NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13707, 25 March 1908, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

A CHINESE STATESMAN.

Mr. Charles Dfxby, the American ConsulGenera? at Shanghai, contributes to the Pacific Era a character sketch of the Viceroy Yuan Shih-Kai, whose impeachment, it was mentioned in a Herald cablegram published yesterday, was demanded at a mass meeting of Chinese in Canton. Mr. Denny's personal acquaintance with the subject of this sketch began in the year 1902, when Yuan was still in Pekin waiting to take up his post as Viceroy. He says:—When Yuan went to Shantung to replace the previous Governor he took his foreign drilled troops with him. He had had some experience as Chinese Resident in Corea, and he had gained from the China-Japan war some knowledge of the meaning" of foreign methods and of the value to be attached to foreign goodwill. In personal appearance Yuan Shih-Kai is of short stature, solid and substantial of figure, but not fat. He has piercing black'eyes and is very observant. His speech is direct and incisive and he arrives quickly at'■decisions'. He is fond of display and is devoted to military pageants. Altogether it may be said that he is more a soldier than a scholar, but with his soldierly qualities he combines the talents of a correct, honest, intelligent, and conservative statesman. . Yuan Shih-Kai distinguished himself by the .dry humour and unsparing severity with which he dealt with the Boxers. When the Boxer rising broke out in 1900 ho was appointed Governor-General of Shantung. He took his foreign drilled troops with him, and at the very opening of his, reign struck terror into the hearts of the Boxers. As soon as he arrived at the capital' a committee of the Boxer lenders waited upon him, and told him Unit they were invulnerable, that they had supernatural powers, and that bullets could not harm them, He listened to them respectfully, congratulated them upon their supernatural gifts, and invited them, to dinner. Tlioy accepted with delight. As tho dinner; was, drawing to a close Yuan said that ho ■had been much impressed by their remarks a-* to their ability to withstand bullets, and such a marvellous and miraculous thing, if well demonstrated, would do moro than anything else to establish their claims to respect. Ho therefore proposed that his guests, who had been speaking so confidently as to their invulnerability, should, on rising from the dinner-table, go out into the backyard, lino tip against tho wall, and allow him to afford tho world a conclusive proof of the truth of their claims. The horror-stricken Boxers in vain protested 4 that the moment was unpropitious. The Viceroy was: inexorable, and olio after another they were taken out and lined up against the wall. , A firing squad of his foreign drilled troops, with rifles, received the command to fire., and the next moment all the Boxers fell dead at the feet of their late host. Such a man was obviously not to lie trilled with. It is stated that he, when Governor of Shantung, issued orders that Boxers should bo killed, whenever caught, without the formality of a trial, as ho had arrived at the conclusion that extermination, was the only remedy for a frenzy ' which seemed to have taken possession of all North China-. As Yuan is now practically the- dominating spirit in the Chinese Empire, and is creating an effective modem army, blood and iron will not be wanting ■from the regimen to which the Chinese and their neighbours are to be submitted in the near future. There is o certain Bismarckian look about him, and although he is Chinese there is very little suggestion of it in Ws face.