WE do not know how muchcredence is to be put in recent reports from Peking as to the new attitude of the Chinese Government with regard to Russia, but if they are well-founded, a very remarkable and very welcome change has taken place in the minds of the rulers of China. For the last seven years, and especially since the somewhat weak-policied Prince Ching has occupied the position triest analogous to that of Prime Minister, China has been, very much to the dis. gust of the younger men of education and position, Chinese and Manchus alike, the subservient protege of Russia. The Empress Dowager has been surrounded by men, who from some inducement or from honest con viction, have consistently done their best to persuade her that Russia was China's best friend. The outrageous action of Russia in reoccupying Moukden, almost if not actually on the very date when she had promised to evacuate the whgle of the three Provinces, and in making a prisoner of the Tartar General HE. Tsen Chi, has apparently given point to the anti-Russian representations of! the two patriotic Viceroys, Chang Chih-tung and Yuan Shih-kai, and we have now to welcome the result, We may well conclude too that ELE, Wu Ting-fang, whose advice has gained much weight since he achieved such a success as Chinese Minister to the U.S., has added his influence to that of the we Viceroys, Together they have succeeded in persuading the government of China to face round ninety degrees, and to look to the East instead of the North for guidance and assistance.
more than eight years since we first announced the negotiations which were characterised by intelligent and patriotic Chinese at the time as the sale of China to Russia, and during these eight years the fascinating influence of the great northern Power over its victim has seemed to grow daily stronger. What was the real connection of Russia with the Box+r movement, if there was any such connection, which we are not inclined to believe, will probably never be known; but that Russia "worked hard to save the Empress Dowager and her personal friends in 1900 is a matter of history, This condoned in the imperial eyes such aberrations as the massacre of Blagovestchensk and the seizure of the right bank of the Amur. Russia had bought Manchuria, and she was evidently doing what she liked with it, and it seemed that the Manchus were looking on complacently at the seizure of the cradle of their race and their ancestral tombs. But the sale of Manchuria was not effected in market overt, and it was most decidedly not made with the consent of the Chinese people, and it seems tha: the Court has at last plucked up courage to repudiate it, and this will give the Empress Dowager, who hag always been very popular with the mass of the Chinese, a still stronger claim on their loyalty. it was natural, perhaps, that a grossly ignorant government like that at Peking should turn to Russia rather than to any other Power. She was near at band, so near that her greatness seemed to almost overshadow the Forbidden City, her progress southward seemed as resistless and inevitable as that of a glacier, and her representatives could make presents and promises with which the representative of no other West-ere Power could compete. Harassed as the Empress Dowager must have been ever since the coup d'état, it
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.