New Forces in Old China: An Inevitable AwakeningBrown, Arthur Judson
History
New Forces in Old China: An Inevitable Awakening
Brown, Arthur Judson
China -- Commerce; China -- Foreign relations; China -- Politics and government; Missions -- China
FRESH REASON TO HATE THE FOREIGNER
OF course, the victorious march of the Allies upon
Peking, the capture of the city, the flight of the
Emperor and the Empress Dowager and the humiliating
terms of peace taught the Chinese anew their helplessness before
the modern equipment of western nations and the necessity
of learning the methods of the white man if they were ever
to hold their own against him. But defeat, while always hard
to bear, does not always embitter the conquered against the
conqueror. On the contrary, there are evidences that the
Chinese respect and like the Japanese far more since they were
soundly whipped by them in 1894 and 1895. In considering,
therefore, the effect upon the Chinese of the suppression of the
Boxer uprising, we must bear in mind not so much the fact of
victory by the Allies as the treatment which they accorded their
prostrate foe. Was that treatment dignified and just? Did
the soldiers of alleged Christian nations behave with the sobriety
and fairness which so eminently characterized the Japanese
troops after the China-Japan War? Have the Chinese reason
to regard foreigners in the future as men who will sternly
punish injustice and treachery, but who are at the same time as
moral and humane and trustworthy as might be reasonably expected
of the representatives of a higher civilization and a
purer religion? For answer, let us turn to the conduct of the
allied armies, led by experienced officers of high rank and
working in harmony with diplomatic officials who were supposed
to incarnate the spirit and methods of the most enlightened
nations of the earth. The testimony of witnesses will be
interesting.
Dr. Arthur H. Smith, who was in Peking at the time,
writes:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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