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55

couraged and forlorn above the squalid Chinese city. 

There are but two other foreigners on the boat. The captain is a small, quiet Norwegian, fifty-two years old, who came to the riverfirst in 1906, but who had to quit soon because of rheumatism, until he learned to cure it by wearing Russian felt boots. In the evening we had along talk, naturally turning to European and Chinese politics. The captain is certain that what a man sows he shall reap, in this life or the next, and that honesty is the only foundation of a proper world order. He has tried to stop the squeezes of lower employees by higher on the boat, but has had to give it up because the system is ramified so through all of Chinese life. He thinks the Dawes plan a good one, and that Dawes is the man of the hour for Europe, or he did until I pointed out that the Dawes plan rests upon the treaty which rests upon the dishonest assumption of the total war guilt of Germany. When we had discussed this he admitted it was new information. I do not know what he thinks about this now. We discussed the next war, the future of civilization, the evil of gambling with food stuff, and so on. Last trip this ship carried 23000 bags of rice up to Hankow, where a famine in Honan puts a premium on it. The rice had first been shipped down to Shanghai from Wuhu. A Chinese merchant in Wuhu informed our first officer that he had cleared two dollars on every bag. And always the poor man suffers, for which our captain blames the big capitalist, and our first officer expresses regret, though scornful of the socialists who would abolish capital, the breath of life of industry. This first officer is a fine figure and a most interesting character, the best specimen of the typical German officer I have ever met. He was with the Hamburg American Line before the war. At the first of the war he was commander of a German destroyer. They sunk a Japanese ship after running the blockade, but could not get away again so beached their boat on the China coast, were made prisoners of war and treated like honored guests of the government for five years and three months. In manner, gesture, facial expression, mental makeup, every characteristic he is perfectly in type. I enjoy talking war and politics with him, especially when he says that Germany's one great mistake was not to float a large loan in America, that all Germany wants now is for all