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. This messenger was also secretly
instructed to find out what the contents of the edict were, and
if it was contrary to the desires of the Governor, he was to
dilly-dally on the way home until the Boxer trouble was ended or
until the foreigners had all been removed from the territory. And
it was such conduct as this on the part of three Chinese and one
Manchu viceroys that saved China from being divided up among the
Powers in 1900, a fact which the Empress Dowager was not slow to
understand and reward.
In 1900 Yuan was made Governor of the Shantung province, and the
court was compelled to flee to Hsian. It was while the court was
thus in hiding that an incident occurred which indicates the
fertility of the Empress Dowager and the elasticity of all
Chinese social customs. Governor Yuan's mother died. In a case of
this kind customs dictate, and the rules of filial affection
demand, that a man shall resign all his official positions and go
into mourning for a period of three years. Yuan therefore sent
his resignation to the Empress Dowager, while "weeping tears of
blood."
The country was of course in desperate straits and could ill
afford to lose, for three years, for a mere sentiment, the
services of one of her greatest and most powerful statesmen.
However much he may have regretted to give up such a brilliant
career which was just well begun, Yuan no doubt expected to do
so. What was his surprise therefore to receive from Her Majesty a
message of condolence in which she praised his mother in the
highest terms for having given the world such a brilliant and
able son
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