To recapitulate, the story is this. Prince Tuan, according to the terms of the Boxer protocol, signed by China, Germany, Austria, Spain, Belgium, the United States, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and Russia, was sentenced to death, with the proviso that he might be exiled to Turkestan for life, if the Emperor saw fit to spare him, on the express condition that' his sentence was never to be remitted. This clause is as much a part of the Treaty as that covering the payments of the Boxer indemnity and is just as much alive to-day.
Prince Tuan, in spite of the clarity of this clause, was never-exiled to Turkestan but has lived in seclusion in Inner Mongolia and in Western China for 20 years, For some time past he has been in ill health and his relatives in Peking, wishing that he might die at home, rightly believed that if properly approached the foreigners would agree to let the old man return to the home of his fathers and spend his few remaining days with his family. The Peking Government was approached and the - former Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, then acting as Minister, took it upon himself to call upon one diplomat and ask for an opinion, at the same time expressing the hope that it would not be taken up formally and that it would not be communicated to the Diplomatic Body. Thus circumscribed the one diplomat consulted expressed the private and personal opinion that if the former Boxer leader came back quietly and if it were not generally known, the Powers would. not make an issue of it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.