Indiscreet Letters From Peking | Page 5

request has been cruelly refused by the Council of
Ministers on the ground that it is absurd. The Vicar Apostolic, however,
gave his grounds for making such a demand calmly and
logically--depicted the damage already done by an anti-foreign and
revolutionary movement in the districts not a thousand miles from
Peking, and solemnly forecasted what was soon to happen....
The French Minister was irate and raised his fat hands above his fat
person, took a discreet look around him, and then hinted that it was this
Legation, the British Legation, which stopped the marines from
coming.

The French Minister was quite irate, and after his discourse was ended
he slipped quietly away--possibly to send some more telegrams. The
crumbs of his conversation were soon gathered up and distributed and
the conviviality somewhat damped. As yet, however, the Boxers are
only laughed at and are not taken quite seriously. They have killed
native Christians, it is true, and it has been proved conclusively now
that it was they who murdered Brooks, the English missionary in
Shantung. But Englishmen are cheap, since there is a glut in the home
market, and their government merely gets angry with them when they
get into trouble and are killed. So many are always getting killed in
China.
So the Boxers, with half the governments of Europe, led by England, as
we know by our telegrams, seeking to minimise their importance--in
fact, trying to stifle the movement by ignoring it or lavishing on it their
supreme contempt--have already moved from their particular habitat,
which is Shantung, into the metropolitan province of Chihli. Already
they are in some force at Chochou, only seventy miles to the southeast
of Peking--always massacring, always advancing, and driving in bodies
of native Christians before them on their march. Nobody cares very
much, however, except a vicar apostolic, who urgently requests forty or
fifty marines or sailors "to protect our persons and our chattels."
Foolish bishop he is, is he not, when Christians have been expressly
born to be massacred? Does he not know his history?
Lead on, blind ministers plenipotentiary and envoys extraordinary; lead
on, with your eternal political situations in embryo, your eternal
political situations that have not yet hatched out; while one that is more
pregnant than any you have ever conceived is already born under your
very noses and is being sniffed at by you. But no matter what happens
outside, Peking is safe, that is your dictum, and the dictum of the day.
So, yawning and somewhat tired of the evening's convivialities, we go
our several ways home, in our Peking carts and our official chairs, and
are soon lost in sleep--dreaming, perhaps, that we have been too long in
this dry Northern climate, and that it is really affecting one's nerves.

III
OVERCAST SKIES
28th May, 1900.
* * * * *
It is only four days since we discussed the Vicar Apostolic's letter, and
laughed somewhat at French excitability; but in four days what a
change! The cloud no bigger than your hand is now bigger than your
whole body, bigger, indeed, than the combined bodies of all your
neighbours, supposing you could spread them fantastically in great
layers across the skies. What, then, has happened?
It is that the Boxers, christened by us, as you will remember, but two or
three short weeks ago, have blossomed forth with such fierce growth
that they have become the men of the hour to the exclusion of
everything else, and were one to believe one tithe of the talk babbling
all around, the whole earth is shaking with them. Yet it is a very local
affair--a thing concerning only a tiny portion of a half-known corner of
the world. But for us it is sufficiently grave. The Peking-Paotingfu
railway is being rapidly destroyed; Fentai station, but six miles from
Peking--think of it, only six miles from this Manchu holy of holies--has
gone up in flames; a great steel bridge has succumbed to the destroying
energy of dynamite. All the European engineers have fled into Peking;
and, worst of all, the Boxer banners have been unfurled; and lo and
behold, as they floated in the breeze, the four dread characters, "_Pao
Ch'ing Mien Yang_," have been read on blood-red bunting--"Death and
destruction to the foreigner and all his works and loyal support to the
great Ching dynasty."
Is that sufficiently enthralling, or should I add that the invulnerability
of the Boxer has been officially and indisputably tested by the Manchus,
according to the gossip of the day? Proceeding to the Boxer camp at
Chochou, duly authorised officers of the Crown have seen recruits, who
have performed all the dread rites, and are initiated, stand fearlessly in
front of a full-fledged Boxer; have seen that Boxer load up his

blunderbuss with powder,