New Forces in Old China Fresh Reason To Hate The Foreigner

XXVI



OF course, the victorious march of the Allies upon Peking, the capture of the city, the flight of the Emperor and the Empress Dowager and the humiliating terms of peace taught the Chinese anew their helplessness before the modern equipment of western nations and the necessity of learning the methods of the white man if they were ever to hold their own against him. But defeat, while always hard to bear, does not always embitter the conquered against the conqueror. On the contrary, there are evidences that the Chinese respect and like the Japanese far more since they were soundly whipped by them in 1894 and 1895. In considering, therefore, the effect upon the Chinese of the suppression of the Boxer uprising, we must bear in mind not so much the fact of victory by the Allies as the treatment which they accorded their prostrate foe. Was that treatment dignified and just? Did the soldiers of alleged Christian nations behave with the sobriety and fairness which so eminently characterized the Japanese troops after the China-Japan War? Have the Chinese reason to regard foreigners in the future as men who will sternly punish injustice and treachery, but who are at the same time as moral and humane and trustworthy as might be reasonably expected of the representatives of a higher civilization and a purer religion? For answer, let us turn to the conduct of the allied armies, led by experienced officers of high rank and working in harmony with diplomatic officials who were supposed to incarnate the spirit and methods of the most enlightened nations of the earth. The testimony of witnesses will be interesting.

Dr. Arthur H. Smith, who was in Peking at the time, writes:--

``Bating all exaggerations, it remains true that scores of walled cities have been visited by armed bodies of foreign soldiers, the district magistrate-- and sometimes the Prefect--held up and bullied to force him to pay a large sum of money, with no other reason than the imperative demand and the threat of dire consequences on refusal. In one case the Russians kidnapped the Prefect of Yung-ping-fu and carried him off to Port Arthur. At Ting-chou the French did the same to the sub-prefect, the only energetic magistrate in all that region, bearing him in triumph to Paoting-fu and leaving the district to Boxers and to chaos. At Tsang-chou the Germans came in force, looted the yamen of General Mei, the only Chinese officer of rank who had been constantly fighting and destroying Boxers for nearly a year, drove him away and released all the Boxer prisoners in the jails of the city, plundering the yamen of the friendly and efficient sub-prefect who had saved the lives of the foreign families close by the city. Is it any wonder that General Mei complained that s on eight sides he had no face left.' . . . The robbery of Chinese on the way home with the avails of their day's work has been systematically carried on by some of the soldiers from Christian lands. Even foreigners are `held up' on the street by drunken soldiers, and it is becoming necessary never to go out without one's revolver--a weapon generally quite superfluous in almost any part of China.''

Bishop D. H. Moore, of the Methodist Church, who hurried to Peking as soon as the way was open, wrote:--

``You can hardly form any conception of the exposure and hardships under any but the American and Japanese flags. The English have scarcely any but the Sikhs, who are lustful and lootful to a degree. The Russians are brutal and the Germans deserve their reputation for brutality. With Lowry and Hobart, I responded to the agonizing appeal of a husband to drive out a German corporal who, on duty and armed, had run him off and was mistreating his wife. The instance is but one of hundreds of daily occurrence. The French are very devils at this sort of outrage. On the advance to Peking, beyond Tung-chou, they found married families-- men, women and children--cowering in barges on the canal and volleyed into them. Every man, every cart, every boat must fly a flag. Coolies are cruelly impressed and often cruelly mistreated. The great Christian nations of the world are being represented in China by robbing, raping, looting soldiery. This is part of China's punishment; but what will she think of Christianity? Of course, our soldiers are the best behaved; but there are desperate characters in every army.''

Captain Frank Brinkley, the editor of the Japan Weekly Mail, penned the following indignant paragraph:--

``It sends a thrill of horror through every white man's bosom to learn that forty missionary women and twenty-five little children were butchered by the Boxers. But in Tung-chou alone, a city where the Chinese made no resistance and where there was no fighting, 573 Chinese women of the upper classes committed suicide rather than survive the indignities they had suffered. Women of the lower classes fared similarly at the hands of the soldiers, but were not unwilling to survive their shame. With what show of consistency is the Occident to denounce the barbarity of the Chinese, when Occidental soldiers go to China and perpetrate the very acts which constitute the very basis of barbarity?''

When I asked the Rev. Dr. D. Z. Sheffield, for many years a missionary of the American Board in Tung-chou, whether this statement was accurate, he replied that it was not only true, but that it was an understatement of the truth.

Fay Chi Ho, an intelligent and reliable Chinese Christian, gives the following account of what he personally saw:--

``I travelled with a British convoy going by boat, occupying quarters on a Major's boat with his Sikh soldiers and cook. I know that the Major was not a Christian man, for he smoked and drank all day long and was constantly cursing, striking and kicking his men, especially his cook. He also gave his orders in loud tones, with fierce mien and glaring eyes, and we all feared him exceedingly. Every day at noon the Major would take four Sikhs and go to villages several miles from the river for loot, always compelling me to accompany him as interpreter. He would catch the first man whom he saw in a village and compel him to act as guide to the homes of the rich. So successful was he on these raids that by the time he reached Tung-chou, he had three new carts, three donkeys, five or six sheep, and much clothing and bric-a-brac.

``One day about noon, we reached a village from which most of the people had fled, and entering a home of wealth found there only a man about fifty or sixty years old who received us very courteously. Immedi- ately the Major demanded money, and the old man replied that though he had money it was not at hand. The Major then commanded his soldiers to bind him, while he himself went into the house to search for money. He found several weapons, among them a revolver and a sword with a red scarf bound on the handle. So he insisted that the old man must be a Boxer, and shot him with his own hand as he lay bound. As usual he impressed ten or more young men in the village to carry his loot, then compelled the strongest of them to remain and drag his boats.... Later, my brother told me in detail how some Sikhs had come to the village one day, and, seizing him and several neighbours, had tied a rope to their queues, then stringing them together like mules, with men leading in front and driving behind, had taken them to the river bank to drag boats. My brother had never done such work before. Wading in mud and water, sometimes up to his waist, with the whip lash to urge him on, he had dragged until nightfall, and then, not being allowed to sleep on the boat, had lain down on the wet river bank.''

During my own visit in north China in the summer of 1901, I visited the hospital of the London Mission in Tien-tsin, immortalized by John Kenneth Mackenzie. I found that it was being used as a hospital for British soldiers who were suffering from venereal diseases. What a spectacle for the Chinese! What a coarse travesty of the religion of the pure Nazarene that the land from which the great British missionary came should crowd with foul white men the hospital that he had built with faith and love and prayer! In the same city, the fine Y. M. C. A. building was almost deserted by the Chinese because it was so situated that to reach it they would have to pass through the Taku Road in the Foreign Settlement, a street which was a cesspool of vice, lined with saloons, dance halls and gambling hells, and its sidewalks so crowded with fast women--French, German, American and Japanese--and with drunken, quarrelling foreign soldiers, that no respectable Chinese, or for that matter no decent foreign woman, could traverse it without fear of insult or abuse.

In Peking for several months after the relief of the legations, even respectable American ladies, to say nothing of Chinese women, could not prudently ride out except in closed carts, so great was the probability of indignity at the hands of foreign soldiers; while at the entrance of famous palaces, the ``public is politely requested not to kick the Chinese attendants because they decline to open doors which they are forbidden to unlock'' --a request that the conduct of foreigners had shown to be far from unnecessary.

In the pillaging of property, savages could not have been more lawless than the white men from ``the highly civilized nations of the West.''

``It is not literally true that every house in Peking was looted. There were some places in obscure alleys, and in many of the innumerable and almost impenetrable cul-de-sacs with which the capital abounds, that escaped. But persistent inquiry appears to leave no doubt of the fact that practically every yamen in the city has been rummaged, and practically there is nothing left of the contents of any of them.''

Words fail me to describe the beauties of the famous Summer Palace outside the city. With its gardens, temples, pagodas, bridges, lotus-ponds, statues, colonnades, walks and drives, it would do credit to the most highly civilized nation of Europe. A barbarous people could never have made such a paradise. The British and French in 1860 burned a considerable part of it, but the enclosure is so vast and the buildings are so numerous that the destroyed section appears almost insignificant. Within the grounds is a beautiful lake, fed by great springs and bordered by temples and avenues of trees and the yellow-roofed palaces of the Emperor, while near by rise the Western Hills.

This Palace is the favourite residence of the Empress Dowager and she spends long summers there. Here, too, the Emperor loves to come during the heated term and both have followed the example of their imperial predecessors in lavishing great sums upon its adornment.

After the siege the Russians occupied it at first, and when they left, the British and Italians took possession. Between the three so little was left that I found devastation reigning in that once splendidly-furnished Palace. All the rare and costly bric-a-brac had been carried away, the mirrors had been broken and the permanent ornaments defaced. A noble bronze statue of Buddha, in the temple crowning the summit of the hill, was lying ignominiously on the floor among a pile of debris, one dark hand stiffly pointing into the air. In a stately pavilion, I saw two superb golden statues of Buddha standing upright and looking unusually dignified, but on going behind them, I found that great holes had been punched in their backs.

Even the places dedicated to science and religion were not spared. At the celebrated Astronomical Observatory not an instrument was left. Every one had been carried off by the orders of men high in authority at the French and German Legations, and the whole place was totally wrecked. What possible excuse could there have been for destroying a place for studying the heavens? At the Examination Grounds, consecrated for centuries to learning and memorable for the myriads of China's brightest men who have there demonstrated their fitness, according to China's methods, for high preferment--at these Examination Grounds, most of the 8,500 cells had been stripped of their woodwork to cook the rations of the European armies, roofs had been torn off and even stone walls had been injured in sheer wantonness.

The Temple to the Gods of Land and Grain and the Temple for Rain are sacred places to the Chinese. To the latter the Emperor comes in solemn state in time of drought to pray for rain, or, if he cannot come, he sends the highest official of his realm. It is in a spacious park and the buildings must have been stately and handsome before the Boxer outbreak. But when I saw them, they were sadly defaced. The stone balus- trades and ornaments had been broken off, the walls had been injured and one of the buildings was in ruins.

It was, of course, inevitable that much havoc should be wrought in the tumult of war. It was necessary that supplies for half-naked and famished besieged thousands should be taken from deserted grain and clothing-shops. It was expedient that certain public buildings should be destroyed by order of the allied generals as a warning for the future. But why were soldiers and thieves allowed to steal the bric-a-brac and furniture and break the mirrors of the Emperor's personal apartments, wantonly to shatter beautiful columns, deface rare works of art, punch holes in gilded statues, maliciously smash the heads of thousands of exquisitely-carved figures and lions, and wreck venerable places associated with learning and art? The world is poorer for some of this havoc, and it will be a generation before it can be remedied, if indeed, some of the edifices are ever restored to their former beauty. Can we wonder that the Chinese continue to hate and fear the foreigner? The New York Times declared that ``every outrage perpetrated on foreigners in China has been repaid tenfold by the brutalities perpetrated by the allied armies. It is,'' added the editor, ``simply monstrous that the armies of Christian nations, sent out to punish barbarism and protect the rights of foreigners in China, should themselves be guilty of barbarism. Revenge has been accompanied by mean and cruel and flagrant robbery. The story is one to fill all rational minds with disgust and shame.''

The exasperation of the Chinese has not been diminished by the virtual fortifications which the foreign Powers have erected in the imperial capital since the crushing of the Boxer uprising. Most of the Legations took advantage of the panic and confusion which followed the raising of the siege, to seize large tracts adjoining their former compounds. The native buildings upon them were demolished. Massive walls were erected and cannon mounted upon them. Over the water-gate in the city wall, through which the allied troops entered the city, the Powers have cut a new gateway which they hold and guard. In addition, they have taken possession of all that part of the city wall which commands Legation Street, made barricades and built a fort upon it opposite the German Legation. Foreign soldiers patrol that wall night and day. On the other side of the Legations, a wide space has been cleared by destroying hundreds of Chinese dwellings and shops, and no buildings or trees or obstructions of any kind are allowed on that space, which can thus be swept by rifle and Gatling-gun fire in the event of any future trouble. Within, ample stores of arms, ammunition and food have been stored so that if another outbreak should occur, the Legations cannot be besieged as they were in the memorable summer of 1900.

All this, of course, is perfectly natural and perhaps necessary. The Legations would be deemed lacking in ordinary prudence if they did not guard against the repetition of their grievous experiences during the Boxer uprising. But looking at the matter from the view-point of the Chinese, can we marvel that it is resented? Would not a European government be stung to the quick if other nations were to fortify themselves in that fashion at its capital? Would Americans endure it for a day at Washington?

Altogether, it must be admitted that the writer of ``Letters of a Chinese Official'' has all too much reason to arraign western civilization as sordid, arrogant and cruel and to assert that Europeans and Americans, while pretending to follow the teachings of Christ, are really ignoring them. His words are bitter:--

``Yes, it is we who do not accept it that practice the gospel of peace; it is you who accept it that trample it under foot. And irony of ironies! --it is the nations of Christendom who have come to us to teach us by sword and fire that Right in this world is powerless unless it be supported by Might. Oh, do not doubt that we shall learn the lesson! And woe to Europe when we have acquired it. You are arming a nation of four hundred millions, a nation which, until you came, had no better wish than to live at peace with themselves and all the world. In the name of Christ you have sounded the call to arms! In the name of Confucius we respond!''

And he closes the book as follows:--

``Unless you of the West will come to realize the truth, unless you will understand that the events which have shaken Europe are the Nemesis of a long course of injustice and oppression; unless you will learn that the profound opposition between your civilization and ours gives no more ground why you should regard us as barbarians than we you, unless you will treat us as a civilized power and respect our customs and our laws; unless you will accord us the treatment you would accord to any European nation and refrain from exacting conditions you would never dream of imposing on a Western power--unless you will do this, there is no hope of any peace between us. You have humiliated the proudest nation in the world; you have outraged the most upright and just; with what results is now abundantly manifest.''

Whether the author is really a Chinese official as he claims to be, or a European resident in China writing under a Chinese pseudonym, there can be no doubt that he fairly represents the opinions of the old, conservative, ferociously irreconcilable mandarin class regarding the white man. Western nations, in their plans regarding the future of China, must take into consideration the existence of that spirit and the acts which, while not creating it, have intensified and inflamed it till it has come to be something to be reckoned with. Undoubtedly, one of the lessons that the Chinese have learned from defeat is bitterer hatred of the alien whose vandalisms and atrocities were so shameful as to nullify, in part at least, the benefit that might otherwise have resulted.

I am glad to report that, with the single exception of the Japanese who were universally assigned the first place from the view-point of good behaviour, I heard fewer complaints regarding the American troops than any other. One Colonel, indeed, lamented that his regiment ``was thoroughly demoralized,'' and there were some instances of intemperance and lawlessness, in one case a Japanese patrol bringing in several American soldiers who had been found at midnight in a Chinese house. But as a whole, the conduct of the Americans was much better than that of most of the Europeans. That the Chinese felt the difference was apparent in the number of American flags that they raised over their houses and shops. It was significant, too, that the districts of the city that were occupied by European regiments were avoided, as far as possible, by the Chinese, while the district controlled by the Americans was thronged.

Nor need any American be ashamed of the policy of his Government. It is true that the majority of the Americans in China believe that our national policy, prior to and during the Boxer uprising, was weak and short-sighted. They spoke highly of Minister Conger and several of the American Consuls, particularly of Consul John Fowler, at Chefoo. But I was repeatedly told that our Government did not appear to realize that there were any other American citizens or properties in China than those in the Peking Legation; that it did practically nothing to rescue its citizens in the prefecture of Paoting-fu and the province of Shan-si; that, while Americans condemn the policy of the European Powers, they have been for years sponging benefits secured by them for all foreigners; and that, if it had not been for their control of the situation, not an American could have lived in China. The opinion was well-nigh universal that the Washington Administration was too much influenced by the astute Chinese Minister, Wu Ting- fang, who was believed to be an adept in ``the ways that are dark and the tricks that are vain,'' and whose alleged success in ``hoodwinking the Government and people of the United States'' provoked the average foreigner in the Far East to the use of strong language.

Though I confess that I am not able satisfactorily to explain the course of our Government in some important particulars, it seems to me that these sweeping criticisms are too severe. During the dark days of the siege of Peking, I was brought into frequent correspondence with President McKinley and Secretary of State Hay, and I vividly and gratefully remember the sympathy and cooperation which they invariably gave. They were as anxious as any one, and tried to do their best in circumstances new, strange and of extraordinary difficulty. As for the Chinese Minister to the United States, of course he did what he could to ``save face'' for his country. That was an essential part of his duty. But while we cannot always agree with him, we should, as friends of China recognize the fact that by his ability and tact, he largely increased popular interest in and respect for the Chinese people.

Taking our Government's policy as a whole, I believe that it has been more in accord with Christian principles than that of any other nation. If our Government has erred in trusting the Chinese too much, that is ,at least better than erring by trusting them too little. If it has failed to do for its own citizens all that it ought to have done, it has not wronged or humiliated the Chinese Government. There is no blood of Chinese women and children on the hands of Americans in China. No record of outrage and iniquity blackens the page on which the American part of the Boxer outbreak is written. If our nation has been unjust to any, it has been to its own. Generations will pass before the northern provinces will forget the bitterness of resentment which they now feel towards the European Powers. But already the Chinese are beginning to understand that the American Government is a friend; that it does not seek their territory; that it will not be a party to extortion; that it does not want to destroy China but to save her; that its object is not to rule her, but to fit her to rule herself, and that it desires only freedom for its citizens to trade and to communicate those ideas of religion which we ourselves originally received from the East, which have brought to us inestimable blessings, and which will, in China as in America, result in the noblest character for the individual and the most stable institutions for the state.

The Chinese keenly appreciate the fresh evidence of America's spirit of justice in connection with the payment of the indemnity. When, before the payment of the first installment in 1902, the fall in the value of the silver tael led the European Powers to insist that China should pay in gold, thereby virtually increasing the indemnity, it was the United States again which did everything in its power to moderate the demands of the European nations. If the legislative branch of the American Government would only deal as justly with the Chinese in the United States as the State Department deals with the Chinese in China, the era of good feeling would be greatly promoted.

But America is not prominent enough in China to make her example a determinate factor in the attitude of the Empire towards foreigners, nor are the people as a whole likely to discriminate in favour of a few Americans among the hosts of aggressive, grasping, domineering Europeans.

Moreover, the majority of the Chinese hear only what their scholars and officials tell them, and these worthies are careful to adjust the account to suit their own purposes, and to save the national ``face.'' They blandly assure the credulous people that the foreign armies did not follow the court because they dared not; that the alien troops left the capital because they were driven out by Chinese patriots; and that the Boxers inflicted crushing defeat upon their foes. During my visit in Tsing- tau, the Germans were digging sewers, broad and deep, with laterals to every house and public building, and many of the Chinese actually believed that these sewers were intended to be underground passageways, down which the foreigners could flee to their boats when they were assailed by the redoubtable Boxers! The best-informed men I met in China, from Sir Robert Hart down, were fearful that the end was not near, and that an official order might repeat the whole bloody history. At a conference with forty representative missionaries of all denominations in Shanghai, August, 1901, a very large majority agreed with the Rev. Dr. Parker, of the Southern Methodist Church, in the statement: ``We are not out of the trouble yet; the reactonaries are in the minority, but they are in power. They have learned nothing and they will try again to drive us out unless the Powers unseat them and reinstate the Emperor and the Reform Party.''