s of the West have for their object
the inculcation of virtue, and, though our people become converted,
they continue to be Chinese subjects. There is no reason why there
should not be harmony between the people and the adherents of foreign
religions."--Hon. Charles Denby in "China and Her People."

IX

KUANG HSU--AS EMPEROR AND REFORMER

AS a man, there are few characters in Chinese history that are more
interesting than Kuang Hsu. He had all the caprices of genius with
their corresponding weakness and strength. He could wield a pen with
the vigour of a Caesar, threaten his greatest viceroys, dismiss his
leading conservative officials, introduce the most sweeping and
far-reaching reforms that have ever been thought of by the Chinese
people, and then run from a woman as though the very devil was after
him.

He has been variously rated as a genius, an imbecile and a fool. Let us
grant that he was not brilliant. Let us rate him as an imbecile, and
then let us try to account for his having brought into the palace every
ingenious toy and every wonderful and useful invention and discovery of
the past twenty or thirty years with the exception of the X-rays and
liquid air. Let us try to explain why it was that an imbecile would
purchase every book that had been printed in the Chinese language,
concerning foreign subjects of learning, up to the time when he was
dethroned. Let us tell why it was that an imbecile would study all
those foreign books without help, without an assistant, without a
teacher, for three years, from the time he bought them in 1895 till
1898, before he began issuing the most remarkable series of edicts that
have ever come from the pen of an Oriental monarch in the same length
of time. And let us explain how it was that an imbecile could embody in
his edicts of two or three months all the important principles that
were necessary to launch the great reforms of the past ten years.

I doubt if any Chinese monarch has ever had a more far-reaching
influence over the minds of the young men of the empire than Kuang Hsu
had from 1895 till 1898. The preparation for this influence had been
going on for twenty or thirty years previously in the educational
institutions established by the missions and the government. From these
schools there had gone out a great number of young men who had taken
positions in all departments of business, and many of the state, and
revealed to the officials as well as to many of