The French Minister was quite irate, and after his discourse was ended
he slipped quietly away--possibly to send some more telegrams. The
crumbs of his conversation were soon gathered up and distributed and
the conviviality somewhat damped. As yet, however, the Boxers are only
laughed at and are not taken quite seriously. They have killed native
Christians, it is true, and it has been proved conclusively now that
it was they who murdered Brooks, the English missionary in Shantung.
But Englishmen are cheap, since there is a glut in the home market,
and their government merely gets angry with them when they get into
trouble and are killed. So many are always getting killed in China.

So the Boxers, with half the governments of Europe, led by England, as
we know by our telegrams, seeking to minimise their importance--in
fact, trying to stifle the movement by ignoring it or lavishing on it
their supreme contempt--have already moved from their particular
habitat, which is Shantung, into the metropolitan province of Chihli.
Already they are in some force at Chochou, only seventy miles to the
southeast of Peking--always massacring, always advancing, and driving
in bodies of native Christians before them on their march. Nobody
cares very much, however, except a vicar apostolic, who urgently
requests forty or fifty marines or sailors "to protect our persons and
our chattels." Foolish bishop he is, is he not, when Christians have
been expressly born to be massacred? Does he not know his history?

Lead on, blind ministers plenipotentiary and envoys extraordinary;
lead on, with your eternal political situations in embryo, your
eternal political situations that have not yet hatched out; while one
that is more pregnant than any you have ever conceived is already
born under your very noses and is being sniffed at by you. But no