356 THE CHIXESE PARADOX 



their diplomatic game, and, beaten in this, they got even with the 

 Powers, as they view it, by receiving the envoys in the Hall of Trib- 

 utar\' States, outside the royal })ahice. 



Again, after Kuangsii came of age and an audience was agreed on 

 in 1890, so little did the Chinese care for the facts of the case that the 

 same hall was used, and, the cereuKJiiy V^eing made even more belit- 

 tling to the dignity of the envoys, tliey determined as a body never 

 to submit to the imposition again. A few private audiences were held 

 consequently under better conditions in the following years, but it 

 was not until the Japanese war, in 1894, had pricked the Chinese 

 bubble and had driven home a few needed lessons that the imperial 

 government vielded its childish pretensions and received the envoys 

 in the palace itself. The Powers, however, let the humiliation of the 

 intercourse through the Tsung-li-Yamen continue, confirmed Chinese 

 insolence by yielding continually until the collapse of 1898 and the 

 succeeding intrigues — the flat refusal to lease Italy Sanmun Bay in 

 March, 1899, though Italy's demand was supported by Great Britain, 

 being the turning point — convinced the party of the Empress Dowager 

 that it need not fear either united or determined action on the part 

 of foreigners. Consequently the Manchu conspiracy, which had been 

 under wa}^ for two 3^ears, came to a head in June, to the sur|)rise of 

 the very chancelleries that practicall}' invited it and to the discom- 

 fiture of the envo3's. Though revealed in im[)erial decree and fore- 

 cast in political changes, when the crash came they sat helpless 

 because there was no Gordius to cut the entanglements of the idle 

 ceremonies 1)}^ whose foolish fetters the\' felt themselves inextricably 

 bound. They forgot that a paradoxical situation is never so mis- 

 chievous as when those who know the falsity of its apparent relations 

 accept the surface fact as final. But all this is past, and the Chinese 

 paradox goes to join the august collection of exploded physical and 

 political notions that had their day of evil obsession, Imt finally 

 yielded to nineteenth centur}' science and nineteenth centurv sense. 



