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. It would have been impossible for Yuan Shih-kai to have
taken his troops to Peking for any purpose without first
informing his superior officer Jung Lu unless he put him to
death, much less to have gone on such a mission as that of
imprisoning as important a personage as the Empress Dowager, to
whom they were both indebted for their office.
Another instance of the way in which the Empress Dowager played
one party against another was the appointment of Prince Tuan as a
member of the Foreign Office. After his son had been selected as
the heir-apparent it seemed to the Empress Dowager that for his
own education and development he should be made to come in
contact with the foreigners. Most of the foreigners considered
the appointment objectionable on account of the "Prince's anti-
foreign tendencies. But to my mind," says Sir Robert Hart, "it
was a good one; the Empress Dowager had probably said to the
Prince, 'You and your party pull one way, Prince Ching and his
another--what am I to do between you? You, however, are the
father of the future Emperor, and have your son's interests to
take care of; you are also head of the Boxers and chief of the
Peking Field Force, and ought therefore to know what can and what
cannot be done. I therefore appoint you to the yamen; do what you
consider most expedient, and take care that the throne of your
ancestors descends untarnished to your son, and their empire
undiminished! yours is the power,--yours the responsibility--and
yours the chief interests!' I can imagine the Empress Dowager
taking this line with the Prince, and, inasmuch as various
ministers who had been very anti-foreign before entering the
yamen had turned round and behaved very sensibly afterwards, I
felt sure that responsibility and actual personal dealings with
foreigners would be a good experience and a useful education for
this Prince, and that he would eventually be one of the sturdiest
supporters of progress and good relations
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