life that has contentedly watched thirty centuries waste and pass. The latter class of critics were quick to trace to missionary intrusion above all other causes the furious convulsion that for months made northeastern China a scene of horror, and they have expressed the hope that such dismal result might bring an end of such misapplied zeal.

Nevertheless, the summons is now heard through all Christian lands, Protestant or Roman Catholic, for a great and immediate increase of mission work in China. The theory is that the more furious the evil outbreak the more desperate is the need of such work. Already the missionaries that were driven out alive are returning to re-gather their scattered flocks; large funds are being contributed; and new volunteers, men and women, are offering themselves for the work. This, whether counted wise or unwise, is now as it has been through nineteen hundred years the sure result of such outbreaks. It is declared to be the natural result, unavoidable until the Church ceases to exist on earth; for only as a purely missionary enterprise did the Church begin in this world, and when it finally ceases from its missions it will cease to live.

Very noticeable has been a readiness to credit any accusation against missionaries, Roman Catholic or Protestant. This had a curious illustration in a misfortune which in February befell a genial American humoristconspicuously careful of others' rights in matters financial-who made himself an object for compassion by instantly lending his credit to a newspaper dispatch by cable, which, by merely dropping a hyphen, represented a missionary, many years in the service of the American Board in China, as extorting money from several villages in which church property had been destroyed and native converts slain.

The dispatch represented him as “hav

ing collected 13 times the actual losses, using (the money) for propagating the gospel;" and on this showing, the man 12,000 miles away was pilloried with delicious humor in a magazine article. The facts as later revealed-for which the genial humorist, however, could not wait, though requested-were that the missionary had collected only one-third (1-3) of the amount of the losses inflicted on the widows and orphans of the converts who were slain-on which partial indemnity they were now supported; and that he had collected and paid over all the damages due to the Chinese Christians still living, and all with the approval and aid of the authorities of the villages who had been transiently terrorized by the fury of the Boxer uprising. He had simply availed himself of a common Chinese custom, fearing that the sufferers might starve while waiting for an indemnity by governmental action. He was not suspected by the "heathen Chinese," among whom he had lived and labored twenty-three years. A question much discussed has been whether missions were the cause of the Chinese outbreak. Consul-General Goodnow emphatically denies as absurd the statement that they were the cause in any important degree. The answer of many of those qualified to judge appears to class the mission work as one cause among various causes: only a very few still class it as the chief cause. Attention, however, has been called to the peculiar privilege which in the last few years has been granted to many Roman Catholic missionaries in China, of acting in their respective villages somewhat in the capacity of local magistrates as regards the defense of their converts from persecution or from injustice against which the mandarins would give such sufferers no protection. It has been alleged that the converts sometimes abused this peculiar privilege to the detriment of their neighbors. This charge, even though it were false, is one that would naturally be made, and would excite a not unreasonable dislike for all foreign control or interference, in which dislike a share would be given also to Protestants, though they never have used or sought such a magis

MISSIONARIES INVITED TO RETURN. Prince Ching, January 24, assured a committee of missionaries that there was no intention or desire on the part of the Chinese government to place any restriction on Christian missions, and that the government itself never had in the past any objections to the missionaries or to their methods. This the prince also recounted the next day to Minister Conger, and spoke of the missionaries' work as often beneficial

to the country. The governor of Shan-tung province has suggested the return of the missionaries to their stations, promising full protection.

MISSIONARY VIEW OF THE PEACE TERMS.

The missionaries in China of all denominations are reported as regretting that among the terms of peace proposed by the powers (pp. 10, 11) was not included some direct recognition of the rights of Chinese Christians to protection from outrage in persons and in property. In a meeting at Peking, with no suggestion of any religious propagandism whatever, the missionaries publicly expressed their disappointment that the peace protocol, while exacting in regard to various advantages to be gained or preserved by the powers, and the indemnities for their own citizens, had given little consideration to measures for the future welfare of China itself. The civilized world had failed to use a most fitting occasion in the interest of peace to advise and benefit China by even so little as a word of regret for the frightful slaughter, sufferings,

and impoverishment of many tens of thousands of native Christians.

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The missionaries in that meeting could look back to another meeting, in company for weeks with the besieged ministers of the powers and their families, whose legation defenses were devised by an American missionary who had engineering skill, were in part constructed with the aid of the hundreds of Chinese converts who had found refuge there. Minister Conger's testimony (Vol. 10, p. 699), which many witnesses have publicly and in large detail confirmed, is that without the missionaries it would have been impossible to maintain the historic defense.

a continuance of that of several weeks preceding. Of the whole act.ve force of British soldiers usually estimated at nearly 220,000, all except about 20,000 were busied not so much in fighting as in guarding the hundreds of miles of railway communication. The Boer bands, frequently of several hundred men, sometimes supposedly of two or three thousand, ranged widely over the country, suddenly appearing and disappearing on their hardy little horses, always ready to destroy a railway bridge, ambush a valuable military convoy, or surprise in a night attack some post held by a small garrison. The total Boer force was estimated at 18,000 or 19,000. The British necessity of protecting towns and detached posts has through weeks past reduced their force actively available. The region more or less directly included in Lord Kitchener's plan of campaign covers more than 450,000 square miles, an area greater than that of France and Germany combined, having a north and south extent of 1,000 miles, and a breadth of 200 to 400 miles-a region in most

parts sparsely inhabited, and excellently adapted to the burghers' style of warfare. Kitchener's force available at any one point can scarcely have been larger than the total with which Lord Roberts entered Bloemfontein-27,000 men and 7,600 horses, or than his total at Pretoria-24,000 men and 6,000 horses.

Camps for the Veldt Folk.

The guerilla phase into which the war has degenerated had compelled an entire change in the British plan. A regular military campaign would be futile against an enemy whose army had finally been broken into two or three bands of considerable size which, with a few smaller ones, all consisting only of mounted men not in uniform, were scouring the country in all directions, constantly finding opportunities for great damage. The Boer bands needed no army train of provisions: they could pick up their supplies and fresh horses in any little village or in the scattered farm houses far apart on the veldt.

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To meet this style of irregular warfare which threatened confusion without end also to liberate his troops for active pursuit of the Boer forcesGeneral Kitchener has been gathering the scattered Boer population from some thinly settled regions into risoned posts, into which the British troops also have driven all horses and cattle. The people who are brought in to these posts are housed and fed at British expense, being largely refugees who have made submission, whom the British are bound to protect from the vengeance which the Boer generals have threatened against those whom they deem traitors to their country. The effect is equivalent to capturing an enemy's supply train. The Boer chieftains thus are now missing their accustomed commissariat and relays of horses in the eastern and western Transvaal and in the northern part of the Orange River Colony. The dwellers in these camps

were reported, February 25, as numbering about 15,000. Their administration is in the hands of civilians.

Opposite Judgments.

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The antagonist judgments nounced early in this contest as to which was the side of right have as yet shown little modification. In the United States the same sympathies as before are evident on one or the other side, and the same arguments are still advanced (Vol. 10, pp. 25-27). The fervor of the Boer advocates, however, on both sides of the Atlantic, has increased in view of the slow progress of the British in either subjugation or pacification since the only formidable armies of the burghers were broken up and the governments of the two republics were disorganized.

The Question of Success.

Some prominent European journals, especially in Holland, Germany, and France, have shown some hope of ultimate Boer success through an expected exhaustion of the British military resources available to meet the harassing modes of conflict which the Boers are declared able to prolong indefinitely. Not a few papers in the United States have been showing the same expectation, in effect, that even though Lord Kitchener may for many months keep up the fight and make occasional gains, the English and Scotch taxpayers will soon be heard demanding an end of such enormous and fruitless expenditure the total British expenditure in the war being stated at more than £130,000,000. But though the Boers have in recent weeks succeeded in greatly annoying and mortifying their foe, it is now evident that the present style of warfare must soon wear itself out. Their truest friends are now hoping that they will give their attention speedily to securing the best terms of peace. Their only conceivable help would be through some scarcely conceivable intervention.

It is to be noted also that the two Boer peoples, never having had a seaport of their own, are now completely shut in from commercial access. Without a supply of various war material, war cannot long persist. Moreover, Mr. Kruger's government is no longer collecting from the foreign Owners and operators of the rich mines the heavy taxes which formerly poured wealth into the public chest. Indeed, the two governments themselves have ceased to be operative, so far as is known to the world.

The Question of Intervention. While much of the Boer advocacy in America and in Europe is to be ascribed to a generous sympathy with the weaker side in a fight and to admiration for a brave and tenacious struggle for national independence, much of it, especially in Europe, is evidently due to a desire to see English pride humbled and England's ambition for international leadership and for commercial pre-eminence on all seas countervailed. This desire exists and has long existed, and has expressed itself without qualification during the whole South African conflict. It is known also, however, that this popular feeling has not had the slightest effect on the action or the attitude of any of the great powers. The governments have seen strong reasons for refusing to bring from Africa a firebrand to kindle a general European war. It has become fully evident that intervention would such a firerrand, even though it were to appear first in the guise of an insistent demand on Great Britain to accept a mediation. A mediation whose proposal is not joined in by both parties in dispute is in reality an intervention, and, if persisted in, means war for all outside parties that thus persist. At the beginning the powers could not have failed to note that on twenty-four hours' notice-that notice a threat from the little South African republics--war had been opened on

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Great Britain with immediate invasion of her territory and capture of her unprepared towns; and the powers could not but see that whether Britain's cause were just or unjust such a case was not in the least propitious for mediation. It is no more propitious to-day.

Military Movements.

GENERAL BRITISH PLANS. At the beginning of February, four general British movements were in progress. One was near the castern boundary of the Transvaal under General French, to disperse Botha's main force, which had threatened the communication to Lourenco Marques. The second, 300 miles away, was a small operation under General Cunningham against Delarey's 2,000 men in the southwestern part of the Transvaal. The third was an operation combining seven columns under Generals Charles Knox, Bruce Hamilton, and Maxwell, Colonels W. L. White and Pilcher, and Major Crowe. They moved first southward, keeping in touch with DeWet's rearguard, aiming to drive him upon the British corps at the Orange river. This concentration the Boers evaded by dividing and swinging westward. The fourth movement was for clearing Cape Colony, and was not as early developed as the others. With these extended movements in view the War Office in London decided on a further reinforcement of 30,000 mounted troops.