The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1900-08-31
Arima, Japan, July 3rd, 1900.

Arima, Japan, July 3rd, 1900.
Dear Friends:
Though this letter is written by a
China missionary and is to be about
China, it is not written from that
country. No one whose duty is not
very plain to stay is likely to be in
land away from the treaty ports this
summer and as we would be of no
use in Nanking and might be
exposed to needless danger we have
come across to Japan to spend the
summer hoping that things will
have quieted by the fall for us to
return to Nanking.
It is not an easy thing to write
letters to America in the present
crisis as you get the news more fully
than we do, strange as it may seem,
and often sooner too. AT present
we are in the greatest anxiety, as you
are too, for those shut up in Peking,
but it is being forced in ON us
that unless God has saved them by
some way we cannot now understand,
the greatest tragedy of modern times
has been finished. And yet not
finished. for there are daily being put
to death men and women because they
are Christians or the friends of foreig
ners. AS yet there is no sign of any
cessation to the troubles but rather
they grow worse. Word comes that
uprisings are occurring on the borders
of Siberia and South toward the
Yang g-tse- Kiang. How anixously we
wait for news that relief force is
starting for Peking and that things
are quieting down elsewhere. No
one can foresee how long an interrupt
tion of our work it may mean, how
severe a blow to the Chinese church h
by the death and dispersion of its
members. Nor can we tell what him
ORANGES may be thrown in the way by
the enmities and hatred aroused and
on the other hand we cannot know
what advantages may come from the
opening up of the country Every
where the Christians are in alarm
and we'll they may be. Wherever riots
occur many of them will lose their
lives, as many hundreds have already,
some of them being burned to death
or subjected to torture such as terrible
beatings. Thousands of others have
lost all at they own and are utter
ly destitute. There is nothing more
pitiless than mob, even in Christian
countries, and how much more here.
We hear that the Christians are
most of them standing firm for their
Master, though the temptation to pre-
tend they are not Christians is very
great, greater than we at home can have
any idea of.
This rising is that of a great mob,
which has been fostered by some
of the anti-foreign officials. In all
countries there is certain class which
delights in disorders as its opportunity
to plunder, as we ourselves have
discovered in times of strikes and
riots. This class is relatively very
large in China, because of the great
oyercrowding, the terrible misgovern-
ment and rapacity of many of the
officials, and the poverty which results.
Riots are common in China, even apart
from anti-foreign movements. Last
winter there was much discomfort in
the North on account of the failure of
the crops, and instead Of suppressing
the disorders which resulted, they were
fostered and encouraged with the
idea of using them to drive out the
foreigners and to destroy the Chinese
Christians The steady and we'll to do
members of the community dislike
and deplore such doings. but the mob
Co,fi,,a,od on Fifth Pono