The events leading up to the Taiping Rebellion have shown that the nation was ripe for a change. The fruit, rotten at the core, was dropping from the tree; as was the Ming Dynasty at its fall, so had become the Tsing Dynasty that supplanted it. The successful revolution under General Li Ts'i-chang was brought to naught by the coming in of an exterior power that snatched the fruits of victory for itself, and, by putting down the Revolution, put down the Dynasty also, and seized the whole country. The rebellion under Tien Wang was put down in the same way, but this time the "foreign Power" invoked was not imbued with a lust for conquest. Yet it brought the Chinese politics a new force to be reckoned with--the foreigner, with his law of extra-territoriality. The awakening of China began with the utter defeat of the Imperial forces by the troops of Japan, and a craving to know the reason of it all obsessed the nation's mind. "Let us go to school with the foreigner; let us study his books" became the nation's watchword. Then there began to dawn in China the thought that far too much national wealth and power and prestige had been handed over to foreign control. There was alarm, suspicion, bitter animosity--and the Boxer movement. With the putting down of this movement and the generous treatment--in spite of all criticism to the contrary--meted out to China by the foreign Powers, came the consciousness of her real needs. From this time China put her youth to school with the "foreigner." Students went abroad by thousands, Japan taking by far the greater number. Already there was the conviction that the Government was corrupt, inefficient, and incurable. The spirit of patriotism had not only been awakened in the heart of the nation, but possessed the soul of each of her students, and even the country yokels were full of the idea of it. From contact with the outside world and from a comparative study of empires, one with another and each with China, came {274} the third necessary factor of China--the awakened and trained mind. It is common opinion that the schools and colleges run by foreigners in China have contributed in no small measure to this Revolutionary movement. It is pointed out that missionary propaganda have also played their part in creating in the Chinese mind a desire to do away with make-believe and insincerity. The charge is a true one. All these new forces coming into the life of the young student must have created an intense dissatisfaction with things as they were. The late Empress-Dowager seems to have been by no means unmindful of this tendency of missionary and educational effort. To this may be attributed, partly at least, her attempt to exterminate missionaries and all they stood for.