Cortland Evening Standard, Friday, August 17, 1900.
CHINESE CRY ENOUGH!
Li Hung Chang Appeals For an Armistice.
ANSWER RESTS WITH CHAFFEE.
He Has Been Given Free Rein to Carry Out Arrangement With the Other Commanders For Delivery of the Ministers at Pekin, Not Tung Chau.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 17.—At the close of a day of intense anxiety the department of state last night made public the latest correspondence between the United States government and China, constituting not only a remarkable series of state papers, but at the same time dispelling all doubt and uncertainty as to the American policy in the present critical juncture.
The urgent, almost pathetic appeal of Li Hung Chang submitted early in the day that the victorious march of the allies stop at Tung Chau and that the military commanders in the field be instructed to arrange an armistice at that point, was met with a response that General Chaffee already had been given complete instructions empowering him to carry out an arrangement in concert with other commanders for the delivery of the ministers and persons under their protection to the relief column, not at Tung Chau, as had been suggested, but at the imperial city of Pekin.
Furthermore, it was made known to China that General Chaffee's instructions left him free rein as to whether he should insist upon entering Pekin and going to the legations or should receive the delivery of the legationers at the gate of the inner Tartar city or at the great outer wall.
In short, China, through her peace envoy, besought a halt and an armistice at Tung Chau, 12 miles from Pekin, whereat the response of the American government, if there is to be a halt—or armistice—it must be at the walls of the imperial city.
Although it was not the regular day for a meeting of the cabinet, word was conveyed to those cabinet officers in the city that a special cabinet session would be held at 11 o'clock. Secretary Root, who has been a guiding factor in the Chinese negotiations, was with the president before the meeting opened, presenting the Chinese communications and the dispatches of instructions already sent to General Chaffee. With the president at the cabinet table were Secretaries Root, Gage, Wilson and Postmaster General Smith.
After the cabinet meeting the American reply was sent to the Chinese minister who, later in the day, cabled it to Li Hung Chang.
Thus the issue was framed, finally and unalterably.
It will be observed that the American memorandum of the reply gives Li Hung Chang practically nothing beyond a repetition of the two dispatches heretofore sent to General Chaffee.
Thus there can be no misunderstanding of the issue as made up. Li Hung Chang's appeal for an armistice at Tung Chau is rejected, and the continually reiterated demand of the United States that the ministers be delivered to the allied troops at Pekin is reinforced.
The latest dispatch from Minister Conger was scanned with interest, but it brought little information beyond that already at hand. In one respect, however, it gave the government strong encouragement as it was almost a categorical answer to the inquiries of the state department. This was the first definite knowledge that we were in direct touch with our minister.
Beyond the important diplomatic exchanges of the day and the receipt of the Conger message the chief interest centered in the exact whereabouts of the allied armies. From Japanese sources came the most advanced information, first in the Tokio advices, that Tung Chau had been occupied and later in the day in an official dispatch from the Japanese foreign office to Minister Takahira confirming this report. The minister promptly communicated his information to the department of state and it was accepted by the officials as the latest and most authentic news of the whereabouts of the relief column.
Some days had elapsed, however, since this occupation of Tung Chau and there had been ample time to cover the 12 miles between that place and Pekin. Whether the allied forces actually were there was the all absorbing question on which every one waited word with keen anxiety.
A dispatch was received during the day from Admiral Remey conveying the Japanese report of the occupation of Tung Chau and adding the statement, also on Japanese authority, that the attack on Pekin was expected to be made Wednesday. A dispatch was sent to General Chaffee, but its contents were not made public.
A dispatch also was sent to Minister Conger, advisory in character, giving him the benefit of the latest developments.
CONFIRMATORY NEWS.
Vienna and Rome Hear of Allies' Arrival at Pekin.
POWERS ACCEPT JAPAN'S PLAN.
Armistice May Be Effected, Dependent on Immediate Delivery of Legations to Allies—Admitted That Chinese Suffered Heavily at Tung Chau Sunday.
SHANGHAI, Aug. 17.—The China Gazette openly impeaches the United States consul, John Goodnow, of complicity with the Chinese.
LONDON, Aug. 17.—A cablegram to Vienna from Hong Kong announces the capture of Pekin, but the Austrian government, like other European powers, is still without confirmation of the report.
An official telegram dated Taku, Aug. 14, has been received at Rome which asserts that the attack on Pekin began Monday, that Sir Claude MacDonald, the British minister, has opened communication with the relieving force and that the allies have established their headquarters at Tung Chau.
Chinese officials in Shanghai are reported as admitting that the allies inflicted a heavy defeat on the Chinese imperial troops around Tung Chau Sunday and then marched direct on Pekin. That, if true, carries the Japanese official advices announcing the capture of Tung Chau one step further.
The Western powers, according to a dispatch to The Daily Express from Kobe, have accepted proposals formulated by Japan for arranging an armistice, dependent upon the immediate delivery of the foreign legations to the allies or the granting of permission to the allied forces to enter Pekin and to guard the legations. Upon these bases the correspondent says, Japan has already begun to negotiate.
Shanghai dispatches declare that the Chinese had intended to make a final attack upon the legations last Sunday, but whether the plan was carried out is not known here.
From the same place comes the statement that Vice Admiral Seymour and Brigadier General Creagh have joined in the protest against the withdrawal of the British troops. All the morning papers, which comment on the subject, appeal to Lord Salisbury not to withdraw them and dilate upon the serious results of such an action to British prestige.
American negotiations looking to a cessation of hostilities also receive considerable attention, favorable and otherwise, but all the editorials agree that to precipitate a withdrawal from Pekin after the delivery of the legationers would have a bad effect upon the Chinese mind.
MINISTERS RESCUED
AND WITHIN THE PROTECTION OF THE ALLIED ARMIES.
Troops Entered Pekin Without Opposition—Signals with Legationers on the Wall Had Been Exchanged—Chinese Had Failed to Flood the Country Near the City.
LONDON. Aug. 17.—The first definite announcement of the relief of the legations came from Berlin.
''The allies have entered Pekin without fighting. The legations are relieved and the foreigners are liberated."
Such is the dispatch received from the German Consul at Shanghai and given out by the Berlin Foreign office at 1 P.M. to-day. The collapse of Chinese resistance is explained in dispatches from Shanghai as being due to the failure of the Chinese to flood the country below Tung Chow. The earthworks connected with the dam at the Pei Ho were unfinished and the canal at Tung Chow was full of water, facilitating boat transport when the allies arrived there.
Signals between the allies and the legationers holding part of the wall at Pekin were exchanged during the morning of Aug. 15 (Wednesday). Troops are still arriving at Taku.
A CHINESE VIEW.
"Christianity Might Triumph and Again It Might Not."
OAKLAND, Cal., Aug. 17.—Ho Yow, Chinese consul general at San Francisco, in an address before the Ebell society, said: "There are 500,000,000 of my countrymen. They are quick to learn and taking these facts into consideration what would happen if the white race succeeded in forcing its civilization and its knowledge upon them? They would be able to manufacture guns and all the engines of warfare with equal facility. Under these circumstances Christianity might triumph and again it might not."
The three chief causes of present troubles in China, Ho Yow declared to be missionary work, acquisition of territory by foreign nations and the desecration of ancestral homes and the landscape of China. In closing, Ho Yow said he could see no legitimate reason why one nation should wish to force its religion upon another.
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| Charles Denby. |
PAGE TWO—EDITORIAL.
The Chinese as Diplomats.
Bret Harte many years ago warned the world at large that it was not a good plan to rely too implicitly upon the honor of a Chinaman. The present trouble in the east makes this fact glaringly apparent, and circumstantial evidence, if any were needed, is furnished by Hon. Charles Denby, former United States minister to China, in an article in the August Forum. It will be remembered that it was through the good offices of our representatives in China and Japan that peace between those two warring nations was finally brought about. After explaining the conditions which existed at the time, Mr. Denby says:
The coast, therefore, was left free for direct proposals to be made by China to Japan for peace. In an interview with the yamen on Nov. 22, 1894, it was stated to the ministers that I was willing to forward to Tokyo, through Mr. Dun, our minister, a proposal, to negotiate for peace. The members of the yamen were delighted at the prospect of obtaining peace and urgently begged me to proceed immediately. Accordingly, I wired to Japan that China desired to open negotiations for peace on the basis of the independence of Korea and the payment of a reasonable war indemnity. Japan answered that she was willing to negotiate, but that she would dictate the terms of peace.
It would be needless to recount here the substance of the numerous dispatches which passed between the two governments through Mr. Dun and myself as intermediaries. There was a vast amount of labor expended by China in an endeavor to find out what Japan meant to demand as the conditions of peace, and besides there always remained in the minds of the Chinese statesmen the idea that ultimately Russia and France would intervene. For these reasons the departure of the Chinese envoys was delayed until late in January, 1895. Feb. 1 the plenipotentiaries, composed of Count Ito and Viscount Mutsu for Japan, and Chang In Hoon and Shao Yu Lien for China, met at Hiroshima, Japan, to make a treaty.
I knew that the Chinese statesmen had had little or no experience in drawing papers of this kind, and before the envoys left Peking I suggested that I would draw the "full powers" for the emperor to sign. I was requested to do so. I procured from my French colleague a form which had been used by Louis Philippe, translated it into English, then into Chinese, and sent it to the yamen. The next day I visited the yamen and inquired whether the paper I had presented had been signed by the emperor. The ministers of the yamen told me that they had changed the wording a little to suit the Chinese idiom, but that they had not materially altered the paper, and they added that the emperor had signed it. The paper actually sent bore no resemblance to the complete document which I had prepared.
The Chinese envoys were ordered to leave Japan immediately. When they arrived at Nagasaki, I wired to Chang directing him to present my "full powers" to the Japanese. He answered, that the emperor had refused to sign them. I then wired to Japan asking that the envoys might be allowed to remain in Japan and complete their work. I offered to wire full powers and to send them by messenger as soon as navigation opened. But Japan was then engaged in taking Wei Hai Wei and refused all delay.
It would seem that there could not well be a more unblushing piece of duplicity, yet neither the Chinese government nor its diplomats appeared to see it in other than a creditable light. It should be borne in mind that these are practically the same people with whom our government will have to deal in the present crisis, and our officials should govern themselves accordingly.
FROM THE PHILIPPINES.
George Colgrove Thinks the Fighting is Nearly Over.
Kennedy Brothers have received a letter from George H. Colgrove of Cortland, who is now in Co. A. Forty-seventh Infantry, United States Volunteers, stationed at Dunsol in the Philippine islands. Part of the letter will be of interest to Mr. Colgrove's friends here and is as follows:
I am in the Philippine Islands helping to kill the insurrectos, and think that we are about through fighting them. We have had only one man killed out of our company so far and he was killed in the second fight we had after landing here in Donsol. We landed here in the Philippines, Dec. 22, 1899, at the Manila harbor, where they loaded us into cascos (large flat boats), taking us up the Passig river 6 miles to a small town called San Pedro Macati, where we were placed in trenches on the firing line, staying there three weeks. Then we were once more loaded into cascos, going down the river into the harbor, where we boarded the United States transport Hancock and sailed for Sorsogun bay, where we arrived after three days' sailing. There our regiment was split up, part of the command going to Sorsogun City, Co. B to Bulan, Co. C down the coast to guard a lighthouse and my company, Co. A, and Co. D boarding the gunboat Helena and sailing for Donsol, where we land under fire after three hours' sail. It did not take us long to take the town after landing. The natives fled back into the mountains, where they had a blockhouse and trenches dug. But that did not avail them any, for in less than ten minutes we drove them from their position. We have been here ever since. They tried to burn the town about fifty times and succeeded only in burning a few shacks on the outskirts of the town beyond the death line.
The population of this town was given as 7,000 and old Donsol. 12 miles farther back, as 15,000. Three miles out there is a town called Pilar, containing 10,000 more. We got our information from a Spaniard who has lived here twenty years or more. If it had been more he would have told us, Sabe? So you can see what less than two hundred men have to combat with. And the Filipinos are very bold. They fight something on the plan of our American Indians and you know how they fight. And we are very near played out by hard work and want of sleep. We have to do guard duty every other night and work all day, sleeping only as we can catch a chance. We built a stockade of logs 500 feet long on one side of town and dug trenches on the other. The remaining two sides are facing the water and the natives cannot get in that way.
They are very poor shots. Their arms are mostly bows and arrows, bolos, (a kind of knife), spear, and a few Remington rifles. I have not time to give you any more of the details just at present.
FOX FAMILY REUNION.
Held at Park Wednesday—Descendants of Revolutionary Soldier.
Eighty-three descendants of Samuel and Mabel (Webster) Fox met at Cortland park, Wednesday, Aug. 15, for their third annual punk Rev. W. D. Fox of Preble, president, presided. Asa S. Fox of Cortland, the secretary and treasurer, reported much good work done the past year. These officers were re-elected, and James H. Fox of West Dryden was elected vice-president, and the officers were constituted an executive committee.
Samuel Fox was a revolutionary soldier who was in constant service from the siege of Roxbury, Mass., to the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Va. In the year 1795 be moved with others from East Hartford, Conn., to the town of Fabius, N. Y., and settled in the beautiful Keeney Valley lying midway between Fabius and Cuyler. In 1810 he removed to West Dryden in Tompkins county, where he died, and his descendants are still represented in both counties.
The clerical element is prominent in this family. These brothers, grandsons of Samuel Fox, were and are ministers of the Methodist Episcopal church; the late Rev. Wesley Fox of Homer, N. Y., Rev. W. D. Fox (retired) of Preble, N. Y., and Rev. R. C. Fox pastor at Cicero, N. Y., now in the forty-sixth year of his ministry. Three daughters of the late Rev. Wesley Fox married ministers of the same church, viz., the Rev. Geo. S. White (retired) of Perry, N. Y., the late Rev. A. J. Kenyon, and the late Rev. M. Z. Haskins. Two great grandsons of Samuel Fox also chose the ministry: Rev. A. D. Webster, now presiding elder of the Adams district in the Northern New York conference and Rev. M. R. Webster, D. D., of Bradford, Pa., Genesee conference. Both were delegates to the last general conference held in Chicago last May. Mabel Fox, a granddaughter of Samuel Fox, also married a minister, the late Rev. A. J. Grover, the intrepid soldier of two wars, the Mexican and civil, in the latter of which, on the field of Gettysburg as major and in command of the gallant Seventy-sixth regiment, he fell.
All the living clergymen of the above list were present and took part in the exercises which consisted of prayer and address by the Rev. Geo. S. White, address of welcome by the president, history and genealogy of the Fox family by Rev. M. R. Webster, and addresses by Rev. R. C. Fox and Rev. A. D. Webster, the latter of whom also rendered a solo, "The Old House at Home." Rev. M. R. Webster sang "The Sword of Bunker Hill," and responded to an encore with "The Evergreen Mountains of Life."
Thus in song and story, hand shaking and social intercourse the hours passed only too quickly, and all departed with the hope that on the third Wednesday of next August all might meet again in the fourth annual Fox family reunion.
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| Photo of Cortland's Main Street showing arc light hanging over intersection at Court Street. |
EGYPTIAN DARKNESS.
B. H. Beard's Horse Badly Hurt by Collision in Dark.
The theory of corporation moonlight in this city results more than half the time in a condition of Egyptian darkness. It is assuredly to be hoped that the director of lights in the common council will get in a little better communication with the almanac in the preparation of the moonlight schedule or that the time may speedily come when we shall have grown enough to afford lights every night in the year. Wednesday night the sky was cloudy and the moon did not rise till 9:29 in the evening. Until that time it was so dark that it was impossible for people to keep from running into each other on the streets or on the walks, without the greatest care.
At about 8:30 o'clock R. H. Beard turned the corner of Washington-st., to Clinton-ave., heading west. A bicycle with a glaring head light was coming toward him on the wheel path next the curb. He turned toward the center of the road to give the wheel man room and was struck full head on by another horse driven by Mr. Masters. One of the shafts of Mr. Masters' buggy struck Mr. Beard's horse on the right side a little back of the shoulder and dug a hole into the flesh about 2 inches deep and ripped up the skin and flesh for a foot back.
Neither party was driving fast and neither had seen the other through the darkness, Mr. Beard being blinded by the bicycle lantern and Mr. Masters not having been able to discover the team as it came around the corner. Mr. Masters stopped and did what he could to help Mr. Beard. The harness and shafts belonging to the latter were badly damaged, and the horse will be laid up for repairs for a few days, though it is not thought that there will be any permanent injury. It was fortunate that it was not worse, but it is an accident likely to happen any time before the moon rises in corporation moonlight. It does seem as though when the moon does not rise till after 9 o'clock it is time to call it off for that month on the moonlight schedule.
BREVITIES.
—There will be a meeting of Orris Hose Co. to-night at 8:30 o'clock to make arrangements for attending the State firemen's convention in Syracuse next week.
—New display advertisements to-day are—Bosworth & Stillman, Opening sale, page 8; M. A. Hudson, Crockery, page 4; Palmer & Co., Mid-summer clearance sale, page 7.
—L. J. Richardson of this village, has been awarded the contract to put in ten and one-half miles of water mains in Ridgewood, N. J.—Oswego Times. Mr. Richardson was formerly superintendent of the Cortland water works.
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