Page:Earl Browder - Civil War in Nationalist China (1927).pdf/20

 While Doriot and I were talking to the teacher, I noticed that the shy, timid youngsters who had been so quiet on our entrance were making quite a noise in the next room. I looked thru the door. There was Tom Mann, the 71-year-old dean of our Delegation, in the center of a regular riot; two boys of about eight years were perched on his shoulders, and he was leading the rest in a song. He was singing a nursery rhyme in English:

"London's burning! London's burning!

"Look yonder, look yonder!

"Fire, fire! Fire, fire!

"Pour on water, pour on water!"

With shining eyes and joyous faces the boys were joining in the song, especially the line "Fire, fire," which they had quickly caught. Tom Mann had made 40 fast friends who will never forget him, I’m sure. The ice was broken, and we were all at home.

A Chinese supper in this big family, eaten with chopsticks, and then a game of football (the school was possessed of an old English pigskin which had seen better days) in which Doriot won excessive admiration for the energy with which he kicked the ball high in the air and clear off the field. A walk around the fields in the dusk, and we returned to meet a delegation of trade union leaders who came to talk with us. The boys disappeared. We thought they had gone to bed.

At ten o'clock we prepared to return to our boat for the night. But we had to wait. Something was being prepared outside. Finally we started. There in the football field was the whole school, with lanterns and illuminations, drums and bugles, drawn up in military formation to escort us thru the dark city streets to the river. We made a glorious procession, and I'm sure the International Delegates were just as pleased, right down to the bottom of their hearts, as were the boys who had arranged the "demonstration."

For three weeks we had been cut off from all connection with the larger world—no newspaper, nothing but an