AUSTRALIAN GOLD
Li Ku Yu, for his part, put on the Double-eyed Peacock’s Feather, with
a Marquisate of the First Rank, and other honours; and his government
began.
Those of his enemies who had been captured were set free unpunished;
those who had fled in all directions one by one crept back, and, to
their utter astonishment, were left unpunished—Li Ku Yu too big and
busy to think of punishing them.
It is true that under his rule very many fell; but the lingering death
and dismemberment fell into disuse.
The men upon whom he meditated with a malign and silent eye were men of
the harmless “scholar” sort, who thought that they knew a lot, but knew
nothing—the official who chanced to quote from Confucius, or Mencius,
or Jesus, or Buddha, from the Philosopher Chu or Chou, from Wang Hou’s
“Admonitions to his Sons,” or “The Book of Ceremonies” of the Chou
Dynasty: sooner or later that scholar’s neck would skip off him beyond
the city walls; flashing was the falchion that slashed him; crude and
ruthless the dawn of the morning of his execution: that afternoon he
quoted no more.
One other man, too, stood in more ticklish danger than ever—the
millionaire, whose wealth, when his head fell, could be confiscated.
From this source alone the Empress was said to have accumulated in two
years eighty million taels in the vaults of the Palace of Celestial
Purity, where she was accustomed to govern behind the curtain of yellow
silk that veiled her and her chief eunuch from the view of men.
Meantime, the cargo of ordered cinematographs had arrived—Li Ku Yu’s
first open act of war against the Christian races.
He himself was head-master of one of the schools which he instituted
to teach the use of the machines; he himself invented many of the
“plots”—“plots” which had only one subject in infinite variety—a combat
between white men and yellow, white women and yellow. And ever the
yellow ended best man, disembowelling the colourless mouse, cutting out
his or her tongue, bamboozling him in business, hacking out his heart,
dancing on his carcass.
These films went out to districts of China and Japan where it was
not even known that there were such things as white men; and, the
entrance fee being only a few _li_, they soon proved popular apostles
of atrocity, became a dissipation, an all-day orgy of fun to hundreds
of millions—for Li Ku Yu intimately knew the mood and instincts of his
countryman.
When the Embassies protested against these shows, and against the
multitude of new “Government Gazettes” which had begun to promulgate
the same two gospels of greed and cruelty, Li Ku Yu constantly promised
that “the evil should be checked”; and advised them, meantime, to get
permission to increase the strength of the Legation Guards!
About this time, when Count Markino, the Japanese Ambassador, said
to him: “China must wake from four thousand years of sleep, Your
Excellency,” Li Ku Yu answered: “Different degrees of wakefulness!
China is awake! You know what woke her.”
“Tell me again,” the Count said, smiling.
“It was the gonging of the English guns that captured the hill forts
above Canton in 1841: she stretched then. They thought themselves very
big and godlike, capturing the poor Tartar General—and they _were_
‘catching a tartar,’ as they say. It was the gonging of the guns in
1857 when the French and British bombarded the south coast: she rubbed
her eyes then. It was the gonging of the French guns which shelled
the junks in the Min River in 1884, and of the guns of all the globe
which bombarded Peking in 1900: _tra-lar!_ she stood up then, and
looked around. Beware who touches her! She is the Dragon and grand
Anti-Christ: she stands awake.”
“Dreadful: if only the dragon had teeth in her gums,” said the other.
“Wait four months,” muttered Li Ku Yu.
Within those four months a beginning of Conscription on the Swiss model
was made throughout China—a thing at which imagination fails.
It chanced that just then Germany and England were at loggerheads over
an African tract; also, just then, Persia was afresh in some trouble
with Russia; and some Russian squadrons at Resht were afresh ready to
rush upon Teheran.
Now, since the Russo-Japanese war, the Persian fancy had rather been
aburn at Japan’s Pan-Asian dream; and several secret Persian (as well
as Indian!) missions had gone in pious pilgrimage to Tokio and Peking.
So Persia, in her adversity, now turned to Japan: for England, with
Germany on the nerves, had been flirting with Russia ever since the
Convention of 1907, and afresh shirked meddling in the Persian mess.
Persia turned to Japan, asking “How long?” and Li Ku Yu flew to Tokio.
He had now more than all the weight and authority that he needed; being
recognised, even in Europe, as the very greatest force in the Orient.
He was “Adviser to the Throne”; Viceroy of the Metropolitan Province.
He had dared to display apricot yellow in the hangings of his
palanquin—a piece of cheek that caused him to be the idol of all
Southern China.
Indeed, he had already assumed not a few of the airs of Royalty. To
the amazement of men his name had “double-elevation” in documents. He
pompously accompanied the Empress to the Eastern and Western Tombs, and
dared to take a principal part in her sacrifices to river, or ancestor,
or deity.
Moreover, the man pretended to magic, the rapt eye, Divine inspiration,
and gift of miracles—a pretence made pretty easy for him to maintain
by his intimacy with scientific things.
The Chinese believe that a Divine Saviour periodically arises for
China: Li Ku Yu said: “Look into my brazen eyes, and see Him.”
On reaching Tokio, he now afresh proposed his “secret treaty”; and he
proposed, in addition, the following plot:
(1) That China should apply for a German loan, offering as security a
protectorate of Shantung—this to electrify the Anglo-German atmosphere.
(2) That the Persian Megliss, meantime, should be urged to knuckle
under to Russia; and the Persian incident be used to bring about a
(sham) _rapprochement_ between Petersburg and Tokio.
(3) That Japan should now openly declare that she really no longer
needed all her warships, now that she lay happy on the breast of the
Bear.
And (4) that she should then secretly offer to sell to Germany—which
should end in Anglo-German war.
But again the international juggler failed.
The Japs, indeed, now agreed to the secret treaty: but as regards
the sweeter part of the intrigue, although they grinned with greedy
interest, they shook sagacious heads. There were dangers—and no hurry.
Some other time.
Li Ku Yu said: “Wise men think in the future, but fools live in it.”
He was very bitter in those days; called the Japanese by his bitterest
word—“pedants”; and prepared to return to Peking.
He had still one rendezvous at the Foreign Office to keep, when
one evening there came to him at the Embassy a cypher-cable from
London—from Oyone, his Irish-Japanese—which said: “England gone wild
to-night. Wonderful discovery gold Australia.”
Li Ku Yu slapped his sleeve; and he cried: “_Tra-lar!_ the tricky are
even luckier than they are tricky.”
He did not keep his rendezvous at the Foreign Office the next day—was
“ailing”; and he ailed eight days, until the still-coming news of the
new Eldorado had well saturated the Japanese head.
Gold in “back-of-beyond country” of North-Western Australia on No
Man’s Land! And no grudging Palmer’s Diggings, apparently, or niggard
Coolgardie, granting a wage to the digger’s sweat, but, by all
accounts, a Golconda, grounds rugged with nuggets, crags of gold, a
coast of gold, with glancing sands!
Already within eight days of the first bursting out of the tidings, the
world’s eyes were turned that way, the world purchasing kit-bags for
the journey....
And Japan was padlocked out: her nationals had to write fifty words of
English dictation, nicely spelled, before landing; captains were fined
a hundred pounds for allowing a yellow man to escape to land.
“The fate of men and nations who delay!” said Li Ku Yu: “God, Marquis,
will pardon every sin, except the unpardonable sin—the waste of time.
_Cluck!_ let a man be bold to-day, and to-night all the stars will clap
their hands at him, calling to him: ‘_You are one of us!_’ Really, I
can’t think of a reason why this field of riches is not in Japanese
territory to-day.”
The Chinaman now had the negotiation all his own way, as if he was
dealing with dazed men: for the gold-find in Australia appears to have
deeply digged at the greed of the little people of Nippon.
Among the high there were searchings of heart; to delight the low
the _Ju Ju_ newspaper used the withering word “_cranes_” against the
governors of its country.
Li Ku Yu flew back to China, chin up, smiling at the horizon—with
pledges in his portfolio.