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Now may I request the enemies of the Empress Dowager to ask
themselves what they would have done if they had been placed at
the head of their own government when it was thus being filched
from them? You say she was anti-foreign--would you have been
very much in love with Germany, Russia, France and England under
those circumstances? That she acted unwisely in placing herself
in the hands of the conservatives and allying herself with the
superstitious Boxers, we must all frankly admit. But what would
you have done? Might you not--I do not say you would with your
intelligence--but might you not have been induced to have
clutched at as great a log as the patriotic Boxers seemed to
present, if you had been as near drowning as she was?
"It is generally supposed," says one of her critics, "that Kang
Yu-wei suggested to the Emperor, that if he would render his own
position secure, he must retire the Empress Dowager, and
decapitate Jung Lu." If that be true, and I think it very
reasonable, the condition must have been desperate, when the
reformers had to begin killing the greatest of their opponents,
and imprisoning those who had given them their power, though
neither of these at that time had raised a hand against them.
Have you noticed how ready we are to forgive those on our side
for doing that for which we would bitterly condemn our opponents?
The same people who condemn the Empress Dowager for beheading the
six young reformers stand ready to forgive Kuang Hsu for ordering
the decapitation of Jung Lu, and the imprisonment of his
foster-mother
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