In the course of a conversation, Mr. Ament referred to the attitude of the missionaries toward the Chinese. He said: “I deny emphatically that the missionaries are _vindictive_, that they _generally_ looted, or that they have done anything _since_ the siege that _the circumstances did not demand_. I criticize the Americans. _The soft hand of the Americans is not as good as the mailed fist of the Germans._ If you deal with the Chinese with a soft hand they will take advantage of it. “The statement that the French government will return the loot taken by the French soldiers is the source of the greatest amusement here. The French soldiers were more systematic looters than the Germans, and it is a fact that to-day _Catholic Christians_, carrying French flags and armed with modern guns, _are looting villages_ in the Province of Chili.” By happy luck, we get all these glad tidings on Christmas Eve--just in time enable us to celebrate the day with proper gayety and enthusiasm. Our spirits soar, and we find we can even make jokes: Taels, I win, Heads you lose. Our Reverend Ament is the right man in the right place. What we want of our missionaries out there is, not that they shall merely represent in their acts and persons the grace and gentleness and charity and loving-kindness of our religion, but that they shall also represent the American spirit. The oldest Americans are the Pawnees. Macallum’s History says: When a white Boxer kills a Pawnee and destroys his property, the other Pawnees do not trouble to seek _him_ out, they kill any white person that comes along; also, they make some white village pay deceased’s heirs the full cash value of deceased, together with full cash value of the property destroyed; they also make the village pay, in addition, _thirteen times_ the value of that property into a fund for the dissemination of the Pawnee religion, which they regard as the best of all religions for the softening and humanizing of the heart of man. It is their idea that it is only fair and right that the innocent should be made to suffer for the guilty, and that it is better that ninety and nine innocent should suffer than that one guilty person should escape.