“No pleasing nor festive cause, no mere fulfilment of a courtly duty, has brought your Imperial Highness to me, but a sad and deeply grave occurrence.  My Minister to the Court of his Majesty the Emperor of China, Freiherr von Ketteler, fell in the Chinese capital beneath the murderous weapons of an imperial Chinese soldier, who acted by the orders of a superior, an unheard-of outrage condemned by the law of nations and the moral sense of all countries.  From your Imperial Highness I have now heard the expression of the sincere and deep regret of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of China regarding the occurrence.  I am glad to believe that your Imperial Highness’s royal brother had nothing to do with the crime or with the further acts of violence against inviolable Ministers and peaceful foreigners, but all the greater is the guilt which attaches to his advisers and his Government.  Let these not deceive themselves by supposing that they can make atonement and receive pardon for their crime through this mission alone, and not through their subsequent conduct in the light of the prescriptions of international law and the moral principles of civilized peoples.  If his Majesty the Emperor of China henceforward directs the government of his great Empire in the spirit of these ordinances, his hope that the sad consequences of the confusion of last year may be overcome, and permanent, peaceful and friendly relations between Germany and China may exist as before, will be realized to the benefit of both peoples and the whole of civilized humanity.  In the sincere wish that it may be so, I welcome your Imperial Highness.”

The Emperor’s other speeches referring to the Boxer movement at this period have been adversely commented on as showing him in the light of a cruel and blood-thirsty seeker after revenge.  This is an unjust, at least a hard, judgment.  A passage in his address at Bremerhaven to the expeditionary force when setting out for China is the main proof of the charge—­in which, after referring to the murder of von Ketteler, he said: 

“You know well you will have to fight with a cunning, brave, well-armed, cruel foe.  When you come to close quarters with him remember—­quarter (’Pardon’ is the German word the Emperor used) must not be given:  prisoners must not be taken:  manage your weapons so that for a thousand years to come no Chinaman will dare to look sideways at a German.  Act like men.”

It is difficult, of course, to reconcile such an address with Christian humanity practised, so far as humanity can be practised, in modern war, but it should be remembered that the Emperor was speaking in a state of great excitement, and that, according to Chancellor Prince Buelow’s statement in the Reichstag subsequently, confirmation of the news of the murder of his Minister to China had only reached the Emperor ten minutes before he delivered the speech.