The age-herald., 1900-08-12
The Chinese Puzzle

From the Chicago Times Herald.
 Any one sincerely anxious to learn the truth about the Chinese people, to say nothin' ahout the Chinese situation, has by no means an easy time of 1t. 1 suspect the Chinese might find it as hard to rec ognize himself as the Yankee does when ne beholds his caricature in foreign novel or as when an honest, faithful French wife aLH mother is shocked at the heroine of Partisan fiction.
 DO even the foreigners residing in China comprehend the Chinman? Certainly not very profoundly. For they almost uni- formly beittled and ridicued the warnings of this uprising
 A letter from MT Quackenbush, agent at Shanghai of Carder, Macy & Co.,, of New fork, now lies before me that says:
 The storms have been gathering in shan tung for many months" The average foreigner coming here for business, mining or railroad concessions, is too apt to think the Chinese must go before modern civil ization. Some months ago the atten- ton of our Minister at Pekin, MT. Conger was called to the state of affairs in Shan tung, and the American Association of Shanghai wrote to the State Department a strong letter on the subject. MT. Congers own dispatches show that he has been very credulous, not understanding the Asiatic
 And in one or two instances where for eigners were sufficiently frightened to leave the country they were ridiculed for their fears, which perhaps prevented others from leaving, especially where they would have to abandon lucrative positions and perhaps their livlihoods.
 But even the missionaries, who come so closely in contact with the native, were taken by surprise, and hundreds have paid the penalty for their ignorance of what must have been going on around them. Some of them may have foreseen 1t all, but heroically stayed to survive or perish with their converts. But this could not have been true of the many who, with scarcely moments warning, tried, but failed to escape.
 Their contradictory and conflicting opin- ions as to the origin or occasion of the war, Its probable duration and results, also show want of comprehension of these people. Some attribute it to a hatred of the missionaries; some to a hatred of all foreigners; some to a mixture of fear and hatred of everything foreign; some to a political revolution against the dynasty, the foreignphobia being merely an excuse or pretext. Some predict that it will be easily put down by European army. 9th CTS with equal sincerity and earnestness de- clare that Europe will never again hold or lnnuence anything more than a few sea- ports that China will never again admit the foreigner inland make it safe for hlm to live there, and that the missionary enterprises are ended forever
 There are too, decided differences of opinion about the Boxers. Some declare them to be the mere scum and "hood- lums" of the nation-thieves rowdies, riot CTS led by a few fanatics. Others describe them ,as agitators and reformers The Boxer movement, as such, being a move ment against the corrupt government against the plutocratic aristocracy of which u Hung Chang Is prominent representa- tive. They hate the foreigner, because In their minds he Is associated with the gov ernment that has admitted him and sold their country to him. They are the bone and sinew of the country, and are deter mined to save it from the clutches of the foreigner. They have attracted to them, as revolutionists always do, the lawless, the fierce, the riotous and ungovernable. But the Boxer himself is only patriot, with a patriots zeal.
 The Chinese craftiness, their guile, their talent for lying, also impresses itself upon the average foreigner. But others declare that this is only conventional or strategic immortality Chinamen do not lie to each other, but only to the foreigner who is an enemy He can be easily deceived, there fore, 1t is just as right to deceive him as it would be any other foe that you want to get the better of. In business, some say, the Chinese are just as truthful and honest as any other nationality. Hundreds of peo- pie in California feel more confidence in him than they do in American dealers, while he is the frequent victim of Ameri- can extortion and fraud. And so it goes.
 
 The prospect of understanding the China man and his Chinese puzzle Is therefore not very promising. But it is not at all Cfr Iaxrr fexUr rnf and traditions do comprehend each other. How few care much whether they do or not! They do not want their own habits of life or of thought disturbed by the in vasion of other ways and modes. Their wis inertia resists the task of change. It even objects to changing it's ideas of other na- tionalities. It requires too much exertion to think of the Englishman or the French man, the German the Russian, as any other than what a superficial acquaintance has photographed him.
 It is doubtful if even the Englishman that lives in the United States without becom- ing naturaliZed and so taking a vital per sonal interest in the land and it's people, fully comprehendNus, and if the foreigner here does not speak our language 1t is through his children in our schools, rather than through his own intercourse that he becomes acquainted with the American people.
 We are nation of nearly S00O0, 900, scat tered over 3,700,000 square miles. The for egner who met only the Louisianian would have a very different idea of the American from the foreigner who met only the Yer mont Yankee or the Kentucky mountain eer. China has 4OO,0O0,000 people, with no such means of intercourse as those which network the United tSates. It would be strange, therefore, if strangers in that strange land could furnish the world with do1,a icfn rinftf