Vol. 65

JUL 6 1900

CAMBRIDGE, MASS

Lowill fund

The War in China:

Peking

After the long silence, news came to hand on Saturday of last week concerning the foreign Ministers at Peking. Admiral Kempff cabled as follows:

Ministers in Peking were given twenty-four hours to leave, on the 19th. They refused and are still there. The Peking relief forces got half way. They were attacked by Imperial troops on the 18th. McCalla was in command. Four were killed and twenty-five wounded. McCalla and Ensign Taussig wounded, but not seriously. Now almost 14,000 troops ashore. Commander Wise commands at Tongku, in charge of transportation, rail and river. The combined nationalities find it necessary to make use of some civilians to operate railKEMPFF.

way.

But on Monday the cable despatches again assert that Baron von Ketteler, the German Minister, was murdered by Boxers in Peking on June 19. The other Ministers were reported as alive on June 25, but in great danger, while there are rumors that the Emperor and Dowager Empress have fled and that Prince Tuan is in power.

The principal Admiral Seymour's Expedition event last week in China was the return to Tientsin of Admiral Seymour's relief force, sent more than a fortnight before to Peking to succor the besieged foreigners there. At the very outset of the column's progress it was attacked by the Boxers, who were repulsed with considerable loss. These attacks increased in violence each day until the Boxers engaged a guard left to protect the railway station at Lofa. Reinforcements were sent back, and the Boxers finally retired, losing no less than a hundred killed. The Boxers had at the same time also attacked the vanguard of the column at Langfang, and were repulsed with the same loss. The following day the column pushed forward to Anting and engaged the enemy, inflicting a loss of nearly two hundred. At this point, finding that fur

No. 10

ther advance by rail was impossible, owing to destruction of the track by the Boxers, Admiral Seymour proposed to organize an advance by river to Peking. Leaving Langfang, his rear guard was attacked, not only by Boxers, but by the Imperial troops, who had made common cause with the revolutionists. The result of the engagement was a loss of from four to five hundred killed on the part of the enemy. Admiral Seymour's casualties were six killed and forty-eight wounded. By this time the force was short of provisions and a withdrawal was decided on, in view of the fact that communication had been cut off with Tientsin for six days, and that there was no opportunity to get supplies elsewhere. On June 19, the wounded, with necessaries, started by boat on the return journey, the forces marching alongside the Peiho. From nearly every village on that river opposition was experienced, the Boxers occupying well-selected positions, from which they had to be forced, often at the point of the bayonet and in the face of a galling fire difficult to locate. On Sunday of last week, the column reached a point opposite the Chinese Imperial Armory above Tientsin, where, after friendly advances, a treacherous heavy fire was opened, the international forces being exposed on the opposite river bank. The enemy's position was at length turned by a party of marines and seamen, who occupied one of the salient points, seizing the guns. On Monday determined attempts were made by the Chinese to retake the place, but were unsuccessful. In the armory Admiral Seymour discovered arms, guns, and ammunition of the latest pattern. He was able to mount several guns in defence, and shell the Chinese forts lower down the river. Having found ammunition and rice, he could have held out for some days, but

being hampered with his wounded, the number of whom had now increased to two hundred and twenty-eight (sixty-two of the foreign force had been killed), he sent for a relieving force, which arrived the next day. The armory was evacuated and burned. The forces arrived at Tientsin on the following day.

Reinforcements

While Great Britain has thus received some check to her military prestige, and took only a subordinate part in the Taku bombardment, a Russian column, under Colonel Schtelle, with other foreign contingents has started for Peking. It is said that there are ten thousand men in this new relief force. The Russians have now mobilized fifty thousand men on the Siberian frontiers, ready to cross into China, and Japan is mobilizing an equal number. England and France are hurrying ships and troops to Taku from Hong Kong and Tongking. Germany is endeavoring to keep order as far as possible in the province of Shantung. The United States has no territorial ambitions, but is moving armed forces to China to protect Americans in peril there. Our land forces will be commanded by Brigadier-General Adna R. Chaffee, whose record has been one of peculiarly high merit. His work in the Santiago campaign was specially noteworthy, and he enjoys great personal popularity. His appointment is thought to be one of the best which President McKinley has made. Last week the Ninth Infantry sailed from Manila for Taku, with an aggregate strength of thirteen hundred men. Each battalion is well supplied with machine guns. The Brooklyn, with Admiral Remey on board, is probably now in the neighborhood of Taku. The Oregon was expected at Taku on Friday of last week, but, unfortunately, she went aground on Thursday in the fog fifty miles from Chifu, striking a pinnacle rock, which went through the vessel's side. The Iris and Zafiro went to her assistance, but it is feared that the Oregon is so badly injured that she may prove a total loss. On arriving at Taku Admiral Remey will supersede Admiral Kempff in command of the American squadron. Some dissatisfaction has been shown with the former owing to the blind nature of his de

spatches. Apparently superfluous words have been common in them and seemingly important single words omitted. Admiral Remey has demonstrated his ability as sailorman,diplomat, and administrator. An Associated Press despatch from Taku says: "Rear Admiral Kempff opposed the policy of attacking the Chinese army unless they began hostilities. It is now admitted that the attacking of the forts by the forces of the Powers turned the Chinese, who were previously well disposed, into allies of the Boxers. Americans think this might have been avoided. Admiral Kempff has held aloof om hostilities beyond movements necessary to rescue Americans." American reinforcements are going to China from this country as well. On Sunday of this week the transport Grant sailed from San Francisco for Nagasaki and Taku, carrying eight hundred men of the Sixth Cavalry, three hundred recruits, and two hundred marines. The Ninth Infantry and a signal corps from Manila, together with the marines already in China, will complete General Chaffee's forces.

The Boer War

Last week there seems to have been more fighting in the Orange River Colony than in the Transvaal. There were three engagements in that colony, each resulting in a British victory. At Senekal, the British casualties were three killed and twenty-three wounded; at Lindley, ten killed and fiftyfour wounded; and at Ficksburg, two killed and four wounded. The Boer casualties are not known. The principal event in the Transvaal seems to have been an attempt by the Boers to blow up the artillery barracks and magazine at Pretoria; an artilleryman frustrated the attempt by withdrawing the lighted fuse. Last week more interest was taken in Mr. Burdett-Coutts's charges of hospital mismanagement in South Africa than in any event in South Africa itself. The Government's defense was presented by Mr. Wyndham, Parliamentary Secretary to the War Office. The allegations as to neglect of the sick and wounded were frankly admitted to be true to a lamentable extent. This was due, it was stated, not to any stinting of supplies, but to insuperable difficulties in their distribution. Mr. Wyndham contended, however, that to

have given a true impression of the state of affairs Mr. Burdett-Coutts should have shown the difficulties encountered in supplying seventy-five thousand troops on the march. A single line of railway, with bridges broken, had, by order of Lord Roberts, to carry over a thousand tons a day. Every demand on the Government in behalf of the troops, added Mr. Wyndham, had been met. There were beds in the hospitals in excess of the demands; in Natal there were five thousand beds, and in Cape Colony, nearly fourteen thou sand. In all South Africa there were nearly five hundred army and over four hundred civilian medical officers; there were over five hundred female and over fifty-five hundred male nurses, besides the doctors and nurses engaged locally.

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Last week the Boer deleThe Boer Delegates gates to this country sailed for Europe, taking with them the money that has been raised here by the National Boer Relief Fund. The delegates issued a final appeal to the American people, in which they review the history of the Transvaal, charge England with duplicity in all its dealings with that country, regard the Jameson raid as a natural culmination of those dealings, affirm that it was only academically censured by the British Government and the public and that "the perpetrators were claimed as heroes in England and in British South Africa," while after the mildest form of punishment, inflicted so as to save appearances, some of the ringleaders have been actually promoted. They claim that the Transvaal Republic made every effort to avoid war, and issued the famous ultimatum only after British troops were moved up to the borders, additional troops were despatched from India, army corps were ordered out, the reserves called out, and a war Parliament summoned for October 6. The delegates do not dwell at great length upon the history of the war, but insist that the ability of untrained burghers to hold their own against a disciplined force, outnumbering them ten to one, has been amply demonstrated. "The Boers may be," they admit, " in the end defeated by overwhelming numbers, and may ultimately be forced to surrender. . . . But the conduct of the

present war as well as the history of the past hundred years justifies us in saying that they will never be conquered." This appeal to American prejudices appears to us to indicate some skill in practical politics, though we do not think it will suc ceed. The delegates affirm that England has sought to monopolize the Klondike in America and the diamond mines in Africa

the one affirmation appears to us as little justified as the other-and that the issue in Africa in 1900 parallels that in America in 1776: "Our enemy to-day was your enemy in 1776. The same British Empire which sought to hold you in colonial subjection now demands from us an unconditional surrender of our national existence." Thus they lay a foundation for comparing their own mission to this country with that of Benjamin Franklin to France, adding:

We do not ask of you anything in the shape of direct or forcible intervention, such as you secured from France and to which your historians attribute your ultimate victory over Great Britain. All we ask, and, indeed, all we need from you, in addition to the continuance of that public sympathy and moral support of which we are abundantly assured, is a convincing indication... that the people of the United States do not acquiesce in what Vattell has termed the monstrous doctrine that the independence of a nation defeated in war is completely at the mercy of the conqueror. The United States as a nation has done all that it could do under any administration, Democratic or Republican, in tendering its good offices; further than that it cannot go. The people of the United States will differ on this issue as they do on most issues; but those who value the independence of a nation only as means of protecting and promoting the liberty of the individual will not expend much sympathy on the Transvaal oligarchy, even though they think a wiser diplomacy than that of Mr. Chamberlain might have secured by peace all that his policy will secure by war.

Ashanti

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Of the three wars in which Great Britain is now engaged, that in her African Gold Coast Colony, commonly known as Ashanti, is giving cause for peculiar dissatisfaction and anxiety. Kumassi, the capital, Sir Frederick Hodgson, Governor of the Colony, has long been besieged by the rebellious Ashantis ;

At

necessity of modifying the Pelloux orders. The Liberalists of all shades, conscious of their new strength, are demanding more than this; they are calling for a national constitutional convention which shall restrict the conditions under which the Statuto, or Constitution, shall be amended or suspended. Unless such a reform is instituted, Italy may witness social and political revolution instead of evolution.

Last week the po

The New Italian Ministry litical disturbances in Italy were brought to a crisis by the resignation of the Pelloux Ministry. King Humbert requested Signor Saracco, the eminent Italian statesman, to form a new Ministry. Signor Saracco has been successful in this attempt, and his new Cabinet has now made its official bow before the Italian Parliament. In the closing session of the last Italian Parliament, the Pelloux Ministry attempted to obtain a vote of confidence from the Chamber of Deputies, approving the Cabinet's supposedly necessary action in suspending constitutional guarantees. As might have been expected, the demand was resisted by all who believed a suspension of the freedom of the press and of the liberty of public meeting unwarranted and unjust. Legislative obstruction was the result. Finally the Ministers decided to take the judgment of the country. Parliament was dissolved last month and an appeal to the constituencies ordered. The resulting elections showed an increase in the numbers of the Liberalists, but the Ministerialists were still able to elect a President of the Chamber of Deputies. Their majority had become so very small, however, that the Prime Minister not unnaturally regarded it as really a sign of adverse public opinion to his course and resigned office. His successor is now confronted by the

Convention

A Prohibition Convention met in Chicago last week representing thirty-seven States. It entertained no opinions, or at least declared none, respecting such questions as our foreign policy, our currency problem, our tariff laws, the Isthmian Canal, the governmental regulation of monopolies, national or other. It proclaimed but two principles, prohibition and woman suffrage. The former is stated by the party in the following words:

We declare that there is no principle now advocated by any other party which could be manifested in government with such beneficent moral and material results as the principle of prohibition applied to the beverage liquor traffic; that National interest could be promoted in no other way so surely and widely as by its assertion through a National policy, and the co-operation therein of every State, forbidding the manufacture, sale, exportation, importation, and transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes; that we stand for this as the only principle proposed by any party anywhere for the settlement of a question greater and graver than any other before the American people, and involving more profoundly than any other their moral, future, and financial welfare, and that all the patriotic citizens of this country, agreed upon this principle, however much disagreement there may be upon minor considerations and issues, should stand together at the ballot-box, from this time forward, until prohibition is the established law of the United States, with a party in power to enforce it and to insure its moral and material benefits.

The rest of the platform, except the paragraph indorsing woman suffrage, is little more than an amplification and repetition of this affirmation of the supreme importance of prohibition as the one dominant issue in both National and State politics.

This affirmation it couples with a denunciation of President McKinley "as a wine-drinker at public banquets and as a wine-serving host at the White House "both of which he has a perfect right to be,