No unrest of any sort need
be apprehended; for whilst rumours would no doubt circulate wildly
as soon as the populace realized the tragic nature of the climax
which had come, the Gendarmerie Corps and the Metropolitan Police
--two forces that numbered 18,000 armed men--were taking every
possible precaution.
In spite of these assurances great uneasiness was felt. The
foreign Legations, which are very imperfectly informed regarding
Chinese affairs although living in the midst of them, could not be
convinced that internal peace could be so suddenly attained after
five years of such fierce rivalries. Among the many gloomy
predictions made at the time, the most common to fall from the
lips of Foreign Plenipotentiaries was the remark that the Japanese
would be in full occupation of the country within three months--
the one effective barrier to their advance having been removed. No
better illustration could be given of the inadequate grasp of
politics possessed by those whose peculiar business it should be
to become expert in the science of cause and effect. In China, as
in the Balkans, professional diplomacy errs so constantly because
it has in the main neither the desire nor the training to study
dispassionately from day to day all those complex phenomena which
go to make up modern nationalism. Guided in its conduct almost
entirely by a policy of personal predilections, which is fitfully
reinforced by the recollection of precedents, it is small wonder
if such mountains of mistakes choke every Legation dossier.
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