The Days of a Man 1900 



meal having been duly eaten, the "Huns" were commanded 

 to shoot down their hosts, in order (as one officer is reported to 

 have said) to give the men "a taste of blood." Later these 

 heroes received medals from their government "for gallantry 

 in action"! 



stealing A peculiarly inexcusable, though perhaps Napole- 

 an observ- on i C) piece of vandalism was the theft by Waldersee 

 of the astronomical instruments from the Imperial 

 Palace at Peking. These dated far back into history 

 and were of enormous and irreplaceable value. Taken 

 to Potsdam and set up in the park as trophies they 

 there remain to be returned, however, in accord- 

 ance with the Treaty of Versailles. But the expedi- 

 tion secured, in addition to "glory" and loot, money 

 enough to cover several times its own cost. For the 

 German government forced on China the payment 

 of an indemnity amounting to about thirty million 

 dollars a year for forty years. With the outbreak of 

 the Great War, however, the flow of tribute from 

 China to Berlin naturally ceased. 



The Waldersee expedition, moreover, did not con- 

 ne itself to murder and pillage of an organized sort; 

 both officers and men committed outrages of many 

 and various kinds in a private way. During the 

 German occupation of the foreign concession at 

 Tientsin, many unpleasant incidents occurred. As 

 a long line of Chinese were engaged in carrying coal 

 for a German ship, one of the men, being lame and 

 slow, caused a break in the line, for which grave 

 misdemeanor he was promptly shot by an officer 

 standing by, that the procession might move evenly. 

 After such occurrences, native labor naturally be- 

 came refractory and quite reluctant to serve the 

 Germans. 



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