It was the garden of the Mission of Peitang. Not a blade of grass was
showing above the ground. The roots of the grass itself had been torn
up, eaten by the last few starving animals within the besieged
compound before they had been killed, and the trees were absolutely
stripped of their bark as high as the beasts could reach. At one side
of the garden a great open crater, fringed with the ruins of
buildings, showed where a mine had exploded. The cross on the
Cathedral hard by was broken, and its Gothic architecture additionally
fretted by the scoring marks of shot and shell. But I think nothing
told more forcibly the tale of the ordeal through which the garrison
had passed than did these gnawed, naked tree-trunks.
I was shown round the day after its relief by one of the Sisters,
which, by the way, was effected by the Japanese, but not until the
third day after the Legations had been relieved, although it was only
twenty minutes' ride distant from them. The Mother Superior,
seventy-four years of age, who had spent thirty-eight years of her
life in Chinese mission work, lay dying--a daughter of Count Barais,
of Château Barais, near Bordeaux. She had belonged to the Order of
Sisters of Charity since her eighteenth year. Three mines had exploded
within the Mission enclosure, and walls and roofs were riddled and lay
tossed about in grotesque confusion. I went into the Cathedral church,
which they were using as a hospital.
Coming from the glare of white light outside, it was some moments
before I could distinguish anything in the gloom within. By degrees
one made out rows of rounded forms of little children lying on the
floor. Above, the stained-glass windows were broken in many places,
and the roof perforated where shells had entered, letting in shafts of
light that fell aslant the gloom. High up on the wall one lit up a
figure of Christ that with bowed head and extended, nail-pierced hands
seemed to point in eloquent silence to the little suffering children
below. The entire floor of the church, even up to the extinguished
lamp of the sanctuary, was occupied with them. In one explosion alone
eighty children were killed, and a still greater number injured. Many
more were ailing for want of sufficient food, because when the actual
relief came they had been reduced to only two ounces of rice per day,
and had but two days' rations left. Other children, who were helping
the nuns, moved noiselessly about among the prostrate forms. The
hushed silence of sanctuary was broken only by low moaning, or the
querulous sobbing of little children weary with pain. The Sister
brought me to see one little mite, whom she called the "first fruit"
of their recommenced labour.
It was a strange story, that of this little child. The French soldiers
who occupied that quarter of the city had come across a house where,
stretched on the kang side by side, were the bodies of all its
occupants. They had committed suicide on the advent of the Allies. As
the soldiers had not time to bury them immediately, intent as they
were on pillaging and looting the neighbourhood, they threw lime on
the bodies. After two days, when they came to throw their remains into
a pit which had been dug for their burial, they found that the
youngest victim was yet alive, and carried her, with her hair still
caked with lime, to the nuns.
In the midst of these ruins these good women, mostly of gentle birth,
were striving to recommence their labours, and nurse, and feed, and
teach the children that remained. But, conversing with them, one
perceived, underlying their heroic resignation, a strain of very human
despondency and disappointment. Their talk here was not of
compensation. It was merely of how they could get their ruined
mission-house fit for work again--the work for which they had left
father and mother and friends, and their homes in far-off France.
It was not quite the same elsewhere, however. There were some
missionaries who appeared to take a different view of the situation.
Already they were lodging claims with their respective Consuls, and in
order to guard themselves against the dilatoriness or uncertainty of
action of their various Governments they were taking measures to
secure immediate compensation.
One reverend gentleman, for instance, was to be seen day after day
holding a sale of loot in a house that he had taken possession of.
Another, an American, was carrying on a similar sale in a palatial
mansion which he had commandeered. The latter was to be seen
surrounded by jade and porcelain vases, costly embroideries from the
spoiled temples, sable cloaks and various other furs, and rows of
Buddhas arranged like wild-fowl in a poulterer's shop. As his stock
became depleted he was in a position to ask any unsatisfied customer
to call in again, as his converts were bringing in fresh supplies of
loot almost every day!
Indeed, not satisfied with the proceeds of his loot sale, this worthy
man was enterprising enough to levy compensation on the Chinese, and,
in addition to recovering the full value of the damage sustained by
his converts, inflicted fines that exceeded that amount--according to
his own admission--by one-third.
[Illustration: General French And Staff On Black Monday.]
There are others who took possession of Chinese houses wholesale, and
found a source of income in letting or leasing them. The fact of their
having a number of converts to support was given by them as a
justification of their actions. Unquestionably they had a large number
more or less dependent upon them, but some other means might surely
have been found. They were very busy in those days. And perhaps that
accounts for their taking no notice of the actions of various portions
of the Allied soldiery. Wholesale robbery, cruelty, and the raping of
women were going on all round; a regular orgy of rapine surged through
the captured city. Yet not one solitary voice of protest was heard.
It would be gratifying to think that, amidst all these exponents of
the doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount, there was one who called for
mercy on the conquered, or asked that even common humanity should be
shown them, or even reminded the generals of their own rules of war
and fair fighting, or who raised his voice for justice, even if he did
not in compassion. What an opportunity lost, which would not have been
thrown away on the Chinese, of showing in practice what they had been
preaching--"Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you,
pray for them that despitefully use you." If, instead of selling
images of Buddha, they had used their influence to preserve his
temples from desecration and defilement, or offered sanctuary to his
priests, it is certain that they would have more materially furthered
the cause they have in hand.
It would be wrong to say that not one solitary voice was raised. 'Tis
true it was not raised by any missionary. But there is a rough-looking
soldier with a strong face that looks as if it had been hewn out of a
block of red sandstone with a blunt hatchet--General Chaffee, of the
United States Army. He would be called in England a "ranker." He, not
content, as Sir Alfred Gaselee was, with keeping his own men from
disgracing their country's flag, wrote a letter of remonstrance to
Count Waldersee, and received a snub in return for an action which,
nevertheless, redounds immensely to his credit.
Christianity in China has received a staggering blow, from which it
will not recover during the lives of the present generation. Its
progress, so far as any one can see, in the immediate future is at an
end. It is even questionable whether it will not be wiped out
altogether in Northern China. The terrible assaults by Boxers will
largely decrease the number of converts. The temporal advantages that
formerly ensued from its profession are now more than counterbalanced
by the hatred and persecution that Christianity entails. The worst
blow it has received has been through the conduct of the Allied
soldiery during the late invasion. These men have crucified it in
China as truly as the soldiers of Pilate did its Founder. And even the
Christian missionaries raised no protest against the crucifixion.
Let us hear what a Chinaman says in a book just published, the author
writing under the name of "Wen Ching." I heard the identical opinions
expressed by many intellectual Chinese.
"For their gifts," he says, "to the West in the shape of silk, tea,
and the magnetic compass, the Chinese have so far in return received
opium, missionaries, and bombardment." "The _literati_, the backbone
of China ... are not kindly spoken of by missionaries, nor are they
liked by foreigners."
It is only "the lower orders that have always been very susceptible to
the teaching of foreigners. Their ignorance and their poverty furnish
ample reasons for their willingness to join the churches of the
Europeans."
Also "the claims of missionaries to a right of travel and residence in
the interior ... are founded on no higher authority than an
interpolation by a missionary translator into the Chinese text of the
treaty between France and China." That "the disturbance of a local
_fengshui_ by a church spire is considered as much of a grievance as
the erection of a hideous tannery beside Westminster Abbey would be."
He says that "the Christian religion spread chiefly, if not entirely,
among the poorer people, until it was discovered that political
advantages accrued to the convert." For "in many places the missionary
intrudes himself into the Chinese court, and sits beside the
magistrate to hear a case between his convert and a non-Christian
native. The influence of the missionary is very great, and the
official is often pestered and worried by the messengers of the
Gospel." Therefore the Christian converts are voted a "source of
trouble and a nuisance."
Still, in this writer's opinion, "nothing has done so much harm to the
cause of the missionary as this forcing the opium trade on the
people." "If there are honest missionaries," he remarks, "there are
also sincere believers in the ancient faiths of Cathay to resent the
insidious encroachments of blatant foreign priests, who preach to the
heathen the doctrines of self-imposed poverty and mendicancy, and yet
themselves live sumptuously enough in comfortable houses, surrounded
by a wife and a numerous progeny, in the midst of heathen squalor and
misery."
These are just a few extracts from the views of an intelligent
Chinaman as regards the question of missionaries in his country. But
in conversation with others I heard similar opinions more forcibly
put. They point out that the various exponents of Christianity insist
that each alone expounds the right version, which is puzzling to the
Chinese, and that the missionaries actually have not agreed as to the
name of their God, as they use five different characters.
Within the radius of an eighteen-penny cab fare from where I write, I
think there is plenty of spiritually productive work for all the
missionaries in China; work for all the sincere, self-sacrificing
missionaries--and there are still many of them in China--men animated
by the spirit of the Twelve Fishermen, who have not adopted their
profession as a means of livelihood, in addition to a secure income
getting an extra £30 for every baby born in their families. And
within the radius I speak of, they would not first have the task of
weaning the people away from the doctrines of Confucius or
Buddha--"Him all wisest, best, most pitiful, whose lips comfort the
world," which doctrines are the very breathing--the life--of their
social as well as spiritual being. When the Chinese see the German
Emperor using missionaries as live-bait to catch a province, and the
French insisting upon being given another as the price of a few
members of one of those religious orders they have expelled from
France, it is no wonder that from that stricken, bullied, cheated
people the cry goes up to the empty heavens--
"To my own Gods I go.
It may be they shall give me greater ease
Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities."
X