INDEMNITY, June 23.
Tue telegram which we pub-Jished on Wednesday reporting that the House of Commons had passed the second reading of the: Dill providing for the remission of the surplus of the Boxer indemnity due from China recalls happy memories of the fateful year 1900. Tt is twenty-four years since the Boxer madness wept over China and those who have personal recollections of the tragic events of that time are an annually diminishing number. Phe chief actors in those dreadful scenes have, for the most part, passed to their reward and though there are still in China a very few who bear on their body sears, that are grim reminders of she-horrors they suffered, to the sinest of us "the Boxer year" is of only academic interest. It is, perhaps, a tribute to our oft reviled human nature that the passions and animosities that were 80 deeply engraved in the hearts of those who endured the perils or shared in the anxieties of those dark days have gradually faded into a remembrance that is without bitterness. The chief reason for this, doubtless, is that we know now that_ the Chinese people suffered mich more from the cataclysm than did foreigners. "The Chinese Government of that day was truly guilty of one of the crimes over plotted the people there were many who were but too ready to abet it in its evil desi But there were also many, and those we are happy to believe were much the Jarger number, who had no sympathy with the bloodthirsty schemes of the Empress Dowager and her quondam advisers. As is in such warfare, the route traversed by the avenging armies of the Allies were caught between the upper and nether millstones of the combatant troops and suffered from excesses of both forces. It is, we believe, the realization of this fact that has all Dut effaced the resentment so keenly felt at the time when the legations were besieged and news the murder of foreigners in exposed situations was being chronicled in our columns every day. And so, with amazing ease, the bill for the remission of the tpalance of the indemnity has been passed by the House of Commons with hardly a dissentient voice. [We note with a good deal of We are not giving to China that which has cost us nothing but, as an act of sincere good-will, we are denouncing money to which we have an indefeasible moral, as well as legal, right. "Doubtless there are those who will tell us that we are acting foolishly and will get nothing in return for our generosity. And to those we reply that they are possibly right, Dut we reserve to ourselves the privilege of being foolish now and then and, moreover, we have a sub-conscious feeling that the luxury of being generous is sometimes its own reward.
We have said that the remission of the indemnity was unconditional, yet it has this qualification attached to it that the money is to be used for educational purposes and in this limitation, are assured, China most heartily concurs. There are many good causes to which the money, or part of it, might have been devoted. There are roads to make, bridges to build, railways to construct and many other schemes. But for these China is well able to find funds if she will but set her financial house in order. The American indemnity fund was devoted to the higher education of Chinese students and it has been a most fruitful investment. We could wish that the British indemnity was ear-marked for the wider provision of elementary education for the toiling millions. There is a National Phoneti Script the adoption of which, it la said, would so simplify education, by the elimination of the cum-brans character from elementary schools, that a working knowledge of books could be obtained in a fraction of the time now wasted in studying the difficult ideographs of the written language. An enthusiastic Chinese Y.M.C.A. Secretary, has devised a. short cut to literacy through the acquisition of one thousand common characters. This summer hundreds of students will devote their vacation to teaching this system, without salary or hope of reward, to thousands of illiterate men, women and boys in many cities and villages. The eagerness of. the toilers to study in the short hour there is left between the end of their darg, which lasts from dawn to dark of a summer day, and the time for sleep is pathetic. Perhaps something could be done fund to promote and encourage such movements for popular education. At any rate we sincerely hope the money will be used so as to bring the greatest possible amount of enlightenment to the greatest possible number rather than in over educating a favoured few. pleasure that the bill was passed ith no restrictions attached.
Where are a good many questions outstanding between the Governments of China and Great Britain
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.