With the relief of Peking, the Boxer Society fell; but the popular view was not that Boxer teaching was false, but that the spirits behind Western religion were stronger than those behind Boxerdom. So one of the immediate results of the fall of the Boxers was to establish the spiritual prestige of Christianity; the second result was to inspire the Chinese with a respect for the military power of the foreigner. The Boxers had failed, the foreign powers had taken Peking, the Son of Heaven had become a fugitive; all this was gall and {10} wormwood to the Chinaman. The sack of Peking was especially felt, both because of the wanton destruction that was committed--one informant told me he saw a vase worth £200 smashed into a thousand atoms by a drunken soldier--and because the enlightened Chinese knew very well that no civilised city is sacked at the present time, and that they were being treated as no other race is now treated. Yet the old spirit of pride prevented them learning completely the full truth. The thinking Chinaman was still disposed to attribute the victory of the West to the superior fighting powers of Western men. A Chinese gentleman, explaining the fear his people have of Europeans, said, "They regard you as tigers." The troops who sacked Peking were to the thinking Chinaman but another example of the well-known truth, that those nearer the savage state fight better than civilised men, and really, considering the behaviour of some of the European troops, no surprise can be felt at this conclusion; it needed another lesson to make them finally and thoroughly realise the superiority of our civilisation. The bitterness of their next humiliation made them ready to learn as they had never been before in the whole of their history, and events provided them with teachers who taught them that the cause of this humiliation was their refusal to accept Western ideas, and that if they would maintain {11} their independence they must learn the art of war from their conquerors.