Ty the autumn of 1898 the Empress Dowager was as convinced in her own mind of the necessity of reform as the Emperor himself; in fact, she often talked it over with her nephew, and listened with great interest to his arguments. But she had the caution of age, he the enthusiasm of youth, and she had also to listen to the representations of her Manchu entourage, that to put the Emperor's plans too promptly into execution would mean a revolution in which the Great Pure Dynasty would run the risk of extinction. The older Manchus, in fact, and their Chinese allies at the capital whose motto was to stand upon the ancient ways and abstain from stirring Camarina, did not hesitate to hint that they would be forced to raise the standard of revolt if the Emperor was allowed to come out into the open as an ardent and practical reformer. She was silenced though not convinced, and remembering the dictum of General Grant that the best way to _geta bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly, e determined to appear to fall in with the views of the Conservatives and let them have their way. That this would mean two or three years of confusion, outrage, and bloodshed she foresaw, but two or three years are a very trifling episode in the history of a nation, whose annals go back some four thousand years, and as to the bloodshed, even Westerners with all their Christian tender-heartedness admit that no one can make an omelet without breaking eggs. What were a few lives, however rich in promise, to 2 nation of four hundred million people? ff a few men had to become martyrs, their death would doubtless do more to promote the cause of reform, which she really had at heart, than their life. Hence the coup d'état, the deposition and imprisonment of the Emperor, the execution of the six martyrs, and the banishment of high officials who could not penetrate the Ewpress Dowager's real intentions. When the conservatives found that the Emperor would not die, sustained as he was by the conviction he himself expressed that Heaven was preserving him to be the instrument for the regeneration of Chins, they made up their minds to strike a yet bigger blow. It was the hated foreigners, they were sure, who were urging on the reformers. They determined to drive out or kill sll the foreigners in China: and we know now on unimpenchiable author ity that they really did their best to exterminate all foreigners in Peking for they believed in their invincible ignorance that if they could once rid their country of the foreign incubus, it would. never return to trouble
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.