he risk of
alienating her best friends, England and America. A farmer attempting
to rope up a shaky barrel in which a hen was sitting on a nest full
of eggs, the silly fowl mistook him for an enemy and flew in his
face. Is not China in danger of being left to the fate which her
friends have sought to avert?

In April a magistrate went by invitation to the French Catholic
Mission to settle a long-standing dispute, and he settled it by
committing suicide--in China the most dreaded form of revenge. Carried
[Page 260]
out gasping but speechless, he intimated that he was the victim of a
murderous attack by the senior priest. His wounds were photographed;
and the pictures were circulated with a view to exciting the mob.
Gentry and populace held meetings for the purpose of screwing their
courage up to the required pitch--governor and mandarins kept carefully
in the background--and on the fifth day the mission buildings were
destroyed and the priests killed. An English missionary, his wife
and daughter, living not far away, were set upon and slain, not
because they were not known to belong to another nation and another
creed, but because an infuriated mob does not care to discriminate.

English and French officials proceeded to the scene in gunboats to
examine the case and arrange a settlement. The case of the English
family was settled without difficulty; but that of the French mission
was more complicated. Among the French demands were two items which
the Chinese Government found embarrassing. It had accepted the
theory of murder and hastily conferred posthumous honours on the
deceased magistrate. The French demanded the retraction of those
honors, and a public admission of suicide. To pay a money indemnity
and cashier a governor was no great hardship, but how could the
court submit to the humiliation of dancing to the tune of a French
piper? An English surgeon declared, in a sealed report of autopsy,
that the wounds must have been self-inflicted, as their position
made it impossible for them to have been inflicted by an assailant.
But

[Note from PG proofer: two lines of text missing here.]

[Page 261]
In 1870 France accepted a money payment for the atrocious massacre at
Tientsin, because the Second Empire was entering on a life-and-death
struggle with Germany. If she makes things easy for China this time,
will it not be because the Republic is engaged in mortal combat
with the Roman Church?

China's constant fricti