To the Editor of the "Norra-Cxina Datty News."
Sir,—You print to-day, in your "Chinese Press Views" a synopsis of an article in the "Sinwanpaco" which replies to Mr. J. O. P. Bland's letter. in the Times." You quote the writer. as saying that ''these indemnities were extracted from China as a result of the Boxer rising for which only two or three foolish Manchu Princes of the Imperial Household were responsible and with which the innocent Chinese people at large had absolutely nothing to do."
If this is a correct report of what the Chinese writer said, one can only attribute his statement to ignorance or impudence or a profound belief in the forgetfulness and gullibility of the foreigner. The Boxer cataclysm was one of the greatest crimes in history. has left a dark stain on the Chinese character that centuries will not efface. he massacres were not the work of " two or three foolish Manchu Princes." The refugee Christians, Chinese and foreign, were hounded from village to city and killed wherever found by the local " Boxers." And these were often men who had themselves received no little kindness at the hands of those whom they murdered, respecting neither age nor sex, Those who knew the Chinese best marvelled that they killed little children with no compunction, for the ordinary peasant is usually tender towards a baby.
The stories of those who suffered and those who died in the "Boxer?" year are heart-breaking reading. The Chinese writer should read "Fire and Sword in Shansi" by Keyte, "Bight Hundred Miles of Miracle" by Glover, "In Deaths Oft"? by Green and many others.
I took this last narrative with me when I returned to my station up-country after the trouble was over and read it in the chapel to the little band of Christians, who had themselves escaped by the skin of their teeth. The next morning our poor old doorkeeper brought me his month's wages and said, with tears rolling down his cheeks, "Send that to Weela'" (Vera, Mr. Green's little daughter who survived the "deaths oft" to die later from the after effects of the hardships she had passed through). It was only three dollars but I tried to think to what cause I had ever given a month's salary.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.