The Boxers and the Government

patriotic movement, even if she wished. If, there-
fore, he had no better advice than this to ofEer, he
might consider himself excused from further attend-
ance at the Council. Jung Lu thereupon " koh-
toa-ed " thrice and left the audience to return to his
own house. Upon his departure, Ch'i Hsiu drew
from his boot the draft of the Decree which was to
declare war. Her Majesty read it and exclaimed,
' Admirable, admirable ! ' "

This Jung Lu, who was the father of the wife of
the late Regent, was one of the few high officials
who clearly saw the folly of the action of the
Empress Dowager and her counsellors, and it was
to him, to a large extent, that the Legations owed
their escape from extermination. Another writer
in the National Review (March, 1907), signing
himself " Shanghai," says : —

" That the Legations succeeded in holding out
until relief reached them must be attributed to the
restraining influence of such men as Prince Ch'ing
and the Grand Secretary Jung Lu, who, though
unable to suppress or control the upheaval, realized
its stupidity and folly, and wisely concealed from
general knowledge the existence in Peking of parks
of heavy modern ordnance that would have speedily
overcome the feeble resistance the Legations could
offer to systematized attack. Outside Peking, great
as was the loss of life among foreign missionaries
and their converts, that loss would have been multi-
plied tenfold but for the splendid behaviour of
certain high Chinese officials — of Hsu Ching-Ch'eng
and Yuan-Ch'ang, members of the Tsung-Li-Yamen,
who, though fully aware of the death penalty to

43



China's Dayspring after Thirty Years

which they rendered themselves liable, and which
they suffered, but sacrificing themselves to save their
country, substituted the word ' protect ' for ' destroy '
in the draft of the second Edict ordering the
extermination of foreigners, before issuing it to the
provinces."
/ The official Chinese explanation of the Boxer
rising is not warranted by the facts. That expla-
nation is to the effect that by their demand for the
evacuation of the Taku forts, the foreign admirals
turned what was a local outbreak into a national
movement against foreigners. 