Part 16 (2/2)

Ay, when your sighs had blown around the world for seven years, they yielded her. You were a power to be checked, and they set a woman in your path.

_Shun_

No!

_Ching_

It was a j.a.panese from the Fushun collieries, a Russian prince of the Northern railways, a French buyer of Yunnan copper, a British s.h.i.+p-baron of Hongkong, and the Chinese owners of the unworked gold veins of Szechuan, who went to the brothers of Wong Fe and said: ”Give Yu Tai Shun his bride.”

_Shun_

It was you who spoke for me!

_Ching_

You had no father, and in my heart you were my son. I spoke for you because I believed in you. I did not think that any bribe could lure you from us. Yours was a soul that we thought would be a torch to every nation of earth. And you choose to go out like a candle in the breath of a woman.

(YU TAI SHUN _is bowed and silent._ MAKURO _touches his sleeve._)

_Makuro_

Come with us, master.

_Ching_

In half an hour the boat will stop at the orchard pier for Makuro. He starts for j.a.pan. It is there you are needed.

_Makuro_

I come from our friends with their summons. j.a.pan's oligarchy of traders, with every means known to power--school, religion, racial pride and hate--is fostering the spirit of war. All the seeds of the jungle are being deliberately sown once more in men's hearts. They are preparing j.a.pan to hold the largest share of an industrially broken China and weld her millions into one instrument of hate against the West.

_Shun_

A pigmy's dream!

_Ching_

A dream that will come true if our giants continue to sleep.

_Makuro_

It is the menace of America that j.a.pan holds before her people till their hearts roll with fear, their brains grow sick with rage. America, who has insulted us with exclusion--who has s.n.a.t.c.hed an island chain from our Eastern waters, and shot, starved, imprisoned thousands ignorant enough and brave enough to resist her. _That_ is the America my people are taught to believe in. But you know a different America, where people love honor and hate war--whose religion is love thy neighbor as thyself. Come, teach them of that America! You are known in a million homes of j.a.pan. You have taught us to love you, and where we love, we listen.

_Shun_ (_with great effort_)

I cannot go. If I part from Wong Fe the blood will leave my veins and flow back to her.

_Makuro_

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