r past it has taken on new
forms, directed itself against new objects, and employed new methods.
It deserves therefore a conspicuous place among the new developments
in the China of the twentieth century.

Where everything is changing, the temper of the people has undergone
a change. They have become restless as the sea and fickle as a
weather-vane, The friends of yesterday are the enemies of to-day;
and a slight or petty annoyance is enough to make them transfer
man or country from one to the other category. Murderous outbreaks,
rare in the past, have now become alarmingly frequent, so much so
that the last year might be described as a year of anti-foreign
riots. The past nine months have witnessed four such outbreaks,
In four widely separated provinces, venting their fury pretty
impartially on people of four nationalities and of all professions,
they were actuated by a
[Page 245]
common hate and indicated a common purpose. That purpose--if they
had a purpose--was to compel a readjustment of treaty relations.

America has the distinction of being the target for the first assaults.
In treating the subject I accordingly begin with America and the
boycott, as set forth in a long extract from an address before
the Publishers' League of New York, November 8, 1905, on

AMERICAN INFLUENCE IN THE FAR EAST

"Mr. President and Gentlemen:

"If I were asked to find a _pou sto_, a fulcrum, on which
to erect a machine to move the world, I should choose this league
of publishers; and the machine would be no other than the power
press! I have accepted your invitation not merely from pleasant
recollections of your former hospitality, but because new occurrences
have taken place which appeal to the patriotism of every good citizen.
They are issues that rise above party; they involve our national
character and the well-being of another people whom we owe the
sacred duties of justice and humanity.

"When I agreed to speak to you of American influence in the Far
East, I was not aware that we should have with us a representative
of Japan, and I expected to spread myself thinly over two empires.
Happy I am to resign one of these empires to Mr. Stevens.

"I shall accordingly say no more about Japan than to advert to
the fact that the wise forbearance of Commodore Perry, which, in
1854, induced the Shogun to open his ports without firing a gun,
has won the gratitude of the Japanese people; so that in many ways
they testify a prefe