tected those who reside within her boundaries. She has enabled these strangers to live in peace and security, entirely free from harm or molestation. The hideous crimes committed against Christian people in China and in Armenia are unknown in Korea. There has been no rebellion or uprising against lawful authority. The Koreans have been at peace at home and at peace with the world. They have offered offense to no nation. They have given no power the slightest excuse for depriving them of their government, or to turn loose upon

them thousands of laborers to drive them from their means of earning a livelihood. These things Koreans fully believe, and believing them, can find no motive for Japan's conduct in Korea but that of avarice and greed.

It is but twenty-two months since Japan signed a treaty with Korea guaranteeing the independence of that country and the peace and repose of the royal family, yet the soldiers of Japan have used Korean soil as their own. The treaty imposed upon the Koreans by Japan on February 23, 1904, had scarcely gone into force

when a demand was made for hundreds of thousands of acres of so-called "waste land" for a Japanese syndicate for the use of Japanese farmers. Knowing their peculiar characteristics in a business deal, the Koreans appreciated that no land would be too fertile to be regarded as "waste" land, and their opposition to this scheme was so strenuous that the Japanese government abandoned it. But this gave the Koreans an idea of what might follow. Then appeared "advisers" from Japan to direct the official acts of the Korean Emperor and his ministers. Korean officials were practically selected by the Japanese, in whose hands they were but mere puppets. Protests were unavailing and resistance useless. The Korean official who had the courage to refuse to do as he was directed by the Japanese instantly dropped beneath the public horizon, and another was selected by the Japanese to take his place. The severity of Japanese rule in Korean officialdom may be inferred from this statement in the "News Calendar": "General Hyen Yeng Woon and wife, after a short imprisonment at the Japanese army headquarters, have been sent to their country home. They were charged with having furnished His Majesty with information concerning the Japanese peace treaty disturbances at Tokio."

The telegraph and postal departments of the government were taken over by the Japanese and the Korean officials and employees were promptly removed. Even the privilege of having their own postage stamps was denied the Koreans. The customs service so long and so ably managed by the Hon. McLeavy Brown, formerly of the Chinese service under Sir Robert Hart, was soon taken over entirely by the Japanese and Mr. Brown shipped home to England. European and American advisers, instructors and employees have been virtually all dismissed to make room for Japanese. It has already been urged that free trade exists between Japan and Korea, and that other nations continue to pay high tariff duties. The "open door" in the Orient, as the Japanese see it, and as the world will doubtless see it, opens for Japan only.

Treaties, so called, have been put through by the Japanese, securing for *Agreement of April 1, 1905,

their fishermen the right to invade the Korean fisheries,† and by the same means they have procured the privilege to navigate the Korean rivers,‡ which means that they will control the transportation of the country and monopolize the most important of the occupations of the natives. The United States denies the right of any foreign ship to engage in coast or river trading in United States waters. Korea would have been glad to have protected her people in the same manner had she the power to force justice from her grasping ally.

There has been one enormous grab on every hand in the city and in its environs. Military necessity is the excuse given in almost every case. Two thousand acres of farming land were included in one monstrous confiscation; but the excuse of military necessity fell to the ground when the land thus seized was divided up among Japanese merchants. and others. What military necessity can there be in a miscellaneous collection of civilians who have nothing to do with the military, in most cases? One can not look into all the cases brought to one's attention, but it is beyond question that the action of the Japanese in Pyeng-yang has been hard to bear. The worst excesses of Korea's most corrupt officials never took on the form of such wholesale confiscations as those which have taken place at Pyeng-yang.

A Japanese subject owned a little plot of ground in Pyeng-yang, but the opening to it was very narrow. A large tiled house worth 6,000 yen stood in the way. The Japanese offered the owner 120 yen, and when it was refused, the Korean was seized, dragged away to one of the Japanese compounds and brutally beaten and otherwise illtreated. He at last got away, immediately took opium and killed himself. In China this would have been a serious matter, but the Japanese laughed. at it and attempted to make the man's widow give up the house. She declared she would die rather than sell on any terms.

The Koreans are helpless because they are too wise to revolt openly. The time will come, however, when the Koreans will be driven to it unless better counsels † Agreement of June, 1905. Concession, August 13, 1905.

prevail among the Japanese. A few miles from the city a Korean owns a fine hot spring. A Japanese civilian appeared, drove his stakes all about the property and said he had taken it because of military necessity, yet he had no papers to show.

The Japanese have also swarmed all over the property of Americans and Englishmen, and planted their stakes, knowing perfectly well whose the land is. The Japanese consul, when approached about the matter, said he knew it was the property of foreigners, but, he added, "You had better just let the stakes remain where they are for the present." When these American gentlemen were asked why they did not pull up the Japanese stakes and throw them in the ditch, they replied that if this was done some of their servants or adherents would immediately be seized and beaten within an inch of their lives.

From time to time the cries of distress of the natives in the interior, where similar outrages have been committed by individual Japanese, are faintly heard at the Capitol, but the Korean Government is utterly helpless to compel the invaders to do justice to them. If a house is wanted, the owner must vacate it, whether he will or not, and take what pay is offered, whether it is just or not, or accept a beating or perhaps a sword thrust in the process of eviction. If a Japanese petty official in the interior wants to build a house, native laborers are forced to work for him. It is of no consequence that their crops may be ruined by their absence, they must go, for the "Sword of Peace" has a keen edge in Korea these days. If resistance is offered by the natives to such outrages, or to other lawless acts of the petty tyrants who are misrepresenting Japan and Korea, a gibbet is easily constructed and the

label on the bodies will read "rebels." Or, it may be more convenient to tie them to crosses and shoot them to death for defending their own, as was done with the Korean farmers who unwisely attacked the railway grade to pull it down because the Japanese, after repeated appeals, had failed to pay for the land they had confiscated.

Japan has now made her usurpation of authority in Korea permanent by forcing at the bayonet's point the acceptance of a protectorate which means the withdrawal of all foreign ministers from Korea.

It is not sufficient in order to justify Japan in the drastic policy which she is following in Korea to reiterate, as has recently been done, by a pro-Japanese writer, the weaknesses and shortcomings of these Oriental people measured by Occidental standards. It is not sufficient to say that corruption exists in Korean public and private life, or that in times of disorder such as the present, cruelty and crime are practiced by some of the lower classes. These things happen in the United States, where we are constantly protesting our virtues.

From the Korean point of view, if America with its advanced civilization and high standard of morality, with all the advantages that have come from the Christian religion, has been unable to eliminate these terrible crimes and the sin of dishonesty in public and in private life, that country-America-should be the first nation to extend sympathy and support to Korea in this hour of her extremity. It is, to say the least, not surprising that the Koreans while submitting to Japan's theft of their country should ask that the harsh and cruel policy adopted by that country be modified to conform with the accepted Occidental ideas of right and wrong in dealing with weak nations.

For the past few weeks, those who are interested in seeing satisfactory relations established between the Koreans and the Japanese have been looking for signs that the Tokio authorities were trying to back up their words with definite action, but the state of affairs here has become

rapidly worse instead of better, until at last the Koreans have reached a state little removed from desperation; and those who catch the undercurrent of feeling among the people are aware that we are dangerously near the point of revolt at the methods adopted by the Japanese.

It is not merely what the Japanese are trying to do in and about the great commercial centers like Seoul, Pyeng-yang, Taiku and Songdo, but the utterly inexplicable methods they adopt in doing it that call for loud and insistent protest. Almost the entire area between Seoul and the river, covering thousands of acres of land, has been staked out by the Japanese on the plea of military necessity, and the entire population, which runs up into the tens of thousands, has been notified that they must vacate their houses and fields when notice is given. In this area there are large and flourishing villages of from one hundred to five hundred houses. The people have their long-established occupations and local business connections. Their livelihood depends in large measure upon these business connections and upon the local interests. But not a thought is given to this fact. They are told that they must vacate at some time in the near future. When they demand pay for their land and houses they are told that the Japanese authorities have paid over, or are to pay over, to Korea some three hundred thousand yen for all this property at Seoul, Pyeng-yang and Wiju, and that eventually the people will be paid something for their houses and lands.

* The Japanese themselves affirm that the Koreans are being driven out because "The Japanese are going to live here."' In other words, the gigantic confiscation has nothing whatever to do with military necessity and is simply the forcible seizure of Korean property for the purpose of letting Japanese settle here.

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Hundreds of people are simply driven from their houses and lands without a cent of compensation. They have no money to rent or buy another place, nor any money to pay for moving. They are simply bereft of everything, including, in many instances, the means of livelihood. As the writer was passing along the road through the section near Seoul, Japanese were busy tearing up crops from fields along the way, making ready to build a road (not railroad). Women with children stood by, crying and wringing their hands at sight of the destruction of the crop which alone insures them against starvation next winter. The Japanese said they were doing it according to orders. The writer was besieged by more than fifty men along the way who begged that some way be found to delay, at least, the carrying out of the monstrous sentence. But what way is there? Shall we tell these people to arm themselves and fight for their homes? However great their wrongs, no one would feel justified in suggesting such a

remedy. If the people should rise en masse and petition the government for redress they would be told (and have been told) that the government is forced to it by the Japanese. If the Koreans should make a monster demonstration, of a peaceful kind, petitioning the Japanese to have mercy, they would be dispersed at the bayonet's point.

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On the night of the ninth instant, as the writer passed through the affected district, women and children came pressing about him by the score, begging him to find some means to avert their being driven from their homes, without a cent of money wherewith to procure a lodging place. Far into the night, young women with babies in their arms were hurrying past in flight to a more distant village. The absolute callousness of the Japanese agents is something appalling. Having been ordered to carry out the "improvements,' they come into the villages and put down all protest by beating the people, and no one dares to resist, because this would immediately result in the coming of the gendarmes and the shedding of no one knows how much innocent blood. * * * And why should Korea be subjected to such drastic treatment, and the land of her people be thus wrested from them on a mere pretext? Even in a conquered territory modern military ethics would not permit of such confiscations without compensation. How much more grievous then is the wrong when we remember that Korea is the ally of Japan. If the Korean government blocks needed reforms, then let the government suffer, but what have the common people to do with this and what excuse does it give for driving out people that are entirely innocent of any intention or desire to block reforms, but would rather welcome them?

These people have no one to whom they can appeal against their hard fate. They were informed by the mayoralty office that their land had all been given to Japan and they must prepare to vacate it. When it came to the sharp pinch a crowd of them went to the mayor's office and protested against the forcible eviction. They were referred to the Home Office as being the source of the order. They went there and asked to see the Home Minister, and were told that it was an imperial order. They then became desperate and charged the minister with having lied to them and having stolen their land. Thereupon the minister asked the Japanese gendarmes to disperse the crowd, adding that killing was none too bad for them. The Japanese charged the crowd, and one man had his arm cut to the bone and another his face from forehead to chin.

BY

ITTLE known outside of a certain official circle,

a

unique American christening is now in progress a ceremony in which President Roosevelt stands as the father, and Hamlin Garland and George Bird Grinnell as godfathers. The officiating clergyman, to continue the simile, is Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman, the full-blooded Sioux Indian who married Elaine Goodale, the New England girl who gained a national reputation as a poet while still in her teens. Dr. Eastman is undoubtedly the most cultivated and accomplished fullblood Indian in America.

This curious christening came about through the peculiar interest which Mr. Garland and Mr. Grinnell feel in the Indian and his wrongs. Both these men have spent much time among the reservation Indians and have a first-hand knowledge of their condition and needs. In talks with President Roosevelt these two writers invariably touched upon the situation at the reservations and discussed its details with an intelligence that at once interested the President, so it is said, and caused him to ask their advice and suggestions as to practical steps for the immediate improvement of the condition of these helpless wards of the nation. Mr. Garland and Mr. Grinnell agreed that the bestowal of family names for the purpose of insuring the right descent of property was one of the most needful and practical of all measures capable of being put into speedy execution. They were also agreed in another particular: that Dr. Eastman was preeminently the man to carry this mission through with discretion, with skill and with credit to the government, himself and his sponsors.

Dr. Eastman was summoned before the President. After a brief consultation he

was appointed by President Roosevelt to go to the reservations of the Sioux nation and rechristen each individual according to "the eternal fitness of things" and his own good pleasure.

The fulfilling of so large and so peculiar a contract for christening-the renaming of an entire race of original Americans-naturally brought to the representative of the "Great Father" many strange and picturesque experiences, all of them interesting and many of them significant. If, according to the old custom, his own people were to-day to bestow upon Dr. Eastman a new name it would undoubtedly be that of Name Giver, for this task has given him a celebrity throughout his nation that few feats of daring could have brought him. Already he has visited the reservations at Standing Rock, Devil's Lake, Yankton, Santee, Rosebud and Sisseton and individually bestowed names upon nearly or quite fifteen thousand Sioux.

Romance often mingles with the currents of every-day affairs; but seldom does it touch a life into changes so marvelous as those experienced by a missionary of a national nomenclature who, although still in the prime of life, is able to divide the book of memory into two volumes: the first in which he looked upon the world with the eyes of a young savage; the second in which he is an honored member of a learned profession, a respected citizen of a cultured community wherein he enjoys the highest social privileges, the husband of a gifted and accomplished wife of Puritan ancestry. The pursuit of his odd task took Dr. Eastman to the very spot, just outside of Jamestown, North Dakota, where, as a little savage, he had pulled his pony to a sudden halt and for the first time looked up at the wonderful steam horse of the white man. The sensations with which he viewed the puffing, superhuman monster