The events of the last few years are so well known that I must ask the indulgence of the reader in recapitulating them. China, confident in the number of her people, which reached to a quarter of the world's population, attempted to assert her rights of suzerainty over Korea against Japan. She had not realised then that Japan was no longer an Eastern power, where knights with two-handed swords did deeds of valour and won for themselves everlasting renown. And when at Ping-yang the armies met, the Chinese General ascended a hill that he might direct the armies of the Celestial Empire with a fan. He conceived the battle to be merely a small affair, where a fan could be seen by all the officers engaged. The result was, of course, that the German-trained Japanese army had a very easy victory. The war ended in the taking of Port Arthur by the Japanese, {6} and China was in the humiliating position of having to appeal to Western countries to secure her territory. So far, however, the sting of her humiliation gave to China a sense of resentment against all foreigners, rather than a sense of repentance for her own shortcomings, and the missionaries found hostility to their work in every part of China. That hostility resulted in the murder of two German Roman Catholic missionaries in Shantung. The well-known action of Germany in demanding a cession of territory as a punishment for this murder may have been a good stroke of policy, but it has brought but little honour either to Germany or to Christianity. In fact it may be regarded as a most regrettable action from a missionary point of view, for it convinced the Chinese that the missionary was but a part of the civil administration of a hostile country, and that if China was to be preserved from the foreigner, missionaries must be induced to leave the country. A deep feeling of national resentment spread over the land, which was encouraged by some in authority. The direct connection between Government patronage of the anti-foreign movement and the German occupation of Kiauchau can be deduced from the fact that the Governor who was responsible for the awful murders in Shansi had been Governor of Shantung when Germany took Kiauchau.