24th Julg.
Daypreak's weekly paper which we all read with so much interest on Sunday morning contained in its last issue an article headed " Play the Game. Bogus Brut ality," which must have considerably surprised the readers of a paper founded by and still, it is understood, controlled by one who has done such excellent work in connection with the Shanghai Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. We need hardly remind Daybreak that even a Chinaman is also an animal, and as such deserving of protection from cruelty, the fact that he is not a dumb animal being no justification for forbidding him that protection. We should have left the article to the neglect which it deserves but that the writer accuses the " North-China Daily News" by name of printing "bogus" charges. against foreigners. He says: "The North-China Daily News" initiated the campaign by inserting from time to time letters from Chinese and anonymous and other missionaries, charging foreigners with all sorts of misconduct. For ourselves we doubt the charges, and, like most cases resting on Chinese evidence, we believe they would be found to be gross exaggerations or impudent inventions." The silly sneer at missionaries is not worth noticing but we are sure that our readers know that we should insert no charge of the kind in our columns without first being convinced of the good faith and trustworthiness of the accuser, whether -he be a Chinese or an "anonymous or other" missionary. The writer goes on to say that he regrets to find that there are "foreigners in China willing to rush into print to lower the prestige of the Westerner by misrepresenting him as a savage as contrasted with the nice and polite' Celestial who, a year ago, from the highest Viceroy to the lowest coolie would have ultimately rejoined if we had all been massacred." Tt is probably of no use to remind so prejudiced a writer of the two high officials at Peking who lost their lives rather than transmit to the provinces the Empress Dowager's order for the destruction of all foreigners, and of the numerous Viceroys, Governors, magistrates and common people who succoured the flying foreigners last year, braving the wrath of their reactionary superiors by so doing. There are, we are glad to say, foreigners in China willing to rash into Court to lower the prestige of the Westerner charging him with working a pony in an unfit condition. It surely lowers the prestige of the Westerner far more to condone attacks on the Chinese among whom we live than to denounce them. "The residents of Shanghai," the writer goes on to say,—" under whom the Chinese enjoy a liberty which is beyond the imagina tion of their fellows elsewhere—a insulted by letters and article: course duly translated into the native prints—which are probably groundless, and at rate unworthy of the importance with which they become invested." According to this reasoning to charge any foreigner with committing any offence is to insult all his fellow-countrymen, and all our Courts of Justice should be henceforth closed. As to the letters and articles being probably groundless, that is " mere assumption of no value whatever; as to their being unworthy of the importance with which they become invested, that is a mere matter of opinion. We, at any rate, and we are sure that the majority of our readers agree with us on this point, after a long acquaintanceship with the Chinese are certainly not among these who regard every Chinaman as an actual or potential Boxer, Those who so regard them should seck their living in some other country, where their peculiar views would be better appreciated.
When foreigners first came to settle in the ports of North China—as the title of this paper shows, Shanghai was regarded as being in North China by the Canton residents who were the first settlers here,—they were regarded by the Chinese as a violent race of beings who must be propitiated by humility and obser {quious! As tine went on, the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.