PRESENT CONDITIONS IN CHINA 
I asked him his plan, and he said he 
would kill the Empress Dowager single- 
handed, in the roadway, on one of her 
frequent journeys between the palaces, 
or between the palaces and the tombs of 
her ancestors. The Empress Dowager 
at the time was going about much, but 
always guarded. 
I kept my friend in my house through- 
out the day and we talked the plan over. 
At the end of our talk he agreed that to 
kill the Empress Dowager would produce 
a situation for which neither the reform- 
ers nor the Manchu clan were prepared. 
There was no one to take her place; and 
the reformers, least of all, could form a 
government. And furthermore, when we 
had gone over the history of China’s 
attitude to foreign nations, he was con- 
vinced that it was because of his own 
people, the Chinese, and not of the Man- 
chus, that China was where and what 
she was. 
Though the Empress Dowager had 
committed political faults as great as it 
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4 
Photo by R. Powell, China Inland Mission, Toronto 
THREE MANCHU WOMEN: NOTE THE CHINESE WOMAN BEHIND WITH SMALL, FEET 
AND A STICK TO HELP HER ALONG 
was possible for one in her position to 
commit, it is true that the Chinese had 
had free access to the world at all points 
for centuries even before the Manchus, 
had been offered the bread of political 
life by disinterested foreigners of all 
countries, had gone abroad and brought 
nothing home, and until then had re- 
jected all. 
THE CHINESE, NOT THE MANCHUS, RULE 
CHINA 
The revolution was not a month old 
when the National Assembly at Peking, 
by utter contempt for the Manchu clan 
and court, showed that it was the Chi- 
nese and not the Manchus who had ruled 
China, and that if China was broken into 
pieces it would be by the Chinese. At 
the word of the Chinese race, spoken 
through a small number of assemblymen 
at Peking, the court vanished and the 
highest officials disappeared. 
Dr. W. A. P. Martin, the most famous 
of living sinologues, aptly characterized 
