1894-5, leading to
Japan's complete victory and conquest of Korea. Japan's acquisitions
would have been much greater but for the intervention of France, Germany
and Russia, England holding aloof. This was the beginning of our support
of Japan, inspired by fear of Russia. It also led to an alliance between
China and Russia, as a reward for which Russia acquired all the
important rights in Manchuria, which passed to Japan, partly after the
Russo-Japanese war, and partly after the Bolshevik revolution.

The next incident begins with the murder of two German missionaries in
Shantung in 1897. Nothing in their life became them like the leaving of
it; for if they had lived they would probably have made very few
converts, whereas by dying they afforded the world an object-lesson in
Christian ethics. The Germans seized Kiaochow Bay and created a naval
base there; they also acquired railway and mining rights in Shantung,
which, by the Treaty of Versailles, passed to Japan in accordance with
the Fourteen Points. Shantung therefore became virtually a Japanese
possession, though America at Washington has insisted upon its
restitution. The services of the two missionaries to civilization did
not, however, end in China, for their death was constantly used in the
German Reichstag during the first debates on the German Big Navy Bills,
since it was held that warships would make Germany respected in China.
Thus they helped to exacerbate the relations of England and Germany and
to hasten the advent of the Great War. They also helped to bring on the
Boxer rising, which is said to have begun as a movement against the
Germans in Shantung, though the other Powers emulated the Germans in
every respect, the Russians by creating a naval base at Port Arthur,
the British by acquiring Wei-hai-wei and a sphere of influence in the
Yangtze, and so on. The Americans alone held aloof, proclaiming the
policy of Chinese integrity and the Open Door.

The Boxer rising is one of the few Chinese events that all Europeans
know about. After we had demonstrated our superior virtue by the sack of
Peking, we exacted a huge indemnity, and turned the Legation Quarter of
Peking into a fortified city. To this day, it is enclosed by a wall,
filled with European, American, and Japanese troops, and surrounded by a
bare space on which the Chinese are not allowed to build. It is
administered by the diplomatic body, and the Chinese authorities have no
powers over anyone wit