong Ching Hui, Ivan
Chen and all the rest of the Republicans, because they
are disturbing their game. One very prominent official
in Hongkong has openly declared that he does not want
to see anything done for the " damn Chinamen." They
are having to fight their way up against great odds.

I am persuaded of this : If I were to be a missionary
in any non-Christian land I would want to get clear
away from the influence of the white man. That is a
terrible thing to say, yet I am forced to believe it,
not only by personal observation, but by the unbroken
testimony of the missionaries we have met. Added to
these problems is the financial crisis of the government.
Here is a nation of unlimited resources. No engineer
has been found great enough to give any estimate of
the iron ore of the interior mountains. It is so vast
that it cannot be computed. Baron Van Richthofen,
who was sent out by the German government to investi-
gate the coal deposits, says that there is enough coal in
China to supply the whole world for two thousand years.
Their agricultural asset is also inestimable. Yet they
seem unable thus far to get their products marketed
to advantage, and therefore the burden of debt threatens
almost the very life of the nation.

However, I must not give you too somber a view, for
notwithstanding these distressing facts, great China is
arousing herself, and no power can stop her. They
have mighty men ; we have met some of them. They

61

have seen a great light and arc determined that the
present order shall be changed. Tlie revolution is a
marvel in itself. Other nations for a far less issue shed
rivers of blood. Our own dear land purchased the
liberty of four million slaves at an awful cost. Just
now we are reading the story of the brutality and un-
warranted murder and assassination of the Mexican
rebellion and that in a land that the religious maps
mark as Christian. The Chinese have carried
through the most unprecedented reformation with but
very little bloodshed. A nation was born almost in a
day out here, and despite the jingoist, the demagogues
and the white politicians, the best thinking people here
have no doubt that it has come to stay.

Then upon every hand we heard the story of the
break-down of the old orders of religion. I myselt
took a picture of the old temple in Kowloon where the
idols are tumbling down and pigs had taken the place
for a convenient pen. While this is going on, Christian-
ity is blossoming in a thousand ways. Vastly more
than in church buildings and members only. Hoi^pitals,
libraries, schools, colleges, universities, medical dispen-
saries, model prisons, homes for the blind, the deformed,
the insane . and other unfortunates, are springing up
everywhere. INIany of these are now under municipal
supervision, though they freely say that Christianity
brought the ideal.

Here, as in Japan, I have been most interested to
learn how far the independent, self-supporting Chinese
Church has been developed, and that is the deepest
cause for courage and thanksgiving. Churches of three
hundred, four hundred, six hundred, eight hundred and
one thousand members are not infrequent, where there
has never been a dollar of direct missionary money in-
vested. They are rising to their opportunities and

Mr. C. S. I.iaiifr, of Hoiifrkoiig, t'ditor of tlu- first C'liristian
daily i)a|)»T in China

have a moral detcrinination that cannot easily be
thwarted. This is evidenced not only by the rapidity
of the revolution and the establishment of a republican
form of government, but in the wiping out of the opium
traffic, which is one of the marvels of the twentieth cen-
tury. We of the west have but a poor conception of
what was involved. Not only was there the deep-
seated habit of the people, but the financial loss was
terrific. The best authorities place the lowest estimate
at .'^144,2!^5,()()0 loss in the three 3'ears necessary to
readjust the land to other crops, to say nothing of the
great connnercial firms that were wiped out of existence
in a day. They anticipated the critic who said " pro-
hibition wouldn't prohibit," and they made the violation
of the law punishable by death. Needless to say, it
prohibits. While investigating this, I could not help
being ashamed of my own country on the whiskey ques-
tion. We are nursing in our bosom a worse devil than
opium, and are dealing out maudlin bosh about the
property interests involved, and the fear that the law
cannot be enforced, and a lot more cheap talk too
ridiculous for a country that produced Abraham I^in-
coln. The Chinese have answered that kind of stuff.

They have also to their credit the open educational
policy which came with one sweep. Ten years ago no
man could think of holding any public office except he
be a member of the " Literati," a graduate of the old
form of Government examination. To-day it is as open
as Canada or the United States.

There must also be observed the cutting off of the
" pig tails " almost in a single day. This may not be in
the same class, but it does carry the same general lesson.
The long cue was regarded as the insignia of the old
order of politics and religion, and when they started,
they finished the job. There are only a few left in

03

central or soutliern C'liina. I was taking a photograph
one day of the seven hundred students in the day edu-
cational school of the Young Men's Christian Associa-
tion of Shanghai. A boy with a pig tail tried to slip
into the group. You ought to have seen them go after
him. They chased him clear over a stone wall into an-
other street. Because of our distance from China we
have but a poor idea of what is happening there in these
lines. It is wonderful, and is an earnest of what may
be expected in the years to come.

No wonder greedy commercial men are suspicious
of the missionaries, for on every hand it is freely com-
mented that these " fancy notions " are the result of the
teaching of the principles of the Gospel by the mission-
aries. These results, plus growing churches, missions
and Young Men's Christian Associations, answer abso-
lutely the query about the final triumph of the Christian
faith in great stirring China. Remembering, too, that
^Morrison began his missionary work in 180T, and
worked until 1814 before he baptized his first convert.

You are expecting me to tell something of our ow^n
work, and I must hasten or I will have wearied you be-
fore I get to it. The message and method here again
seemed to fit as though it had been prepared especially
for China. I wish you men who are so vitally back of
us could hear some of the comments of these mission-
aries and Christian workers. American Consul-General
Wilder of Shanghai, in bidding me goodbye, said that
he felt it to be the greatest mission of that character
which he had witnessed during his stay of ten years
in the Orient. Perhaps the following letter from Rev.
Edward Evans of the China Christian Literatui'e So-
ciety will give you a little idea of how our work is being
received.

64!

" Shanghai, China, February 22, 1913.
Dkar Bkothkk Smith: My lioart is full of thanks-
giving after that meeting this I'.M. You have made
an impression here in these days beyond my most san-
guine hopes. There has been the clear note of healthy
utterance throughout, with the so evident endorsement
of the Holy Spirit. God i)less you. I pray that you
will be led to come liere again, for you have a work to
do in this place. I feel sure of it, and shall ask the
Lord to keep it on your heart.

Yours in His service,

(Rev.) Edward Evans."

Totaling our whole work since leaving, we have held
158 different meetings with a complete attendance of
.'57,1 ()1. Robins has spoken 87 times and I have spoken
88 times. The quartet has sung 84.5 times and attended
125 meetings.

Out of the nudtitude of impressions and thoughts
that have been filling our minds during these days,
there are three, I think, which take the supreme place.

First. — The responsibility of the people of Christian
lands to extend the Gospel to these less privileged of
the Orient is not simply n sentimental thing. It is with
us as an irresistible, unchangeable law. We cannot es-
cape from it if we would. " Bear ye one another's
burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ " will have to
be cut out of our Bibles or else we must stand by this
missionary program until it is finished. This is not
only a Biblical injunction, but we westerners have been
marvelously successful in exporting all of our vices, and
ought to be equally diligent in extending our virtues.
For instance, tlie open saloon with its nnisic and attend-
ant attractions was never known in China until western
civilization came over here and established it. I am

65

told by the best authorities that chicanery in business,
graft and the like were unknown elements in their life
until our up-to-date western men appeared upon the
scene. And there are other things I might name which
are far worse. If we had no missionaries here they
would utterly misunderstand us, and I am afraid we
would be put down as being more heathen than any
people on earth. Therefore not only from the Christian
standpoint, but from the standpoint of a moral cor-
rective, we are committed to transplanting the Christian
gospel to this non-Christian land. And oh, how gladly
we ought to give ourselves to it ! I thank God for the
privilege of being over here for what we have been able
to do, but even more than that, I am grateful for this
little touch because it may give me a new power in
testifying at home for the whole Foreign Missionary
propaganda.

Second. — The evangelization of North America is
essential to world success. Just as intensely as I be-
lieve in our duty to the Orient, equally so do I believe
that the evangelization of the world will never be accom-
plished without the evangelization of North America.
I would say nothing but kindest words of appreciation
for the Christian Englishmen, Scotchmen and Germans
I have met in Japan and China, but after all, I do not
believe that they have quite that breadth of vision con-
cerning the indispensable place of Christianity in the
lives of these people that has been vouchsafed to the
men of Canada and the United States. We of the
North American continent are millionaires by the grace
of God, not only in resources of money, but in capacity
to give it away in freedom from caste and in wise method
of attack. We ought not to boast of our leadership,
but with great humility to proceed to see to it that the
Christian standards at home are exalted as they never

have been before. I have already expressed myself
concerning the unfavorable influence of certain types of
white men out in this needy region. The first night we
were in Shanghai, we had the privilege of meeting with
all of the Young Men's Christian Association secretaries
and their families in their weekly conference and prayer
meeting. The remarkable thing to me was that the
burden of their anxiety and of their prayers that night
was more largely centered upon the European and
American men than upon the question of the conversion
of the Chinese. That is, the winning of the Chinese
now is comparatively an easy proposition, but when
these missionaries met on that night, I thought there was
some irony in the fact that they were lifting all their
hearts in prayer that God would somehow overrule
the distressing influences of Europeans and Americans.
It is simply terrific to think that. these nations which we
call Christian should be sending out to the port cities
of this nation of 400,000,000 people, in the hour when
it is so ready to accept Christianity, some representa-
tives of such low morals that the missionaries who are
sent out primarily to work for the natives have to invest
a good deal of their power in undoing the unfavorable
eff"ect of the non-Christians of their own lands.

I would not have you think that from the missionary
standpoint the battle is over, or is even past its desper-
ate stages. The strength of the Church in the great
centers is only equalled by the weakness of it in some
of the interior regions. We traveled with a Methodist
missionary printer who is running a printing establish-
ment on the border of Tibet, and he told us of there
being 16,000,000 Tibctians without a single missionary
of the Gospel among them. Only a few have ever
penetrated that region, and every one who has gone in
was martyred. And yet the striking part of it is that

67

there, on tlie border of that land of 16,000,000 people
in absolute moral darkness and destitution, there are
missionaries learning that language, waiting for a
chance to get in. What a pictui-e that is of the power-
ful urgency which the Gospel implants in the human
heart! These missionaries who are thus waiting know
what has been the fate of those who have gone before.
Notwithstanding that, they are ready to be the next to
carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ into that forbidden
territory.

/ hope the time will come when our United States
Government will not think of sending a man out to any
form of official responsibility unless he is known to
he a clean-cut, straight-out Christian man.

Third. — I am more thoroughly convinced than ever
before that our religion is one of supernatural origin.
A man may be a kind of a fake Christian at home,
where there are plenty of churches and plent}' of
Christian restraints surrounding him, but he won't
fake very long when you put him out in a life of this
kind. It tells the story quickly. If his relation to
Christ is real, he abides ; if not, he soon drops by the
way. It is nothing short of an undertaking that verges
on insanity to come out here and expect to see conditions
in China and Japan redeemed by anything less than
supernatural power. It is most interesting to talk to
men and see the contrast. The unconverted and worldly
man sums up his whole idea by saying " Damn the
Chinamen I " or " Damn the Japanese ! " He sees no
change taking place, and he dares hope for nothing bet-
ter in the future. But these mighty warriors of God
who have no doubt that they themselves have experienced
a supernatural transformation, believe that that Divine
influence which has worked wonders of grace in their
lives, can be effective here, and they have no more sense

68

than simply to proccod to apply tlio Gospel all the time,
carrying with them, by the eye of faith, the picture
of a rcdoemetl Orient. I do not believe I have ever
seen a day when I had no faith in the truth of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ, but T know I can testify now
that it is deeper, more thoroui^hly fixed and more un-
chan^eal)le than ever.

All along the line, mixed in with our work, there is
constantly an element of tremendous humor and spice
which helps very nmch in carrying the burden of the
work. Nine times out of ten, when we are dealing with
the ordinary Chinaman, he gets everything we undertake
to tell him mixed up and turned around, and finally
docs just what you do not anticipate. While in Shang-
hai, Alexander Hyde, who is traveling witii us, decided
late one night, to go up to Nanking. He went back to
the hotel while we were at a meeting, wrote me a note
explainin£^ that he wouhl go there and would get back
the next afternoon. Then he gave it to the " boy " and
told him to either put it in my room or pin it on my
door. He went away feeling that I would know just
where he was. Fortunately, one of the clerks of the
hotel told me he had gone, but I did not receive the
note. When Mr. Hyde got back the next afternoon,
he found the letter he had written to me in his own
room, lying on the bed. He asked the boy why he
did not give the letter to me anrl received the quiet
answer " ^Nle no find pin yet." He was perfectly honest.
He fully intended to deliver the letter, and was " dili-
gently " looking for a pin, but the idea that a question
of three or four days in the time of delivery made any
difference, never dawned upon him.

Then we have had great sport trying to get some
suitable pictures. We have gotten a few, but it is al-
most impossible to get the really typical scenes. This

69

again is in contrast with Japan. There they would
walk up with delight to be photographed. Here the
lower classes are positively frightened out of their lives
at the thought of having photographs taken. Women
will grab their children and run. Men will hide their
faces and do anything to keep away from the camera.

In Hongkong, one of the common means of transpor-
tation is to be carried on the shoulders of two coolies
in a big wicker chair known as a sedan chair. This is
not unique or a luxury. It is just as common as riding
in a taxicab in New York City. We have tried by
every kind of method to get a picture of one of our
party in one of these chairs, and finally after repeated
devices, we thought we had solved the problem. Robins,
Lathrop and others were to stand on the side of the street
with their camera and I was to hire a chair and ride past
them while they snapped it. In some way these coolie
boys got hold of the fact and they refused to take me.
Then two policemen came up and they commanded them
to go, for the law is that if you ask them to carry
you they must do so. The policemen told me to get
in and the}^ would make the boys carry me. I did, and
the boys got under and tried to lift it but fell flat on
the ground and said that they could not possibly carry
me for I was " too heavy man." We worked for days
trying to get that kind of a picture, and with five or six
cameras in the party we came away defeated.

Among the ordinary incidental impressions is that of
the delightful dress of the Chinese women. It seems
to me that the men make themselves cumbersome and un-
comfortable. They wear long, heavy gowns which must
be burdensome, but of all the places I have ever visited,
it seems to me that the dress of the women in China is
the most sensible and unique. They wear some kind of
a silk kimona or mandrin, which comes about to the

70

knees, then loose, silk pantaloons, and now most of them
have full-sized, comfortable slippers. Better than all
else, they wear just a little simple cap in place of the
vulgar, good-for-nothing, unscriptural, unsanitary,
crazy headgear of our American women. I would be
willing to raise a fund of a million dollars, and I am
sure I could get it, if I could get as reasonable a method
of dress for the women of the white nations as have
these Chinese women. It is sanitary, it is modest and
apparently comfortable, while our women indulge in
the most unsanitary, immodest combination, and appear
to be inflicting self-torture equal to any footbinding
the Chinese ever knew.

Another one of those impressions that does not ex-
actly classify itself anywhere, and yet one with which
we are all of us equalh' concerned, is the folly of the
attempt on the part of our various denominations to
transplant their denominational distinctions into China,
and indeed into the whole Orient for that matter. I had
interviews with six of the greatest Chinese leaders of
Christian activities. None of them wished to have their
names quoted, for they did not want to seem to be out
of harmony with their own denominations. Every man
in the lot said that this is one of the most serious prob-
lems in the way of the progress of the Church. The
whole system is so utterly meaningless to them that for
the most part they are confused, and the stronger and
educated ones are disgusted. I do not know that we
can blame any one in particular for this, for it is only
the result of a highly intensified denominationalism in
the home countries, but it is positively a calamity. It
would seem as though we ought to have progressed far
enough to understand the real spirit of the Gospel
sufficiently to call together the Protestant church forces
and in some way to simplify the method of procedure

71

for the future. There is no more sense m having all
the denominations hammering away out here, trying to
propagate themselves, than there would be for the
Fourth National Bank to have four different presidents
speaking four different languages. Not only is it con-
fusing and disturbing to the minds of both the Japanese
and the Chinese, but the cruel waste of money in the
administration is absurd.

Before closing this letter, I want once more to speak
of the tremendous power and unique significance of the
Associations out here. One of the greatest laymen in
China, a man who has repeatedly represented his nation
at foreign posts, and has figured very conspicuously in
the revolution and in the organization of the republic,
told me that he felt as though the Young Men's Chris-
tian Association must have been ordained from Heaven
just to fit into the situation of the Chinese young men.
Take just one Association, which I am told is only
typical of many others, that at Shanghai. They have
1,900 members in the Association, with TOO men enrolled
in day educational classes, and over 500 in systematic
Bible study. Not a month passes but that they send
young men to the churches for Christian baptism.

We of the North American Associations ma}'^ well
be thankful to God for the men who have been set
apart to represent us. I have heard nothing but words
of deepest appreciation for their work. We were sorry
to miss great Brockman at Shanghai. He was com-
pelled to go on north with IVIott before we reached there,
but from one end of the land to the other his name is
the synonym for unselfish and efficient service. I do
not think I am doing any injustice to any other men iij
Christian callings in China to say that he easily takes
rank as the greatest man in the nation, so far as mis-
sionary statesmanship is involved.

72

If there is any time in our work when we do not have
a meeting to go to, we are never at a loss for something
to do, for when everything else fails, we are compelled
to go out and buy some clothes to try to keep in har-
mony with the now style at each place we visit, or else
to go out and get our " money changed." When we
started, I thought we had the orthodox outfit. Each
man was carrying two business suits, one cutaway, one
frock coat and one full dress outfit. But, dear me, that
won't get anywhere in the Orient. When we got to
Japan, we had to get a certain kind of a slipper or
else we could not get into half the places we wanted to
visit. I lost ten pounds getting up and down, taking off
my shoes and putting on those slippers. Then there
has been some new angle to about every new city that
had to be met, until I am now up to eleven full suits
of clothes and six extra pairs of trousers. I expect
to start a clothing store on Third Avenue when I get
back, and I will put some of those famous clothiers who
come from near the ancient Sea of Galilee clear out of
business. Along with this, money changing is a fright.
In some places in China you have to carry foui'teen
different kinds of money, for every time you cross a
street, you are in a new " settlement " and that involves a
different currency. You can start with ten dollars in
the morning, thinking that you are going to make a
small purchase, and begin to change your money to try
to get in harmony with each settlement, and then decide
you are going to try another place, so change your
money again and you can come back to the hotel about
" tiffin " time witliout a cent and without having made
a single purchase. You simply lose the whole business
with exchangers' fees. I have made one solemn resolu-
tion. When I get home I am going to put on an old
flannel shirt and a pair of blue overalls, sit down on the

78

front porch, stick my feet over the railing, and sit
there for one full afternoon without changing my money
or my clothes.

In a few hours we will be landing in Manila. We
have already received the advance program for our
work there, and are assured of a typical eight-day cam-
paign. They have a committee of seventy men organ-
ized, and are going to have everything that we had in
any of our best campaigns at home last year. I can
hardly express to you our sense of gratitude to Almighty
God to-day. From the night we left New York City
until this present hour, every campaign we have held,
with one exception, has been up to a high point of
power and efficiency. We were somewhat disappointed
in Hongkong. I do not think they ever quite under-
stood what we were trying to accomplish. With that
one exception, the work has been perfectly grand. God
has opened the door wide for us, and we are trying to
be faithful.

With warmest love and increasing appreciation of
the privilege we have in taking this message around the
world, I am,

Yours as always,

Fred. B. Smith.

74

VII

En route on Stcunicr Kumano Maru, Manila to Bris-
bane, Australia, March 18, 1913.

Dear Mr, Canxox : Once again we are out on the
big blue sea and are having one of our longest pulls —
thirteen days between ^Manila and Brisbane, Australia.
I am dictating this message just as we are about to
cross the equator. Of course, we are all more or less
nervous about it, and although this is the fifth time I
have been across, yet one never becomes entirely immune
from anxiety, for, as you understand, we have to find
one of those open places to pass through, and if the
ship, through any inadvertent error on the part of the
Captain, should miss one of these gateways, it may be
very serious. We liave been consoled all day long, how-
ever, by Peck, the optimistic member of our party, who
says he has been told that the government has widened
these equatorial passages and that we will probably get
through with a good deal of comfort and safety. One
cheerful passenger tells us that it is recorded in history
that not infrequently ships have broken right in two in
the middle by the severe strain in going over the line,
and therefore you can sympathize with our fears.
Then, of course, we have all the time to cherish the
tliouglit that wlien we once get over the equator, we have
to get back or eternally stay, and much as we are all in
love with the Southern Cross, I have the impression that
every man in tlic party is confitlently contemplating a
return to tiie Ignited States. Therefore, discomforting
as the thought may be, we have to think of crossing
the equator twice.

76

In the messages wlilch I am sending back to you, I
tliink you liave already discovered that there is some
difficulty in attempting to write a report that is fair to
all the people in the countries we are visiting, but I de-
clare to you that I do not know how to tell you what
is in my heai't concerning Manila. One impulse is to
write a letter of scathing denunciation of the old order
there, and of some of the flimsy present-day methods,
but I know that would be entirely unfair to all the facts,
and so I am bewildered and am sure I will write inade-
quately.

Perhaps no one. morning of the whole trip will live
longer with us than that one when Robins and I were
up at about three o'clock to get the first sight of the
famous Philippine Islands. We have worked in beauti-
ful Honolulu and have not forgotten those days of great
privilege. We have worked under the little round red
and white Japanese flag and have fallen in love with
its people. We have seen something of China, and have
been tremendously stirred by its need in its great port
cities, but from the standpoint of American interests,
we were most anxious to see and begin our work in
Manila.

As the gray dawn broke over the hills and mountains,
and our good ship the Derfflinger slipped quietly into
the harbor, we renewed in memory that eventful May
1, 1898, when Dewey went in there with the fleet, and
so triumphantly sunk the Spanish ships, put up the
stars and stripes, and thus changed the history of the
Orient. I am satisfied that the full significance of that
May morning will not be understood for a hundred
years to come. Dewey was the human instrument, and
the sinking of the Maine under the shadow of INIoro
Castle in Havana harbor, was a part of the way of
bringing it about, but I never believed more thoroughly

76

in my life that God led in any event than I now believe
that His matchless wisdom was guiding those ships in
Manila harbor that morning. It was not for national
glory or American expansion, but for the sake of human
liberty. Just as surely as Abraham Lincoln was needed
for the four million people in slavery in our southern
states, just so surely was there needed some power to be
raised up for the delivery of seven millions of people
who were in the vicious, tyrannical grip of an un-
scrupulous system. As we neared the breakwater and
the docks, I do not believe I ever saw the stars and
stripes when they waved more gloriously.

Words will utterly fail me, I am sure, to fully ex-
press the cordiality of our reception. We were met by
the members of the local committee, led by our big two-
hundred-pound Young Men's Christian Association sec-
retary. Toner. Very soon after we were on shore, we
were hustled away to the City Hall, where the jNIayor,
Hon. Felix M. Roxas, with the members of the City
Council were waiting to give us our official welcome.
After we had been properly and most graciously re-
ceived, they sent us on an automobile ride through the
city to visit the places of greatest interest. We were
also informed that we were to spend one day at Baguio,
the mountain capital, to which the Government officials
move, bag and baggage, during the hot season of the
year, and that Governor-General Forbes had declared a
half holiday in order that all of the Government officials
might be able to attend the meetings.

As though these tokens were not sufficient, we were
informed that President Horace L. Higgins of the Ma-
nila Railroad Company, had granted us a special train
free of expense to take us up to Baguio and return. I
must a little later say something especially about the

77

day in Baguio, but this much reference to it as a part of
our v.elconie.

That night at the Manihi Hotel, which, by the way,
is fine enough to grace any city in the world, we were
met by two hundred and thirty-four of the most repre-
sentative men of every form of life, at the opening
banquet of the campaign. Thus you can see how
favorable was our entrance into this American territor;y
of the far East.

We found it somewhat difficult after the first excite-
ment of the reception, to get our minds down to the real
issue of our Men and Religion campaign, and we also
found it difficult to centralize the thought of the com-
munity upon it, for we were anxious to study the ques-
tion of the Philippine Islands, and those resident there
were anxious to know what were our impressions, and
to learn whether we had any inside information about
the future attitude of the American Government towards
the islands.

Before we were granted the privilege of reading letters
from home, we were handed the ]\Ianila morning paper
dated March 5th, which had in it the list of President
Wilson's new Cabinet. The air was charged with un-
certainty, anxiety and expectation, for many of these
men have staked everything upon the permanent
progress of the Philippine Islands, and to them at least,
this progress is only secure by the continuance of the
American administration.

I have known something of the problem of coloniza-
tion, having had the privilege of visiting a good many
of the British, Dutch and German colonies, and I was
exceedingly anxious to know how our Americans were
going to appear at the end of fifteen years of such
experience, twelve thousand miles away from home.

78

From the evidence we were able to secure, in ninety per
cent of the illustrations, I was proud of them.

As accurately as we could get the story, when the
American troops went into Manila, they found it in a
horrible state physically, unfit for human beings to
live in, in all except a small section, carefully guarded
for Spanish officers and friars. This is no dream. I
talked with many Filipinos and Spaniards who have lived
there during all the years, and their descriptions were
fierce. As you entered the old Walled City, it was sur-
rounded by what was called the moat, filled with stag-
nant water, with old flirty caribou wallowing in it. The
streets were heaped up with accumulated filth. No
sewers, no electric lights, no decent water, and only one
abandoned, unkept park. The years have transformed
it into a place of beauty. The streets in all except one
small portion, are cleaner than most of the streets in
cities of the same size in the United States. The moat
has been filled in and to-day it is a vast plot of ground
covered with beautiful green grass. In the afternoons
literally thousands of men and boys are playing base-
ball, volley ball and tennis in the location of the old
foul, stagnant pools. The Luneta, the park at the
water front, bids fair to become one of the beauty spots
of the world. A modern system of sewerage has been
installed, and an electric-light system reached into every
corner of the city. While many of the old native
quarters still remain with the rude bamboo cabins, yet
they are clean and pure.

I will not undertake to describe some of the moral
conditions, for they were indescribable. To-day there
is not a gambling house in Manila — NOT ONE. The
police are on the track of them as hot as anything I
ever saw. To me, one of the most striking things is the
fact that here in a city of nearly three hundred thousand

79

population, they have only twenty licensed saloons. If
some of the clubs and hotels Avould eliminate the drunk-
enness which they tolerate, drunkenness would be reduced
to a very small amount. Is it not enough to break
your heart to note this fact — low-down, brawling drunk-
enness, not only in Manila, but in Hongkong, Shanghai,
New York, London and Philadelphia, is coming to be
found vastly more in the stylish club and hotel than in
the old-time groggery ? This was most manifest to us in
Manila. Street drunkenness is very seldom seen there.

The social vice, Avhile not under that control which
it ought to be and will be, is reduced almost to the mini-
mum. No immoral street characters are seen.

On the afternoon we were taken about to see the city,
we witnessed the exhibition by about the most perfect
Fire Department system which I have seen in operation.
All unknown to the firemen. Assistant Chief Samuelson,
who was with us, stopped at one of the fire boxes,
turned in an alarm and had the department respond.
They ran three blocks with their electric engine, at-
tached the hose, and had two streams of water in the air
in less than a minute and a half. We visited the general
hospital, which has been built during the last five years.
I think the Trustees of Hahnemann could well afford
to send out some of their specialists to examine that
hospital, for I do not believe New York City has any-
thing more perfect. It is a marvel for completeness.
They have three hundred and fifty nurses and forty
doctors. When our representatives went into the
islands, they found a people sick, diseased and dying,
and but little being done in a scientific way to remedy
the conditions. The annual deaths from smallpox were
over five thousand only ten years ago. To-day they
are less than six hundred. Some of those other plagues
and epidemics which formerly swept the islands and

80

carried off thousands in a few days, are absolutely un-
known now.

We visited Bilibid prison, went through it, and had
the same impression concerning its modern supervision.
The stories of tlie old prison life arc enough to cliill
your blood, and to make you feel as though the Spanish-
American war did not last long enough.

So far as public schools were concerned, when Dewey's
fleet went into Manila Harbor, there was practically
no such a thing known in the whole realm of the islands.
To-day, from one end of the countr}^ to the other, there
are springing up public schools, under the remarkable
leadership of Commissioner White, and his assistant.
Professor McGec, which will rank favorably with those
of any land under the sun.

I spoke in the Normal School in Manila to a thousand
young Filipinos who are being trained there, and who
will go out as the real makers of the new civilization
of the Philippine Islands. I also spoke in the School
of Commerce, where five hundred young men are being
trained in the modem methods of commerce and busi-
ness. They also have in Manila a Trades School with
over five hundred boys, which unfortunately we did not
have time to visit. There are a thousand American
school teachers in the Islands, and they are the leaders
of eight thousand native instructors, all of whom have
been developed during the past fifteen years.

I would not have given you a fair statement of Ma-
nila if I failed to mention beautiful Fort McKinley. I
have visited, I think, most of our largest garrisons
throughout the whole republic, but certainly there is
not one that excels in beauty and order Fort McKinley.
We found 1,600 men there under the superb leadership
of Col. William J. Nicholson. In the fort is a Young
Men's Christian Association with nearly a thousand

81

members, and a building which looks about the size
of the Young Men's Christian Association building on
Twenty-third Street. It is the largest Army Young
Men's Christian Association in the world. The moral
regulations concerning the soldiers stationed there are
the most perfect I have ever known. As an illustration,
any soldier found walking the streets anywhere with
a Filipino woman is placed in the guard-house for six
days and fined ten dollars. The same penalty is im-
posed upon any soldier found in a dance hall. Other
regulations are quite as binding, with the result that
those attendant physical results wiiich follow drunken-
ness and the like, are reduced to the minimum. Out of
the 1,600 men there, only forty-nine were on the hospital
list. I have been told many times that soldiers would
rebel against regulations of this kind. Instead of that,
they would cheer to the echo when you referred to the
binding moral obligations which were being imposed
upon them.

This much is positively sure. The American Govern-
ment has proven beyond any possible doubt its capacity
for worthy colonization. I wish other great nations
which are engaged in a system of colonization vastly
greater than ours, would send their representatives to
Manila and see what is being done there. Observe
the spirit that characterizes it, and the type of men in
Government service. The contrast here with conditions
in some other cities we have visited, is simply enormous.
I do not mean by this that in every case the men who
have held public office under our Government in the
Philippine Islands have been worthy men. There are
a few of them who have been a disgrace to themselves,
to the people and the flag they represent, but they
are in the minority. It is not my purpose to attempt
to write you a symposium of the results of American

82

invasion of the far East. Volumes would be necessary
to do that, but I do want to testify that they have
" made good," and ought to be honored and not abused.
I only wish that all of our home people could actually
see what has been wrought there in a few years.

I am thoroughly convinced, however, that we were
led of God to go there just at this time, with the
Men and Religion message, because, without any ques-
tion, the place where there, is greatest tension, the most
critical need, and in some respects the greatest unrest,
is in the realm of Christian life. Christian work and the
Church. It is freely commented upon every hand, both
by those who are warm advocates of the Church and
the Christian organizations, and also by those who are
not only indifferent, but antagonistic to the Church that
religious work has not developed in an3'thing like the
degree exemplified in other enterprises.

I have said a good deal about the developments along
physical, educational and moral lines. If you can go
back to the genesis of it all, you will find the influence
of Christianity, but the sad part is that the men who
are promoting these elements of real Christian enter-
prise do not admit that they have any relation to the
Church, and in many cases seem anxious to declare an
absolute independence from all such connections. We
met and heard one man who takes high rank among the
men Avho have rendered noble service in behalf of the
interior peoples. He took particular pains to empha-
size his non-religious attitude, but at the same time,
gave a graphic account of his Christian ancestry in
New England. His motives, his ideals and his moral
energy were imparted to him by an intense church life,
but he seems to feel it entirely foreign to wliat he is
now doing in public service. He is only typical of

83

many sti'ong men we met. Therefore the Men and Re-
ligion Movement came at a critical and needy time.

We had a marvelous ten days' work, in view of all
the conditions surrounding us. We held meetings of
every kind and description that we ever held anywhere,
plus a very unique opportunity^ at Fort McKinley,
where I had the privilege of speaking three nights to
about six hundred soldiers each night.

I do not know whether you will be interested in the
complete figures, but they are very interesting to us.
While in Manila, we held forty meetings with a total
attendance of 13,772 people. Mr. Robins and I each
spoke twenty-three times.

The above, added to what I gave you in my last let-
ter, makes a total of 198 different meetings held, with
a total attendance of 51,933 people. The quartet
has sung 413 times. Robins has spoken 118 times and
I have spoken 119 times.

I must tell you a little more about Baguio. It is
situated in the Benguet mountains, 150 miles to the
north of Manila, in a place of unexcelled beauty.
To this place the Government moves its operations for
about three or four months of the most heated season
of the year. They were also anxious to have the Govern-
ment officials come into contact with our message that,
as I have already indicated, they arranged for a special
train to carry us up by night, thus economizing the
day for work, and a half holiday for all employees.
If Tammany Hall had been in the saddle, I am afraid
it would have been different. We had there 228 men
at luncheon, and in the afternoon, in the open amphi-
theater, with the great General J. Franklin Bell acting
as host, we had 494 people. You can readily see that
these audiences were very influential, for we had Govern-

84

nicnt officials iind men of tiic very higiiest rank in mili-
tary power.

The afternoon meeting was held in wiiat I am sure is
the most beautiful open amphitheater in all the world,
so far as I have knowledge. It has been built by Gen-
eral Bell, not for his own pleasure, but for the people
to enjoy for all the years, in musical, patriotic, educa-
tional and religious assemblages. This was the first
public gathering in it, and took the form of a dedication.
It is a place of indescribable beauty. It must be seen
to be realized. Robins and I each spoke, and in that
vast place, you could hear literally to the last seat,
so perfect are the acoustic properties. The whole meet-
ing was most impressive, but reached a climax, when at
the close. General Bell beckoned to the officers at the
rear to send the Igorots down to him. They came to
the front and stood in a line with their scant dress,
while the old General stood by their side and addressed
the people, telling of their faithfulness as workmen,
for they were the men who really built the place. There
were a good many tear-dimmed eyes as the people wit-
nessed that grand man's unwillingness to have those
poor natives who had worked so hard, forgotten in
that opening meeting. Kvery man in our party left
there that night, feeling that since leaving New York,
no one single day had reached so far in influence as
that one.

Had there been no meetings to be held, it would have
been a wonderful trip just for the ride. The railroad
runs a line witliin seventeen miles of the mountain.
From there, " Camp One," we took automobiles up
steep roads and over narrow gorges. Probably the
ride from Boidder to Estes I*ark in the Rocky Moun-
tains is equal to it, but that is the only one I know
which is to be compared with it. We climbed 5,000

85

feet, and passed around great gorges and precipices
where it would almost take your breath away to think
of running an automobile. You can get a little im-
pression of the condition of the country when I note
that in returning, the railroad would not pick us up
at " Camp One," where they left us in the moniing,
but made us take automobiles fifty miles farther down
the line. We made this, starting from Baguio at
8:40 in the evening. You have done some mountain
climbing in automobiles during your day, but even with
your generalship and Thomas' sense, I do not believe
you would tackle that ride.

So far as results are concerned, I do not care to
attempt very much in the way of statistical tabulation,
but there are some things that are worthy of peculiar
comment. In evangelistic results, I would not dare tell
you the number of young men who professed to accept
Christ and who manifested a renewed interest in the
Christian life. The definite evangelistic results were
tremendous both at Fort McKinley and in the city of
Manila. The churches have united in a larger federated
effort. Without any doubt the strongest Christian
business man in the city, and one who had not interested
himself very much in this kind of work, has given
pledge to leadership in the conservation work. Perhaps
in the follow-up work, the two places where there will
be the largest permanent results, will be in a better
campaign for boys, for not much has been done in
this line, and in an intensified definite Christian Social
Service propaganda.

There are a thousand things I would like to say to
you about the Philippine Islands — their future and
our relation to them, but time, space and your patience
will not permit of too much. But there are a few im-

86

cr; J_

> =

prcssioiis that 1 would not feel 1 had been just to my-
self, to the party nor to you if I did not express.

First. — The PhiUppinc Islands are to have a great
future. They have resources that are simply unlimited.
No man can estimate them. We know now something
of the conunercial value in hemp, rice, cocoa fibre, to-
bacco, sugar cane and minerals, but not one of them
has as yet been touched in its possibilities. Take just
one illustration. By most accurate surveys, there are
68,000,000 acres of immediately tillable land— 68,-
000,000 acres that could be put under cultivation to-
morrow if there were workmen ready for the task. Of
the 68.000,000, less than 8,000,000 acres are now under
cultivation. In acreage, the Philippine Islands will far
exceed the Hawaiian Islands. I do not know in what
proportion, but it is very great. In fertility and favor-
able clinr.ite, they are fully equal to the Hawaiian group.
It has not as yet entered into the mind of man what
the rice, sugar, com, cocoa fibre and mineral resources
may some day become. Three days' sail to the west,
three days' to the northwest and seven days to the
north, places the Philippine Islands within the reach
of nearly 800,000,000 people, one-half of whom are
poorly fed. And here, 60,000,000 acres of rich ground
are lying waste.

Does it not appeal to you as a great piece of work
in the nanie of God and for humanity, to have these
resources released that the hungry may be fed and
the naked clothed.''

Second. — The American Government is essential to
this development. I am not a politician, as you know,
but I am at such a point of intensity upon this question
that if I thought our Government was going to be so
positively absurd as to stop now its beneficent work in
the Philippine Islands, I would start home to-day and

87

campaign the country to create a sentiment against
that idea. You can go into Manila and meet a few
of those very choice cultured Filipinos, spend a day or
two at banquets and functions and possibly go out
with the idea that they are ready for complete inde-
pendent self-government. But we had a pretty good
opportunity to get a fair estimate of the whole situation.
I went on a ride of a hundred and twenty miles into
the country in an automobile and passed through small
villages all along the way from Manila to San Pablo.
About twenty of them. No man could dream of any-
thing more foolish than to think of turning over to
complete self-government that district, which is one of
the best in the whole Islands. Add to that the fact
that they have 400,000 wild men in the north, and about
500,000 more in the south, absolutely wild, " head
hunters," who would be moving on Manila inside of
thirty days if they heard that the American soldiers
had withdrawn, and it makes your blood tingle to think
that anybody would propose to leave that situation now.
I am persuaded that not only would the great work
of education and uplift stop if our influence were re-
moved, but I am also persuaded that it would go back
to a state worse than it was before the Spanish-Ameri-
can war. God knows the Spanish administration was
bad enough, but that would not compare with the hor-
rors of that people if left entirely to themselves at this
period. And the saddest part of it all is that without
any doubt, those who are most deserving would be
those to suffer most. I can assure you, my dear friend,
that this is not simply the echo of the views expressed
by the Americans resident there, nor of a few office
holders who might be suspected of an ulterior motive,
but it is the pronounced view of some of the finest type
of Filipinos whom we met. I talked with one native who

88

is a man of fine training, splendid business ability and
a thorough Filipino patriot. He gave it as his un-
qualified judgment that such an action on the part of
the American government would be disastrous to the
whole future of his country. We have as a fellow
passenger on tlie ship en route to Australia, Rt. Rev.
Gilbert White, one of the Australian bishops of the
Church of England, who has been in the Philippine
Islands for a month on a tour with Bishop Brent, visit-
ing the interior places. He, of course, is an entirely
disinterested man, but he is just as strong in his state-
ment of the necessity for the American administration
remaining in the Philippine Islands as am I. I cannot
quite express to you how deeply we all feel upon this
question, for after our contact with that people, and
with the issues involved, we feel that for our Govern-
ment to withdraw would be one of the saddest pages in
American history, and that inside of ten years, when
some power would certainly have to go back there to
carry out what has so well begun, we would be the
laughing stock of the powers of the world for our folly
and neglect.

I do not protend to be a scientific man in matters of
government, but I think I know a little of what is in-
volved, and I have been trying, while writing you, to
think of some plausible reason for such an action. Of
course, it would sound very beautiful to say that after
these years, we had withdrawn and given that people
their liberty, but instead of liberty, just as sure as
God lives, it would mean slavery, servitude and defeat
for tens of thousands of people who are now on their
way to a better life.

I am fully aware of the fact that there are some
grave dangers to be avoided. When the clever com-
mercial American gets a full realization of the many

89

possibilities in the Philippine Islands, his greed for
gain will have to be restrained or he will go over there
with commercial trickery and combinations which will
wring the very juice out of the country at the cost of
its people. This peril must be guarded against, and
it will take a strong hand. There is also the hungry,
unscrupulous politician to be reckoned with. He will
have to be watched, lest public office degenerate into
a bargain counter for paying off political debts. It
is to be a country of such marvelous beauty in scenery
that the adventurer and the man of low morals will
have to be guarded against, and ought to be notified
that he is not wanted there. Already our representa-
tives are serving that notice in no unmistakable. manner.
But our nation is big enough to render an unselfish
service there, and to give the whole world an illustration
of what can be accomplished by the best blood of
our best people. China, with 400,000,000 people, is
just across the little narrow stream of water, asking
for a guide to better days. Japan is unfolding, but
is poorly prepared for all that is ahead of her. It
seems to me that the stars and stripes ought to remain
at this place which seems to have been given to us so
providentially, and at the doorway of these other na-
tions, to render a hitherto unknown, unselfish service.
I could plead for a continuance of the American ad-
ministration, not for gain in commerce, not for a mili-
tary base from which to whip the world sometime, not
to boast of more acres and dominion, but in the name
of God and humanity, to give a clearer illustration than
history has yet recorded of a strong power giving its
life to redeem a weaker people, and to lift them up.
I cannot conceive of any reason why fullest autonomy
cannot be granted to the Filipino people, and yet have
it done under the protection of our own country. The

90

Filipino people need us. Their best blood responds to
that fact, and I wonder if it may not be that we, as a
nation, need the Filipinos. As certainly as I believe
God was guiding in that hour when Dewey sailed into
Manila Harbor with liis fleet, just so surely do I believe
that there is yet a duty to be performed in His name,
and to withdraw would, in my judgment, mean the
setting of the clock back upon the whole Orient by
scores of years.

Third. — The supreme need of the Philip pine Islands
is for a stronger demonstration of a pure Christianity.
In what I am about to say, I would not want you to
get the impression that the forces of Christianity are
not strong in many respects, for they are. Bishop
Brent, of the Protestant Episcopal Church is there, and
he alone is a tower of strength. The various mission-
ary boards which are represented have some able men.
Bible societies have done a wonderful work in disseminat-
ing the scriptures in the various native languages. The
Young Men's Christian Association in the city of Manila
is a tremendous power in the community. I would not
seem to be unnn'ndful of the faithful, self-sacrificing
service rendered by these Christian workers, but as
compared with the population, and as compared with
the issues, the whole force combined is inadequate to the
situation. They would say this even more freely than
would I. I have no fear whatever in sa^nng that, with-
out any exception, I believe this presents the most criti-
cal situation we have faced, so far as definite spiritual
Christian work is concerned.

In the first place, here is the terrible task of present-
ing Christianity in a country, which on the map is
already marked as " Christian." When we were in
Japan and China, the issue was well defined. We had
there to make a presentation which would convince men

91

that Christianity was better than Buddhism, Moham-
medanism or Shintoism, and while we always faced a
stubborn resistance, there was never any doubt about
the result. And there was no embarrassment in press-
ing the claim. But when you get to Manila, it is a
new situation entirely. Here it is a question of proving
that one type of Christianity is better than another,
and also the embarrassment of making use of any illus-
tration or arguments which would seem to be " omnibus "
in their character as applied to the Roman Catholic
Church, for we are all the time reminded of those great,
noble souls of the Roman Catholic Church with whom
we are so well acquainted in the home country. But
the degenerate form of Roman Catholicism which was
developed in the Philippine Islands is in many ways
worse to deal with than Buddhism or Shintoism. I do
not mean that they did not do anything. They did some
things, but the record of Friar domination will stand
as one of the blackest pages in human history. If you
want to stir up a riot, all you have to do, almost any-
where in the Philippine Islands, is to mention the Friars.
Of course we know that they were not Christians in the
time sense of the word. They took the Divinest thing
on earth and made havoc for their own sensual desires.
But in the face of this terrible history, Protestant Chris-
tianity has now to make its way.

In the second place, of all the cities I have ever visited,
I think I have never come into contact with such cpn-
fusing ideas as to what it means to be a Christian.
Some Americans have gone out there who professed
to be church men at home, and have so compromised
themselves that it is very difficult to discover any differ-
ence between them and men of no religious profession.
Some of these nearly had a fit because I dared to refer
fo whiskey, and even feigned to look with great sur-

92

prise that whiskey drinking should be listed as one of
the things not to be tolerated by professing Chris-
tians. I cannot tell how many times I was taken out
in a comer by confidential advisers who wanted to per-
suade me that Manila was " peculiar," and that a
Christian man could do things there that he would not
think of doing in New York City, Washington, Phila-
delphia, Boston or Chicago. Not all of the professing
Christian men, i)v any means, have surrendered to this
view. There are men who hold the standards just as
high and pure and good and true as the day they left
San Francisco. But there are enough of the other type
to have complicated the whole church question, and to
make it exceedingly difficult to persuade non-Christian
men that there is any power or necessity in the Chris-
tian life for them.

In the third place, Protestant Christianity is very
much weakened by unnecessary divisions. I do not find
it easy to deal calmly with this element of the situation.
Instead of one, or at most two strong churches in the
city of Manila, we found four, every one of them strug-
gling for life, poorly supported and not able to make a
real impression upon the entire community. I would
not censure those earnest men who have been sent out
there, and I would not censure overmuch the men at home
whom they represent, for all of it is the expression of
a very noble and worthy desire. But the result is de-
plorable. Now they are trying to consolidate, but the
problem is very difficult, in view of the fact that all
of the machinery of the four different denominations is
now in operation. Notwithstanding the noble sentiment
which prompted the various Missionary Societies in 1898
to send their representatives thither, I refuse to believe
that a God of wisdom, by His spirit, prompted that
method of procedure. Had the forces at home been

93

sufficiently united, tliere could have been one demon-
stration of real spiritual power. Let the past, how-
ever, be what it is ; it does seem to me that such a blun-
der ought to be averted in the future. Not only in
Manila, but all along the way, I have been thinking of
what a wonderful service ought to be rendered to the
cause of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ throughout the
whole earth if the Federal Council of Churches in
America can be brought to its full place of power. Had
it been sufficiently active in 1898, it might have been
the agency to have led in a wiser propaganda through-
out the Philippine Islands.

In the fourth place, the country is filled with that
type of men of whom I have already written, who back
in the States, got their vision of life, service and good
morals from their vital church contact, and who are
now in the Philippine Islands rendering most splendid
humanitarian service, and yet, who are not onh^ indif-
ferent to but decry the Church. Some of them, of
course, are embarrassed by the complicated situations
which obtain with reference to the Roman Catholic
Church. Some of them, perhaps, have become discour-
aged with the inadequate efforts being made by the pres-
ent church forces, but whatever the cause, they stand
as a very serious handicap to definite Christian work.
Very naturally men point to them and to their noble
service and say that if men live such lives and i*ender
such service without relation to the Church, why should
we younger men think seriously of this question.'' In
view of the fact that you and I know that this kind of
service will not be abiding, and also that the sons and
grandsons of tliese very men will not render that kind
of service if the definite Christian motive is eliminated,
I believe that there is no spot in the world which pre-

94<

sents a greater opportunity for vital Christian effort
than in our own Philippine Islands.

I do not feel discouraged about it for I am sure the
program of the pure gospel of Jesus Christ and the
open Bible is going to win, but it is a big job. It is
worthy of big men and of loyal, generous support on
the part of the home people.

I feel as though I would not be fair to all the incidents
of our visit and work in the Philippine Islands if I failed
to speak once more of the splendid influence and co-oper-
ation of the E. H. Fallows party. They preceded us
by nearly a month. Bishop Fallows, in an interview,
had commended our work most heartily, and Mr. E. H.
Fallows had said such kind things to the business men
wjiom he met that they wore ready to welcome us. Dur-
ing the campaign in Manila, I tliink there were a good
many men who felt that we were putting the pressure
on rather vigorously, but the earnest approval of the
Fallows party helped us to hold our position securely.
Mr. Fallows' conduct and business methods were those
of so splendid a Christian type that I am a little in
doubt as to who preached the biggest sermon — the
" Men and Religion team," or the " Fallows party."
One thing is sure, the two worked together admirably.

As I close this letter, and we begin to get our minds
fixed upon our work in Australia, I want to tell you
how deeply every man in the party is feeling the sense
of gratitude to God. We have traveled nearly 18,000
miles. We have been in every type of climate, on every
kind of a ship, on every kind of a sea, in every kind of
a hotel, which, it seems to me, anybody could find, and
we have all been in perfect health. As I have already
said, Ave have held one hundred and ninety-eight meet-
ings, and during all the time not one man of the whole
group has been incapacitated for service. Vaccination

95

made us a little weary and languid for a few days, but
no serious thing has befallen any one of us. Therefore
we are moving steadily forward and praying for yet a
greater measure of grace.

As you have opportunity, say a word of greeting
to every one of the dear friends at home. I go over
them in my mind many times, and there is not a day
passes but that, as we meet in our little daily Bible
study together, we offer prayer that those behind us
may be kept constantly in the love and power of God.
Yours very sincerely,

Fred. B. Smith.

96

VIII

On White Star Liner Persic, Australia to South Africa,
May 1, 1913.

My dear Mr. Cannon: Once more we have closed
our charts, diagrams, discussions, books and mouths,
for a few days, and are at sea, resting and thinking it
all over. The rapid cannonading of the great cities of
Australia is over, at least for the present, and now we
are actually out upon the Indian Ocean, plowing our
way toward South Africa.

According to all the signs, we are booked for some
new experiences too. We are " at sea " in more ways
than ever before.

First of all, the waters over which we are traveling
are entirely new to us. Out of all my wanderings, I
have not hitherto taken this course from Australia to
South Africa, and while the ocean is the ocean, yet
there does seem a little new interest in the thought of
crossing this unknown part of the great deep. It is
about 5,000 miles from Albany, West Australia, to
Durban in Natal, and this will take me farther from
land than I have ever been before.

Then we are a little bit " at sea," because we are
on a new type of ship. Thus far we have traveled upon
ocean palaces, particularly the great Manchuria, the
ship upon which we sailed from the Hawaiian Islands
to Japan, and the Nippon Yusen Kaisha steamer, Kji-
mano Maru, upon whicli we spent two weeks in getting
to Australia. Both of them were about perfect for
comfort. But now we are on the White Star Line
steamer Persic, a one-class boat carrying three hundred

97

and ninety passengers, packed almost to suffocation,
and we are having a touch of the real " simple life."
I think you would smile to see some of our conveniences.
Our party has a table on top of a hatchway down in
the main dining saloon. The place is so crowded that
they have had to put a special table there for us. We
will not see a napkin for sixteen days, not even a paper
one. No hors d'ceuvre, caviar, French dressings, or
other dainties which are usually concocted to stimulate
the appetite. But we are getting plenty of corned
beef, cabbage and potatoes. And better than all else,
we are getting plenty of fellowship with real folks.
The people are sturdy, genuine, common people, and
we are enjoying them.

We are also " at sea " somewhat concerning just the
real, permanent net results of our Australian cam-
paign. There we really came into contact with some
new conditions, and about everything in our program
had to be revamped to fit the unique elements of their
church life. We have been holding some conferences
on the ship to try to find out " where we are at." Aus-
tralia presents some elements which are absolutely pe-
culiar to its own life, and we were not there very long
before we discovered that fact.

However, before I get too deeply into these ques-
tions, I must first say that there is no place on earth
where a Christian worker from North America will re-
ceive such a cordial welcome and hearing as in Aus-
tralia. It is a joy to work with those earnest men,
for I find they have more in common with us than any
other living people. This is a new nation and is not
rigidly set in its ways. It is open-minded and ready to
revise where revision promises better returns. Its peo-
ple are not everlastingly bound to traditions of a thou-
sand years which they feel must not be altered, as is so

98

mucli the case in the older parts of the world. Then
they have an unbounded enthusiasm which becomes con-
tagious when you have been there a few days. And
grander than all else, they have not reached the place
where they are too proud to manifest their enthusiasm.
Sometimes we thought it would run away with us, but
it was so genuine and hearty that it was a constant
inspiration. Then, too, they are the sons of a big vast
territory. Australia has 2,974,.581 square miles of
area. They are compelled to think and travel in great
distances. This gives them mental discipline in big
thinking, and it results in big men every way.

I wish you could have been with us in some of our
" welcome " receptions. Governors, Prime Ministers,
Lord Mayors and big politicians were in most cases
the hosts. In the two greatest cities — Sydney and Mel-
bourne— the Lord Mayor gave the opening reception
and properly greeted us and commended our work. In
Sydney, the Lord Mayor, Rt. Hon. A. A. C. Cocks,
M.L.A., was the chairman of the whole Men and Re-
ligion Forward Movement committee, and upon sev-
eral occasions, before the largest audiences, put the
Christian life as the supreme issue of every man's char-
acter as strongly as any of us could do. It was a moral
tonic to hear the great big powerful men entreat the
young men in a vast audience in the town hall to stand
loyally l)y the Christian life. Christian work, the Church
and religion. Then in Collingwood, one of the suburbs
of IMelbourne, at the close of a public meeting which I
held in the town hall, the INIayor sent for me to come to
the Council Chamber, where they were giving a ban-
quet to the inconu'ng Superintendent of Police. He
said they had the banquet arranged before they knew
of our meeting, and therefore could not attend, but
he was very anxious that the members of the Council

99

fhould hear me explain something of the Men and
Religion Forward Movement, and had for that pur-
pose invited me to their meeting. In his remarks, he
called attention to the fact that the strongest drink
in sight was ginger ale, and said they had not had
anything stronger at any of their public functions for
five years. This must not be taken as typical of all
the public life, nor of the Australian life in general,
for they are fearfully in the grip of " whiskey and
soda," but it does show the trend of thought among
many of their most prominent men. Of this I am cer-
tain— the Australians can beat the world in cordial-
ity of welcome. It helps tremendously those who are
doing the kind of work we are, at a time when we were
so far away from home, and in a sense felt the limi-
tations of being strangers in a strange land.

I believe every man in our entire party was at high
tension all the time in Australia, undertaking to com-
prehend the many angles of life which were so intensely
interesting and yet so perplexing. Remembering that
the territory is almost as large as that of the United
States, we were, of course, first attracted to the prob-
lem of their material resources. Notwithstanding their
vast acreage, they have a little less than 5,000,000
population, of which over 1,000,000 are resident in
Melbourne and Sydney, about equally divided between
the two cities. Yet, with this limited population,
their 1911 output of cattle and sheep amounted to
$286,000,000. Of agricultural products, such as
wheat, barley, corn and rice, $236,000,000. Of min-
erals, $122,500,000. This last, of course, is pretty
largely in the gold regions of the great west. Manu-
facturing is only in its infancy and yet, during that
year, they turned out $483,000,000 "worth of manu-
factured articles. This you will at once see is a tre-

100

inendous voluiiic, and I have not been able to mention
the long hst of smaller industries which were frequently
quoted. As illustration, we made a stop at Thursday-
Island, at the extreme north, where they take out
$10,000,000 worth of pearls annually. Fruit is not
listed. No one seems to have data upon that ques-
tion alone, although there are no finer grapes, pears,
peaches, apricots or apples in existence than those
grown in Australia. Summing it all up, I doubt if
there is another country in the world where there is
so much produced by such a small number of people.
Everything that can be grown anywhere in the earth
can be grown in Australia.

When the doors are opened a little and the popu-
lation increases in some relative proportion to the ex-
tent of the country, a new standard of world prices
may be necessary to take care of the output of this
Anglo-Saxon nation luider the Southern Cross.

In all of these figures and future possibilities, we
have practically to reckon with New Zealand and Tas-
mania as a part, although our travel did not take us
to either, and their products are not included in this
statement.

Added to all of these natural resources of the soil,
there is a climate which is wellnigh perfect. The

north is tropical, and, of course, hot, but, swept by
the sea breezes of an immense water front, it is not
excessively so. The entire southern coast is a garden
of beauty with ideal living conditions. From Sydney,
straight around to Perth, a distance of over four thou-
sand miles, it is difficult to tliiiik of a climate more
delightful.

From the standpoint of our Men and Religion tour,
we were most interested in the legislation upon welfare
topics. Here we found that from the law-making end

101

about everything that could be dreamed of for the good
of the people had been done. Robins was simply over-
whelmed with the magnitude of their legislation upon
these questions. They have an eight-hour day uni-
versal labor law. It applies to everybody from the
cashier of a bank to the domestic servant. At Mel-
bourne, in the Parliament Gardens, there is a beauti-
ful shaft with " 8 — 8 — 8 " on the top, typifying eight
hours labor, eight hours sleep and eight hours recrea-
tion. It is the first and only one of its kind in the
world. Here they have a great annual festival and
parade when they march around this monument in
honor of Australian labor laws. They have a minimum
wage law with permanent boards to determine what a
living wage is in every vocation in the nation. It is
against the law to work for less than a living compen-
sation, as well as for the employer to pay less. They
have an old-age pension act, providing for the care in
old age of all who have served faithfully in any ca-
pacity. They have stringent laws concerning the op-
eration of dangerous machinery without adequate pro-
tection for the workmen. They have elaborate laws
for the protection of health in all shops, mills, stores
and mines. As illustration, every mine, mill and shop
must be well lighted, sprinkled and kept free from dust
and infection. They have laws making Wednesday and
Saturday afternoon half-holidays, when all stores close
at one o'clock, and at six o'clock on all other days,
with one exception, when they may keep open until ten
o'clock. This exception is usually Saturday night.
They have the strongest compulsory educational laws
ever passed anywhere. No boy nor girl can be excused
from school before fourteen years of age, except for
pronounced illness. Of course, this carries the no-child
labor law with it. Their statutes covering sanitation

102

aiul housing are sucli that there is not what we would
call a tenement in the wliole commonwealth. Then they
have reached the climax in an immigration act, which
practically excludes immigrants. No yellow, brown,
or black man can get in at all, and white men must not
come in without a good supply of money and nmst
also be able to write forty words in any European
language the Immigration officer chooses to name.
This means that the officer can look the applicant over,
and if he does not appear to be up to the standard, he
will name a language he cannot write, and the appli-
cant is thus excluded and deported back to his start-
ing place. It is a prohibitory law by another name.
The slogan, " A white Australia," might also be made
" Australia for the Australians." It is wondcrfvd to
go through these cities day after day, crowded as they
are, and not see a black-skinned man anywhere, and
hear but one language spoken — English,

Of course, there is a strong feeling against this rigid
legislation restricting immigration, and now the coun-
try is torn from one end to the other over an agitation
to modify it, for they are in great need of more people.
It is also true that there are many who feel the whole
question of laws has been carried to the extreme. Per-
haps that is true in some cases. It is very amusing
to follow some of the ramifications of these laws. For
instance if a banquet is served and you are in a hurry
and want to have the speeches immediately following
the dinner, you cannot do it, for the Waiters' Union
makes it arbitrary that all the dishes shall be cleared
away before the speakijig begins. I was told that at a
banquet given in honor of a visit of the Prime Min-
ister of Victoria to Sydney some months ago, they
were unal)le to have any speaking at all, because the
time consiuned in clearing the tables carried them clear

103

up to the hour when the Prime Minister had to hurry
away to catch his train. I asked a telephone man if
t}>ey manufactured their own glass insulators, and he
said " No, the law won't let a man take a breath deep
enough in Australia to blow glass."

The multitude of laws upon the labor question and
government ownership of railroads, telephone systems,
street cars, water supply and telegraph, open an im-
mense avenue for some abuses, and there are great dan-
gers. That no one can doubt. Individual ownership
and adventure are not put at such a premium as with
us in the United States and Canada. We found a
strong current of criticisms concerning the attitude of
many of their young men to just drift along and take
it easy, for a living is almost guaranteed by the gov-
ernment. There is no real competition in the sense
that word implies with North American business men.
They would not quite admit this, for some of the men
in trade think they have competition, but my observa-
tion led me to believe that they do not know what the
word means. No other evidence is necessary than to
observe the great warehouses and office buildings closed
from one o'clock to two o'clock each day, while every-
body quietly goes to lunch. Would that not be an
amusing proposition in Wall Street? There is some
fear upon the part of capitalists lest they will not be
protected in future investments. The laws have given
the political socialist and agitator a fertile soil in which
to exploit his government-destroying theories, and I
am fully persuaded that this has something to do with
the lack of growth in population, and especially with
the slow enlargement of manufacturing. There are
certainly serious difficulties, but I believe they are only
passing and temporary. At first, as we met men, talked
over these questions and read the papers, I felt be-

104)

wildered in trying to see through it, and do not now
pretend to have more than a superficial knowledge, but
I am convinced that the laws, for the most part, are
good and will live, and that other nations will follow
in adopting them.

There is not another land on earth with so little
poverty in it. That district of destitution which is in
every city of all other nations I have ever visited, is
not to be found in either Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney
or Adelaide, and remember, two of these cities have
600,000 population each. There is not another nation
where every man, woman and child has such a good
chance tor a decent, comfortable life as in Australia.
Those who fail and go down cannot blame society for
their woes. They are self-imposed penalties. Mr.
Robins, who is an expert and a scientific student of
these questions, says that there is no other place
where wages are so uniformly good, living conditions
so favorable, prices so moderate as in Australia. From
the material standpoint, they have reached a very high
standard.

The striking thing is that while these men have been
engaged in passing the most arbitrary industrial laws,
they have permitted in many cases the loosest ones to
exist upon the great moral questions. The public bars
are loosely run. Men, women and children patronize
them freely. Apparently the bar-maid is no small part
of the attraction for many men. Gambling is permit-
ted at race tracks and cricket matches. They need a
Governor Hughes with some real convictions on the
gambling question to start a crusade to bring them up
to date. The laws against the social evil are so vague
and technical that they practically cannot be enforced.
Upon this question, in two of the cities we discovered
what is absolutely the most ridiculous and absurd leg-

106

islation ever known among professedly Christian peo-
ple. These legislators, while intensely moved concern-
ing the physical and economic welfare of the people,
seem to have had their minds fixed on the money ques-
tion, while morals were pretty well forgotten and over-
looked.

I have written rather fully upon these topics, for
the Men and Religion message ran right into them at
once and made a unique setting for our type of work.
Probably there is no place where we have worked or
ever will work where the significance of the Men and
Religion message was so great as for Australia, and
this for several reasons.

First. — A people may pass laws until doom's day,
or until the dreamer has dreamed his last dream, and
they alone will not make people good, righteous nor
happy. There is no other such final evidence upon this
point as that given in Australia. From the standpoint
of legal benefits, they have nothing more to ask. Here
young men receive the maximum pay for the minimum
amount of work. They are given more time for recre-
ation and the pursuit of elements of personal improve-
ment than was ever granted to any other people.
Then, as though a goodly Providence would put the
final seal upon it, this test is being made in a climate
perfectly adapted to the fulfillment of the heart's
fondest desire. Yet, in the face of all this, young men
are going to hell by the route of whiskey, gambling
and impurity just as they do everywhere.

The last word has been spoken in answering the
question whether improvement in conditions of life alone
will produce good morals. Even the most intense critic
of the Church and Religion has to admit that laws and
high ideals do not of themselves produce good charac-
ter. Only God, the Bible, Jesus Christ and the Church

106

can solve the moral question. This is so terribly mani-
fest, and the developments in some cases are so dis-
tressinif and so discouraging, that a cry is going up
throughout the whole connnonwealth for a new vitaliza-
tion of the moral forces. Therefore we arrived at a
strategic time, when the greatest men of every walk
were ready to listen to what we had to say. It made it
possible for us to declare the indispensable place of
Christianity in the life of any people, and to have the
illustration right at their own door every hour.

Secoxd. — The message concerning the place of the
Church as a force in social life never had such a ring to
it as in Australia. I have already written quite fully of
the wonderful progress of welfare legislation. It has no
equal, but the sad part of it all is that this has been
wrought almost entirely apart from Christian organi-
zations, and, in a sense we had never witnessed before,
has been accomplished in opposition to the influence of
the Church. We are all agreed that in Australia, in a
larger sense than in any other place we have ever
worked, " Labor " and the " Church " seem estranged.
To speak of one man as a " Labor man " and another
as a " Liberal " is almost synonymous with saying that
one is an anti-church and the other a church man.
The greatest men among the Christian forces, both
ministers and laymen, said that they believed our mes-
sage would be wonderfully blessed of God in helping
the Church to see its responsibility for social work, and
equally in helping the labor men to recognize the need
of a vital spiritual message in their work. As you will
at once recognize, this in a certain degree has been one
of the unique elements of the Men and Religion For-
ward Movement all the way along, but it was vastly
more so here than in any other place of which we have
knowledge. The Rev. Frederick C. Spurr, pastor of

107

the Collins Street Baptist Church in Melbourne, and
possibly the most unique figure in the church life of
the commonwealth, one night in prayer, with an in-
tensity that we cannot soon forget, thanked God for
the wedding ceremony of Evangelism and the Social
Service message which the Men and Religion Movement
was performing. If we ever had any lingering doubt
about these two messages being the complement the one
of the other, it was eradicated by the campaign in Aus-
tralia. We were happy in presenting a method by which
the two could be amalgamated. The remaining serious
([uesbion is whether the breach between the Church and
tlie labor world has become too wide for remedy.

Third. — The emphasis upon the need and power
of organizing the local men for permanent evangelis-
tic work was most timely. Australia has been the scene
of an immense amount of mass evangelistic effort in
the past ten years. I can speak freely for I have par-
ticipated in it myself and must, therefore, share in any
word that seems criticism. Australia has been visited
by about everybody in sight upon the evangelistic ques-
tion. There have been some tremendous efforts in great
evangelistic campaigns. Just now, the criticism upon
this type of work is more terrific there than in any
place I have ever visited, and, of course, as is always
the case, some extreme things are being said, for with-
out doubt great good has followed these campaigns.
And yet, after making every allowance, the permanent
results have been fearfully meager and not at all in
harmony with the advertisements. It is a parody
on such big evangelistic campaigns if the saloons,
brothels, gambling dens and dishonest public life, and
class distinctions have not been disturbed in the least.
This criticism is being freely and publicly made by their
strongest Christian leaders. The message of the Men

108

and Religion Movement, emphasizing as it has all the
time that the final work of evangelism is a local respon-
sibility, and must be done by those who abide, was most
needed, for in every city we visited we found the Chris-
tian forces stunned in a sense, and wondering what to
do next. Following our meetings, we heard of liter-
ally hundreds of churches where they were calling meet-
ings of their own men to organize for permanent work.
In five of the greatest cities, before we left, they had
called delegate meetings to organize Inter-Church
Federations for the continuance of those portions of
the message common to the whole community. I thank
God for the spirit that was developed and was so
manifest of deep determination upon the part of min-
isters and laymen in eveiy one of the cities, to go at
the job themselves rather than to wait for another cy-
clone to blow in from somewhere.

Fourth. — The privilege of helping to strengthen
the position of the Young Mens Christian Association
was one of the gladdest tasks. Of course, we were there
representing various organizations upon exactly the
same basis as in the work in the United States, commit-
tees being appointed from all the brotherhoods and all
the churches as well as from the Associations. There-
fore we could not deal exclusively with the Young Men's
Christian Association problem. But I was anxious to
compare the Associations of 1913 with those of 1905,
when I was there before. The progress has been sim-
ply splendid. The total membership has almost doubled ;
the total property value has increased SS^; the secre-
tarial staff has doubled ; the relation between the As-
sociation and the Church has immensely improved ; a
larger and better scope of work is being done. All
along the way I found splendid returns from the vis-
its of Dr. Warner, INIessrs. Morse, Mott, Budge and

109

Pierce. These men, eacli in turn, have left a contri-
bution that is real and abiding. Their greatest pres-
ent need is for a permanent national secretary who
will stay with the work for at least the next ten years.
I do not know of any position in the Young Men's
Christian Association anywhere in the world where a
man is more needed than the right man of God's choos-
ing for this great task. We had in every city some
special Young Men's Christian Association functions
where I was permitted to meet the Association men in
special conference. These events reached their high-
est point of interest at Melbourne, the headquarters
of the national committee, and I found the whole spirit
of things there to be one of expectation concerning
the securing of a national, organizing, supervising
leader.

I think I have given you in some of the previous
letters a summary of our work, but I am now glad to
say that we have had the privilege of presenting the
Men and Religion program to 92,651 men and boys
in conferences and meetings since leaving home, and to
40,718 men and boys in the commonwealth of Australia
at 113 meetings and conferences. It is interesting to
note that I have spoken 177 times since leaving home,
and that Mr. Robins has spoken just the same number
of times.

Notwithstanding the breaks in sea travel, and the
time thus lost in actual meetings, it looks as though I
myself would have the privilege of presenting the
claims of the gospel to more young men in total during
this year than in any previous year of my life. For all
of these privileges, for the constant care that is fol-
lowing us, and for the sympathetic messages coming
from home, we thank God.

Notwithstanding an immense amount of hard work,
110

nfmmsm

<s^

'isr»

';^

there is plenty of spice in it all the time, and we are
never permitted to grow dull. You cannot work in Aus-
tralia without plenty of animation. One of the little
incidents which the fellows of the team will not soon
forget occurred in Brisbane, where three or four of
the men were in a book store, when a woman, who was
a little the worse for liquor, walked up to Alexander
Hyde and said to him : " You are Mr. Robins, aren't
you.f* " He wanted to get rid of her and half turned
away, saying that he was not. Then she said, " Well,
I know that Fred. Smith. He cannot fool me. He is
not an American, he is a Jew from the north of Ire-
land. He got his education in America. I know all
about it." So you see, at last I am discovered, and
will have to give up talking about my New England
blue blood.

Then, too. there is plenty of interest in the ques-
tion of railway travel. To us one of the most amus-
ing things is the necessity of changing cars every time
you cross a state line. I believe only two of all the
states have the same railroad gauge. There is the
5'3" gauge, the 4'8% the 3'6", the 2'6" and the %'
gauge. You just get nicely started and settled down
when they come in and announce that you have to
change cars. When you ask what has happened, they
tell you that you are going " over the line," which
means that you arc going into another state. Of course,
they tell you this is going to be modified, and I guess
it will be, but they told me that eight years ago and
there has been no change yet.

We got another delightful little shock the other day
as we were getting onto the ship at Albany. I over-
heard some ladies saying that they understood that
there were " some very distinguished Americans " who
had just come on board. When you read this, please

111

emphasize the " distinguished." Another lady inquired
about them, and the first said that she did not know
just wlio they were, but she knew that they were " dis-
tinguished gentlemen," and then the second one re-
plied, "Won't it be lovely to hear them talk?" We
have felt all the way along that we were absolutely
assured of good audiences in Australia, for, apparently,
our accent is so amusing that when there is an even
chance for a crowd of men to go to an ordinary enter-
tainment or come to hear us speak, we win, for it is
more entertaining than anything they can get for three
shillings.

I had another rather hot shot one day on the ship,
when a man, talking with me on the question of smok-
ing, commented upon the fact that it seemed rather
strange to him that none of our party were " smok-
ers," further stating, " About all of you chew." I
looked at him in amazement and said, " What do you
mean.f* There is not one in the party who ever did
such a dirty trick." His reply was, " Why, really, I
thought you all chewed tobacco, I have seen you chew-
ing so much." Then I thought a little inore carefully
and discovered that the whole Men and Religion team
had exposed themselves to the suspicion of being to-
bacco chewers because an ardent friend in Adelaide,
who evidently wanted to engraft himself in our affec-
tions forever, in an unguarded moment had presented
the party with a goodly supply of spearmint chewing
gum, and, American style, we have been going up and
down the deck chewing our cud, and the Australian
could only interpret that kind of motion to another
method of handling nicotine. At the same time I have
been reading John Foster Fraser's book upon " The
Panama Canal," and in it he comments upon the Ameri-
can " gum-chewing habit " on the Canal. It may be

112

a little more excusable than tobacco, Ijut 1 have made
up my miiul not to look at another piece of gum as
long as I live.

I am not so sure, though, but that we could pretty
nearly counter on the gum-chewing proposition, for
positively there is nothing more amusing in a world
tour than to see that kind of spell which comes over
a Britisher at about five minutes to four o'clock every
afternoon. From five minutes before four o'clock imtil
fifteen minutes l)efore five, I challenge any man living
to talk to any Britisher upon any subject under the
high heaven except " tea." Yesterday I sat in my room
and laughed as much as I would at Barnum's circus
to hear them outside the port holes chattering like the
annual meeting of a ladies' aid society — men, women
and children, all discussing tea. From early morning
until late at night, the whole day's program is outlined
with reference to not interfering with tea. Sports stop
for tea. Those who are seasick, with marvelous magic,
get out of their bunks and partake of tea. I think the
Union Jack would cease to wave, and the British lion
would go down to ignominious and eternal defeat if
tea should fail this people.

The unkindest cut of all came to us, however, just
as we were leaving West Australia. A newspaper re-
porter came to me and said that it was reported over
the west that we were a band of " Mormon Evan-
gelists," who were out to establish the ]Mormon Church
in Australia. I hastened to disabuse his mind. Then,
when we got on ship, we were shocked to learn that
the same word had been passed on to the passengers.
I am supposed to be a nephew of the great Joseph
Smith. Isn't it awful.'' Eight men, and not one woman
in the party, and then to be accused of Mormonism 1
This is part of the penalty of being famous.

11 J}

I Avould not feel as though I had really written you
about our Australian trip unless I told you about our
three days' rest at Albany. This is a little town on the
west coast where we had to wait to catch our ship for
South Africa. We broke up into pairs and triplets,
and went fishing, mountain climbing and anything we
wanted to do for reci'eation. Robins and I got two
riding horses, rolled up our blankets, took a few crack-
ers and sardines and started right back into the " bush."
The bush is Australia's term for describing the interior
country. It is practically covered with an undergrowth
and big gum trees, and their name for it is " the bush."
The first night we rode out about fifteen miles into a
district that seemed so wild that you would doubt
whether white men had ever been there before, rode by
moonlight until about nine o'clock, then we went up on
the side of a mountain, hitched our horses, lay down on
the ground and slept the sleep of the just. It was per-
fectly glorious. The night was cloudless, the moon was
shining and the bright stars seemed literally to fill the
sky, with the great Southern Cross in the center of it
all. It was rather cold, for it is winter there now.
We built a big camp fire, and I don't think I have put
in a finer night in ten years. The next day we rode
on, crossing the King and Kalgan rivers, circled
around the mountains, sometimes following a trail and
sometimes riding by the direction of the sun. The sec-
ond night we saw what we thought was an approaching
storm, and hunted for a " settlement " which, in our
terms, would be a farm house, and put up for the night.
We were out three days, scaring up wild kangaroo
and playing at being real Australian " bush men."
Every man we met (there were only a few of them)
we stopped and visited with concerning the country, its
future and its prospects. Perhaps we learned more

114

about real Australian country' life in those three da^-^s
than we could know by all the rest of our time there.
I have spoken of some of the difficulties of the coun-
try. Thc3' are terribly wrought up by the unrest and
conflict between capital and labor. They are more or
less in distress concerning their climate. The amount
of rainfall is always an uncertain quantity. But I be-
lieve their most serious j)roblem is the development of
a real, genuine, undivided patriotism. I do not mean
by this to hint that they are not in love with their coun-
try, but it seems secondary with everybody. They all
lalk about " going home," meaning back to the British
Isles. I referred to the night we stayed at a " settle-
ment." The man's name was Wilfred Warthwyke. He
has been out there twenty-five years ; came when twenty-
two years of age: has two fine farms, one of 100 acres
and another of 1,000 acres. His wife was born in Aus-
tralia, and has never been away from it. But they are
selling out to " go home." On the ship, yesterday, I
fell into conversation with two young men, both of them
of Australian birth. I inquired where they were going,
and they said they were " going home," en route to
England. We have a minister on board, the Rev. Vic-
tor Bell, pastor of a very influential church in Sydney.
He and his wife are making their first voyage away
from Australia, but in conversation with IMr. Bell he
was rejoicing in the fact that he was " going home."
I talked with the pastor of one of the largest churches
in the whole commonwealth, with a membership of over
1,500. He has been in Australia for nearly fifteen
years. He now feels that when he has completed the
fifteenth vcar, he is entitled to " go home." There is
that kind of transitory feeling, as though Australia
were a probationary place, and the great goal is to " go
home." I contrasted this with Canadian life. There

115

Is no such feeling in Canada. I do not believe that Aus-
tralia will ever develop as it ought until there is a larger
consciousness that it is the real, permanent, happy
home of the people.

I must not utterly weary you. There are about forty
things more about which I would like to write you, but
must not do so for fear this epistle will appear too
voluminous.

Always and every day we are thanking God for our
privilege, and for the wonderful care which Is taking
us on the long journey without any illness or accident,
and best of all, for continued good news from home.

Yours as ever,

Fred. B. Smith.

116

IX

En route Capetown, South Africa, to London, Eng-
land, June 24, 1913.

My dear Frikxd : Again, after a terrific campaign
of six weeks in South Africa, we find ourselves out on
the big water, having just sent a cable to White Plains
which read "Homeward Bound." I pity the man who
stays at home all the time and never knows the joy of
sending such a cable after nearly seven months away
from home. I can hardly believe that we are nearing
the end, and are now making our last long sea voyage.

I have this morning been looking over the pages of
the copies of the letters I have written you, and remem-
bering the volume I have sent, I almost pity you when
I think that I am again writing to you, this time to try
to interpret what is in our hearts concerning great,
wonderful, sunny South Africa. As my memory sweeps
me b<T.ck over the incidents from that wonderful night
in the Hotel Astor in New York City, up to this present
hour, there has been only one place where we could say
that our reception had not been hearty and cordial, and
only one place where we have an}' very serious misgiv-
ings al)out the results. We are deeply and profoundly
grateful to God for His good hand, so markedly mani-
fest in every city and in every place, but, like that fa-
mous wedding feast, we are prepared to say that in
His good providence, the best was reserved until the
last.

When I visited South Africa five years ago it got
hold of my affections and Interest in a way that no other

117

country save my own had ever done. I could hardly tell
why, but I am greatly interested now to note that it
has had the same effect upon all of us this time. I
believe evei'y man in the pai*ty if he was to say this
morning which of all the places visited he would most
like to revisit would without delay say South Africa.
Tliis is not to be interpreted as in any way belittling our
interest in other places, or suggesting any indifference
to the issues of the Kingdom in other nations where
we have shared a little in Christian work, but there is
an undefinable something about South Africa that stirs
one through and through.

Perhaps this may be in part the sentiment that is
aroused within us because of the fact that it seems to
be a land of the most perplexing problems. I believe
that there are more cross currents to deal with in South
Africa than in any other place of which I have knowl-
edge. First, you start out immediately with the Eng-
lish versus the Dutch situation. From the very begin-
ning until the finish in nearly every meeting we held,
some prayers would be offered in English and some in
Dutch. The public schools are conducted in two lan-
guages. The debates in Parliament are in the two lan-
guages. Practically all of the signs and advertise-
ments on the streets, over the shop windows, on the
railway trains are in two languages. And there is a
sharp, keen competition going on. The leaders of each
group are watching the other with critical eye to see
that by no means shall one language become the ex-
clusive one. This is not to be understood as indicating
any excessive bitterness, though there is some, but for
the most part the two races of white people are mov-
ing together in sympathetic and fraternal relations.
But there is no disguising the fact that the language
question is a buiMiing issue in South Africa, and they

118

are all wondering what the future has in store for them
in this matter.

Perhaps this unusual interest is aroused in a spe-
cial way with Americans because there is so much talk
of the things which have happened " since the war."
It is wonderful to think that only a little over ten years
ago the whole northern half of that country, which is
now being brought together so happily into one union,
was being baptized in war, and that 33,000 brave Brit-
ishers and Dutchmen had given of their blood in de-
fense of what they thought to be right. It is not
strange that some feel restless concerning the slow
progress of reconstruction in some particulars, but to
us familiar with the transition days after our Civil
War it seems nothing short of a miracle that they have
accomplished so much in these few years. The most
striking of it all is that while the British flag waves
from the Zambesi to the Cape of Good Hope, unques-
tioned by all, and I think practically representing a
patriotic British people, yet the country is essentially
governed by Dutchmen. Possibly the one item, apart
from our meetings, that I shall always remember with
greatest pride and a little American conceit, was the
luncheon given to us in the Parliament House by Gen-
eral Botha, the Prime ^Minister of the Union. There
also sat at the table General J. C. Smuts, INIinister of
Finance; Hon. J. W. Sauer, Minister of Native Af-
fairs, and the Hon. F. INIalan, Minister of Education.
These, without any doubt the four most powerful men in
the Government, arc all Dutchmen. It is natural that
some of the old-time residents from the British Isles
should be wondering what the war was all about, and
perhaps expressing themselves as rather dissatisfied
with the general tendency toward the supremacy of
the Dutch, l)ut that is only a passing incident in an

119

almost unequalled program of building a new united
nation from those discordant parts. I am sure,
however, that all of this has a unique interest for Amer-
icans, for we have seen our country pass through ex-
actly this complicated situation to a very happy solu-
tion.

Perhaps our unusual interest, however, may be more
certainly influenced by the tremendous question which
is there involved concerning the complications of the
relations between the v/hite men and the natives. There
is no doubt that South Africa has a real difficulty to
overcome in the co-ordination of the Dutch and the
English, but that is only insignificant as contrasted
with this other question of white versus black. In
South Africa there is a white population of about
1,250,000. In the same territory there is a popula-
tion of 10,000,000 blacks, but now they are no longer
to confine themselves to the issues of South Africa
alone, for the opening of the " Cape to Cairo route "
is going to give them quickly the problem of Africa
as a continent, and this means 200,000,000 blacks as
contrasted with 2,000,000 white people. In Australia
the aborigine has passed away in the presence of civ-
ilization. For some mysterious reason he could not live
under its restraints. The same is true of the red man
of North America. He has faded away in the presence
of the white men's modern houses, railways, steamships
and cities, but this is not to be the record in Africa.
There is abundant evidence now that the black man will
not only live in South Africa, but that he will thrive
and multiply even more rapidly under domesticated life
than in his native kraal. This seems to demand that
a permanent method of living and working together
shall be developed. Of course we felt that we had some
little intelligence from the experiences of our American

120

life with tlie negroes, and jet our deductions could not
bo accepted as final, for with us the proportion stands
at one black man to every ten white men, while in
South Africa there is but one white man to every
twenty black men. This question, which is so acute in
South Africa, is rapidly becoming a world issue. The
white man is going everywhere, and the morning after
he arrives he expects to take charge of everything in
sight, and does. The final answer to the white man's
supremacy is one of the biggest problems of the world
in the next few generations. A few pale faces are rul-
ing India. A few of the same color are in charge of
Egypt. A i{i\\ more are holding the reins in the Ha-
waiian and the Philippine Islands. Another little group
is doing the same thing for South Africa. Approx-
imately 600,000,000 " natives " of these various soils
are taking orders from about 2,500,000 whites, while
a few thousand more generous Anglo-Saxons and Teu-
tons sit on the periphery of China with its 400,000,000,
kindly " advising " them, and 40,000,000 Japanese are
wondering when their tuni will come. What the last
chapter is to be may make the wisest men pause. Will
the white race finally prevail and the darker ones die
out entirely.'* Will the races intermingle until a common
new race emerges? Will the darker skins, so much
greater in numerical power, awake some day and take
charge of the whole earth, and reverse the order by
making the white man get up and build the early fires
for a few years.? Will there arise a prophet big enough
to call a World Conference to establish universal
methods of segregation.'' Will the races gradually
learn how to dwell together in equity.'' These are some
of the questions which cannot be permanently evaded,
but are rapidly to demand answer. Just now it is
White's move, and his measure is to be taken in what

121

he does. It is very easy for the idealist to stand off at
long range and give positive statements concerning the
solution of these questions, but it is a tremendous and
almost overwhelming problem.

Perhaps our unique interest in South Africa may
be accounted for partly by the sharp contest going on
throughout all of that country as to whether it shall be
a nation controlled and governed practically for the ex-
tension of their three greatest industries — gold, dia-
monds and ostrich feathers — or whether there shall be
taken into account the greater possibility of the agri-
cultural realm. Here, again, we found two strong cur-
rents, the one insisting that it was the purpose and plan
of the Creator that the country should be agricultural
and pastoral, the other saying that it was essentially a
country of the special interests named. It is to be ex-
pected that the special privileges will claim a good deal,
for at present they are on top. Johannesburg is turn-
ing out $155,000,000 worth of gold every year, and the
best engineers say that it will take at least a hundred
years more to mine what is now known to exist, and that
the undiscovered fields present a bewildering possibility
in gold. In the diamond mines they are producing
$30,000,000 worth annually, and the only question with
them is that of the market. In the realm of feathers.
South Africa boasts of about 7,000,000 ostriches,
every one of them of plume-producing age, good for ap-
proximately $50 per head annually, and the average age
of the birds is twenty-five years. A little mathematics
reveals the fact that the ostrich is a " clever bird." It
is no wonder therefore that these three interests feel
pretty " uppish " concerning their prestige in South
Africa. Of course we were constantly reminded of the
fact that all of these are in operation because the luxuri-
ous American is bound to have his fastidious nature sat-

122

Ilfiuhnan," Zulu, Kraal

isfied. Scveiity-fivo per cent of all the diamonds go to
America, also ninety per cent of all the best feathers
and considerably more than half the gold. If the
women of the I'^nited States should have a spell of
twenty years of good hard horse sense, at least the
feather and the diamond business would be bankrupt.
These big nianij)ulators are just sitting down there in
South Africa pouring out diamonds and feathers and
cooing over the crazy American women. Notwith-
standing all of this, however. South Africa's greatest
future is in agriculture, and everywhere I went I was
amazed to see the marvelous dcvclopmnt. Cattle, sheep,
maize, mealies and wheat will be telling their story
after the others will have been forgotten.

Perhaps we may find a partial key to our great inter-
est in South Africa in its wonderfully unique scenery,
its marvelous climate and its high sunny skies. I do
not believe that there is any other place where it seems
as though the sky were so high and the horizon so wide
as out upon that great rand of Johannesburg. It is
the only place in the world where it did not seem to me
as though the sky came down to the earth at all. It
just seems as though there is no end to it. Then there
are the Victoria Falls, the most wonderful on earth.
The great stretches of veldt, dotted here and there by
the Kaffir kraals, somehow lay hold upon me in a way
that I cannot explain. Every time I saw one of them
I wanted to go to it. I never had a better time than
when I could get away for a while and drove out among
them.

Capetown, with its wonderful Table Mountain, the
Twelve Apostles, and the Lion's Head, towering up over
it in majestic grandeur; Durban, with its bathing
beach, esplanade, botanical gardens and wonderful
clubs; Pretoria the beautiful, nestling in among the

123

liills like a painted picture, with its massive Government
building, large enough to put our Capitol inside and
never know it was there — all of these form one constant
round of interest.

Of all the sea voyages I have known, the most beau-
tiful is from the Philippine Islands to Australia, but
next comes the one to South Africa. I marvel that the
globe trotters have not fallen into the South African
habit more than they have. There is beauty enough in
South Africa to make it fascinating to a high degree.

But I think when we have given due recognition to
all of these items, the one thing that to me at least
commands the deepest love, greatest admiration and
fondest hope is the colossal moral and religious problem.
Here upon this soil I believe there is to be fought out
the last great issue of Christianizing the world. We
witnessed some distressing and almost bewildering
scenes and problems in Japan. I can never forget
them. We only touched the fringe of China, but we
were there long enough to feel its throb and know
something of its meaning. I have not forgotten India,
with its hungry three hundred millions of people, but
in every one of these there is a sense in which all the
time you see education, culture and some advanced civ-
ilization. In South Africa you are immediately facing
the unfathomed depths of heathendom. We were privi-
leged to spend one day at Amanzimtoti. There we
saw four hundred students in that lovely school being
taught not only the truths of Christianity, but being
taught also to do everything that is helpful for life.
Then you could go out five miles and find people so
wild and heathen that you would think they had never
seen a white man or heard of a book or knew that there
was such a thing as the Church in all the world.

I had the privilege of spending two days at Love-
124

H=

V^

(laic, which is the great high place of missionary en-
deavor under the United Free Church of Scotland.
Here they have over a thousand students, and I saw
them teaching those boys and girls everything from
gardening, horticulture, carpentering, blacksniithing,
plumbing, making shoes and harness and wagons clear
up to the highest mathematics and literature. Lovedale
was founded by the great missionary James Stewart in
1839, and is now presided over by the Rev. James
Henderson. From this great center, where this wonder-
ful work has been going on for all of these years, pro-
ducing the most splendid type of Christian young men
and women, I drove out five miles and was in the center
of a heathendom wild enough, vicious enough and sad
enough' to break your heart. I have never seen any
place in the world where heathendom and Christianity
are brought into such close contrast.

I cannot begin to tell you all the missions I visited,
but I will add that I was proud of our American repre-
sentatives, among whom some of the most powerful are
Bunker, McCord and Foss, of Durban ; LcRoy, of
Amanzintoti ; Taylor, of Maritzburg, and Bridgman,
of the Transvaal. This missionar}'^ situation is itself
enough to make South Africa a country of commanding
interest to anyone who believes that the whole world
ought to have the gospel of Jesus Christ. But this
is not the only factor of intense interest in the religious
condition of South Africa. The whole church question
is passing through a transition. The most remarkable
thing ill it is the newer spirit looking toward federa-
tion. In our own work I was much impressed with two
wings of the Church with which I did not have much
intimate relation when I was there before, but they were
conspicuous by their co-operation. I refer to the
Dutch Reformed Church and the Church of England.

125

From the time we touched at Durban until the final
meeting in Capetown, which was held in the new Cathe-
dral, and presided over by the Venerable Dean C. W.
Barnett-Clarke, we had the heartiest support not only
from the laity and the rectors of the Church of Eng-
land, but from the Archbishop, the Bishops and the
Archdeacons who all co-operated with us with a cordial-
ity that can never be forgotten, and this same thing
was true of the Dutch Reformed Church. One of the
outstanding results in South Africa, I am sure, is going
to be an enlarged federated activity that will bring to-
gether all branches of the Church.

Then, too, in this religious problem, we faced anew
the question of the Young Men's Christian Association
and its work. I heard a good deal about what is being
spoken of as the " American invasion " and its results.
For the last few years there has been a rather insistent
American emphasis there in the Association work. This
was occasioned by the visit of Dr. Mott some years ago
organizing the Student Movement. He left INIr. Owen
Bull, a strong Traveling Secretary, who is still there
doing grand work among the schools, colleges and
universities. Then, following my first visit, we sent out
six or seven men. Of these there still remain in the
country Frank Howe, General Secretary at East Lon-
don, and E. D. Ranck, General Secretary at Johannes-
burg, both doing magnificent work. The most marked
of the men who have been in their secretarial ranks is
our own International Secretary of the Army and Navy
Department, Mr. John S. Tichenor. Everywhere we
went I found he had left a fine impression. The only
regret was that he did not remain as the national leader,
and good words are said of the other men who have re-
turned. They all did good work, but could have multi-
plied their influence by longer service. We have been

126

llfisiit/i ;m(l Zulu iiit('r])r('ters l)()tli used at one time

most liappy in this campaign in assisting in the raising
of funds necessary to carry on a national work, and
our Harry X. Ilohiies, who has been the advance guard
and Orgjinizing Secretary of the Men and Religion
World Tour, bade us good-bye at Capetown, and re-
mains there to conserve the work of the Men and Re-
ligion Campaign, and to take the national secretary-
ship of the Young Men's Christian Associations of
South Africa.

The most significant advance of the past five years
has been in Johannesburg, where they have built a fine
building and are pushing forward a great work. I
am persuaded, however, that the deepest Interest is
in the men we met and their brave efforts for the
Kingdom of God. Stronger and grander than build-
ings is the coming into the life of the Associations
of some very strong new blood among laymen. I could
mention many if time would permit, but the most
marked is Mr. H. Wallace Soutter, President of the
Chamber of Commerce in Johannesburg, and also
Chairman of the National Council of the Young Men's
Christian Associations for the Union. He is simply
marvelous in his leadership in that work. He has been
going from city to city as a paid Secretary would go
and dealing with them with scientific ability upon their
local problems. I have said of him several times that
I have thought of him as a sort of combined James
G. Cannon and Alfred E. Marling.

I do not dare to weary you with too much detail,
hut we are simply filled with enthusiasm about our
South African Camf)aign. So far as the national vis-
its are concerned. South Africa stands first in attend-
ance and lunnbcr of meetings, although Melbourne,
.\ustralia, outstripped any other one city. Taking our
whole tour thus far, we liave held 487 meetings and

127

conferences, with a total attendance of 158,281 men
and boys, and by the time we reach New York we will
have traveled 4'2,308 miles. I have been rather inter-
ested to know that notwithstanding our long time be-
tween points in travel, I will have personally addressed
more men in this year than in any year in my life.
I have been going at about 100,000 or a little more
each year. This year will reach far beyond that.

I never felt less in my life like boasting of things
done than I do to-day, but I am tremendously humble
in the presence of the testimonies we have heard con-
cerning the influence of our visit in South Africa. A
great company of men followed us down to the ship,
and I can say truthfully that never in all my life have
I listened to such words of commendation as I heard
there the last day as we were preparing to leave. God
has seen fit to use us and we are praying for grace
enough to give Him the praise.

Every hour now reduces the distance between us and
home, and we are finding it difficult to be patient.

Very, very best love,

Fred. B. Smith.

128

X

Nearinej London en route from Capetown, South
Africa, July 4, 1913.

Dear Mr. Cannon : This is the glorious 4th of
July, and we are celebrating on the sea, although
there is rather a sombre note in the proceedings for
me at least. I am not sure whether I ought to weep
or sing, shout or wail. I am compelled to relate an
unlooked-for incident in our world tour. Wc have
just held one " conference " w'hich was not on the
schedule. This unexpected one promises to do more
to make me famous than any one of the whole cam-
paign. In long sea voyages one of the things which
help to keep up the spirits of the passengers is the
breaks in the vo^^age by " port of entry calls." From
Capetown to Southampton the mail steamers of the
Union Castle Steamship Company have one such call
at Funchal on the coast of the Madeira Islands, a
Portuguese possession. We looked forward to that
day for a week.

Well, it at last arrived. It is now over and we are
sailing on, a wiser company, and life can never be
the same again. I at least am a changed man. You
may take my picture out of the Chamber of Com-
merce, where it now hangs, and put it into the Hall of
Fame. I am not sure in just which gallery it ought
to appear, but it certainly should go there somewhere.
I have been an inmate of a Portuguese prison, the
subject of a conspiracy, the hero of a dramatic inves-
tigation, the central figure of a romantic escape.

My name may go down in the galaxy with Napo-

129

Icon Konaparte upon St. Helena, or Captain Drey-
fus upon Devil Island, the difference being that, poor
as their accommodations were, they had some provi-
sion. I had neither food, water nor a bed. Had the
issues of my incarceration been a little different I
might be listed with John Bunyan or the Apostle Paul,
but even their " light afflictions " can hardly match
my troubles. Perhaps when you have gotten the full
setting you may be led to reserve a space for my por-
trait in the " Carrie Nation " ward or with the Lon-
don Suffragettes. Some may be confused in the final
decision between Darius Green, Cook the Explorer,
Jack Johnson or myself. However, that is a detail —
the fact is, I have been made famous in one single day.
Let me tell you about it.

The incident really begins the night before we
reached Madeira. We had the regulation " concert "
and " presentation of prizes " for deck sports. Of
the latter, I may modestly suggest that I received
two prizes for having won the two most difficult ath-
letic events. In the concert a comic theatrical per-
former sang a song which went as follows :

" SETTING THE VILLAGE ON FIRE "

In the village they always thought I was so quiet,

But lately they've had a big sell.
With my daredevil ways I've been causing a riot.

Since I came out of my shell.
It's the wild blood I've got in my veins I suppose.
Why, to-day I've been out and bought this suit of
clothes.
^ Chorus

I'm setting the village on fire,
I'm setting the village on fire,
130

Getting tlic family name into disgrace,

Into disgrace, through going the pace.
To-day I spent threepence on wine,

And then had a hike out on hire.
And I jumped off a car before it had stopped.

Oh, I'm setting the village on fire.
I'm one of the boys, I'm one of the nibs,

I'm a jolly good fellow!
I'm one of the lads, I'm one of the nuts,

Setting the village on fire.

I saw it was making a weird impression upon some
of the less serious of the men, and fearing there might
be some danger that they would try to demonstrate
the song at Funchal the next day, I decided that I
ought to accompany them on shore to restrain any
superabundance of enthusiasm.

We went to the hotel for breakfast, and all went
well. Our conduct was above possible reproach. Then
we started down into the old city, riding in bullock
sleds dragged over cobble-stone streets at the speed
of 2| nautical miles per hour (Special emphasis
should be given to " nautical.") The others of the
party insisted upon singing the song they had heard
the night .before: "We Are Setting the Village on
Fire." It seemed an innocent amusement, so I did not
forbid them, and thus we rode triumphantly through
the " esplanade."

Down in the heart of the great " metropolis " we
came to a kind of fort or garrison, where a Portu-
guese sentry stood on guard. He looked like the last
page of the explorer Cook's diary — sort of incom-
plete. The " boys " wanted his 'photo, and to make
a striking illustration of the new world vs. the old,
or of the Twentieth Century vs. the Sixteenth, or of

. 131

a roast beef diet vs. cigarettes and wine, they over-
persuaded me to go up to him and " present arms "
with my cane, which I did — thoroughly innocent, and in
a perfectly kind and gentlemanly manner, as you know I
would do.

The change was something awful! I was arrested,
and in five minutes found myself before the Commis-
sioner of Police. Then the vexed question arose as to
what I was charged with. One of the Court proposed
it should be for " exceeding the speed limit " in the
bullock sled. After deliberation, that was dismissed.
Another proposed that I be charged with blocking the
streets and delaying traffic. Some of the main thor-
oughfares are 2 feet 8 inches in width, and I trem-
bled for the result of a trial for this offense, for I still
weigh 235 pounds, and if I went through any street
I was of necessity guilty on this indictment. Fear-
ing too much notoriety, however, this also was with-
drawn. Several other possibilities were proposed, but
finally it was decided that I was to be tried for " in-
sulting the Portuguese Army." As soon as I heard this
I knew I was safe, for no matter what the evidence
was, I would be exonerated. It was an impossible
charge. During the excitement some of my friends
hastened back to the ship to request Captain Becher to
hold the ship till I could " get out," which he con-
sented to do if my liberty could be secured within an
hour or two.

Others went for the American Consul, Mr. John
Correia, who arrived promptly and took charge of my
case. It was soon discovered that mine was no ordi-
nary affair for the common police court. I had to
deal with the Presidential Chair of Portugal. Of
course as soon as they got me they knew they had
a prize, and wanted to give me every possible dis-

132

Interviewing a Portuguese sentry

tinction, ami so passed my case up to the liighcst pos-
sible authority. I ought also to say that to strengthen
the dignity of the case one of my friends, a Britisher,
went for the Britisli Consul, who had heart disease,
and could only come as he was able to find shaded walks
to pass through, and therefore did not arrive in time
to share in the festivities.

Well, after long debates about jurisprudence, jur-
isdiction, local venue, misdemeanors, felonies, high
crimes and treasons, by the faithful good offices of
the American Consul I was declared a free man. IVIind
you, not a guilty culprit punished and set free- — not
that. They officially gave me back my character,
which had been temporarily taken away from me, and
I walked out free! My dear Mr.- Cannon, you Wall
Street men can sympathize with my feelings. You
know what it is to be in doubt about your standing,
and then by a small margin to get your freedom.
Well, that's how I felt. I went back to the ship, and
I must say that there were some rather sarcastic things
said by some about the leader of the Men and Re-
ligious Movement getting into jail at the finish. I con-
soled myself, however, by answering that Peter, Paul,
John and James had similarly suffered. Others were
unkind enough to remind me that I had been the ship's
preacher on the Sunday night before, and had highly
conunended good conduct as the best policy, but I
only replied to these unnecessary comments that a man
to be a good preacher needs to have sympathy with
the unfortunate, and that I was getting valuable ex-
perience.

Thus the incident closed, but there is a solemn les-
son in it which I want to pass on to you, for I feel
you need its warning, and through you have it passed

133

on to many other men who are in peril at the same
point.

Really, what think you is the secret of this fall?
You and all my other friends will refuse to believe
that I was deliberately bad. My record dispels such
a thought. I was reared by a good father and mother.
I went to Sunday-school regularly, and learned the
golden text. I joined the Church and the Young
Men's Christian Association early in life. I sang in
the choir (once). I have an Irish wife with whom
I have lived twenty-seven years. No stronger testi-
monial of my character can be asked for than that.
I have been a Secretary of the International Commit-
tee of tlie Young Men's Christian Association for
years, and in the Religious Work Department of which
3^ou are Chairman. It is impossible to give more
weighty evidence of strong moral qualities than this.
The whole tale is told by the old, old story, " bad com-
pany " — that's it. I fell in with the wa-ong crowd,
and they were my undoing. They led me astray.

Let me give you the full setting: In the party
there was a Mr. William Campbell, a strict Scotch
Presbyterian elder, a Director of the Young Men's
Christian Association of Johannesburg, and a member
of the National Council of the Young Men's Chris-
tian Associations of South Africa. He was without
doubt the worst influence of the whole lot, for we ex-
pected better of him. There was a Mr. William Cuth-
bert, an Irish Presbyterian elder, one of the old fa-
mous Covenanters, who sing only Psalms. That is the
reason he insisted upon singing " We Are Setting the
Village on Fire." There was a young man, a strict
Quaker, from Brooklyn, by the name of F. C. Whitney.
He is one of the kind who thinks it wrong to laugh.
There was a very pious Wesleyan, an Englishman,

134

by tlie name of Lynn lienwood. He is an ardent fol-
lower of John Wesley. Then there was our own C. M.
Keeler of the quartet, the son of a Methodist min-
ister and a zealous advocate of all missionary under-
takings. Also Paul J. Gilbert, the tenor singer and
theologian, the watchdog of personal conduct, and P.
Harlow Metcalf, the Oberlin graduate of the strictest
sect. Also James E. Lathrop, the private secretary of
a religious worker. He is soon to marry a minister's
daughter. Then, to crown it all, there was Mr. Alex-
ander Hyde from Wichita, Kan., the " prohibition "
State. He is known as the stickler for law and order.
He i)oasts of never having been arrested, although he
also tells of unusual intimacy with the Ciiief of Police of
his home town. Raymond Robins was not at the imme-
diate scene, having remained behind on the ship, but
nevertheless he was a factor in the general atmosphere in
which I was moving. He has been the most violent
participant in the Progressive Reform party, advo-
cate of law enforcement, but has himself been arrested
so many times that he has given up the count. Ed-
w^ard W. Peck also stayed behind. I think he antici-
pated some kind of trouble, financial or otherwise. He,
too, shares in the unsavory influence which dominated
me. He is a typical Puritan. In his boyhood, when
a teacher once displeased him, he made up a gang of
hoodlums who took the poor chap out into tiie corn-
field and tarred and feathered him. Therefore, when
this incident is fully known, charge it to bad com-
pany. When you look over the list of persons with
whom I was associated, tlie wonder is not at what ac-
tually happened, but that it was not worse.

Anyway, we got back to the ship and are sailing
on. As a fitting finish to the day in sport, which we
begun by singing " We Are Setting the Village on Fire,"

135

the crowd came to my room late that night and sang-
to the tune " In the Sweet Fields of Eden " the following-
which Alexander Hyde had written :

Chorus

Dare am res' fo' de unwary,
When yo' visit old Madery,
If yo' monkey wid de sentry,
Dare am arres' fo' yo' !

Don yo' go asho' wid Fred. B.,
If yo' really 'spects to sightsee,
Fo' he's gwine to 'suit de Army,
And dare'll be arres' for yo' !

Does yo' really think yo' otter.
Make yo'self out as a Mater,
De servin' Star and Gater
Caus' dey 'rested yo' !

Dey let yo' go at roll call,
And yo' make us b'l've dat dat's all,
But dere's anudder tale in Funchal
'Bout dat arres' of yo' !

Now we's gwine to take yo' word, sir.
But it ain't just wat we hurd, sir,
As to 'zakly wat occur'd, sir.
When dey 'rested 3^0' !

Now a-let dis be a warnin',
'Gainst dis regulation scornin'.
Or some day we'll be in moumin',
Caus' dey 'rested yo' !
136

I liavc known for weeks that there would be great
joy in getting back to the " hind of the free," but it
has a new significance now.

Sincerely appreciating my liberty to write you, I am,
Very cordially yours,

Fred. B. Smith,
An American Subject.

137

XI

Four Days on the Continent of Europe and the World's
Sunday-school Convention. London, England,
July 12, 1913.

Dear Mr. Cannon: Little by little we are cutting
down both the space and time which yet separate us
from the happy consummation of the campaign.

A world tour would hardly be complete without in-
cluding historic Continental Europe. I therefore set
aside four days that I might give this part of the uni-
verse unhurried attention. In the conscious remem-
brance of the criticism passed upon " globe trotters,"
and especially those from America, that they go too
hurriedly over the route, and do not, therefore, have
time to really catch the full sentiment of the historic
spots, I decided to avoid this criticism and take time
enough for an exhaustive study of this portion of the
world, and set aside four full days to that part of Eu-
rope which lies to the north and east of the English
Channel. Peculiar attention was given to Germany,
France, Switzerland, Holland and Belgium. I am sure
you will appreciate what a liberal education this was,
for it involved an exhaustive study and understanding
of the life and work of such statesmen as Bismarck,
Napoleon, Louis the XlVth and Leopold. I found that
a complete understanding of these made it necessary
also to include Cromwell and Wellington in my inves-
tigation. It also involved a new study of Church his-
tory, with special attention to Martin Luther, Zwingli,
John Calvin, John Huss and John Knox.

138

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I ain sure some Americans will feel that there was a
touch of extravagance in f^iving so nmcli time to this.
I met one who was trying to cover it i\\\ in one after-
noon. He admitted, however, that he was a i)it hur-
ried, but thought he would succeed. Hut for me, I
am glad I took ample time, and can henceforth feel that
sense of confidence which rests in knowiiicr all phases
of a sui)ject.

Seriously, my main oljjective was the World's Sun-
day-school Convention at Zurich, Switzerland, in the
foothills of the Alps. Certainly no one event can stand
out more deliohtfully than the privilege of seeing and
sharing in this great world gathering. I am fully con-
vinced that it will mark a mighty advance in Sunday-
school work everywhere. It was worth going a long
way for, and was great any way you approach it.

It was great in the first place because of the city
in which it was held. Zurich is the ideal spot for a
World Sunday-school gathering. Here, just a night's
ride from Rome, Protestantism had its birth, and to-
day stands, after more than four hundred years of
testing, ready to be judged by the law — " By their
fruits ye shall know them." Luther, Zwingli and Cal-
vin did not labor, pray and suffer for naught. Zuricli
in every way is a worthy illustration of the power of
religious liberty. It has beautiful churches filled with
people. IJut I know cities where there are beautiful
dnu'ches filled with people, while the mass of the folks
outside are in filth, dirt, s(]ualor, vice and unspeakable
destitution. Not so in Zurich. The city is clean, well
built, well governed and prosperous. The people are
})rosperous, happy, and, as a rule, morally good. If
what any given doctrine produces in the lives of pco-
})Ie is an index of its worth, those founders of the
Zurich faith had the right thing.

139

The Convention was great In the second place be-
cause of the world optimistic view of Bible Study
which it afforded. It was no place for a pessimist.
The air was charged with hope. It would have been
great fun to have taken one of the real downright
muck-scraping journalists, who insist that everything
is going bad — religion dying out, the Church failing,
and most men going to the dogs — into that Conven-
tion, and held him under that fire for twenty-four
hours. He would have been either dead or converted.

There were delegates there from at least 46 differ-
ent nations. They reported an enrollment of 28,000,-
000 students. They brought the message that the
Bible, the prophesied " obsolete " book, is being sold
at the rate of 11,000,000 copies per year in 540 dif-
ferent languages. The biggest sale of Scripture in
the history of Christianity, according to the two great-
est Bible Societies, was in 1912. The announcement
was made that the " Adult Department " alone was in-
creasing in enrollment at the rate of 2,000 per week.
The Convention revealed the fact that the Bible is still
the most popular book in the world.

It was a great Convention, in the third place, be-
cause of the tremendous emphasis upon specialized work
for men and boys. There have been those among the
leaders of the Sunday-school work who have contended
for a co-educational basis. For the first time in the
history of the World's Convention topics dealing with
men and boys only were introduced. Our own W. C.
Pearce, W. A. Brown and John L. Alexander were
pleaders for this topic. In all the world tour I have
not met greater enthusiasm than when I spoke there
urging the Sunday-school to make room for a men's
and boys' special organization to carry out the ]Men
and Religion })rogram. The great F. B. Meyer, in his

140

PVedk. B. -MtytT, London, at Zuricli, watcliing Sinuliiy-school
Convrntion

openinf^ address, pleaded for Social Service as a part
of tiie Christian program, and in a most delightful
personal conversation with me said we ought to be urg-
ing our Christian men to get into politics and public
affairs. Our beloved Floyd Tomkins, who preached
the Convention sermon, in the same manner pleaded
earnestly with tiie men of the Sunday-school to par-
ticipate in the social awakening of modern times. I
came away feeling that the most marked note of the
whole session was the new accent upon masculine work.
The Convention was great, in the fourth place, be-
cause of the American enthusiasm. If I may be per-
mitted modestly to say it, the " North American "
badges seemed to outnumber any other by two to one.
We have a good many things to make us humble, and
sometimes to make us ashamed, in contact with some
types of Americans who travel abroad and swagger
and swear, but North American stock was above par
at Zurich. I have not the full report of the Creden-
tial Committee, but, notwithstanding the distance and
cost of travel, I am persuaded that more than lialf the
delegates were from North America. The Treasurer
reported that he had issued 47 " Life Memberships "
during the past three years. A life member is one
who subscribes $1,000 or over in any given year. Of
the 47, I was interested to observe that 39 of them
came from our side of the sea. Then, too, our Amer-
ican side bulks big because the General Secretaryship
of the World's Sunday-school Association is held joint-
ly by Rev. Carey Bonner, of England, and the big-
Kouled, generous-hearted ^Marion Lawrance, of Chi-
cago. He will offset the unwholesome influence of a
hundred cheap American buccaneers who go brawling
around Europe. The Nortli American was a very con-
spicuous part of the whole Convention.

141

For these and many other reasons, it was a mighty
Convention, and one that will advance the Kingdom
of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth. There were
many most interesting features, the variegated colors
of the delegates, the peculiar dress — all sorts, kinds
and descriptions were there. The language question,
however, was most vital. All the reports and addresses
were submitted in three languages — French, German
and English. But when you got down in the lobby of
the great hall there seemed to be a hundred going on
at the same time. It reminded me of the remark of
the old stewardess on the ship coming up from South
Africa, who came up to me after she learned who I
was, and congratulated me upon the work I was en-
gaged in, and then said : " Do you know about the Con-
gregationals .'' I joined them last winter out at Wim-
bledon. But I am not sure whether I like it or not.
It seems to me the preacher out there at the Congre-
gational don't know where he is going. He seems
to know a lot of things he don't know, but I never
}ieard him tell about any he does know for sure."
Then, with a good amount of English assurance, she
said: "I think our preacher is just building the tower
of Babylon." Well, Zurich seemed sometimes like the
first morning after that famous tower went over.

This is sure — the Sunday-school is a great institu-
tion. It has been a great power, is now, and is yet
to be a greater one. I did my first Christian work
in a little country Sunday-school out in Dakota, and I
have never been accused of indifference to it, but I be-
lieve in it now more than ever before.

Just closing the long appeal for a bigger, better
work for men and boys all the way around the world,
I thank God for having given me this view of the world-

142

wide Sunday-school awakening. It gives great hope
for the future.

Once more I bid you good-bye, although I hope to
l)e under '* Old Glorv " myself when you are reading
this. ■ .

Yours as always and everywhere,

Fred. B. Smith.

143

XII

England and Homeward Bound, July 17, 1913.

My dear Mr. Cannon: The writing of reports and
home letters, cabling, watching for " the mail," and
counting days, are about over. If nothing unforeseen
happens, in twenty-four hours more I will be standing
on the old sod and under the grandest flag that ever
waved.

Our return to the British Isles, coming in midsum-
mer, made it impossible to do very much in the way of
constructive Men and Religion work. As in New York,
everybody seems to be away from London on a vacation
during July and August. We were there long enough,
however, to feel a little of the throb of the dominant re-
ligious note, and to know that the same powerful tides
are running there which we have found in other nations.
We found the pulpit and the religious press discussing
the question of how to interest and hold men and boys
in the Church.

On Sunday, July 6th, I had the privilege of speak-
ing in the famous Wliitfield Tabernacle, where the fight-
ing parson, theologian, parliamentarian and statesman.
Rev. Silvester Home, M.P., is pastor. Raymond Rob-
ins also spoke in the same church in the afternoon at
the wonderful men's gathering, which has been running
for nearly ten years, always with an immense audience.
Silvester Home is the embodiment of the essential Men
and Religion message, and, of course, gave us a grand
reception. At night, I spoke at the old Christ Church,
made world-wide in influence by the ministry of Rev.

144

Frederick B. Mcjer, and where our own Kev. Len
Broughton is now pastor. We had worked witli him in
Atlanta, and he knew the whole message and result. No
argument was needed to convince liim of the value of
the Men and Religion campaign. He had tasted it be-
fore and gave us a never-to-be-forgotten greeting of
cordiality to his great church and people. Indeed, he
is a wiiole Men and Religion Movement in himself. We
found him doing in Christ Church the same splendid
work of organization which he carried out with such
marked skill in Atlanta. With a good deal of certainty
he said that his church was going to have a forward
movement in men's work, no matter what the rest of
England might do.

In the afternoon of the same Sunday, I had the joy
of speaking to a magnificent audience in the central
Young Men's Christian Association building, where our
mighty friend of many years, John James Virgo, bet-
ter known as " Jack," presides as General Secretary. I
do not think the Association anywhere can boast of
much better work than is now being carried out here.
July is not the best month to see it in action, but the
whole comment about it is one of cordial approval.
There is a good educational work, a splendid physical
department, great social activities. They have one
of the best billiard rooms in any Young Men's Chris-
tian Association building in the world. There were
those who prophesied that the 'buses would stop run-
ning if ever the London Association put in billiards.
But they are there and still the world moves right on.
I do not believe that there is another such meeting in
the entire Brotherhood as the " Social Tea " following
the Sunday afternoon men's meeting. Two hundred
young men sat down at the tables the Sunday we Avere
there, and at the roll call of nations from which

145

they came it seemed as though the ends of the earth
responded. The organization may well be proud of the
work now being carried on by the original Association.

I liad frequent conferences at the national headquar-
ters, No. 13 Russell Square. Here, too, they are mak-
ing fine progress, and are adding some very strong men
to the staff. The central topic here is the anticipated
special united forward moA^ement in which Mr. Basil
Hewer, the Secretary for Religious Work of the Na-
tional Council, is to lead. It is practically the Men and
Religion Movement, but they have decided to call it the
" Christian Manhood Campaign."

In all of these meetings and interviews the Forward
INIovement in men's work was the theme. There are
unique difficulties in such an effort in the British Isles,
but I venture the prophecy that if it is carried out
earnestly, it will make the most profound impression
there of any place in the whole world. Their religious
conditions are just ripe for it, and when the Britisher
sees the real significance of this type of masculine Chris-
tian emphasis, he will, as usual, do it well.

At the close of these months, and almost within sight
of the dear old United States, I am going over the ex-
periences and trying to summarize my impressions. It
is not an easy task, for we have been through so many,
many varied scenes. Some, however, stand out above
all the others :

The marvel of the perfection of ocean travel is not
the least. Although it may not have any immediate
bearing upon our work, it is nevertheless one of the
very impressive facts. We have put in over eighty
days on the sea, traveling upon thirteen different ships
m all kinds of seas and climates and among all kinds
of people. There has been not one jar or accident all
the way. The modern skipper sails through wind, raiii,

146

snow and fog up to the exact spot at the exact hour.
We have not been an hour late anywhere. Ocean trans-
portation is more rehable, I beheve, than are the rail-
ways upon land. We are closing this part of our wan-
derings upon the Mauretania, the queen of all the ships
afloat. She is just one great city. We get up in the
morning, read the daily paper, answer correspondence,
send a few telegrams and then have luncheon. In the
afternoon the ladies don their walking or street gowns,
the gents their neatest business suits and all promenade.
Fifth Avenue is not finer than " B" deck of the Maure-
tania on a fine afternoon. At night, dinner at about
eight, music in the drawing-room and the day is over.
If anyone on this voyage had not looked out, they
would not have known we were at sea at all. All the
way from Liverpool, not a motion more than one would
get on the Hudson River. Wouldn't Lief Erickson,
Christopher Columbus and Sir Walter Raleigh like to
be Captains now?

The world-wide influence of the Men and Religion
Movement has amazed me. I do not say this merely
as related to the nations and cities we have visited, but
in a large sense based upon the messages coming from
so many other quarters of the world. Hawaii, Japan,
China, the Philippine Islands, Australia, South Africa
and England are deeply stirred, but I am even more
impressed by the impression made in other places. I
have already written of how deeply the World's Sun-
day-school Convention was aroused over the need of
this type of work. I have never in my life had a more
pressing invitation than one which comes from Hol-
land for a campaign of this kind. I was surrounded
at Zurich by the delegation from Sweden, determined
that I should go straight to Sw'eden with them to launch
a campaign. The last hour in London brought a stir-

147

ring appeal from Belfast for a series of such confer-
ences and meetings. I do not write this in a sense of
conceit, but I hope more in humility than otherwise, for
I believe God Himself has been guiding these develop-
ments, and this appeal is being made in just the exact
period when He ordained it should be. If I were back
in that " state room " of the Hotel Manhattan, May
18, 1911, and knew in advance all the anxious days
and nights, all the hard work and all the heart aches
that would be involved in carrying out the program,
I would go straight forward. It has been used of God
permanently to change some things in organized Chris-
tianity. I believe in " Movements " more than ever. I
am grateful to God that Moody led out in that great
evangelistic movement. I am glad for the Laymen's
Missionary Movement. I am thankful for the Men
and Religion Forward Movement. I am rejoiced to
hear of the United Missionary Movement. I am happy
in the anticipation of the Movements yet to be bom.
Anything but a calm!

The loyalty, love and devotion of the members of the
team uill live forever with me as one of the outstand-
ing impressions. I would not be true to myself in this
last letter to you if I failed to speak of my associates
in these hard months of work. There have been breaks
in travel, but the pressure has been indescribable at
times. I am built for a good deal of hardship, and am
always in danger of going too fast. You may know
that it has been pretty earnest when I sum up the
whole tour by telling you that we have held 476 differ-
ent meetings and conferences, have addressed 147,181
men and boys in eight different Nations, and have trav-
eled 43,308 miles. During it all, every man in the
party has been true, and ready to do his utmost. At
the close, instead of being ready to separate, I believe

148

they would rather be together than with any other sim-
ilar group of men on earth. I cannot go over them one
by one, but I do want to testify to tlieir tremendous
work throughout the whole year.

The necessity of evangelizing otir own North America
is upon my heart more than anything else to-day. Of all
impressions, this is the most dominant one. I am thpr-
oughly convinced that we of Canada and the United
States have an obligation to the religious world every-
where. I am persuaded that this does not apply simply
to our general Foreign Missionary responsibility, but
has an equal bearing upon the welfare and progress of
the Kingdom of God in lands called Christian and non-
Christian, and I think we would be untrue to the vision
which has been vouchsafed if we did not from time to
time make our contribution to the extension and devel-
opment of the Christian forces throughout the world.
Our commerce is going everywhere. I have not foimd
a place in all our wanderings where I did not see Ameri-
can farm machinery, kerosene oil, soaps, perfumery,
pickles, razors, cough-drops, boots, shoes, sewing ma-
chines, automobiles, mcntholatum, bicycles, wind-mills,
wagons, chewing-gum, flour, oatmeal, canned fruits and
meats. By the law of honorable return, any nation which
is drawing so much, both in people and financial gain
from the remotest corners of the earth, ought to expect
to share in the great moral battles of the world. Of
this principle I am firmly convinced. But I am even
more convinced of the fact that notwithstanding these
distant responsibilities, our primary, fundamental and
immediate necessity is to see that the work of moral
preserv^ation. Christian energizing and evangelizing are
carried out in our own North America. This is forced
home upon me for so many reasons that I would not
dare attempt to write you all of them.

149

I am sure it is true because we are here working out
■ the illustration, it seems to me, of the final method in
religious work which must be applied to all people
everywhere. I have been repeatedly made to tremble
as I have realized how continuously the American
method in religious work is finding its way into all the
nations of the world. It has been rather amusing, in
some places, to hear them speak of the danger of the
American methods, and not infrequently even argue
against them, and then turn quietly around and adopt
them. We are bearing a grave responsibility in that
from the standpoint of the extension of the Kingdom
of Jesus Christ, leaders of every nation of which I
have knowledge are anxiously awaiting our develop-
ments.

I am sure that there is also a great responsibility to
evangelize our own country, because notwithstanding
all the arguments concerning the needier places of the
world, we have to bow our heads in humility as we face
a good many bad situations in our own home land. I
do not think I found any kind of sin anywhere but that
in some form it exists in New York, Chicago, Toronto,
Montreal, San Francisco and all the rest. I remember
hearing an old theological professor in a Young Men's
Christian Association Convention some years ago say
that he believed every man in the world ought to have
a fair show for his salvation. It sounded very com-
monplace at first, but it has been with me ever since as
a powerful statement. It is upon this principle that
the Foreign Missionary appeal becomes irresistible, and
every real Christian has to accept his part in that re-
sponsibility, but it is equally true that the young men
of our own country ought to have a fair show for their
salvation, and that a good many of them are not having

150

it. No lessening of force at home can be thought of
or tolerated so long as present conditions obtain.

I feel the sense of this home responsibility as I never
felt it before, for we have in our land, as perhaps in
no other in the world, the available resources to do the
work. Somewhere I have either written or said that I
believe that there are ten dollars of money ready for
every dollar of need if the Christian business men of the
United States and Canada can be assured that their
money is going to be economically and efficiently ad-
ministered. If we cannot win this contest in the United
States and Canada, it cannot be won anywhere. I be-
lieve that the Kingdom of God is going to be estab-
lished, and that the ushering in of this day with us is
a sort of advance movement in the interests of the whole
world. I .am coming home to give myself to this task
of the religious life of the young men of our own North
American continent as I have never done before.

As I think about what it will mean to step on those
shores to-morrow, I cannot help a sense of great
pity for the men of our land who are whining about
" conditions." The man who cannot make a reasonable
success of life in the United States or Canada would
be a wretched failure anywhere you put him, and the
religious organization which does not do a great work
there ought to surrender its charter and go out of
business. I am afraid I will be found preaching the
doctrine of North America patriotism a good deal dur-
ing these coming months. To-day I feel as though I
wanted to get oflT this ship, and get down on my back
and roll over on the ground of our own soil.

For all the journeying mercies that have surrounded
us, for all the unparalleled blessings which have at-
tended our labors and for the good providence of God
which brings us back safely, we render unspeakable

151

.^Lf^nqr 7

thanksgiving, but in this oratorio oi gxc.^. othing

else at this moment impresses me so profoundly as the
sense of home, with my own family, the circle of Chris-
tian men with whom I work, and my native soil. I shall
sing, as I have not hitherto sung. Dr. Barbour's favor-
ite hymn :

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties.

Above the fruited plain !
America ! America !
God shed His grace on thee.

And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea !

O beautiful for pilgrim feet

Whose stern, impassioned stress

A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness !
America ! America !

God mend thine every flaw.

Confirm thy soul in self-control.

Thy liberty in law !

O beautiful for heroes proved

In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved,

And mercy more than life !
America! America!
May God thy gold refine.

Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine !

152

M

\J

O beautiful for patriot dream

That sees beyond the years
Thine ahibaster cities gleam

Undinnned by human tears !
America ! America !
God shed His grace on thee

And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea !

Yours with everything I have for the

Kingdom of God,
Feed. B. Smith.

153 "SlL.^

CH1N81GUT
HILL

TROW PRESS
NEW YORK

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