The attitude of the Peiping residents towards their new masters is not so very surprising to those who know their history. Listen to what an eyewitness has to say in that stormy summer of the Boxer Year, just after the Allied armies had entered Peking:—
"My attention was attracted by the similarity of the occupation which now appeared to be engaging numbers the people on the side streets, The occupation was plainly a doubtful one. Since as soon as we were seen every e fled indoors. AN had been standing scraping away at the door-posts wiin any instruments which came handy; and one could hear this scratching and screeching distinctly in the distance as one approached AIL these people had been scraping off little diamond-shaped pieces of red paper pasted on their door-posts; and these papers were written a number of characters, which proclaimed. the adherence of all the inmates to the tenets. of the Boxers. In their few weeks' reign this Chinese sansculottism had succeeded in imposing its will on all. Every one was. implicated. the Whole city had been in the plot.
Inside the house I had singled out we found only old women and young boys; We rest had all fled. Spread on ihe ground were pieces of white cloth on which flags were being rudely fashioned—Japanese, English, French and some others. "They were changing their colours, all these people, as fast as they could, and farther on we found these protecting insignia already flying boldly" from every house. Everybody wished to be friends."
Summing it up, the general explanation given for working together with the Japanese, whether by the humblest rickshaw coolie or the highest official runs something like this: "Well, I've got to earn my living. I can't let my family starve. We've got to live somehow.
"One has got to live" pleads the thief in extenuation, in that well-known French story. But the judge's retort: "I don't see the necessity," would be quite lost on a Chinese audience.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.