``In the missions of the Church of Rome, they (treaty rights) are systematically, and I am afraid one must say unscrupulously, used for the gathering in of large numbers of nominal converts, whose only claim to the Christian name is their registration in lists kept by native catechists, in which they are entered on payment of a small fee, without regard to their possession of any degree of Christian knowledge or character. In the event of their being involved in any dispute or lawsuit, the native catechists or priests, and even the foreign Roman Catholic missionaries, take up their cause and press it upon the native magistrates. Not infrequently a still worse course is pursued. Intimation is sent round the villages in which there are large numbers of so-called Catholic converts and these assemble under arms to support by force the feuds of their co-religionists. The consequence is that the Catholic missions in southern China, and I believe in the north also, are bitterly hated by the Chinese people and by their magistrates. By terrorizing both magistrates and people, they have secured in many places a large amount of apparent popularity; but they are sowing the seeds of a harvest of hatred and bitterness which may be reaped in deplorable forms in years to come.''[74] [74] ``Mission Problems and Mission Methods in South China,'' pp. 309, 310. In my own interviews with Chinese officials, it was my custom to lead the conversation towards the motives of those who had attacked foreigners during the Boxer uprising, and without exception the officials mentioned, among other causes, the interference of Roman Catholic priests with the administration of the law in cases affecting their converts. In several places in the interior, this was the only reason assigned.