The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1911. THE BOXERS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 256, 8 March 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1911. THE BOXERS.

The Chinese seem to like tile "foreign J devil" as little as ever, if the latest I news regarding the position in Mukden I and other parts of Manchuria is a criterion. The anti-foreign feeling was aroused in the first place by those devoted white folk who in their efforts to "civilise" China gave the cue for commercial adventurers to make what spoil they could. The fact that traditions of extreme antiquity have been disturbed is one of the chief reasons for the occasional outbreaks of violence against the disturbers. Lately the "foreign devil" in Manchuria has, like his kind elsewhere, thrown himself heart and soul into the conflict with the dreaded plague, and the probability is that tile fatalism of the yellow man has been lacerated. It is natural under the circumstances that Chinese patriots should punish tb». disturbers, and the "Boxers," who are the soul of the anti-foreigner movement, will, it is presumed, lead the insurrection. The "Boxers," who were given their name by the foreigners whom they so violently detest, werg a powerful organisation even before the dreadful year a decode ago, when, in a frenzy of lervor, they engineered a terrible and widespread ivnti-missionary rising in northern Chinese provinces, Shantung, if we remember correctly, bearing the brunt. Not only did the Boxers rise in protest against foreign religionists, many of whom they slew, but the movement was wholly anti-foreign. No student of matters Chinese doubts that the greed of Western Powers brought about the Boxer riots and the anti-foreign demonstrations. That wonderful woman, the Chinese Dowa:ger-Emprcss, it will be remembered, at first discountenanced the rising,- but her ultimate passivity and her teal hatred of all foreigners resulted in the siege of the legations at Pekin, the assassination of the German Minister (Baron von Ketteler), and the whole of the ultimate trouble that ensued. It is history how two hundred foreigners took refuge within the walls of the British Legation at Pekin. Five Powers—Britain, Germany, France, America and Japan—at once organised a re- ■ lief expedition, and bombarded and reduced the Taku forts with their men-of-war. Admiral Seymour, commanding tlie allied forces, advanced on Pekin, but' was repulsed, but later with reinforcements 1 again advanced, the allies fighting industriously at Tientsin, Pei-tsang and Yangtsun, and ultimately raised the siege. It will be remembered that the agitated Court rolled its bundle and quitted, and that the five Powers, representing the greatest fighting forces on earth, comfortably sat down until the declaration of peace. In the meantime, the intolerable insult put upon the "foreign devil" had to be wiped out in gold, for neither one of the five Powers ever recognised that China had any right to do what she liked in her own territory. The indemnity was fixed at sixty-four million pounds English money, and although the Powers effectually but temporarily squelched the Boxers, gained much gold and a great deal of loot, tlie unforgetting Chinese have not yet taken the foreigner to their bosoms. Since the time of that anti-foreigner rising there has been immense industry on the part of foreign traders in China. Interests have grown 1 enormously; great German, American and British businesses have been established; white engineers have built railways in the gigantic empire; Chinese princes of commerce have even fallen on the neck of the Yankee drummer; and everything in the garden has appeared to bloom. In really national or provincial matters —and most Chinese provinces have larger populations than many European kingdoms—the people think and act as one man. This has never been demonstrated better than in the vast and successful war against opium, the cutting off of queues, and the gradual disappearance of the system of education that had been part of the Chinese life for thousands of years. The Chinese are entitled to believe that Ithc ■ "foreign devil" who introduced opium and controlled the gorgeously profitable trade was insincere in his efforts eithei to save his soul from joss worship or his body from plague. He may still hold that one foreign devil is like every othei foreign devil, and that if a looter of a court is worthy of death, all his brothers are als® worthy of the same treatment In the meantime, troops will probablyi bt sent to Mukden in order to protect the foreigners there, but Mukden, as well as the rest of China, has changed a little since the days of the Boxer rising whicl: ended in the Pekin bother. . We have been told that a species of nationalise lias grown up in the great Empire; we know that, thanks to Western example Chinese defence is better ejfganised thai it was, and we are not sure that the Young Chinese Party, although it maj be very courteously inclined to do busi ness with the "foreign devil," still hatei him, and will perhaps aid the Boxers it what the latter believe would be a ;jusi war of extermination. China owes hei new ideas and her new commercial as pira tions, her new railways, her new cdu cation, her new belief in her enormou: power to Westerners, but she does 1101 love them any the, better because she has soon their methods applied to the extension of foreign trade. Althougl what we call "enlightenment" hasspre.ie in China, there are uncountable million; in the Empire who are unable to gras; the idea that the white man is thei! friend and not their exploiter. Thi white men, who are ambitious of west ernisinjr the East for the sake of tin West, see only swollen banking account and not the terrible menace of the en mily of three hundred million yellov men. They may fling their allied troopi into .Mukden or even into Pekin, am mar effect temporary cessation of hos tility. They may even make the yellov man respect the white man. but as lonj as the latter remains in China he wil

gain no esteem. He will still remain the "foreign devil" who must be killed I as opportunity offers. I