298 PROBLEMS IN CHINA 



life and to his property and the invioU\l)ility of a promise — the sacred- 

 ness of the trutli. Non-Christian law is practically a denial of the 

 authority of these fundamental princijiles. It is not meant b}'^ this 

 statement to affirm that there have not been in the ])ast and that 

 there are not now many men in China who are just, upright, humane,, 

 and strictly honest. It is an indisputable fact, however, that human 

 life has little value in that country; justice is almost unknown in 

 the courts, and there is no respect for the truth — a promise is kept 

 onl}' when self-interest makes it worth while. Now, a conflict is in- 

 evitable when two civilizations founded on such antagonistic princi- 

 ples come into close contact, and its ultimate cause will be found tO' 

 be the assertion on the one hand, the denial on the other, of one or 

 all of these principles. Here, again, there is not the slightest inten- 

 tion of maintaining that in all the relations of China with the western 

 powers, when disputes have arisen, she has always been in the wrongs 

 the}' always in the right; but it is meant simply that the cause or 

 pretense of every aggressive act on the part of the powers has been 

 either that a foreigner's life has been taken, his property alienated or 

 destroyed, or the terms of a treaty or concession have not been faith- 

 fully observed. 



The incident which was probabl}' the immediate cause of the Boxer 

 rising — the murder of two German missionaries b}' a mob — is a typ- 

 ical one. From the western [)oint of view it was onl}' just and reason- 

 able that first the magistrate of the town or district where the outrage 

 occurred, then the ruler of the province, and lastly the government 

 in Pekin should be held res[)onsible for the death of these two men. 

 We nvAY justly condemn the method which Germany pursued to 

 secure reparation for the (\eei\ ; but this does not alter the fact that 

 she was right in her original contention that satisfaction should be 

 given for the taking of the lives of her subjects, and that she would 

 have failed in her duty if the outrage had been suffered to pass un- 

 noticed. From the Chinese standpoint, however, nothing could seem 

 more unreasonable, more absurd, than the demand that the governor 

 of Shantung should be punished because two insignificant men were 

 murdered b}' a mob, whose deed possibly he did not justify and could 

 not have prevented had he so desired. This German demand would 

 naturally seem to them the mere arbitrary exercise of power, with the 

 ultimate i)urpose of conquest, not the fulfillment of a sacred dut}'. 



Fertile in international disputes, sometimes leading to war, have 

 been the commercial treaties concluded with the powers, and the 



