hey
were put into the hands of the young Emperor and by his command
distributed among the viceroys and governors of the Empire.

[Footnote *: Translated by Dr. Woodbridge as "China's Only Hope."
Kelly & Walsh, Shanghai.]

[Page 226]
What a harvest might have sprung from the sowing of such seed in
such soil by an imperial husbandman! But there were some who viewed
it as the sowing of dragons' teeth. Those reactionaries induced the
Dowager Empress to come out from her retirement and to reassume
her abdicated power in order to save the Empire from a threatening
conflagration. It was the fable of Phaeton enacted in real life.
The young charioteer was struck down and the sun brought back to
his proper course instead of rising in the west. The progressive
legislation of the two previous years 1897-98 was repealed and
then followed two years of a narrow, benighted policy, controlled
by the reactionaries under the lead of Prince Tuan, father of the
heir-apparent, with a junta of Manchu princes as blind and corrupt
as Russian grand dukes. That disastrous recoil resulted in war,
not against a single power, but against the whole civilised world,
as has been set forth in the account of the Boxer War (see page
172).

Affairs were drifting into this desperate predicament when Chang
of the Cavern became in a sense the saviour of his country. This
he effected by two actions which called for uncommon intelligence
and moral force: (1) By assuring the British Government that he
would at all costs maintain peace in Central China; (2) by refusing
to obey an inhuman decree from Peking, commanding the viceroys to
massacre all foreigners within their jurisdiction--a decree which
would be incredible were it not known that at the same moment the
walls of the capital were placarded with proclamations offering
rewards of 50, 30 and 20
[Page 227]
taels respectively for the heads of foreign men, women, and children.

It is barely possible that Chang was helped to a decision by a
friendly visit from a British man-of-war, whose captain, in answer
to a question about his artillery, informed Chang that he had the
bearings of his official residence, and could drop a shell into
it with unerring precision at a distance of three miles. He was
also aided by the influence of Mr. Fraser, a wide-awake British
consul. Fraser modestly disclaims any special merit in the matter,
but British missionaries at Hankow give him the credit. They say
that, learnin