Part 5

Far be it from me to think of posing as a military expert or a sort of composite military attache to the allied forces. I speak merely as an observant outsider. In riding to hounds one soon learns the men one would select to ride against the pick of another pack. One feels in his "innards" the man he would like to go tiger-shooting with, although it would be another matter to put down his reasons in writing, and much more so with soldiers in the field.

From what I have seen in South Africa and China, I feel and know it--luminously know it in the marrow of my intelligence--that for that South African job, if it were to be done over again, I would select the British; that they have done, not alone as well, but better than any other nation would have done. Many things might have been done better. But apart from the question of transport, when I saw the others there were everywhere signs of their probable failures being infinitely more numerous.

There are only two armies that, granted the possibility of their being landed in South Africa, could have conceivably tackled the job. These are the Japanese and the Germans. The Japs would probably have failed from their want of efficient mounted infantry or cavalry; the beer-blown Germans would have been worn down by men of better physical training. The war-knowledgeable brain, looking out through spectacled eyes, would droop tired in its physical limber until it was brought on a level with the less scientific but more practical weapon of the polo-playing, cricketing, footballing British officer.

The Chinese had reached that ideal which we, at the end of the past century, were making an initial attempt to attain to in the calling together of the Hague Conference. For they had reached the stage of advanced development where the pen is really mightier than the sword--where the highest class in the community is that of the scholar, the next that of the man who tills the soil, and the last that of the man whose occupation it is to kill his fellow-man. Thus the Orientals were naturally at the mercy of the Western countries, the largest expenditure of whose revenue is absorbed by the cost of killing-machines and men to work them.

The Chinese have a saying that, as the best iron is not made into nails, so the best men are not made into soldiers. With our Western civilisation, the best men and steel and soldiers found them an easy victim. There are no people in the world who have a higher regard for abstract justice and right than the Chinese. It is admitted by every man who has had large commercial dealings with them that there are no people who have a greater regard for straightforward, honest dealing. In our dealings with them, as regards this campaign, right and justice in every case have given place to might.

When the German officer I have referred to above pointed towards the fields of millet which he wished to have burned, I was strikingly reminded of a certain mysterious picture which some years ago had been inspired or drawn by his Emperor and Kaiser. It had been called by some "The Yellow Peril," and depicts the figure of Germania, surrounded by the nations of Europe, standing on a pinnacle, and pointing to a broad plain below traversed by a river, and from the plain volumes of smoke rose skywards. No one seemed to know quite definitely what the actual meaning of the picture was. But since this latest crusade towards Pekin, the real meaning of it is suggested. In this campaign of revenge, with the Germans as the leading performers in it, animated and inspired by the speeches of their Emperor, the picture, now illustrative of recent history, might bear a more actual meaning.

"And Caesar's spirit raging for revenge, With Ate by his side, come hot from hell, Shall in these confines, with a monarch's voice, Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war, That this foul deed shall smell above the earth With carrion men, groaning for burial."

THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA

It was the garden of the Mission of Peitang. Not a blade of grass was showing above the ground. The roots of the grass itself had been torn up, eaten by the last few starving animals within the besieged compound before they had been killed, and the trees were absolutely stripped of their bark as high as the beasts could reach. At one side of the garden a great open crater, fringed with the ruins of buildings, showed where a mine had exploded. The cross on the Cathedral hard by was broken, and its Gothic architecture additionally fretted by the scoring marks of shot and shell. But I think nothing told more forcibly the tale of the ordeal through which the garrison had passed than did these gnawed, naked tree-trunks.

I was shown round the day after its relief by one of the Sisters, which, by the way, was effected by the Japanese, but not until the third day after the Legations had been relieved, although it was only twenty minutes' ride distant from them. The Mother Superior, seventy-four years of age, who had spent thirty-eight years of her life in Chinese mission work, lay dying--a daughter of Count Barais, of Chateau Barais, near Bordeaux. She had belonged to the Order of Sisters of Charity since her eighteenth year. Three mines had exploded within the Mission enclosure, and walls and roofs were riddled and lay tossed about in grotesque confusion. I went into the Cathedral church, which they were using as a hospital.

Coming from the glare of white light outside, it was some moments before I could distinguish anything in the gloom within. By degrees one made out rows of rounded forms of little children lying on the floor. Above, the stained-glass windows were broken in many places, and the roof perforated where shells had entered, letting in shafts of light that fell aslant the gloom. High up on the wall one lit up a figure of Christ that with bowed head and extended, nail-pierced hands seemed to point in eloquent silence to the little suffering children below. The entire floor of the church, even up to the extinguished lamp of the sanctuary, was occupied with them. In one explosion alone eighty children were killed, and a still greater number injured. Many more were ailing for want of sufficient food, because when the actual relief came they had been reduced to only two ounces of rice per day, and had but two days' rations left. Other children, who were helping the nuns, moved noiselessly about among the prostrate forms. The hushed silence of sanctuary was broken only by low moaning, or the querulous sobbing of little children weary with pain. The Sister brought me to see one little mite, whom she called the "first fruit" of their recommenced labour.

It was a strange story, that of this little child. The French soldiers who occupied that quarter of the city had come across a house where, stretched on the kang side by side, were the bodies of all its occupants. They had committed suicide on the advent of the Allies. As the soldiers had not time to bury them immediately, intent as they were on pillaging and looting the neighbourhood, they threw lime on the bodies. After two days, when they came to throw their remains into a pit which had been dug for their burial, they found that the youngest victim was yet alive, and carried her, with her hair still caked with lime, to the nuns.

In the midst of these ruins these good women, mostly of gentle birth, were striving to recommence their labours, and nurse, and feed, and teach the children that remained. But, conversing with them, one perceived, underlying their heroic resignation, a strain of very human despondency and disappointment. Their talk here was not of compensation. It was merely of how they could get their ruined mission-house fit for work again--the work for which they had left father and mother and friends, and their homes in far-off France.

It was not quite the same elsewhere, however. There were some missionaries who appeared to take a different view of the situation. Already they were lodging claims with their respective Consuls, and in order to guard themselves against the dilatoriness or uncertainty of action of their various Governments they were taking measures to secure immediate compensation.

One reverend gentleman, for instance, was to be seen day after day holding a sale of loot in a house that he had taken possession of. Another, an American, was carrying on a similar sale in a palatial mansion which he had commandeered. The latter was to be seen surrounded by jade and porcelain vases, costly embroideries from the spoiled temples, sable cloaks and various other furs, and rows of Buddhas arranged like wild-fowl in a poulterer's shop. As his stock became depleted he was in a position to ask any unsatisfied customer to call in again, as his converts were bringing in fresh supplies of loot almost every day!

Indeed, not satisfied with the proceeds of his loot sale, this worthy man was enterprising enough to levy compensation on the Chinese, and, in addition to recovering the full value of the damage sustained by his converts, inflicted fines that exceeded that amount--according to his own admission--by one-third.

There are others who took possession of Chinese houses wholesale, and found a source of income in letting or leasing them. The fact of their having a number of converts to support was given by them as a justification of their actions. Unquestionably they had a large number more or less dependent upon them, but some other means might surely have been found. They were very busy in those days. And perhaps that accounts for their taking no notice of the actions of various portions of the Allied soldiery. Wholesale robbery, cruelty, and the raping of women were going on all round; a regular orgy of rapine surged through the captured city. Yet not one solitary voice of protest was heard.

It would be gratifying to think that, amidst all these exponents of the doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount, there was one who called for mercy on the conquered, or asked that even common humanity should be shown them, or even reminded the generals of their own rules of war and fair fighting, or who raised his voice for justice, even if he did not in compassion. What an opportunity lost, which would not have been thrown away on the Chinese, of showing in practice what they had been preaching--"Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that despitefully use you." If, instead of selling images of Buddha, they had used their influence to preserve his temples from desecration and defilement, or offered sanctuary to his priests, it is certain that they would have more materially furthered the cause they have in hand.

It would be wrong to say that not one solitary voice was raised. 'Tis true it was not raised by any missionary. But there is a rough-looking soldier with a strong face that looks as if it had been hewn out of a block of red sandstone with a blunt hatchet--General Chaffee, of the United States Army. He would be called in England a "ranker." He, not content, as Sir Alfred Gaselee was, with keeping his own men from disgracing their country's flag, wrote a letter of remonstrance to Count Waldersee, and received a snub in return for an action which, nevertheless, redounds immensely to his credit.

Christianity in China has received a staggering blow, from which it will not recover during the lives of the present generation. Its progress, so far as any one can see, in the immediate future is at an end. It is even questionable whether it will not be wiped out altogether in Northern China. The terrible assaults by Boxers will largely decrease the number of converts. The temporal advantages that formerly ensued from its profession are now more than counterbalanced by the hatred and persecution that Christianity entails. The worst blow it has received has been through the conduct of the Allied soldiery during the late invasion. These men have crucified it in China as truly as the soldiers of Pilate did its Founder. And even the Christian missionaries raised no protest against the crucifixion.

Let us hear what a Chinaman says in a book just published, the author writing under the name of "Wen Ching." I heard the identical opinions expressed by many intellectual Chinese.

"For their gifts," he says, "to the West in the shape of silk, tea, and the magnetic compass, the Chinese have so far in return received opium, missionaries, and bombardment." "The literati, the backbone of China ... are not kindly spoken of by missionaries, nor are they liked by foreigners."

It is only "the lower orders that have always been very susceptible to the teaching of foreigners. Their ignorance and their poverty furnish ample reasons for their willingness to join the churches of the Europeans."

Also "the claims of missionaries to a right of travel and residence in the interior ... are founded on no higher authority than an interpolation by a missionary translator into the Chinese text of the treaty between France and China." That "the disturbance of a local fengshui by a church spire is considered as much of a grievance as the erection of a hideous tannery beside Westminster Abbey would be."

He says that "the Christian religion spread chiefly, if not entirely, among the poorer people, until it was discovered that political advantages accrued to the convert." For "in many places the missionary intrudes himself into the Chinese court, and sits beside the magistrate to hear a case between his convert and a non-Christian native. The influence of the missionary is very great, and the official is often pestered and worried by the messengers of the Gospel." Therefore the Christian converts are voted a "source of trouble and a nuisance."

Still, in this writer's opinion, "nothing has done so much harm to the cause of the missionary as this forcing the opium trade on the people." "If there are honest missionaries," he remarks, "there are also sincere believers in the ancient faiths of Cathay to resent the insidious encroachments of blatant foreign priests, who preach to the heathen the doctrines of self-imposed poverty and mendicancy, and yet themselves live sumptuously enough in comfortable houses, surrounded by a wife and a numerous progeny, in the midst of heathen squalor and misery."

These are just a few extracts from the views of an intelligent Chinaman as regards the question of missionaries in his country. But in conversation with others I heard similar opinions more forcibly put. They point out that the various exponents of Christianity insist that each alone expounds the right version, which is puzzling to the Chinese, and that the missionaries actually have not agreed as to the name of their God, as they use five different characters.

Within the radius of an eighteen-penny cab fare from where I write, I think there is plenty of spiritually productive work for all the missionaries in China; work for all the sincere, self-sacrificing missionaries--and there are still many of them in China--men animated by the spirit of the Twelve Fishermen, who have not adopted their profession as a means of livelihood, in addition to a secure income getting an extra L30 for every baby born in their families. And within the radius I speak of, they would not first have the task of weaning the people away from the doctrines of Confucius or Buddha--"Him all wisest, best, most pitiful, whose lips comfort the world," which doctrines are the very breathing--the life--of their social as well as spiritual being. When the Chinese see the German Emperor using missionaries as live-bait to catch a province, and the French insisting upon being given another as the price of a few members of one of those religious orders they have expelled from France, it is no wonder that from that stricken, bullied, cheated people the cry goes up to the empty heavens--