Being Tested: Reputation for Hospitality on Trial In w leading article of November 4 the London "Daily Telegraph"
It will be remembered that before] the Customs Conference opened inst autumn Peking itself was plastered with posters denouncing in the cruelest fashion the brutality of the British. Not far from the city wall, and beside one of the few passable rouds in the vicinity of the capital, there was painted In black upon white wall, in letters 18 inches high, a phrase that should not be forgot ten at this moment: "God damn Britishers. Get out this road. The point of the matter is not so much that this should have been set at a time of national excitement, hen an anti-foreign feeling was being carefully fomented by least of the great parties in China; it is that that inscription has remained there throughout the entire time of.the Conference, and reus there to this day. Five years ago so great an insult would have zoomed impossible. The Chinese have always had a name for politeness, almost for over-politeness, and it would have seemed inconceivable} that, at the-very moment when their credit as a civilized nation was being tested at a Conference held within their gates, and their reputation for hospitality was on trial, such a thing could have been permit: ted to remain. This is a concrete example of a growing discourtesy that we have never known before in our dealings with the East, and it is a symbol of a change of attitude Jon the part of China that may not are|only wreck British interests within her borders, but may drive China herself our' of the "comity of ma-y tions.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.