No degree of care can avoid the irritations caused by railway construction. In building the line from Tsing-tau to Kiao-chou, a distance of forty-six miles, the Germans, as far as practicable, ran around the places most thickly covered with graves.

But in spite of this, no less than 3,000 graves had to be removed.

It was impossible to settle with the individual owners, as it was difficult in many cases to ascertain who they were, most of the graves being unmarked, and some of the families concerned having died out or moved away. Moreover, the Oriental has no idea of time, and dearly loves to haggle, especially with a foreigner whom he feels no compunction in swindling. So the railway company made its negotiations with the local magistrates, showing them the routes, indicating the graves that were in the way, and paying them an average of $3 (Mexican) for removing each grave, they to find and settle with the owners. This was believed to be fair, for $3 is a large sum where the coin in common circulation is the copper ''cash,'' so small in value that 1,600 of them equal a gold dollar, and where a few dozen cash will buy a day's food for an adult. But while some of the Chinese were glad to accept this arrangement, others were not. They wanted more, or they had special affection for the dead, or that particular spot had been carefully selected because it was favoured by the spirits. Besides, the magistrates doubtless kept a part of the price as their share. Chinese officials are underpaid, are expected to ''squeeze'' commissions, and no funds can pass through their hands without a percentage of loss. Then, as the Asiatic is very deliberate, the company was obliged to specify a date by which all designated graves must be removed.

As many of the bodies were not taken up within that time, the company had to remove them.

In these circumstances, we should not be surprised that some of the most furiously anti-foreign feeling in China was in the villages along the line of that railroad. Why should the hated foreigner force his line through their country when the people did not want it? Of course, it would save time, but, as an official naively said, ''We are not in a hurry.'' So the villagers watched the construction with ill-concealed anger, and to-day that railroad, as well as most other railroads in North China, can only be kept open by detachments of foreign soldiers at all the important stations. I saw them at almost every stop,--German soldiers from Tsing-tau to Kiao-chou, British from Tong-ku to Peking, French from Peking to Paoting-fu, etc.

Nevertheless, railways in China are usually profitable. It is true that the opposition to the building of a railroad is apt to be bitter, that mobs are occasionally destructive, and that locomotives and other rolling stock rapidly deteriorate under native handling unless closely watched by foreign superintendents.

But, on the other hand, the Government is usually forced to pay indemnities for losses resulting from violence. The road, too, once built, is in time appreciated by the thrifty Chinese, who swallow their prejudices and patronize it in such enormous numbers, and ship by it such quantities of their produce, that the business speedily becomes remunerative, while the population and the resources of the country are so great as to afford almost unlimited opportunity for the development of traffic.

As a rule, on all the roads, the first-class compartments, when there are any, have comparatively few passengers, chiefly officials and foreigners. The second-class cars are well filled with respectable-looking people, who are apparently small merchants, students, minor officials, etc. The third-class cars, which are usually more numerous, are packed with chattering peasants. The first-class fares are about the same as ordinary rates in the United States. The second-class are about half the first-class rates, and the third-class are often less than the equivalent of a cent a mile. This is a wise adjustment in a land where the average man is so thrifty and so poor that he would not and could not pay a price which would be deemed moderate in America, and where his scale of living makes him content with the rudest accommodations. Very little baggage is carried free, twenty pounds only on the German lines, so that excess baggage charges amount to more than in America.

The freight cars, during my visit, were, for the most part, loaded with the materials and supplies necessitated by the work of railway-construction and by the extensive rebuilding of the native and foreign property which had been destroyed by the Boxers. But in normal conditions the railways carry inland a large number of foreign manufactured articles, and in turn bring to the ports the wheat, rice, peanuts, ore, coal, pelts, silk, wool, cotton, matting, paper, straw-braid, earthenware, sugar, tea, tobacco, fireworks, fruit, vegetables, and other products of the interior. Short hauls are the rule, thus far, both for passengers and freight. This is partly because the long-distance lines within the Empire are not yet completed, and partly because the typical Chinese of the lower classes in the interior provinces has never been a score of miles away from his native village in his life, and has been so accustomed to regard a wheelbarrow trip of a dozen miles as a long journey that he is a little cautious, at first, in lengthening his radius of movement. But he soon learns, especially as the struggle for existence in an overcrowded country begets a desire to take advantage of an opportunity to better his condition elsewhere.

Once fairly started, he is apt to go far, as the numbers of Chinese in Siam, the Philippines, and America clearly show.

The literary and official classes are less apt to go abroad, but they are more accustomed to moving about within the limits of the Empire, as they must go to the central cities for their examinations, and as offices are held for such short terms that magistrates are frequently shifted from province to province.

When this vast population of naturally industrious and commer- cial people becomes accustomed to railways and gets to moving freely upon them, stupendous things are likely to happen, both for China and for the world.

And so the foreign syndicates relentlessly continue the work of railway-construction. Trade cannot be checked. It advances by an inherent energy which it is futile to ignore. And it ought to advance for the result will inevitably be to the advantage of China. A locomotive brings intellectual and physical benefits, the appliances which mitigate the poverty and barrenness of existence and increase the ability to provide for the necessities and the comforts of life. In one of our great locomotive works in America I once saw twelve engines in construction for China, and my imagination kindled as I thought what a locomotive means amid that stagnant swarm of humanity, how impossible it is that any village through which it has once run should continue to be what it was before, how its whistle puts to flight a whole brood of hoary superstitions and summons a long-slumbering people to new life. We need regret only that these benefits are so often accompanied by the evils which disgrace our civilization.

PART III

The Political Force and the National Protest

XII

THE AGGRESSIONS OF EUROPEAN POWERS

THE political force was set in motion partly by the ambitions of European powers to extend their influence in Asia, and partly by the necessity for protecting the commercial interests referred to in the preceding chapters. The conservatism and exclusiveness of the Chinese, the disturbance of economic conditions caused by the introduction of foreign goods, and the greed and brutality of foreign traders combined to arouse a fierce opposition to the lodgment of the foreigner. The early trading ships were usually armed, and exasperated by the haughtiness and duplicity of the Chinese officials and their greedy disposition to mulct the white trader, they did not hesitate to use force in effecting their purpose.

But the nations of Europe, becoming more and more convinced of the magnitude of the Chinese market, pressed resolutely on; and with the hope of creating a better understanding and of opening the ports to trade, they sent envoys to China. The arrival of these envoys precipitated a new controversy, for the Chinese Government from time immemorial considered itself the supreme government of the world, and, not being accustomed to receive the agents of other nations except as inferiors, was not disposed to accord the white man any different treatment. The result was a series of collisions followed by territorial aggressions that were numerous enough to infuriate a more peaceably disposed people than the Chinese.

The Portuguese were the first to come, a ship of those ven- turesome traders appearing near Canton in 1516. Its reception was kindly, but when the next year brought eight armed vessels and an envoy, the friendliness of the Chinese changed to suspicion which ripened into hostility when the Portuguese became overbearing and threatening. Violence met with violence. It is said that armed parties of Portuguese went into villages and carried off Chinese women. Feuds multiplied and became more bloody. At Ningpo, the Chinese made awful reprisal by destroying thirty-five Portuguese ships and killing 800 of their crews. The execution of one or more of the members of a delegation to Peking brought matters to a crisis, and in 1534, the Portuguese transferred their factories to Macao, which they have ever since held, though it was not till 1887 that their position there was officially recognized. Portuguese power has waned and Macao to-day is an unimportant place politically, but it is significant that this early foreign settlement in China has been and still is such a moral plague spot that the Chinese may be pardoned if their first impressions of the white man were unfavourable.

The Spaniards were the next Europeans with whom the Chinese came into contact. In this case, however, the contact was due not so much to the coming of the Spaniards to China as to their occupation in 1543 of the Philippine Islands, with which the Chinese had long traded and where they had already settled in considerable numbers. Mutual jealousies resulted and Castilian arrogance and brutality ere long engendered such bitterness that massacre after massacre of the Chinese occurred, that of 1603 almost exterminating the Chinese population of Manila.

The growing demand for coffee, which Europeans had first received in 1580 from Arabia, brought Dutch ships into Asiatic waters in 1598. After hostile experiences with the Portuguese at Macao, they seized the Pescadores Islands in 1622. But the opposition of the Chinese led the Dutch to withdraw to Formosa, where their stormy relations with natives, Chinese from the mainland and Japanese finally resulted in their expulsion in 1662. Since then the Dutch have contented themselves with a few trading factories chiefly at Canton and with their possessions in Malaysia, so that they have been less aggressive in China than several other European nations.

A more formidable power appeared on the scene in 1635, when four ships[36] of the English East India Company sailed up the Pearl River. The temper of the newcomers was quickly shown when the Chinese, incited by the jealous Portuguese, sought to prevent their lodgment, for the English, so the record quaintly runs, ''did on a sudden display their bloody ensigns, and . . . each ship began to play furiously upon the forts with their broadsides . . . put on board all their ordnance, fired the council-house, and demolished all they could.''

Then they sailed on to Canton, and when their peremptory demand for trading privileges was met with evasion and excuses, they ''pillaged and burned many vessels and villages . . .

spreading destruction with fire and sword.'' Describing this incident, Sir George Staunton, Secretary of the first British embassy to China, naively remarked--''The unfortunate circumstances under which the English first got footing in China must have operated to their disadvantage and rendered their situation for some time peculiarly unpleasant.''[37] But as early as 1684, they had established themselves in Canton.

[36] Parker, ''China,'' p. 9, places the number of ships at five and the date as 1637.

[37] Foster, ''American Diplomacy in the Orient,'' p. 5.

June 15, 1834, a British Commission headed by Lord Napier arrived at Macao, and the 25th of the same month proceeded to Canton empowered by an act of Parliament to negotiate with the Chinese regarding trade ''to and from the dominions of the Emperor of China, and for the purpose of protecting and promoting such trade.''[38] The government of Canton, however, refused to receive Lord Napier's letter for the character- istic reason that it did not purport to be a petition from an inferior to a superior. In explaining the matter to the Hong merchants with a view to their bringing the explanation to the attention of Lord Napier, the haughty Governor reminded them that foreigners were allowed in China only as trading agents, and that no functionary of any political rank could be allowed to enter the Empire unless special permission were given by the Imperial Government in response to a respectful petition. He added:--

[38] Foster, p. 57.

''To sum up the whole matter, the nation has its laws. Even England has its laws. How much more the Celestial Empire! How flaming bright are its great laws and ordinances. More terrible than the awful thunderbolts! Under this whole bright heaven, none dares to disobey them. Under its shelter are the four seas. Subject to its soothing care are ten thousand kingdoms. The said barbarian eye (Lord Napier), having come over a sea of several myriads of miles in extent to examine and have superintendence of affairs, must be a man thoroughly acquainted with the principles of high dignity.''[39]

[39] Foster, p. 59.

As might be expected, the equally haughty British representative indignantly protested; but without avail. He was asked to return to Macao, and was informed that the Governor could not have any further communication with him except through the Hong merchants, and in the form of a respectful petition.

The Governor indignantly declared:--

''There has never been such a thing as outside barbarians sending a letter. . . . It is contrary to everything of dignity and decorum. The thing is most decidedly impossible. . . . The barbarians of this nation (Great Britain) coming to or leaving Canton have beyond their trade not any public business; and the commissioned officers of the Celestial Empire never take cognizance of the trivial affairs of trade. . . . The some hundreds of thousands of commercial duties yearly coming from the said nation concern not the Celestial Empire to the extent of a hair or a feather's down. The possession or absence of them is utterly unworthy of one careful thought.''[40]

[40] Ibid, p. 60.

Whereupon the proud Briton published and distributed a review of the case, as he saw it, which closed as follows:--

''Governor Loo has the assurance to state in the edict of the 2d instant that 'the King (my master) has hitherto been reverently obedient.' I must now request you to declare to them (the Hong merchants) that His Majesty, the King of England, is a great and powerful monarch, that he rules over an extent of territory in the four quarters of the world more comprehensive in space and infinitely more so in power than the whole empire of China; that he commands armies of bold and fierce soldiers, who have conquered wherever they went; and that he is possessed of great ships, where no native of China has ever yet dared to show his face.

Let the Governor then judge if such a monarch will be 'reverently obedient'

to any one.''[41]

[41] Foster, pp. 61, 62.

The result of the increasing irritation was a decree by the Governor of Canton peremptorily forbidding all further trade with the English, and in retaliation the landing of a British force, the sailing of British war-ships up the river and a battle at the Bogue Forts which guarded the entrance of Canton. A truce was finally arranged and Lord Napier's commission left for Macao, August 21st, where he died September 11th of an illness which his physician declared was directly due to the nervous strain and the many humiliations which he had suffered in his intercourse with the Chinese authorities. The Governor meantime complacently reported to Peking that he had driven off the barbarians!

The strain was intensified by the determination of the British to bring opium into China. The Chinese authorities protested and in 1839 the Chinese destroyed 22,299 chests of opium valued at $9,000,000, from motives about as laudable as those which led our revolutionary sires to empty English tea into Boston Harbor. England responded by making war, the result of which was to force the drug upon an unwilling people, so that the vice which is to-day doing more to ruin the Chinese than all other vices combined is directly traceable to the conduct of a Christian nation, though the England of to-day is presumably ashamed of this crime of the England of two generations ago.

It would, however, be inaccurate to represent Chinese objection to British opium as the sole cause of the ''Opium War''

of 1840, for the indignities to which foreign traders and foreign diplomats were continually subjected in their efforts to establish commercial and political relations with the Chinese were rapidly drifting the two nations into war. Still, it was peculiarly unfortunate and it put foreigners grievously in the wrong before the Chinese that the overt act which developed the long- gathering bitterness into open rupture was the righteous if irregular seizure by the Chinese of a poison that the English from motives of unscrupulous greed were determined to force upon an unwilling people. The probability that war would have broken out in time even if there had been no dispute about opium does not mitigate the fact that from the beginning, foreign intercourse with China was so identified with an iniquitous traffic that the Chinese had ample cause to distrust and dislike the white man.

This hostility was intensified when the war resulted in the defeat of the Chinese and the treaty of Nanking in 1842 with its repudiation of all their demands, the compulsory cession of the island of Hongkong, the opening of not only Canton but Amoy, Foochow, Shanghai, and Ningpo as treaty ports, the location of a British Consul in each port, and, most necessary but most humiliating of all, the recognition of the extra-territorial rights of all foreigners so that no matter what their crime, they could not be tried by Chinese courts but only by their own consuls. This treaty contributed so much to the opening of China that Dr. S. Wells Williams characterized it as ''one of the turning points in the history of mankind, involving the welfare of all nations in its wide-reaching consequences.'' It was therefore a lasting benefit to China and to the world. But the Chinese did not then and do not yet appreciate the benefit, especially as they saw clearly enough that the motive of the conqueror was his own aggrandizement.

Unhappily, too, the next war between England and China, though fundamentally due to the same conditions as the ''Opium War,'' was again precipitated by a quarrel over opium, the lorcha Arrow loaded with the obnoxious drug and flying the British flag being seized by the Chinese. Once more they suffered sore defeat and humiliating terms of peace in the treaty of 1858. The effort of the Peking Government to close the Pei-ho River against an armed force caused a third war in 1860 in which the British and French captured Peking, and by their excesses and cruelties still further added to the already long list of reasons why the Chinese should hate their European foes.

Nor did foreign aggression stop with this war. In 1861, England, in order to protect her interests at Hongkong, wrested from China the adjacent peninsula of Kowloon. In 1886, she took Upper Burma, which China regarded as one of her dependencies.

In 1898, finding that Hongkong was still within the range of modern cannon in Chinese waters seven miles away, England calmly took 400 square miles of additional territory, including Mirs and Deep Bays.

The visitor does not wonder that the British coveted Hongkong, for it is one of the best harbours in the world. Certainly no other is more impressive. Noble hills, almost mountains, for many are over 1,000 feet and the highest is 3,200, rise on every side. Crafts of all kinds, from sampans and slipper- boats to ocean liners and war-ships, crowd the waters, for this is the third greatest port in the world, being exceeded in the amount of its tonnage only by Liverpool and New York. The city is very attractive from the water as it lies at the foot and on the slopes of the famous Peak. The Chinese are said to number, as in Shanghai, over 300,000, while the foreign population is only 5,000. But to the superficial observer the proportions appear reversed as the foreign buildings are so spa- cious and handsome that they almost fill the foreground. The business section of the city is hot and steaming, but an inclined tramway makes the Peak accessible and many of the British merchants have built handsome villas on that cooler, breezier summit, 1,800 feet above the sea. The view is superb, a majestic panorama of mountains, harbour, shipping, islands, ocean and city. By its possession and fortification of this island of Hongkong, England to-day so completely controls the gateway to South China that the Chinese cannot get access to Canton, the largest city in the Empire, without running the gauntlet of British guns and mines which could easily sink any ships that the Peking Government could send against it, and the whole of the vast and populous basin of the Pearl or West River is at the mercy of the British whenever they care to take it. When we add to these invaluable holdings, the rights that England has acquired in the Yang-tze Valley and at Wei-hai Wei in Shantung, we do not wonder that Mr. E. H. Parker, formerly British Consul at Kiung-Chou, rather naively remarks:--