Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-03-20
CHAPTER XVII.
The Three GospeIs,


table before him, all around his feet,
overfiowing every article of furniture In
the apartment. were maps-general maps,
local maps. special maps survey maps.
He had a goodly wide brain, and every
village in Europe, its position. it's name.
it's population. and every stream, and
fort, and railway, and town. was climbing
into that brain, one after the other. with
the intention of staying there. And when
he was finished he knew how God nad
made Europe, and how man had made it,
and what was in it.
He also knew Asia
While he was still pondering his maps
China was already far on it's march. The
seizure of the railway line by Tribe
tans" 20, reported in the Pail Mall Ga
zette, had taken place four weeks before
the news reached New York The British
army of India, afterward annihilated in
Russia, had passed that way and left an
easy task for the yellow pioneers.
Even before this China had begun to
flow westward. Yen How had found her
a frozen stream; and like frozen stream
when the sun shines strongly, she had
moved at last under her steady heat,
slowly, in trickling rivulets, long before
the crash of the dripping ice and the bill
lowing broad rush of the torrent.
Having walked China by the methods we
have described. how did he effect this ir
resistible western tendency, so mighty In
Its impulse at last, that an arm a
million times stronger than Yen Hows
could not have checked It, had he wiled?
He did 1t by preaching, with the inspira-
ton OF Confucius, only with far greater
success than Confucius, his three gospels
of greed. of race and of cruelty.
And in doing so he remembered the
density of the skull which he had to in
spire with ideas: he was not preaching even
to Russian moujiks, but to men still slower
of understanding. To plow a fact into
their brains he knew that he must plow
hard. But he was quite equal to this. With
his usual thoroughness he said: "A hundred
ways: and Of these one will not fail" At
all events he had chosen the doctrines
which the Chinese were most apt to learn,
and had, in fact, already been taught by
nature. And therein lay his chief wis
dom.
Just when the pressure of the new taxa
ton crushed heaviest upon the penurious
poor of China, he collected, an army of
400 900, composed of men taken from each
of the regiments into which all the land of
the Mongols was now divided; and this
force he hurled into two divisions across
the Si-kiang against AMMAN, the ancient
antagonist of China and Burma. The
horrors perpetrated in these atrocious and
totally unexpected raids could not be de-
Scribed: a great massacre resulted, and the
army amassed boards of spoil. gathered
from many Buddhist vihara and jeweled
palace-gate. And Immediately it's re-
turn, the individuals who composed it were
redrafted, laden with booty, TO their for
lage in China fairytales Of gore and gold
in foreign lands.
There was not moreover a drill sergeant
of the remotest squad of conseripts who
did not become a missionary of Yen How,
preaching for him the three glad tidings of
hell.
Many Chinese did not know that there
vas any other land than China, nor had,
,,r the massacre seen q white man. nor
known that there were such things as
WnIte men.
Now they heard; and the astonished ear
was charmed.
Could it be that beyond that land OF
pnched scarcity which they knew there
was another, in which feeble, pretty crea-
lures, resembling real men, lived in rose
beds, and threw to one another balls or
gold, and made love on couches of elder
down and ivory? And if not. what was this
rumor, these tidngs of good. coming
this new holiday of blood and this new
drilling after four thousand years? And
this new movement, and this new stirring
of sap in the DID, dead tree-trunk after
the long long changeless winter? Surely
the seasons return! and by wondrous mira
Gle leaves again on the branches, and
all is newt There is, then. spring and joy
in the world? and not utter, ugly Woe
four thousand years of age? Gold?-and
frail, white limbs to be torn apart?-and
the blood of luxurious kings to be quaffed
by thirsty Cinnamon in carved gobIets of
aiabaster land cushions of embroidered
silk hanging in plenty for all among the
lazy, rotting melons on the far-off trees?
Far into the dreamiest wilds of savage
China, Mongolia, Thbet,- came this mes
sage of blessedness. this new religion Of
lust. And every citizen became a convert
and every convert zealot and every zealot
an apostle.
And the more intolerable Yen How made
China Ior them with burden, and drill, and
tax. the louder and deeper sWeled their
cry to be led forthwith into this promised
land of plenty afar.
In the Commentaries of Caesar we read
of whole communities packing, as it We're,
.l.eir trunks leaving their own land, and
migrating in body to some new terri
tory. 1t was this strange, wandering ten
dency which now possessed the Mongolian
race; but instead of a tribe or community
on the march, the stars We're to look down
and behold a nomad empire.
This weird and, indeed, awful spectacle
destiny had held concealed In her womb;
for this, too, was to be one of the acts
in the drama of man; and in the fulness
of time 1t was evolved and seen.
But no one knew better than DIR. Yen
How that the Monaghan race in It's passage
across the old world would meet with OBJ
stacle and pain-the WEAKNESS of the march,
the DAYS hunger, the fight in the street,
the rain of shot and shell at Metz, and
Konigsberg, and Paris, and Dover; as for
the japanese section of the race, he knew
that greed and cruelty alone We're incentives
sufficient to provide a steady impulse to
their native firmnesS and Valor; but as for
the continental section of it, he decided
to huri them forward by an added impulse
the excitation of the instinct of race.
In China this instinct took always q re-
ligious form. And hence Yen How had
skillfuiy contrived to invest his massacre
with something of the solemnity of a rite
In the cities round the coast, where the
white man had long been known and abom-
mated the massacre gave an impetus to
racial animus, which perhaps was capable
of no further fury; but, in addition, he
planned for China on the whole a religious
mania In connection with this very race
instinct, which he counted upon to inspire
IL In the direction he witled with the frenzy
of the Crusader
The religion of China consisted In the
worship of the dead; and this worship took
the form also OF the worship of the living,
whenever the living happened TO be rein
carnation of the dead. On the belief in
reincarnation Buddhism and Confucianism
were at one.
The living were reincarnations of the
dead when they were either proclaimed to
be so by the priests, or when they were
proclaimed to be so by the emperor, Or
when they could work miracles
Now Yen How could work the most as
founding miracles and he was proclaimed
| by the emperor, and he was proclaimed all
| over China by the priests. to be- the REIN
| carnation of dead man. And the dead
| man of whom he was proclaimed to be the
rencarnation was-Confucius.
| To begin with. he was made a saint.
Then Cat about the time when John
| Hardy Joined the EngliShmen at kiao-