I found in Peking several good observers of political life, especially Dr. George Morrison, Mr. B. Lenox Simpson, and Mr. W.H. Donald. All three had the training in observation and judgment which comes from writing for responsible papers. Doctor Morrison was gifted with a memory for details. Thus, he would say: "When I first visited New York I lived in a little hall room on the third floor of 157 East Twenty-ninth Street, with a landlady whose name was Simkins, who had green eyes and a red nose and who charged me two dollars a week for my room." He delighted in detailing minutely his daily doings. His sense of infinite detail combined with his remarkable memory made Doctor Morrison an encyclopædia of information about Chinese public men. He knew their careers, their foibles and ambitions, and their personal relationships. Like most British in China he was animated with a sincere wish to see the Chinese get ahead, and was distressed by the obstacles which a change for the better encountered at every step. His own mind was of the analytical and critical type rather than the constructive, and his greatest services were rendered as interpreter of events and in giving to public men and the people a clear idea of the significance of complex Chinese situations. "I am annoyed," he would say, "because kindly old ladies persistently identify me with the missionary Morrison who died in 1857."
Mr. Donald's acquaintance with Chinese affairs had come through close contact with the leaders of new China, with whom he coöperated intimately in their military and political campaigns. He had a heart for the Chinese, as if they had been his own people. He worried about their troubles and fought their fights. Mr. Simpson, the noted writer who uses the pen name "Putnam Weale," began active life as a member of the Maritime Customs service, but he soon resigned, to devote himself wholly to literary work. His masterly works of political analysis were written in the period of the Russo-Japanese War, although his best-known book came a little earlier—a book which long earned him the ill-will and suspicion of many of the legations in Peking. He himself disavows giving in "Indiscreet Letters from Peking" a recital of actual facts. He told me: "I wished to give the psychology of a siege, selecting from the abundant material significant facts and expressions, but I was not in any sense attempting to chronicle events and personal actions."
Mr. Simpson has also written a series of novels dealing with Chinese life. The short stories are the best; the longer ones, while interesting in description and clever in dialogue, lack that intuitive power of characterization which is found in the greatest novels, though "Wang the Ninth" which has recently come from the press is an admirable study of Chinese psychology and an excellent story as well. Though his playful and cynical mind often led people to judge that he was working solely for literary effect, it seemed to me he had a deep appreciation of what China should mean to the world; he also had real sympathy for the Chinese, and desired in every way to help them to realize the great promise of their country and people. As a conversationalist Mr. Simpson resembled Macaulay, in that his interludes of silence were infrequent. Notwithstanding the brilliance of this conversation, luncheon parties of men occasionally seemed to become restive under a monologue which gave few others a chance to wedge in a word.
Aside from these three British writers, many other men were following with intelligent interest the course of events. Bishop Bashford, gifted with a broad and statesmanlike mind, could always be trusted to give passing events significant interpretations. Dr. W.A.P. Martin had then reached an age at which the individual details of current affairs no longer interested him. His intimate friend, Dr. Arthur H. Smith—a rarely brilliant extemporaneous speaker—was full of witty and incisive observations, often deeply pessimistic, though tempered with a deep friendship for the Chinese people.
Among the members of the diplomatic corps it was chiefly the Chinese secretaries who busied themselves, out of professional interest with the details of Chinese affairs, although they did not in all cases exhibit a broad grasp of the situation.
Mr. Willys R. Peck, Chinese secretary of the American Legation, born in China, had a complete mastery of the difficult language of the country. He could use it with a colloquial ease that contrasted most pleasantly with the stilted and stiff enunciation of the ordinary foreigner speaking Chinese. His tact in intercourse with the Chinese and his judgment on character and political affairs could be relied on. Mr. Peck took the place of Mr. E.T. Williams, who was called to Washington as chief of the Far Eastern Division in the State Department. I considered it great good fortune that there should be at the Department a man so experienced and so familiar with Chinese affairs.
It was my good fortune to have as first secretary of the legation a man exceptionally qualified to cope with the difficulties and intricacies of Chinese affairs. Not only are these affairs infinitely complex in themselves, but they have been overlaid through many decades with a web of foreign treaty provisions, which makes them still more baffling to the stranger who tackles them. But Mr. J.V.A. MacMurray, the secretary, was possessed of a keenly analytical, legally trained mind which was able to cut through the most hopelessly tangled snarl of local custom, national law, international agreement, and general equity. Also his interest in things Chinese was so deep and genuine that his researches were never perfunctory. The son of a soldier, he had an almost religious devotion to the idea of public service.
Among the ministers themselves, Sir John Jordan, actual Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, was through long experience and careful attention to affairs most fitted to speak with authority on things Chinese. I was immediately greatly attracted to him and formed with him a close acquaintanceship. This led to constant coöperation throughout the difficult years that lay ahead. Sir John was a man of unusually long and varied experience in China. He came first to the consular service, then became minister resident in Korea, and his forty years of official work had given him complete intimacy with Chinese affairs. Although he speaks Chinese with fluency, in official interviews and conversations he was always accompanied by his Chinese secretary and expressed himself formally in English. As a matter of fact, few diplomats ever use the Chinese language in official conversation. Because of its infinite shades of meaning it is a complex and rather unprecise medium, therefore misunderstandings are more readily avoided through the concurrent use of another language. While Sir John understood Chinese character and affairs and was sympathetic with the country in which his life work had been spent, yet there dwelt in him no spirit of easy compliance. When he considered it necessary, he could insist so strongly and so emphatically upon the action he desired taken that the Chinese often thought of him as harsh and unrelenting: yet they always respected his essentially English spirit of fairness and straightforwardness.
Other colleagues with whom close relationships grew up were Don Luis Pastor, the Spanish minister, a gentleman thoroughly American in his ways and familiar through long residence in Washington with our affairs; and Count Sforza, the Italian minister. To the latter China seemed more or less a place of exile; he appeared bored and only moderately interested in the affairs about him. But his legation—with Countess Sforza, Madame Varè, whose Lombard beauty did not suggest her Scotch origin; the Marquise Denti, with her quizzical, Mona Lisa-like haunting smile, concealing great ennui; and the entirely girlish and playful Countess Zavagli, a figure which might have stepped out of a Watteau—was a most charming social centre. M. Beelaerts van Blokland, the Netherlands minister, a man of clear-thinking, keen mind, and great reasonableness, and the Austrian minister, M. von Rosthorn, a profound Chinese scholar, who was then working on a Chinese history, were men of whom I saw much during these years.
There were few sinologists in Peking at this time. The successive Chinese secretaries of the American Legation ranked high in this respect. Of resident sinologists the most noted, Mr. (later Sir) Edward Backhouse was a recluse, who never allowed himself to be seen in the company of other people of a Western race. At the only period when I had long conversations with him I found him much disturbed by wild rumours current in the Chinese quarter to which I could not attach any weight. Others whose knowledge of Chinese was exceptional were Mr. Sidney Mayers, representative of the British China Corporation, who had formerly been in the consular service; Doctor Gattrell, who had acted as secretary of the American Group; Mr. W.B. Pettus, the director of the Peking Language School; Mr. Simpson, already mentioned; and several missionaries and professors at Peking University.