YU HSIEN APPOINTED GOVERNOR OF SHANTUNG, REMOVED BY BRITISH DEMANDS, ONLY TO BE REWARDED—YUAN-SHIH KAI SUCCEEDS HIM—CAUSES OF HATRED OF CONVERTS BY PEOPLE AND BOXERS—THE BOXERS AND THEIR TENETS—THE EMPRESS CONSULTS ASTROLOGERS

WITH the appointment of the Manchu Yu Hsien as Governor of Shantung province, to be the successor to the anti-foreign Li Ping Heng, whose removal the Germans had succeeded in effecting, commenced the governmental recognition of the Boxers’ society as an agent to expel missionaries, merchants, and diplomats alike. This man, whose hatred of foreigners exceeded that of his predecessor, was no sooner in office than he caused the literati all over the province to revive among the masses the “Great Sword” and “Boxer” organizations, which had been a bit shaken by the removal of their encourager, Li Ping Heng.

The foreign residents of Shantung, who had hoped the new government would be an improvement over the old, soon found they were worse off than before. The native Christians were persecuted most bitterly by their heathen neighbors, and their complaints at the yamens treated with disdain.

Yu Hsien did his work thoroughly and rapidly, knowing the foreign power which had compelled the removal of Li Ping Heng would also cause his removal. But as he was only placed in Shantung for the deliberate purpose of making trouble, his removal would mean for him a better post as the reward of his success.

This came when the “Boxers” of Chianfu prefecture attacked and murdered a young missionary of the Church of England named Brookes, who was traveling from Chianfu city to his station of P’ingyin.

The British government demanded his removal from office, and the Chinese government acquiesced; but their treatment of him upon his arrival in Peking alone would have sufficed for an intelligent observer to make clear the policy of the Empress without any other confirmatory evidence, abundance of which, however, was not lacking.

Instead of being reprimanded, we find him granted immediate audience with the Empress, and the next day’s Court Gazette informed an astonished world that the Empress had written with her own brush the character “Fu,” happiness, and conferred it upon him publicly. Then followed his appointment as Governor of Shansi, a rich mineral province in which the “Peking Syndicate,” an Anglo-Italian company promoted by Lord Rothschild, held valuable concessions. In this province, too, were the long-worked missionary establishments of the American Board (Congregationalist) and the China Inland Missions.

The Chinese all understood this as an appreciative approval from the Empress, and so, too, did all the older foreign residents; but the diplomatic corps, beyond a feeble remonstrance from the British and United States ministers, did nothing. So, to-day Yu Hsien is pursuing in Shansi the same policy he did in Shantung, the results of which must turn out similarly.

The Empress appointed as successor to Yu Hsien the man who had turned traitor to the unfortunate young Emperor, Kuang Hsu, Yuanshih Kai. This man is well known to foreigners. He was formerly Chinese resident at Seoul, and it was largely due to him that the China-Japan war occurred. After the war he was made commanding-general of a force of foreign-drilled troops stationed at Hsiao Chan, south of Tientsin.

Yuan is one of the shrewdest and most unscrupulous men of China, and the Empress, in rewarding him by this appointment for his service to her in making known the Emperor’s purpose to send her into captivity, gave power to a man who would desert her, when it suited him, as quickly as he had the weak, but well-meaning, Emperor.

Yuan, upon his arrival in Shantung, found himself in a difficult position. If he encouraged the Boxers he would make enemies of the foreigners. If he was severe with the Boxers he would be removed by the Empress, influenced as she was by General Tung Fu Hsiang and his cabal.

Being a man of great wealth and having a perfect knowledge of the situation, he steered a course that would obviate his striking on either rock. He subscribed to the Boxer organizations where they obeyed him, and punished them where they were refractory, and soon had Shantung, which was in a ferment when he took charge, fairly well in hand.

He gave it to be understood that they would, in time, be able to exterminate foreigners; but they must patiently drill and practice gymnastics until such time as he considered that they had reached perfection, and must not on any account injure a foreigner too early, as it would bring down trouble before the government was prepared to meet it. At the same time he allowed them to pillage and murder the native Christians freely, well knowing this would please the Court, and would not be actively taken up by the foreign powers as an infringement of treaty-rights, which it certainly was.

Evidently his idea was, too, that Tung Fu Hsiang’s plan to drive out and exterminate all foreigners was an entirely impossible one, and that if he could keep his province from committing any overt act that would lead to a foreign war, for a year’s time, the Chihli authorities, all the Manchus, and Tung Fu Hsiang himself would have brought on the war and ruined themselves, while he, Yuan, would then have a chance to cut loose from the conservatives, and come to the front in the new regime, which must come, as a reformer. That he will do this I fearlessly prophesy.

The Boxer organization was not started by Tung Fu Hsiang, but was, by his advice, given imperial sanction and infused with new life and activity. A similar organization, known in olden times in China under the same name, was a volunteer militia for national defense. The recent revival has not only been for defense, but to exterminate the Christian religion and the people who brought it.

That the Chinese people have much to complain of from the aggressive attitude of many native Christians, and particularly the Roman Catholic Christians, no sane man will deny. For years it has been the practice of the priests and of many of the Protestant missionaries to assist their converts in lawsuits against the heathens, and to exert an unjust influence in their behalf. To “get even” with an enemy it is only necessary for a convert to tell his priest or pastor that he has been persecuted in some way for his religious belief, to induce the missionary to take up the cudgel in his defense. I have heard heathen Chinese often assert that these men (converts) appear good enough to their priests, who see very little of their ordinary behavior, but behind the father’s back they are overbearing and malicious to all their neighbors, who hate them because they fear them.

After years of residence in China, I have come to the conclusion that it has been a mistake of the Powers to insert in their treaties provisions making the preaching of Christianity a treaty-right, in spite of Chinese objection. Nearly all of the riots in China have come from attempts to force the Chinese officials to stamp deeds conveying property to missionaries for residences or chapels. The animosity incurred in forcing a missionary establishment upon an interior city, town, or village is not obliterated in a lifetime. It may be barely tolerated in time of peace, only to be demolished when the country is disturbed. This applies to the China that has been—barbarian, uncivilized China.

Should the reformers come into power, and religious toleration be granted as the result of civilization, then there would be no reason why the missionaries should not work in the more remote parts of the empire; but China, as it has been and is, would be much more peaceful for all concerned if the proselyting work was carried on only in the treaty ports. I don’t expect any of the missionary body to agree to this statement, but doubtless many of their supporters, thinking people, who will take the trouble to reason it out, will believe it, supported as it is by the testimony of all the residents of China acquainted with the problem. There are many reasons for the Chinaman’s hatred of the foreigners, but his religion is the chief one.

In the late riots the railways have been attacked and destroyed, but that came only after a half-year’s successful campaign against the converts had led them to want to root out the people who brought both the religion and the railways. While I am a Christian myself, and would gladly see China a Christian nation, I cannot help seeing that the policy which has been pursued in forcing Christianity upon the Chinese, in the aggressive manner we have, practically at the point of the sword, has not been a success, and has given to such men as Tung Fu Hsiang a powerful argument with which to persuade his ignorant followers to exterminate alike the foreigner and his converts.

The Boxers are principally of two sorts: the ignorant villager and the city loafer or vagabond. The first easily becomes a fanatical enthusiast; the latter has joined simply to obtain loot. When it became an assured fact that the Empress sanctioned the movement the ranks were rapidly filled, because rewards and preferment were held out as inducements to serve, and the majority of China’s population, being poverty-stricken in the extreme, would join any movement that promised an increased income. The Boxer headquarters was the palace of Prince Tuan in Peking. From this place emissaries were sent with instructions, first into Shantung and afterward throughout Chihli, to coÖperate with the already-existing secret societies, as well as to organize new companies. Every city, town, and village was visited, the head men consulted, and the young men and boys enrolled.

Their gymnastic exercises, from which they derive their name, were taught them, and they were promised that when they had attained perfection they would be given service under the Empress with good pay and rapid promotion. They were told that if they would go regularly through the ceremonies prescribed every day, in from three to six months they would acquire indomitable courage, and would be invulnerable to bullets and sword-cuts, and that the youngest child would be a match for a grown man of the uninitiated. That thousands believed this nonsense there is no doubt; and thousands of little boys from ten years of age upward eagerly enrolled. The exercise consisted of bowing low to the ground, striking the forehead into the earth three times each toward the east, then south, then throwing themselves upon their backs and lying motionless for several minutes, after which they would throw themselves from side to side a number of times, and, finally rising, go through a number of posturings, as though warding off blows and making passes at an enemy. As a uniform they were given a red turban, a red sash to cross the chest, and red “tae tzio,” or wide tape, to tie in the trousers at the ankle.

The time set for their uprising was fixed for the Chinese eighth moon, seventeenth day, being two days after the annual “harvest festival,” or pa yueh chieh. The premature explosion of the movement was not anticipated by those who originated it, but it is largely due to its going off at half-cock, so to speak, that enabled the Powers to combat it so readily after they were aware of its existence as a real government agency.

Doubtless the government intended before that time to give arms and ammunition to all grown men; but, in the first place, they were to arm themselves with swords and spears only. They were told, among other things, that at the time of their uprising myriads of regiments of angelic soldiers would descend from the skies to assist them in their righteous war against foreigners.

The Empress herself believed this story as well as the possibility of their being invulnerable to foreign bullets. She is exceedingly superstitious, and in the early part of May consulted the Chinese planchette to read her destiny. Two blind men, holding the instrument under a silk screen, wrote in the prepared sand underneath the following message from the spiritual world:

“Ta Chieh Lin T’ou
Hung Hsieh Hung Liu
Pai Ku Ch’ung Ch’ung
Chin Tsai Chin Ch’in
Tan Kan
T’ieh Ma Tung Hsi Tscu
Shui Shih Shui Fei
Ts’ai pai shiu.”

The interpretation of this would read in English:

“The millennium is at hand;
Blood will flow like a deluge;
Bleaching bones everywhere
Will this autumn time be seen.
Moreover, the iron horse
Will move from east to west;
Who’s right and who’s wrong
Will then be clearly established.”

The millennium is used by the Chinese as a critical period in a cycle of years. The iron horse is supposed to mean war. The Empress understood this to mean that in the war which she intended to commence it would be clearly shown by her success that she was right.

The Boxers, however, completely spoiled all her plans by their eagerness to obtain loot. Being promised the spoil of the foreigners after the contemplated uprising in the eighth moon, they regarded the property of the Christians and their teachers as already mortgaged to them; and, fearful lest the government troops would acquire some of it, they commenced the campaign themselves before the appointed time. How the government at first made feeble efforts to restrain them, and afterward completely gave in and joined with them is now a matter of history.

The monumental idiocy of the idea that China could successfully defy the whole civilized world was only possible to such brains as those possessed by the densely ignorant Manchus who surrounded the Empress as her cabinet. Several of the tsung-li-yamen ministers, like Prince Ch’ing and Liao Shou Heng, weakly tried to reason them out of it, and were promptly given back seats.

Of the others remaining in the tsung-li-yamen after their retirement, none dared say anything against the movement for fear they also would be shelved. But as they were not strong enough to please the Empress in her final dealings with the foreigners, she, a few days before the commencement of the siege, appointed Prince Tuan as head of the yamen, in place of Prince Ch’ing, and at the same time appointed two fire-eating foreign-haters, Chi Shui and Na T’ung, to seats in that obstructive body. These men, with Tung Fu Hsiang and the cabinet, must be held responsible for the murders of Baron von Ketteler, F. Huberty James, David Oliphant, H. Warren, Ed Wagner, and the other civilians and guards killed during the siege, as well as for many missionaries in the province that have doubtless perished, but of whose fate we, being besieged, had no certain knowledge.

That the Powers, in the settlement of their crimes, will treat them as murderers, as they are, we can scarcely doubt, and we hope none of them in any way implicated will be allowed to escape capital punishment.