the real Yellow Peril, is not the Chinese alone, or even the Chinese allied with the Japanese, but the Chinese led by the Russians. Thus the present disturbances in China have been a gain to Russia in every way. The Boxer movement and the siege of the Legations have opened the way for her obtaining all that she at present desires; the present disunion amongst the allies in China, the daily increasing tendency to follow the illadvised philanthropy of America, and avoid present difficulties rather than overcome them, promise the success of her designs in the future. The other Powers have thus far gained nothing whatever, and by their mutual jealousies, disunion, and vacillation display to the world their hopeless incapacity for dealing with the situation, convince the Chinese of the vanity of their pretensions and the emptiness of their threatenings, and prepare the way for a renewal of the disturbances and the further success of Russian encroachment. It would be vain to expect that the European Powers should take any strong line and carry it out to its fulfilment, but it is none the less painful to see the inevitable result of weakness growing daily nearer. If the first result of the siege, the ruin of a great city and the desolation of a fair province, is a consideration to make one weep, this second result is a consideration to make one alarmed for the future progress and peace of the world.

3. The present crisis has revealed an unexpected strength in the Chinese Government. It would appear that the Court has only to retire to some inaccessible city to render all Europe helpless. At Sian-fu the Emperor has only to wait until the times are changed, and the foreigners are forced by mutual disagreements to pray for his return. The country generally has shown no desire to seize this opportunity to rise and dethrone him. All the bitterness of the people is poured out upon the invader. No viceroy has repudiated his allegiance, no province has risen. Never have the people seemed so united. It is true that none obey his orders so implicitly as to draw down upon themselves the fury of the allied Powers; but none side with the allies or endeavour by their aid to set up an independent throne. Before the outbreak we heard frequent rumours that such was the design of Yuan Shih Kai in Shantung; since the outbreak such rumours have ceased. Before the outbreak there were continual insurrections against the Government in all parts of the country; since the outbreak the only risings have been those of men eager

to force the viceroys into active opposition to foreign invasion. It is true that at one time we heard of a Ming dynasty pretender in the south, but so little has he succeeded that his name is scarcely mentioned and is generally unknown. The Chinese Government has, therefore, managed to take up an almost impregnable position. The wrong which it has done cannot be avenged. The desecration of Peking, the desolation or even the depopulation of the whole province of Chihli are insults indeed, but not irrecoverable disasters. Cities have been sacked before in China, provinces have been wasted. With the proper official explanations the Chinese Government can return, if the way is made sufficiently easy, and prepare at its leisure for a new and more successful attempt.

4. The strength of the present Government is due, as we have seen, to the attachment of the people. But by nature the people dislike and writhe under the Manchu tyranny. That they have not seized this opportunity to cast off the yoke is due to the fact that for once Government and people are at one in a common hatred of the foreigner. If the siege of Peking had proved nothing else, it would have proved effectually that rulers and ruled are united in this one feeling and purpose. This hatred is due, not to any general dislike for strangers, from which the Chinese, as a rule, are singularly free, but, as I tried to point out in the November CORNHILL, to the deep-rooted conviction that the European intruders are men possessed of might, but destitute of any true sense of right, that their objects are not honest, nor their means praiseworthy. That the Powers, as a body, have not given the Chinese much reason to think otherwise, no one can deny. What, then, is the natural conclusion to be drawn from the siege, and the consequent action of the Powers? Have the allied forces given the Chinese any good reason to think that they are actuated by any better motives than they have displayed in the past? It is hard to believe that the better-class, sober-minded, industrious Chinese will be converted by the conduct of the campaign into the belief that after all these European Christians are guided solely by principles of benevolence, justice, sincerity, truth. It is hard to believe that the Chinese will hate them the less if they find at the end of a long and ghastly war that they are no better off than before, but have simply heavier burdens laid upon them by force of arms. But it is a matter of crucial importance that this hatred should be overcome. In dealing with

the South African problem no one fails to remember the necessity of using all possible means to overcome or weaken racial prejudices and ill-will. Surely, in dealing with the Chinese, this element in the problem cannot be disregarded. It is not enough to make peace anyhow, by mere brute force, or even by untimely concessions. It is absolutely necessary that the European Powers should keep ever in view the truth that peace enforced by fear alone is not good peace. It may be necessary for the moment to restrain the fierce outbreaks of hatred by force, but it is wiser and in the end better policy to devise means by which the causes of hatred may be gradually removed, and that can only be done by convincing the Chinese that the foreigner is guided by other motives than those of commercial and territorial greed.

5. The late disturbances have thrown singular and most instructive light upon the Chinese methods of action. The foreigners themselves prepared the way for the present miserable condition of affairs by stirring the hearts of the whole nation. against them. But few, if any, of the foreigners understood what good use the Chinese Government could make of the material which they so light-heartedly supplied. No one, I suppose, had any idea of the skill and secrecy with which the Government could foster and employ the rising force of the Chinese feeling. A few, no doubt, did prophesy that this feeling amongst the common people was fast coming to the point at which a second Tai Ping rising might be expected; but no one knew what careful measures the Court had taken to use that rising for its own ends. It was certainly a surprise to our military officers to find the whole country stocked with arms and ammunition sufficient to equip a countless host of volunteers. Yet such was the case. The

European Powers were prepared to meet the regular army of the State; they were utterly unprepared to meet the nation in arms. It is one thing to fight the Chinese Government when it thrusts into the field its host of soldiers, ill-armed, ill-fed, unled. The Japanese did that, and the world knows the result. It is quite another thing to meet the nation, armed indeed by the Government, but urged into action, not from above, but from below, not by arbitrary command from headquarters in a cause for which the fighting men care nothing, but by an internal natural impulse in a cause which every man understands and holds his own. Henceforward, as Sir Robert Hart has pointed out, the dread of the foreigner will not be the Government but the people, not the

paid army but the volunteers. Before that army European forces are useless. Against the Government, to win victories is to win the campaign; against the people, to win victories is to win nothing, unless victories are followed either by armed occupation or conversion. For then the moment the armed force retires the people rise again. I am not speaking, of course, of imaginary invasions of the West by hordes of Chinese, but of the peaceful pursuit by foreigners of commercial and other more or less useful projects in China. Few people in England understand at all the power of the Chinese democracy. The Government in China must have behind it the goodwill or the acquiescence of the people or it fails. Mr. A. R. Colquhoun, in his Transformation of China,' pointed this out with sufficient clearness. Now at the present moment the allied forces have to deal not only with the Government but with the people. They may be able to coerce the Government. How can they coerce the people? The Government has shown that it follows, and by following leads, the people. It must either follow, and so lead, or perish. In the future it will act, as it has ever done, with the most consummate skill in combining the forces of autocracy with those of democracy. The past few months have shown plainly enough what will be the inevitable result and the means by which it will be pursued.

6. The only hope for the future lies, then, in one of two courses. Sir Robert Hart is perfectly right when he argues that the only choice lies between the partition and the Christianisation of China. Partition seems to be out of the question; the Christianisation of China, Sir Robert Hart says, lies outside the limits of practical propagandism. It is doubtless true that there is no hope of such a miraculous spread of Christianity as 'to convert China into the friendliest of friendly Powers, and the foremost patron of all that makes for peace and goodwill.' Yet on this question, wherein lies truly the only hope of the future, the late siege has thrown much light. If there seems no hope of the progress of Christianity removing the peril which threatens European intercourse with China, there does seem good hope that the spread of Christian missions may greatly mitigate its horrors. In Peking the Europeans were saved by the native Christians. Few people outside the small circle of students of missionary annals had any idea that there were such numbers of Christians in Peking; the foreign Ministers themselves seem to have regarded their presence as likely rather to increase than to lighten the danger of the besieged.

The event proved here the truth which the history of European wars all over the East and in Africa has abundantly proved elsewhere, that Christian natives are the strongest support which the European can find in the event of any trouble with heathen races. In other words, Christian stands by Christian, racial instincts give way to religious. Thus in the present problem these two facts stand out clearly as of the first importance: (1) the advance of Christianity is generally, by politicians, largely underrated; (2) the conduct of the native Christians shows the power of this motive to make men stand by those from whom they have received spiritual benefits. In Chinese language, the Christian becomes infected with a poison which does eradicate from his heart that hatred for the foreign devil which the heathen regards as natural, proper, and patriotic. Furthermore, the influence of Christianity in China or in any other place is not to be gauged by the number of baptised converts. I heard, while actually writing these lines, that a year ago the British Consul in Pakhoi warned a medical missionary from setting foot in a village not more than three miles from the city, because of the known hostility of the people. In that village there are to-day only six baptised Christians, of whom two or three are children; yet the state of public opinion has been so altered that the villagers will not suffer even the children in the streets to shout after a foreigner the mild abuse of 'foreign devil' without visiting the offence with a sound thrashing. In the article in the Standard' from which I quoted above the conversation between Sir Robert Hart and the Peking banker as illustrating the ignorance of the people in things political, the author adds: The only people who can and do gradually correct these notions, and give the people an inkling of the truth, are the despised missionaries.' Where go the missionaries, there go the influences which tend to remove racial prejudice and increase sound knowlege.

Any one who takes the trouble to read carefully Mr. Michie's pamphlet Christianity in China,' or the chapter in Lord Curzon's 'Problems of the Far East' which deals with the missionary question, may easily gain a view of the vast difficulties with which Christianity, as it is at present propagated, has to contend. But

he

may get only a one-sided and distorted view. The real truth lies here: If Christianity, burdened with all these disadvantages, yet been able to accomplish and is accomplishing so much, how great would be its success if it were taught rationally and

has