"Why not?" she replied. "See what you foreigners are doing to us, have done to us, are still trying to do to us. Can you blame us? Judge for yourself."
"I can perfectly understand your Boxer uprising," I told her, "when you tried to get rid of us all—"
"I'm glad you can understand that," she retorted. "Few foreigners do. We feel that way still; only we can't show it as we did then."
Into my mind came a recollection of the high stone wall surrounding the British legation, on which are painted the words, "Lest we forget." Every day, as one passes in or out of the legation quarter by that road, one's attention is arrested by those words. "Lest we forget." Every foreigner in Peking is thus reminded of those dreadful months of siege in 1900. But so is every Chinese of the upper classes; so is every rickshaw coolie who stops to point out those words to the tourists as he passes. Why remember? Why not try to forget? Neither side will forget. Neither foreigner nor Chinese has any intention of forgetting. The huge indemnities that are paid out year by year by the Chinese make forgetting impossible. Of all the countries that received an indemnity, America was the only one that tried to forget. Yet she did it by erecting a monument to her forgetfulness, or forgivingness, in the shape of a college-preparatory school for Chinese boys, and is using part of her yearly indemnity fund to maintain it; and "Lest we forget" is written large upon its walls.
But in contrast to the bitterness of the little Chinese lady, we received an impression to-day of quite opposite character. We called upon the editor of one of the Chinese papers. We have seen him many times, and he has often had tea with us in the lobby of our hotel, but upon this occasion he sent us a note and asked us to call on him at his office. He kept us waiting a few minutes in a shabby, dingy office, littered with papers and newspaper clippings, the regulation untidy office of a newspaper man. When he finally arrived, after ten minutes' delay, he apologized profusely, saying it was five o'clock, the hour for his bowl of porridge. He looked as if he needed it, too, for he was a thin, nervous little man, a burning, ardent soul contained in a gaunt, emaciated body.
Straightway, after his allusion to his porridge, he burst into a eulogy of America, such as it did our hearts good to hear. In his mind there was absolutely no question that China should trust herself to America, enter the war on the side of America. No other nation in the world, he said, had such great ideals, and so thoroughly lived up to them. Wilson's Mexican policy filled him with enthusiasm; he spoke of it at length, almost with tears in his eyes. Next he touched on our Philippine possessions. Our record in the Philippines is an example to the world. No exploitation of a helpless people but a noble constructive policy to educate them, develop them, and, finally, bring them to a point where they could exercise their own sovereignty. The first thing we did, he reminded us, on taking possession of the Philippines, was to throw out opium. It was at that time a drug-sodden country, but our first act was to banish the traffic, root and branch.
It was also America, he went on, which had given China moral support and active backing in her ten-years' struggle against the drug. We had called together the Opium Conference at Shanghai, and later the Hague International Opium Conference, and owing to the publicity gained through these conferences China had had the courage to demand the opportunity to eradicate the curse. On and on he went, and it was good hearing. He would use his influence, and it was great, to induce China to accept America's invitation and enter the war on the side of the Allies.
It made one rather humble to hear him. China will place her fate and her fortunes so implicitly in our hands. It will be a great responsibility for us to meet. Do you think we can do so?