December 1, 1900.]
THE MASSACRES OF MISSIONARIES.
427
course would cause differences and possibly another little war, and they are willing therefore to be prodigal in promises, believ ing that the fulfilment of such promises may be deferred, on one plea or another, for an indefinite period. Russia is playing into China's hands meantime, with a selfish pur- pose in view. When all the other demands have been met in some way or other, the astute Muscovite will turn up with his little bill for the accommodation. It is the duty of the other Powers to baulk this strategy and to force the hands of the Chinese Government, easy one, and there will be many tempta- The task may not prove an tions to deviate from it, but we trust the newly-formed Anglo-Teutonic agreement will prove impervious to all allurements in the shape of self-interest, and outlast any attempts at new combinations for unworthy purposes.
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT. wives and children sought refuge with three Belgian priests at Houpa. The Catholic Mission was attacked by the mob, and all the (Daily Press, 24th November.) missionaries, both Protestant and Catholic, By somewhat slow degrees truth as to the were burned to death in the building. Mr. fate of various missionaries in the interior and Mrs. GREEN and Miss GREGG of the of north and north-western China is coming China Inland Mission at Huolu, in Shansi, to light. The tale is grievous and the de- who have escaped with their bare lives after tails sad and sickening. The unfortunate almost incredible sufferings and hardships, teachers of the Christian religion and their to which their little daughter, succumbed, flocks have experienced almost every cruelty have been telling the story of their journey and torture that have ever been known and to Paotingfu and deliverance there. They practised by a callous-hearted race. Neither left their home at Huolu on the 6th July youth nor age nor sex has been spared. with the intention of proceeding to Tientsin, The innocence of childhood, the helplessness and after running the gauntlet of several of womanhood, the white hair of the aged dangers, arrived at Tsing-yuan, where they have alike failed to awaken one sentiment of were betrayed to a party of Boxers by a pity, one feeling of compassion in the minds youth who had hypocritically professed of the Boxers and their official patrons. sympathy with their forlorn plight. The The mandate had gone forth that they were Boxers dragged them out of the house in to slay and spare not, and the Boxers had which they had sought refuge by the hair no bowels of compassion to be moved, while of their heads, and beat and kicked them the mandarins who gave the or lers seldom unmercifully. They were then bound hand had the courage to see them carried out, and to foot behind their bodies, i.e. right hand to closed their ears to any appeal for aid oright foot, and a bamboo was passed between for mercy. There were exceptions among the arm and body and behind the knee- the officials, it is true, and the people joint; and thus slung, with the other leg also in some instances, to their honour be and arm and the head hanging down and
(Daily Press, 26th November.) it said, succoured the hapless victims of the ladies' hair trailing the ground, they were the
An article by Sir ROBERT HART in November Fortnightly Review prejudice and fanaticism, sometimes saving carried for about a mile and a half to the seems to have excited much interest and their lives at great personal risk. But in Boxer headquarters in a temple near Tsing- no little discussion in the home papers. most cases there were none to deliver: amid yuan. Even the children were treated in The Times devotes a leading article to it, the crowd of mocking faces not one ex- the same barbarous manner, and Mr. GREEN, discounting the well-known Inspector-Gen- pressed pity at the fate of the persecuted. | who was suffering from shot wounds, having eral's bold statements on the ground that The story of this latest nineteenth century been fired at by a Boxer previously, was put China, as has long been known, has cast a massacre is not quite unrelieved in all its to exquisite torture. Here they would have spell over his mind and sympathies to an dark passages of blood and cruelty, but it is been murdered without doubt, had extent uncommon even in those who have dark, doleful, and dismal to a degree. In this not the tradespeople of Tsing-yuan inter-resided in this country as long as he has. most sordid empire chivalrous feeling and vened on their behalf, and protected them tender solicitude for the weak and the until an official arrived with an order from suffering is not looked for, but on the other the Governor to fetch them to Paotingfu, hand such a revel in bloodshed was certain- where at length they arrived on the 17th ly not expected.
September, having had to leave their dead child at Tsing-yuan.
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SIR ROBERT HART AND OTHERS ON CHINESE AFFAIRS.
Our contemporary sees "Oriental fatalism in Sir ROBERT HART's acceptation of the view that the principles underlying the Boxer movement must some day triumph. And certainly the pronouncement is a startling The records of the dark deeds done in
one. We have in the past heard of the “Yel- this last year of the century will long be a The fate of many missionaries is still in low Peril" ad nauseam, and recent study of stain on China. They were perpetrated doubt, and it is greatly to be feared that the question has apparently resulted in the in defiance of treaty rights, in teeth of the there are yet to be unfolded several melan- allaying of the former apprehensions to a fact that the Chinese Government had choly stories of outrage and massacre. great extent. But Sir ROBERT re-states the engaged to protect the foreigners, and These missionary murders and those of the despite the promptings of that natural Belgian engineers have to some extent been Chinese than from the European point of case very forcibly, speaking more from the feeling of humanity which should govern avenged by the recent executious at Paoting-view. He is content to risk the laugh which the entire race, irrespective of colour, race, fu, where the Governor and the Tartar or religion. The savageries practised by the General were made to expiate their crimes Red Indians were not more revolting than against humanity by the allied commanders, the barbarities inflicted upon the mis- but the worst culprits, because the prime sionaries and their converts in North China. movers in the plot, viz., Prince TUAN, Bishop HAMER, the founder of the Belgian General TUNG FUHSIANG, and YU-HSIEN, Mission and Bishop of Western Mongolia, the ferocious Governor of Shansi, have yet who had for nearly thirty-five years laboured to be brought to book. These personages in Shansi-practically giving his life to the are all nominally in disgrace, and Prince work-was seized while celebrating Mass, TUAN has been deprived of all power for the bound, and marched through the city, and, time being, but General TUNG is still in because he counted his beads as he went command of some sixteen thousand troops along, had his hands chopped off, and was with which he dominates and probably then thrown into a noisome prison. Three menaces the Court at Hsian-fu. Indeed, days later he was brought out, wrapped in it is more than likely that he will hold cotton on which kerosene was poured, and the EMPEROR and EMPRESS-DOWAGER as then set alight and burnt to death. With hostages for his own safety, and will thus him perished five thousand converts, and be able to delay the negotiations for peace, every church and building connected with supposing that the wicked EMPRESS-DowA- the mission was destroyed. Another devoted GER is really willing to permit them to pro- priest, Father HEIEMAN, was taken with ceed. Whatever may happen, through the a confrère, Father MALLET, to a place called difficulties of intervening distance, the bad Huiwacheng, where the former was cut faith of the Imperial officials, or other com- into four pieces and his heart taken out and plications, we sincerely hope that the Allied nailed to a tree. What fate overtook his Powers will march steadily to one goal- companion in misery is not yet known. At viz., the punishment of those responsible for Lachoukeou, near Jehol, in Mongolia, an- or participating in the hideous massacres other priest, Father SAGERS, after having been carried for a distance, bound like a pig on a bamboo, was thrown into a ditch and there buried alive, unless a blow given him on the head with a mattock as he strove to rise first secured for him a deliverance from further torment. Another terrible case, also in Mongolia, was that where twelve Swedish Protestant missionaries with their
that followed the Boxer outbreak. This is clearly the first consideration, and the Powers should not allow financial or com- mercial, or even political interests, to divert them from this point. What is wanted is simple justice, which we ought to enforce, no' matter at what cost. The Chinese Government do not really wish to give up these great and powerful mandarins; they fear that such a
his words may provoke and fearlessly de- fends the national Chinese movement. The writer in the Times, in reply to Sir ROBERT HART's "extraordinary vision of the yellow race triumphant over the united civilisa- tion of the West in the not distant future," points to the case of the allied operations in Chihli and the readiness with which the people sell supplies to the foreign invaders, and therefore seems to question the patriotic nature of the movement од which Sir ROBERT SO much insists. The truth, no doubt, lies somewhere between the two views. The Boxer movement is patriotic in that it is an expres. sion of Chinese resentment for the many indignities heaped on the country by other peoples, particularly in the filching of nearly all the best ports in China. The fact that the Chihli peasantry, now that the Allies are in command of the province, should accept the inevitable and make what money they can in the circumstances is no new trait in Chinese character; it is at least as old as the history of European strife with China. No one would suggest that it indicates that the provincials have changed in their estimate of European intrusion into the empire. Ridiculous as was the idea of those who fostered the Boxer society that China in arms could withstand, or rather drive out, the foreigner, there is nothing ridiculous in the contention that the Chinese national character can, for still a very long time to come, hold out against foreign influences. The remedies which Sir Rosier