The Rev. William L. Stidger is one of the most thoroughly alive men in the ministry today. He sees quickly, reacts instantaneously, and knows how to bring others to a like alertness of mental and spiritual seizure. If it be said of him that he is impressionistic it must be remembered that the impressions are made on a mind of sound purpose and communicated to others for the sake of the truth behind the impression. His narratives of travel do not belong in the guide-book category or in that of th

That vast stretch of opal islands; jade continents; sapphire seas of strange sunsets; mysterious masses of brown-skinned humanity; brown-eyed, full-breasted, full-lipped and full-hipped women; which we call the Orient, can only be caught by the photographer's art in flash-light pictures. It is like a photograph taken in the night. It cannot be clear cut. It cannot have clean outlines. It can only be a blurred mass of humanity with burdens on their shoulders; humanity bent to the ground; creaking

Fire! Fire! Fire everywhere! Fire in the sky, fire on the sea, fire on the ships, fire in the flowers, fire in the trees of the forest; fire in the Poinsetta bushes which flash their red flames from every yard and jungle. In the tropical lands flowers do not burst into blossom; they burst into flame. Great bushes of flaming Poinsetta, as large as American lilac bushes, burst into flame over night in Manila. That great tree, as large as an Oak, which they call "The Flame of the Forest," looks lik

The red dawn of tropical Java was near. The shadows of night were still playing from millions of graceful Palm trees which swung gently in the winds before the dawn. Three ancient volcanos, still rumbling in blatant activity, loomed like gigantic monsters of the underworld, bulging their black shoulders above the earth. Before us lay a valley of green rice paddies. We had roved over ancient Boroboedoer all night, exploring its haunted crannies and corners, listening to its weird noises; dreaming

He was an old man; gray-haired, gray-bearded; gray-gowned; and he knew that the Japanese Gendarmes would just as soon take his life as light a cigarette. They do each with inhumane impunity. One means as much to them as the other. He was under arrest for conspiracy in the Independence Movement. "Do you know about the Independence Movement?" he was asked. "Yes, I know all about it," was his fearless reply; though he knew that that reply in itself might mean his death; even without trial or furthe

Quick, short, sharp signals shot down the speaking tube from the bridge. The Chief Engineer of the Santa Cruz yelled across the boiler room. The bell rang for reverse and the entire ship shivered. A woman on deck screamed, and there was a rush to the railings, for the old boat had been slowly making its way up the winding, treacherous Saigon River out of the China Sea into French Indo-China. "Those damned Chinks again, trying to escape the Devil!" "What's the matter, Pop?" some one asked the cap

"The Jap is the slant-eyed Hun of the Orient. He has a slant-eyed ethics, a slant-eyed morality, a slant-eyed honesty, a slant-eyed social consciousness; a slant-eyed ambition, a slant-eyed military system; and a slant-eyed mind!" said Peter Clarke Macfarlane, the well-known author and lecturer, one day when I was interviewing him on the Japanese question. "That's pretty strong, Mr. Macfarlane, in the light of your usual conservatism," I commented. "I say it carefully and after much thought. It

"Oriental women are fascinating to Occidental men," said a newspaper reporter in a Shanghai hotel lobby, a year ago. "All women are fascinating to Occidental men. Take the French girls and the way they captured our American soldiers; of course, these brown-eyed, brown-skinned, graceful, mysterious——" "It's just as I said," replied the first speaker interrupting the second speaker, "Oriental girls are more fascinating to Occidental men than white girls." "Yes—I guess you are right, when we get do

All the "Peck's Bad Boys" of the world are not confined to American soil. I found them all over the Far East; especially in China. I was annexed by one of them who became a sort of a guide de luxe when we were going through the ruined Palaces of the romantic regions of Peking. He annexed himself to us in somewhat the same fashion as a thistle or a burr annexes itself to you as you walk through the field where thistles are thick. He was an acquired asset of questionable value. With him were a lot

"Self-determination!" That phrase has set the whole world on fire! "Independence!" That word somehow has awakened the Oriental world; awakened that mass of humanity as it has never been awakened before. Korea perhaps has thrilled to this awakening as no other section of the Orient or the Near and Far East. India's millions are restless; the Filipino is hungry for Independence although he is loyal to the United States; but Korea has the matter set in its heart like adamant. This determination wil

Three great Flash-lights of Failure stand out in the Far East and the Oriental world to-day; one being the failure of a race to survive, another being the failure of the world to understand that Shantung is the Holy Land and not the appendix of China; this sacred shrine of the Chinese which has so carelessly and listlessly been given over to Japan; and the third being Japan's failure to understand that methods of barbarism from the Dark Ages will not work in a modern civilization. "Why are they

We were running down the Samabs River in a small Dutch ship, the Merkeus . This river, running almost parallel to the Equator, and not more than fifty miles away from that well-known institution, cuts the western end of Borneo in two, and lends phenomenal fertility to its soil. Shooting around a bend in the river, suddenly there loomed on the western shores, so close that we could throw a stone and hit it, a tree that was leafless, dead as a volcanic dump; but its dead branches literally swarmed