17th Sept. Usper the heading "What Stand will America take in the China Affair?" the San Francisco " Examiner's" Washington correspondent considers the problems that confronted the Administration on the 18th of August. Up to the beginning of September at any rate it was impossible for the impartial observer in China to find any error in the course pursued by the United States State Department. All the suggestions made by the so-called Chinese Government through Li Hung-chang or Wu Ling-fang that warlike operations—though there has never been any official war—should be arrested in order that peace negotiations might be undertaken, were firmly put aside until the safety of the Ministers was assured and when, in the beginning of August, Li Hung-chang with something very like a menace promised Mr. Hay that the Ministers should be brought in safety to Tientsin if the Allies would forego their march on Peking, Mr. Hay made the straightforward reply in clear and unmis-arable language that "this Government will not enter into any arrangement regarding the disposi tion or treatment of the Legations without first having free commiuniention with Minister Conger that "the responsibility for their protection rests upon the Chinese Government; and that if that Government can deliver the Ministers at Tientsin, it can open direct communication with them." Li Hung-chang knew perfectly well, and Mr. Hay probably ad a sufficiently strong suspicion, that the Chinese Government could not and would not protect the Ministers if they once left the shelter of their barricades, and that he should have made the proposal at all should be enough to discredit Li Hung-chang as a peace negotiator, if he were not sufficiently discredited already. Meanwhile, although the demand for troops in the Philippines has necessitated the diversion thither of some of the soldiers intended for Taku, the Americans who have landed in the north have fought most cordially and gallantly with the Allies at Tientsin and in the relief of Peking. That there has been a strong feeling in the States against. some of the excessive demands that have been made for vengeance, we know; an article on "The Enemies of Civilisation" in the New York "Nation" says: "Can the cause of civilisation and Christianity be advanced by governments or men actuated by such motives and animated by the passions which they inevitably arouse? No! for it is the end and essence of civilisation to repress such passions and to subordinate such motives to more generous ones; and those who glorify
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.