The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-09-24
OF INTEREST TO WOMEN

dence in case of any one of these
 troubles should affect Picking palace.
 In the general condition of helpless
 ness and imbecility that permeated of- ficial China the little Empress Regent saw her opportunity and compelled obedience even among those who read I in Confucius many paragraphs intend- ed to discourage women from leaving the nursery.
 In 1864 the Taiping rebellion closed | by the capture of Nankin and the sui eide of the pretender. In 1872 the Mohammedan uprising, which had | spread immensely since 1856, came to an end. The rebellious Sultan Soli- l man poisoned himself and his head was brought in triumph to Picking. While l was in China the last of the rebels l on the Turkestan border were being | dispersed.
 Educated fin statecraft. i For the trst twenty-si years of her | life at court she had been receiving the 1 rare education which comes from dis cussing and carrying on measures for the safety of State in extreme dan- ger. Sine had had ample opportunity before her accession to actual domin- lon in 1861 to measure the relative
 feebleness of the different officials who pretended to help the government, and she must have been weak, indeed, if she did not draw courage from the complete breakdown of the remedies proposed by legislators, whose only knowledge of the world was represent cd by thousands of secondhand max
 Inns memorized parrot fashion from the
 so-called classics.
 One must have lived In China to ap-
 preciate the huge task that this little
 Empress has accomplished-the task
 of holding the country toesther, of
 holding at bay the nations of Europe
 who have been consistently urging up
 on her reforms that might endanger
 her throne by precipitating civil war
 In 1873, when Kwang Su was two years old, the Emperor Tung Chi as- cended the throne, and immediately
 was made to feel the force of the lady s
 hand. For in 1874 he proposed to re- store the famous Summer Palace. which
 had been destroyed in 1860. Germans
 and French insist that the destruction
 was by English hands. English offi- cers who were in the campaign have assured me that the French alone were
 responsible for the outrage.
 | At any rate. in 1874 the co-regent Kung, opposed the project of Emperor Tung Chi on the score of expense.
 This displeased his Imperial Highness,
 who immediately degraded the co-re- gent from first class to a second
 class Prince.
 Emperor Obeyed Her Will. But on the next day the Emperor
 was compelled by the command of this
 little Empress Dowager to reinstate
 the Prince In all his honors.
 That was the only time that this par | ticular Emperor attempted to test his
 right to govern. It was a dramatic
 and instantaneous failure. He died in
 1879. and was succeeded by the pres
 ent Emperor Kwang Su. at the age o1 1 She was born in 1S71--the same day
 as Napoleon III, August 15, and in the year of Napoleon's complete extinction
 The accession of Kwang Su gave rise
 to immense difficulties, for there was
 much in the court law touching his
 birth and parentage which conficted
 with orthodox Chinese reasoning. II
 would be a complicated narrative to
 unravel this here. but suffice it to say i that the little Dowager desired Kwans Su. and there he is. One lofty official ventured to protest on grounds of pre-
 cedent. but he promptly went and l hanged himself, and his views did moi
 spread.
 l Today the only serious objection tc l Kwang Su is that he Has not present. ec | his country with a successor-and 1T
 the eyes of true Chinaman this is a | serious defect.
 From this and the other causes, good Chinamen are apt to shake theii | heads over Kwang Su His reign has been full of calamity. The French
 war. the war with Japan, the Boxer
 uprising, a fire in the palace, the | partial destruction of the famous Temple of Heaven in Picking, the loss l of Kiao-Chau. Wei-hai-Wei. and Port Arhut, nearly everything he has done | has been by the old school of China
 men traced to certain orthodox cir ! cumstances attending his accession-