THE YELLOW NAPOLEON.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 14 November 1901, Page 4

THE YELLOW NAPOLEON.

Death of Li Hung Chang. & Sketch of China’s Great Statesman No man has been killed by the newspapers and resurrected in subsequent issues quite so often as Li Hung Chang, “the intellectual giant of the Orient,” news of whose death has just been cabled, and yet these stories have not been wholly without justification. Physically the Grand Old Man of China has been half dead for some time, but intellectually he remained a marvel, and he loved to sharpen his wits and fight intellectual battles with the eleven representatives of Europe. America, and Japan, who formed that chaotic, most inharmonious body that is called “the concert of the Powers to China.”

Writing a few months ago, Mr Stephen Bonsai said

“Practically every morning at sunrise the Viceroy is half dead. All his extremities are cold, and he lies an inert mass upon his klang. His glassy eyes are motionless. his breathing ‘imperceptible. It would take a medical man to tall whether he is alive or dead. At the hour when vitality is lowest he is very bw indeed. Every morning he is brought back from a deathlike sleep to life, slowly, patiently, by the care of his attendants and the galvanising force of his mighty brain and heart. Under the direction of a very intelligent Chinese doctor from Canton, Mr Mark, the daily operation of resuscitation is begun, his arms and legs are rubbed wish flannel soaked in alcohol, and a white substance, containing the essence of almonds, is forfted down his physically unwilling throat. “Then the Viceroy half opens his eyes, and is confronted with a hard boiled egg, which ho nibbles. Then Dr Mark applies electricity, shock after shock, and finally something like a lifelike glow rues through the gray withered body. Two of bis attendants then shake him into his clothe?, like a pillow into its case. Other attendants grip him under the shoulders, and wich their help he reaches his working table. By this time his sleepy energies are revived. You would hardly know the man. He sits upright in his chair, reads and rereads his telegrams, and, without a pause, dictates the answers and his despatches to a succession of secretaries.

“Then, but not until after his assistants —boys in the heydey of youth though they be—are fatigued by the exuberant energy of their chief, something happens. What it is would be hard to say. A feeling of exhaustion arrests him in his mental flight, sometimes, though not often, before his day’s work is done. Ho has felt a warning that for this day, at least, he must no longer concentrate his mind on affairs, and wi hout a word he drops his \york,

“His people know the signal well, and they bring him one of the classic books of Confucius beautifully hand written by some prince of literature, for ;in ridiculous benighted China there are still princes of literature. This is the only luxury which the Viceroy, perhaps the richest man in the world, permits himself, the only aesthetic taste in which ho Indulges—that of having beautifully bound aod artistically written copies of the works of the Chinese sages.

“And now for an hour or two he is lost, entirely to his surroundings. He copies the words, or rather the ideographs, with the accuracy of a mathematician, and the love of an artist, reproducing the faded work of a dead master. In his opinion this patient mechanical labour is the greatest restorative. It banishes every thought of the intrusive Powers, the vanishing Court, the crumbling Empire, which after all his advice and counsel were unheeded, has been placed upon his shoulders to uphold.

“All goes well in the Good and Loyal Temple until tiffin time, when the Viceroy closes his book, and turning with some pride from his own well-written transcript of the sage’s sentences, begins to remember that like all men of his inches and intellect, he is a mighty feeder. “ The Viceroy literally worries through the afternoons listening to the no ses, which his Chinese associates in the negotiations make, or reading the despatches that come in from the Viceroys and other high officials. As a rule they do not tell him what to do, but what he ought to have done. Now and again a mighty chieftain of bow and arrow soldiers somewhere in Central Asia, one who has never been within the sweep of quick firing guns, suggests that perhaps, after all, it would bo best to drive the foreign devils into the sea. The Viceroy sighs a sigh I shall not endeavour to fathom, though sometimes I have thought it said, ‘ Would that it could hr done !’ But at least his counsellors make a great noise, and keep the Viceroy from going to sleep, and so he smokes and laughs until night comes, and his attendants hoist him on their shoulders and put him to bed. “ It was a great personal triumph for the Viceroy when after much delay, and with evident trepidation, the foreign Ministers consented to receive him and his silent partner, Prince Ching, in confer* ence, for he knows very well that he is denounced as a traitor and scoundrel in all the languages of tho eleven Treaty Powers, as well as in every dialect that is spoken of the children of Ham, and the inhabitants of their territorial acquisitions.”