CHAPTER XXIV.

PRESIDENT McKINLEY AND THE CHINESE CRISIS.

When, in 1899 and 1900 the civilized world was filled with indignation over the atrocities of the “Boxers,” a vast element in China, and when it became necessary for the United States to send its contingent of soldiers to the scene, for the protection of United States interests there, and of its diplomatic corps, this government’s hand in the matter was guided by President McKinley.

The result was like that of all other affairs in which the comity of nations has been involved, during President McKinley’s incumbency of the executive place, so far as the United States were concerned. It was creditable to this country, and was ramified by the judicious and commendably conservative character of the man.

The conduct of our country in it all was devoid of elements of greed and spoliation, or revenge, or any sort of unnecessary violence, and there was an utter and entire absence of outrage.

The great uprising of a large part of the Chinese population against the presence of foreigners in the empire, which began in the latter part of 1899 and resulted in the loss of untold thousands of lives, was one of the strangest occurrences in the history of the world. At its inception little was thought of it by the other nations, for China has been the home of disorders, insurrections, uprisings and rebellions for many centuries, but when the revolt spread from one province to another; when Christian missionaries were ruthlessly slaughtered on every hand; when natives who had been converted to Christianity were subjected to the most horrible tortures; when foreign ministers in Peking were assassinated and legations burned; when the guards of other countries whose duty it was to protect the foreign representatives and members of legations were attacked by the imperial Chinese troops and forced to shoot down the soldiers of the empire as well as the rioters by the thousand in order to save themselves; when millions of dollars’ worth of property belonging to missionaries and citizens of other countries had been burned; when the fleets of foreign nations were fired upon by the Chinese, as was the case at Taku on the morning of June 17th, 1900, resulting in the taking of the forts by the foreign fleets after a brisk bombardment; and, finally, when the American, British, German, Russian, French, Italian and Japanese soldiers, sailors and marines sent to the relief of the imprisoned ambassadors and ministers of the great powers of the world were beaten back by the Chinese troops with heavy loss, then, and then only, did the other nations fully realize the great danger that confronted them. The awful Yellow Terror was wild for blood, and determined to drive every one of the “white devils,” as the Celestials call all foreigners, out of the Empire.

When the outside countries demanded that their ambassadors and ministers, as well as their citizens in China, be protected, the Chinese government replied that the uprising was too widespread to be controlled, and then the powers took the matter in hand themselves and sent troops by the thousand—the aggregate by the end of July, 1900, being nearly 100,000, with fully that many on their way or ready to start. Meanwhile the Chinese imperial troops, most of them having joined the insurgents, showed their fighting qualities in several engagements, and the tried and trained warriors of the United States, England, France, Russia, Germany, and other countries soon found they were opposed by no mean foe. The Chinese have a contempt for death, and are stoical when undergoing the most frightful punishment; they fell in ranks and rows and heaps before the steady fire of the invaders, but yet they came on. The one thing they did not like, however, was the use of the bayonet against them, and when the foreign troops resorted to the cold steel and rushed upon them with it the Chinese invariably gave way.

The uprising which began in 1899 was the most extensive China had ever known, and the national government soon found itself helpless. It was incited by the secret society Ye-Ho-Chuan, or “Boxers,” the literal meaning or translation of the name of the society being “Righteousness, Harmony and Fists.” It had about 4,000,000 members in the Empire, and while the society was formed for the purpose of overthrowing the Manchu dynasty, which represented not more than 12,000,000 of the 450,000,000 people of China, its hatred of all foreigners was the predominating spirit. The “Boxers” first began by attacking the outlying foreign mission settlements and then worked their way to the capital of the Empire, leaving a bloody trail behind them.

China had always hated the people of outside countries, and never had much to do with them until about the first quarter of the nineteenth century. China traded as little as she could with the outside world. Indeed, there was formerly a law punishing with death any Chinaman who ever visited any other country. “China for the Chinese,” was the watchword, and the lives of foreigners have never been safe in the Flowery Kingdom.

China is thousands of years old, and was known to the ancients—the oldest nations of which history makes record. It was mentioned in ancient Sanskrit literature, but little was known of it. It was called by the earliest civilizations as Seres; two thousand or more years ago it was known as Chin, possibly because of the Thsin dynasty, which occupied the throne some two hundred years before Christ. In the Middle Ages it was called Cathay. The probabilities are that the name China comes from the race called Chinas, who lived in the mountains near the Indies, and was a branch of the Dard races. This name probably reached Europe through the Arabs.

In 1840 China had her first experience with a civilized power. She had been fighting barbarian nations like herself for many centuries, but had never become embroiled with any of the western countries. England had been doing a large trade with China in opium, to which the mandarins of the Empire, who really ruled the country, objected, and finally they stopped all foreign trade whatever. England declared war and captured Canton, Shanghai and other important cities, after subjecting them to bombardment, and China, to gain peace, being defenseless, paid England an indemnity of $21,000,000 and opened the ports of Amoy, Fuh-Chow-Foo, Ningpo and Shanghai to foreign trade.

Troubles then began to visit poor China in hordes. A rebellion broke out in consequence of the failure of the Emperor Heenfung to carry out promised reforms, and taking advantage of this, one Hung Sew-tseuen, who had been converted to Christianity, and who knew the longing of his countrymen for a native Chinese dynasty, proclaimed the inauguration of the Taiping dynasty with himself as the first Emperor. This was in 1852. He overran several provinces and captured Nanking, which he made his capital, and was further aided in his schemes by England, which declared war against the Tartar or Manchu dynasty in 1857 and gained further trade advantages. France also joined in this campaign and the allies marched to the very gates of Peking. A war indemnity of 8,000,000 taels was also paid by the imperial government to the victors.

China quarreled with Japan over Corea, the Hermit Kingdom, in 1894, and was badly whipped both on sea and land. The Japanese fleet and army captured and occupied Port Arthur and Wei-Hai-Wei, the two strongest harbors on the northern China coast. Japan proposed to keep Port Arthur. Russia, with the assistance of Germany and France, compelled Japan to restore Port Arthur to China. Afterwards Russia took Port Arthur herself, and proceeded to make it the strongest military and naval base in the Pacific.

From 1895 until 1899 the outrages in China on foreign missions, schools, and hospitals were of monthly occurrence. At the same time foreign aggression on Chinese territory became more marked. Russia, Germany, France and England acquired large areas of territory, either by lease or by force, and began fortifications, railroads, factories, etc. This foreign aggression only intensified the popular discontent among the Chinese masses, and the secret societies flourished as never before.

The “Boxers” had been ravaging, pillaging and murdering for some months before the European powers became awakened to the seriousness of the situation. During the latter part of May, 1900, the Washington government addressed a note of warning to Peking to the effect that the United States could not stand idly by and see its citizens slaughtered and their property destroyed, as the Chinese government was bound by treaty to protect the persons and property of citizens of friendly nations. No reply was made to this, for it soon became apparent that the Dowager Empress was friendly to the “Boxers.” Small bodies of imperial troops were sent against the “Boxers,” but the latter easily overcame the soldiers, who at once joined them.

The “Boxers” society was organized in the province of Shan-Tung, and it grew so rapidly that the great provinces of Shan-Tung, Honan and Pechili were completely under its control. Soon it had branches in every province of the Empire, and entirely dominated Pechili, the province in which Peking lies. Its leaders were energetic and resourceful, and by the end of May, 1900, all China was aflame.

The 4,000,000 membership of the “Boxers” society was made up of coolies, river men, idlers, pirates, bandits, and criminals of all classes. But their leaders, although unknown to the European authorities in the far East in the latter part of 1899 when the great uprising was inaugurated, were men of ability and shrewdness.

The “Boxers” might reasonably be considered as simply a part and parcel of the revolutionary propaganda in China. The society differed little from other societies known at different times as the “Society of Heaven,” the “Heaven and Earth Society,” the “Triads,” the “Black Flags,” the “Teente Brotherhood,” the “Tea Society,” the “Water Lilies,” the “Floods,” or the “Vegetarians.”

These societies and others with different names but similar purposes, waged constant war against the foreigners. They always resented the presence of Christian missions and commercial enterprises alike. To them the engineer who surveyed a railroad, the physician who came to end an epidemic, and the missionary were equally the objects of aversion, and the secret society murdered the one as cheerfully as the other.

Previous to the “Boxer” outbreak there were three or four rebellions which tended to put the Celestials in the humor to fight anything and anybody, particularly the foreigners.

China is yet honeycombed, and has been for centuries, as no other country in the world with secret societies, embracing all classes, having an existence dating from the second century of the Christian era—an existence not of tradition but vouched for by record.

Up to 1898 these secret societies had for their main object the overthrow of the Manchu or Tartar dynasty, but after that they devoted their attention to the expulsion of the foreigner from the land. It has always been a mistake to believe that John Chinaman was a stranger to patriotism. Indeed, so passionately devoted is he to his native country that he makes arrangements for the return of his bones to the Flowery Kingdom in the event of his dying in foreign lands. This fiber of patriotism was utilized in 1900 by that extraordinarily clever woman, the Dowager Empress, to rally the entire nation into the presentation of a virtually united front to the foreigner, to convert the secret societies from anti-dynastic into anti-foreign movements, and to achieve that which the Triad sought in vain to bring about at the time of the Taiping rebellion—namely: coöperation of all the secret societies, one with another, against the common foe, which this time was not the Manchu conqueror but the white foreigner.

It can hardly be denied that from about 1840 to 1900 China was subjected to a degree of indignity, insult, extortion, and bullying on the part of some of the foreign powers no Christian power would have tolerated. Treaties were imposed upon her by force, her finest harbors seized, and vast stretches of her littoral successively placed under foreign rule. She was compelled to consent to agreements providing for the transfer of her immense river trade to foreign flags, and for the gridironing of the entire land by means of foreign built and foreign controlled railroads, while for every concession made by her a dozen new ones were presented by the foreign powers.

In December, 1899, the Empress issued a secret edict, addressed to the Viceroys of the various provinces.

“The various foreign powers cast upon us looks of tigerlike voracity, hustling each other in their endeavors to be the first to seize upon our innermost territories,” she declared.

“They fail to understand that there are certain things which this Empire can never consent to do, and that if hard pressed we have no alternative but to rely upon the justice of our cause.”

Four weeks later another edict was dispatched to the same officials by the Dowager Empress, who had, it was said, English or American blood in her veins, her mother having been a Eurasian, or child of a white father and Manchu mother. In this second edict the Viceroys were warned to exercise a prudent discrimination towards the disturbers of public peace.

“The reckless fellows who band together and create riot on the pretext of securing the inauguration of reforms,” were to be punished, while those “loyal subjects who learn gymnastic drill for the protection of their families and their country,” that was to say, the members of the “Righteous Harmony Fists (‘Boxers’) association,” were to be favored. The “Boxers” association was openly a society for the cultivation of gymnastics, but secretly an anti-foreign political movement, something like those “Turnverein” or gymnastic societies which played so important a political rôle in Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century, becoming one of the most important factors in the liberation of the fatherland from the presence of the French invader. From the time the “Boxers” were openly encouraged by the Empress, they became a means of union among all the various secret societies, and the fact that these societies in all parts of the immense Chinese Empire simultaneously took to arms to drive out the foreigner was due to the adroitness of the old Empress, who thus, at the close of the nineteenth century, emulated in a way the rôle played by Queen Louise of Prussia when she roused her countrymen to rid Germany from the thraldom of Napoleon.

However, the Chinese went about it in the most horrible fashion, subjecting the objects of their hatred to the most agonizing tortures and inflicting upon them every conceivable atrocity the barbarian mind could invent.

The fact that Hon. Edwin H. Conger, United States Minister to China, his wife and daughter, were among the foreign ambassadors and ministers shut up in Peking, and sometimes reported massacred, was sufficient reason that the United States should join with the allied armies in the war against “The Yellow Terror,” and there were other good reasons. Thus came about the part that the United States naval and military forces took in that war, in which occurred the battle of Tien-Tsin and the relief of Peking, together with the development of the fact that Minister Conger and his family were safe. All of which are matters of recent history, and for which there is no reason that it should be repeated here.

In the entire war, however, the exemplary conduct of the American soldiers was apparent to the world, and it has been shown that the kindness of President McKinley and the humane nature that characterized him in all things was the spirit that pervaded the American camp.

The brutality and savagery of the Russian troops composing a part of the allied forces which captured the City of Tien-Tsin July 14, 1900, were almost beyond belief. In view of the frightful excesses of the soldiers of the Czar, it was not at all strange that the Chinese should have regarded the people of the so-called civilized nations with distrust. It should be said in this connection, and in justice to the other troops of the international column, that the Russians were the only ones who committed excesses of any sort, while the United States troops did what they could to prevent looting and murder. The Americans commanded the admiration of all by their conduct, but the Russians were condemned on every side.

Further testimony of the great respect and admiration manifested for the United States troops is shown in the story of the march to Peking:

A correspondent, in describing the men as they appeared when sweeping through a town not far from Tien-Tsin, said the Americans impressed the spectators more than any other troops because they looked and acted so business-like. It was most gratifying to the people of the United States that the reports from China were invariably favorable to their soldiers, who compelled the respect and admiration of the allies and Chinese alike. It was demonstrated as never before that the American soldier was the most effective fighter on earth. It was not claimed that he led all others in bravery, but certainly no one ranked higher than he in that respect. All had courage and daring, but no other soldier shot so accurately. The Chinese gave testimony to that effect, and they had the best kind of an opportunity to learn the facts.

“When we see so many falling around us that we are forced to run,” said a captured Chinaman, “then we know we are fighting Americans.”

This superiority in marksmanship was conceded by the allies, too. They had seen it demonstrated often, and the brave man is quick to give credit where credit is due. “When firing at the top of a wall,” said one correspondent, “the American bullets chip the masonry.” The Japanese gave especially convincing evidence of the opinion in which the American soldier was held in China. They are enthusiastic little fellows, and are ever anxious to learn all that friend or foe can teach them, and they gave particular attention to the methods and work of the Americans.

“We do not shoot as well as you,” said a Japanese officer, “but we have seen the importance of learning it. Look out for us; in a few years more we shall shoot even as well as the Americans.”

If imitation is the sincerest flattery, Uncle Sam’s enlisted men have reason to feel proud, for no one is so quick as the Jap to see what is worth imitating. His judgment and perceptive power in this line are what brought him so rapidly to the front.

All in all, the people of the United States had ample excuse for pride in the men who were representing them on the battlefield in China. The record made was splendid.

After describing the appearance of the troops of other nationalities on the march, the correspondent said:

“Then came the Americans, looking so hardy and determined, marching like veterans, although so many of them were very young, and carrying their rifles like men who know how to use them. They do know how to use them, as the Chinese are well aware. When there is any hot work to do—where fine marksmanship is needed—they always have the United States troops attend to it, and the job is always well done.

“Captain Reilly’s Battery—only about 200 horses and six guns—closed the United States column. Poor Reilly! He fell while directing his men before the walls of the Sacred City at Peking, and died like the hero he was. There was no attempt at show when Reilly’s battery passed the spot where we were standing—none of the ‘pomp and circumstance of glorious war’—and Reilly himself, a little bald, gray man, a sort of Joe Wheeler. But Reilly is the fashion here to-day and everybody wants to see him.”

Thoroughly illustrative of President McKinley’s attitude in that war, and characteristic of him and his administration, is the following correspondence between him and the Emperor of China:

On July 19th the Emperor of China appealed to President McKinley to intercede with the powers to bring about peace. It reached Washington July 23rd. The following is the Emperor’s appeal:

“The Emperor of China. To his Excellency the President of the United States, Greeting:—China has long maintained friendly relations with the United States, and is deeply conscious that the object of the United States is international commerce. Neither country entertains the least suspicion or distrust toward the other. Recent outbreaks of mutual antipathy between the people and Christian missions caused the foreign powers to view with suspicion the position of the imperial government as favorable to the people and prejudicial to the missions, with the result that the Taku forts were attacked and captured. Consequently, there has been clashing of forces with calamitous consequences. The situation has become more and more serious and critical.

“We have just received a telegraphic memorial from our envoy, Wu Ting Fang, and it is highly gratifying to us to learn that the United States government, having in view the friendly relations between the two countries, has taken a deep interest in the present situation. Now China, driven by the irresistible course of events, has unfortunately incurred well-nigh universal indignation. For settling the present difficulty, China places special reliance in the United States. We address this message to your excellency in all sincerity and candidness with the hope that your excellency will devise measures and take the initiative in bringing about a concert of the powers for the restoration of order and peace. The favor of a kind reply is earnestly requested, and awaited with the greatest anxiety.

“KWANG-HSU, 26th year, 6th Moon, 23rd day (July 19).”

President McKinley at once replied as follows:

“The President of the United States, to the Emperor of China, Greeting:—I have received your majesty’s message of the 19th of July, and am glad to know that your majesty recognizes the fact that the government and people of the United States desire of China nothing but what is just and equitable. The purpose for which we landed troops in China was the rescue of our legation from grave danger and the protection of the lives and property of Americans who were sojourning in China in the enjoyment of rights guaranteed them by treaty and by international law. The same purposes are publicly declared by all the powers which have landed military forces in your majesty’s empire.

“I am to infer from your majesty’s letter that the malefactors who have disturbed the peace of China, who have murdered the Minister of Germany and a member of the Japanese legation, and who now hold besieged in Peking those foreign diplomatists who still survive, have not only not received any favor or encouragement from your majesty, but are actually in rebellion against the imperial authority. If this be the case, I most solemnly urge upon your majesty’s government to give public assurance whether the foreign Ministers are alive, and, if so, in what condition.

“2. To put the diplomatic representatives of the powers in immediate and free communication with their respective governments and to remove all danger to their lives and liberty.

“3. To place the imperial authorities of China in communication with the relief expedition so that coöperation may be secured between them for the liberation of the legationers, the protection of foreigners and the restoration of order.

“If these objects are accomplished, it is the belief of this government that no obstacles will be found to exist on the part of the powers to an amicable settlement of all the questions arising out of the recent troubles, and the friendly good offices of this government will, with the assent of the other powers, be cheerfully placed at your majesty’s disposition for that purpose.

“WILLIAM McKINLEY.

“By the President: JOHN HAY, Secretary of State. “July 23, 1900.”

By reason of the good offices of President McKinley, a settlement of the Chinese troubles was had that was equitable to all parties concerned. It is doubtful if such a result could have been reached otherwise.

As it was, instead of attempted dismemberment of the Chinese Empire, and a program of wholesale looting, spoliation and consequent disturbances between the powers interested, the matter was settled with honor to all the world.

McKinley’s kindly heart and hand was of the leaven that leavened it all.