361
81
80
BRITONS V. GERMANS IN CHINA
see whether they could be legally released from their agreements, and such advice was sought far more frequently by Germans than by Britishers. It was seldom that by these means a young German permanently bettered his position; the usual result seemed to be that such unrest led to nothing in particular beyond a good deal of unnecessary worry. China is not a place like America, where there is a living of some sort for every man willing to work. The Chinese can do everything themselves up to a certain point, and there is only room in the Far East for the men who possess some special knowledge or advantage which the natives have not yet acquired. It is here felt necessary to refer again to the extraordi- nary extent to which German employees were in debt to their compradores. A com- pradore is the name by which the head Chinaman in any
in any foreign merchant's
BRITONS V. GERMANS IN CHINA
office in China is known. Only very few
were not heavily involved in this way, and although such borrowing from Chinese is by no means uncommon amongst other foreigners, it is quite certain that it was not practised to the same extent. This hand- to-mouth style of living was quite a feature of German life in Hongkong, and very little thrift was practised. It was quite usual for them to spend their salaries months in advance on extravagant living, and it is obvious that persons of this stamp do very little to build up the trade and position of our colonies. We require men to colonise, settle down, work hard, and invest their savings, and it cannot be said the Germans have done this to the extent justified by the business they were doing.
The Germans were good linguists and many could speak and write several Euro- pean languages. All mastered English in