dBooks desire

For several years before the present troubles all the resources of
foreign diplomacy, backed by moral demonstrations of the physical
force of fleets and arms, have been needed to secure due respect for
the treaty rights of foreigners and to obtain satisfaction from the
responsible authorities for the sporadic outrages upon the persons and
property of unoffending sojourners, which from time to time occurred at
widely separated points in the northern provinces, as in the case of the
outbreaks in Sze-chuen and Shan-tung.
Posting of antiforeign placards became a daily occurrence, which the
repeated reprobation of the Imperial power failed to check or punish.
These inflammatory appeals to the ignorance and superstition of the
masses, mendacious and absurd in their accusations and deeply hostile
in their spirit, could not but work cumulative harm. They aimed at no
particular class of foreigners; they were impartial in attacking
everything foreign.
An outbreak in Shan-tung, in which German missionaries were slain, was
the too natural result of these malevolent teachings.


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