“You mean K’ang-hi and K’ien-lung.”
“I do.”
Sên King-lo smiled again, but he drained the glass Sir Charles had refilled.
“Twenty Sun-Yat-sens would not out-balance either K’ang-hi or K’ien-lung. And I hope the Manchu will come back. And I don’t like dethronements.”
“We’ve had a good many in China.”
“Not exactly. Conquering princes and warriors have mounted, usurped, if you like, the throne of the Emperor they’ve unseated—but that’s a very different thing from a people voluntarily dismissing their ruler. And when they do it at foreign instigation and chicanery—to my mind it is without excuse.”
“Mencius taught ‘Killing a bad monarch is no murder,’ ” Sên remarked.
“Then Mencius was, to my thinking, a bit of a Bolshevik,” Snow retorted.
Sên King-lo laughed pleasantly. That he did—at such hot derision of the Sage, showed how tight Young China had gripped him, how far Old China had lost him.
“I hate to see China a republic,” Snow insisted. “And I stand by the Manchu. You will dislike my saying that——”