Moreover, the majority of the Chinese hear only what their scholars and officials tell them, and these worthies are careful to adjust the account to suit their own purposes, and to save the national ``face.'' They blandly assure the credulous people that the foreign armies did not follow the court because they dared not; that the alien troops left the capital because they were driven out by Chinese patriots; and that the Boxers inflicted crushing defeat upon their foes. During my visit in Tsing- tau, the Germans were digging sewers, broad and deep, with laterals to every house and public building, and many of the Chinese actually believed that these sewers were intended to be underground passageways, down which the foreigners could flee to their boats when they were assailed by the redoubtable Boxers! The best-informed men I met in China, from Sir Robert Hart down, were fearful that the end was not near, and that an official order might repeat the whole bloody history. At a conference with forty representative missionaries of all denominations in Shanghai, August, 1901, a very large majority agreed with the Rev. Dr. Parker, of the Southern Methodist Church, in the statement: ``We are not out of the trouble yet; the reactonaries are in the minority, but they are in power. They have learned nothing and they will try again to drive us out unless the Powers unseat them and reinstate the Emperor and the Reform Party.'' XXVII HOPEFUL SIGNS THE future is not necessarily so doubtful as the facts and opinions cited in the preceding chapter might in themselves seem to indicate. It is true that the daily press often contains accounts of tumults and revolutions in China. But an Empire a third larger than all Europe, with an enormous population, a weak central Government, corrupt local officials, few railroads and frequent floods, famines and epidemics, is certain to have uprisings somewhere most of the time. A European reading in the daily despatches from the United States of strikes, riots, martial law, the burning of negroes, the mobbing of Chinese and the corruption of cities, might with equal justice get the impression that our own country is in continual turmoil. The Imperial Government in China pays little attention to what is going on in other parts of the country.