5th Sept. Tue preposterous suggestion that a member of the reactionary party at Peking, like Yung Lu, who has actually been Generalissimo of the forces who attacked the Legations, and would have murdered every foreigner in Peking if
pluck, should be accepted as a peace they had onl: possessed the necessary plenipotentiary is an insult of such a glaring character as to be almost incredible, even as coming from a Reawsia has, no doubt, her private in his dotage like Li.
reasons for' wanting to male peace, but we cannot believe that any other Power will allow itself to be trailed in the dirt at her heels, There should be no talk of negotiations until the murderers of Baron von Ketteler and the other foreigners killed in Peking—the men who directed the murders, not the actual assassins—have been brought to book, the Empress Dowager sent into retirement where she can do no more harm, and the Emperor reinstated on his Throne. There can be no Between China and Foreign Powers, permanent peace in China itself, or unless these conditions are fulfilled. Every secret society in China will rise, if they once think that they must abandon the hope that reform is coming under foreign auspices; and if the Empress Dowager is allowed to return, even under the most solemn promises of amendment, there will be another attack on foreigners in the North next spring, in which the causes that have led to the failure of the Chinese this year will be avoided by experience. "We guess at Russia's reasons for wanting peace, and may be sure that she is not consulting the good of any other Power; and we may be certain that a patched-up peace now is for all the Powersexcept Russia—even for France—the most suicidal policy that could possibly be adopted.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.