The Chinese remind one of the English in their love of compromise and in their habit of bowing to public opinion.  Seldom is a conflict pushed to its ultimate brutal issue.  The treatment of the Manchu Emperor may be taken as a case in point.  When a Western country becomes a Republic, it is customary to cut off the head of the deposed monarch, or at least to cause him to fly the country.  But the Chinese have left the Emperor his title, his beautiful palace, his troops of eunuchs, and an income of several million dollars a year.  He is a boy of sixteen, living peaceably in the Forbidden City.  Once, in the course of a civil war, he was nominally restored to power for a few days; but he was deposed again, without being in any way punished for the use to which he had been put.

Public opinion is a very real force in China, when it can be roused.  It was, by all accounts, mainly responsible for the downfall of the An Fu party in the summer of 1920.  This party was pro-Japanese and was accepting loans from Japan.  Hatred of Japan is the strongest and most widespread of political passions in China, and it was stirred up by the students in fiery orations.  The An Fu party had, at first, a great preponderance of military strength; but their soldiers melted away when they came to understand the cause for which they were expected to fight.  In the end, the opponents of the An Fu party were able to enter Peking and change the Government almost without firing a shot.

The same influence of public opinion was decisive in the teachers’ strike, which was on the point of being settled when I left Peking.  The Government, which is always impecunious, owing to corruption, had left its teachers unpaid for many months.  At last they struck to enforce payment, and went on a peaceful deputation to the Government, accompanied by many students.  There was a clash with the soldiers and police, and many teachers and students were more or less severely wounded.  This led to a terrific outcry, because the love of education in China is profound and widespread.  The newspapers clamoured for revolution.  The Government had just spent nine million dollars in corrupt payments to three Tuchuns who had descended upon the capital to extort blackmail.  It could not find any colourable pretext for refusing the few hundred thousands required by the teachers, and it capitulated in panic.  I do not think there is any Anglo-Saxon country where the interests of teachers would have roused the same degree of public feeling.

Nothing astonishes a European more in the Chinese than their patience.  The educated Chinese are well aware of the foreign menace.  They realize acutely what the Japanese have done in Manchuria and Shantung.  They are aware that the English in Hong-Kong are doing their utmost to bring to naught the Canton attempt to introduce good government in the South.  They know that all the Great Powers, without exception, look with greedy eyes upon the