o
nails, so the best men are not made into soldiers. With our Western
civilisation, the best men and steel and soldiers found them an easy
victim. There are no people in the world who have a higher regard for
abstract justice and right than the Chinese. It is admitted by every
man who has had large commercial dealings with them that there are no
people who have a greater regard for straightforward, honest dealing.
In our dealings with them, as regards this campaign, right and justice
in every case have given place to might.

When the German officer I have referred to above pointed towards the
fields of millet which he wished to have burned, I was strikingly
reminded of a certain mysterious picture which some years ago had been
inspired or drawn by his Emperor and Kaiser. It had been called by
some "The Yellow Peril," and depicts the figure of Germania,
surrounded by the nations of Europe, standing on a pinnacle, and
pointing to a broad plain below traversed by a river, and from the
plain volumes of smoke rose skywards. No one seemed to know quite
definitely what the actual meaning of the picture was. But since this
latest crusade towards Pekin, the real meaning of it is suggested. In
this campaign of revenge, with the Germans as the leading performers
in it, animated and inspired by the speeches of their Emperor, the
picture, now illustrative of recent history, might bear a more actual
meaning.

"And Caesar's spirit raging for revenge,
With Ate by his side, come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines, with a monarch's voice,
Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial."

IX

THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA

It was the garden of the Mission of Peitang. Not a blade of grass was
showing above the ground. The roots of the grass itself had been torn
up, eaten by the last few starving animals within the besieged
compound before they had been killed, and the trees were absolutely
stripped of their bark as high as the beasts could reach. At one side
of the garden a great open crater, fringed with the ruins of
buildings, showed where a mine had exploded. The cross on the
Cathedral hard by was broken, and its Gothic architecture additionally
fretted by the scoring marks of shot and shell. But I think nothing
told more forcibly the tale of the ordeal through which the garrison
had passed than did these gnawed,