Sir Matthew Nathan came to Hongkong as governor from hot and feverish
Nigeria. Hongkong is a moist hot place, very near the direct sun of the
equator, and men who wish to live long go slow in the luxuries of work,
liquor, etc. It is a good place to send your victim, as David disposed
of Uriah “in the forefront of the hottest battle”. Sir Matthew’s
enthusiasm was to be every inch a “knower” (mandarin) of the people,
and a governor. He wore his staff out. He was up at unseasonable hours
in addition to his regular duties. He worked as hard on the hot Praya
as another man would on cool Piccadilly in March. Every emergency and
occasion found him at hand, whether an awful fire, a new railway, or
the launching of a great ship. The memorable typhoon of September,
1906, struck the unprepared colony which has been visited so often
with these circular hurricanes. Sir Matthew seemed to superintend the
rescuers at every spot of the long beach and harbor. When the steamboat
_Hankow_ holocaust occurred in October he worked, axe and arm, with the
firemen. Little wonder that he died, really of exhaustion. He was a
typical example of the grand old British civil service in China. He was
heroic, unselfish, tireless, sympathetic, a man whose example lives to
fire China with zeal and altruism.
Doctor C. D. Tenny, an American educator, has been connected with the
American Peking legation and has served on many American political
missions, such as the inspection in 1912 of Doctor Sun Yat Sen’s
government at Nanking. His influence in the northern provinces with
Yuan Shi Kai has been great. Pai Yang Technical University at Tientsin,
and Paoting Fu College, both Chinese, have known the worth of his
guidance, and therefore they stand as models. Doctor W. A. P. Martin,
the dean of American Presbyterian missionaries for thirty years, has
done almost a similar work in the north in connection with the Chinese
Tungwen College and Peking University, and moreover, Doctor Martin is
a famous translator of American books into Chinese. Wells Williams, of
the American Peking legation, is famous not only because his father
wrote that noble basic work, _The Middle Kingdom_, but for his own work
as a diplomat in America’s diplomatic advance in the Far East. The
American minister at Peking, Mr. W. Rockhill, carefully and bravely
explored Mongolia and Tibet, and wrote a diary of his travels in the
debatable lands where Russia, Britain and China face one another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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