We wore sitting over the fire, last night, Jim O'Neill and I discussing the riot; coming home to dinner we bad passed down the Kiukiang Road and seen the Tactai's bodyguard of Hunan braves squatting on the pavement outside the Senior Consul's house; and the sight had suggested a train of thought not altogether in sympathy with the methods of cosmopolitan diplomacy.
"There won't be much more fighting in the strocts," said Jim, "but Pil back the native when it.comes to the clean-up. He's only got; to sit tight and wait till we begin to fight amongst ourselves. It doesn't take us long, as rule, and if they refer the settlement to. Peking, those Ching brothers will have time to grow up and learn sense at our expense before anything is done."
"Don't you think they'll have to put the Court in order now? If they don't, its only a matter of time before the Volunteers sleep in the Country Club Jim looked thoughtful. "I'll tell you how the thing strikes me," he said, everybody's business is nobody's. How can you expect the Taotai or any of the precious rascals that worked up this business to be brought to book when they've only to got on the right side of one of fourteen Consuls to bring the whole machinery of local Government to a standstill?"
"That's so. It was the same at Peking. after the Boxer business. If it didn't usually pay: somebody to stand in well with the Celestials, the Empress-Dowager wouldn't be where she is.now."
"ye got two pictures in my mind," Jim went on. "They make a pretty contrast and shed some light on our position and prospects. The first is a pretty scene: His Excellency the Tsotai holding forth to the delegates of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Press, and educational societies on the bravery and patriotism of Magistrate Kuan. You can see him from here—this brilliant example of Oriental patriotism, vowing to exact reparation for the ' insults and shameful treatment? experienced by his subordinates, There 'a delightful naivety about. the follow's attitude that tickles "one—he will cheerfully farm out the likin on cattle to a for-ignor, wink merrily at the Canton trade in children from the famine districts, and let any one of China's sovereign rights hang if to save it would take s dollar out of his fat purse—but he becomes the staunchest patriot of the bunch when it comes to getting longer finger in the Mixed Court pie. Just mark him oncouraging the patriotic orators in their folly, Lam willing to give up my post in the fight for justice and fairplay!? If it were not for the serious results of all thie. roguery, for the lost lives and disturbance of our peace, we might well laugh—as the guilds laugh—in their sleeves at this "wind talk."
"Yes," said I, "and that impudent patch of his to Sir Pelham, so lauded in the native Press, ought to be evidence enough of the real cause of the row."
"And all those poor fools, Koo Bang-ming and the rest talking their damn nonsense at the guild meetings under his official wing. No doubt some of them will have to pay for it, unless they take his advice now and skip. Buf' don't spoil my pictures: let us put them side ide. One, you have seen—the machinery that set in motion our little Maloo drama: Yuan, the patriot, sacrificing coram: publico on the altars of his country's liberties.
And now look at the other. The row is over, the fleets have lariied their forces, and the Volunteers can go home to well-earned sleep. Behold now our Taotai solemnly attending Consular meeting in the Kiukiang Road. Below, his braves smoke their pipes; his chair of office looms like a sentry box in the darkness; and a couple of runners, crouching in the doorway, are calmly discussing the removal, of Twyman. What is going on up upstairs? out the indignant representatives of European civilisation are. calling the chief culprit to account, making good their solemn warning to hold him peraonally responsible for any breach of the. peace, and insisting on the immediate
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.