ce could possibly reach them, and that they
heard only what courtiers with their own fish to fry permitted them to
hear.

The real culprits then, according to all accounts, were the officials
who deliberately misled the Court. It was characteristic of the I.G.,
always too big for resentment, that he could find some excuse for
them and, though the length of his service entitled him to more
consideration than most of those who cried out bitterly for
"vengeance," could write in his book ("These From the Land of Sinim"),
"In the heat of the conflict, and under the agonizing strain of
anxiety for imperilled loved ones, many hard things have been said and
written about the officials who allied themselves with the Boxers.
But these men were eminent in their own country for their learning
and services, were animated by patriotism, were enraged by foreign
dictation, and had the courage of their convictions. We must do them
the justice of allowing that they were actuated by high motives and
love of country--not that these necessarily mean political ability or
highest wisdom," The truth is--and he realized it thoroughly--that
the real deep feeling of the Chinese people has always been to be left
alone in peace to pursue the even tenor of their way.

So enlightened a man as the great Minister Wen Hsiang--"one of the
most intelligent and broad-minded Chinese I ever knew," as Sir Robert
Hart sometimes said--frankly confessed this when speaking to the I.G.
a few years after the inauguration of the Customs. "We would gladly
pay you all the increased revenue you have brought us," were his exact
words, "if you foreigners would go back to your own country and leave
us in peace as we were before you came."

Of course neither the wishes of the Chinese nor the question of
Imperial responsibility or non-responsibility mattered greatly in
1900. The nations of the world were not in a tolerant mood; they
would, as he pointed out, care little for excuses and less for the
Chinese anxiety about the Palace, "with its ancestral contents," or
the Imperial Tombs. The only thing which might influence them was the
consideration of the welfare of the Chinese people.

Plans for the future must turn upon this as upon an axle. Moreover,
to effect anything some distinguished person of high position and
importance must come forward, and the man whom the I.G. named when he
was asked for his advice was Prince Ching. He was the one person with
whom the Forei