2th September, OFFICIALLY and officiously we have been informed that Boxerism is no longer a force to be reckoned with in China, that its strength is exhausted, its superstitious beliefs exploded, s mad outburst over, and its future non-exis in a word, that it is as dead as a door-nail. This assurance, having come from the pens of the representatives of eight great Powers, cannot but be true. Confirmation of not Peking been held in durance vile it is plentifully forthcoming. Has for a year or more? Have not the Taku forts been razed to the ground—at any rate on paper? Are there not edicts already issued making it a crime to belong to any anti-foreign society, and lasi but not least, has not. the importation of arms been entirely put an end to—again on paper?
True the word "fiasco" is being more and more heard in Western lands in connection with the China expeditions. Everybody is dissatisfied, even Russia, who wishing to annex Manchuria with the full cognisance and consent of the Powers and the Chinese, now finds herself under the painful necessity of annexation without that consent. Germany is doubly disappointed. After her frankly ex-rossed national sentiment' over ritish "atrocities" in South Africa, she was absolutely pained to receive the "Letters from the Huns," and has not ceased, even now, her frantic efforts to prove that they were made in Germany. But this' might have passed without grave reprehension but for more material failure, a failure which Count von Waldersee has been doing his best, very unsuccessfully, to minimise. As to Great Britain, the feeling is one and undivided everywhere except within the narrow bounds of the Cabinet and its friends. The British opinion is that the opportunity of the century has been allowed to pass unimproved. It has been the old trouble of too many cooks.
We have dwelt upon this Western disappointment because it is strangely counterbalanced with delight that, at last, the thing is over, the troops withdrawn, the Protocol signed, and the chances of international entanglement lessened, if not entirely removed. Thestricken mariner never jettisoned valuable carg" when his life was in danger with greater absence of regret than did the Powers the claims and rights to which the} insce action of China had entitled them, but which certain stormy considerations of their own made them only too willing to forego.
Hence it is that we feel it necessary to issue this formal warning, a warning to all and sundry, but especially to the trading vations, to-Great Britain, the United States, Germany, and Japan, that whatever may be our ground for gratulation and congratulation over the "settlement" of the Chinese question, there is one point in which our honour is engaged, that of Great Britain stof all, which as yet cannot, even with diplomatic optimism, be counted as settled. We refer to the support which it may be necessary to give to the Viceroys and other Mandarins who, mainly because of their own good sense and-humanity, but partly from the advice of British officials and the British Press, refused to carry out the commands of the usurping faction in Peking last year, Boxerism now is dead. The Court says so; the Ministers confirm. By and by, perhaps, the Empress Dowager will return herself and permit the} Emperor to return to Peking. Little by little her confidence, now rudely shaken notwithstanding the mistaken Western notion that 20 lesson has been given, will also return. With it will come a reversion to feelings now dormant, or rather repressed, through fear. Now if there is any feeling which ranks predominant. in Chinese nature—and in Manchu nature most of all—it is the feeling that wherever and whenever a wrong, real or} imaginary, has been received, or a slight suffered, there must some time or other be taken a counterbalancing revenge. It is part of a Chinese child's training to return abuse for abuse and railing for railing. Our Western notion that such vulgarism is best left unnoticed has no practical hold upon the Chinese. Epithet for epithet, oath for oath, malediction for malediction, such is not merely their practice but their teaching. And this is carried out in deeds as well as in words. No people can be more gentle while their passions remain unaroused, none can be more vengefully cruel when their blood is up. This is too well-known to need farther comment.
Already there are little signs, straws to show which way the wind blows, that as soon as the Reactionaries are firmly fixed in the saddle once more, the Progressives, the Patriots, the men who really saved their country last year, will have to look out for squalls. Already it is quite possible that not a few of them are shaking in their shoes at the respect in store. Invitation to eking—an honour which many an official would fain decline, and which by dint of judicious illness, and the application of abundant palm oil many do evade—will be issued to these men. " Lo obey is better than sacrifice," says Holy Writ, but circumstances alter cases, and to sacrifice would certainly lo better than to obey in many of these cases. The question is what can the Powers do to prevent the vengeful punishment of men whose only crime it is that they have done their duty? Perhaps the best means, certainly the most diplomatic, will be to continue the fiction that the Boxer outbreak was not an official movement, that it was as anti-dynastic as it was anti-foreign, We can then put the matter plainly to the Empress Dowager and_her party roughly in these terms:—Here are a party of officials who were true to their instructions, instructions issued by you in accordance with the treaties, not once or twice but many times. They therefore are your best friends: they supported your authority in defiance of Boxer mandates, and are deserving of every confidence and every support. You can prove to the world your abhorrence of Boxerism by substantial rewards to such as withstood it. Should you or the other hand show idence of dislike of these men, you thereby condemn yourselves and stand revealed before the world as Boxers pure and simple, and the world will then know how to act.
In the last sentence lies the keynote to our recommendation, which is this, that the Allied Powers should let it plainly but diplomatically be known that. vengeance will be met with retribution, that no specious attempts at it under any guise whatever will be passed unnoticed. As we have said, our honour is involved, and as we have secured material guarantees for the safety of the Legations, so we CLARKE'S B 41 PILLS st° warranted to cure in, either sex, all acquired or constitutional Discharges from the Uxinary Organ a Gravel and Pains in the back, Free from Mercury. Established upwards of he Tu boxes 4s, Gd. ench, of ors ists and Patent Medicine Yeni 30 throughout the World, Proprietors, Tils Lincoln and "Midland Counties Drug Company, Lincoln, England.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.